I've decided to not write a clean clearview of the status at which the round is currently in like I did in Replay #3-7, but I've decided that I want to continue the story and that I'll report on the questions that
georgjorge had btw., because making a full-stop now is imho not the right time with the war being in progress, and I also found that there were very little reactions to me giving clearviews in the past, which I interpret in the way that people find it very difficult to comment on the current status of something and really formulate statements judging things, yes, even the pro's. I'm doing such things, but that seems to be something only few people do, I hope you don't mind though.
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Screenshot taken from 200 BC, so slightly past of where we left already.
Showing that I joined the war against de Gaulle. He cannot reach me, so I'm exchanging diplopoints with 3 Civs having my religion, against slight diplohits from 3 Civs I could not become friends with anyhow.
Showing that I made a very good trade for CoL.
I'm also keeping an eye on that the Civs which would be willing to trade with Lizzy (Asoka, Frederick, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Washington)
don't lack any techs Lizzy has, while having a tech theirselves that she doesn't.
Maybe superflous, but I found these trades worth reporting, because they show that I'm trading my Horses to Asoka, so by resigning from the possibility to build Horse-units, I solve most of my Happiness problems, and the Marble I get from Brennus basically is free atm., because there's nothing I (or he) could build with it!
It's important to look closer at the overall and diplomatic situation again:
Predicting what will happen, is an ability owned by skilled and experienced players. Knowing where one stands atm. comes with not going away from somewhere, and in this case this means, that I'm in an ok situation atm. with having 10 cities, but I have to pay some serious attention to my friends. I don't worry about Asoka, Pacal and Peter, because those 3 are already out for me, with having only 8-10 cities, but the Americans and the German are in very strong positions.
Going against Lincoln could get a lot more difficult than we'd like it, because 15 cities means he has the power to produce from all of those, and Lizzy having 7 and us having 10 means that we'll have 17 cities at most after the war, and 17 vs 15 can be quite a challenge with the AIs getting Deity bonuses!
I hope that this answered some of the questions
georgjorge had already.
Now
troglodyt asked me to report about the diplomacy, and though he
neither answered to my post, nor my PM, I'll post this screen, because I think that it's interesting for all:
What I did for diplomacy, were 2 things:
- I traded techs to all Civs that I wasn't 100% sure of, that they'd be the next target, or the target after the next. This means, I traded techs to all Civs but Lizzy and Lincoln. Trading techs for diplo-bonuses makes it harder for me to stay in the tech-race because it often means that I'm giving away techs for free, but it gets me the desired +4 points through "fair trade relations" .
- Once I could see with whom I could make friends (so seeing with whom I shared Religion and who wasn't my direct neighbour -> possible target) , I began sharing wars, at least when I was sure, that they were no danger for me!
And the result of behaving like such, in 50 BC, is this:
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What's missing, is what happened in between:
The heroes conquered the southern front. Under the command of
Tachywaxon, they were able to steal a lot of Workers, and
bcool got inspired by him, and conquered a city (Coventry) all on his own.
Zx Zero Zx noticed that the others were doing a great job and noticed that he didn't have to fight at all, what he hasn't noticed though, is that like this, he doesn't get any XP and cannot become a legend like
Tachywaxon and
bcool...
Kossin is a very good player, so he specced Drill, giving him larger XP from single fights and reducing the time he needs to heal because Drill makes units take less damage (not only from Collateral, but through the Firststrikes there are chances, that a Drill unit will even survive a fight unharmed sometimes) , and I had level up and decided for Morale, because I heard of heroes fighting at the
North front, that desperately needed a healer:
As you see, some of those Cho-Ko-Nu's have names already, and some don't! This is, because I renamed the Cho-Ku's in the order after which I met them in that round!
Sun Tzu Wu, Kaitzilla and WastinTime were the heroes which conquered
Liverpool, a city which can be seen here:
I hope that shift didn't fck you, and that you can laugh about it.
A Warriorfarm? Seriously? Yes! A really good empire has one of those, and I told you, that I'd play perfect in this round and that I'd use everything that's available to me, so yes! Warriors cost only half as many
as Archers do, and there wouldn't even be the possbility to train Archers anymore, because I've aquired Feudalism in the meantime! Using Cho-Ko-Nu's as City-Garrisons, would mean spending 90
for some Happiness instead of spending 22 (!) on exactly the same, and Cho-Ko-Nu's are really only needed in Border-cities! I have totally safe fronts in the south and in the west, so there's no reason not to greatly save some Hammers by guarding those cities with the best unit of the game!
And then
building the Palace, the HE and the NE in London? Yes! If you remember screenshots from before, that city has a fcking amount of 4 times Food, and it's even strong Food! The current Happiness-limit of that city is size 5, and it will be size 10 or 11 once I've conquered Lizzy, but that city has such amazing amounts of Food, that I see absolutely no way to keep it from running into Unhappiness, but build the Globe in it! To me, the opportunity costs of this also seem very small, because it means that I have to build some theaters in cities that have (or will have) border-pressure anyhow, and luckily enough, London has just the amount of Forrests to first build the Palace and run as a Bureaucratic Capital, and build the HE + the GT still in very little time!
Buro? Are we there already? Yes! With having the good friends that you've seen on the screen I posted above, getting Civil Service by trade was absolutely no problem! I of course had to give up my monopoly on Machinery for this, but that's a little price for
making 200 BPT (that's twice as much as on the screens you know from 200 BC, so 10 turns earlier) . Have a look at the
tech-screen:
I'm basically having large techs as advantages over the AIs, while lacking only very few things, that I don't even need yet! (NN for Philosphy before Liberalism in a war-round, and Construction would have been nice, but is really only needed from the time when AIs have Castles onwards. )
"Wow, so 200 BPT!" Yes.
I used the GA from Music to start a GA, and waiting for that was really the hardest thing in the whole round for me!
I had 1500 
in the Bank, and always thought "you have the Mids, why not switch to US and rush-buy some fancy things" , but then I did some real calculations, and it turned out that 1500
, though not being somewhat, wasn't too much either! Single Cho-Ko-Nu costs about 300
on those settings, so I could have bought exactly 5 of them, great, as if that would really make the difference! I could also have bought the Palace, but that'd have been absolutely stupid, because with being IND, I'm getting +50% on the chops for it, but with buying it, I'd have had to pay +50% in
, so lose lose!
What I did with that money, was Rush-Upgrade some Archers, because what I need, are more Cho-Ko-Nu's with all that stupid stuff that I already have to build, to get into a killing position, so this is the status of the current chinese military:
Here, you really must look at the numbers. 20 Cho-Ko-Nu's available, and that with 10 lost already, means that I built 30, which I find is really decent for that it's not even 1 AD yet!
I also bought a very small number of Workers, because even with the Workers conquered from Lizzy, the biggest gain I could get now (still speaking of troops) would be if I could chop all those Forrests you see here:
This is the freakin most insane amount of Forrests, that I've ever seen! How many are those? 20? 30? 40? Now imagine that every Forrests is almost 1 Cho-Ku, now imagine a Cho-Ku instead of the tile where the Forrest is on, that'd be an army that were even larger than the one I'm already having! Chopping all of that will be way enough to conquer Lincoln, even with him getting / having Longbows, what I must ensure, is that those Forrests get chopped fast, because the faster they go, the earlier I'll have Lincolns cities, and Lincolns cities again will be what will get me the Forces for the next target, + of course what the cities that I'm currently building up will also produce!
Workers were the right investment for that money, because a Worker really can multiply and pay back 10 times by chopping those Forrests, while everything else would have been poor choices at most.
This may again be superflous, but I think some may ask what
Civics I plan to run at the end of the GA, and they are of course:
Police-State, Buro, Slavery and Theocracy. I tell this, because I did experiment with running Vassalage a lot, and after all of my experiments with it, I can assure you,
Vassalage is not worth it except in rare-exceptions!
Example for one of those rare exceptions would be i. e., that you don't have Burea yet, but Burea is
the boost to Commerce (and also slightly to Hammers) , and what really helps in a war round, is getting 5 XP-Troops from Barracks cities or single promoted troops from anywhere, and you get that through running Theo. There aren't really that much buildings to build anyhow, ok, now you'll laugh, but it's seriously only Granaries, Forges, Barracks and Theaters, so with the end of this post, I'll seriously end the enormous build-up-phase until the end of the game! The only positive thing from Vassalage is, that it doesn't require a religion and that's it. The benefit from being able to run OR, is very minor with the small number of buildings, it's worth it in the very beginning when Theo isn't available yet, but with Theo, there's nn to run Vassalage, and
Buro is the deal, as it allows you to create unbelievable amounts of research from only 1 city having an Academy!
And this is that city:
Screenshot from 190 AD, a time when the war against Lizzy was over, and it's
ment to be a preview on the upcomming update, because we want to know what happened with the heroes in between, but I hope, that you now understand why I pushed so hard to get the Globe in that city, and that is, that this city has 200% bonus on unit-production and +16 Food even with working the Plains-Mine! I really would have liked to whip away that Plains-Hill on that screen because it's no good tile, but there simply wasn't any chance, because this city produced 2 troops in 3 turns and regrew so fast, that it always grw onto the Plains-Hill again!
100 BPT from the Buro-Capital is not that amazing, but I think it's still ok, shows really that I had problems with research in that round so even one reason more to definately run Buro, but
what I hope... :
Is that you had a fun-time reading this post, and that you now feel fresh and am motivated to read the next upadte, and that you'll maybe leave a comment on this, because, believe it or not, but writing this post again took me from 4 'o clock in the morning, and it's now almost 10 'o clock in Germany
.
So while I'm getting myself some breakfast, you think about if this was good or not, 'til soon,
Seraiel
. I find it always nice to know where I'm standing with my knowledge 
. I'm either hoping, that you're exagurating here, or I hope that you're not 
only from buildings, and because needing to add the Specialists from the GL to that, those are 21 
= 1 
, and that's not enough.
) right with your choice of words, but if you look at it how I look at it, Buro gives over 20 
, that's between 15 and 20% of the Research I can really conduct at that time!
.
