RR15 - Mills for D. Quixote

[LKendter]

My vote on Toku -
Kill, Crush, Destroy
Kill, Crush, Destroy
Kill, Crush, Destroy
Clear enough?

Not sure about the Huanya trade. How soon do we want to hit the tech trading cap?

@Imhoptep - definitely an unreal start from HA. One civ crippled, and a second soon to be dead. I thin we now have to lose the game, and this many cities this early is to strong.

Barely AD time frame, and I already think the debate of how to win is valid - can mills provide enough production to launch a ship?

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Mills, when in conjunction with Workshops and State Property, can easily provide more than enough production. The real problem you'll have is with research.

 

[lymond]

The real problem you'll have is with research.

Hammer economy is pretty strong with this setup. Plus, Electricity boosts this quite a bit. Regardless, I hope to crush all the wimpy AIs before all this.

 

[timmy827]

So, how bad did I screw up the game?

Well, since you asked...this is still in the bag, but here's some critiques. Spoilering so my plans aren't lost in a long post.

Spoiler :

The biggest is lack of scouting. Good on scoping Qinland with the boat, but we know nothing more about the wild west. See the settler going for the clam/iron/gold, good, but we don't know what the rest of that land looks like, or if there is an Otto or barb city cramping our style there. And no effort has been made to find a Sulei city for sailing trade routes, despite having the GLH and not-full set of foreign trade routes. Made sense to neglect scouting the last two sets when our army was a-rompin' but the peace treaty was the logical time to go fill those map gaps (as well as looking through Huayna's lands, always good to see what's there when you have open borders)

We're one turn from Currency, so that's nice. I'm sure someone like r_rolo or LKendter would have gotten it on this turnset, but... I'm not that good.

Or...someone who turned on the science slider. Currency is a pretty important econ tech, well worth deficit-spending our 300 plunder gold on, especially since we can't do anything else with gold until Currency...doing that + building improvements/workers in our cities would have us looking better than building Research has.

Tiles - we are still well short of improved tiles in some cities, but you started no new workers (we have one more than last save, presume it was the one in the queue @the previous save). This variant meant that we could go light on workers early but now need a lot; mills take more turns than farms/mines/cottages, in addition to the wartime expansion boom. Also there are 4-5 instances of unimproved tiles being worked instead of mills.
Particularly egregious is Addis Ababa, where
1) 1/0/2 coast worked over 2/1/1 mill and 2/2/1 ivory
2) still slowbuilding a forge due in forever when it lacks fishing boats and lighthouse (I suggested doing these first before your set). It made sense to stagnate this city early - it grabbed ivory and horses, we were avoiding fishing for the bulb. That's no longer the case.
3) three workers wasting turns on a jungle mill. The city is size 3 and has enough tiles already for size 5 (ivory, clam, horse, 2 mills); ages from size 6 (no granary, no food)

Not ticked or anything, just trying to give feedback.

------------------------------------------
Got it, I will probably play tomorrow night, as I will be gone all day Saturday. Thoughts/plans:

Yes, finish toku now. Keeping Tokyo, clams+wheat (and GLH) is plenty good enough.

I also think whipping 2 galleys to kill Qin ASAP is in the cards. I would like him gone before Feudalism is known since vassal states are on. His offshore city will be quite nice giving use those BTS "overseas" trade routes.

Tech - trade for Monarchy with Sulei. He won't take just Aesthetics. I would probably give him MC (known by Huayna) instead of Aesth + HBR. Maybe wait one turn (for Currency) and see if a little gold + Aesth works, or conversely see if he has gold to balance out a MC-for-monarchy trade.

For our own research, Calendar and CoL seem like the two obvious targets. I would probably do Calendar 1st but could be persuaded to flip; suppose HR and Buddhism probably patch our happy crunch for the moment.

Adopt HR, OR, Buddhism (Hooray for Huayna + RNG for spreading it fully!). Hopefully the civic bonus for HR offsets the religion hit for Sulei.

Whip some workers.

The settler in production now may go to Qin island if there's another good site there, or to the jungle site lymond has been recommending. (don't think we have a precise dot, perhaps 1N of the sugar? grabs lots of river and can share Aksum's corn)

For longterm plans, with lymond, yeah I don't see this going to space. Do we play nice after killing Qin and Toku (aiming to build, and then push for domination w/traditional Renaissance war), or try to push for one more war before our HA's go semi-obsolete? If latter, I won't be declaring that war but we may want to whip out some reinforcements during my set.

One silver lining of peaceful approach is that we may get both Huayna and Sulei to Friendly (full tech whoring) with HR + religion. (Sulei didn't found Judaism, could get him to convert with a few missionaries, will evaluated once we see how many Jewish cities he has). Question: Do AI's eventually forget the "you declared war on our friend!" malus?

--------------------------
If (ok, when) you got bored reading all that, please answer

1) any objection to killing Qin this set after Toku?
2) should we build even more units for yet another war before HA's go obsolete?

 

[lymond]

arrrgh!!! me eyes be blinded by coliseums! so many more important things to build....


some good points made, Timmy...Addis does not even have a granary. Not sure what is going on there. The best point you made is more workers.

No, AIs never forget "you declared on your friend"

1) Not sure I'd bother with Qin at the moment. Who knows, we may get him back to OB at some point for boosted trade routes. He is of no concern at present.

2) Honestly, I probably would have pushed on to Silly sooner. We could have probably cleared this land mass. Silly may be close to Feud now though which would hamper things a bit, but not impossible.

Also, OR and Bud might have been very helpful to our cause. Reason I wanted us to trade for Mono.

By the way, this game is won.

 

[timmy827]

arrrgh!!! me eyes be blinded by coliseums! so many more important things to build....

No, AIs never forget "you declared on your friend"

1) Not sure I'd bother with Qin at the moment. Who knows, we may get him back to OB at some point for boosted trade routes. He is of no concern at present.

2) Honestly, I probably would have pushed on to Silly sooner. We could have probably cleared this land mass. Silly may be close to Feud now though which would hamper things a bit, but not impossible.

Also, OR and Bud might have been very helpful to our cause. Reason I wanted us to trade for Mono.

By the way, this game is won.

So, that's another option, I could ignore Qin and prep for a Sulei war (more HA's, keep OB and find his cities, road towards him). However I doubt we can get Qin back to open borders, he's at -6 and it will get worse once we adopt Buddhism.

Re: longbows: Sulei isn't in HR yet so I bet he just got Monarchy - IdiotsOpp, do you happen to remember when it showed up in trade screen, or have autosaves you can check?

Re: OR and Bud - the upside is that wrong religion might have put him to Annoyed, so at least we can nab Monarchy in trade now before adopting those.

 

[timmy827]

Sorry about the delay. And a sure letdown after the wait - since no consensus on whether we are warring more, or who on, I played only 3 turns.

After Currency reached, swapped MC for Monarchy + 50 gold. We are now a Proselytizing Buddhist Dynasty. Toku is dead of course. With archers on a hill, thought it might make sense to try Flanking HA's - only to have 2 Flanking II's win @20% each.

I partially retract my criticism about not scouting as there was a much simpler reason we didn't have Ottoman trade routes - none of us had ever opened borders - fixed now.

All my EP raving about one other AI existing was right. She's one sad puppy too.

But, she does give us more yummy trade routes.

Although no beakers have yet been invested in Calendar due to the anarchy, I effectively committed to it by moving workers to those resources. They can road and clear jungle them while we research it, ready to Plantation as soon as done. Calendar is 4T @ 100%, we will have enough gold to do most/all of CoL right after.
Nothing new of note found up by the golds. I presume this is the city point, but since I was stopping early anyways I left the settler unmoved in case there is disagreement.

Captured 2 workers, 2 more whipped this turn, could still use more I think. Gondar whipped Forge and can have 2 chops come in next turn, probably worker there makes sense. Also note the build queue in Addis Ababa, Granary is first because 2 chops coming in next turn and a WB first would waste overflow.


So again stopped quickly since only lymond commented on the questions regarding next wars.

I still think wiping out Qin makes sense before the possiblility of him Vassaling comes up. The overseas city(ies) are real nice with GLH, although we now have a full set of foreign trade routes so not quite as beneficial. Also we are too far in the hole on relations to have any prospect of getting OB from him. And I would probably not launch a Sulei war in this era, seems like we'd overextend; I'd plan to to go to Curs and then get domination by taking our continent. I'm assuming the last AI is isolated, so we can't do a all-HA conquest but can Dominate without any navy - once we have tech/development to not go bankrupt when holding all the land. I am a wimpy builder at heart so I may be underestimating the benefits of another war now (besides Qin).

So thinking that attacking Qin may come soon, I moved some HA's to Beijing, and others to the middle of the empire (sign-marked), but have not yet sunk any hammers into Galleys. The rest of the military is a bit spread out - couple healing in Tokyo, couple mapping out Incan and Otto lands. If we want to attack Sulei instead it will take a few turns to reassemble them, but we would probably want the delay anyways so our scout HA can find the rest of his cities.

I'm busy the next few days so happy to pass it on.
Roster
r_rolo1 - UP
nocho - deck
lymond
LKendter
IdiotsOpposite
timmy827

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, sorry for the delay ....

Got it for tomorrow

 

[nocho]

Looks good, nothing wrong with calendar next. I'm fine with killing Qin. Or anyone else for that matter.

 

[LKendter]

Qin should be real easy, so I will gladly wipe him out.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, I wanted to play yesterday , but I had a small accident ( basically banged my head hard against a chandelier that was way too low ... don't worry, it ended far more broken than me ) and was with 0 will of playing, as you can imagine ...

Anyway, some issues:

- I have no problems with attacking Qin, but ... what would we gain of it now, when we are still struggling with way too much maintenance for our economical capabilities ? Besides that, we don't have the means of ferrying a large army there and the main ability of mounted units is lost in naval attacks ...

I think that the first thing to do would be to establish a city in the island, most likely in the area closer of Beijing ... it would be good for our trade routes as well. Then maybe attack Qin. Anyway we will not attack Qin soon, given that we have no galleys ...

- Techwise ... well, Calendar->CoL seems obvious enough ( BTW CoL ->Caste? I assume so )... then what ? The usual Lib trail ? Guilds ( for the extra hammer in workshops + knights ) ?

- BtW Mids (??????) and HG are still open. Mids most likely is being done either by Egypt or the Inca, but we could have a decent shot at HG. Should we try ?

 

[timmy827]

Beating a drum here, but would like Qin dead soon in case another AI reaches Feudalism, he could coneivably vassal to Huayna who we probably don't want to fight simultaneously. As for economics, we have the GLH+Currency, so Qin's overseas city is guaranteed to pay for itself immediately.

We don't have any galleys now, but we could whip/chop 2 quickly @Bejing, and 2 roundtrips (landing 8HA's) should be plenty.

I don't see need for caste, think production from whipping more important.

Yeah I don't really have strong thoughts on the tech path after Calendar and CoL. But unless you want to play a long set, i think those will occupy most of your turns and you can go 100% gold for a bit at the end, then decide for the following set.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, now in colors ... :S

First thing to do was to settle the gold city:

Spoiler :

Suleiman decided to creep our western border . There is nothing that makes me so furious with the AI like them setting in top of the other civs and then complaining about close borders...

Spoiler :

SOme turns later of exploring, jungle cutting and watermill/workshop spam and we found the last AI, Rags:

Spoiler :

He is SW of Hatty and in war with her. So far I have done no deals with him , to avoid worse enemy deal demerit.

Calendar came in, CoL was slotted next:

Spoiler :

Not that we didn't knew about that, but the calendar recentering shows us that we are in a small penisula east of a large pangea-like landmass and that us, QSH and Toku got the short straw in terms of avaliable land, while HC and hatty got the lucky strike....

Anyway, on other issues, as I said before, the Mids were still undone. I decided to invest on them a little, even if for the failgold. As I predicted Hatty did it in this set:

Spoiler :

110ishs gold ...

As timmy suggested I also got a galley and started ferrying our HA to the QSH island:

Spoiler :

In the end of the set we already had 8 HA there. I left some behind because there is a Chinese axe-sword duo trapped south of the ex-Japanese cap.

BTW QSH settled another crappy city. Really Qin? Why not on the west side of the island where there is atleast some seafood ?

Spoiler :

Then we got a quest ....

Spoiler :

According to ori ...

Quest3:
	Horse Whispering
	Prereq: ANIMAL_HUSBANDRY AND Horse resource
	Obsolete: NATIONALISM or PRINTING_PRESS or EDUCATION or GUNPOWDER or ASTRONOMY
	Active/Weight: 25/500
		Aim:
		Build default number of players for this world size stables (7 for standard)
		Result:
1.you get  default number of players for this world size Horse Archers (6 for standard)
2.All mounted units get the Sentry promotion
3.All stables provide +1 food

That is actually a pretty decent quest, especially if we consider that we have already 3 stables done

HC made Parth ...

Spoiler :

You can also see a settler in reserve, the annoying Otto city and the chinese axe-sword duo.

I finished the set in 10 turns, when CoL got online. No religion ( QSH got it ) and so far no change to Caste( maybe later, when we have more workshops )

Spoiler :

Our cities are whip- free, so we can whip courthouses en masse if we want to. And ,as you can see , i slotted CS next ( 22 turns @ breakpoint ATM ( 20% sci ) ). That is not written in stone, though: I can see a case for going Guilds ASAP and , to be honest, CS in itself will not do much for us ( bureau is not so good because our cap is not exactly shiny, we can't chain irrigate due to variant and we don't want maces that much ( right ? ) ) ...

On other issues, a sign of how much land Hatty and HC still have avaliable ...

Spoiler :

A untouched barb city stuck in untouched jungle with no shore in sight west of HC and SW of Hatty ...

Our army in QSH island, ready to roll:

Spoiler :

The medic chariot in on the galley.

Tech screen:

Spoiler :

Suleiman has Feud on us and that's it. HC has 350 gold in stock ( failgold from Mids ? ) that we might want to collect

Glance:

Spoiler :

I dropped it in here just to show that QSH and Suleiman are cautious with eachother. I still have to check if QSH can peacevassal @ cautious, but I think the risk is small.

Topics for discussion:

- Teching. I dropped CS in the queue somewhat reflexively, but, like I said above, I can see a case of going Guilds ASAP ( both for the extra hammer on workshops and knights ... if we are going to try the quest, might as well capitalize the stables ). Opinions ?

- Settling. I have refrained of settling more cities before CoL rolled out, but now we can do it ... any ideas on what to settle first? We have a settler on hold ...

- HG ... it is still undone. Should we give a toss on it? We have stone and the AI in this game is developing letargically, so we might have a chance. With 10 cities, the benefits would be massive ... Should we try ?

- Longer term prospects: to be honest, I'm afraid that HC might try to run away. He definitely got the lucky strike in terms of land ( well, him and Hatty, but hatty is rarely a danger to a win ). I know that we have much to do before going in another war ( after QSH, that is ), but we need to think about this ...

Anyway, nocho is up and already got it. lymond is on deck

>>Save here<<​

 

[nocho]

Looks good.

Got it. Build stables for quest. Kill Qin, raze Nanjing (too awful to maintain, rather settle crab if needed). Sell something to HC for loads of cash. Shall we get literature? Beijing screams to be NE city. Whip forge and market there. CS next is fine with me.

 

[r_rolo1]

Updated the report

Roster

r_rolo1 - just played
nocho - UP and got it
lymond -On deck
LKendter
IdiotsOpposite
timmy827

 

[nocho]

I must say that I do fancy guilds over CS, which indeed given the variant is not very useful. I'd still squeeze in literature (quickly obtainable with HCs cash) despite not having marble. Beijing has so much food that we could just whip the NE at some point. A HE somewhere will always be useful. So lit-feud-guilds?

 

[r_rolo1]

You forgot Monarchy, but we can surely trade for it

 

[nocho]

You forgot Monarchy, but we can surely trade for it

How odd you mention monarchy if we are in HR and if I want to use that tech to get HC's cash.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, fair enough

 

[timmy827]

I would sell Monarchy for Huayna's gold - we want him in HR anyways for fav civic.

Would put new 2 new cities:
-1E of fish north of capital, can share corn, get lighthouse lake
-2E of the crab on the island - it doesn't have enough food to work all the PH and grow, might as well settle on a PH.

Along with keeping Qin's main city and razing the crappy new one.

Ok with guilds next.