SE 5 Peter of Russia

[babar]

@AZ

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I have never seen such a fiscally irresponsible attitude. Very interesting. I have never even found out what happens when a strike continues indefinitely. I would panic and beeline CoL. I'm guessing this is only possible because you have achieved isolation and share such a small border with the barbarian hordes?

 

[AbsoluteZero]

I managed to recover by 600 AD.

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I slowly whip libraries in all my cities and switch them to running 2 scientists. I used a great prophet I got from stonehenge to shrine judaism. Best thing I ever did, the autospread spread it to all my cities by 600 AD.

I tech fishing -> sailing because some of my coastal cities aren't roaded and I have seafood that I can work.

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Then alphabet. The pyramids went about this time. I wonder who's on the other continents.

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Then currency.

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Then COL

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Then quickly teched to monotheism for OR for faster build times.

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Then monarchy.

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Took a quick break from research to whip courthouses.

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I'm still deciding what to do here. Iron to clear out the jungle in the 2 gem mine city for sure.

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Building wealth in a few cities got me out of the red, so I'm fully recovered now.

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@AZ

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I have never seen such a fiscally irresponsible attitude. Very interesting. I have never even found out what happens when a strike continues indefinitely. I would panic and beeline CoL. I'm guessing this is only possible because you have achieved isolation and share such a small border with the barbarian hordes?

Ya I'd be a little wary of pulling a stunt like that if I had a border with someone like Shaka. Barbs have really calmed down and I haven't seen one in a while. Even if they attacked my fortified axemen would hold them off. One reason I spammed settlers and settled everywhere was to keep barbs from spawning in the middle of my empire.

 

[vranasm]

@AZ

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wouldn't switching from research->wealth after currency quicken your dig out? or you did try and you didn't get into green?

didn't check yet the save etc. but going some workers out for at least some improvements would see as biggest priority.

 

[AbsoluteZero]

@AZ

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wouldn't switching from research->wealth after currency quicken your dig out? or you did try and you didn't get into green?

didn't check yet the save etc. but going some workers out for at least some improvements would see as biggest priority.

building wealth only works if you can build enough get your slider above 0%, if you cant you might as well build research and run a huge deficit. Until I whipped courthouses I couldn't even build enough wealth to offset even half of my maintenance costs. Now that I can, however, building wealth is the better way to go ( building wonders for fail gold, even better ). And yes I will be whipping a lot of workers first thing now.

 

[babar]

@AZ
By my calculations you owe the computer at least 3000 gold pieces.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Regarding the chopping/not chopping thing.

In a game like this, with loads of specialists, I would argue that many cities will never need to work all their squares anyway - so keeping them for health and also for happiness (forest reserves) is a valid strategy (fighting war weariness & emancipation unhappiness at the moment). Also a lumbermill by a river is fairly similar to a watermill from memory - though state property will change that - but I'll be sticking with mercantilism this game.

 

[vranasm]

played a bit further to 425AD, have a couple questions

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I followed the earlier plan with going for Music, then currency and drama. Now finishing on cs.

the AI's tried to be a b**s with no religion spread (hindu spread we talk here) and not good tech trades.
I finally got CoL from Music and some other couple techs (IW, Monarchy and maybe some more small ones). Self teched Meditation for Philo bulb.

Since I got CoL and hindu spread at the right time and the situation seemed good to pop GA, I used Music's GA for golden age. I admit I wasn't that prepared with city sizes so i got only 1 GS from south east city and capital will get another one close after finishing GA.
Now start the complications though.

I have still 3 turns of GA, next turn i finish CS (I could delay it though). I have somewhat reasonable trade situation, with HC evidentely going for MoM (he already built Sistine Chapel so let have him his wonder spam fun).

I am not sure which civics choose on the end of GA and if I should milk CS for next turn or delay it.
Which tech trades would you do now? Calendar from Dutches will be good choice, can probably trade with Drama for it and get from HC some gold for drama.

I didn't start building theaters anywhere. I have already 3 religions (actually 4, because I got christianity out of nowhere) so if I invest some hammers into missionaries and temples... but it seems a bit complicated since hammers are scarce. So I would "need' slavery for boosting production...
I got hindu in 'wrong' city with almost no hammers. I still lack Workshops to start milking hammer economy so I am a bit in transition phase.

So to close somewhat the question:

Civics - Slavery or Caste?
Techs - go for workshops to boost hammers in low prod cities? or go Lib line with edu as prime target?

screens

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[AbsoluteZero]

@vranasm

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Are you talking about milking bureaucracy? I don't see any reason to not switch to bureaucracy if you are in a golden age and not needing vassalage. But keep in mind bureau only helps with a large commerce or hammer base in your capitol. In this game you probably have neither, so I wouldn't be too exited about bureau. At the point where you are I am usually in monarchy / bureau / slavery / OR and building lots of stuff. Too early for caste unless your running lots of specialists. Hammer Econ must at least wait for guilds IMO.

Played to 1560 AD. Specialist economy without foreign trade routes is kinda sucky.

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IW to chop away the jungles from my gem mines.

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whipped tons of workers now that I am no longer striking

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after iron its math

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then calendar

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then CS for bureau and to spread irrigation.

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At this point I'm confident enough about my finances to finish colonizing my continent. I whip troops and set out to conquer barb-land.

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longbow barbs!

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I do some cottage smashing for money

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I start throwing down some more cities. I want to colonize every inch of this continent to keep the AI's from settling anywhere when they find me.

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I switch to caste / bureau to pop some great people for a golden age or two.

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I golden age and run lots of specialists in my cities hoping to milk another few golden ages.

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I go philo and meet some axe barbs

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I burn 2 more GP for another golden age and take one barb city that was only defended by 1 axe.

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meet pericles

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not that advanced. The AI's haven't been trading much which is great.

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I get education. This was actually a mistake as maintenance costs prevented me from actually doing any research for quite a while. Should have gone astro.

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I assume the lib race is long lost so I just get some trades out of edu

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Meet charly

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I switch to no religion and do some deals with Charly. This pisses off Pericles a bunch for some strange reason, even though I did an even trade ( or maybe I don't understand how that works ).

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Thankfully pericles trades tech at annoyed.

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Using cats I finally take the barb city.

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I have the whole continent settled. 23 cities total. If I can get another golden age I will be researching like a beast.

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I never knew you could get fail gold for a missionary. Very interesting. I wonder if there are any situations where that could be useful.

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My economy takes another dive as I get all those new cities online.

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Meet saladin vassal of toku.

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This was probably not a good trade but I need to get to astro bad.

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Nothing I can do with Toku. He's tech leader this game, heh.

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The tech situation.

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Toku gets lib at 1540, heh.

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Heres where I left off. Toku got astro a few turns ago. I think I will make some caravels + mish + spies and convert someone to my religion, if for no other reason then to start some trouble.

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Last save. If anyone has any advice let me know.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Played to 1856AD, not won yet.

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125AD, Dutch declare war on me, they don't get anywhere so I get peace with them. I want to concentrate on economy.

They TWICE more declared on me. This seems somewhat insane, being 5 cities against 17 or so and having a smaller army. I've had a flick through the mechanics for declaring war but regardless - this still seems somewhat mad. I was at cautious most of the time. The only negative on my record was "you declared war on our friend" - oh yeah the one I wiped out 3000 years ago. Get over it!

The last time they declared on me, I resolved to wipe them out which I did in 1850AD. I would've been much better off getting a decent army together earlier & smashing them to bits, they only had 5 cities for goodness sake. Economy was not going well as they had Statue of Zeus (+50% war weariness for enemy), had -7 war weariness and -6 emancipation unhappiness. When the war ended my bpt shot up from 950 to 1300 as all those angry citizens went back to being specialists.

Outside of war, I settled the rubbish 4-square island near their continent, and also managed to fully colonise the large-ish island with 5 cities. Tried to build versailles there at a brand new city but failed by 9 turns, so built forbidden palace there instead. Those cities are just about becoming useful now. Didn't build as much on my home continent as the previous poster, probably had some 30 or so squares that weren't covered by any cities.

Spent so much time building infrastructure to deal with war unhappiness. Another reason that I should've squished them earlier.

Plan for economy was to found taoism & shrine it but I missed out by ONE TURN Dutch founded Christianity so when I (finally) got that recently I shrined it - also founded sid's sushi there recently. Once bank & wall street get built the economy will go into overdrive.

On the other continent, Charlie has vassalised everyone. I have free religion to stay on their good sides, though I could switch to Hinduism to get happy with him.

I am winning the science race but not by too much (I have assembly line and no-one else has steam power for example). Glad of this especially considering my perilous state at 1AD and the near complete lack of trades (gained maybe 6 techs?). My general feeling is someone should be further ahead. Never me Pericles before - strikes me as a tech monster, is this right? He has 6 or 7 cities but is often the first to a new tech.

Plan is get the UB out (only 2 techs away) and go for spaceship. I think it's a great help for spaceship victories - with representation it's a lab with more than 18 extra beakers included.

Got specialists coming out of my ears at the mo. Spreading sushi & getting eiffel tower/rock'n'roll etc at the moment to move the economy up to the next league. Really need to pump out infantry too incase anyone gets any funny ideas about invading me.

The computer auto-assigning specialists bugs me sometimes. I keep having to check cities. No I really don't want spy specialists in my Oxford + academy city!

 

[vranasm]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

Are you talking about milking bureaucracy? I don't see any reason to not switch to bureaucracy if you are in a golden age and not needing vassalage. But keep in mind bureau only helps with a large commerce or hammer base in your capitol. In this game you probably have neither, so I wouldn't be too exited about bureau. At the point where you are I am usually in monarchy / bureau / slavery / OR and building lots of stuff. Too early for caste unless your running lots of specialists. Hammer Econ must at least wait for guilds IMO.

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well not exactly. I plan to switch to bureau (even if it will not be that big boost as usually, but with some foreign trade routes with GLH going and eventually some hammers from mines it will be good).

My question aimed more to the slavery or caste. I have representation and there is a lot of food around in south-south west.

So was thinking about making everywhere scientists where possible, but would like some infra first (like for example granaries at least, libraries would be great too) and for that it would be better to be in slavery.

Slavery could help with spreading religions, because I have access to 4 of them and need to spread everywhere everything, well at least hindu would be great at start.

As it seems going slavery will be better and after I whip enough of infra and missionaries (and temples) I can switch to caste. In the meantime I can work on the guilds from trades and lib line.
Dunno if switching to HR would be good? as I said I have access to rep, going HR could stall my progress a lot, with me whipping everywhere everything.

 

[vranasm]

@WelshGandalf

there is one small trick I use when battling governor and his assignments of specialists. When you go into the city and click once (and only once) on type of specialist you set priority for that type of spec.
If you want to adjust minimum amount of specs that way you can too (with clicking further).

I use BUG though, so am not that sure if it is a feature of that mod or function of the game.

 

[vranasm]

played to 1030AD and need help.

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As advertised I switched to slavery with bureau and OR and big rounds of whips started. I expected Dutches to build AP, so knew that I need to spread hindu around a lot and whip temples and monasteries. which I kind of managed in most cities (maybe I overlooked 1 or 2).

Capital got Hindu Mandir on top of temple and monastery.

I don't understand why people say that getting great engineers is tough... I got this game at this point 3rd one! First was used for GLH, second I used for university of sankore (with that many temples+monasteries it seemed logical). Now I am setting on another one and a bit clueless what to do with him.
One option would be to slowtech Lib (14turns from now on) and get TM and use the GE on TM.

I started to build workshops around even if I know they are subpar until guilds x chemistry.
My ultimate target is cuir war against HC and Dutches somewhere "soon".
After the big whipping I did in last 30T+- I think I will switch slowly to building wealth and bpt should pickup.

I am in an unfortune situation in tech trades screen :-(, HC went into WFYABTA and I have only dutches. I would liked to get Feud and guilds, but with edu as the only trade bait and only one partner it doesnt seem viable, maybe will have to slowtech it after lib->nat. Will depend a lot on bpts.

So what people think about the situation?

Oh I have there 2 screens of capital, one with scientists only and the other with a lot of specs mixed for reasonable time of next GP.

screens

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[WelshGandalf]

@vranasm

Thanks for the specialist tip! I don't have BUG on the current game but will make sure to ouse it & your tip in future.

Regarding the question of when to switch from slavery to caste system, I asked that earlier in the thread, I got an interesting response in post 35.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Finished, 1949 space victory, about 15-20 turns ahead of the computer players. Lots I could improve on.

My science city at the end was running 19 scientists (15 normal & 4 bonus ones) & 10 settled super-specialists.... possibly overkill but it was fun. It was producing over 700 of my total 3,000 beakers a turn.