RR12 - A perfect spy

[lymond]

We have masonry by the way

I forgot about Oracle. If we are going for it, I guess we should start down that path now.

My understanding now is that as long as our culture tile is right next to the AI's city center we can take the city. Basically the turn that their last unit dies our unit moves into the city and that tile is now our culture simultaneously. If not then this game will take forever.

 

[lymond]

Ok...that was quick. Not much to report.

Aksum finished worker and library with a settler in 1 turn. pigs and 2nd gold improved and city is working all these tiles. worker started a road to new city and copper

Gondor built a scout, worker and started Oracle. Trade route is now hooked up. Oracle may be tough to get, but we have 2 workers to chop it out.

I started Alpha, but Wang got it so I switch to Aesthetics. I know we want Alpha but it will be a while before we start pumping spies and Aesth might be nice with marble and trade value.

OB with everyone but Monty is well hated.

Mansa settled the Bananas. We should rush to get out cities now. 2 in the east and on west. There are some cows near the second ivory.

 

[nocho]

On the rules, see post 214 of RR11... But maybe rolo can clarify again.

Will check the save tomorrow.

 

[lymond]

oh wow...I did miss that. So this is a pure culture war game.

 

[LKendter]

How much longer are we playing farmer's gambit? I've seen no mention of military building so far.

I generally dislike 1 off the coast cities. I don't see enough to justify "B" IMO.

Hope to start comment more next week once I have access to the game. To busy getting ready to go home right now.

 

[Thrar]

Got it.

Unfortunately, I can't see your screenshot (probably due to the Chinese Firewall if it's on Imageshack), so I don't know where those A-D spots are. Could you repost the picture on Photobucket, Imgur or as CFC upload? Or can you put up signs in-game and repost the save?

I think we should be fine with no military for a bit longer, the power ratios look acceptable so far. Aksum is well set up to pump settlers and workers, after the current settler I think we can build another one and a worker without worries.
With Oracle I suppose we get CoL, or are there any other suggestions?

I will wait until tomorrow evening (about 30h from now) for discussion on city locations and other objectives of the turnset.


Just to make sure, having BUG in CustomAssets and using BULL won't cause any issues, will it?

 

[lymond]

Completely forgot about the image issue. I edit that post above with an Imgur upload.

BUG/BULL in CustomAssets seems to be the norm here.

 

[Thrar]

Thanks, I can see it now.

What about placing C one tile further south? We'd get an extra hill and trade some plains for grassland. Considering Mansa's city, I think W of the cow (N of the lake) up north would be a good staging ground to pour culture into Mali and deter Korea from settling into that direction.
If we manage to flip MM's city early (needs 500 culture in our city to reach it, plus some espionage), I don't think we need to settle as close as D or E as he won't have that much culture there yet.

These two cities along with MM's cover a lot of ground with little overlap. Marble could be settled later further east, e.g. along with the wine and deer down there.

I don't like B for the overlap with the capital; including the desert and sea that means there are 6 tiles in its BFC that it won't be able to use in the long run. A is nice but a bit out of the way, I'd prefer settling towards our opponents while we still can.

 

[Thrar]

Are there any more suggestions on the next turnset? I haven't played yet, will do so tonight.
Do you have any input re city placement and other turnset objectives?

 

[lymond]

Thrar - Basically we wait for a turnset plan from you and then we will provide feedback on it.

 

[Thrar]

So, my plan is to settle the next city somewhere east, one south of C or lymond's A are my favorite spots there. Aksum will build another warrior, settler and worker to settle north of the 3rd city - see my post above (#108) for my thoughts on locations.
Gondar will chop the Oracle for CoL, after that, we might use it as a military production center to deter Monty and build garrisons for new cities.

Tech-wise I'm not quite sure. Math->Calendar is a decent option, we might even switch to Math now to get some of the chopping bonus for the Oracle. Or we could trade Aesthetics for Alpha and continue with Currency. Monarchy is another possibility to grow our cities some more, or IW to develop a city in the jungle between MM and WK.


Regarding the rules, what exactly are troops that accompany a settler allowed to do? My understanding is that they're just there to protect the settler, who has to be on the move to its location, but that could be bent a little.
Are they allowed to accompany the settler into enemy territory and pillage? Or even into enemy cities? Is the settler allowed to camp somewhere, e.g. to defend a chokepoint?
What do you think?

 

[nocho]

I personally don't see much added value to moving C 1S. We gain a hill, but lose fresh water and invalidate A as a possible location. As stated before I'd settle C, but A so far has the most votes it seems... Can live with that.

Other than that, plan is fine with me. I'm not really sure where we stand technologically, but math seems like a solid choice. Chop bonus is welcome and it usually takes a while (=until HG is built) before AIs are willing to trade it.

On settlers, I wondered the same thing, but I guess the spirit of the rule is that the units are pure escort, so no fancy pillaging or anything...

 

[lymond]

Once we trade Aesths for Alpha we can look to trade for Maths, while holding Currency as a placeholder. Hard to say really as I have to rethink Monarch level actions, since the level is so easy.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, sorry for the absence ... it was just piled work that delayed me of posting something ( even now, I have a 10+ cm pile of papers in the left side of my laptop ).

Ok, on cities: I would change my vote from A to C. Mansa is settling against us and this blocks him more than A.

Techwise ... well, what lymond proposes semms sensible. Anyway we can do much of planning in those terms if only wang has alpha :/ , so we will most likley have this talk again in 10 turns or so. BTW note that Wang and monty are not BFF

Besides that, your plan looks good , Thar. Go ahead

 

[Thrar]

T0 - No changes.

T1 - Settler -> Settler in Aksum, moving towards A.

T3 - An American archer came up out of the southern tundra. I don't see his borders anywhere, is it possible that they're stuck somewhere down there?
Founded Lalibela on the A spot as discussed.

T5 - Shaka asks us to cancel deals (close borders) with Lincoln. I'd rather not get on his bad side, so accept.

Gondar will grow to size 4 next turn, slot in a granary to whip for 2 pop next turn.

T6 - Whipped the granary in Gondar.

T8 - Settler -> Worker in Aksum, heading west for the cow/ivory. Without IW and calendar, the north doesn't look attractive, and I'd prefer to settle towards our enemies first and backfill later.

T9 - Aesthetics comes in, trade with WK for Alphabet (nobody else has it yet).
The tech situation:

We could trade Aest with MM for IW and Archery. There's no hurry though, WK already has these, so he won't have any reason to give away Aest to MM. We could trade Medit around for Fishing and Archery but I doubt it's a good idea due to WFYABTA.
No further trades have been made at this point.

Research is set to Currency as I think by the time we need Math we hopefully can trade for it.

Warrior -> Granary at Lalibela (the previous settler escort already headed west for the next settler).
Whipped a worker at Aksum for 2 pop.

T10 - Worker -> Granary at Aksum.

T12 - Whip the remaining part of the Oracle (would have been 4t) for 2 pop. Finally hooked up one of the gold hills for extra happiness.

T13 - Oracle -> Courthouse at Gondar.
CoL comes in, Lalibela is confused, and Monty spreads Hinduism in Gondar for good measure. Monty is only marginally stronger (0.9) than us, so I think we can afford some courthouses before building up military.
Addis Ababa is founded in the west. The settler went unescorted as it's close to Monty's borders and there are plenty of units about, so no barbs expected nearby.

T14 - Granary -> Courthouse in Aksum. Stonehenge BIFAL (by Lincoln). In 900BC!

T15 - Nothing special, I'll stop here.
The situation in the west:

And the east:

There are two workers around Lalibela, I suggest keeping one there and sending the other back west, hook up the gold, build roads etc. Two more are near Gondar, we could use one of them to get the ivory while sending the other to hook up Addis Ababa and its cow.
The confucian missionary is between Aksum and Gondar, I suggest sending him to AA so he can contribute some culture over there. Note that Monty has two hinduist missionaries near AA who appear to be heading to our lands; maybe he'll help us build up some culture.

AA should be enough to eventually flip Teotihuacan (500 culture for border expansions plus some spying) and it should be able to push Tenochtitlan's borders back far enough to allow another city further north and add more cultural pressure there. Note that Monty has founded Hinduism in Tenochtitlan, so that's quite a bit of culture we need to overcome there.

Note that we're currently running a deficit, we might want to change that and try to save up some money to respond to events. EP are still spread out widely (I forgot about that), I suggest focusing them all on Monty for now.

 

[nocho]

Looks okay I think... I wouldn't have cancelled deals with Lincoln though, Shaka must be far away enough and may take a while before Lincoln will come back to talk to us. Oh, well.

With a city in Monty's face, I guess we'll need some backup units. Maybe we can plant a city 3E of the sign "MMs city". Surrounded by jungle, but with 5 (unique!) resources will eventually be a good city by its own right and obviously will press MM's city. And before lymond does, I'll say we can use some more workers as well.

 

[lymond]

Good turnset. A little recommendation here to not build roads that are not needed and instead hook-up the cities pre-settle or build improvements.

Thoughts:

- We should get a worker to create a road to Wang or Monty to open trade routes
- There's a nice spot on the Sugar up north. Just settle on the Sugar. I think that should be next in fact
- Currency is needed, but we need to pull Poly somehow and go Lit> Music...the GA would be nice. Maybe even culture bomb
- we need more workers...wait...wha?....Nocho!!!...you beat me to it
- I would avoid whipping Aksum much at all

 

[r_rolo1]

I open the save and see ... a hindu aztec missionary coming in our direction That is actually good news: it means that Monty is running Missionary strat, a thing that implies that he will not make a "hands-full" free DOW

Thoughts:

- We should get a worker to create a road to Wang or Monty to open trade routes
- There's a nice spot on the Sugar up north. Just settle on the Sugar. I think that should be next in fact
- Currency is needed, but we need to pull Poly somehow and go Lit> Music...the GA would be nice. Maybe even culture bomb
- we need more workers...wait...wha?....Nocho!!!...you beat me to it
- I would avoid whipping Aksum much at all

-Yes to the road to the Koreans and up to monty. Both the AI will have to cooperate with our efforts though ... and unfortunately the rivers do not cooperate with us, otherwise we could simply tech sailing.

- it might be a bridge too far settling on the sugar, but we have to take chances. Just remember that we are already breaking even at 60 % science ...

- Yup, currency is highly needed. Not sold to go music fast. In fact i don't see much need to go music at all. Remember, we are suposed to use extensively the spread culture mission , not to try to make a push via ordinary means. OFC that I'm not oposed to make a couple of Cathedrals or Sistine, but I'm not sure that it is worth to go to that half-dead-end side of the tech tree. ... even the the GLib in the possible pack ( that is heavily overrated IMHO )

- Yes, mr whinners , we need more workers. 4 workers for 4 cities is too little in this stage of the game and with the things we have to do.

- Indeed, Aksum is a slow growth city as long as we wok both those gold hills. Avoid the whip there.

Now on other issues:

- First, we are going to get a GSpy in 2 turnsets or so. What to do with him? Obviously not GA , we can't bulb with him ... so we get to either make a SY or settle him ( or keep him on ice, that would be a waste ... or to wander a little with him to explore. I never said that GP were forbidden to move around ). Suposing whose two options, which one of them .... and where ?

To be honest, I'm quite divided between both options. A SY now would have to go to Aksum ( due to the Palace EP ), but Aksum will have some serious issues to be a good EP producer ( mainly the lack of high food tiles ). Settling him is equal everywhere, but as this will be a LONG game, the settled GSpy will be surely not the best choice. Decision, decisions ...

- As I hinted above, the tech path needs to be discussed. Franky, I do not want to go Music fast ... I only see fringe benefits in there. I think we would definitely win more going the good and beaten path of Education ( after netting currency and some math related stuff ) to be able to get the high EP buildings faster. OFC that getting some spy specs giving culture directly is a good idea, but I'm not sure that is worth the detour.

Anyway, roster:

r_rolo1
Thy_Spellcraft
Brian Shanahan
lymond
Thrar - Jusp. played ... and quite nicely, I must add
LKendter - today is 7 of may, so I'll put him UP until further notice
nocho -on deck


P.S @ nocho

On the rules, as extra clarification, if I understood rolo correctly, we cannot even ever capture cities. We can attack from a nearby tile (under our control) but will have to leave the last man standing... Everything has to flip eventually.

Well, we can acept gifts, use the AP to give the cities to us, acept them in peace deals ( quite unlikely ) besides flipping them But yes, no captures.

Oh and we can clean the garrisons entirely. There are atleast 3 ways to do that:
- Nukes
- Gunships
- Missiles



P.S II I think this is obvious, but I decided to stress it : we need more military Ok, we have a missionary loving monty , MM and wang as direct neighbours , but we can't push our luck .

 

[LKendter]

Back home working on getting NEW computer setup. Not sure how long to it is good enough to play Civ.

I have a lot of stuff to get installed on the PC, unpack car, etc.

 

[nocho]

I take it that the above means you're on skip until further notice?

If so, I'll try to post something resembling a plan tomorrow.