RBE3 - This Space Available For Rent

[croald]

Originally posted by Yndy
AFAIK using the worker in the blocakde is a no - no.

This would be news to me. The only reference to workers wrt blockades I see at http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/etactics.html is under Amphibious Blockades, which is not what I was doing.

What victory options did you guys chose? Apart from the 3 luxuries which is very good, and the iron which is ok, the number of towns founded is too small IMHO. This is going to be a tough one if all victory options are on.

I believe they're all on, so of course Sullla's optimism needs to be taken in context. We clearly do still have our work cut out for us.

Hope you'll beat them.

Thanks! It's cool to know other people are reading.

 

[croald]

Originally posted by Sullla
PS - The English have a worker in their capital this turn (I saw when I opened up the save game.) If we REALLY want to cripple them, we could buy it.

Would really hurt, considering how much jungle they have to deal with.

As a point of interest, at one point I noticed a Japanese worker available, and considered it for about a minute -- and then I realized we were too broke to afford it regardless so I never did come to a decision about it.

 

[Sullla]

Croad is right - I also checked the tactics list and there is nothing dishonorable about using workers to form a blockade in neutral territory, so long as we are not using the workers as sacrificial lambs and don't blockade the entire penninsula off. And my optimism is not misplaced - it is entirely possible to win a Deity game with no more land than what we have planned on our maps. I did it in GOTM7 and I've seen similar stories from others. With that said though, we also may be able to expand militarily later in the game depending on what comes up; certainly if we could conquer England it would put us in a much stronger position. I wasn't trying to imply that the game was "over", just that I was very pleased with how well the landgrab was going.

 

[croald]

A question occurred to me:

Given the lay of the land, and the vast distance between London, Kyoto, and Delhi, it's really unlikely they've ever been at war. Perhaps the workers were sheltering from a barb? or else it was just coincidence, or some defect in the AI's movement algorithms.

 

[Yndy]

Originally posted by croald

This would be news to me. The only reference to workers wrt

Sorry, my fault.

Really, these blockades seem to be a must do on deity. I just saw that on both RBE's U use it extensively.

Guys, don't take me for a negativist. I've been there and never made it from such positions on Deity.

I'm sure you'll win and I'll learn some new "tricks".

So when will the early war come ?

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Xinjian founded on red dot, Chengdu to get iron. The English settlers have retreated.

We finished researching Writing. I started on Code of Laws at min science, aiming for Republic to get out of depotism. We are behind in tech (big surprise there ).

We can afford to buy one tech. Possibly we'd like to buy Map Making and get some galleys out. See if we can be first to contact the other two Civs.

Most everybody is building a Great Lighthouse.

We need to settle on black dot before England grabs more land in that area. I have a settler queued in Canton, but that won't complete for a while.

Tsingtao needs some culture ASAP if it's going to avoid flipping to England. (Or will it not flip if it never tries to expand? Maybe should avoid getting culture there...)

Shanghai will complete granary this turn, grow next turn. Does production happen before growth? I thought not, but if it does can be rearranged to grow this turn.

We could sell our one unit of ivory to France, if we think we can manage with just one luxury for the next 20 turns.

1225BC

 

[Sullla]

Originally posted by Jaffa Tamarin
Tsingtao needs some culture ASAP if it's going to avoid flipping to England. (Or will it not flip if it never tries to expand? Maybe should avoid getting culture there...)

Shanghai will complete granary this turn, grow next turn. Does production happen before growth? I thought not, but if it does can be rearranged to grow this turn.

No, we definitely will need some culture in Tsingtao. Cities can flip if a foreign culture has control of any of its 21-tile radius, not just the current radius of the city. The best way to prevent a flip will be to get a temple there right away and stick our excess units in the city (like our current warrior defenders once we build real defenders).

Growth is factored in before production, which is how you can occasionally complete a project that says "2 turns" in one turn if the city grows and pulls in additional shields. I recall Sirian pulling this off in RBD23b and I've managed to do it occasionally in other games. I don't know exactly what that means for our granary situation, but growth is definitely factored in before production.

EDIT: After looking at the game, it appears as though we are only 3-4 techs back and we can get one of them simply by trading our ivory to France. I think we should establish an embassy with England and get a ROP with them so we can send our workers in and build a road to their capital. (Under the honorable rules we need a ROP to do this). That would allow us to trade our wines and currently unneeded horses to England, which would probably catch us right up to tech parity. And improving relations with our closest neighbors is always a good thing...

 

[croald]

Originally posted by Sullla
I think we should establish an embassy with England and get a ROP with them so we can send our workers in and build a road to their capital. (Under the honorable rules we need a ROP to do this).

We do? The only reference I can see in the Tactics list refers to "entering enemy territory with the intention of attacking on later rounds, without first declaring war" -- entering in order to build a road is not a surprise attack.

On the other hand, Liz is likely to demand we leave without a RoP, and it would be dishonourable not to obey, so in practice I suppose we do need the RoP.

Sadly, we're in one of these positions wrt France where it would definitely be to Joanie's benefit to pay us for a RoP, but the AI calculation won't see it that way.

 

[Urugharakh]

(0) 1225 BC Inspected our empire. Establish embassy in London.

(1) 1200 BC Liz sends a settler, which I block. Shanghai finishes granary and starts on settler. I buy Code of Laws from Otto for 9 gpt, world map and 35 gold. Then trade it to Joanie for Philosophy and 82 gold. Finally trade it including 51 gold to Gandhi and aquire Map Making in return. I set min research to Republic. We are only 1 1/2 techs behind!

(2) 1175 BC A couple of gpt payments run out.

(3) 1150 BC ...

(4) 1125 BC Everyone has literatur exept Liz. I buy it from Joanie for ivory and even get 5 g in addition. Then I trade it together with 41 g to Liz for Mathematics. France and England signed a military alliance against Germany. Finally we discovered the target of all those french units in our territory.

(5) 1100 BC Beijing finishes temple and trains a spear. We can use some military police and a few defensive units will be useful later on. Nanking whips temple.

(6) 1075 BC Nanking starts on worker. Shanghai finished settler and starts a harbor. Joanie and Gandhi enter medival age.

(7) 1050 BC I pay 8 g for RoP with Liz, so our workers can bild a road to London.

(8) 1025 BC Beijing finishes a spear. I start a libary as a prebuild for markets.

(9) 1000 BC Tsingtao whips to harbor and then whips the temple. I set Chengdu to harbor for the same reason. Next player should whip out the 20 shields and the whip the temple next. We need the culture. We have silks back under our control. I don't trade it away again. We might need it for larger cities.

(10) 975 BC Hangchow founded on black spot. Tsingtao has its temple and starts on worker.


Hints for our next player (hi Sulla) and discussions:

We can buy currency from Joanie for silks, 6 gpt, wm and 62 gold. Liz and Otto still lack the tech and we should get good stuff in return. This is the first decision for the next player. You must decide if we first add a couple of workers or start on a few large cities now. In the first case the trade is good, while I would avoid it in the latter case. I would favour a few larger central cities but you have to play the next 10 turns. The silk trade will bind us for 14 turns until the ivory is free again.

Don't forget finishing the started road to London.

Don't forget whiping Chengdu.

Please buy Currency in time (in case you don't buy it immediately) and switch Beijing from libary to markets. Should be possible using our wines with the harbor at Shanghai.


0975BC

 

[croald]

What is our game plan at this point? Are we playing peaceful development for a while, or do we need to be looking at building knights?

 

[Sullla]

I'll be playing later tonight, so if you have any comments for me you'll need to post them before then. My gut feeling is to make that trade now (IF it looks like we can get good stuff from brokering Currency; obviously not otherwise) and build some workers right now. It's never too early to have a good force of workers around. However, when I open up the game things might look different, so I can't promise anything. I'll probably be following Urugharakh's suggestions for the most part on this next turn.

With our favorable position, we will probably have the opportunity to build and use Riders sometime in the middle of the medieval period. Given our position, I don't think getting a declaration of war will be difficult (from random units walking through our territory.) Obviously the ideal situation would be to upgrade a number of horsemen to riders, and then use our Golden Age to take out an AI civ. England seems to be the most likely candidate for such action, given their weakness, possession of two more luxuries, proximity to our current cities, and good land (once we clear out the jungle). Now we won't be in position to attack anyone for about another 50 turns, but we should indeed have a plan in mind and this is the best one that I see working out. Comments from the rest of the team as to pursuing that as a rough goal for the future?

 

[Sullla]

Too late for comments! You'll just have to suffer through my turn.

(0) 975BC First action is to switch Canton from settler (no need - all land is grabbed!) to granary. Given that we can probably swing a 2 for 1 tech deal if we trade for Currency, I make the deal that Urugharakh suggests. We get Currency for 63g + silks + 6gpt. For Currency we get Polytheism + WM from England and 83g + WM from Germany. I then trade around maps a bit and get the updated view of our continent for a cost of about 5g after trading around. Bad news: France has discovered a new continent to the east and is expanding there as we speak; how large it is is unknown at the moment. They are already the dominant AI and could be pulling further ahead. (That's bad.) I use 50g to establish an embassy with France... and guess what? They're at war with Japan in addition to Germany! (Paris is building a sword by the way) Go waste that production! Everything else looks OK so I end the turn.

(1) 950BC BAD news: India also declares war on Germany. Otto is almost certainly going to die, which is NOT what we want. I don't see anything we can do about it though...

(2) 925BC England signs a military alliance with France against Japan. There must be some bigtime action going on down there! In checking the diplo rounds, I notice that Gandhi has workers for sale; I spend 49g to buy two of them. This isn't done to slow down the AI; we can really use some more workers at this point. I make about 20g of this back by trading world maps around.

(3) 900BC India declares war on Japan as well. Looks like it's not simply a "pile on Germany" but an out-and-out war between all of the AI civs. Nothing doing diplomatically.

(4) 875BC Shanghai completes a harbor (opening up trade route with Japan) and starts a marketplace. Xinjian finishes a granary and starts a temple. Germany finishes the Great Lighthouse, so watch out for contact with the other continent(s) soon. Tokugawa is not impressed with our wines, so I hold off on making any deals to see what I can get from Liz on the next turn when that route opens up.

(5) 850BC I trade our first excess wines to Tokugawa this turn for 63g and 3gpt. Then we get Construction from Lizzie for 125g + 4gpt + wines + horses. Liz goes to gracious and we enter the Middle Ages. We are 100% caught up on tech. Germany lacks Construction, but they can't pay anywhere close to market value and we don't want them getting their freebie scientific tech out anyway for the other AIs to purchase. All in all, a pretty successful turn.

(6) 825BC Nothing exciting going on... I make about 10g trading world maps. Very much worth it since we only get 5gpt.

(7) 800BC Germany and England sign a peace treaty. We must raise the luxury rate to 10% to keep both Beijing and Shanghai from rioting next turn. 7 turns until we get our ivory back from France, btw. France has the Republic this turn, and laughs at our attempt to buy it @2nd civ price. We will get it in 24 turns regardles...

(9) 750BC Beijing completes marketplace, starts work on spear to begin upgrading our pitiful defenses.

(10) 730BC Germany and England sign a peace treaty. Canton compeletes its granary and begins works on a marketplace (can be vetoed if desired). Tsingtao completes a worker and starts another; it can't go past size 2 at the moment without revolting due to the whipping, so might as well use it to produce workers for a while. This can go to size 3 with the addition of another MP however. Chengdu whips its temple this turn after whipping a harbor on the previous one. It's going to be useless for the next 40 turns, but we need the culture there to secure our iron supply, so it's not a waste. I made some more money trading around France's world map for a profit.

Situation: We're sitting pretty nice right now, with the other AI civs largely trapped in ongoing wars and tech moving pretty slowly. France has The Republic which no one else has, and other than that we are completely caught up! Our cash flow is pretty good and our goal right now is to build up our core cities to size 12 as soon as possible. We will be getting our ivory back in 6 turns and our silks in 10 turns, which should keep us OK in terms of happiness. Beijing should probably produce spears until we get a new city improvement to build, with excess warriors going to sit in cities under culture duress to decrease the likelihood of a flip. If someone wants to try and sneak in a fishing village somewhere, go ahead and do so but I didn't see an especially compelling place to do so. We should have plenty of time to attack a civ of our choosing (subject to the honorable conditions of course) with Riders, though we currently don't have horses until our deal with England wears off. There's no need to build horses right now though, so it shouldn't be a problem. Barring a sneak attack by an AI civ, we should be sitting in great shape.

RBE3 730BC

 

[Sullla]

And our current map...

 

[Gothmog]

Hello All, croald mentioned that you could use another player for this DSG. I have never played with the RBE rules before though so forgive me in advance if I screw that up. I read them over yesterday and they seem in line with how I typically play anyway. One thing I couldn't make out though, can you use spies to steal tech with a civ you are at war with? or is that Dastardly? If you decide to let me in on this one please let me know about things to avoid doing before my turn.

I have a good conection at work, but my connection at home is spotty so if you don't hear from me over the weekend that is most likely the reason.

Oh yeah:

 

[Gothmog]

Sorry the first .jpg file I uploaded turned out to be huge! Here's a smaller one.

 

[Sullla]

Hello Gothmog. Unless someone else in this game objects, I don't see any reason why we can't put you into the rotation as our 5th person after croald. The rotation will be:

Jaffa
Urugharakh
Sullla (me)
croald <<< up now
Gothmog

As to your other question, under the honorable ruleset the only espionage act that we can ever use is the "Investigate City" option. All other acts are prohibited; the state of war does not allow us to steal techs or use any other acts of espionage. Just make sure to familiarize yourself with the turns played so far so that you know our situation in the game.

 

[croald]

Got It. Will play tonight.

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

I updated the roster in the first post. Is it not possible to edit the thread title?

 

[Sullla]

I thought it was possible to edit the thread title and I'm pretty sure I've done it before, but I seem to recall also being unable to do so the last time I tried. But do we really need to change the title? I kind of like the "This Space for Rent" motif.

 

[croald]

Very quiet turn.

(0) 730 BC

switch canton from marketplace to galley, then change mind back
because canton doesn't have a harbour. then change mind back because
regular galleys can still explore, and it doesn't seem right to let
france have all the fun. then i change my mind back *again*, because
we really do need that marketplace.

rearrange tsingtao for max food anyway, even though it'll be unhappy
as soon as it grows. it's not like being at size 3 with an
entertainer is worse in any way than being size 2, and the extra
shields are all being wasted to corruption anyway.


(1) 710 BC

nothing much


(2) 690 BC

bismark has suddenly acquired construction, republic, *and*
monotheism. he must have finished construction, got
monotheism for free, and traded it to france for republic.

france and england now have monotheism, japan and india do not.


(3) 670 BC

joanie wants an alliance vs japan in exchange for right of passage.
Most regretful, honourable Chinese cannot help -- puny Chinese forces
would surely only get in way of mighty French swordsmen.

joanie thinks we should pay her 80g for a RoP. Poor, deluded AI.


(4) 650 BC

ivory to france expires.

france, germany have monotheism & republic.
england has monotheism, not republic.
japan,india have neither.
sadly, we just don't have what it takes to get in on republic @ 3rd,
for the brokerage opportunity.

i use some of our accumulating cash to buy an embassy with india.
delhi, pop 7, is producing 7 spt, and will be done the great library
in 11 turns. defended by 3 spears and a catapult.


(5) 630 BC

nothing much.


(6) 610 BC

gandhi wants to trade territory maps. i figure why not?

i buy france's world map for 12g -- joanie's found a couple more
little islands. selling the new information nets everybody else's
current world maps and a net profit of 6g.


(7) 590 BC

japan and england sign peace treaty.
kyoto completes the great library.
japan begins building the hanging gardens.
germany cascades to hanging gardens.
france cascades to sun tzu's!

(8) 570 BC

tokugawa has picked up republic, but that hasn't lowered its price to
anything we can afford. gah. ivory+24gpt is still not enough.

i buy an embassy with germany. berlin is pop 6, no aqueduct, 9 spt, 5
spear garrison, building a sword. all the AI wars have so far
accomplished almost nothing -- i see the remains of two razed cities,
but nothing controlled by anybody other than its builder. we
currently have nine french swords and three spears in our territory,
crawling southward. they'll be obsolete by the time they get where
they're going.


(9) 550 BC

nothing much.

(10) 530 BC

silk to france expires.

france will accept ivory+silks+18gpt for republic, which we will then
have an opportunity to put toward a trade for monotheism with england
or india. i'm not sure there's an actual 2-for-1 opportunity here,
though -- we may not have enough cash flow to complete the deal. we
get republic in 11 turns at min sci, which is still a long time. i
leave it to gothmog to decide whether we grab republic now, or wait
until england and india have managed to buy in to lower the price.
(my inclination is that republic is important enough to seize
immediately. we can live without the lux.)

the AIs are splitting into two groups -- france, japan, and germany
have monotheism, feudalism, republic, and monarchy on us; england and
india only have monotheism. still no contact with babylon or persia
-- I've started a galley in shanghai to take our shot at finding them.
(remember by honourable rules, we have to leave another country's
territory if they ask, so it probably requires RoPs to do much
exploring by galley.)


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/rbe3-530bc.zip