RBE DSG4 - Beyond Deity

[T-hawk]

Inherited turn:

Thebes can go into food shortage to crank swords at 30 shields/turn.

Interesting - Copernicus has been built, but we cannot trade resources with China. That means China doesn't have Astronomy. There's brokering opportunities up there on the tech tree, if we can get there...

War weariness is killing us, with luxuries at 40% now. Still, I don't expect this Greek war to last more than about five more turns (enough for our army to capture Pharsalos), so we'll stay in Republic.

Diplo check - nothing to do. Joanie somehow lacks Theology, although there's no way we can get it to broker.

Interturn, our wall kills about six Greek swords while losing one spear.

260 AD: The Forbidden Palace completes, boosting our take-home income from 14/turn to 34.

290 AD: We capture Pharsalos. That gives us HORSES! I order up a couple war chariots right away.

300 AD: A very eventful turn, that took me about an hour.

War weariness has jumped up to phase three.

But a war chariot triggers us our Golden Age!

England landed a couple units next to Pharsalos, and we get a Great Leader from picking them off!

I think it's better to make peace than to waste 50% of our Golden Age income on luxuries. Greece gives us Theology for our treasury, a 22gpt discount from what anyone else wanted for it. We sell Theology to India for all he can pay, which is 78 gold + 6/turn.

I also pay Greece Silks (he's our only potential customer) plus 44gpt to get Education, so we can see what lies beyond that.

Bingo - China has Banking, but lacks Astronomy, and France lacks both! I pay a hefty 95 gold per turn to Russia for Astronomy.

That means we can trade resources with China, although the other four civs will require Navigation. We trade Astronomy + Silks + 3/turn for Banking + Spices + Wines. Then Banking to France gets us Feudalism.

Astronomy to Germany gets us peace plus Engineering. I was hoping France would have Invention so we could trade them Astronomy for it, but they don't. I'll look for a buying opportunity on Invention or Economics to use our leader on one of the wonders. One-beaker research started on Printing Press as usual.

We can drop lux tax to 10%, and still have 65/turn income. Some banks are ordered up.

310 AD: England landed a couple more swords, which we kill, and they will pay 20 gold for peace. We do so, because we want to trade resources now that they have Navigation. Russia does, too.

Silks get us Ivory from Russia and Incense from England. Lux tax to 0%. I establish embassy with England: they've got Smith's due in 12, which is our time limit for buying Economics and rushing Smith's. (Canton may have it due even sooner.)

And nothing else interesting happened. Sulla, up to you as to whether to go for Leonardo's or Smith's or save the GL for something else (all the way to ToE?) Thebes is on the Heroic Epic to prebuild for Wall Street, which it'll be able to swap to just after Elephantine's bank finishes.



http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe4-egypt-350ad.zip

 

[Sullla]

Magnificent! I am thoroughly impressed with the wartime turns put in by Urugharakh, Zed, and T-Hawk. Alex thought we were easy meat; instead we nailed two of his cities, triggered a golden age, and popped a great leader. That 300AD turn was one of the biggest single turnarounds I've ever seen in ANY game. Cheers to that!

I say to use the leader for Smith's right away, hopefully killing the cascade as soon as Leo's gets built. With a proper prebuild, I don't see any real chance of losing TOE; no reason to hold on to Cheops for that long. I'm going to play this game sometime tomorrow, and I'll go with whatever the group consensus of those posting here is. Hopefully I'll be feeling better then as well; at the moment I barely have enough energy to get up out of bed.

 

[JMB]

Very nice! Since my last turn (*smile*), we are miles ahead... Great work! I wonder where you guys would be without me dragging you down... *smile*

I would also agree with going for Smith's right away.

JMB

 

[T-hawk]

I didn't jump on Smith's because the tech would cost us around 1400 gold total; having Smith's won't recoup that for 60-70ish turns, but it'll be a fine payoff later on. And do note that we're on pace to reach 1000 gold for full interest right around when Wall Street will complete; any gold paid out now may delay that.

Leo's isn't that great a prize, but at least it's on the main tech path. (Tis a pity the Sun Tzu/Sistine cascades went through to Bach's). And with Leo's, we get the option of building a zillion war chariots for Military Tradition upgrade to really teach Alex a lesson. I'm really on the fence, which is why I left it up to the group.

I was waiting for Joanie to get either Invention or Economics and pull a brokerage deal. She may yet do that, although I don't know how much longer we can wait before someone finishes one of the wonders. Another option is to buy Invention now, and look for a brokerage deal between Gunpowder and Economics.

If you want to buy a tech and rush a wonder now, you can do it in Memphis which has an empty box and won't lose any shields.

Hope ya feel better, too

 

[Zed-F]

We got 2 leaders out of that war, don't forget our army.

We would not be able to use Leos to build up and upgrade a war chariot army without first disconnecting our iron. We've already had our golden age so war chariots should be removed as a build option (if not now, then at the end of our golden age?) Are we planning to go to war again before Infantry? If not then Leo's is probably not very useful. By the time we get Infantry/Arty we should have factories and Hoover (assuming we do in fact get ToE) so we should be able to build outright any troops we need.

I'm guessing by the time we catch up on infrastructure again it will be close to the Industrial age anyway, so on that basis I'm guessing we don't want war again soon (besides which we need this weariness to wear off) so I'd vote against Leo's. We should either use him on Smith or save him for later. If we don't go to war again soon he will keep indefinately. Of course the latter is more dependent on when Alex will decide to attack us again...

 

[T-hawk]

Don't need to disconnect the iron - we haven't gotten Chivalry so we can still build the war chariots.

If I were soloing the game, I'd probably do Leo's and go for the war chariot upgrade swarm. That takes a lot of coordination, though, that we might not pull off perfectly in an SG. There's also the fact that there's no way we can get _ahead_ in tech - if we get cavalry, so will he. Smith's is the safe, reliable bet - but that price tag on the tech is still scaring me off...

 

[Urugharakh]

We should discuss our game strategy before deciding on the correct wonder. I do like some more wars with the goal of killing Alex and I want these wars soon. I have several reasons for this:

1) I like some more wars after I played the more uneventful trading games RBE3 and Epic 17.

2) Pharsalos faces serious flip danger until we eliminate Alex from our continent.

3) Herakleia is a first ring city for our FP. Sparta and Mycenae are first ring cities for Thebes.

4) There will be (most likely) coal and rubber in the jungle. There is a good chance of having all necessary resources on our continent.

5) We will get a dyes monopol in addition to our silk monopol, which would open superb trade options.

6) We own 19 single swords and a sword army, which will become useless soon. We must use all our shields most effectively in this beyond deity szenario.

7) I think Alex will attack us again, maybe at some for us unfavorable time. For example while establishing factories and working on our rail network.

8) The game is (almost) won in case we own our continent.

9) Alex hasn't paid enough for his betrayal.

10) Our people in Pi-Ramesses must be saved.

11) We would control Sistine in Athens.

12) Heroic Epic will give us a solid shoot at another leader.


Hopefully everyone else agrees now, that we should eliminate Alex as soon as possible.

We can build war chariots until we discover chivalry or military tradition, because they are cheaper than horsemen with the same stats. So a massive cav or a knight upgrade is a good possibility.

Getting knights at the appropriate time is easy even without spending precious resources unnecessary. We simply buy invention (or any other tech) and trade it to Otto or Joanie for chivalry.


Concerning our wonder:

The advantage of Smith is obvious: about 3 gold per turn and city for the remainder of the game. - I count market, bank and harbor for all cities. I don't count airports, wich approximately cancels the mistake for counting harbors in non coastal cities. After all I'm interested in an approximate value of the wonder. - This results to ~40 gpt with our current empire and adds to ~80 gpt once we eliminate Alex.

The advantage of Leo is more difficult to compute. We save ~1000 gold for economics (Mao sells for 35 gpt and 310 g), which we can pick up with some out of day techs from Otto or Joanie later.

We currently own 17 spears. Lets assume we upgrade 20 spears to infantry, which results in another 1400 gold.

We will need at least 40 war chariot -> knight upgrades for another 2000 gold.

All together we would save about 4500 gold with Leo, which results in Smith being more favourable money wise in case the game will run for another ~80-100 turns, which is most likely.

In short term analysis, we would save some of the cash for the spear-infantry upgrade. This will still need ~65 turns until Smith beats Leo cashwise.

The main question is of course, do we need the knight, resp. cav upgrade to crush Alex in time? I think we do.

Summary: assuming we want Alex head, and we want it soon, Leo is the better wonder.

My advice would be, wait three or four turns to evaluate trade possibilities. Then get invention and build Leo unless the trade options suggest otherwise. Our main cities should be ready for war chariot procuction in at most 4 turns. Lets build a couple of chariots, grade them up to knights and teach Alex a lesson in about 20 turns. This would at least give a very interesting game.

We shoudn't be afraid of war weariness. Being religious we could switch to monarchy without problems. The spoils of war as outlined above should be more than enough compensation for a couple of low income turns.

For a war strategy, we should be able of taking Hereiklia, Mycenae, Sparta and Thermopylae all in our second war turn using all our swords on Mycenae and 12-15 knights on each of the other cities.


Concerning Pharsalos: please train a couple of workers out of it once the market is finished. With 7 foreigners the flip chance it way too high.

 

[Charis]

This is becoming quite an interesting game to watch and read.

Urug, I think you're SPOT ON about needing to see Alex go, and sooner rather than later. Then again I think I was the earliest one around here advocating war with Alex

Besides, I tend to have Alex as super-researcher in my games, and it wouldn't surprise him to get Cavalry so much earlier than you that it would be very painful indeed.

On the wonder... tough call. If you HAVE the cash to spend on upgrading to knights, Leo is only a short-term saver, not an enabler - go for Smiths. If OTOH it enables you to make the big upgrade where spending cash on Economics and without Leo's you cannot, I would go for Leo.

In recent Deity games I've been fighting a lot more and a lot earlier, and their stigma of being all-powerful is quickly dissipating. Their tactical prowess in actually conducting war is just... a joy to watch.

Charis

 

[Arhiss]

Ok, well on the score of which wonder to build, if most people think we ought to be going to war then I agree Leo's is it. I would think we should get some banks and infrastructure in general going first, especially around our FP; hopefully 20 turns is long enough for that as well as to build up military. I didn't realize we didn't have chivalry though! Silly me...

EDIT: Doh, wrong account. Zed-F speaking...

 

[Urugharakh]

Originally posted by Zed-F
I would think we should get some banks and infrastructure in general going first, especially around our FP; hopefully 20 turns is long enough for that as well as to build up military.

20 turns is more than enough and we don't need our FP site producing military. Heliopolis, Memphis and Elephatine are ready for military procuction once they finished banks. (No harbors are needed at the moment.) They make a chariot every turn as long as we are in golden age. Add a few chariots from Thebes, once we finished wall street and heroic epic (maybe even before the latter) we should have enough chariots for the upgrade in 20 turns without a single unit from our FP area, which should indeed focus on infrastructure first. So it is the question of do we want a war in 20 turns, not the question of do we have the necessary military in 20 turns.

 

[Sullla]

(0) 350AD I like Urugharakh's idea the best; build a bunch of War Chariots, get Leo's, upgrade them all to knights, and wipe Alex off of the map. For that reason, I'm going to try and find a brokering opportunity for Invention; if one doesn't exist by 400AD I'll just buy it from the Chinese. With that in mind, Memphis goes from an unnecessary harbor to War Chariot production (one every turn). A bunch of other cities will do the same once they finish their banks/marketplaces. Pharsolus is entirely too risky for a flip, even with all those units in there (perhaps especially because we have a big army there). I change it from market to worker, and set it to starvation diet. I want that city down to one Greek national.

(2) 370AD Heliopolis finishes its bank and goes onto War Chariot production. A brokering opportunity opened up this turn, as Germany picked up Invention but lacks any other techs we need. Since we want Navigation to be able to trade with Germany and France, I buy Navigation from China for 764g + 10gpt. We can now trade luxuries with Germany, which allows us to get Invention for Navigation + silks + 5gpt. Unfortunately, Joanie is broke and can't offer us anything for our silks, but we can Chivalry from her whenever we want. Not surprisingly, the civs ahead of us have Gunpowder; exactly what tech they are up to is impossible to tell though. They haven't reached Theory of Gravity yet, fortunately. Cheops rushes Leo's in Memphis. From this point on we need to build up gold for upgrades, so no more deals.

(3) 380AD We get Leo's as planned. Memphis back to Chariot production. Alexandria finishes bank and also switches over. Despite having Gunpowder, Alex does NOT have muskets in his cities (or at least not in Sparta). This is a great stroke of luck for us! As long as we attack before he enters the Industrial Age, Alex is toast.

(4) 390AD Bank finishes in Elephantine, switches over to Chariots. Thebes switches to Wall Street, due in 3 turns. Pharsolus also hit size 1 this turn, so it should be quite safe from flips with all those units in it.

(7) 420AD Now this is interesting. Between turns Gandhi shows up and "demands" iron. India has 4 cities and is so far behind in tech that they can't even reach us with units. I tell him to back off and he does. Wall Street finishes in Thebes on the same turn our income goes over 1000g (not too shabby, eh?) Thebes is set to build Heroic Epic, due in 6. But Thebes is getting 39 shields/turn, and the Epic costs 200 shields. I switch the tiles around and can get it in 5 turns without starving.

(9) 440AD The Russians build Magellan's and the cascade ends completely this turn. If we're lucky, we might be able to get all the wonders from this point on, especially if we can get Newton with a great leader.

(10) 450AD I end on an unremarkable turn.

Right now we have 33 War Chariots. At a cost of 50g per upgrade, that would run us 1650g. We currently have 1945g and are making +304gpt. We are producing 5 Chariots/turn, so we won't run out of money for upgrades. El-Amarna is getting 19 shields/turn; it will be able to produce a War Chariot each turn as well each turn once the worker in the city merges into it next turn. (Note to JMB: merge that worker into El-Amarna next turn!) I say the date to attack is 500AD; that's the turn that our golden age runs out, and at that point we won't be able to produce War Chariots every turn out of most cities. We should also have about 50 chariots by that point, and the best unit they should come up against is hoplites. When I think about all the damage that 50 knights can do... it's almost scary. I think Alex is going to be in for a rude awakening 5 turns from now! Good luck JMB - your next turn is going to be crucial.

RBE4 450AD

 

[Urugharakh]

Superb preparatory turn, Sulla.

To JMB: The second time you'll lead us to war, though it was not your intention last time. Be sure gathering ALL our swords to attack Mycenae on our second war turn. I suggest using 20 knights on Herakleia to secure the capture. Probably an overkill, but we must take it immediately even with possible bad RNG luck. 15 knights on each Thermopylae and Sparta shoud be fine, while the rest of our knights can pick up some longbows near Pi-Ramesses. Sparta must be razed due to its bad position with respect to Thebes and Elephantine. I suggest rebuilding it 2 tiles northeast. I'm not sure about razing the other southern greek cities though.

Good luck, be the RNG with you.

 

[JMB]

Urugharakh,

Sparta has Cop's Observatory... Does that change your opinion on what should be done with Sparta? (I am usually loath to raze GWs, but I agree, Sparta is in a terrible location for us...)

JMB

 

[Urugharakh]

Originally posted by JMB
Sparta has Cop's Observatory... Does that change your opinion on what should be done with Sparta? (I am usually loath to raze GWs, but I agree, Sparta is in a terrible location for us...)

Hmm, good point, I completely missed that. Do we get enough out of Copernicus to let Sparta live? I doubt, but its not that obvious like it would have been without Copernicus. I personally would still raze Sparta to the ground, but treat it as you like. With Copernicus ours, I can live with the sight of this terrible city.

 

[Zed-F]

How is Sparta in a bad spot? Looking up at the above map from T-Hawk's turn, it seems to be 5 tiles away from Elephantine and 6 away from Thebes, for no overlap.

 

[JMB]

Zed,

You are right, it has no overlap but does waste several (potentially) good tiles right near our capital. Looking at things again, the waste doesn't seem all that bad... I'll start the war tonight, but wait to take Sparta until we get a few more votes as to whether to raze it or not (it will have a fair bit of overlap with Delphi though, but hopefully that city will be ours as well...)

JMB

 

[JMB]

Partial report...

450 - Notice that Pharalos doesn't have a barracks, switch from Marketplace and will rush in 3 turns or so (so that we can upgrade our WCs right before attacking Herakleia). Start breaking down our defensive wall to increase our defenses up North. Troop shuffling to get everyone into position... Hurry granary (120 gp) in Byblos and begin a settler to replace Sparta. Palace expansion.

460 - More troop buildup and troop shuffling. We complete the Heroic Epic.

470 - More troop buildup and troop shuffling.

480 - More troop buildup and troop shuffling. Purchase Chivalry from Joan for Silks, 215 gp, and our WM. Upgrade our 49 WCs for 2450 gp (dipping well into our capital...). Notice our first Musket out of Thermoplyae.

490 - Move our knights into position. 17 are on the iron mountain outside Asyut. 14 are on the wheat to the SW of Elephantine. 17 are on the mountain to the NE of Pharalos. France declares war on the Greeks! Yeah baby!

500 - We declare war on the Greeks. I establish an embassy with France for 83 gp, because I want to see what they would offer for an alliance versus the Greeks. She won't offer anything and expects us to pay her! We lose a knight to a sword on a mountain (we were attacking from a mountain as well). The second knight takes care of that swordsman. A knight takes out a longbowman on the hill north of Sparta. A regular knight takes out a longbowman in the jungle outside of Pi-Ramesses. We capture 2 slaves as we move our knights to the mountains north of Thermoplyae (it, like Sparta, is guarded by a musket). All is ready... We lost 3 knights to a counterattack. They also already have Cavalry... Renegotiate our trade deal with China. Silks and 10 gpt for Spices and Wines. Our golden age ends... Thebes riots (whoops!).

510 - Lux tax raised to 20% to prevent further rioting... A vet knight promotes to elite killing the knight on the iron mountain outside Asyut (their knight killed our spearman and freed our recently aquired slaves...). A regular knight takes out a horseman... The taking of Herakleia: 2 retreat, 4 die. We kill 2 hoplites and a cavalry. Begin starving city. The taking of Mycenea: Our army attacks Mycenea's musketman (only one hp lost). A vet sword then takes out the second regular musketman, only taking one point of damage. Mycenea is ours! (and it was on a hill too...) We start starving the city. The taking of Thermoplyae: First knight retreats, second one wins. Third retreats. The fourth dies. As does the fifth. The sixth wins. The seventh dies to a Cavalryman. The eighth and ninth take out two cavalry. The tenth takes out the last musketman. The eleventh takes out a longbowman. Thermoplyae is now ours. Starvation diet and temple construction begun... The taking of Sparta: Incomplete until more opinions come in...

I am also considering purchasing gunpowder from Joanie for 2 reasons. 1) to upgrade our measly (sp?) defensive troops (that is, if we have saltpeter) and 2) see where the Greeks are getting theirs so that we can cut off their supply (no more calvary and no more musketmen... Hopefully). Let me know what you guys think.

Attached is the file from 510 AD. Feel free to comment on the upcoming rounds... I was thinking of trying to raze the city W of Thermoplyae, perhaps trying to raze Delphi, and sending some more troops towards Pi-Ramesses to liberate our people.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/RBEDSG4-510_AD.zip

JMB

 

[Zed-F]

Cutting off saltpeter may be a plan but it probably will not matter if we take over all his cities first... which seems likely. We've lost about 10 knights of 50 and have taken 4 cities of about 13 so far, so we're well on pace to wipe him out. If we concentrate more on his northern cities he will lose his production base (his southern cities are all corrupt anyway and so will be lacking infrastructure.) I don't think he can really stand up to our blitz, as he's going to have spent all his mobile troops by the end of your turn and will be hard-pressed to come up with a lot more, while we continue to pump out reinforcements (albeit relatively slowly.) If you can get it on the cheap or can get a 2-fer, fine, but otherwise I'd say we want to build our principal back up to 1000 first. If the war seems to be threatening to bog down then it might be a good time to reconsider. But, I can make a good guess that the saltpeter is in the southern desert, so if you can pillage a road or two that might do the job even without knowing exactly where it is.

I'd be tempted to keep Alex alive to get tech off the peace deal but I don't think it would be worth the flip risk. My vote is to wipe him out. We will need some settlers coming from somewhere fairly quickly to fill holes, however.

Well, we don't want waste near our capital, and Copernicus is not that useful, we will probably not be doing most of our own research this game. I wouldn't object to razing it. I think Greece owns at least one other more useful wonder, though, Sistine or Bach IIRC... so check to see which ones we want to keep before razing. If we can take his cities really quickly then the flip risk will be minimized on the basis of the number of turns Alex exists.

 

[Urugharakh]

I basically agree with Zed-F. One more point for razing Sparta is, it frees troops otherwise occupying the city for a faster advance towards Athens.

Concerning a peace treaty with Alex, we will probably need one after he is wiped of our continent. I doubt we can take his fishing village on the small southern island in time. So we should own gunpowder and chemistry at this time to get physics and metallurgy for peace. But there is no need to buy it now. He'll have no production base after we take the next few cities. So even 40 shield cavs will take more time than he has.

Concerning flips, we can't have enough slaves. Trim greek cities down to 1 foreigner and 2 units should do, at least after we get ahead in culture.

 

[Zed-F]

Well, yes, obviously we want to starve them down & build workers. I was referring just to wiping him out or making peace. It will be a while before we get ahead of Alex in culture, IIRC he has a considerable advantage right now, plus any city we capture will have more Greek culture memory than Egyptian for a very long time, especially if it's a wonder city. I wouldn't think it would be that hard to build a caravel or two to get the troops over there, or rush one in a captured city at the bottom end of our continent, but of course that requires that Alex disband all his ships due to lack of funds once we control the mainland. If it is not feasible to capture the southern city, then it's not feasible and we should get whatever tech we can out of the peace deal of course.