RBtS1a - The Thief Economy
- Thread starter darrelljs
- Start date
First IBT, we get a double cash boost for losing Pyramids.
Shaka is still a concern. He's annoyed with Hatty so hopefully she's the target.
Nope Wang is the lucky fellow.
Here goes nothing.
Lose the spy but...
Courthouses are queued everywhere.
Our great spy is born. As discussed, Scotland Yard in the capital.
I send a spy towards Shaka and up his EP weighting. It arrived last turn.
We also steal another tech and this time the spy returns safely.
Darius has the only available source of iron.
We have one spy still in Hatty's land.
I whipped courthouses last turn in two unhappy cities. I also made this trade to try and ease some unhappiness issues.
Here is the tech situation. Not really much out there, except Mathematics.
I'd say it's probably good to wipe Darius now, while Shaka is busy elsewhere and then hit him. We could divert the spy in the capital to Darius and either sabotauge his iron or steal Mathematics (my choice)
We have another site for a city NE of the capital that will pick up whales, another happy resource we need (once we get Optics) and has horses as well.
We can also look at adding spy specialists in cities that have courthouses (in fact I've already employed one in Pasargardae).
We should also become Buddhists, everyone else is (excet Shaka who's a devout Athiest) and 4/5 of our cities have Buddhism.
A belated save.
Shaka is still a concern. He's annoyed with Hatty so hopefully she's the target.
Nope Wang is the lucky fellow.
Here goes nothing.
Lose the spy but...
Courthouses are queued everywhere.
Our great spy is born. As discussed, Scotland Yard in the capital.
I send a spy towards Shaka and up his EP weighting. It arrived last turn.
We also steal another tech and this time the spy returns safely.
Darius has the only available source of iron.
We have one spy still in Hatty's land.
I whipped courthouses last turn in two unhappy cities. I also made this trade to try and ease some unhappiness issues.
Here is the tech situation. Not really much out there, except Mathematics.
I'd say it's probably good to wipe Darius now, while Shaka is busy elsewhere and then hit him. We could divert the spy in the capital to Darius and either sabotauge his iron or steal Mathematics (my choice)
We have another site for a city NE of the capital that will pick up whales, another happy resource we need (once we get Optics) and has horses as well.
We can also look at adding spy specialists in cities that have courthouses (in fact I've already employed one in Pasargardae).
We should also become Buddhists, everyone else is (excet Shaka who's a devout Athiest) and 4/5 of our cities have Buddhism.
A belated save.
save please Benno 
It's great we have COL. Would see where we can hire spy specialists. I agree converting to buddhism seems the way to go.
For mathematics, maybe it is easier to get it from Hatty where we already have a nice discount, without investing more into Darius. It would help to know who's first to construction and currency to choose where we spend our espionage points
It's great we have COL. Would see where we can hire spy specialists. I agree converting to buddhism seems the way to go.
For mathematics, maybe it is easier to get it from Hatty where we already have a nice discount, without investing more into Darius. It would help to know who's first to construction and currency to choose where we spend our espionage points
Save added to end of report. Sorry.
We don't have many EPs invested in Darius, should just blow our points on sailing or archery before eliminating him. The spy from Heliopolis should be able to get there in time to steal something.
Can we scout Shaka properly please before we make war plans, Hatshepsut looks like an easier target right now, although we might want to keep her around to research for us.
Can we scout Shaka properly please before we make war plans, Hatshepsut looks like an easier target right now, although we might want to keep her around to research for us.
darrelljs
Immortal
·Imhotep·;5810348 said:
Okay..that's good. So any commerce city should probably get a Scotland Yard. I'm guessing this is better bang for the buck than settling.
Ozbenno said:
I'd say that is great news...the logistics suck and Wang Kon is protective so I'm not sure just how much damage Shaka can do. Plus, if he does take a city down south, we can take it back without having to declare on Korea and get our distance modifier greatly reduced.
Ozbenno said:
That's a good trade, we now have two metal resources, so Forges will give +2 happy...if we see Metal Casting pop up in anyones tech trading screen we should prioritize it. For now though let's target Mathematics on the way to Construction. It will enable the Odeon for +3 happy, Catapults, and Elephants.
uberfish said:
I'm thinking we should try and play this game builder style as much as possible. Shaka is a wolf and it doesn't make sense to leave him untouched, but even so I'd rather just take him down a peg or two once Construction comes in, rather than wiping him out. I'd prefer to leave Wang Kong and Hatty untouched. That's just my vote, if the team wants to take this in a more aggressive direction I don't mind at all
. BTW, if we do decide to leave Hatty alone, we should start a settler for the gold in the souteast to claim the Marble/Fish/Pigs. Hatty can sail right across and snatch it at will.Ozbenno said:
Okay, I'm a hypocrit, but he's got to die now
. It will probably remove some motherland unhappiness as well. I'd take him out immediately.blid said:
Welcome back...you're lucky the first start was isolated or you might have missed a third! If you want to take 20 feel free
.Darrell
Sure, let's play nice with Hatty then. I would like to kill off or at least cripple Shaka though if possible, because he is a very bad neighbour.
We can go with swords or wait for construction, if we do the latter there's 3 decent city sites we could settle peacefully in the meantime (fish/corn, NE deer/horse/cow and SE pig/gold/marble)
We can go with swords or wait for construction, if we do the latter there's 3 decent city sites we could settle peacefully in the meantime (fish/corn, NE deer/horse/cow and SE pig/gold/marble)
darrelljs
Immortal
Since we have access to Elephants, I would think Construction is worth the wait (especially since Shaka has troops marching through our lands now). Mmm...didn't they change it so that Elephants required HBR as well? Here's a dotmap, kind of late for one but we do have a few choices left:
I'm guessing a bit on Shaka's cities, we really do need to scout him out. He's got a lot of land based on his score and lack of tech. I'm in favor of pink dot first because I want to deny Hatty, then Orange because the Corn is already improved, then green because it is a good site. Grey dot might be worth it when we are about to steal Optics. Uberfish, were those the locations you had in mind?
Darrell
darrelljs
Immortal
Okay, I did a little world builder experiment. Gave Justinian Divine Right and myself a Great Artist. Here is the tech steal cost before the partial lightbulb:
and after:
So it looks like beakers don't impact the tech steal cost or probability of success.
Darrell
and after:
So it looks like beakers don't impact the tech steal cost or probability of success.
Darrell
lurker's comment:
You might already know this, but you can see the costs of performing espionage operations in each enemy city on the espionage advisor screen. These costs are different for different cities. The distance is just one of the factors. I think population also plays a role, but I haven’t played with it enough to figure out exact formula.
The most important part of this for your game is that, from what I saw after some experiments, the relative costs go up after successful missions in a target city. I don’t know if the costs ever go back down, but it seems you’ll get a better deal if you check the espionage advisor and send your spies to less well protected cities, instead of constantly stealing from the same one.
PS If the cost increase is permanent, you might want to save nearest cities for later in the game, when you are stealing expensive techs, and steal the cheap ones from more distant cities now.
You might already know this, but you can see the costs of performing espionage operations in each enemy city on the espionage advisor screen. These costs are different for different cities. The distance is just one of the factors. I think population also plays a role, but I haven’t played with it enough to figure out exact formula.
The most important part of this for your game is that, from what I saw after some experiments, the relative costs go up after successful missions in a target city. I don’t know if the costs ever go back down, but it seems you’ll get a better deal if you check the espionage advisor and send your spies to less well protected cities, instead of constantly stealing from the same one.
PS If the cost increase is permanent, you might want to save nearest cities for later in the game, when you are stealing expensive techs, and steal the cheap ones from more distant cities now.
IHT : switch to buddhism
Turn 1 :
Hatty completes The Great Lighthouse
I move troops next to Darius. The spy would probably get there too late to steal anything. That would be some wasted EPs, but not big deal. I need that iron asap to start some swords. The cities are kinda of short of stuff to build. And we have a good happiness cap, cities should grow. We should limit whipping I guess, till we have markets available
Turn 2 : declare on Darius.
Wang wants us to join against Shaka. No thank you, you're a nice buddy but not right now, WHEOOH
Turn 3 : Darius was building swords, I feel sorry for him
Shaka's doing HBR and Hatty calendar. C'mon guys, we need to focus here. Currency, construction anyone ?
Susa starts Chichen Itza, waiting to grow again before starting a settler
Turn 4 : crappy RNG, I shouldn't have felt sorry for Darius. I lost two axes to a sword who didn't get a single scratch. Had some nice odds after kiling an archer at 30% and a sword at 45%. The city fell eventually and Darius was down to one city. We are short of axes, glad Shaka is busy elsewhere.
I'm still reluctant to whip the capital, to resume building troops.
BTW, we kill a general who were built while Darius sword did those amzing fights
Turn 5 : set units to heal, which concidentally give the spy time to get into Darius last city.
Turn 6 : Susa gets to happy cap at size 5. Switch from Chichen to settler.
Pasargadae finishes a barracks and picks up the wonder coin alchemy from Susa
Our spy in Elephantine is stumbled upon. Annoying
Turn 7 : I'm cottaging erverywhere except Persepolis. Pasargadae has a good potential too for pure productive city. We can farm over cottages later, once we know civil service.
Turn 8 : units healed, they move against Darius last stand with the spy.
Hire a specialist in Perspolis
Turn 9 : Wang signs peace. That sucks. Shaka didn't achieve anything, except laggin behind in techs. If he picks a loosy tech after HBR, I'm gonna divert EPs on Wang.
Turn 10 : Shaka picked maths after HBR. It takes him 13 turns.
Turn 11 : the spy couldn't do anything good, so I just take the last persian city without more causalties. I sent a spy back to Elephantine.
Darius is dead, but I got this event.
I sent an axe to what seemed like an exposed city, but I didn't encounter any resistants anywhere.
Turn 12 : Hatty asks us to stop trading with Shaka. Not the time lady
Turn 13 : settler finally out. Send him to the marble/pigs site. Start our first sword
Turn 14 : capital finishes the courthouse and starts a sword. I think we should grow first before hiring spies. Eliminating Persia gave room for more growth in his former cities. A spy was built in Pasargadae, so I reroute the spy heading towards egypt to Korea since he was closer and sent the new one to Elephantine.
Turn 15 :
Shaka seems stuck at 13 turns for maths. Maybe he's spending gold to spy on us. And he has enough on his hands !! Since he just researched HBR (saving money to upgrade chariots ?), we can do more holkans (I started by swords first). Hatty is not planning to invade anyone for the moment.
Another settler is expected next turn, I would send him to the corn spot.
We also know a lot more about Shaka lands.
He has some barbarians in the south and also in the west, but my guess is that the continent stops there. Doesn' hurt to check though, a chariot is doing the recon.
If Shaka declares on us, we can play defensive to increase his WW, then go on offensive with swords/holkans/axes. If not, then we can wait for construction to go with cats/phants/holkans.
Also, don't forget to up Wang EP weight once we're done stealing mathjs from Shaka, that is if he ever gets to actually spend some gold on research
save
Turn 1 :
Hatty completes The Great Lighthouse
I move troops next to Darius. The spy would probably get there too late to steal anything. That would be some wasted EPs, but not big deal. I need that iron asap to start some swords. The cities are kinda of short of stuff to build. And we have a good happiness cap, cities should grow. We should limit whipping I guess, till we have markets available
Turn 2 : declare on Darius.
Wang wants us to join against Shaka. No thank you, you're a nice buddy but not right now, WHEOOH
Turn 3 : Darius was building swords, I feel sorry for him
Shaka's doing HBR and Hatty calendar. C'mon guys, we need to focus here. Currency, construction anyone ?
Susa starts Chichen Itza, waiting to grow again before starting a settler
Turn 4 : crappy RNG, I shouldn't have felt sorry for Darius. I lost two axes to a sword who didn't get a single scratch. Had some nice odds after kiling an archer at 30% and a sword at 45%. The city fell eventually and Darius was down to one city. We are short of axes, glad Shaka is busy elsewhere.
I'm still reluctant to whip the capital, to resume building troops.
BTW, we kill a general who were built while Darius sword did those amzing fights
Turn 5 : set units to heal, which concidentally give the spy time to get into Darius last city.
Turn 6 : Susa gets to happy cap at size 5. Switch from Chichen to settler.
Pasargadae finishes a barracks and picks up the wonder coin alchemy from Susa
Our spy in Elephantine is stumbled upon. Annoying
Turn 7 : I'm cottaging erverywhere except Persepolis. Pasargadae has a good potential too for pure productive city. We can farm over cottages later, once we know civil service.
Turn 8 : units healed, they move against Darius last stand with the spy.
Hire a specialist in Perspolis
Turn 9 : Wang signs peace. That sucks. Shaka didn't achieve anything, except laggin behind in techs. If he picks a loosy tech after HBR, I'm gonna divert EPs on Wang.
Turn 10 : Shaka picked maths after HBR. It takes him 13 turns.
Turn 11 : the spy couldn't do anything good, so I just take the last persian city without more causalties. I sent a spy back to Elephantine.
Darius is dead, but I got this event.
I sent an axe to what seemed like an exposed city, but I didn't encounter any resistants anywhere.
Turn 12 : Hatty asks us to stop trading with Shaka. Not the time lady
Turn 13 : settler finally out. Send him to the marble/pigs site. Start our first sword
Turn 14 : capital finishes the courthouse and starts a sword. I think we should grow first before hiring spies. Eliminating Persia gave room for more growth in his former cities. A spy was built in Pasargadae, so I reroute the spy heading towards egypt to Korea since he was closer and sent the new one to Elephantine.
Turn 15 :
Shaka seems stuck at 13 turns for maths. Maybe he's spending gold to spy on us. And he has enough on his hands !! Since he just researched HBR (saving money to upgrade chariots ?), we can do more holkans (I started by swords first). Hatty is not planning to invade anyone for the moment.
Another settler is expected next turn, I would send him to the corn spot.
We also know a lot more about Shaka lands.
He has some barbarians in the south and also in the west, but my guess is that the continent stops there. Doesn' hurt to check though, a chariot is doing the recon.
If Shaka declares on us, we can play defensive to increase his WW, then go on offensive with swords/holkans/axes. If not, then we can wait for construction to go with cats/phants/holkans.
Also, don't forget to up Wang EP weight once we're done stealing mathjs from Shaka, that is if he ever gets to actually spend some gold on research
save
Do we want to get HBR from Shaka (we need it for elephants)? We can get Maths from Wang.
The report you got whern eliminating Darius is one I've seen before, with the same results (ie none). Maybe a bug.
I'd think we want to keep 2 spies in each opponent's territories if we can.
The report you got whern eliminating Darius is one I've seen before, with the same results (ie none). Maybe a bug.
I'd think we want to keep 2 spies in each opponent's territories if we can.
darrelljs
Immortal
. Looks like good progress blid, we can't help it if our opponents don't know our needs. Speaking of incompetence, check out this gem:
Honestly, I don't which is worse, cottaging over those nice floodplain farms or the unimproved gold tile. Worker schizophrenia seems to be one of the bigger things to work on for the patch.
@Ozbenno - I think getting HBR from Shaka is definitely in the cards, although it would be nice if something better came along. I've gotten the partisans for razing cities before, in my case it was four free Axeman for Japan. Not good when I was already teetering on the edge of losing that war. I guess with the civ dead the partisans melted into the hills
.Darrell
darrelljs
Immortal
Hmm...Wang Kon has Metal Casting now, with Gold and Gems that might be a good target after Mathematics (assuming nothing better comes along). We have about 700 EPs with Hatty and close to 600 with Shaka, might want to change the weights from 1/1/0 to 0/0/1 in the near future, and go after it. Metal Casting is also on the way to Optics...does anyone know if Caravels can carry spies?
@Zeviz - I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know any of that, I rarely make good use of the advisors. I speak for myself only, I'm sure the larger team was in the know
.
Darrell
@Zeviz - I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know any of that, I rarely make good use of the advisors. I speak for myself only, I'm sure the larger team was in the know
.Darrell
Qwack
The Poopman
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2006
- Messages
- 836
Yes, they can. Although I dont think sending spies to the other continent should be a big priority right now. Since hte distance costs for espionage will be really high, and im pretty sure the other continent will be behind technologically since it only has 2 civs (Compared to our 5), so less trading going on there.
Nice turns blid, looks like our economy is getting back into motion. If I can tonight ill check the save and post some thoughts.
is the spy distance calculation dependent on distance from our capital? If so, we can move it later. Anyway I started by diverting some spy points to Wang Kon.
I decided to steal Sailing from Shaka while waiting for maths to come up as we have 2 settlers and our city locations are coastal. I spotted a 12-stack of foot troops in his lands so felt I had to train some more axes to counter him. Then he shows up and demands we cancel deals with Hatty. I refuse this, and sure enough his stack shows up on our borders.
I prepare to defend... but actually it turns out he's just sending them through to attack Hatty. Shaka is a total psycho, we really need to deal with him before we become the next target. He also seems to have researched HBR without even having any horses, for some reason.
In the meantime we have 2 settlers. I rejected the pig/marble site as the pig and marble were owned by Thebes' culture and it's pointless picking a fight with a creative AI capital. I founded Chicken Itza at the fish/corn north of our capital, and decided not to use the other settler yet as our economy isn't in good shape. It is fortified on a hill in the northeast with a holkan.
Shaka attacks what seems to be a lightly defended Heliopolis but somehow loses his entire stack. Ok, we are definitely not attacking before construction.
On the last turn our spies successfully steal metal casting from Wang and maths from Shaka as requested, so I started a couple of forges. The AIs are starting to get more EPs though. Hatshepsut is up to 600EP on us but gets construction in 4 turns and I switched espionage focus back to her for now to try and get a stealing discount. If we want HBR some points will have to go to Shaka.
We're up to 13 unit maintenance cost because I trained more axes and swords. We should quickly make a few catapults and go once we have construction (maybe send two spies to different Egyptian cities in case one fails.)
I decided to steal Sailing from Shaka while waiting for maths to come up as we have 2 settlers and our city locations are coastal. I spotted a 12-stack of foot troops in his lands so felt I had to train some more axes to counter him. Then he shows up and demands we cancel deals with Hatty. I refuse this, and sure enough his stack shows up on our borders.
I prepare to defend... but actually it turns out he's just sending them through to attack Hatty. Shaka is a total psycho, we really need to deal with him before we become the next target. He also seems to have researched HBR without even having any horses, for some reason.
In the meantime we have 2 settlers. I rejected the pig/marble site as the pig and marble were owned by Thebes' culture and it's pointless picking a fight with a creative AI capital. I founded Chicken Itza at the fish/corn north of our capital, and decided not to use the other settler yet as our economy isn't in good shape. It is fortified on a hill in the northeast with a holkan.
Shaka attacks what seems to be a lightly defended Heliopolis but somehow loses his entire stack. Ok, we are definitely not attacking before construction.
On the last turn our spies successfully steal metal casting from Wang and maths from Shaka as requested, so I started a couple of forges. The AIs are starting to get more EPs though. Hatshepsut is up to 600EP on us but gets construction in 4 turns and I switched espionage focus back to her for now to try and get a stealing discount. If we want HBR some points will have to go to Shaka.
We're up to 13 unit maintenance cost because I trained more axes and swords. We should quickly make a few catapults and go once we have construction (maybe send two spies to different Egyptian cities in case one fails.)
darrelljs
Immortal
What a strange and angry fellow is Shaka
He should have come at us when he had the chance.
He should have come at us when he had the chance.
