RBTS7 - L'estasi Dell'oro

[timmy827]

T-hawk:

Spoiler :

Yeah, personally I was surprised I got that close to Liberalism. Had considerable luck with being able to skip Paper and half of each CS and Philo, and if Madrid hadn't popped a GS (the chance of which was only a little over 50%) we'd still be a ways off although certainly close enough for the spaceheads to get it.

WFYABTA - of course we want to hit this as soon as possible, tech stagnation from here on is a relative advantage to us. Took the cue from the multi-trades in your first round.

I'm positively shocked that you think Sushi is a good idea
Looking at the current wonders in Madrid, if we ran 4-5 merchants for a whole GP cycle the odds could be 2/3 or better for GM once SciMethod has killed the free scientists.

 

[darrelljs]

I will be out of town until Wednesday. Garath, if you want you can swap with me for this round.

Darrell

 

[mostly-harmless]

IHT:
Oh my god, Spain has surely changed after I last ruled it.
First of all our army costs us way too much for just idling around. I put them to use in pillaging and attacking Greece. That should bring in some loot to sustain a few more rounds of all out research.

Turn1:
Wan Kong demands Education, which I deny him of course.

Turn2:
Liberalism comes in and I grab Astronomy.
Printing Press is next on our way to Physics.

Turn3:
Our army captures and razes Mycenae. If we had kept that city it would have costs us a lot in maintenance and would have choked on English culture.

Turn5:
Alexander gives in to our demands of 120 gold, 5gpt & world map. Peace breaks out.


It follows a stretch of time where I literate our Spaniards by erecting libraries, universities & observatories.
Research takes a detour to Banking & Economics as our coffers are empty.
It is a shame that apart from the scientific development of Spain the Space Cadets also have to take care of the economy!

Turn16:
Roosevelt offer a defensive pact. Why not. Makes me feel safer and not bother as much about the military.

Towards the end of my turnset Versailles and Taj Mahal are built by foreigners.
Furthermore Suleiman declares on Alexander.

Spain has made a scientific infrastructure jump by erecting a couple of libraries, 6 universities, 6 observatories and the Oxford University and another academy during the last 20 turns.
Also the economy is back in the black numbers by going for a number of courthouses, harbors and markets.

Finally I swapped to Free Religion and Free Market to push as towards the stars.

mh

The save:

 

[darrelljs]

Our army captures and razes Mycenae. If we had kept that city it would have costs us a lot in maintenance and would have choked on English culture.

The proper solution would have been to remove the offending culture...I'll see what I can do to rectify the mistake on Wednesday .

Darrell

 

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Roosevelt offer a defensive pact. Why not.

I like this. Defensive pacts with a human involved are rarely seen in SGs, and I'm curious to see if this changes the dynamics of this particular game in any way. Probably not, but who knows...

-Kylearan

 

[Garath]

I like this. Defensive pacts with a human involved are rarely seen in SGs, and I'm curious to see if this changes the dynamics of this particular game in any way. Probably not, but who knows...

I have this strange feeling that it might shortly get broken again by a declaration of war. Can't imagine why I might think that...

Garath

 

[Garath]

darrelljs:

Spoiler :

It would appear that we've been left with a mobile army of all of one knight and 8 HAs, half of which are on the other side of the empire. This is actually less than I left at the end of my turn - I'm not entirely clear where the rest have gone.

We're three techs short of Military Tradition (for Conquistadors), but Gunpowder and Nationalism can both be picked up immediately in trade, which I think is far more valuable than retaining our Astronomy monopoly. You can also pick up some 700 gold in the process, which is enough to run research at full blast for 4 turns to get MT. After that it could be turned off, and I would suggest using the income, together with any remaining gold and any more that can be traded for in the meantime, to upgrade the standing horse archers as quickly as possible. Our production of Knights and Conquistadors should be pretty good - pretty much all cities have some good production tiles currently unworked that we can switch to.

Elizabeth and Alex are still at war, so I imagine neither of them has a huge standing army right now. That makes one of them the nicest target at this point, I should think. I'd recommend Elizabeth precisely because she's the tougher target, if you can manage it. Alex is far, far behind, and can be mopped up at our leisure later with outdated troops.

Good luck, and good hunting, General!

Garath

 

[T-hawk]

I'll see what I can do to rectify the mistake on Wednesday .

Unless it's fairly early on Wednesday evening, we might be headed for a bit of a stall over the holiday weekend. I'm away from Thursday morning to Monday night the 7th; my last chance to play my turn before that is Wednesday around midnight.

 

[timmy827]

I'll be around most of the time and could play, although that would put us at three turns for myself vs. one for T-Hawk.

Of course, we could always approximate a culture turnset by "turn up culture slider, hit enter 20 times"

 

[Garath]

I'd prefer to wait for T-Hawk - I don't mind the game slowing down a bit if it needs to for that. I think that with this variant it's particularly important that each of our unique styles gets its chance to play.

We need to decide how many turns we're playing per set on the next round. I'd favour dropping to 10, since otherwise we'd be likely to only *have* one more round, and Qwack in particular wouldn't get to see the later game at all.

Garath

 

[darrelljs]

Okay...I was going to rush out my set now but now I can relax and play tomorrow .

Garath:

Spoiler :

You are thinking pretty much how I am thinking. I'll be using the whip a lot as well, if they can lose an entire army I don't feel so bad replacing it on the backs of our people

Darrell

 

[Garath]

darrelljs:

Spoiler :

Whip sounds good - I often forget by this stage of a game, but here I think it can do us significant good. Should be able to whip Conquistadors after 4 turns, which is coincidentally the same point as the time when all that population working 2/0/n tiles become useless to us.

 

[darrelljs]

The bad news is I can't play today. The good news is I will be able to play before T-Hawk is back. So, if you cultured guys were going to swap then I might need Garath to take my set, otherwise I will have my turns up Monday.

Darrell

 

[timmy827]

I'm fine with waiting and that seems to be the general consensus. Take your time.

 

[T-hawk]

Yeah, let's take a break over the holiday weekend. (I'm still online, just not at my Civ 4 computer, and this laptop can't come close to playing it. )

 

[darrelljs]

Whew...that was 20 long turns. Report tomorrow but I'll attach the save now just in case anyone wants to take a peak. Here's a teaser:



Garath:

Spoiler :

It went so well at the start, I thought I might get to take out both Elizabeth AND Alexander, but it was not to be . I made two major errors. #1, I stopped whipping and drafting too early, and reinforcements weren't enough (I missed London for the want of one lousy unit ). #2, I thought Alexander was gassed, totally spent, dead as a doorknob, but unfortunatley he had a stack left. I sent only a few units to finish him off, but his counter attack re-took a couple of cities right before the turn counter ended. Still, he is down to three only. He is also Elizabeth's Vassal, I probably should have made him ours. Elizabeth is close to gassed, but I'm sure that will change soon enough. We are at break even with the slider on only 10% research because I built sooooooo many troops. BTW, I think 20 turns is best for us, we really need some time to rebuild our army, I have a feeling it is going to get "lost" every time we give up the save. If I only had 15 turns I would have made much less progress, and if I only had 10 turns I would not have made any progress. I think that Elizabeth and Alexander are so gassed, you should take 'em out your turnset. After that we might be in for a rough spot.

We need to use fast units, I was just attacking with Conquistadors, that was a good idea you had. Calvary should be our next goal and then Tanks. Going to be hard to manage. I think the space guys are doomed, but the cultural fellows are in pretty good shape .

Darrell

 

[timmy827]

Blech. I have no desire to read the revolting tales of bloodshed and carnage. Thus I have gone straight to steps to correct this abysmal situation and restore the focus on sophistication and artistry.

T-hawk:

Spoiler :

Hmm, I think I spent as much time looking at save/thinking/typing these up as I did actually playing my last round. Apologies if these are a little too detailed...

OK, you might be able to get Sushi founded, depending on whether we win the GP lottery. Madrid has just birthed a GP so this is our best chance to get a merchant out of there.

Tech:
Sci Method is part-researched so we can trade MilTrad for that, Constitution, and Chem immediately - I THINK that Liz will go back to Cautious after peace and be willing to trade, you may be able to broker Sci Meth to Roosevelt as well. You'll probably have to research Bio and Medicine yourself (unfortunately that Great Scientist will bulb Physics before Bio, maybe someone besides Wang will research Physics and we can trade in time to use the GS on Bio but seems unlikely), hard to tell if that's doable without making peace and waiting a turn for the WW to subside. Probably will be, you can build wealth/research almost everywhere and run tons of specialists in the non-legendary cities.

WFYABTA limits -
Hatty 10
Lizzy 15
Roosy 15
Sulei (in case we drop below Friendly) 10
Wang 10
Zara 10

Since Wang, Hatty are in WFYABTA and Zara is not, I'm guessing we're right on the edge with those him (and he's forgotten one more trade than the others have). So trade with Zara first.

Looks like several AI's have Corp., IIRC only Friendly civs will trade it to you in BTS. Maybe by brokering SciMeth to Roosevelt you can get all three of Const, Chem, SciMeth without giving MilTrad to Sulie, however by waiting a turn to broker to Roosevelt there's a risk he will make his own MilTrad -SciMeth deal. Since we will research faster without Corporation (most cities are coastal, so Corp is going to be -1 trade routes in most cities) I would just make a deal with Sulei immediately for one of the other techs and trade him Bio or Medicine for Corp.

However, trading for Corp earlier would allow a sooner revolt to Representation to speed research - losing the HR bonus with Sulei will probably drop him from Friendly which we need to trade Corporation.

Other Civics - when you are able to switch, Caste is obvious so Madrid can run max merchants. Merc for an extra merchant in Madrid is useful but FM would speed up research a ton, your call. Represenation once we've made the deal with Sulei. And of course Free Speech.

At the current save it looks like Pacifism unit cost vs. no upkeep is roughly even, but that will drop once we aren't in Vassalage. You should be able to get the GP in 20 turns w/o Pac even though the GL and Parth will be obsoleted. (In that case, OR for the christain missionaries. Looks like Hatty may spread us Conf once we aren't in Theocracy too). Madrid has food support for 6 merchants and some room for food depletion which will allow odds of about 2/3 for the Sushi founder.

Other things:
While we are still in slavery you may want to whip monasteries in the Christian cities to get a jump on the spread. However, you would have to hold off on the SciMethod trade so probably not worth it. I did a quick test in another game, even if you whip a monastery and then trade for SciMeth before the next turn, it disappears. So this probably isn't worth it, make the trades and just revolt to OR 5 turns in.

Seafood - there's a fish 2 SW of Phrygian that should be hooked up if we get Sushi (not in the BFC of any city though). Pharsalos's borders should pop during your set bringing in another clam.

You should probably be able to finish all of the Christian temples and some of those cathedrals. The conquered Stone will help a lot with this. Hermitage in Toledo seems like obvious call as well. Globe is still at 2/3 completion in Granada, Toledo could use a Theatre also if you are able to get all of the other builds done.

Granada is also getting close to a GP, so run artists there to try and cash it out during your set. Be careful not to pop before Madrid's unless the extra cost won't push the Madrid GP past the end of your set (note that making Madrid get to 1000 GPP instead of 900 will also slightly increase merchant odds since we won't be able to run max merchants until 5 turns in). I think artist should bomb Toledo; assuming we stay in free speech until the end settling would get more culture but I don't think the other teams (dominators especially) will leave that civic in place. As for location of Sushi - I like Madrid since Wall Street cannot be built there, that way if the spacers spam it to all cities it won't speed up their research quite as much.

If you get to the Sushi techs with turns to spare, turn off research. The only thing that will help us are Broadcast Towers and I expect the other teams will get us most of the way there. Well, other culture corps could help but that's highly dependent on GP luck.

One other thing: the last two turnsets have had civics changes on the last turn. This is partially my fault, I changed on the 2nd-to-last on my turnset, for a reasonable cause (Caste for a while to squeeze hammers out of a couple of workshops @ Madrid, then slavery to whip that first Christain missionary and was going to whip ND but it got build by someone else) but the last two have seemed gratuitous. I recommend not continuing this streak and asking other players to try to do the same.

 

[T-hawk]

I see it; most likely I can play Tuesday night. (It'll take me most of Monday to digest timmy827's analysis there. ) I'm still going 20 turns, right?

 

[darrelljs]

I'm still going 20 turns, right?

Yup...I'm in favor of keeping it at 20 turns the rest of the way, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise .

Darrell

 

[darrelljs]

So, I open the save and find that the good foundation laid by General Garath was squandered for the arts and sciences. Mismanagement of misuse of civic resources are rampant. The final, tragic straw is our lack of influence on the international stage:



For shame ! Let's see what I can do to rectify the situation. For starters, production is maximized in all cities (food = production). I can also trade some of the useless techs we've acquired for things of a more militant nature:



Research is set to Military Tradition @ 100%. Need to sell a few more useless techs for enough cash to make it. Next stop, Nationalism and Theocracy. Ah. Shameful. A civics swap right before handing off the save. A little investigation seems to indicate this trend started with the uncouth cultural team. I check the mirror and see that indeed, I do not have my big hat on today . At least we have slavery. Before:



After:



This process is repeated in 1440 A.D., with Knights and Spies building as normal during the interim years. In 1450 A.D. when Military Tradition comes in, I set the espionage slider to 20% towards England, and focus the remaining on wealth for Conquistador upgrades. I also swap to Nationhood, Theocracy and Mercantilism and begin drafting Musketmen. Kind soul that I am, I stop the whipping so our next player doesn't inherit any unjustifiable whip anger (and BTW, I did inherit some so don't complain to me). Drafting would also stop after a few rounds. Anyhoo, on to Greece:



The war effort was helped when a Great Merchant trade mission upgraded most of those Knights to Conquistadors, who go through Greek units like the proverbial knife through butter. I was tempted to save him for Sid's Sushi, but then I realized I wanted to win the game. Enough troops were massed on England's border:



Sparta fell next. Then Argos. Then Newcastle. Then Athens (Alexander capitulated to Elizabeth at that point...way to find a strong master ). Next was Nottingham. Coventry followed. Here, in the year of our lord 1535 A.D. did the ambituous General Darrell make quite the mistake. Thinking that Alexander was gassed, I sent about five spent Conquistadors to take out his northern outpost. Unfortunately, Alexander had both Epheseus and Hastings, not to mention quite the stack of Knights. Gift from Elizabeth? I can't see the AI being that clever but the Spanish wiped out my force and re-took both Sparta and Athens over the next two years. Since I did stop whipping mounted units, I couldn't get enough garrison up in time to preserve those two key cities .

I also (barely) failed to take London:



So overall I'll call my turnset a failure . We are still at war. I'm sure you peace loving hippies will want to make peace prior to ending the turn, but I can't imagine not finishing off London first . Oh, and to help with the crippling troop costs, I did swap us into Vassalage .

Garath:

Spoiler :

Failure is a bit harsh...the turns could have gone better at the end but England and Spain WILL fall on your turnset. I just don't want them to think of us as the favorites to win (and truth be told, I still feel we are). I see the culture team struggling to find a third city. The space team has a loooong way to go on the tech tree. We should still win this thing darn it!

Darrell