RB2 - Clueless Catherine Conquers Crowded Continents

Lurker here, with a silly(?) question:
Why bother annexing Istanbul at all?

If you stay away from the Barracks line of research, puppets won't build useless barracks and instead will build temples and circuses and colosseums -- all of which are useful, especially because puppets don't raise the cost of social policies.

Unless Istanbul has amazing production (which it doesn't seem to, looking at screenshots), I don't see why you wouldn't just leave it as a puppet all game.
 
Lurker here, with a silly(?) question:
Why bother annexing Istanbul at all?

If you stay away from the Barracks line of research, puppets won't build useless barracks and instead will build temples and circuses and colosseums -- all of which are useful, especially because puppets don't raise the cost of social policies.

Unless Istanbul has amazing production (which it doesn't seem to, looking at screenshots), I don't see why you wouldn't just leave it as a puppet all game.

Because my understanding is that we specifically WANT to win by Domination if possible, so we will almost certainly want the bottom of the tech tree. And while there are plenty of gamey things to do with puppets as proven by Luddite, I am not sure we want to go that route.

That said, annexing anything other than a production monster is probably a net-negative in this game.

***Ignore file attachment, it is my glitched Immortal OCC save that I couldn't upload at RB***
 

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Lurker Question:

Is it even possible to go back and choose the raze city option after you've set up a city as a puppet state? Seems like I only remember being given an option to annex the city when I've clicked on a puppet city's name.

--SB
 
Lurker Answer:

You can annex the puppet city and in the city screen click on Raze city. Same difference if you decided to raze the moment you captured it.
 
Lurker Answer:

You can annex the puppet city and in the city screen click on Raze city. Same difference if you decided to raze the moment you captured it.

Also to note: razing a city at the time of capture automatically annexes it. If you stop the razing before it gets completely destroyed it cannot then become a puppet city.
 
Managed to sneak out the turnset between classes, report forthcoming after I finish for the day.
 
Upon opening the save, I spent about five-ten minutes just poking around and looking through things to get a feel for what was going on. We have a LOT of spears - does anyone know what their upgrade path is? My priorities this turnset are 1) Consolidation 2) Bringing happiness positive 3) Setting up for war with Lhasa, allowing us to ally with Helsinki more easily and to begin reaping the benefits of Maritime bonuses. I swap Moscow from Stable to Monument, as I'd like to accumulate culture while we can, to save up for those awesome later-game policies.

T1: Istanbul finishes the monument it has been building. I annex it and start on a Courthouse. The ICS strategy posted upthread is amazing, and I'd like to take full advantage of it this game.

Edirne isn't providing us very many workable tiles that we cannot get with St. Pete and Istanbul, so from that perspective, it isn't that useful. But according to the new theory of ICS for this game, if you build a colosseum, market, bank (plus trade route), library and monument (finished in 4-turns), then every city is a net positive if you don't grow it past size 4. So it might be worth keeping, even if mostly useless tile wise.

Basically, you build those few buildings and work high-gold tiles and you're set. This strategy dovetails nicely with our desire to cover the land FOR THE GLORY OF THE SOVIET and take full advantage of the Order tree. The one problem with raze & replace is that AIs get very pissy if you do that, and until we're actively conquering somebody I'd like to use their luxuries.

T3: Our second plantation finishes, so I dial up the AI with my spare silk in hand and... what do you mean, nobody has connected more than one of any lux? :mad: One of my major problems with the happiness bonuses the AI gets on higher difficulty levels is that it doesn't even bother with luxuries nine times out of twelve - Wu Zetian hasn't connected *either* of her whales, and Fishing is a first-tier tech! Okay, fine then. How about... this?



The AI massively overvalues strategic resources. It does not understand that it can only feasibly use a handful of the resource within a 20-turn period. 30 horses for 20 turns are as valuable as 15 horses are as valuable as 5 horses. So let's take advantage of being Russia (as this is a family site, I will leave out the jokes about how much Catherine likes her horses) and sell our excess for happiness (the first silks + the ivory brings us into happiness, even with the 5-happy penalty from annexing Istanbul). I also re-affirm our Pact of Cooperation with Bismarck - not sure when that got dropped, but I like him as a partner in the south, as Caesar is a weasel and Hiawatha is a moralizing bore. Of course, if he proves an inconvenient partner of convenience...

Commando said:
Matrix: Remember, Sully, when I promised to kill you last?
Sully: That's right, Matrix! You did!
Matrix: I lied.

:mischief:

T4: Finish researching Writing, begin Trapping. Need the tech for our Trading Posts and our Camp on the deer.

T6: Forces reach the perimeter of Lhasa's culture. It has Walls and is strength 19. We are not getting inside there until we have Catapults (or, as a backup plan, we could just zerg it down with Horsemen). We have the tech for Cats (Mathematics) but require Iron to build them.

T8: In accordance with this plan, when Trapping finishes I start researching Iron Working, due in ten. Hopefully, we have Iron. If not, we're going to need to reconfigure our military priorities in accordance with newly-realized economic goals for the benefit of Greater Russia at the lamentable cost of some collateral damage to neighboring populations (translation: murder some poor sap with it and take their stuff).

T9: Policy comes in. We might want to spend it on Military Caste (I wish we hadn't bought Warrior Code - GG are, well, great, but you get them pretty quickly from standard warfare, which we'll be doing a LOT of this game, and you can't rebuy policies), but for now I'm saving it, as happiness isn't really a problem - we're almost done with two Circuses, and then we'll have plenty of headroom to tech to Construction and get Colosseums to enact the ICS strategy already mentioned. So it may be better to just hold onto our culture until we reach the Industrial Era for Order, especially since unit maintenance costs make it a poor (ha!) idea to garrison backline cities.

T10: I get a notification that Lhasa and Germany are no longer allies. :eek: Well, it's a good thing I didn't declare on Lhasa yet! Just for paranoia's sake I check every city-state manually - none of the ones we have contact with are allied with anyone now. I left three of our workers unmoved, as they all happened to finish jobs this turn, and the next player can decide what to do with them.

Summary pics:





We are spending a TON on unit maintenance. Our scout will be within our borders next turn, so we can profitably (ha!) disband him then. We should make Currency a priority, and get some Trading Posts up ASAP (especially around Erdine)! St. Petersburg needs a monument. Let's sell our horses for cash (ha! wait, that wasn't a pun...).

I really, really, hope we have Iron. Save attached.


Kylearan
Aretii -> just played
SleepingMoogle -> UP
Gold Ergo Sum -> on deck
MuLepton
 

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Hehe, nice report! :goodjob: I agree to research Iron Working next, as iron is absolutely critical to us. I actually mentioned that in my report as well. :p (Going for Trapping might have been the correct move anyway, given our economical situation...)

Our Workers are running out of things to do (insert standard gripe about this being typical in Civ 5) and we're bleeding out cash. I figured trading posts solved both those problems, as well as being key to the ICS build.

Glad you enjoyed the report :D
 
Policy comes in. We might want to spend it on Military Caste (I wish we hadn't bought Warrior Code - GG are, well, great, but you get them pretty quickly from standard warfare, which we'll be doing a LOT of this game, and you can't rebuy policies)
Well, as I wrote in my report, I took it because it opens up Discipline, which I thought would be pretty helpful to us in our warmongering game.

Anyway, since Aretii brought up the issue that he wants to go the ICS route, we need to think about short- and longterm expansion plans, as well as what social policies we are going to take. With ICS, we won't get a lot, so we better make them count.

The order tree is probably what we should be aiming for then, I guess? Maybe two in Patronage for less influence decay and more influence per gold.

Expansionwise, should we try to first assimilate China or rather backfill our land in the north? I'd probably prefer to do the former, because we're looking fairly strong militarily right now and there's no reason to let China catch up.
 
The problem that I see with saving up our culture for the Order policies, is that if we get any more cities, we will actually lose earned social policies due to the increase in policy cost. So our already earned culture loses value every time we settle or annex a city. For this reason, we should either slingshot our way to industrial to grab Order policies, or just face that we won't see very many and finish our way through Honor.
 
Hey guys, sorry about the long wait but I'm really not feeling well right now. Fortunately the turns weren't too exciting either, but Cathy's diary will remain a mystery for this turnset at least. :)

(Since we aren't attacking anyone right now, and there's no clear concensus what to do with our social policies, I left them alone for this turnset)

T85:
Following the earlier suggestion, most available Workers start building trading posts on available tiles. I also traded horses around: 5 for 20 turns for 200 gold to Bismarck, and 15 for 20 turns to Wu Zetian for 436 gold.
This put us over 1000 gold, and I decided to simply buy our way into Helsinki's good graces at that point. Attacking Lhasa is still a while away, and the diplo boost can be used to renew the ally status at that point. Better to have the food bonus now so cities can focus on production and gold.

T87:
Istanbul wants dyes. Moscow made the same request earlier, so I scanned the map and only found resources near Hiawatha. Naturally, he hasn't gotten around to hooking them up yet. :(
Other than that, an unmet player advances to the classical age, and the Oracle was BIDL

T89
St. Petersburg grows and finishes its Circus. As the city generates no culture on its own, I have it build a Monument. Moscow finishes the Library, and starts building a Circus. In hindsight that may have been unneeded, but there wasn't too much else to build anyhow.

T91
Trading posts start finishing. I emphasized a gold focus in most cities since we're running out of things to build.
Washington requests a Pact of Secrecy vs Monty, which I politely declined. If anything, Washington may be our next target. Hiawatha also enters the medieval era.

T92:
Iron Working finishes. We have a source of iron just west of Istanbul. I decided to buy the tile right away, and send over a Worker to build a mine. There's additional nearby sources northeast of Moscow in the tundra, and east of Helsinki.
Further sources of Iron seem pretty limited, which is good for us! :D There's one resource within Venice's cultural border, and another between Bismarck and Hiawatha. If we can claim the other two sources, we are in a good power-broking position.

As our cashflow is starting to hurt, I make Currency the next tech to research. Aside from Markets, it will also make us advance to the medieval era, increasing our food bonus from Helsinki.

T93
Bismarck declares war on Venice. He must have sniffed out that iron or something. In the same turn, he requests our help against Hiawatha (?) which I declined. We want to be friendly to Hiawatha at least until we can trade for his Dye resources.

Istanbul finishes building its Courthouse and Edirne its Circus, and happiness shoots up again. Our gold income is only a trickle right now, but at this pace a Golden Age isn't too far off. Both cities start building a Krepost.

I notice at this point that Monty has founded a third city south of his capital, the first AI Civ we met to have more than two cities.

T95
Hiawatha finally hooked up the first of his Dyes. Unsurprisingly he refuses to trade it, but hopefully this means the second resource isn't far behind.

St petersburg finishes building a Monument, and starts a Library. I'm not certain about this, we might want to build a Settler to claim more Iron resources instead.

Venice requests units in their struggle against Germany as well. As we have an army encamped near Lhasa right now that's doing nothing, perhaps this might be something to consider?

I attached a screenshot with the Iron resources circled in red, and the save is attached at the bottom of the post.
 

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Any suggestions from the peanut gallery for my turnset?

I am going to play it tonight because I have to leave Monday for Los Angeles to defend a deposition on Tuesday, so if I don't play it tonight, I wouldn't be able to play it until late Tuesday (and I will be playing the new Medal of Honor on Xbox on Tuesday anyway when I get home).
 
Didn't have a lot of direction, so this is what I did:

Inherited it on T95. I did this before the turn change:

Sold extra silk to Wu for 147G + 3G/turn.

Our puppet city, Edirne, started to make a Krepost. Unacceptable. This is how puppets kill you, by making production buildings when they never produce anything. Decide to either raize or annex. Not sure if we feel raizing everything (ideal) is an exploit, so I annexed. Put to max production, courthouse is due in 19 turns. We had plenty of happy to spare, so this seemed like the right way to go. Annexing will save some AI pissiness.

We were building a Krepost in Istanbul. Not sure why. Leave it.

Moscow was building a circus. Don't need the happy, so I switched this to a settler to get the whale spot in the NW. On max production, settler due in 5 turns.

T96: Set the worker to farm the desert river hill at Edirne. Will be a FFHHG tile when it finishes. Set other worker to build a grassland TP at St. Pete.

T97: We get five horses back from Washington in 2 turns, so I make this trade 8H-->171G from Monty.

T98: Bismarck makes peace with Venice. Set worker to build another river farm at Moscow. I think we may have too many farms. We might just want to TP some of those river tiles. Caesar declares war on Geneva. Monty makes the Medieval era (tech leader?).

T99: Caesar asks for war with Biz. I say no. Monty declares on Tyre. Washington declares war on Tyre. I sign for OB with Caesar. Monty shows up to talk smack:



T100: Moscow finishes Settler. I set it to finish the Circus before hammer decay sets in and hire two Scientists. Istanbul finishes the Krepost and I put it on a Library. There must be some glitch because I look up and we have 100 (!!!!) horses. Oh well, I start selling them, being picky about amounts to get max value. I trade 13H-->301G with Wu; 27H-->375G to Monty; 8H-->222G with Caesar; 6H+OB-->162G with Washington. We now have 11 horses (more than we could build w/ unit costs) and 1441(!) gold.

T101: I decide we have too many river farms at Moscow and build a TP on the river forest for a FHGGG tile that will be good in a GA. Our mine finishes on the Iron and we now have 4 Iron. Have that worker begin to road to my proposed city site in the NW for an instant Trade Route.

T102: Wu and someone unmet to the Medieval. Apparently our horses to Biz trade ended and glitched because I am getting that notification every turn. Goody! St. Pete TP finishes.

T103: We enter the Medieval by finishing Currency. Yay for more food boni. I debate a 2-turn Sailing for the whales at the new city OR 4-turn Philosophy so we can start putting some of this cash towards Research Agreements. We probably have enough for a RA with every current civ. Talk about speeding up research! Move the worker at St. Pete to build a river farm. ARABIA gets conquered somewhere off in the fog. Bye bye Darius. It was nice not-knowing you. My prediction is that Japan or Alexander ran him over.

T104: FFHHG farm finishes at Edirne. St. Pete finishes its Library and I put it on a Horsemen. Time to put our Horsies to use. A horse rush is very powerful. We could probably gear up and knock out Wu within 25 turns. Might want to go south, though, and secure another Maritime city state.

T105: Move worker to TP the hill at Edirne. I look up, and somehow we have another 160 horses. Is this a glitch? Jesus. So I make some more trades. 9H + OB --> 132G with Monty. 20H + OB --> 19G/turn with Hiawatha. 70G + 10G/turn --> 14H with Biz. 10H --> 60G + 6G/turn with Wu. 4H --> 60G with Washington. Someone said two of our cities wanted dyes for WLTKD, so I trade 30H -->Dyes with Hiawatha. We now have 1752G + 31G/turn coming in. BROKEN!!! When I took over, we had 78G + 0g/t. HORSIES FTW!!! Oh, BTW, we still have 73 more Horses and get 50 back next turn. More trading to come . . .

Our Settler arrives in the NW. I don't settle, that way we can discuss. I believe we should settle on the Grassland cow for an extra food on the center tile. I don't want to waste the production potential of one of the hills by placing our city there. Whoever takes over for me, be sure not to end the turn without moving/settling the settler. Here is the NW:



What do we want to do with all the gold? We could sign up another city state, but until we can guard it, I think that is wasting the money (maybe go to war near it to secure it?). We could cash rush Horsemen and go stomp on Wu (or Monty's punk ass). We can build infrastructure (markets are now available). Or we can sign Research Agreements with any civ we don't plan to attack in the next 30 turns (everyone but Wu and maybe Monty since he is saber-rattling at us). Thoughts?

We also might want to sell one of our Luxuries (to counter the dyes we bought) to slow down our first Golden Age. Best to save it until we have our full infrastructure in place, especially since each one gets progressively more expensive.

Kylearan -> On deck
Aretii
SleepingMoogle
Gold Ergo Sum -> completed
MuLepton -> UP
 

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I have the save and had a look at it. I'll hold off playing though, for a few reasons. I'll edit this post with them once I'm at a real computer (posting this from my phone).
 
Wow, our horses seem to be very...fertile. :crazyeye: That's really odd...together with the repeating "deal ended" notifications I also experienced, there still seem to be some bugs in the resource management part of the game.

Now that we've annexed Edirne after all, we should probably make sure it won't grow too much. Happiness, ICS and all that. Founding the new city on the cows is a good idea; Istanbul can provide the work boats for the whales and the two fish then.

I agree we should kill someone with horses - they are very strong, so we shouldn't let this window of opportunity pass. We will still have enough capitals to go after with other unit types after that!
 
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