RR12 - A perfect spy

[lymond]

Ha...yeah...I meant SY...sorry, I have "settle" on the brain

Gondor is a major hammer city, but it still can run quite a few spies and overall generates some fairly decent commerce. There's really not much better at present and it's probably best to keep the SYs to internal cities for noow.

So, I went ahead a played. I report soon below. whew!!!

 

[lymond]

Okay...TS report

Hopefully, I can remember everything, so many little things. I played a few turns longer just to get some things accomplish. This EP culture stuff is grueling after a while.

So...

1) Settled Gspies in Gondor and Massawa

2) Traded Comm to Linc for Astro and 400 gold. Switched to Physics and got it easily. Settled GS in Aksum. Moved on to finish Medicine.

3) Founded Sushi in Djienne when Medicine came in. We have enough Banks for Wall, but the Bank in Djienne has a couple more turns before we can start Wall there. The city is still rather small pop wise. We can whip a CH into Wall as some point, among other things. I whipped an Exec into the Bank and it went to Yeha, which is now starting the domino Exec builds.

4) Meanwhile, going back to the start, I aggressively built and drafted units, for a few turns, to man the Mali and Aztec fronts. I sent 1 big worker stack to the hill next to KS and built a fort for our units to fortify in. Also built a fort on a hill just outside Aztec borders near his cap. Sent a big stack to just fortify there and take damage, but also sent units down to that new city to defend.

5) Of course, I built more spies as well. Got up some key buildings here and there. Built Globe in AI and some cathedral type buildings on the eastern borders.

6) Once units were in position, I beg gold from Linc and Darius and then DOW on Mansa and co.

7) Spy revolted KS and our units took the city down to 1 unit. Mansa really did not put up a fight. He sent a unit or two for a couple of turns but the city was always kept to 1 injured unit. Revolt chance is up to 8.5% each turn. Also, Spies run culture missions in KS and Tim which boost the odds. KS is surround now by culture. After a few turns KS goes into revolt and stays that way for many turns - it is still in revolt. I don't see how it can't flip here soon. With a couple tiles culture surrounding KS, Mansa stops sending units. There is just an injured cat in the city. At this point I decided to send the bulk of the stack to Tim. I build a fort outside the city, lower defenses, and eliminate his large stack in Tim to 1 unit. Man, I literally won every fight - Rifle vs. Rifle - with several at relatively low odds even with collateral. Probably one of my longest strings of luck in one battle. Anyway, Tim has few units and the culture is now a bit in our favor. However, it still shows no revolt risk at present.

8) In addition, I sent a small stack to Txacala (old Aztec city that is Malinese now) and whittled that city to 1 unit. It shows a revolt risk of about 6%, so this city could go into revolt soon. With a few more spy missions there it should be ours in the near future.

9) On the Aztec front, Monty hit our stack for little damage on our part and then basically did nothing for the longest time. He did send two pesky Frigs over to Massawa and the 2 Frigs I built died unluckily. I'm building more Frigs down there. He pillaged one net but didn't bother the other one. I have a new workboat ready when we clear the Frigs.

10) So I did run some culture missions in the Aztec capital. Just on the last turn, a tile opened up next to the city - and it's a hill!!! this means we can move our stack next to the city and build a fort on the hill and just pummel his defenders.

11) Airships help a lot. I've built quite a few. We should send more to the west to take on Monty's cap

Odds and ends:

- I stole Corp from Mansa. It took a couple of tries. In hindsight I probably should have stolen it from Wang or someone else. Just wasn't thinking and we had most of our spies in Mansa's cities.

- I've had a good bit of success with the spies, but also losing a lot. We just have to keep building them. There are quite a few parked in target cities at the moment, but the AIs are getting in Security Bureaus some expect a few to get caught while parked.

- After Med, I quickly grabbed MT for some Cavalry and then moved on to Electricity which will provide a nice boosts.

- Darius just signed a DP with Lincoln. Not really a big deal but should be noted.

- We should send spies to Monties rear cities and start spreading some culture there. It will help us take his cap faster.

 

[LKendter]

When are we going to Emancipation. Even a small town like Massawa is -2 due to slavery. We can't afford the culture slider to offset this.

I took a look at Mansa - Timbuktu is the priority for spies and flipping. Spiral and Sankore are there. That flips, and Mansa is crippled. We need to start weakening the AIs.

Where do we want Iron Works - it is available, but not queued. My gut says Gondar.

Can we save the next GP for another GA? We still need to speed things up.

Another thing for flips - we need to put a priority on cities with seafood and rice. +4 CPT from Sushi helps, but we need to up that number if we want to win this.

We have to stop building wealth. For example - Hawulti still needs spy buildings, but is building wealth. We need a lot more spies and EP to win this. IMO building wealth is a path to loss. I know Djenne getting WS will help, but I'm not sure if it will be enough. I think we are starting to pay the price for to many farms and spy specialists...

 

[lymond]

When are we going to Emancipation. Even a small town like Massawa is -2 due to slavery. We can't afford the culture slider to offset this.

I'd prefer to go without it for as long as possible. We can also use spies to flip AIs out of Emancipation

took a look at Mansa - Timbuktu is the priority for spies and flipping. Spiral and Sankore are there. That flips, and Mansa is crippled. We need to start weakening the AIs.

I agree about Tim and that is where most of the focus is actually on. As for weakening the AIs, what do you think I just spent my TS doing?

Where do we want Iron Works - it is available, but not queued. My gut says Gondar.

HE is in Gondor. I don't like mixing the two. There are other places to put IW but IMO it was not a priority at the time.

Can we save the next GP for another GA? We still need to speed things up.

I agree with this. Another GA would be nice. Doesn't do a ton for us but it is always good to have. I considered saving the free GS for it with one of the artist, but I like to settled GSs in Ox late game. I figure we will get another oddball GP soon anyway.

Another thing for flips - we need to put a priority on cities with seafood and rice. +4 CPT from Sushi helps, but we need to up that number if we want to win this.

Well, good idea in theory, but we need to get to those cities first. This EP business is slow, but should speed up now since we are at war. We can trade for extra seafoods as well.

We have to stop building wealth. For example - Hawulti still needs spy buildings, but is building wealth. We need a lot more spies and EP to win this. IMO building wealth is a path to loss. I know Djenne getting WS will help, but I'm not sure if it will be enough. I think we are starting to pay the price for to many farms and spy specialists...

I totally disagree with this. yeah, we don't always need to build wealth, but we need to pay for spreading Sushi and that is why I'm building Wealth in a few places. I think we are doing exceptional well with EP generation.

Bottom line is this whole spreading culture deal is a slow process. We really should have attack Mansa much sooner. It interesting to note that as I destroy all his units, the revolt risk goes up. However, when the AI sends like 1 or 2 units back into the city the revolt risk drops dramatically - far more that compare to the like happening to the human IMO. KS should be ours very soon I think and then we can really put the press on Tim. Monty's cap should really feel the heat now since we can attack the city directly. I think we made a lot of good progress this TS, but all of this should have been done sooner.

 

[nocho]

Sounds very good, lymond! Will have a look later today.

 

[Tatran]

Lurker's comment :

Is this team not interested in the other 2 (creative con + civ jew) culture generating corporations?

 

[LKendter]

I agree about Tim and that is where most of the focus is actually on. As for weakening the AIs, what do you think I just spent my TS doing?

I agree you made excellent progress on military weakening. I was thinking economic weakening.

HE is in Gondor. I don't like mixing the two. There are other places to put IW but IMO it was not a priority at the time.

Agreed - I hate mixed the two. Always wasted HE as people keep building wonders. That is why I posed it as a question - I wanted to get the discussion going.

I think we made a lot of good progress this TS, but all of this should have been done sooner.

I have to agree. Trouble was we worked on spies without military. The two are tied together. I know I started pushing war my last turn set as I we spinning our wheels.

We can trade for extra sea foods as well.

I like this idea.

I totally disagree with this. yeah, we don't always need to build wealth, but we need to pay for spreading Sushi and that is why I'm building Wealth in a few places.

I understand more why it was done, but multiple wealth and we still hardly generate spare cash? My worry is something is really screwed with our economy that at 0% we need wealth builds to generate small extra cash.

 

[lymond]

I understand more why it was done, but multiple wealth and we still hardly generate spare cash? My worry is something is really screwed with our economy that at 0% we need wealth builds to generate small extra cash.

Well, I think it is important to keep some things in mind here. Sometimes it's hard to pick up a save and immediately ascertain what just took place the last 10 or so turns. I actually made a couple of incorrect assumptions on my initial view of the last save.

First of all, we are not necessarily built for cash this game - at least up to this point. We are not overly cottaged and, honestly, I'm not a huge cottage guy myself. The difference though is that we are running primarily spies as specialists.

I amassed a good bit of cash at the beginning of the TS through trades, begs and demands. I burned through it all teching. When we got Med and founded Sushi there was little cash to spread it so a built some wealth. We just used some cash to spread Sushi in Yeha. Also, we're a bit in a recovery phase with the build up of units and fact that we have some many and some unhappiness. I've raised the culture slider a bit which is eating into the gold. That will subside and I doubt we will need to build many more units at present and definitely not draft unless absolutely necessary.

There is nothing wrong with building wealth. It's called the hammer economy and we are going to have to do some of this. Once Wall is built in Djienne this will help a lot. I think we should just run merchants in this city and other than a courthouse, I doubt we need to really build many EP focused buildings here. We should try to specialize a little built. This will give us some good static cash flow.

 

[r_rolo1]

Good, we are making real progress in here. The military aproach is clearly paying up ...

Ok, on the wealth thing: i can see us going wealth for a while in some places ... we need the cash to pay up for sushi execs and after a certain city is done doing the necessary buildings , it might be the best thing to do ( given that we can't build espionage directly :/ ). But I see LK point that cities that are still without their EP builings will need them first ... we are doing fine EP wise, but as we start to need to sabotage Sec Bureaus en masse, we will need more than the 800 EP/turn we are making ( sabotaging a Sec bureau costs easily 1300 EP if you don't wait ... ).

Techwise ... why do we have Electricity slotted ? It is a good tech, OFC, nice wonders and all the jazz, but IMHO we have 2 techs better for our game before electricity: Railroads ( prod + faster spy movement ) and Steam ( more prod, opens the way to infantry and factories ). Even artilery could be a option, given our current warbent times ...

BTW, given that our maintenance is bound to skyrocket with all the sushi that we want to spread, why are we without FP ? Adulis, for a example, would be a nice place ... On trades for seafood for sushi , it would be a good idea if someone had them to sale The ones that have seafood surpluses are the ones we are warring with and no one in the world has excess rice.

The issue needs to be tacked soon enough. We are 3 turns away from the next ap vote, that, fortunately is the one for the AP seat, but we will have to defy any vote for peace most likely and thus we need to be able to cope with extra 5 pretty much everywhere . That , in top of the emancipation anger can be quite hefty ... ok, a lot of our cities could cope with it, but that would cripple places like Zelia, Harar or Yeha, that are running on fumes happiness wise. That or we take the AP fast enough

Bottom line is this whole spreading culture deal is a slow process. We really should have attack Mansa much sooner. It interesting to note that as I destroy all his units, the revolt risk goes up. However, when the AI sends like 1 or 2 units back into the city the revolt risk drops dramatically - far more that compare to the like happening to the human IMO. KS should be ours very soon I think and then we can really put the press on Tim. Monty's cap should really feel the heat now since we can attack the city directly. I think we made a lot of good progress this TS, but all of this should have been done sooner.

True enough. We should had started the culture spread earlier, but we must also remember that doing that earlier would mean doing that on weaker basis and with smaller support to continuity of action. We have a quite solid EP output now, but notice that this is a somewhat recent development ... and this set was the first IIRC where we had more than 20 spies alive at any moment.

I agree that a turnset earlier in both cluture spreading issues and warfare would had given us more safety, but atleast in terms of military the fault was on a very unusually military bent Mansa ( really, when was the last game you seen Mansa vassaling Monty and beelining for Riffles ? ) ... the first one, you can blame on the fact that no one in the team has enough experience doing this kind of game to have a nose for the right time, a very normal thing given that AFAIK we are doing a first in here

Roster:

r_rolo1
Thy_Spellcraft
Brian Shanahan - MIA
lymond - just played
Thrar - retired due to crappy notebook
LKendter - UP
nocho - On deck

P.S @ Tatran

About the other 2 culture corps ... they are both problematic to get, but for diferent reasons. Cre con needs a GE, that to be honest I don't see us getting before Fusion, the jewel one is both in the end of the line tech wise and the enabling tech obsoletes the AP ( I still want to see if we can play the assign city trick as soon as we capture the AP city from Mansa ). If the results are not promissing in that sector, I would consider doing it...

P.S. II fun to see mansa both building military in all cities and running 90% culture ... the AI is really not prepared for both a Military attack and a cultural pressure at the same time, I guess

 

[LKendter]

Got It.

I think another problem the team had was different views how to proceed. My plan was power empire first, then spies / EP.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, i given another look at the save and there are somethings that need to be done with urgence, so I decided to take notes:

Monty:

- Sabotage the sec bureau in the cap ASAP ( even before the red button ). Spread culture there after ( our acess to the city is crossing a river and the tile SE of it is 49% ours ... )

- Should we taunt the cap stack to attack us by moving near the cap ?

- Spread culture in the other cities as well.

Mansa:

- We don't need all the stack that is near Kumbi there. The city has almost none prod power as it is and it is building culture. Neither mansa or monty have horses, so there is no danger of seeing cavs reinforcing it and as it is isolated we have 1 turn to deal with any attempt of reinforcement with gunpowder units.

- OTOH we need more culture in Timbuktu. We need to flip that city as soon as humanly possible ... but sabotage the sec bureau ASAP there as well.

- Spread culture in Walata and Tlaxcala. There are still 2 Malinese cities we can't spread culture to directly and we should arrange things to end that state of affairs. The second one is more important since the city might flip soon to our side .

- We need another worker to settle near Tlaxcala when the city flips, since we have two marked spot and we migh get a 1 turn opening to do so in the northern spot.

General:

-Start the FP. Seriously, why haven't we done that already ? Like I said above Adulis seems a good place... well until i noticed Versailles 3E 1 N of it ... maybe the malinese cap then, when we capture it ?

EDIT: @ LK

True enough, trying to follow two paths at the same time always leads to delays in the best of cases and disaster in the worse Thanks to the heavens we are far from disaster

 

[LKendter]

1760 AD
(IT) I MM Djenne to steal the flood plain cottage from Debre. With being the future home of WS we want every possible cottage being used in this city.

I switch Kaskase to a theater. We want culture in our border cities, and this will let us hire two artists.

BLEH - nobody has any happy sources to trade.

I agree not to put Iron Works in Gondar. It is painful though, as it is one of our few cities that will have a Levee for even stronger base production.
Debre was tempting, but I don't want to steal from our WS city and capitol. With a Levee that city will have good production.
I pick Lalibela for Iron Works. Changing to priests and an engineer gets the ETA to 20 turns. That is before one workshop. It will gain three more hammers with railroads.

I change research to Steam Power. I would like to locate the coal. In addition, it opens up levees. Reviewing the cities I'm very frustrated with not enough production to do everything we need to. We need more production.

At 10% culture we only have 5 unhappy faces, so I drop to 10%.

I just caught Aksum has Scotland Yard, but never built a jail.

I caught Rolo's post just in time, and cancel the plans for FP in Adulis. I turn it into a spy building city. We are way short of them. This city is low science, low income and has all spy buildings.

That has to be one of the longest pre-plans I've had in a while.


1765 AD
(IT) We suffer a lost jail in Debre due to enemy spies.


1770 AD
(IT) We get a low odds engineer. We have plenty of upcoming wonders that help (Eiffel Tower - culture boast) that I will simply hold on to him. We could even rush a good wonder on an AI border.


1775 AD
Monty was nice and sent a stack of 3 units into our territory. I would rather kill them on open ground. We get a bonus and get a great general that I attached to a chariot to have another high healing unit. Medic 3 units rock.
(IT) I vote for Lincoln to control the AP.


1780 AD
The RNG was nice, and I get rid of one of Monty's frigates.
The spy died, but Monty lost the SB in Teno. Our next culture spread gives us the key hill by Teno.
The walls of Teno come down.
(IT) Lincoln controls the AP. Hopefully that lowers the odds of peace with Mansa.


1785 AD
I know this city will never be great. However, with all spy buildings, and 2 spy specialist it will generate a decent amount of EP. IMO we should have built a lot of these towns sooner. At size one it only needs 15 turns to court and 6 EP.


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1790 AD
Timbuktu no longer has a SB.
Massawa is finally free of frigates.
I killed 10+ units, and we finally have 1 unit in his capitol. Now we need to get our culture above 50%. It was a bloody battle on both sides.


1795 AD
We just stole another tile from Teno.
We spread Sushi to Kasake. For the moment +6 culture, but hopefully better as we add more resources.


1800 AD
Timbuktu just crossed the line to 50% our culture.
8.04% chance of revolt.


1802 AD
I destroy the Christian Cathedral in Timbuktu to make sure we keep the culture lead.


1804 AD
We know have the majority in Teno.

I spread Sushi to Hawulti. We need to push culture on the Korea front, and stealing that rice tile would really help Sushi.

Our next GP is another spy. LOL
I'm stopping hear, as I see *no* go city for another SY. All our cities with heavy spy specialist already have SY.



Summary:
The biggest area I feel we are suffering from is lack of spies. We need to get more cities like Adwa (very low income, spy buildings complete) on infinite spy duty. These cities are NOT worth building science and income buildings. I have 7 cities on permanent spy duty, and IMO we still don't have enough.
Adulis will join this club after the levee is built.

The only thing I haven't built is the FP. IMO we want it further away such as the Aztec or Mansa capitol.

We are increasing our EP generated, and we need it as some of the missions are sucking down EP really fast. For example: Harar completes IA next turn, and can hire a second spy specialist next turn.

Djenne is doing level first, as it adds 10 base shields. All income multiplying buildings are queued up after that.

Korea may become a problem. He is working on electricity. We can't let him get to radio and Eiffel Tower. Him having broadcast towers would slow us down TO much. I already feel we don't have enough time, we can't afford any setbacks.

All our workers are by the capitol fortified. As soon as rails come in, we need to put priority on connecting cities to get spies to the front faster.

I would like to start spreading culture to the other two Aztec cities. I think they will flip fast, and our front will get much easier after Monty is gone.




Kumbi = 7.53% of revolt.
Timbuktu = 8.11% of revolt.
Tlaxcala = 6.54% of revolt. This city NEEDS new spies. Our % culture dropped to 49%.
Teno doesn't show a % of revolt yet. I suspect this is because we just crossed this turn.

 

[UncleJJ]

Hello. Lurker here.

I have just found this thread and find it absolutely fascinating. I've always wanted to play this sort of combined culture and espionage type game; and I've thought about how it could be done quite a bit, so I downloaded a couple of your savegames and took a look at what you're doing. Very interesting, it is too.

I have a few questions and comments. You may have already answered these elsewhere in the thread but it's long and I haven't had time to read through everything you've discussed earlier than the last two pages of comments.

1) Why are you in Free Religion? It seems to me that adopting Christanity (the AP religion) and using OR would be much better. Almost all of your production is buildings for culture, espionage of happiness and OR would really help there. You would easily control the AP and any votes. Of course you would not want to win by using the AP but as resident you can choose to ignore those votes. Spreading Christianity to all your border cities would make the temple and cathedral much better with Sistine adding +5 for each and the cathedral would add + 2 happy and another +1 when you get Mansa's incense.

Of course the main reason for switching to a religion is for the HUGE -40% discount on all spy mission costs and the higher mission success rate (I think it improves that too)

I took the liberty of playing your game on a few turns and trying this using the GSpy to fire a Golden Age and switch religion and civics. It looked a lot healthier as far as production went due to OR (discounting the obvious effect of the GA ) and spy missions were much reduced in costs.

2) If you are determined to stay in Free Religion why are you not spamming missionaries of the three relgions you control to border cities. They help with happiness and culture and allow temples to be whipped so more cathedrals can be built. In FR all religions are equal except the AP one has better temples and you have its shrine so investment in missionaries gives some increased income even if that is not the reason for spamming them.

3) You're Creative and that gives a cheap library which gives cost effective culture on the border and a nice boost to research in cities that have many specialists (like Massawa)

4) You have loads of obsolete troops that are costing you more than they're worth now. You are the totally dominant military power with cannons, rifles and airships so warriors, axemen and archers are junk and never worth upgrading. Many cities have several of these military junk and you could save maybe 20 gold / turn by a purge (since inflation is 68%).

5) Was Sushi a mistake? It looks painfully slow to spread and not adding much considering the costs of setting it up. It will obviously pay off better later on when you control more of its resources and Wall Street is finished but it complicates the game right now. I think I might have used my old favourite SP for lower maintenance costs and the basic 10% production and some cities would benefit from the extra food, but Mercantilism looks fun with 2 free specialists in every city. SP also allows you to move the capital nearer to the spy action for reduced costs and shorter return trips after a mission.

6) Emancipation looks painful but you're not using espionage to switch other civs (e.g. Darius and Wang) into other civics. In my espionage games I like to keep a few of the AI in Slavery so that saves my happiness costs. The two Spiritual civs can be kept out of Emancipation for 4 turns and then switch another civic say Mercantilism (so they have to wait another 5 turns). That might cost more EPs but you would probably recover it by not having to use the culture slider as much or as often. Five other civs running Emancipation for a long time gets very painful in your larger cities.

7) Your statistics on spies is amusing. Built 100 and 29 alive and you're building them in 5 cities. Would you care to speculate what the statistic will be when the game ends. I guess you'll have built more than 300

Anyway, thanks for playing such an interesting game and publishing it for everyone to enjoy. I appreciate it is a rather specialised sort of game that only a few will understand but it is nice to see this deeper aspect of the game explored rather than the simplistic axe rush for the bazzillionth time.

 

[nocho]

Sounds good, will have a look tonight or tomorrow and hopefully play by Wednesday.

@UncleJJ, glad you enjoy lurking this! If you like the culture/espionage combo, have a look at RR6 as well, which was about achieving a cultural victory with getting 3 AI cities up to legendary status before capturing them...

You bring up some interesting points, maybe I can use some for my PPP. On FR, we didn't really discuss it much, but seemed logical to keep out of religion in an early phase to appease everyone and get the science boost when FR came around. You do have a good point though about OR and cheaper missions. I'm not sure OR is still worth it as we have a lot of infra done already (but there can be more, sure...).
Whether Sushi is a mistake or not I don't know, but on this map it's not that strong for the lack of abundant sea food. SP might make sense too indeed, but I guess we'll now stick to our corps, at least it's another culture producing element to (ab)use of.

I'd have to look at the save to address other points, but sure disbanding some old troops could make sense. Don't know how bad emancipation unhappiness is right now, but both this and the OR suggestion make me wonder if we should get Cristo Redentor to have some flexibility for civic and religion changes.

 

[LKendter]

Most of the obsolete troops are city garrisons. I don't know if we really have many to disband. All the top quality troops are on the front line.

And we are already paper-thin against Korea and Persia. We need more troops on those borders.

 

[r_rolo1]

@UncleJJ

First of all, thanks for lurking On your points :

1) FR IMHO is a relic of the past. We wanted to avoid early wars and we never adopted a religion in the the first place, so it was a gag reaction to adopt FR. I agree that Or would help with the buildup ...

2) it is a good idea, but, atleast in my set, I had the hands full with too much stuff to care with missionaries

3) True, but see 2)

4) i don't think we have so much of obsolete troops. Like LK pointed, most of those are doing garrison duties and replacing them with one of our more modern units would actually make us lose time...

5) To be honest, I've been debating that with myself. IMHO for this variant and with the buildup we have ( Sistine + SoL ), SP is not that attractive vs Merc + Rep. The corp in it self ... well, the map does not help sushi ( see the distribution of seafood and rice ), but as soon as we put the hands in Monty and mansa fish and co , things will go better.

6) Taking mansa out of Emanciaption would probably be a waste of EP given his traits. Wang is another issue, but we are quite with handsfull regarding spies, as you might have noticed

7) In RR6 IIRC we built ... wait I have a pic that I never posted in that thread IIRC:

Spoiler :

216 built, 51 alive in the end .... I don't expect to see less spies built in this variant than in RR6. I even have been working on the assumption that we will need between 400 and 500 spies

Thanks for the comment, though ... and i agree: doing the n-th axe rush is so 2008 Everyone already did it atleast 10 times by now and there is even a rush calculator in the Strategy articles section, to inform the persons how many axes they will need in average . But it is also interesting to see the way the AI reacts to this very unusual situation ... they actually can keep their act together while in peace, but the seem to get lost when they are in war AND suffering a cultural attack.. ( to be honest, I'm pretty sure most humans would already had lost their act far earlier if put in a heavy spy barrage situation )

On the game: will see the save tonight. Wang going Electricty is a bad one indeed . We proably will need to use force to stop this ( say , dow Wang ? Sabotage stuff ad nauseam ? mess with the civics ? )

 

[lymond]

Damn, I forgot that we were in Merc. We need to be switching to Free Market pronto.

 

[UncleJJ]

1) FR IMHO is a relic of the past. We wanted to avoid early wars and we never adopted a religion in the the first place, so it was a gag reaction to adopt FR. I agree that Or would help with the buildup ...

It's more than just OR, there are 4 main reasons to change from FR to use the AP religion (any religious civic would do but OR is best) :

The major gain from having Christianity as your state religion is that you have the Holy city and that gives a 40% reduction in the cost of spy missions. That's a 66% increase in effectiveness of EPs

OR will indeed help in some cities especially the newly acquired ones. With Kremlin whipping, forge and OR you're getting 67 hammers per pop whipped for buildings.

The Sistine Chapel gives a 5 boost to Christian temples and cathedrals.

You get control of the AP

6) Taking mansa out of Emanciaption would probably be a waste of EP given his traits. Wang is another issue, but we are quite with handsfull regarding spies, as you might have noticed

In my games where I use an espionage based SE I find I can usually keep half the other AIs out of Emancipation on a fairly continual basis while I use slavery without a great deal of effort. The happiness saved is worth the 10% you're spending on culture slider at present which I have for more EPs or gold.

As I said before (perhaps unclearly) if you switch a Spiritual leader's civic he will have his 5 turn civic-switch counter reset. And then if you switch another civic 4 turns later it is reset again and he can't use his Spiritual trait. So you can keep him out of a particular civic for quite a long time. Then when he does eventually switch to Emancipation (and other civics) you can switch him immediately out of it again if you have a spy waiting. With enough spies and EPs (and you have them ) and some micro management you can completely avoid Emancipation until the UN resolution is passed.

7) 216 built, 51 alive in the end .... I don't expect to see less spies built in this variant than in RR6. I even have been working on the assumption that we will need between 400 and 500 spies

You could be right I'll be eager to see what the final tally is.

Damn, I forgot that we were in Merc. We need to be switching to Free Market pronto.

I'd say it is far too early to switch to FM to reduce costs, you only have 4 cities with Sushi. Besides that the trade routes from FM will benefit all the other civs you are not at war with far more than you. Merc is doing a good job there keeping your economy ahead while keeping open borders (helping spy survival). FM will give a 20% discount in EPs for the trade route if you want to do spy operations during peace but otherwise doesn't help.

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Anyway, I have said enough already. Good luck to you guys, although I don't think you'll need it

 

[LKendter]

Don't forget Merc = +4 EP every city from the extra free specialist, and that is *before* multipliers. As far as I'm concerned, stay in Merc the rest of the game.

Sushi is mostly the border cities, so not that important. Don't forget Djenne still has WS, market and grocer to build! And that shrine is a very well spread religion.

 

[nocho]

Looked at the save. Some remarks and questions.

1) I noticed that most of the cities that at 0% culture slider suffer unhappiness lack markets, which in great part would solve those issues. I'll build them there (Yeha, Zelia, Adwa).

2) According to the tooltip Sushi gives us a measly 2 food and 6 culture now. Is spreading it much really worth it? What does it cost per city to found it? I'm inclined to put it only in some border cities in the east for now and maybe spread further once we get more sea food.

3) Crazy idea maybe, but I'm thinking we might want to move the palace to Adulis, way east. That way our spy missions when we start working on the east will be cheaper and the distance our spies have to walk will be lesser. Mansa and Monty are about toast anyway. Maybe it can wait a bit, but in anticipation of such a move I'd build the FP now in, say, Adwa. I really don't want to stall building the FP any longer.

4) What's the problem with Wang getting electricity? Broadway? We could steal electricity the moment he gets it and build the wonder in Gondar for denial (or with spare GE in some border city), if it's seen as problematic. Note Lincoln already has electricity anyway.

5) I feel we should start to make serious business now of Wang and start on Seoul. Note it has another very juicy shrine. Is it strechting it too much starting meanwhile as well on the Persian city of Tarsus?

6) Kumbi is marked as keep, but I remember someone said to resettle, like 2E1N. We may reach Pyongyang earlier that way, though if we work on Seoul we'll reach it from there. So what's the deal?

7) I'm happy to see MMs northern cities within our reach already, which is good.

8) Do we still want to resettle Tlaxcala? Doubt whether it's really necessary.

9) We still need boatloads of spies more. Will see after that. After all we should reach the 500 spies rolo mentioned.

10) Tech, what after RR? Assembly Line for factories? If we steal Electricity, Radio is a good option for all 3 of its wonders.

11) What to do with the GSpy? Settle, some SY, or save for a well-timed GA with a GAr at some point? Like when we do want emancipation? Or do we want OR like our appreciated lurker suggested?

12) I'm also inclined to stay in merc.

13) 4 AIs do have emancipation. Is it worth it to get some out of it anyway? Does the unhappiness scale with the size of the AIs? In that case with MM and Monty getting smaller and smaller and Wang going that way too soon, maybe we can just handle it, if it won't get worse.

14) Before I do silly wonder rushing with the GE, how about mining inc? At least we have many more mining resources than sushi resources.