RBE DSG2 - It's a Small World After All

[Sirian]

Fortresses are the last thing to be pillaged. Rails, then Road+Iri/Mine, then Fortresses last. I can envision scenarios where all those fortresses bite us back, but the AI's only tend to use amphibious vs cities, so unless they take out a city or bust through our land fort, it probably won't matter. The fortress does add to the cutouts' defense vs bombardment, I believe, but if they keep bombing past 1hp they can still hit the rails beneath.

We ARE now up to where tech theft is our best bet. Always always go for something not owned by all, and try to leave enough cash to do one or even two additional trades with those lagging, to get 2-for-1 or better. We CAN win this thing! Just going to take some luck and dilligence. Always use the Safe tech steal option, too, unless we're already at war or the target is in anarchy (on the chance that that means anything).

As for military, we can't have too much, IMO. We're going to be stealing tech, and that could put us back to war. We're much more likely to get into serious war trouble than to miss the game by one or two turns. Luck on the die rolls of the tech steals will have more to do with the outcome than a few gpt.


- Sirian

 

[Zed-F]

Like Architect, I have not needed to use spying before. Exactly how does "safe steal" work? Does it always get the tech? Can you still get found out? If so, do you need to replant the spy? And, what's the difference with non-safe stealing? A basic rundown of how tech stealing works would be useful.

I might have opted to steal Radio rather than buying it but I wasn't familiar enough with how it works, I think we wanted to wait until we could do a bunch of thefts at once, and I wasn't sure whether we would go after the Iros or the Americans as theft target next. Probably the latter I suppose. I agree that we want to start stealing now, however; I suspect that most of the cash I spent on Radio just went to the Iros for tech for America anyway. I should probably have bought from Egypt instead, even though it was a bit more expensive, as they wouldn't be able to trade with the Iros.

 

[smegged]

Well on the tech stealing issue, I believe that a "safe" steal only increases your odds of gaining the tech. If you fail to steal, the game rolls whether or not you are caught (very likely to get caught using immediate...less so on safe).

Are the Iros in Communism yet?

 

[T-hawk]

double post

 

[T-hawk]

Zed - we wanted to buy Radio to safely get into the Modern Age to see what techs everyone has, and to start a 40-turn research. Now, we probably do want to accumulate enough cash for several steals and use them all in one shot. Probably against America, because he's still in Democracy so 1) his spies aren't "veteran" and 2) we want to knock him out of it if possible.

The question is timing, when to cash it all in. I'd say to do it when either 1) we go to war and need mech inf; 2) they start getting more than 3 spaceship parts into production (check the F10 spy); or 3) when our current 40-turn finishes.

smegged - guess you weren't invited to the Communist Party we had on the last page Yup, the Bolsheviks took over the Iroquois.

 

[Sim_One]

Are you guys worried about Egyptian nukes?

 

[smegged]

Well, I used the "go to last page" link on the main forum and missed an ENTIRE PAGE. Woops. A bit of here

 

[Zed-F]

Smegged, you're up...

Sim, not really at this point. We are not currently at war with Egypt. I expect at some point this planet is going to blow, though, given the relations everyone has with everyone else. Hopefully we can get off the planet before it happens.

 

[T-hawk]

Do remember the AIs aren't that good at nuking. They rarely can get a tactical nuke into position to blow away anything more than a fishing village. (I am curious as to whether Egypt can manage it, being on the same continent at us.) They can use ICBMs, but those do require the quite late Satellites technology, and cost a fairly high 300 shields for a Deity AI to build. And also, do remember that we can make peace anytime we want with an AI after six or so turns of war. If we manage to steal up to tech parity, we don't have any other need to go to war (wouldn't need to knock them out of Democracy.)

 

[smegged]

Inherited turn - safely stole Rocketry from the Americans.

1782 - Traded Rocketry + 1010 gold to Egypt for Computers

1784 - Upgraded all infantry that was in our cities for 400 gold. That will make anybody think twice about invading fortress Azteca.

1786 - I check the space race and the Iros have 1 part in construction. Everybody else has none. They also happen to be the only civ with the Space Flight tech.

1788 - Bapedi starts prebuild for Apollo (Battlefield Med). Please make sure it gets swapped as soon as we have space flight. The two big AIs both now have Ecology. Whether or not we can afford to spend 29 more turns waiting for that tech is unknown.

I have had an idea that can wait for Sirian's turn. We can mobilise for war even in peace time. The idea is that if we get absolutely desperate to get the last couple of spaceship parts done, we can mobilise after we've started those parts. We might not be able to prebuild them if we've had to build several parts already.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

1798 - The Iros finish some Thrusters for their Space ship.

And on my final turn (1800), I got caught by Lincoln trying to steal technology. Fortunately he didn't declare war. But it did cost use nearly 3k. We still have a spy since I used the Embassy (was this ?)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe2-1800AD.zip

EDIT: Our oil was exhausted on my round. Fortunately our engineers found another oil source merely 2 or 3 squares away...

 

[Yndy]

Hi guys,

Nice goin' ...


So you started to steal your way through. I noticed that some of you are not experienced at doing that but you did get the job done.

I'm not going to stake my rep that stealing during opponent anarchy has better chances (i read that in a forum around here and it came from someone I knew to give 'reliable' advice. I tryed to search it but ... 'the search function has been disabled'. The keyword is 'espionage'). However I have tried a couple of times to time my stealing with enemy anarchy and succeeded with 'moderate' chaces both times.

Hints from my limited experience (not 100% guaranteed):
- Use 'safe' stealing always (see exception above)
- Use 'communism' when possible ( Aztecs are religious right? You should change to communism, steal, and then change back - this is very important IMO)
- YOU WILL GET CAUGH eventually. Be prepared to deal with the consequences.
- Chances for success: I don't know but safe stealing while you are in communism and enemy in democracy is about 60 - 80% (i'm guessing, this is my experience not documented).

You seem to be getting along quite good. You may pull this through after all. It will be of epic proportions.

 

[Zed-F]

If we were to flip to communism, that would make it more important to gather up a bunch of cash, flip to communism for a turn, and then flip back to democracy.

Of course, we would have to HAVE communism first... I swapped to Ecology a while back. We should be about 23 turns away from it, unless we need to steal it first.

 

[Sirian]

Yndy, the only time I've failed with the Safe Steal option was IN communism.

Since we can't revolt twice on the same turn, we'd lose TWO turns of commerce and production with each "pit stop", and our maxed out cities would bleed the food out of their boxes and then start to starve. That does not sound like a winning idea to me.

Likewise, two successes with moderate steal is not enough of a sample to establish anything. Even four samples -- counting the LOW probability and the moderate that we succeeded with on Architect's turn, is still not enough to draw a conclusion. It's something I will keep an eye on, though.

Most of my tech stealing has been done from democracy and the record is pretty good with the safe option. Considering that that is the only way to "spend" cash on research that does not ultimately put it into the hands of the top dog AI, from this position of being this far behind, it's the only choice. Research will take too long. 2-for-1 steals might just catch us up in time. Anyway, we'll have more data to examine soon enough.


- Sirian

 

[T-hawk]

Start a Palace somewhere ASAP too, as a prebuild for a 640-shield component. Madrid will be kept pretty busy putting out two or three of the 320-shield components.

You know what makes good prebuilds for anything in the modern era? I use them to prebuild Research Labs, Mass Transits, Nuclear Plants, and spaceship parts: Battleships! All our cities are coastal, so as long as we're holding on to oil, any city can have 200 shields of prebuild, more than enough to cover the four 160-shield spaceship parts. Get any city that doesn't have anything else to do to have a Battleship prebuilding at the ready.

BTW, does anyone know if capturing the city with a civ's Apollo Program means they have to build it again before building more parts?

Also, we may WANT Abe to be declaring war about now, to divert his attention away from space...

 

[Yndy]

Sirian, I agree about low testing and I'm sorry for not finding the thread anymore. I, too will continue to test the spying during enemy anarchy.

You're right about losing money during change of gov to/from communism but this should be counted for in the price (it may or may not be appropriate.

You don't mean to tell me that you don't know about the 'veteran' spies in communism.

I'm hoping you don't hold against me the fact that I try to help. I think you should use all the help you can get to get over the edge and win this.

 

[Sirian]

IT: renewed trade deals, got a few more gpt from America.

1812AD: Egypt and Iro's made peace.

1814AD: Stole Space Flight from America @Safe. Traded to Egypt for Fission, Communism and Iron. Rails touch-ups underway.

1816AD: Apollo Program completes in Bapedi.

1818AD: We have completed a ship part! (Whooda thunkit).


Situation:

Iro's are two techs from done. They need only Nuke power and Laser. They have 3 parts done, 4 underway, and just got Superconductor this turn. Other AI's lack superconductor, but may trade for it before we can get the dough to try to steal. They have no nukes.

America has one part done, 3 underway. I don't think they have Synth Fibers yet, but can't be sure. They DO have one ICBM and two Tacs. They are the only AI in democracy, the others have stayed commie so far.

Egypt just bought their way up @3rd. They are in tech parity with America but do not have any ship parts underway yet, having only gotten space flight from us a few turns ago.

The only way we can run a 2fer deal is to steal Superconductor from the Iro's. Ecology has 13 more turns, and we HAVE to wait it out or we're toasty for sure. The only good news is that the Iro's must get two more breakthroughs to finish. Whether or not we should start a war now is dicey. The Iro's are militarily weak, no offensive units to speak of, and no surplus of mechs, they must have spent a lot attacking Egypt. They still have a formiddable navy and are more than a match for us, though. Would be nice if America's nukes were hitting Iro soil, but I cannot think of a sure way to bring that about that won't kill us in the process. That decision may fall on T-hawk's shoulders. If we ride it out, it looks at the moment like we will come up short, as the AI's are buzzing along on tech now. I did all I could on my turn. Our cash is still only rolling in it at ~410gpt, and that takes 8 turns to amass enough for one safe steal attempt.

BatMed is our biggest prebuild, but that could change to ICBM's once we get sat tech. We do have one uranium, at Madrid. The Palace is still only 300 shields, not good. We could keep a city back and forth between BatMed and MilAcad to stay between 400 and 500 shields... of course, once we get a prebuild city back up that high. Madrid is doing the Engine. This thing is going to go down to the wire, and it's a tossup as to whether we'll lose by lacking the tech or lose by lacking the production power to finish the ship parts.


RBE2 Aztecs - 1820AD


- Sirian

 

[T-hawk]

So, what do you think it would take to capture Salamanca to kill their spaceship? One tac nuke and about 12 modern armor? We can build armor pretty quick by drafting and disbanding infantry...

The mantra on Deity is buy time, buy time, buy time. If we had to compete with the Iros on a ship from scratch right now, it'd be just about a level playing field.

 

[Zed-F]

Can we try and build up to some ICBMs in non-part cities? We probably don't need more units at this point (unless we go to war.) But, we do need some way to kill off enemy ships, as well as building our own parts. All our cash is going to go into tech theft so we can't rely on sabotage.

There is one other thing we could do, sign up MPPs with Egypt and America and convince the Iros to declare on us. That might divert their attention from ship parts long enough for us to complete the ship. Hopefully we have enough fighters (jets?) and navy to defend ourselves against whatever portion of their armed forces the Iros send our way. Since they have no nukes, this is probably not too risky, unless they decide to build some and send them our way.

BTW, Smegged, sounds like using the embassy was in fact ... safe steal with spy seems to be the way to go.

I think Architect is up next, IIRC.

 

[T-hawk]

Last I checked, all three AIs were at "never accept" for all MPP and alliance proposals.

I think our best bet is to nuke and raze Salamanca. We can get transports into position to land (including a nuclear sub with a tac nuke; don't need to build a more expensive ICBM) before declaring war, so their naval superiority won't matter. We'll be mercilessly drafting our cities to get mechs to disband for shields; and remember that the minute we get all the techs we can drop back into Monarchy.

Can you ever make peace with an enemy after nuking them? I've never tried. But if we can knock out Salamanca, all we'd need to do is hang on to aluminum (if we get the fuel cells done beforehand) and Madrid, and we'll win in time.

Architect is up now, and it looks like the grand moment will be either on my turn or Zed's. I do have previous experience in nuking and capturing to prevent an enemy launch, way back in RBCiv Epic Two. What says anyone else to that plan?

 

[Architect]

I have the game and I checked diplomacy. It will take ~1000gold to get both America and Egypt into a MPP.

We could start a world war by simply bombarding the iro battleship on our coast.

I worried that nuking Salmanca just moves the problem to America. I would like to have the whole world at war ASAP just to slow everyone down.

I can't play till tonight so more opinions please as I have to "set us up the bomb".