RB10 Elitist Hegemony -- slavers not workers.

Excellent round Liq the Pirate captian. Yar! I see you moved the workboat back southeast. Maybe Zeviz can use it to explore Northeast of Tokugawa's territory, then further east for circumnavigation, or mayhap he'll build his own, or blaze trails for another bloody path!

Hail Liq, and I call forth Zeviz from the dark to pursue this next round of fury. Go forth Zeviz, map our sails towards conquest! Victory or Death lay beyond that next turn screen!

1. Liq (Just played)
2. Zeviz (UP)
3. S.ilver (ON DECK)
4. ndthsmdy (Yarrrr, ye scurvy dog)
5. Drasca (Watching with glee)
 
Was trying to head south on the workboat to spot another path to the west. as I was getting blocked.

Kinda was distracted by all that pillaging/ cabin boy fun as well so was a :smoke: perhaps on my part as I didn;t look to the north. It's lack of a name makes that obvious.

Glad cabin boy was able to sneak back on his own. a single warrior guard wouldn't have done us much good if toku wanted blood and darious is too useful where he is.

Feel free to berate me when needed though! I'm a student of civ.



Black Beard really earned his peg leg there, we got like 35 gold from that pillaging alone hahaha. No point wimping out with him after that miraculous win you pulled off.

would have gone for the gems if I could have lol. drat!

Btw let me explicitly say it, fantastic start. That timing on the cabin boy was a solid gamble and, as is said in RB circles, Fourtune favors the bold! on the counterattacking archer.

Sometimes it's better to be good than lucky
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good

As for that no cheat toggle... I'm not so hot on it. I really rely on sevlopedia as the default civlopedia is just the worst thing ever. I cringed going back to it.

Not sure what all the no cheat toggle was geeking on, that or blue marble but blue marble is really easy to uninstall / reinstall.

I support the no cheat toggle's concept 100%, just not so happy with its implimentaion so far.

Anyway, we got a solid crew going here, this is gonna be a fun SG.:goodjob:

When are the moo SG's starting up, zed is soooo slacking:lol:

Cheers!
-Liq
 
I actually didn't turn on the no cheat toggle at first. I naively set an admin password under "Game details", wanting to know what that did, and that had the unintended effect of 'no cheating' and all that entails. I honestly didn't know at the time there was anything different. I can take it off for your next round if you'd like, or take it off completely. This round, I didn't have time to, because well. You played with black beard and cabin boy so fast, I wasn't able to come back with a changed before you would play! I am glad you managed to find a way around this difficulty.
:smoke: perhaps on my part as I didn;t look to the north
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This can be forgiven. I too am at fault, busy watching for men to capture, instead of noting alternate paths west beyond lizzy's continent. Looting takes all your concentration! Doubly so when death comes at any moment. However, the next player needs to be a more careful about workboat scouting. I am not yet worried we'll lose it to someone else, but we must be quick about it. No slacking off!

Hehe. I honestly expected that warrior (Black beard) to die. We got lucky, and it paid off in spades when you took advantage of it. You aptly saw the one tile jungle blockade, and was smartly wary of an archer retaliation. It is possible to pillage everything, but you'd likely lose both warriors in the process. That blockade is too valuable.

When you're lucky and skilled, sieze the advantage! When you're skilled and prepared for the unlucky, take heart in the fact you've prepared all that you can, and we can understand acknowledge sometimes the gamble does not pay off, if you care to explain why! What booty do you seek to bring? What lands do you conquer? What natives will you bloody your swords on? I lost my men, but look at the treasure I've brought back! Zounds, it is worth trying! Mathmeticians and Astronomers knew how large the world was at the time of Colombus and Magellan, and figured it was round long since. The distance was too great to sail to Asia heading west. There was no knowledge of the americas, but that insane man proposed to Spain, an emerging world power and rival to Britain at the time, and she had little to lose sending 3 ships with Columbus, and all to gain. That she did after wishing Columbus to his likely doom

The AI only counter-attacks from its city garrison if it thinks it has overwhelming forces, and this scale is usually set too high for a bold player's taste. What you or I think can retaliate and go back, the computer is too much of a wimp to take. You may get your hand bitten inside that crocodile's mouth, but you can easily punch in the nose, and beat its brains to a bloody pulp before it decides to bite back. In short, the AI is chicken. Have your way with it, whether fried, baked, or grilled.

In my experience, Tokugawa would never unguard Osaka to make an attack towards you. He can't think that. He cannot sense or understand there will be no sneak attacks, that his city will not be in danger if he leaves it unguarded. Civ AI's are simply unable to sense or reason, but are set at certain (fairly hard) thresholds for generic defense against all possible dangers--rather than our ability to look at the map, determine what dangers lay out there, and dynamically prepare defense when we need it rather than "I need this much xxx at all times." The only guaranteed time it does counterattack from the city garrsion, is when roads are in place next to the city, and he can attack and retreat safely back to the city. Roads are not required when they have mounted (movement 2) units, but that is how the AI thinks most of the time. There is a trigger for 'last ditch' efforts to cripple your assault, but usually it is too late if you are performing a well prepared fortified assault with reinforcements incoming.

Personally, I would think pillaging the road on the hill would be very important. He road/mine is my first choice in pillaging. Burning that slows down Tokugawa's next worker considerably, slows down active defense capabilities (see above) and gives potential for another kidnapping should we be able to keep blackbeard on the hill, while his partner covers his back in the jungle. You took the safe route and I wholly respect your choice. At any turn, tokugawa could've spawned an archer, thus blowing the whole raid (all right, someone else can calculate the numbers for maximum # of turns it'd take tokugawa based on that yield, but it wouldn't be many turns at all). You took toku's mines and then some. Good work!
 
was gonna edit but you type far too fast..

playing with loading the inital save, bluemarble works fine as does civ scale... need to find that salmon color UI again lol...

My pc likes blue marble much better for some reason, plays much smoother and I like the look better by this point.

I think the culpret is the sevlopeadia as that was the only known mod I had other than what I mentioned.

That's not so easy a change to just swap in and out. So I'll save effing with that for when I'm awake. 4am (430am here now) is where Liq earns his self bestowed Nyquil moniker.

As for the looting I figured I had 4 to 6 turns of loot time.. the roads were secondary.

I agree completely about roads but the first road I would have taken away from the mine right next to kyoto. Blackbeard barely took out the mine for that.

an advanced raid would be to go back and take an archer warrior pair to double pillage those gems then clean out the roads. a hill promoted archer would scare him off from attacking.

Actually that gambit could be done now.. promote the archer to hills then move it up to hook up with darious.

queue up another archer for protection... got more than enough warning if toku is going to attack.

I so love barracks in the early game especially. Half priced barracks is a major reason I love aggressive.

Cheers!
-Liq'd
 
Liquidated said:
I agree completely about roads but the first road I would have taken away from the mine right next to kyoto. Blackbeard barely took out the mine for that.
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Here is the gamble that I did not wish to suggest: It may have been possible to assign both warriors to pillage duty, but if Tok had an archer next turn, we might've lost both warriors. Within two turns, the mine and road next to Kyoto are taken out, and the other warrior is almost ready to pillage the farm. Next turn, farm pillaging, and black beard returns from taunting kyoto to return to the original outlying mine. However, this might leave more overall production available to Kyoto, so your way was definitely safer, and probably bought more time to pillage with.

Liquidated said:
I so love barracks in the early game especially. Half priced barracks is a major reason I love aggressive.
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Oh so do I! If I do not need to build stonehenge, barracks can become my first item partially built until pop 2 (next is usually a settler or worker).

Early barracks + Combat I = Instant 35% advantage over melee or archers.
 
Good job destroying all of Toku's improvements. Pretty soon we'll have more improved lands than him, despite our no-worker start. :)

Should we sign a cease-fire with him to encourage him to train more workers for us to enslave? Or does breaking cease-fires carry too much of a diplomatic penalty? Drasca, do you know under what conditions AI hides his workers in the cities? (We will not be capturing Kyoto for a while, but we can try your worker capture method again if his new worker comes in range.)

About exploration, how long will it be until barbarian galleys appear? Circumnavigation bonus seems too important to risk doing it with a work boat, but if you’ve done it before, we can try it here.

My plan is following: build workboat or galley for circumnavigation, then finish archer, then build [another] galley for short range exploration and settler transport. That galley can be loaded with the warrior from Madrid for more effective exploration (every other turn warrior jumps on shore and returns to boat next turn, before it moves).

For research, I’ll probably finish mining, then go for Priesthood (for Oracle), Bronze Working and Iron Working. Does this plan sound ok?

I’ll play tonight or tomorrow night.
 
If you're worried about breaking a ceasefire, simply declare peace. You can break that at any time. Toku must be willing to speak with you first, though. Have enough turns passed for that?
 
Cease fire can be broken at any time. Peace treaties cannot declare war for 10 turns.

As for barbarian galleys, you pretty much have free reign. Barbarian galleys are extremely unlikely. A second workboat is likely the best bet for its cost.

Research wise: It is is almost too late to grab oracle (I daresay we'll be unable to), and we need an archer immediately if we want to keep up our blockade/worker denial strategy. That's ok. Stonehenge is more useful to us anyways. We should make a run for great lighthouse or colossus. If you can grab stonehenge right now, it'd be wonderful.

I am not entirely sure about the worker garrison thing. I believe if you're in, or near their city radious, the AI gets paranoid about their workers. Press your advantages. For the warrior, that means staying in the jungle, but he'll need backup soon. That fortify bonus on top of jungle tile is enough to keep ONE archer away. I'm not sure he'll heal in time for the second one built.

Also, if you're within their road movement, and they have 'spare' troops, they'll attack. If you plan to use that hill to your advantage, I recommend one archer immediately, a workboat, then another archer. Promote that archer to hills defense before you move in. 2nd archer with Combat I--->Cover would also be deal. Those jungles and forests give us enough of an advantage to scare Osaka, and if he dares attack, the Cover archer can pillage with impunity.

Actually, AI's only attack with "spare troops" in addition to their city defenders. Tokugawa's one of the ones that builds almost nothing by 'spare troops.'

If Tokugawa offers a peace treaty, don't take it. If you really want a cease fire... offer him one yourself, but if you look at his culture, he we won't be able to penetrate his lands in time. Toku's peace treaties are really just for him to rearm. Don't take allow him, and don't accept peace. He is a lesser man! Force his hand!

List of possible things Zeviz can do:
1. Start stonehenge or great lighthouse--We could really use stone henge for a great prophet, but GLH is not bad either. Cabin boy mine the gems, and forest chop the plains hill south of the gems, then mine.
2. Workboat/Galley Explore eastern front via galley / boat. I suggest workboat, it is cheaper, and we need cheap long range scouts, not short range military / transport boats right now). This is your call however. We're not all that far off from getting circumnavigation, so a galley would be a good choice after all.
3) Archer pillage offense, need two, one on the hill near Kyoto with hills defenses, the other pillaging elsewhere. Possibly third later on for home defense.
4) Check every turn if we can get open borders with Lizzy.
5) Deny Tokugawa peace. Militarily, peace takes away our advantage, and lets him come back with millions more troops. Diplomatically, Tokugawa is also usually the 'safe bet' to declare war on. He's so isolationist most of the time, most other AI's dislike him.
6) Settler? Probably a good idea, especially if you get a galley and see some Iron/Bronze resources. I would like stonehenge asap for a Holy Shrine to spread judaism for us, but this is a strong choice when paired with galley, and defintely a choice we need to take if we see Iron/Bronze on some nearby island. We'll also want horses, but that can wait for now.
 
The anti-cheating checkbox is more trouble than it is worth. Here is the latest save modified to remove (hopefully) that checkbox.
 
to to stress, after reinstalling blue marble, I went back to my save in 1600 and looked hard at the path for the work boat.

unless we get open borders with vicky(?), the only costal path westward is most likey north of vicky as south just took me east and towarsd the polar cap.

Get open borders with the white civ to the west, go east with the original work boat, or pop a new one and go east.

and yes, no peace for toku, he's a military monster if you let him be.

Cheers!
-Liq
 
1600BC (turn 0) Despot Zeviz takes over the Holy Spanish Empire. Our glorious empire is home to 3 religions and Port Madrid is training first archers to go and challenge those Japanese cowards, who are hiding in their cities. We are almost done with research into Mining, so our newly captured slaves can build a mine.



The only trouble happens at the docks, where unemployed sailors are getting into a lot of drunken fights. The despot decides to remedy this situation by building a Galley to send around the world. He considers building a workboat instead, but the difference in cost is small and there are no fishes nearby for our boat to fish when exploration is done, whe a galley will be necessary for settlers.

Our brave explorers in the west are sent south-west, because a small island there looks like a possible bridge to more distant lands.



IBT: Those Japanese cowards have trained an archer in Osaka.

1560BC (1) Our western explorers continue their exploration and sailors continue drinking in Port Madrid bars. 7 turns until galley is ready.

IBT: a Japanese archer leaves Kyoto and one of their warriors leaves Osaka. Darius Drake laughs in the face of this cowardly combat I archer. (I consider moving him back to a jungle hill, but this will cause him to lose fortification bonus, so he will not gain anything from the move.)

1520BC (2) We learn mining and start learning Bronze Working, to find bronze and chop forests on hills. Our slaves start building a mine on Gems. Madrid switches to training an archer.

1480BC (3) Darius bravely defeats Japanese archer, but is seriously wounded, so I take him back towards a jungle hill in our territory to heal faster and get a better combat advantage. Our western explorers can't proceed west and might have to turn back north.



1440BC (4) We have trained an archer in Madrid and go back to constructing a galley. Japanese warrior cowardly retreats towards Osaka, so our archer moves forward to meet him (and to cover wounded Darius).

1400BC (5) Japanese warrior ran back to hide in Osaka at the mere sight of our Archer. The archer and Darius proceed to jungle hill, where they will meet and fortify together. Our slaves have completed the mine, so we start working it, instead of one of the forests. This will stop our growth, but we are at happiness limit already. Research time for Bronze working decreases from 6 to 4 turns.

1360BC (6) Our slaves are sent to mine another hill. Japanese warrior works up the courage to approach the hill where Darius and archer are meeting.

1320BC (7) The warrior tries to go past our archer. We attack and easily win. (2.0/3 strength)

1280BC (8) Our archer takes 2 hill defense promotions and prepares to heal before moving towards a hill near Kyoto.

1240BC (9) We learn Bronze working, but don't see bronze anywhere. We research Agriculture(4) to farm the corn to be able to grow while working mines, before going on to Iron Working. Our sailors rejoice as we complete our first Galley. The ship is immediately sent on its first voyage of great discovery to the east, past Japanese lands.

Our holy people complain that they don't have a suitable place of worship, so we start work on Stonehenge(12). This will let us train Great Prophets to construct our holy shrines, as well as improving culture in all our cities.

1200BC (10) All units are still unmoved. I'd move the archer and warrior to the hill overlooking Kyoto. Hill II archer is almost invulnerable in his current location, but we won't catch any more workers if he stays there.

Note somebody's yellow border to our south-east.



I am not sure if it makes sense to go for Stonehenge. Calendar is a high priority for us both for advanced ships and because we have silk and dyes. Once we discover Calendar, Stonehedge will stop producing GPPs. So we might be better off using the production to train a settler and just hiring some priests in production-poor cities later. I've put only 1 turn of production into it, so perhaps the next player should cancel it and start training a settler.
 
Zeviz said:
Hill II archer is almost invulnerable in his current location, but we won't catch any more workers if he stays there.
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The opportunity window for capturing workers has gone. Toku's large cultural borders, roaded hills, and the fact he goes bonkers with military, will make it impossible for us to get any more, and if we do get more from him, it'll be at too high a cost. We don't need anymore right now.
Zeviz said:
Note somebody's yellow border to our south-east..
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Probably Huayana Cupac. Looks too light to be Mali. Quecha (warrior UU) Spiritial / Financial civ. Isn't the most powerful around, but can't let him have the opportunity.

Zeviz said:
I am not sure if it makes sense to go for Stonehenge. Calendar is a high priority for us both for advanced ships and because we have silk and dyes. Once we discover Calendar, Stonehedge will stop producing GPPs
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That's a very good point. Do we have any access to buildings that allow us to use a Priest specialist right now? Temple or Monastery? Either way, I've delayed our expansion phase long enough. We're probably behind badly. We should build a settler, possibly two.

The galley has enough time to do some exploring. I suggest northeast towards Lizzy, trying to get open borders along the way.

I think, however, we should gamble putting the settler on your newly built galley and expand elsewhere. If we build something on this island, that's just one more place to defend against the land-bound Tokugawa, and I don't see any crucial resources here right now.

Stonehenge isn't prioritized with the AI anyways. I don't think calender justifies not taking stonehenge, because we NEED that first holy shrine to spread our state religion, but we need to expand first.
 
wow there really is no bronze anywhere we've seen. that's silly. hope we have some iron.

Seems osaka's location is as good as anywhere such that we might as well let it grow to 2 then capture it, saving us the settler.

imo pop a few cheap warriors and give them combat 1, any fight they get into gives them a chance to become cheap medics that will get attacked last the remainder of the game.:lol:

don;t see how toku is land locked btw, both towns he has are costal.

Cheers!
-Liq
 
Lurker's comment: The northernmost tile of that bit of land Huayana's on looks tempting for a city spot to me, particularly if there's any fishes or anything east of it. It's also worth noting that putting a road on those gems will take Madrid back to a position where it can grow without becoming unhappy - not sure if you've got the wheel yet, though :p
 
He's land locked because we're going to control the sea, and his ability to expand. He's too focused on us to think: Oh I should build a galley and run far far away.

Warriors are too outdated at this point to be of any use. As for Osaka, we'll likely flip it. No need to conquer.

We need to find an island with iron. Horses too, but Iron first.
 
I just typed a long reply that got eaten by the board. :( So here is the summary:

If primary purpose for Stonehenge is to get a prophet we are better off hiring a priest:
Stonehenge makes 2 GPPs, so 50 turns for a Prophet. Priest makes 3 GPPs, so 34 turns for a Prophet. Stonehenge has 10 turns left. Priest can be hired in less time than that. (about 6 turns to research Priesthood and a couple turns to build discounted temple) Running a priest, instead of working that forested hill will cost us 2 hammers per turn (but give 1 extra gpt), but Stonehenge will cost over 100 hammers to complete, so running a priest long enough to generate 1 prophet will also save us production.

Conclusion: we should probably switch from Stonehenge to Archer->Settler, putting in Temple as soon as we discover Priesthood. And switch research to Priesthood -> Iron Working.

EDIT: Another thought I had is that if western workboat doesn't find a passage near islands it's currently exporing, we should bring it home for more short-range exploration. There has to be some metal near the coast on a map like this, so we probably just need to explore more around home. Our east-bound Galley can complete circumnavigation on its own.
 
I'll get to it in 5 hours. It looks like we really want to concentrate on some expansion.

I agree with the synopsis that any effort put towards Stonehenge would be better used elsewhere. I'm not a huge fan of specialists (probably will become one here), but it's probably much better saving that production for actual units and settlers.

Any ideas how we're going to nab new workers?
 
looking Good guys!! No workers...... Nice Variant :crazyeye:
 
Normally, I am not a big fan of specialists either, but we've made a huge investment into religion in this game and the only way for it to pay off is to get a great prophet ASAP (the sooner we put up a shrine, the faster our religion will start spreading to AIs, giving us financial and diplomatic benefits). According to the calculations from my previous post, the fastest way for us to make a great prophet is to hire a priest for 34 turns.

About workers, this map needs very few workers anyway. We have all we need for now and we'll get more with captured AI cities in the future. (In my solo game, even the workers that I did capture spent most of the time sleeping, because there was nothing for them to do.)
 
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