Sengir01 - Spying with a vengeance

[Sengir]

Nice set sturick, I love the sight of the espionagepoints

I agree with signs on cities to make their specialization clear, I find it really helps in SGs (solo games as well, but to a lesser extent) as it means you don't have to check back to remember what each city is supposed to be doing.

Will look at the save later tonight.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Looks like a nice set sturick. (Congrats to you and Whosit on the acK W too!)

 

[Whosit]

As they say, a "solid set, sturick." Mmm, alliteration.

Your build orders look good to me, a balance between infrastructure/EPs (courthouses), and military. With such an active group of neighbors, we definitely don't want to fall behind there.

I've opened the save, and I noticed that we can see into many cities. Alex is busy building several spies, so should we keep a few spies stationed in our territory for counter-intelligence? Also, Ragnar is building the SoZ in Nidaros. Not a huge deal, but should we consider sabotaging it before it's finished? Wang Kon seems to be desperately trying to make up for all the cities that he's lost. Gilgy is a few turns away from the MoM. Oh well.

Actually, if we can scrape a heap of catapults together, I think we can clean the board with Ragnar if we attack soonish.

Oh, yes, Frankfurt. I envisioned this place as a GP farm. At this time, it can run a total of 4 Specialists (we'll need more specialist buildings, of course). Maybe 5 or 6 if we turn the hammer producers into specialists when it doesn't need to build anything more.

Cologne is full cottages, though Essen is another candidate for a GP farm, I was just under the impression that we would cottage it over as well. Essen wouldn't reach it's full food capacity until Civil Service, though.

Couple notes. Some workers building a road on Dyes outside of Essen's culture. The road will be done long before the culture expands, so maybe not the best use of worker turns. There are also some workers that appear to be sleeping just north of Munich. At Stuttgart, none of the workers are doing anything wrong, and the forest chop outside culture seems properly timed, it would just have been my style to combine the workers on single jobs to get those done faster. On second look, all the jobs will be done by the time the town grows, it looks like.

After the settler is done in Frankfurt, let's put in a Library and some Temples because Saladin seems to be surrounding it. Maybe we can culture squash Anjar, or at least prevent it from stealing tiles from Frankfurt, which it seems to be in the process of doing.

Dortmund will probably end up working the sheep and both grass farms, work the silver, iron, and plains hill, then stagnate on the plains forest. It should end up with enough hammers to produce, what, units? Ligurian, it'll have some trouble until the wheat gets farmed (and hopefully irrigated some day). Did we talk about leaving the forests for a National Park in the dark, misty future? I can see only one way to irrigate that wheat without cutting down a Ligurian forest: We'll have to irrigate from the south of Hamburg, and cut down that forest.

OK, probably enough commenting from me.

Oh, no, wait. Lots of our neighbors have cash. Why don't we sell off Currency, as many are close to teching it. Gilgamesh won't give us much for it, maybe we can find another way to separate him from his treasury.

@Norvin: And thanks regarding aCK!

 

[Meiz]

Ok, I'm finally back and got it. I must say our empire looks a bit different from the last time I played

Looks like a set for finishing courthouses and continue to build us a bigger army. I'll also gift Currency to Wang and hope that he chooses a better tech next.

I like the idea of sabotaging Ragnar's attempts to build SoZ. That would be a real pain in the ass...

 

[Norvin_Green]

Just curious (as I can't look at the save right now) but are we allowed to run specialists? Or have a GP farm?

 

[nocho]

I'm not very worried about the SoZ. Ragnar is still 21 turns away from it and even if he has it when we attack I'd head straight for Nidaros bypassing Uppsala as it is walled and on a hill. Nidaros has walls as well but is on flat grass.

Just curious (as I can't look at the save right now) but are we allowed to run specialists? Or have a GP farm?

Of course we are! At least Sengir said so, though we should hire spies before scientists or other specialists. I would make Frankfurt a GP farm, so would build library and maybe market there next.

 

[Sengir]

I'm not worried about the SoZ either, but I think it fits in the game to sabotage it rather then conquer it (though it might come back to bite us if/when someone else builds it).

GP farm is allowed, as long as Courthouse is build first (and spy specialist assigned at all times).

 

[Meiz]

Preturn

Sell Currency to Wang for 60 gold, and hope that he chooses a better tech next...

Turn 1

...nope, Wang starts to research Calendar so I'll gift that one as well. At least we got +4 attitude from fair trades.

Note: Newly built settler is put to sleep in our capital, as there is no real city spots available for now.

Turn 2

Both Alex and Ragnar get Mononotheism for a total of 330 gold. Time to increase the EP slider.

Turn 3

Gilgamesh builds MoM.

Turn 4

Gilgamesh makes peace with Gandhi. We sell CoL to Gandhi for 150 gold and he starts to research Philosophy, which is of course a good choise for us . I can only spare one spy for him now.

Turn 7

We steal Metal Casting from Alex. Like taking a candy from a (ill-tempered) child

Turn 8

Alex makes peace with Montezuma while our palace is finally moved to Cologne. Now it's time to pray for CS so we can get some real benefit from this.

Turn 9

Hinduism spreads in Dortmund but I see no reason to convert.

Turn 10

Wang sends us wine for one of our dyes. The German people become a bit happier, but grumble something about the good old beer.

Turn 16

Here I am whistling and cruising through our empire when this ugly bearded guy comes knocking.

And the bastard steals one of our workers! . We kill the attackers, but manage to sacrifice couple of units to RNG god. At least we get a GG out of it. Ragnar looks to be quite pissed and it doesn't get any better for him when Gandhi completes SoZ on the same turn.

Turn 17

I'll stop here to even the turns. But not without easily capturing Nidaros after a succesfull city revolt.

Ragnar has a lot of spears in Birka, not sure what's he's going to do with them . Well, Ligurian is only defended by a single swordman (with city raider promotions, I just noticed), so we might want to replace him with some longbows.

Ragnar is building some horse archers so we could probably use a couple of more spears. Chariots will also come in handy against his axemen. And we also need... ah hell, we need much about everything!

I left our GG and a chariot in the same tile. I think the best option is to create a super medic as we already have a lot of injured units.

Oh, and I traded Metal Casting to Saladin for 200 gold as he was about to complete it. We have a healthy sum of gold in our bank.

And finally, a picture of our espionage screen:

We are concentrating on Gandhi (Philosophy in 2 turns) and Alex (Machinery in 8 turns). Hammurabi is also getting CS in 8 turns, but we already have almost 1000 EP's on him. Spies are stationed or on the way, but we could sure use a more of them.

Btw. Alex and Saladin have enough on their hands, but I doubt we will be the target.

Have fun and make the bearded fellow cry! (Funny how I've said the excactly same phrase in two other SG's, somehow it's always Ragnar causing trouble ).

 

[nocho]

So mr ZZ Top declared on us, huh? Well, that at least saves us diplo penalties!

With his little size 3 and 4 cities he hopes to overtake big brother Germany, well, let's crush him completely then, especially now he has missed out on SoZ as well. Let's go full military mode, if that's not the case already. Super medic sounds good btw.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Much earlier in the thread someone mentioned that it is a shame that we can't research Communism for the free GSpy. I'll admit to being horrible at the whole lightbulbing thing but in looking at the GP tech preference chart I'm wondering if we could possibly bulb it. In order to bulb it we would have to possess Scientific Method and Liberalism and have a GS, GA or GE for the bulb. I'm not sure which GPerson would be better suited and more importantly if one GP would be enough to bulb the whole thing either. Figured I would throw it out there for more competent minds than myself to discuss.

 

[Sengir]

I think we'd need 2 GS for that bulb, or more for the others.

 

[sturick]

Good set Meiz!
I like the tech selling to net us a little extra cash.

We have three good tech steals coming up in the next few turns.

Gandhi-Philo in 2 turns
Alex-Machinery in 8
Hammy-Civil Service in 8

Next player should be sending spies for those techs.

Also we will need more cats for collateral damage in our assault on Ragnar...well I think Meiz said it all when he commented that we still need alot.
Since Rags declared on us we weren't quite ready to attack...no big though he should be pretty easy pickings for us.

Plus we have a Great Spy due in 2 turns.
Where should he go?
Not really any prime locations...maybe Berlin or Essen???

 

[Meiz]

Much earlier in the thread someone mentioned that it is a shame that we can't research Communism for the free GSpy. I'll admit to being horrible at the whole lightbulbing thing but in looking at the GP tech preference chart I'm wondering if we could possibly bulb it.

Well the variant unfortunately says "We can only bulb/start research on techs that aren't researched allready (as far as we can know)."

We have three good tech steals coming up in the next few turns.

Gandhi-Philo in 2 turns
Alex-Machinery in 8
Hammy-Civil Service in 8

Next player should be sending spies for those techs.

We have spies on the way or stationed, but unfortunately not enough to send two for everyone. So if our spies fail, it will cost us time.

Plus we have a Great Spy due in 2 turns.
Where should he go?
Not really any prime locations...maybe Berlin or Essen???

Munich has the second highest EP's and is working nice amount of cottages.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Well the variant unfortunately says "We can only bulb/start research on techs that aren't researched allready (as far as we can know)."

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the variant but wouldn't that allow us to bulb Communism so that we are first?

 

[Meiz]

Well the variant unfortunately says "We can only bulb/start research on techs that aren't researched allready (as far as we can know)."

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the variant but wouldn't that allow us to bulb Communism so that we are first?

Oh, you're absolutely right. My bad.

 

[Whosit]

Regarding the emerging Great Spy, I think that I'm seconding Meiz on another Scotland Yard? If Munich is putting out enough EPs now that the 100% bonus from a new Yard outweighs doubling the bonus from embedding the Spy in Cologne, then let's make a new S.Y.

Sengir's up next, so good luck building up our military and crushing Ragnar!

 

[Sengir]

Hmm, didnt notice I was up. Got it for tomorrow.

 

[sturick]

I blame lack of coffee on my Scotland Yard question.
I thought we already had Scotland Yards in Cologne and Munich...that is why I was promoting Berlin or Essen.

Scotland Yard in Munich 100%!!!
Sorry for the confusion.

 

[nocho]

Indeed, SY in Munich!

Regarding communism, we can partly bulb it and maybe research the rest. By that time we could have representation, if some AI is friendly enough to research constitution on time. As I understood the rules, we can adopt representation, just not through the mids. If we have enough specialists (which probably we'll have, by then we'll have expanded by force quite a bit I suspect, so enough places with spy specialists and probably some scientists here and there as well) research at 0% science slider could be high enough to self research the rest of communism.

In fact I did an offline spy game with Roosevelt where I did build the mids and took representation from the beginning and managed to research half the techs myself, so it's definitely doable with representation. Only question is whether we find that too cheesy...

 

[Norvin_Green]

Oh, you're absolutely right. My bad.

No problem, I just wanted to understand. If we decide to try it then I would think that we should have to bulb the whole thing or by running specialists per nocho's post.