SGOTM 02 - Rat Pack

[ThERat]

I got us drama and traded for feudalism already, we are getting engineering in 4, then guilds/gunpowder etc...

As it turns out, Bismarck has some value for trading, so going after Hatty is good for a start.
I suggest to not give up our astro monopoly, but once someone has it, we should try and trade with the rest before it spreads by itself. We should make the most out of it, example get them to fight each other etc.

I founded Kagoshima already, it's neither where Till suggested nor where hamfist said. I put it on the hill SW of the sheep to work sheep and horses and be able to work 2 hills in the south. There are lots of forests which we can work for more shields. Any city we found from now on should be in terms of shields not commerce. We have too many commerce city already.

I agree on whipping galleons, we need them for transport and to cover our resources on the Island cities.

 

[hamfist]

Are we running Vassalage yet?

 

[hamfist]

I suggest to not give up our astro monopoly, but once someone has it, we should try and trade with the rest before it spreads by itself.

Astronomy is one of the first high value techs that the AI doesn't normally trade with other AI. I would expect the spread of Astronomy to be quite slow. It may be to our advantage to never trade it. War Extortion should be plenty to keep up tech with. If an AI gets Astronomy, that just moves them farther up on our *hit list.

 

[ThERat]

Are we running Vassalage yet?

I don't think we should (ever). Slavery and whipping is the one civic that is unbalanced and stands out as too powerful. Why should we not use it?
New cities can whip courts and whatnot, our sea cities can whip a navy. I don't see any reason why we should stop that.
I doubt we gain that much for the few cities that could run more specialists (and with a market our capital runs with 4 of them already)

 

[Tatran]

Our relations have been improved, but the AIs are still unwilling
to start any wars or to stop trading among each other.

Here's my plan.
Mao is the smallest fish, he has only 5 cities.
We can go after him first and extort techs ASAP.
After that we can ship our units over to Egypt.
With Mao's techs we can bring Kublai Khan and Bismarck
in to play.Both are willing to start a war, but
we need something to bribe them.Both are behind in tech,
so let's keep them as 'friends' as long as we need them.
The Incas and Mali are running away in tech and power.
Huayna Capac is unwilling to start any war, but Mansa Musa
will start any if we bribe him. I tend to give him Astronomy,
as soon as one of the other AIs got it, for a war against the Incas.
Kublai Khan and Bismarck will go to war with China, Egypt and Mali.


Pre-turn
Mali,the Mongols and Incas have knights.All civs won't give us anything for free.This should change.
To build the globe theatre in Madrid, we need 6 theatres.Set 5 cities to build one.
Madrid will be building number 6.
I see a lot cottage spam.I thought some people were cured after the Mutineer games.
In this game I prefer watermills/farms over cottages on river tiles.

1274 AD (4)
Engineering is in, start to research Guilds.

IBT 1274 AD
Huayna Capac changes to free market.

1298 AD (8)
The AIs have a lot of settlers waiting.

1316 AD (11)
Guilds is in, start to research Gunpowder.No one else has it.
Well, this is very annoying.

Huayna Capac is a huge problem.I'm afraid when he gets Astronomy we will be his target.
All AIs are his closest friends.We should ship over some missionaries, so he changes
to free religion to break the bond between him and Mansa Musa.

1322 AD (12)
Astronomy is known by Hatshepsut.
Mao has some trade techs, but he's annoyed even after giving him WM + claims +60 gold.
This is too bad. Now we can only make some crappy deals for Astronomy + some AI wars.
Philosophy and Paper are the techs leading to the more expensive techs like Nationalism
and Education.Trading for Philosophy + Paper doesn't mean the AI will trade for Nationalism
and/or Education.
Also the next turn we will get a Great Person, a scientist (83%) or merchant.
A Great Merchant will lightbulb Banking.
A Great Scientist will go for 1) Philosophy and 2)Paper.
With Paper, Education will be the lightbulbed tech.

Ok,I made this deal first and F4 revealed that Huayna is the only one with Education.

This is the second deal.Mansa had only Theology and Banking for trade.

Now, Kublai Khan is also willing to start a war against the Incas, but not for Astronomy.

1328 AD (13)
Alhazen has been born in Tokyo.We can speed up Education.
As I suspected, Huayna won't trade Education.
Kublai Khan doesn't go to war with anyone for Astronomy + Paper.
I accepted the next deal with Bismarck.He won't go to war with Mao.

1334 AD (14)
Kublai Khan still doesn't want to fight anyone.
Rush 2 theatres, so Madrid can start the Globe Theatre after the harbor.

1340 AD (15)
We've got to find a way to get Khan's army busy.
I think I have to review the China plan.
The Incas are ahead in tech, Theology + Education + Banking + Economics.
Mali is second with only Theology and Banking.
Egypt is third with only Theology.

 

[ThERat]

I hope those wars will start to slow them down.

We could attack Inca's by crossing the ocean eastwards from our Island, they are close and can't really threaten our core Island cities.
Should we do that soon?

 

[Tatran]

Mao hates Mansa.
Hatty and Mansa hate Kublai Khan.

Maybe, it isn't such a bad idea to take out the Incas first.
Also if we declare war on them, maybe Kublai will also join
the party.After the Incas we should go after Mali with some
help from the AIs again.

 

[hamfist]

I don't think we should (ever). Slavery and whipping is the one civic that is unbalanced and stands out as too powerful. Why should we not use it?
New cities can whip courts and whatnot, our sea cities can whip a navy. I don't see any reason why we should stop that.
I doubt we gain that much for the few cities that could run more specialists (and with a market our capital runs with 4 of them already)

Vassalage is a Legal civic
Slavery is a Labour Civic

We can run both. I think you were thinking of Serfdom. I'm asking about Vassalage.

 

[hamfist]

Very Interesting turnset. I definitely agree that extra river grassland tiles should be watermills. Cottages are of very limited use in this game. Food and hammers, food and hammers, food and hammers. I can't see the save until later today: Who has the Pyramids? If it's Inca, I'd say that seals the deal as to our first target. Universal Suffrage will allow us to cash rush units. Slavery still seems right. Vassalage should be in.

We've had to do some serious trading, but I think you've done exceptionally there. With a lightbulb towards Education and starting a war with the only other AI with Education, we could conceivably still make a run for Liberalism (I still doubt it's enough). Making a run to Liberalism will cost us any advantage gained from early Chemistry. I still think we can do this by finishing with Grenadiers and Cannons, so Liberalism is not really a key path for us. With a lot of luck and a switch to Research over Unit Production we'd still most likely lose the race. Moving to Cavalry seems like a bad idea anyway, as only our melee and gunpowder units get free Combat I.

Since I can't load the save, I don't know what civics we are running. I think we need Vassalage, and if we haven't switched back to Paganism we should. Why bother paying for a religious civic when we have no state religion?

Before my turn, I'd like to hear more about the following:
1. First war target
2. Liberalism or Chemistry?
3. The right mix to start the war.
4. Civics Mix.

 

[Tatran]

Who has the Pyramids?

Take a guess.

The Great Scientist is still in Tokyo.
We're still running Bureaucracy, but I agree to change to Vassalage
in the near future.It's also better for unit support.
We shouldn't go after Liberalism.The risk is too high we'll lose it
to Huayna Capac.Proceed with the military path.
We definite need pikes, most civs have knights.
So mixture of pikes,samurai,muskets and some medics.
Muskets have strength 9 and will be targeted instead of our samurai.

It's risky to invade the other continent via the Incas, but our relations
will improve with Mali (free market) and the Mongols.If Kublai Khan is
Friendly with us we can clean the east first,Mali + Germany + Egypt,
without worrying about a sneak attack from him.Even Mao can be helpful.
Instead of killing him first we should bring him into play.
Every unit the AIs "trade" with each other is welcome.

 

[ThERat]

looked at the save and have to say, that was brilliant trading here

Sorry, hamfist, I mixed up vassalge and serfdom

ok, Incas have the pyramids, surely our first target
I would switch Madrid to GT now and try and whip asap, so we can whip military without end. we need a few galleons to ship our units from the east coast and I'd say 4 galleons filled are good for a first landing and then go after Inca, raze and pillage for more money and keep the pyramids

Inca's have knights so some pikes are needed, many more catapults to soften (and they are dirt cheap) cities.

I'd say forget liberalism, we need chemistry and grenadiers. We can prolong wars with more lux if necessary, taking out the enemy is important and nothing else
I would also continue to go for steel after chemistry for ironclads to make the Island cities safe from pillaging

 

[ThERat]

Also, we can make use of weaker civs by bribing them, so fighting them first is a waste of time, we really should go for Incas, maybe initially it's harder, but we surely have more benefits long term.
By the way, do we found another city on our east coast, the AI will surely settle there soon with astro now

 

[Tatran]

I don't know why we want the Pyramids.
I prefer to stay in the hereditery rule for fighting unhappiness
and the foreign relations (Kublai Khan,Hatty and Huayna).
If we want to speed up the unit production we can whip, no need for
25% police state bonus.We can fight WW with the culture slider.

 

[hamfist]

I don't know why we want the Pyramids.
I prefer to stay in the hereditery rule for fighting unhappiness
and the foreign relations (Kublai Khan,Hatty and Huayna).
If we want to speed up the unit production we can whip, no need for
25% police state bonus.We can fight WW with the culture slider.

Now that we have Astronomy and have connected all of our resources, happiness doesn't seem to be such an issue. This will become less so as we capture new happiness resources. Once we have eliminated Inca and are on our way over to Egypt, we only have to worry about keeping Kublai Khan happy. We can do that with gifts (even give him some crap city that can easily be retaken once we decide to war on him).

You're right that we don't necessarily need them right now, but being able to cash rush out of a frontline city the moment in comes out of revolt while whipping a courthouse at the same time will be very powerful and could shave precious turns off of our finish date. We could rush on 2 turns in sequence, once for a building or defender, and again on the next turn for an offensive unit (replacing a suicide cat, for example). Units don't have to be shipped anywhere, as they appear close to the front, etc.

If we find that we are falling behind on tech even with extortion, we could even take Representation for a while to make our specialists tech better. Though not a 'must have' item for winning this game, having the versatility of all Government civics makes the Pyramids a significant bonus of defeating the Inca. The Inca are probably have their tech lead because of the Pyramids. Taking the Pyramids away from Inca will stop their tech advance.

 

[hamfist]

Has anyone here used a Galleon Chain? If so, could the setup and use be explained? I've heard that it works in the following way, but have never tested it:

1. Load units onto Galleon, move Galleon one turn towards destination.
2. On the next turn, you can move them Galleon to Galleon as often as you want during the turn, allowing you to complete the rest of the chain in 1 turn. Move the first Galleon back to the head of the chain and repeat.

This allows up to 3 units per turn to be arriving to the front and only a 2 turn delay from embarktion point to destination.

 

[hamfist]

All of our forces seem to be lined up for an attack on Egypt. Is it more important to get a war, any war, started? Or is it more important to attack HC?

I'm in pre-turn atm, and want confirmation on the first target.

 

[Tatran]

Is it more important to get a war, any war, started? Or is it more important to attack HC?

No.We need a good prepared invasion force when we go after Huayna.
Once we declared war we should contact Kublai Khan to see if he's ready
to jump in.The Egypt-Germany war is not our business.
We also should work on our relation with Mao.
I don't like the idea to switch to any other government.
I'd like to see Kublai Khan Friendly, so he will go to war for us until
we don't need him anymore.Means Incas,Mali,Germany and Egypt are
gone and he is next on the list or Mao.

 

[hamfist]

Ok. I'll move the forces to the East Coast in Preparation for attack and keep building up our forces. I won't be switching Government anytime soon. If Khan asks for any tech help, I give in. I'm not sure if we have any resource agreements with him, but will gift him a health if need be.

 

[hamfist]

It looks like the hill to the east of Vilcas would be a good landing point. We can raze Vilcas, move one step east and take Tiwanaku. Tiwanaku has the Great Lighthouse, and would probably be a 'keeper city'. A good place to do some Grenadier Upgrades, I think.

 

[ThERat]

It looks like the hill to the east of Vilcas would be a good landing point. We can raze Vilcas, move one step east and take Tiwanaku. Tiwanaku has the Great Lighthouse, and would probably be a 'keeper city'. A good place to do some Grenadier Upgrades, I think.

sounds like a good plan to me, that is what I was thinking as well.

By the way, can we cancel those forge builds in the Island cities. I don't think they will help a lot. I rather we have more galleons.

And maybe we can get out a settler for the east coast, I could see us building a city there claiming the fish and corn for some production capability. Also, Barcelona should build cash builds like a market, grocer and bank since it has a shrine