RK13 - The Great Prophet Game

[Glare Seethe]

My thoughts:

- Bribe Joao into Theocracy and therefore Taoism. He's not coming after us most likely (I think he can't declare at Pleased anyway, but could be wrong) but it'd be nice to have him at Friendly again just for the tech trades.
- Give sugar to Ragnar for 14gpt and wine to Joao for 15gpt.
- Steel to Joao for Sci Method and gold. Steel + Rifling to Gilga for Astro and Corporation.
- Democracy next, revolt to Emancipation and work tons of cottages in our new cities.
- Eridu should get the market and grocer, then build the National Epic, then farm over all the workshops and run max specialists (we'll be out of Caste by then but with the courthouse and the gold buildings we should have enough specialist slots - it doesn't even matter what specialists we run, after all).
- Open borders with Gilga for trade routes and relations.
- All Sumerian cities except Ur/Larsa/Umma (cottages) and Eridu (GP farm) look like production cities to me.
- Let's not waste any time with Charles - declare as soon as our stack's healed and ready, with some riflemen on board.
- Bibracte can have Wall Street and Oxford (if we ever get those last two unis up).
- Moai and West Point can wait until we get stone from Charlemagne. Moai in Camu or Uruk and WP, well, wherever. Maybe both in Camu?
- Ironworks can go... somewhere... don't know where. Amazing how Gilga managed to settle so many cities one tile off a river. Maybe Ironworks + Moai in Camu and save WP for Uruk?
- Now that we're not starved for production (our current army should suffice for Charlemagne) Camu can definitely grow some more - let's switch some workshops to the water tiles for a while.
- Tech path something like Democracy (switch to Emanc) > Communism (switch to SP) > Steam Power > Assembly Line? Maybe Biology before SP? Once our cottages have grown under Emancipation we can switch back to Caste to get that nice Caste/SP combo going.

 

[Meatbuster]

Fortunately Joao doesn't declare at pleased. And he only has 80% chance of declaring at Annoyed.

Caste/SP? That won't work if the rest of the world is in Emancipation... let me check the happiness meter first.

Should we "rebuild" our economy first by going Communism? Or go straight to Ass. Line? I think we can afford to war a bit more before SP (we have 2 shrines), I would tech to infantry and just attack Charlie soon, and tech to Communism during.

I'll check all of Glare's recommendations and review our production cities (that's MM, which I am also POOR at) and play shortly.

 

[White Dragon]

I don't think you need to wait to war. Once all the units are in 1 group we should have enough to take charley. We shouldn't loose any units just several cannons each city. Trading for Corporation, building wall street in Bibracte, and grocer & bank in confucian city should support us enough to get him. I say we take his first few strategic cities, most importantly stone, then vassal him as well. Then recovery for as short a time as possible until state property. I say we don't ever stop teching. Lets go for domination or conquest. Vassal charley, rags, alex & gandhi. Don't think they can beat us to culture and Joao doesn't have enough cities to out tech us let alone outbuild SS parts. Once we get tanks its all over.

 

[Meatbuster]

Pre-turn:
Open borders with Gilga
Trade Joao Steel for Scimeth, 80 gold, and Adopt Theocracy.
Trade Joao Wine for... wait, where did his gpt go... oh well.
Trade Ragnar Sugar for 14 gpt.
Trade Gandhi Rifling for Mil. Trad and 210gold. (Fortunately, he's annoyed with our 3 prospective targets, I don't see him trading that out.)
Trade Gilga Rifling and Steel and 1400+ gold for Corporation and Astronomy.
Change up our Economy civic to Free Market.
MM Camolodunum for growth.
MM Zimbir to not starve.
Queue some commerce buildings in Tolosa, it's so far from the front lines, I guess it can stop building units now and focus on commerce.

Moai and WP in Camolodunum sounds like a good idea.

EDIT: More...
Ask Gilga to research Steam Power.
Tentative tech path is Democracy (hopefully trade for communism), Biology, Communism, Assembly Line, Fascism, Railroad, Industrialism, Combustion.

Spoiler Map for... "We have struck oil! But there's a catch..." :

Oil is found under a town near Vienne!
Fortunately there's an "unpillageable" oil resource under Ur.

EDIT2:
WHAT! We're friendly with Joao, and now we get WFYABTA?
Weird... I swear that shouldn't happen.

Turn 332...

Spoiler :

It's time to pull the trigger on another chapter of war for the Celtic people.
Promote a few anti-horse promotions as well.
Of course we retreat back into the safety of Gilga's city first.

(to be continued in 8-10 hours)

 

[Meatbuster]

Turn 334:
Ragnar was bribed into the war. HOW? Not like Charlie has anything to pay him.
Alex is busy, but the likeliest scenario is, he is about to redeclare on Gandhi.
Some units being built in our homeland are being sent to border cities just in case of a sea invasion, but likely it's just Ragnar running across Holy Roman land.
Joao already has communism. Looks like we'll get beat to the Kremlin.
Tech to 100%. Looks like we'll be the first to Democracy. So much for being champions of the free world, because much blood is waiting to be shed in the name of unity...

Turn 335:
One turn, 4 cannons, and much strife later...

Turn 336:
...we take the city, the screenshot is gone

A potential marauder is destroyed by our high-tech Ship of the Line...

Also I was building a University in Gergovia. Sorry, but it's the best chance we have of a faster Oxford.
I already started up Moai in Camulodunum and Banks in some cities for our Wall Street.

Turn 340:
India asks for Scimeth. Sorry, but no dice!
As AP resident, I propose to declare war on Ragnar.
Tech: Democracy -> Biology

Turn 341:
Everybody says no. I feel so sad.
Start the National Epic at Eridu.
Start Status of Liberty at Bibracte. It can build Wall Street next, and Oxford after the University finishes in Umma. There is no need to hurry.

Turn 342:
Upcoming bloodshed at Ulm...

Turn 343:
Our Frigate destroys a Viking Frigate and we get a GG, I decide to build Military Academy at Lagash, which is reasonably near our front line.

Attack Ulm... starting with a cavalry which I hope to retreat and the AMAZING happens... odds to win are around 2.6%

Turn 344
More units reinforce, but the inevitable happens. Thanks to the extremely lucky Cavalry first attack, no losses occurred these turns.

Turn 345
THE END
Uruk is still running "Starving Artists" protocol because the food around it can't support the population and people will die anyway. This is to reduce chance of revolt in the future.

See those glowing objects, those are cannons we can use to reduce the chance of revolt even further.
Gilgamesh will research Steam Power in 14 turns.
I suggest finishing Liberty as it's very powerful in this map (and in Pangaea) and Gandhi has Democracy already. Fortunately for us Gandhi doesn't have copper. You poor poor man.

 

[Meatbuster]

No one will trade us squat, so I guess we're on our own for now until Gilga finishes Steam Power.

Watch out, Ragnar may show up with his own stack of doom soon.
Our troops are healing at Ulm.
Also please tell Gilga to attack the next southern city, while we attack the north.

Compact Roster:
RK/Meat (just played)
Glare Seethe (up now for x turns)
White Dragon (on deck)

Save is below:

 

[Glare Seethe]

We are doing well.

I was worried about having to take down a Viking stack since Ragnar has Assembly Line already until I saw that we can get peace with him this turn. So I will do that, he'll give us some gold and his map for it.

Bibracte will build WS after the Statue of Liberty. Eridu maybe a university after the NE to get the 6th one.

Also want to switch to Emancipation cause that's why we teched Democracy, to get those villages up to towns. We can switch back after they're fully grown; Spiritual is for real probably my favorite trait. Wouldn't worry about The Kremlin, I think we should stay in HR anyway to keep Joao Friendly. Speaking of which, really annoying that he won't trade techs with us at Friendly... I've never had that happen to me before, surely it's a bug?

Will promote a few of the macemen to CRIII, then upgrade to riflemen, and capitulate Charley after taking Aachen (and all cities on the way, of course).

 

[Meatbuster]

Waitasec, what game are you looking at... Ragnar doesn't have Ass. Line. Heck, he doesn't even have Economics.

Are you talking about Steam Power? Yeah that does give him ironclads, and they are a hop-skip from railroad which gives him the pain in the rear machineguns.

I guess this means NOT giving Ragnar and Alex Economics and Corporation to deny them researching Assembly Line before we do.

re-checked my save, right now, Alex's power is going way off the charts. He may have just gotten Rifling and is upgrading his armies.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Oh right, you need Corporation for AL, I forgot. Okay. Still going to make peace with him, though, I'd rather not have any distractions.

 

[Meatbuster]

All right, let's try for a cease fire. We want to be able to re-declare as soon as we finish off or capitulate Charlie (a rather bad idea since he isn't any good at teching in this game, but it does eliminate him as an opponent faster right?).

I think we can actually monitor who does and doesn't have Ass. Line, as we can see Joao "can research it".

 

[Glare Seethe]

I think I'd rather take peace than a cease fire, though, cause we're not likely to make it to Aachen within those 10 turns of enforced peace anyway. And with peace we get his gold and map, with a cease fire we don't get anything (I think?).

 

[Meatbuster]

This being Emperor and we haven't killed many Viking units, I don't see how it won't be us paying him instead.

Also I asked the question about WFYABTA with Joao...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=332487

AI is weighing team vs team, so in our "team" it would be including Gilga who's only +4 with Joao. I suppose we should convert Gilga to Taoism (and first, out of Theocracy).

 

[White Dragon]

Thanks for asking that question Meat. You still learn something new every day.

Joao is pleased with Gilga so why won't he trade with us? I suppose it is like you say we both have to be at friendly.

Does the above change our thinking regarding Charley. Joao is pleased with him as well but how hard of a time are we going to have getting Charley to switch to HR? And Joao to switch out of free religion.

Should we start producing as many missionaries as we can to convert both Gilga and Charley?

Should we re-assign all espionage to Joao to spy him to Theocracy?

Rags will give us money for peace as Glare suggested.

Also, Rags/Gandhi/Alex/Joao all have lots of gpt to trade and we have stuff they want. We have lots of extra happy so I say we trade away to get the money.

We can go to 100% and research biology asap. I think we should move the idle workers back to our original land and rework as many tiles as possible looking into the future.

Edit: I have kinda a stupid question. In my SP games I would never go biology before steam power & RR given this particular map. I wouldn't have even gone to Demo. I know emanicapation is powerful but I didn't really see that many tiles that would make it worth the detour. Charley has numerous already matured towns that seem more worth the military to take them over faster than worry about growing new ones. Is this your normal tech path? Or are we just looking at the map differently? Because, to me and our plan to war, the + from levee's and railroads on mines is much more desirable. Also, wasting time getting oxford and wall street up in Bibracte to build statue of liberty seems a waste to me. +1 specialist in about 15 cities or +100% gold and science in our best city. I am weak in city specialization but everyone says it's the bomb and to me getting Bibracte properly specialized seems like a better choice. Since both of you are better players than I can you please give me your rationale?

 

[Glare Seethe]

Democracy was just cause we decided we want to tech again and getting cottages up to towns in twice the speed is great for that. Since we're Spiritual switching to Emancipation and back is not even a problem which makes it even more attractive (i.e. we don't have to completely adjust our strategy to accomodate Demo/Emanc, we just do it temporarily).

Our army is large enough to take care of Charlemagne anyway so extra hammers from levees can wait. But to be honest we probably could've skipped Democracy and still be fine, as the AIs are teching slowly and the game is won anyway (was probably won once Gilga was defeated).

Because of this I've been kind of lax with a lot of decisions that in other circumstances might be more crucial... I agree for instance that WS/Oxford are much more important than the SoL but it doesn't matter much either way at this point. If we were in Representation then maybe, but we're in HR and unlikely to change. Likewise I don't think it's important to try and pacify Joao completely, now that we know how much trouble it's going to be. Sure we could do it but hammers spent on missionaries and spies and whatnot are probably better spent on more units to kill off Ragnar and Alex.

Basically I think we can have some fun doing stuff like building the SoL, just cause we can. If we were aiming to play optimally then Oxford should've definitely been up ages ago.

As for Biology, it's always a massive boost and you're right that our workers will have to be ready to change improvements accordingly in our main cities, though I'll keep a few near Eridu to get the GP going. I was planning on reviewing improvements in all cities anyway, I can plan the changes with Biology in mind. Also, Biology trades very well and most AIs have Steam Power already. Of course our diplo situation kind of blows in this specific case but generally speaking Biology is a great tech both for its direct benefits and its trade value.

 

[Meatbuster]

Vassals bypass WFYABTA too, I don't suppose.

If we really want to get Gilga to Tao, it isn't so hard, we can revolt to OR, tell Gilga to convert, build 4 missionaries while in OR, no problem. Yeah, but it IS a detour from our military goal. Plus we may be capitulating Charlie anyway so the diplo situation with Joao will be even more dicey at that stage. It's probably safe to assume that we're screwing Joao and just making Gilga our main trading partner.

All right, I cave in, Liberty is a but it IS fun, and we can't build Oxford anytime soon unless we switch to slavery. We can build Wall Street already though. Banks are easier to build than Universities.

Trade Bio with Gilga's Steam Power in a couple of turns. This is while we're researching Bio and Communism. We can also gift some Holy Roman cities to Gilga to improve his research so we can just ask him to research Electricity or Combustion next.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Played too long and very sloppily (with very little micromanagement) but at least the war's over. Sorry for that and the barebones report, just kind of tired today in general. Should've just kept the set shorter.

IT, 1625AD:

Switch to Emancipation, slider up (Biology in 6 turns), Bibracte halts SoL and works on Wall Street instead. Silk to Joao for crab, cow to Alex for 14gpt, wheat to Gandhi for 11gpt. Peace with Ragnar for 260g, map and 3gpt. Upgrade a few CR3 macemen to riflemen, change some builds around.

1630AD:

Army heads out towards Strassburg, set rally point for new units in Luxembourg.

1635AD:

Alex declares on Gandhi and asks for help but is refused. He's down to Furious now. Split up our stack cause Charlemagne withdrew some forces out of Strassburg so we don't need as many units to take it.

Give Joao Democracy for 870g and up the slider to 100% to get Biology in three turns.

1640AD:

Not much.

1645AD:

We take Strassburg:

1650AD:

Almost take Pisa. Next turn... oh yeah, Biology's in and I put in Communism.

1655AD:

We take Pisa:

1660AD:

Not much.

1665AD:

Camu starts the Ironworks.

1670AD:

Not much.

1675AD:

Not much.

1680AD:

Communism in, start Physics. Adopt State Property.

1685AD:

Joao wants Biology for free. Denied.

1690AD:

Trade Demo and Communism to Gilga for Steam Power and tell him to research Physics, switch our own research to Railroad to facilitate troop deployment to the front.

1695AD:

Not much.

1700AD:

We take Prague:

1702AD:

Luxembrough flips to Gilgamesh. Maybe it happened last turn, I dunno. Just noticed it now. Whatever!

1704AD:

Not much.

1706AD:

Take Nuremberg:

Charlemagne will capitulate and even throw in Florence, but we want Aachen, right? Also, Alex demanded a source of gold and I gave in, if he was planning to attack us at least it gives us 10 turns of peace.

1708AD - 1714AD:

Not much.

1716AD:

Railroad in, Assembly Line next.

1722AD:

Finally take Aachen, capitulate Charlemagne and save game.

We can give Mainz back to Charles I think, we don't really need it. Just connected a source of coal (didn't notice it wasn't hooked up before) so the workers can start railroading - they are standing pretty much in a row starting at Georgiva heading south-west, I put a sign on every tile with a worker.

 

[Meatbuster]

At this stage, micromanagement probably won't do much, and with state property, how can we lose?

I can see Joao is back out of Theocracy, that's fine, as long as he's friendly AND afraid of our military the chances of him attacking us are pretty slim. He's not a known backstabber anyway.

Next up is Ragnar, who looks like he's quite a long while from Assembly Line.

This game is in the bag, let's just mop it up and get whatever score we deserve.

EDIT: Losing Lux is fine, Gilga needs all the research help he can get. Of course he can't have his capital back.

I think we should keep Mainz, it's an extra city. And since charlie gave it to us, the nationality is automatically 100% celtic. No revolts there, for sure. It also helps keep Charlie's culture at bay so Aachen has less chance of a revolt. Let's just build some more culture buildings like University to keep the citizenship up.

Joao is in free speech, we're losing culture at the north end, I think we can now safely go into free speech too, we have a bazillion towns. We can stay in theo for the experience points, or go free religion for the research. Either way, is good.

We have railroad already, time to wake up those sleepy heads and rail up our empire up to the last mine and lumbermill. Of course the grand continental railway between greater Celtia and Holy Rome must be built for faster military unit transition. I say assign enough workers to build it one railroaded tile/per turn, then route away. If we have enough workers for 2 tiles/turn so be it.

Finally, it's time to get the 17gpt from Joao for our wine (or whale) trade.

 

[White Dragon]

The Prophecy of the Dragon, Part 6​

Spoiler :

Turn 371
1.) Make a Pre-Play-Play.
a. Build infrastructure to continue to recover economy, increase gold output, and increase production.
b. Build Transcontinental railroad.
2.) Make the trade with Joao.

3.) Went through and MM'd specialists. I found that both Lagash & Uruk have military academies. SWEET.
4.) Increase slider for AL in 6 turns.
5.) Move troops to the front line and rearrange in cities.
6.) Workers begin railroad network.
7.) Relocate GG to Bibracte in anticipation of switching out of Bureaucracy.

Turn 372 Z

Turn 373
1.) Oxford completed in Bibracte.
2.) Revolt to Free Speech. Slight increase in research rate.
3.) Military Academy in Bibracte. The more troops, the merrier.

Turn 374
1.) Gandhi wants us to cancel our deals with Alex. No deal.
2.) Great Prophet in Eridu. Send him to Bibracte to settle. +215:

Turn 375 Z

Turn 376 Bad event with Joao. He is still friendly.

Turn 377
1.) Assembly line is completed.
2.) Select Combustion.
3.) Well, here is why. Most of our cities are already . With Public Transportation we will get +2. If we want to build factories in our production cities, we will need the extra health.

Turn 378-379 Z

Turn 380 Gandhi wants OB. OK.

Turn 381 Z

Turn 382
1.) Alex demands Democracy. Uh, NO.
2.) Combustion in.
3.) Select Medicine.
4.) Well, after I built a factory, I noticed that it gives +5 then remember that it gives even more when we get power and the + if we build coal plants. We need those hospitals for +3.

Turn 383
1.) Ragnar wants OB. NO.
2.) Alex declares on Gandhi again.

Turn 384-386 Z

Turn 387 The Southern Pacific Railway has been completed. 6 turns of travel instead of 19.

Turn 388 Z

Turn 389
1.) Medicine completed.
2.) Select Facism.
3.) Reduce slider to 40% so facism in 6 turns, same number as Gilga to complete fission since these are the only two tech we can research.
4.) I figure we can use the extra gold to mass upgrade troops to infantry. +600 x 6 = 3,600 That will do some good.
5.) The army is assembled and awaits you orders Meat.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Looks really good. And I can't believe Ragnar still doesn't even have Corporation. Shall we head towards Artillery after trading for Physics with Gilga? Lots of cannons to upgrade...

We can also consider switching back to Caste since we have almost all of our towns already. With Caste Gergovia can actually produce a unit a turn (and its hills aren't even railroaded yet). We'd have to raise the culture slider a bit, though only Eridu actually goes into unhappiness.

 

[Meatbuster]

Oh. My. God.

This is one of the best pre-turns ever... realizing I have an unstoppable stack at my disposal. I shall start razing through Scandinavia now.

With that, I veto Caste System, as I'd rather not micro happiness.

Playing now.