RR12 - A perfect spy

[lymond]

Good job, LK. Not sure I agree about the trades though

Yeah, this is going slow. We've had Djienne surrounded for ages and it's only at 5% revolt.

I think maybe overall we could have manage diplo a bit better. Resource trades give us a little bonus, and maybe there were some demands we could have given into to keep some friends. The reason - to keep options open to bribe AIs into war with each other.

We only need a few units on Djienne. I think we should fortify a power stack on the hill outside Kumbeh Saleh - we could even throw up a quick fort on that hill - and let Mansa suicides units on us. Mainly Oromos, a few pikes, and some siege to weaken his stack. Yeha will need some defenses though as Mansa will send some to that city. His city in the west can be reduced with a small stack.

Pretty much the same deal on Monty's side. Defend the borders and use a small stack on it.

Oh...and something we've complete forgotten. We can run city revolt missions on these cities....ha...why did i not think of this earlier. Besides doing it for the war, do it in peace just to cripple the city. It may add to the 3 revolt city flip dealio. Not sure as I've never tried it. Maybe 1 flip has to be genuine, but it may contribute. Run a city revolt and then a couple of culture missions. We can also sabotage some culture buildings like temples, monuments and castles. Djienne has all of them and 2 temples. Brainstorm!!!

 

[LKendter]

I think killing the temples in Djienne is a great idea.

 

[nocho]

Got it, will have a closer look tonight.

Sabotage and inciting revolts sound interesting, but I'd like to have more input on that, as I'm not entirely sure whether it's an efficient and effective way of spending our EP. But it might work, indeed.

Otherwise I guess the set is about war prep and getting communism.

Maybe we should really start spreading culture in Timbuktu? That should also influence positively on Djenne, as well as spreading our invisible hand more north.

We need to decide between settle and Scotland Yard.
Courthouse + Jail + Security Bureau = 14 EP. We are just 10 turns from communism that ups that to 22 EP. The settled spy is with 24 EP after SY. The choice isn't so clear now. Settling does give us another 6 beakers. I still learn toward settle, but want to confirm.

I think we are locked to grab communism first, and that free spy. That will give us our last critical building.

CH: 2EP 1 spy slot
Jail: 4EP +50% 2 spy slots
IA: 8EP +50% 2 spy slots
SB: 8EP 2 spy slots
SY: 100%

Settling the GSpy in Aksum that already has a SY gives 12 +200% = 36EP extra, supposing full infra (well, jail+IA).
Building a SY in any other city gives 22 EP extra from buildings.

However, note we get 7 spy slots with full infra. A spy gives 4EP (right?), so if we're able to hire 4 spies or more somewhere, a SY wins out (22+4*4=38). We need cities with high food potential for that. Given this, I think a SY in Yeha is better than settling in Aksum. Can't recall other high food cities from the top of my head, but we should watch that. Do note though that with SoL and merc we get 2 of those spies for free, so it shouldn't be too difficult to reach the 4-spy threshhold in various cities.

Obviously if/when we use the spy slider as well a SY only gets better. Given we're close to having full spy infra available and hiring 3/4 spies with SY evens out settling, I'm inclined to build SYs with all upcoming GSpies, in cities that can have at least those 3/4 spies hired. When going slider it will be obviously much better to have those SYs in place.

 

[r_rolo1]

IIRC spy induced revolts do not count for the count of the revolts needed for a flip I would not put doing that aside to disrupt the builds, but it looks like a very expensive manouver compared with piling even more culture

BTW, I wonder why nobody listened to my call to close borders with mansa ... the AI understands revolt danger and that would had made impossible to mansa to reinforce Djenne. Oh well, what is done is done...

I still need to see the save ( passed the last 2 days uninstalling and reinstalling stuff to try to solve a very irking issue that disallows me to see some flash based sites due to incompatibility between them and my graphical card running the last Flash reader update under Vista ( namely, I can't see youtube videos ) ). Will try to check it today, though.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, gave a look at the save...

I think that LK is right, we need to war Mansa and Monty ( btw nice job in the culture side in the Monty border ... it would be fun to see the AP assigning those cities to us ( even if to clear those cities out of units ). Mansa is easy to clear if we play smart ... just catch him out of the hills ( he will attack Yeha with his stack most likely ). It will be a boring war and I certainly do not expect to see us getting a city out of it

I'm not agreeing with the "keep" sign in Kumbi. The city is ok, but we can't put a city to attack Pyongyang there due to the 3 tile rule ...

Nocho, your analysis would be more complete if you remembered the Kremlin slots, but 10 spy slots need a LOT of food Bio and sushi would solve that ( BTW Kremlin in Yeha ? Aksum ? )

But besides that, nocho is right. Communism->Bio ( maybe? ) , buildup and War.

P.S not sure on going spy on Timbuctu. We can't have territory in our hands that is further away from any of our cities than legendary radius even if we have more culture there than the other civs. In other words, the culture in timbuctu will not give us much more territory even if we spread a lot of it ... atleast until we get a city in the area

 

[lymond]

Yep, SY in Yeha may be good indeed if we can run even more spies there, which means more Gspies and more SYs or settled Gspies. I'd go for it.

Well, at this point maybe sabotage in Djienne isn't worth it since missions are so expensive, but it may be worth it in other cities where it's much cheaper. Just note that it appears we went back in culture in Djienne recently. As mentioned earlier, spreading culture in back cities like Tim could indirectly help out with forward city flipping.

The close borders idea is good.

 

[lymond]

Kremlin in Yeha seems best to make use of the spy slots.

rolo - the point on Tim is that it will easy the forward culture pressure somewhat. We need to start getting creative or we will never flip these cities.

I expect Djienne to flip during the war and possibly KS - at least get it to revolt some. Again I would fortify on that hill outside KS with a fort and let Mansa blow his stack on ours. Even some CG promos on the Oromos would work well. It should also prevent him from sending much inland, but we still should protect Yeha. Same in the west for Monty.

 

[nocho]

Okay, also had a look.

Kind of plan and some questions.

- Current spy makes SY in Yeha. We likely get another one in 4 turns. Where do we want next SY? Addis may be an option as it can get 5 spies hired more or less easily (but in which case I'm inclined to farm over the 2 towns), or even our Moai city down south, which will run out of reasonable tiles shortly from now anyway and which can have 4 specs+2 free ones (merc/SoL).

- Tech communism, bio sounds perfect to me.

- Mansa is teching RP. Do we fear he gets rifles, do we want to steal RP?

- I'm getting the feeling that doing (much) more spy missions in Djenne is basically a waste. We already have it boxed in by 3 cities with superior culture output than Djenne itself. To me it seems most logic to start on Timbuktu. We'll eventually will have to start on it anyway if we ever want to get up north (from what rolo said I understand it has to be flipped first anyway before even being able to reach the north) and spreading in Timbuktu obviously has a direct effect on Djenne (and Kumbi!) as well. Djenne will be boxed in from 4 sides this way.

- Keep working on Teotihuacan. Forget Korea/Persia for now spy wise (?).

- Assemble more military. Be wary of Mansa's moves (he looks uncharacteristically aggressive this game).

- Build more spies and spy infra (obviously). Do we want to bother with the Globe somewhere? Where?

- Close borders with Mansa and Monty.

 

[r_rolo1]

I think that we should make enough missions in Djenne to keep the pressure, but we will probably not win much more by a agressive culture spread there.

I do not opose doing mission in Timbuktu, I was just stating that we will not win much territory now by spreading culture in there ( it would be nice to get a opening to drop some more cities ). obviously spreading culture in Timbuktu will help to flip all the neighbouring cities, so it is clearly the next step if we want to rack the pressure on mansa

I'm also worried with Mansa going RP. We might need to steal it and even then we will sure get magic rifles if we don't move fast or if mansa does not divert the teching somewhere else.

On your topics:

Yup, forget the east for now in spy terms

Yup, more troops and a eye on Mansa ( indeed , Mansa is being a bad boy in this one )

More spy stuff, and not sure on the globe. Not seeing a good food site for the draft besides our GP farm ...

Yup, close borders for now. We don't need them open

 

[lymond]

Yep, I struggled on finding a Globe site. We may get a place later to put it.

I mentioned earlier that AA and Gondor should be farmed/watermilled. I think that process started.

We might just consider settling Gspies in SY cities for now.

Don't forget we can draft Oromos, so build trebs and maybe a few pikes or phants

 

[LKendter]

I did draft some Oromos during my round.

 

[nocho]

Ok, I'll leave spies in Djenne which already have a (considerable) stationary bonus. One of them might actually steal RP, which is also useful for our wind- and watermills and will do some more culture missions with the rest. The rest will move on to Timbuktu.

SY in Yeha and other one in AA (with extra farms and imminent bio it can hire enough spies to make it worthwhile).

Draft and build mainly trebs.

I was thinking to settle "E" for the silver. It seems we're close to the happy cap (or even over it some places) so the silver would come in handy (supposing we don't have it elsewhere). I'll build some more settlers to stand by in case something flips and can be razed and resettled (Teohiuaciuahuahihaha, Txlacalalalala, Kumbi).

Will leave the Globe for what it is for the moment.

I'll hopefully play this evening if I find the time... If not tomorrow or latest by Friday.

 

[cripp7]

Lurker Comment: I did a Sitting Bull game where was the key and all GSpies had to create SY in the highest cities first, running spy specs 1st. The SY adds 100% to the current base total in the city. Running lots of cottages provided more ep output in my game, plus the spy specs. Nationhood really was a major help there, can't beat 25% per city!

 

[nocho]

The good news is that our EPpt went up from 405 to 674 and that we got first to communism where I hand it over. Other good news is we completed this little thing:

Mediocre news is that a surprising number of spies got caught and that Mansa is now furious with us. Worst news is that Mansa is 5 turns away from rifling.

However, to get there he had to research RP for us.

I founded this city for the silver, which incidentally also happened to have oil.

The tech situation is this. Wang nearly has demo, so we could get all his cash for it.

Spread culture in Timbuktu and Teohiuhahaha, the latter is now cut off from the rest of the Aztec lands. Closed borders with both Mansa and Monty.

We got SYs in Yeha and Addis. We got the GSpy from communism which I'd send to our Moai city down south. That city has 5 forests where I've started forests preserves with the idea of building the National Park, which means 5 free spies. With SoL and merc that's actually 7. We might actually want to build Kremlin here as well, as the food could sustain 3 specs more for the grand total of 10 spy specs! Anyway, also without Kremlin but with NP a SY here makes a lot of sense, imo.

I queued bio, which is pretty huge with our amount of farms and incidentally opens up the NP. I think I'd go steel next for cannons and possibly shut off research there, as then we've got all essentials and can rely on stealing to advance technologically. I queued up quite a number of intelligence agencies and have whipped a number of security bureaus.

I'm surprised we didn't get a single revolt yet, so indeed we should prepare for war. Hence the idea of steel after bio, while stealing rifles when Mansa gets them. Note that our power is 1.2 vs Mansa, so there's no need to fear him really, though we should be prepared for a DoW. Or beat him to it, of course.

 

[LKendter]

We really do want to move west to east. The last person on the east is Shaka, and he tends to be horrid at building culture. He would be by far the easiest to flip last. We need to push hard to get Mansa and Monty out of the road.

We do have the question of at what point to we shut off tech.
I agree we want biology for better farms (more spy specialists) and national park in our Moai city.
IMHO we also want corporation (not sure on Wall Street city) and Medicine for Sushi. I feel we are behind schedule to flip so we need our new border cities to produce maximum culture ASAP. Add Sushi to the +4 from free specialist and we should hit ring 3 very fast.
Cannons would be nice for war, but are they critical?
Railroad speeds things up some, but that is about it.
IIRC our ultimate tech is gunships. I think they can kill the last unit in a city leaving it empty. That is the ultimate to flip a city. However, I don't think we want to tech that far.

After the last round of spy buildings is build we need to concentrate on spies and military. As I've said before, we can't win without wars.

I'm glad to see we finally have speed 2 spies as that will help speed things up.
If we are going to commit to the Kremlin, we should be a city before the next person starts playing.

 

[r_rolo1]

That person would be me

I agree , we need to decide where do we want the Kremlin. I think the natural place would be in Yeha...

I'll say more later, after seeing the save. I might not to be able to play so soon as that, though : tomorrow is a holiday in here and i don't expect to have much time to play and saturday I'll be recording the next polycast ( so probably not much time to play as well )

 

[Tatran]

Off topic :

...and saturday I'll be recording the next polycast

A small warning, Dan loves to sing and prefers to go culture whenever he can

 

[LKendter]

The weekend has passed. Any updates?

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, sorry for the big delay, but I basically was not in home yesterday and today ( and when I was in home I was forced to go see a movie in TV with the rest of the family )

This is not a game report, bte. I have some serious doubts in how to proceed ATM. My main question is the war with Mansa/Monty.

Some pics

Spoiler :

To be honest I think this is the main issue. Monty is not exactly a big threat, but we don't have the military in place to stop this dudes ... especially the HA. We have no pikes or whatever cav stoppers around except a spear, for heavens sake.

On the other foe:

Spoiler :

Mansa is not a threat, but he is 6 turns away from the rifles and we know what the AI does normally as soon it gets the magic fire sticks...

To be honest, I'm not feeling confortable in starting a war now ... but I'm pretty sure I'll not feel better about this in 6 turns when mansa gets rifles and shares the techs with Mr lunatic with mini-skull included

On other issues:

- we have another GA coming by the looks of it . Bah

- Should we steal Rifling ? We will need probably 4000 EP to steal it... we are close to get those , but we will probably need to not spend EP as liberally as that. We will probably want to sabotage Hermitage in Djenne ...

EDIT: -Kremlin. I suggested to make it in Yeha, and I'm not sure if people agree with this. Anyway, anywhere we build it, we should buy again stone from Mr American wimp

 

[LKendter]

I agree 100% to buy stone from America.

I'm not sure what city is best for Kremlin. Have you looked the Moai city. Somebody suggested this with 5 forest preserves we will have a ton of spy slots to use up when National Park is added.

IMHO we are not ready for war. All we can due is build up at the moment.

If we can get another GA - go for it. We need to wrap up our last spy building and get in military / spy mode. Hopefully not another artist.

I didn't catch Hermitage was build - that MUST be sabotaged.