RR12 - A perfect spy

[LKendter]

I dial up Mansa, and he gives us two cities for peace - Gao and Awdahost. We didn't even have 50% culture Awdahost, so I feel it is worth it.

Before I start actually playing, do anyone have an objection to this? His last three cities all have over 50% of our culture, and we can concentrate 100% of our spies pushing toward America.

We can always go back and clean up later, but our #1 threat IMO is Lincoln going to space. I would prefer to send everything we have toward Korea NOW. This deal would let us do it.

Unless somebody complains, I plan to do this tomorrow when I actually start playing.

 

[lymond]

I'm fine with it but would not completely neglect spreading culture in Malinese cities. The only thing though about Mali is that he is toast. We've completely wiped his army and his cities continue to revolt until he has nothing, which is the goal of the game.

 

[LKendter]

I would leave a few stray spies vs. Mali, but he would only have 3 cities left to deal with.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, Mansa will give any combo of cities that does not include his current cap, so we can be picky ... I would go fo Gao + Walata , even if because it cuts mansa terriotry in 3

I also think we shoul Dow monty soon ... he has 2 rifles in his city and that is 1 rifle too much :/ We should also dow wang as soon as we can attack 3 cities ( that means more work in Pyongyang )

The thing that it is irking me the most is the fact that we are still far away of putting culture in any american city. Pusan missiona are putting ATM 8 culture each, that is ridiculously low ... but i reall don't have any idea of how to solve that ... besides demanding a american city via peace deal and drop 2 or 3 GA in it to get to the others .

Regardless of anything else, we need to railroad the area that we gained with Timbuktu capture...

 

[LKendter]

I plan to finish up tomorrow, but want to give a sneak peak.

 

[lymond]

oh...meant to say that we should take one of the settlers near thracian and plop him on that plains tile west of Thracian - 1NE of the oil. It's actually a pretty good site, has a bunch of resources that the AIs were to stupid to settle, has 3 to 4 lake farms, and of course puts more pressure on Thracian. I was thinking about doing it in my TS but with war with Mansa was not prepared to defend that city.

LK - How was the pummeling of Pusan?

 

[r_rolo1]

Good, one less civ to deal with ... ( snip, have not looked at the score )

The bad news is that we are in 1900 already ... 180 turns to go. Can we do it ?

P.S How is the deal with Seoul ? The minimap is not clear on this

 

[LKendter]

Game settings were fouled - We "WON" via domination.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, color me stupid How could I forget that ? :suicide:

Anyway, that would not be a major issue ...I think. I'm really not familiar with the behaviour of the AI regarding VC after the win ( well, better said, culture, since there is no other win strat coded for the AI ), but I can't imagine it behaving properly ...

SO, what do we do? We call it a lost due to technical issues or we push it to the end and see if we can grab the win before anyone even gets close of "winning" ?

 

[LKendter]

I checked, we also would have won by culture at some point...

My votes is start RR12A. I have no question the AI will behave dumb at this point.

Even if somebody can edit the save the turn before Thracian flips, we are in bad shape to win.

High level issue was not pushing toward Korea or Persia first. Monty was a non-issue (culturally weak) and should have been ignored initially.

 

[r_rolo1]

I agree with the fact that we shouldn't had neglected Wang for so long. I also think that we started warring too late, but that was a curve ball that mansa sent us :/

Anyway, I'll wait for the rest of the team to make a decision on this.

 

[lymond]

Although I've not played past a victory in a very long time, I recall the game getting kinda funky after a victory occurs. I say we call it. We did a lot of good things here and learned a lot about this particular strategy.

What about firing up another 1000AD game? Maybe as the Byz - good central location with lots of action to start. Add some variant rules including definitely building the Hagia Sophia.

 

[nocho]

Well, that has saved us the trouble!

Achieving dom this way kind of has proved the point already so I'm okay for something new. 12a is fine too however.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, I do not think that getting dom showed our point, given that we had a LOT of work to be done to take down atleast the americans ( that NY city is awfully located for our proposes ) ...

One thing is certain, I'll get back to this variant. My only doubt is if it should be done now

Lymond, E1000 AD with the Bizantines is extremely easy, since there is little in the early game that can take down the Bizantine UU ( and you start with some in your army ). You can start mowing with them through east untim you reach Japan and after that Europe is no match for you. Korea, for a example, is a far harder challenge ... and to be honest IIRC you start with Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in E1000 AD

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

My vote would go for 12a. We could even take the initial save to go for a second try.
Otherwise I've still in mind rolo told somthing about a variant with "no cities"..

 

[nocho]

Well, I do not think that getting dom showed our point, given that we had a LOT of work to be done to take down atleast the americans ( that NY city is awfully located for our proposes ) ...

Of course conquest was a lot harder than domination, but still a domination variant without units leaving home, doesn't sound that bad... Just trying to be positive here.

Just out of curiosity, with domination are only the tiles counted you actually own, or does having the cultural majority in tiles which you don't own (like in northern Mali in lymond's save) also count? Not that it matters, but I wondered just now. What I gather from the minimap in LK's domination screenshot it does seem we flipped some stuff in Northern Mali though.

 

[LKendter]

I am very much up for 12A if you do it.

We've learned hopefully enough to pull it off faster. It took to long for us to realize war needed to be part of the game plan.
Leaving all those artist sitting around hurt. We could have gotten attack access to a key city earlier. I think that relates to failing to realize war was important soon enough...


Mali was toasted - we took two cities in peace. Naini revolted, then Mansa gave it to us via AP. Thracian revolted the turn we tripped domination. Mansa dropped to a OCC

 

[r_rolo1]

We've learned hopefully enough to pull it off faster. It took to long for us to realize war needed to be part of the game plan.
Leaving all those artist sitting around hurt. We could have gotten attack access to a key city earlier. I think that relates to failing to realize war was important soon enough...

Pretty much. And I have to give you credit for having said that far before any other during the game We also neglected the AP that could had nabbed some more easy cities and sped out a lot our development...

Anyway, as the team looks to globally lean towards a rehash of this ( I definitely understand , given the ambivalence of our situation at 1900 AD in this game ... ), I will make a RR12a ( will be called RR13, though , to give good luck ). Stay tuned ... and if you're a lurker and want to play, we have a slot free

P.S. To be honest, I'm quite surprised that we got to have 3600ish per turn in the end of the game. That is quite impressive for a standart map and a clear sign that we could spread enough culture to give us high revolt chances in all the cities of the map. The main issue was if the RNG would give us the cities in the 180 turns we had left ...

 

[LKendter]

We also neglected the AP that could had nabbed some more easy cities and sped out a lot our development...

We got one from Persia and one from Mansa in short time. Both of them because we had to much culture in the cities. In addition, Wang getting -5 happy really hurt him.

To be honest, I'm quite surprised that we got to have 3600ish per turn in the end of the game.

I'm not - consider merc and SoL put two free spies in every city. That alone is a ton. It also help prove my theory of a tight build. We could have easily put another 6+ cities on the map. Every one could have given us quite a bit more EP with just court and 2 specialists.

I think we want is a small core with cottages to support the empire. A couple high production cities. Lots of small cities work best - even if all they do is build a spy every 3 to 4 turns. Lack of spies was my biggest issue despite 90+ on the map.
All later cities become low production cities with hopefully some food to whip key buildings only.

 

[LKendter]

Asoka is coming to mind for me.

Fast worker would really help us. Nice to move onto forest, and start working the same turn. Despite me building workers during my turn we were short. This helps make up for we don't have a lot of production to spare for workers, and the variant keeps up from stealing any during war.

Spiritual to let us swap civics easier, and cheap temples.
Organized is self-explanatory. We need a lot of cities.

Comes later, but the UU jail replacement gives two more happy. You can't have enough happy, especially when staying in slavery late game. And the variant requires us to build jails anyhow.