RBTS7 - L'estasi Dell'oro

[timmy827]

What can I say? Beginning every turn with mini-cities and woeful amounts of is kind of tiresome. Can't those virtual citizens realize I only want to bring them the finer things in life and save their anger for the bloodthirsty tyrants?

 

[darrelljs]

Yeah...I'm hoping MH disappears again (nothing personal) so you guys get to deal with it .

Darrell

 

[Garath]

Well, that could have gone a whole lot better.

I couldn't take Istanbul on the first turn due to having fewer attackers capable of killing than they had defenders, so I bombarded the city and took it on turn 2. So far, so good.

A small stack of Roosevelt's took out a small reinforcing stack of mine that was slightly behind the main Istanbul stack. That'll teach me to respect enemies who have Tanks when I don't, perhaps.





I split off a small column to go and capture the city down to the south, having seen that it was lightly defended and I could get to it quickly. Unfortunately, immediately afterwards it was countered by another stack of Roosey's. Stacks of Tanks and Arty really do just own stacks of Infantry. There was then a backwards-and-forwards battle over that city for the remainder of the set - each turn Roosevelt turned up with a new stack of 6-8 mixed units, killed a bunch of mine, and then got killed in return. Throughout the whole turnset, though, there were very few AI units that I saw that *didn't* start by killing one of my units before I could counter and kill them. In retrospect, I should have just returned the city to the Koreans and got on towards Ankara, although that probably wouldn't have worked either.





At this point, it was looking mostly like the only reason I wasn't on target to do what Darrell was hoping we could do in this set was that for some reason Suleiman wasn't even willing to talk, so I couldn't try to capitulate him. Zara would have taken peace at any time, but I was hoping that killing a bunch more of his units might be enough to get the rest of Industrialism in the peace deal. More fool me, though, and this is why...





That's a stack of AT LEAST 20 Ethiopian units, simply come straight out of the fog at my main stack, which is on nearly full health in the city... and killing every single unit.

So despite having pushed deep into Ottoman territory, he still won't talk. I've taken peace with Roosevelt, but after the slaughter just perpetrated on my main stack by Zara, I really don't know what to do with the game, so given that it's now quite late at night I'm attaching the game without playing the final turn, since I truly and genuinely don't know what to do. Feel free to move as you wish on the inherited turn, or I can clean up tomorrow if you prefer.

Can the Culture team fight off the marauding forces of Zara Yaqob? Will Suleiman build any more pieces of the spaceship, even whilst at war? Can Hatty be simply be beaten to her cultural victory, or will the Culture team itself be forced into fighting?

Garath

View attachment RBTS7 - Survivor AD-1900.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[timmy827]

Oh, you poor souls. AFAIK Sulei will refuse to talk to you while he's a vassal, you can only sign peace with the master. Also, Industrialism has gotten you precisely one tank, while it gives us two aluminums for CreCon - thanks a lot

Hatty's last place city gained about 5700 (now just over 28000). Extrapolating that over the next 40 turns (when our set would end assuming M-H plays 20 for the spacers) puts it just over the legendary benchmark then, and probably a few turns earlier assuming some gentle acceleration. Things could indeed get interesting...Lekdevil.NL suggested an amphibious assault, which might be a tad tricky given total lack of a navy or airforce ATM, not to mention that I have really never fought a modern war on competitive terms.

 

[Garath]

Oh, you poor souls. AFAIK Sulei will refuse to talk to you while he's a vassal, you can only sign peace with the master.

Probably true, and I guess I haven't done enough damage to him to break him free, since I got distracted by all the stacks that weren't his, even before the final counter. Roosevelt also wouldn't talk until turn 10, though, and I don't think he has the same excuse.

Also, Industrialism has gotten you precisely one tank, while it gives us two aluminums for CreCon - thanks a lot

Sure, I know it's not actually useful, but it's what I would have done in a normal game, and I've preferred to do that when possible. It just seems fairer to me. In that respect, we might well have done better had we had the 20 Space turns before us - it's quite possible that we'd have had Tanks at the start of our turn rather than the end, which would have made a big difference.

Have fun with Hatty! She's also trying diplo victory votes, though I don't think she's anywhere near succeeding.

Garath

 

[darrelljs]

Ouch...I guess reports of Roosevelt being gassed were a bit premature . Too bad we can't see the power graphs yet.

MH,

You got 24 hours for a got it, otherwise we'll roll back to the cultural team.

Darrell

 

[mostly-harmless]

Got it! Although I must be crazy to take over such a mess.

mh

 

[Lekdevil.NL]

Certainty of death, small chance of success... What are we waiting for?

 

[darrelljs]

Darrell

 

[mostly-harmless]

Oh dear!
What a mess, space wise.
Cant stop the war with Suleiman (does not talk) and Zara (wants Istanbul). Takes a while to spot where the Apollo Program was queued up! Hastings, with 2hammers invested! Nice!
I make the usual civic swaps and get Apollo started in Madrid and Wall Street started in Toledo(?).

After a while a monster stack defeats our troops at Istanbul. Ack.

So, who's bright idea was it to fight this war? We are outnumbered and underequipped. Huge stacks of Tanks helped by bombers & guided missiles are ripping our forces apart.
I wish I had given Zara Istanbul on turn 1 to get peace. Now he won't listen to any peace offferings.

What should have been some quite and quick turns for the space team, ends up in an epic struggle to hold our empire together.

What remains of our troops (not much!) falls back to Cordoba. In a desperate attempt to raise cash I trade satellites to Hatty for 200gold. If we had a decent economy I would have gotten that amount myself.
Anyway, with the additional cash and the city of Konya and 250gpt!!!! we have peace again.

Zara gets the Internet.
Suleiman completes Thrusters.
Does not look to good.
At least our own Apollo just finished.

I pause here after 10turns and will continue the next 10turns tomorrow.
As a one man team I claim additional time to play.

I have to shoot off to my bachelors party now.

mh

 

[timmy827]

Darn it, I should have posted this. The "what is the price for peace" is not absolute. At the 1900 save, Zara would have taken peace for a (substantial) amount of GPT instead of Istanbul.

 

[Garath]

Yes, but Istanbul was sufficiently surrounded by enemy culture that we might as well have given it anyway. It's not like we'd ever be in a position to take it back even if the Domination team was going to get another turn.

 

[mostly-harmless]

Ok, second part played.
Suleiman, Zara & Wan Kong are building spaceship part en masse. Memphis has gone legendary already with the two other Egypt cities almost there as well.
We are hopelessly behind in tech.
Our army is wiped out really.

I got all our sea food resources connected again, which will help the cultural team to some extent.
But I rather win the game by cultural victory, than loose to Hatty.
The next 20 turns will see the ending, one way or other.

mh

 

[Lekdevil.NL]

I just checked some numbers:

• Heliopolis is at 44584 culture points, making 836 per turn, going legendary in 7 turns.
• Thebes is at 44358 culture points, making 747 per turn, going legendary in 8 turns.

 

[timmy827]

But I rather win the game by cultural victory, than loose to Hatty.
The next 20 turns will see the ending, one way or other.

mh

Well, Free Speech and culture slider might have helped us out a little more there...But probably truer to the variant that you refrained from taking steps that obviously help us more than your quixotic spaceship plans.

T-hawk:

Well this is quite a mess. Assuming Lekdevil is correct and we have only 8 turns (going by the rate of culture from 20 turns ago until now, he can't be far off), possibly 7 if the culture accumulation continues to accelerate, I don't see us having any military option against Hatty - we can't get there in time as we have 0 naval units and cannot get OB through Suleiman; even if we could our army is not very large. Zara is willing to declare on her but we have nothing to bribe him with, even if we stockpiled gold for a few turns and it was enough to start a war I don't see him taking a legendary city in time.

Attached is a preliminary turn 0 save - I revolted to free speech, US, OR, set cities to wealth, bought as many culture corp resources as I could and selling off other resources for GPT, etc to get a sense of how far away we really are.

We have 3 confucian cities but need OR to send a missionary to Toledo (fortunately granada could build one in a single turn and have it send immediately). Toledo has some significant production overflow banked but it will still probably be turn 5 or 6 so before it can finish the cathedral so it just won't do much in our 8 turn window. It would probably barely be more than what we would get by having those cities build Wealth and use that for an extra turn of 20% more culture slider or so. We could also use US to buy it after a turn of hammers.

Madrid can pop a GP in 7 turns by assigning 4 artists, we might get a 50% chance of the one we need.

Other things we can do:
Convert mines at Toledo to windmills
Probably the best thing to do with additional pop at Toledo beyond windmills is just to assign other specialists (each producing 2cpt thanks to Sistine)

Another thing is that Nottingham needs to be watched like a hawk - its very close to popping a GP and if the governor auto-assigns specialsts as it grows it might pop before Madrid and Madrid would then not pop until after Hatty wins.

Now the dismal news is that all this isn't enough. Toledo is 14 turns away, Granada 11 (Madrid is in the clear). If we can artist-bomb Toledo it will take off 3-4 turns, and there are some other things - larger cities letting us run more slider, more corp resources becoming available to buy - that might speed things up a bit but I doubt by more than 1 turn.

So, am I missing some other way to get more culture? If not, maybe going all gold and attempting to bribe Zara to attack Hatty is the best way (note - I would have to not use the uploaded save; he goes back to annoyed when we go back to having a state religion). I think there is a minuscule chance of that working but it's significantly higher than the goose egg I'm looking at with the peaceful approach. I know every turnset has wound up better than we expected, but I can't see us beating Hatty.

(double check the map also, I believe M-H did reconnect all seafood except for one of Athens's clams.)

Finally, since the end is near, I'd be willing to go 4 or 5 turns each if you want a chance at the controls.

 

[darrelljs]

I would recommend an immediate declare on Hatty, it is possible she will change her priorities away from culture in response and slow her pace down. I'd run cash, rush ships and get together a Naval strike force for ready (while crossing my fingers and sacrificing a chicken at midnight on a full moon). Are any of her legendary cities on the south coast?

Darrell

 

[T-hawk]

Oof. I'll inspect the save tonight and offer ideas from there, including whether or not I'll want a turn at the controls. Random thoughts now:

Where is Hatty's culture coming from - does she have a culture corp and can we replace it with a competing non-culture corp? Can we do anything to her civics via either diplo or espionage? Sabotage a cathedral? Pillage food tiles to knock out specialists? Pillage trade routes to cut a city off from resources? Pay anyone else to cancel deals with her?

Or maybe our tripolar squabbling oligarchy just wasn't meant to win...

 

[timmy827]

Oof. I'll inspect the save tonight and offer ideas from there, including whether or not I'll want a turn at the controls. Random thoughts now:

Where is Hatty's culture coming from - does she have a culture corp and can we replace it with a competing non-culture corp? Can we do anything to her civics via either diplo or espionage? Sabotage a cathedral? Pillage food tiles to knock out specialists? Pillage trade routes to cut a city off from resources? Pay anyone else to cancel deals with her?

Or maybe our tripolar squabbling oligarchy just wasn't meant to win...

No corporate source for her (in SP). Likely AI uses the slider, lots of towns/windmills around the cities. No one will stop trading with her either.
I really have very little experience with the new espionage system. But she has 9000 EP on us vs. 300 on her; anything we do is going to have lower chances than normal and odds of spys getting caught en route may be high too. Also will probably be 4 turns before any spys can get in position, that's not leaving much time

Getting her out of free speech would slow her down a bit. But she has the CR so we'd have to keep doing it every turn most likely, and we have to not be in free speech ourselves. I don't think that will put us ahead of her. Sabotaging cathedrals might be better but there's 5 religions per city; I don't have much confidence in that either. I believe that if one spy gets caught all spys on the tile are caught, and due to time constraints we'd probably be stacking them in attempt to get most of the cathedrals in one city in time to make a difference. The AI generally uses the culture slider so the unhappiness mission probably won't do anything.

Anyone else watching this thread - ideas/experience with these aspects of espionage would be handy...

@Darrell - nope, north coast so the long ways around the continent.

I think our best option is to DoW her immediately as Darrell suggested, run some espionage on her while pumping gold to buy in Zara. I loaded a different game and ran a test, a DoW didn't seem to alter the CPT of an AI going for victory by anything substantial, but being at war should reduce the price of buying in Zara. We can try cathedral sabotage to buy a little more time. Note that Zara is Pleased with Hatty and not that fond of us; we may have to convert to Confucianism to mollify him back to Cautious after (yet another) "you declared war on our friend" hit.

 

[T-hawk]

9000 to 300 EP? Ok, nothing doing in that department, most likely.

I think you're right on the best option - just declare war and try to distract the AI any way we possibly can. Afraid I don't have anything else to suggest. Feel free to play the whole 10 turns - I examined the save, but can't think of anything more to add...

 

[timmy827]

Sorry, no miracles here.

T0 - revolt to OR, FS, US. Declare on Hatty. Set EPs to her but don't really expect anything there. Set to 100% gold. Zara is annoyed, convert to Conf and he's back to Cautious. some cities are set to tanks - If sulei is willing to OB again soon (he was saying "not yet - maybe in a few years"), I could try a crazy suicide run to one of her cities with all the tanks I can muster.

1st interturn - I was pinning my meager hopes of accomplishing something on Sulei opening borders again soon but that goes out the window as Hatty bribes Wang against us right away. 4 destroyers show up. I abandon hope of any land ops against her and set cities back to wealth. Hope wang doesn't have any real army...
Thebes (lowest) gains about 650 to 45096. We have 8 more turns.

I send a Conf missionary to Alex and force him to convert to make sure Zara stays cautious to our average.

3rd turn: Hatty shows up with a small stack, will be butchered easily once it comes off of a hill.

4th turn - Defy an UN stop war vote. Hatty lands a small stack and I take it out with the loss of a suicide cav (took that marine down to 2.4/24 strength too - not bad!) Disaster strikes as Zara goes to "enough on his hands"; even if he isn't coming after us there's no way he'll declare on Hatty in time. I go 100% culture, nothing else useful to do.

IBT - a pair of battleships get ganged up on and sunk by korean destroyers (taking one each with them). Those were our first warships ever BTW.

5th turn - kill Hatty's other stack.

6th turn - 2nd Egyptian city hits legendary. A battleship from Madrid fails to kill a single Hatty destoyer. She'll sign peace but I'm being bitter. Here's a shot of a spy in Thebes - yeah not much chance for espionage here.

A cathedral would be presumably 5x expensive based on the hammer cost, it would come down some if we left it stationary 5 turns, although of course Hatty would win by then.

7th turn - Madrid goes legendary and the great WA Mozart arrives to celebrate. The bomb brings Toledo to 5 turns away, Granada at 6. But Thebes is only 2 away and there's nothing to be done. Also, poor Alex apparently had OB with Sulei still and bravely put a stack of Napoleonic units in Ottoman territory which was swiftly replaced by an equal number of slightly-injured Egyptian WWII units.


Oh well, at least I managed to make her head disappear.

(I would really like a new computer, but buying one just to handle lategame Civ4 seems awfully gratuitous).

Hatty wins in 1929, save before that turn attached.

How are the top 5 cities computed?


I thought it was straight culture, but that's not the case as Madrid is higher than our two representatives and Hatty's are out of order.

Thanks to Darrell for a top-notch idea, and all participants (especially T-Hawk, great fun to partner with someone so sharp on variant analysis). I guess I'm used to a player or team having a unified plan, but it was surprising how well the AI did when given some breaks caused by the team switchovers. I never expected Hatty to get culture so quickly and at the end of our last set was sure that we would beat her; even after Garath's set I was expecting 16 turns on our set or so (which would have been enough) instead of 9. The England and Greece recoveries after the "Ode to Carngae" set were also surprising, I initially thought that the next domination set would be able to steamroll them without breaking a sweat. And of course, T-Hawk had some considerable luck to get the right GP for Sushi and CreCon; if that hadn't happened this game might have ended with no team close to a victory

I'll probably have some more comments tomorrow. Again, thanks to all the players, was a great time.

EDIT:
Well, I had time to go back through the thread and reread some of the action with the spoilers before going to sleep. This is Garath to Darell in post 69:

"The paranoia comment to Culture is mostly a bit of subtle psychology, in the hope that they will think that since I'm saying that to them I'm probably saying exactly the same thing to the Space team, thus covering the fact that I really do want to talk to Space, whereas I don't care about Culture."

You really over-estimated my thinking about sneaky alliances, Garath It did work, although I thought at the time that a comment to the Space team was kind of meaningless because I was up next and they weren't.