SAM-01 Smoke and Mirrors

[Whosit]

I was going to open with a joke regarding your unfortunate predicament, Norvin, but after a brief moment of thought, I think that a job isn't anything to complain about nowadays. But, yeah, if only it didn't cut into precious Civilization time. The nerve.

You do have a point about our building priority, though. I wouldn't mind a few Macemen since they are eligible for the City Raider line of promotions, but as long as we don't have Friendly status with the French, we probably want to keep our troop levels up. The only reason I wouldn't recommend building HAs is the point that someone made (too lazy to go back and look) that their upgrade cost would be prohibitive, even if we went to 0% science during a Golden Age.

At the very least, we'll want solid garrisons in our border towns. Crossbowmen to handle infantry, spearmen (or pikemen when we get them) to take care of mounted units, and catapults and trebs to prepare for city smacking.

I guess you also have a point about the city . . . I guess it depends what's built in there. I just feel like we spent so much time fussing about where to settle that location so long ago that it's like a waste to leave the city there. And maybe I'm just slightly vindictive . . . .

 

[Norvin_Green]

My thought with the maces is that if we are going to try and sweep our continent with cossacks that speed is going to be the key. Normally that means no siege just cav (in this case cossacks) and rumble through as quickly as we can.

 

[Whosit]

Ok, got a look at the save. Now I see Capac's town. Hrm. But, yeah, we'll crush it with culture.

I really think that those two Grasslands by St. Petersburg should be farmed, not cottaged (note that to irrigate the southern tile, we'll have to farm through St. Petersburg if we're going to avoid improving the grave site). Here's why: A cottage will take many, many turns to mature and at most offer 4 commerce. Those fur tiles can give us 4 commerce each in a much shorter period of time, and some extra food from farms will ensure that the city can work all of them. Also, I see a workshop being built. We'll need the extra food if we want to work any of those, too.

Edit: Otherwise, we should probably start our irrigation projects to the northern cities and make sure we spread Confucianism to the rest of our newer cities.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Something came up and I just couldn't get to Civ tonight after all. So I'll play my set Wednesday morning - in 36 hours or so. And I was really itching to play... but at least that gives us some more time to discuss things.

Huayna has a +4 bonus for voting for Nappy so I'm guessing it is cumulative, although it does go away pretty quickly, I think. Whatever, Nappy can't hurt us, we have much better units and are steadily closing in the gap in power ratings - Dave's set really improved that I think. I'm still going to play nice with him until we are ready, but we only need to be Friendly with him for a short while. More important is to keep Huayna at Friendly so Nappy can't bribe him into war with us once we declare. We will take a slight diplo hit for declaring on his friend but if we've got him at +13-14 we'll be okay.

I agree about farming St. Petersburg, if only so we can work the furs, and also about keeping Bactria. Yeah it's not our original location but it will save us lots of time settling a new city and bringing it up to speed, etc.

I will build a few macemen and crossbows for defensive purposes, although disbanding some older troops might be wise, as Dave suggested.

Main thing is to reach MT ASAP so we can start building cuirassers. The upgrade from Cui > Cav is fairly cheap if I remember correctly (110g, maybe?). Depending on how long our tech lead will last we might actually consider a war on both fronts - if there's a chance to hit Huayna with Cavalry vs. medieval units we should take it before he gets to rifles, even if we're not done with Nappy yet - if only just to cripple him. I'm not sure we'll have enough units, though, and it all depends on the tech situation. We will also be meeting the rest of the leaders soon and that could change things completely depending on who's out there. I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I was saying the main issue is to get to MT ASAP so bulbing Philo is more attractive to me than self-teching it, unless we can double-bulb Edu and save more beakers that way. I will take a look at beaker costs once I open the save. I'm not concerned about losing Lib, more about Nappy and Huayna trading happily towards grenadiers or rifles before we have amassed a large enough army, which is why I want the actual production to start as soon as possible.

I'm going to shift EP focus to Napoleon for a while until we can see his research, then set it to 1:1 so we can keep an eye on both.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Okay, sorry for the delay.

IT, 1170AD:

-Music to Huayna for 250g. His research of Engineering goes from 23 turns to 40 turns. I guess he can't afford to keep his slider up much now. I also give him fur for 8gpt - we'll have another fur up in 2 turns anyway as replacement. Music to Nappy for 340g. We have 1118g now to fund some research.
-Shift EP focus to Nappy, 2:1 ratio against Huayna.
-GP bulbs part of DR. Slider to 100%, it's due in 4 turns.
-Send a horse archer from Magnitogorsk to scout out France. For some reason there is this nagging thought in my head that Nappy is secretly building a massive stack in Grenoble. Turns out it only has two axes and an archer.
-St. Petersburg whips granary. Cancel the order to build a workshop on the plains tile since we want to irrigate the grasslands through the city - this tile has to be farmed.
-Spy specialist in Elektrogorsk ordered to work the coast for extra growth.
-Karachev build changed to Confu monastery for the research boost.
-Stalingrad build changed to Confu missionary for our new cities.
-Move the chariot outside of Juli towards Werzdaartist to act as garrison as its sentry duties are no longer needed.

1180AD:

Mezh completes the National Epic, starts on a Confu monastery. GS due in 4 turns. Svetlograd finishes Confu temple, starts on a stable. The worker has just finished a chop there so it'll be up next turn already. St. Petersburg starts courthouse.

Revolt to Bureaucracy!

1190AD:

A volcano erupts near Magnitogorsk, we lose two mines one of which is the iron mine. I send the worker who has just finished the incense plantation to the iron.

1200AD:

Svetlograd completes stable, starts a crossbowman. Magnitogorsk completes maceman, starts crossbowman as well. Stalingrad ships out a missionary to Novgorod, starts another for Werzdaartist.

1210AD:

I am ********. I built a Christian missionary instead of a Confucianist one... change builds in Stalingrad again, waste of time. Divine Right due in 1 turn but I'd like to wait until Confu is in both our new cities, and this missionary debacle is a delay. Change research to Paper for now.

1220AD:

Karachev completes the monastery and starts on a market. Borders of Svetlograd expand but annoyingly we don't get the sheep back just yet. At least Juli's under cultural pressure now. Elektrogorsk grows to 7 and I whip the library there.

1230AD:

Marie Curie is born in Mezh and bulbs Philosophy. Apologies to those who wanted an Academy.

Napoleon adopts Vassalage and a Great General is born overseas. Magnitogorsk starts on another crossbowman. I move a citizen in Moscow from a mine to a cottage, dunno why I didn't do that before. Once Moscow grows it'll work the mine again and I'll set it to build workers instead of wealth.

1240AD:

Not much.

1250AD:

Paper is in, just in time for Stalingrad to ship out its second Confu missionary and start on the University of Sankore. I had two chops ready to take it down from 19 turns to 14.

Set research to Nationalism. I figure we can start the Taj almost immediately after the UoS is finished in Stalingrad, while Moscow builds the Spiral Minaret (so that means no workers built there, I'll find another city for workers; maybe Karachev). The golden age will help us tech through Edu > Lib and we can take Military Tradition immediately from it.

By the way, Svetlograd is building an Confucian Academy... for hammers and culture.

1255AD:

Confucianism spreads in Werzdaartist and Novgorod. Switch research to complete DR. Notre Dame built in a far away land.

1260AD:

Stalin realizes that he is the State. Islam is founded in...

...MOSCOW. Double holy city! Now we just need another prophet somehow. Islamic missionary sent to Stalingrad. Moscow starts on the Spiral Minaret.

1265AD:

Mezh starts on a Christian monastery, Elektrogorsk on a Confu one. Confucianism spreads in Tiwanaku. Drop slider to 40% since we have run out of cash, Nationalism due in 17 turns.

1270AD:

Looks like Huayna is aiming for that barbarian city in the tundra. He can have it. Yeah we want to settle it but we have other priorities right now, I can't really divert production to a settler at the moment. We'll take it from him later.

1275AD:

Not much.

1280AD:

Not much.

1285AD:

Novosibirsk finishes its trireme. Of course I just noticed Werzdaartist's fish is an ocean tile, which means the barb gallery would not have been able to pillage it so we didn't need any defense. Oh well. In any case, Novosibirsk starts on a Confu temple... it will actually bring more hammers than a forge and would be useful once the SM is in.

I also vote for Napoleon in the AP elections again but we don't get a diplo bonus.

1290AD:

Russian revolt in Juli. Archangel finishes spy and starts Confu temple. Bunch of other cities finish some builds, I whip some stuff, etc. etc. etc. Infrastructure, basically. I also send a worker to start irrigating from Novgorod down to Werzdaartist, since that will be a production city.

Napoleon offers Feudalism and 60g for Divine Right. Nope. No more trading with you, Nappy.

1295AD:

Goth captured by Huayna. Svetlograd finishes Confu Academy and starts on Versailles... why not? It doesn't have anything else to build anyway.

Confucianism spreads in Juli... that's a shame, an extra 1g for our shrine, but the city's useless. Think we'll disband it once it revolts to us.

1300AD:

Not much. I'm a little annoyed that we can't see Napoleon's research yet, looks like he beefed up his EP spending against us. So I drop Huayna down to 0 for a while.

1305AD:

Napoleon completes the Sistine Chapel.

1310AD:

Not much.

1315AD:

University of Sankore completes in Stalingrad, cutting down Nationalism by 2 turns. Stalingrad starts on an Islamic Monastery. Karachev finishes a harbor, I start building wealth. Normally I would stop here since it's already been 22 turns but let me just finish Nationalism first... building wealth in Magnitogorsk as well since we don't need units and I can up the slider that way.

1320AD:

Not much.

1325AD:

Not much.

1330AD:

Nationalism in, Stalingrad completes Islamic Monastery and starts Taj Mahal. Set research to Education. Pretty straightforward set, not much to report really.

Some notes:

- We have another GS due in a few turns, I suggest he part-bulbs Education and then we finish it. Then onto Liberalism, taking Military Tradition.
- I skipped on detailing some worker turns and city builds... it was mostly infrastructure in Elektrogorsk and Mezh (whipped a lot of stuff but made sure not to take away any scientist specialists in Mezh). Novgorod has a few cottages now. Irrigating in St. Petersburg and from Elektrogorsk towards Mezh. Furs in St. Petersburg coming online, some extra resources (wheat north of Stalingrad, sheep south of Stalingrad, second silver mine near Novosibirsk, etc.).
- We should consider a Confucian Academy in Magnitogorsk for the extra 2 hammers. If so we should start it now (it'll be quick with copper) so it's ready before MT comes in and cuirassers are available.
- Stalingrad can bring down the Taj from 18 to 15 turns with some tile shuffling, but it'll stagnate as a result. Dunno if it's needed.
- We'll have knowledge of Nappy's research in a few turns, once that's in we should maybe shift some EP towards Huayna again, ideally we want to see both their research at the same time.
- I suggest we don't trade anything to either one of them anymore. They don't have anything we need anyway and trading just to one is useless as they're best friends and will just trade everything away.
- We lost the +2 "You voted for us" bonus with Nappy, it went away quickly. I guess Friendly is not possible anymore, but at this point I suppose we should not care.
- I never got around to building more workers. Sorry. Karachev built a market, lighthouse and harbor instead. And that Confu monastery.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Hmm, it's actually better to irrigate Werzdaartist from Stalingrad and not Novgorod, because there are more grasslands to the west of Werzda than to the east and the hills prevent us from irrigating all of them through the city.

Svetlograd finally has the sheep tile as well, I actually just noticed. Meanwhile Huayna has returned his troops to Juli so it's possible it won't flip to us at all - I don't know how much units are needed to prevent flips entirely, though.

We should send the trireme to scout the tundra island to the south, maybe there's a resource there that we can settle later on.

edit: Actually, once we have SM and Versailles we can trade DR to both of them, Feudalism would be useful to us, although not that much. But definitely no trading of any important techs, I think. We want to keep them as backwards as possible.

 

[Whosit]

Sounds good, sounds good. How kind of Napoleon to build the Sistine Chapel for us. And nice bit of luck getting that double Holy City. Ah, and sending the Christian Missionary to Mezh kept it from being a waste; it was something I wanted to do eventually, anyway. Perhaps Mezh can run a few priests to try and get a Prophet at some point? Or would getting a scientist be more valuable . . . . It would be nice to get an academy or two, yes? (I suppose the reason for using the next GS to bulb education is to get us to Cossacks that much faster?)

I'll have to look at the save later (I've been saying that a lot lately). Pity you weren't able to get any more workers trained, but I suppose there's always time on the next set to build a couple more.

As for the Confucian Academy in Magnitogorsk, it's probably a good idea, though does it really need the extra hammers what with the heroic epic. Or does it need the extra hammers because of the heroic epic? 2 would become 4. Yeah, I guess it would be silly not to take advantage of that, even if it is "over kill."

So, yeah, I think all your builds were good choices Glare (even the Christian Missionary). Aside from no more workers. Hopefully our current crew is doing an adequate job?

So, tech plan is: Education < Liberalism < (Military Tradition) then taking whatever we need to get to Rifling the fastest? Sounds fun.

After Moscow finishes the Spiral Minaret . . . no, never mind. No point in spreading Islam before we have the shrine. Anyway, radiofreestl is up next, if I correctly recall.

 

[Glare Seethe]

You won't be so pleased if I mention that I was so annoyed with my mistake that I deleted the Christian missionary instead of sending it somewhere. I don't know what I was thinking. So it really was just a waste of hammers.

I was thinking we can try to get a Prophet from Stalingrad again, which is why I sent the Islamic missionary there - with three temples we can run three prophet specialists and have a very good chance of getting a GP. Question is will Stalingrad have enough GPP to generate a GP before Mezh generates the next scientist (after the one we get in 3 turns). Probably. Islam's already spread to one of Nappy's cities, by the way. But it'd also be nice to have some academies up after we bulb Education.

I will say that I didn't feel like we were lacking in workers, I actually had trouble finding stuff for them to do on occasion...

 

[Whosit]

Ah . . . OK, then, yeah, it was a waste. I think that I forgot that Mezh was the Christian Holy City and didn't need a missionary. Oh well, nothing to do about it now.

As fer the workers, I suppose we have enough after all. I guess we went so long without building any more that we just caught up to where we needed to be? Anyway, Priests in Stalingrad sounds like a fine idea. We can feed three specialists, right?

 

[Glare Seethe]

I think so, but maybe not without stagnating. It'll need to wait until the Taj is in, of course, so we can build more temples. Still, Islamic Shrine is a relatively low priority though it'd be really nice to have it. I'm just kind of itching to get started with the war.

And... I just realized something: we need Gunpowder before we can start building cuirassers. So we are further away than I thought. I'm going to load up the save, we'll need to alter our tech path.

EDIT: Okay, we need Feudalism > Guilds to get Gunpowder, so how about this:

- trade DR to Nappy for Feudalism + 50g and to Huayna for Engineering + 210g. Spiral Minaret and Versailles are 9 and 10 turns away respectively (less if shuffle some tiles / assign engineer specialists) so I don't think we are in danger of losing either (although it should be noted that Nappy has stone, so he gets a big bonus on SM). We don't need Eng but we might as well do the trade if we trade DR away to Nappy.
- Edu (part bulb) > Lib > MT. Trade Education to whoever has Guilds by this point, start Gunpowder.
- Gunpowder in, start mass production of cuirassers in Magnitogorsk, Stalingrad and Svetlograd.
- Banking (possibly trade for it) > Printing Press (part bulb, hopefully) > Replaceable Parts > Rifling > gold to 100%, mass Cui > Cav upgrades, run over Nappy.

Instead of DR we can also trade away a combination of Paper + Philo, or CS + Paper, to get Feu and Eng. But those techs put Nappy and Huayna on the path to Lib, so I think it'd be better to do DR.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Sounds like things went well Glare! Don't beat yourself up over the missionary. If thats the move that costs us this game we are in SERIOUS trouble! I won't be able to look at the save until later but I'm going to bring this up now. It would seem like we have the tech lead and will get to Lib first. Without knowing what is going on elsewhere in the world tech-wise how safe would it be for us to delay Lib to see if we can grab a better tech?

 

[Whosit]

Actually, I meant to point out the foreign Great General. Clues that there is some foreign warring going on. But we haven't seen a lot of GG, so probably not a ton of war (at least, I don't recall hearing about a lot of GG. I should look at the logs). Personally, I'm hesitant to risk delaying Liberalism too long, though another clue is when Notre Dame was built "in a far away land." Toaism was already founded when we got Philosophy, so another clue. All these clues! And I'm too loopy to add them together.

We do need gunpowder . . . maybe after re-evaluating our tech path, we can decide what to grab for free. Probably makes sense to just take the most expensive tech that we can reasonably prep for that's on the way to Cossacks. I'll look at the save later today and hopefully come up with a better answer.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Edited my previous post with a revised tech path / trade plan.

Just checked the log, three Great Generals have been born, the first in 1140AD, second in 1210AD and third in 1220AD. So the wars are fairly recent. Hopefully that bodes well for Liberalism, maybe we could get RP or Rifling from it, although that's risky without knowing the tech situation on the continent. I'm hoping the AIs will start sending caravels out, Nappy already has quite a few so maybe he's already made contact. But according to the tech screen he still has a monopoly on Optics, so either he hasn't met anyone yet or he has but they don't have Optics.

It'd be nice if we could generate 2 scientists to bulb Printing Press after we bulb Education with the upcoming GS, but we'd have to switch to Caste to do that. Dunno. Maybe we should consider Caste + Pacifism for a little while? If only we were Spiritual.

edit: how about building wealth in our main cities to force our slider up? Once the current batch of wonders is done most cities won't have much to build. Magni, Stalingrad, Svetlograd, Karachev, Moscow, Mezh, Elektrogorsk... all these cities have decent hammers and most if not all of the important infrastructure. Since we don't want any more units until cuirassers, all of these cities are free to build wealth, and doing so is enough to run the slider at 100% (I just tried it).

 

[Whosit]

Wow. I am obviously way too tired or something because I was sure no one had posted here for a couple of days, but it was only this morning, and I was one of the people who posted!

Anyway, your tech plan sounds good, Glare. I think we're pretty safe on both wonders, personally. Napoleon isn't Industrious, so even with stone, he'll build the Spiral Minaret at the same rate we would and we have a good head start. He'd have to have a town that can produce double the amount of hammers of our own. I think it's pretty safe and the extra gold we can get from trade will definitely help us spend at high rates. Building wealth isn't a bad idea so long as the cities already have all the infrastructure they need.

 

[Glare Seethe]

Well he'd get 100% on SM while we have 50% and a headstart... so maybe it balances out. I don't like calculating this sort of stuff. Of course, we could send the spy from Archangel to sabotage his stone quarry... we'd lose some EP so it'd take even longer to see his research, but might be worth it for the peace of mind.

 

[Dave Hartwick]

So, who's up?

 

[Whosit]

That would be radio. He's got until sometime tomorrow morning to call it. Well, morning for me. He had to delay his turn in another SG, so it's possible that he's busy. If he has to skip, Norvin would be up next.

 

[radiofreestl]

Sorry for the delay. Yes, I do need a skip. RL is just too much atm.

 

[Norvin_Green]

&#1071; &#1087;&#1086;&#1083;&#1091;&#1095;&#1080;&#1083; &#1101;&#1090;&#1086;

That's Russian for "I got it". Well, hopefully that's what is means. I DON'T know Russian at all I just used an English to Russian online translator. SO, if by chance it doesn't please excuse me and let me know and I'll remove it.

 

[Whosit]

Hee hee. It probably does mean "I got it," put it might not mean "I got it." That is, online translators translate literally; I have no idea what the Russian equivalent of that phrase is but that is entirely beside the point.

Anyway, good to see we're back on track. Sorry life has you busy, radio. When you got time, just let us know if you want to be slotted in at the next available point or wait for your normal turn to come up.

I think we already discussed our next set of moves about as much as we need to. At least, I'm content with it. Of course, if anyone has last minute additions to the plan, go ahead.