SGOTM 02 - VQ Black

[namliaM]

First on a game note,

I noticed that Edo doesnt have a Barracks yet... We want that I think before we continue anything that looks like a unit in there...

Did anyone notice how small Mansa is? Just 2 maybe 3 cities....

edit: And a warning: My next post(s) are rather large...

 

[namliaM]

OK well... Uhm... dont know what to say here... I am feeling well uhm... Not so good right now... Let me try and respond to Cosmichails first post...

Ok guys I not finding this fun anymore.
When I played last night most cities were busy with NamliaM's set of turns building forges or whatever and had things queued so the only real input I had was building some samurais in Osaka. Rather than having some individual/team input I was just following what NamliaM wanted.

No fun = no good. Did I que that much? I dont recall, if so I am sorry. Ques offcourse can be changed... I do tend to que and will attempt to lower the queing a bit/a lot.

Also contradictions too like don't get calender then the very person that stated this goes ahead and trades for it????????

Yes looking back Calander trade was somewhat over done and over rushed, we could easily have run 0% science for a while and cought up in Astronomy later. And yes I spoke up we needed to not have it... Bad mistake....

Now we have to fire the scientists in Osaka and build Heroic Epic there which will not allow us to build either Oxford or Wall street.

This is important right here!!
Oxford needs:
Paper (1345)=> Education (4036) = 5381 beakers
6 Universities @ 300 hammers each = 1800 hammers
600 hammers to build Oxford
Total of 2400 hammers (or 24! Samurais)
Wall Street needs:
Guilds, but we need that for Gunpowder anyway... So dont count that...
Banking (1569) => Economics (3139) => Corporation (3588) = 8296 beakers
6 banks @ 300 hammers
900 hammers to build Wall streeet
Total of 2700 hammers (or 27! Samurai)

Just to build the stuff we "lose out" on 51! Samurai. FIFTY ONE samurai that is not taking into account the amount of beakers.
Our goal is Conquest not Space...

The extra units we are amassing is costing us. All this whipping in BT is stunting the pop which if it grew to max would be working a lot of commerce tiles improving science overall. I think 10 cats is enough whilst we have a financial problem which only worsens by building more units.

Yes we are investing greatly.... First off one can NEVER have to many catapults as long as we can pay for them (if need be at 0% science)....

On BT, it has a natural cap of 5 pop... 5 ! we dont get anymore productive people...
Kyoto can work the 4 "big coastal tiles" and run a scientist or Engineer and still have +14 food! Lets asume we run an engineer ...
It will bring us 8 beakers, 8gpt, 4 hammers.
A catapult is 60 hammers, ideally we want to whip at say 12 hammers... Thats 3 turns. So on turn 4 we whip (+1 ) the catapult netting 90 hammers, 48 go into the Catapult (+1 ), 42 overflow into something else. An Archer (37 hammers) for example (+1 ). Now the cap isnt 5 anymore its 6 and we got 2 more units...
We spend 5 turns on that cicle... 5*14 food = 70 food, to grow from size 5 to size 6 one needs 45 food (without a granary which we have !)
5=>6 = 25 food?
6=>7 = 30 food? total 55
-1 for the whip = size 6
Now at size 6 rince and repeat... except now we can either work a coastal tile (+2 commerce) or run a scientist (-2 food for +3 Beakers and +3 GPP)
Due to this process we allready have +8 and +4 or a net of +4 in Kyoto even with the whip angre in place which will be of no importance once we get Astronomy, since we get the happy resources from Hokkiado.... at which point we need to check where we are...
Even if it means at one point Kyoto becomes all angry at some point...

Or we can stay at size 5 slowly produce some buildings (which are not going to kill anyone=> Conquest?) Running an engineer and 2 scientists which will get Kyoto to 13 beakers, 6 gpt, 4 hammers,
That is allready including a Library, maybe we can add 1gpt for a market.

So in all of 5 turns we can choose between:
65 beakers, 30 gold, 20 hammers, 20 food (roughly growing from 5 to 6, and 1 whip now again at size 5)
or
Lets asume we work coastal tiles over running a scientist for now...
40 beakers, 40 gold, 20 hammers, 70 food (Roughly growing 5 to 6 to 7, and 1 whip)

So we trade 15 beakers for 10 gold and +1 pop in Kyoto. That +1 pop can now be a scientist and add 3 beakers in those 5 turns again. Adding 15 beakers. Now we are even on beakers, but still +10 gold and +1 pop again.
I dont see the issue?!

One minute we need Astronomy quick and the next we are to take actions that just slow it down. Two scientists add more than 6 beakers with multipliers of library/bureaucracy.
As to the scientist in Kyoto I didn't put them there and NamliaM you stated yourself that we should keep at least one engineer/scientist there. So now we fire four scientist. 4x3=12 beakers and with multipliers more. So Astro goes from 22 turns back to like 28.

The 2 scientists in Osaka actually produce 11 beakers, putting them to work on the Cottage (2f1c at the moment) and the Plains hill (4 hammers) just makes more sence to me.
The food will make Osaka grow (more cottages/mines to work) and we can use the hammers too... Osaka still has 5 pop able to grow.

Workshops are useless until we get guilds which is like 30 turns or more away. (even then plains forest provides the same) Now we are going to whip Barcelona/Madrid (PS Toledo was razed so maybe you mean Cordoba) now too again stunting population which again takes away from working commerce tiles and improving science. Workshops will have 1f2h with guilds and with Chemistry 1f3h. Then with state property 2f3h.

While I conseed that workshops are less effective... Still without guilds they add a hammer, where a cottage adds a coin. With guilds 2 hammers. From Astronomy I am sure we can trade for guilds and Engineering.
Also a plains forest is slight less good. 2 plains forest produce 2 food 4 hammers. 1 farmed Plains and a Workshop plains = 2 food 4 hammers. The same... But you get the hammers from the chop, which makes replacing them slightly better.
Yes I meant Cordoba, sorry for the mix up...

When I saw all those forges I realized that was the intent on whipping everywhere. I learned in this game pop is everything and if you get your cities to max allowable pop you get a lot of science/commerce from it. Whipping just slows that down and does hurt eventually.

No it will not IMHO, more later....

I also pointed that Mao has Astronomy so he is likely to come settling on our land. Did anybody notice that? Not that long ago we were talking about filling up our continent.

Yes I definatly noticed...
There are not that many great spots left anyway, I think we need 1 maybe 2 more "usefull" cities on Hokkiado
1 between the sheep and Wheet, the other south near the copper.
The rest is crap land, let the AI settle it for them thats high upkeep (untill we take it from them) Offcourse we want the Barb city soon too... A pitty we couldnt take it before Spain come around the corner.... so that makes 2 settlers in my book.

I agree that missionaries are good for helping wealth and it's really the only thing I concur with.

Actually we dont need to many of them either. Maybe a few to beef up Cordoba (see I learn) a bit and possibly benifit from Theocracy, but we need Samurais and Guns and lots of them.

If you want a fast victory by the whipping method well just look at our science now. IT SUCKS. Madrid could be a powerhouse commerce/science city and likewise for Seville/Barcelona/Cordoba.

Yep science isnt great, but we DO NOT need it to be great. We want things that kill, not things that stand and do nothing.
Conquer a single city thats +100 gold... That is a lot of turns working a cottage. Lets assume we are working a Town tho (it takes 15 + 30 + 60 = 105 turns for a cottage to grow into a Town!) ... @5 coins (with Printing press) thats 20 turns... (not counting library and such)
Except after conquering a city we can go on to the next and get another 100 gold, say every 10 turns?
All because we whip that 1 pop which would otherwise work the cottage/town.

BIG cities mean BIG commerce/science. Producing units right now will just worsen science and that needs to be addressed. We are falling behind and only one we can trade with is KK. I traded Philo for Drama to get the max out of it. I felt in the beginning we were heading the right direction but now I think we are slowing down. Researching Astronomy right now only hurts us and won't be much of a trade tech with Mao having it already. Bismarck tends to be friends with everybody so that Astro will be traded. Now I haven't looked at the relationship so I could be wrong about that. Huyana has Guilds but won't trade it.

BIG commerce/science => WHO NEEDS IT? Like I posted in post #321 (altered for current state)
Well what is our goal? Conquest right? Right...
What do we need?
- Catapults (we have)
- Samurais (we have)
- Galleons (we have, in ~30 turns)

1st Optional:
- Grenadiers (Chemistry & Engineering )

2nd Optional:
- Knights (Guilds)
- Cavs (MT & Gunpowder)

3rd optional:
- Cannons (Steel)

Any research beyond that... is simply not needed. If it is, we lost the chance for the Ribon anyway.

A more detailed thing about beaker cost and stuff... is here in #328
I think we should beeline Chemistry and Steel... But... hey... thats just me... but its concentrating our resources in 1 spot. Samurais => Grenadiers and Catapults => Cannons. Where MT would offcourse be Knight => Cav...

What I feel we need to do:
Improve science/commerce so we can get Astronomy out of the way and get to guilds/banking to improve our finances.

No we dont, IMHO, war will improve our finances... Less units (we lose some offcourse) and lots of gold... Banking costs 1569 beakers and 300 hammers for each bank... That IMHO is a good way to "waste" good resources that could be spend on warring and/or warring techs.
Gunpowder = 2691 beakers. We could be ~60% thru Gunpowder instead of researching banking. That means we are that much closer to Grenadiers...
CR3 Grenadiers cause a lot of damage....

Stop building units for now and get our financial house in order. We won't be able to support a large army with these finances. 40/50% science is too low and should be at 70% at least. I would have loved to build missionaries but again "it's build lots of samurais, whip catapults and who cares if we have 3 crappy cities" Those crappy cities could be offering a lot of commerce at their max pop. If we don't want Mao on our land we need to build settlers.

While 40/50% is not great, it will do... because as I said above we dont need much more beakers. Or by the time we get it up to 70% we will be into the 2000ad allready...
It takes a cottage 45 turns just to grow from a cottage (1coin) to a village (3coins) thats a loooong time.... for "little" gain.
Re: 3 crappy cities, see my "thing" above about Kyoto.

So what's it going to be:
Build settlers or build missionaries or build military units. Troops are near barb city so that can be taken soon. We may need another 3 settlers to fill up the continent which will only push us deeper into debt. Having Kyoto/Edo with max pop working many commerce tiles will help alleviate that. Madrid/Barcelona/Seville/Cordoba likewise. Tokyo can only work so many tiles (other cities too) so just build what we need and move on to the next city and build what we need.

Kyoto and Edo at max pop... hmz... Lets see... assuming we have the luxes and infinate happy...
Kyoto would be size 20, 8*2 + 12*1 + 1= 29 base commerce. Or lets assume we work the 4 big ones and run 16 (which we cannot) scientist:
4*2 + 1 + 16 * 3 = 9 commerce and 48 beakers. Nice enough.. but those are beakers... Beakers dont kill, OK having a scientific edge on the opponent helps. But that aint gonna happen. Therefor we need Catapults and Samurais and lots of them. Later upgrade them to Grenadiers.
A beeline to Grenadiers = ~11000 beakers not accounting for any trading. At 114 beakers a turn thats a 100 turns, I know thats a lot. but take into account ...
Hopefully we can trade for Engineering and Guilds that leaves about 6700 beakers or 60 turns, better right? Now take into account we will earn booty from the capture of cities.... that would easy bring it down to 40-50 turns maybe... BUT we need units to do that.
We have to go down (build units = lower tech) to go up (booty)...

I was really enjoying this game but now feel like I am only playing NamliaM's SP turns. I am being truthful about how I feel and this is a team effort.

This is not good. Again my reall apologies for this. Like I said allready above... I tend to que and should do that.
On the other hand about techs/buildings/national wonders I feel verry strongly we are mostly done. We just need to produce units now and lots of them. We lack hills on Hokkiado to add Hammers, we have LOTS of food in BT and Barca and Madrid. The whip is our only big producer of hammers and (again) IMHO we dont need much/any more techs.

I don't use whipping a lot as I like to grow the cities to their max and then consider whipping if they exceed that. Kyoto is at 10 cap now which never gets past 6 those 4 extra citizens would produce 8Coins more and help with our research. Why not have a GP farm in Kyoto and pop scientists.

10 cap? NO... Check again... 5 natural cap (till Astro) if the cap is higher it is due to the units that we whipped....
1 whip = 2 happy faces... So we gain a happy every whip...
Down to the Nitty gritty. Yes assume we could have 4 more pop, gaining 8 coins/gold. Now we have 10 Catapults which when complemented by a few LBs can take down Mansa earning us 200 gold for 2 cities (if he has 2 cities, more if he has more cities) thats 25 turns of running 4 more pop.
But from there we now have a base to start on the next AI (the one with the pyramids?). I repeat, but the goal is conquest... not space.

We are going in too many different directions and not addressing our immediate needs. Bottom line. Both Bob/NamliaM come up with things like WHY this and WHY that like what is this the Spanish Inquisition.

No inquisition, just my way of trying to help and understand...

We are here to play and have fun. Now switching to non state religion and switching from OR to what Paganism again?? Wouldn't that be 2 turns of anarchy. So now Astro will be more like 30 turns considering NamliaM's plan and Bobs.

We are currently Hindu, with 2 cities having that religion.
Maybe Confused would be better, as we have 4 cities allready there.
We are currently NOT running OR... So strike that... We could (later) consider swapping to Theology if that seems right... for the +2 xp even better if we can get the Pyramids (for Police State?).
Current religion issues are:
-1 Bismark
-1 Mao
-2 Kublai
-4 Hatty & Mansa (only a few cities left!)

Total modifiers
-9 Mansa (Furious)
-5 Hatty (annoyed)
+1 Mao (Cautious)
+3 HC (cautious)
+5 Bismark (Pleased)
+9 Kublai (Pleased)

Pyramids by the way are in Cusco (inca next to Mansa), so maybe they be the next target?

Bob asks something "Calender" and one post away is the answer. NamliaM felt sorry for KK.

Uhm, that was a joke... Tho an obvious mistake on my part which I allready owned up to.... It would have been better to wait possibly run 0% and settle a city or 2, pop its borders and then get Calander...

Now our new cities won't pop borders anymore until we get a religion there but oh with no state religion that won't happen. We can build theaters now so that will do the trick but the faster we pop borders the better so as to stop Mao from settling on our land. Eventually Bismarck/Hatty will be showing up too with settlers.

True offcourse

I hope we can consider all the players input since there are six of us.

That is what TEAM stands for right? Again, sorry to make you feel we are not a team... What is it they say in English... There is no I in Team ... Right?

EDIT: I understand that NamliaM you want to take Timbuktu with the cats/archers/Lbm but again we can't afford it. I would love to take that city as it is a gem. You can't go to war if you don't have the financial infrastructure to back it.

Conquest gives money too...
Hopefully some AI may just happen to build us Versailles... This would help a lot...
Getting astronomy will help too, as we get the traderoutes over the Ocean to the mainland.... this will help considerably, tho this will go down as we conquer AIs...

Edit: Corrected some small typos

 

[namliaM]

As for Osaka, I think we should use it to build Oxford University instead of Heroic Epic. As long as we have bureacracy, it doesn't need the boost in production, we might as well let another city have it. Also, with all that commerce and science, the University would be better.

I disagree... the boost from HE is needed badly and Oxford is NOT needed. Osaka is (with madrid maybe too) the best producer.
It has 16 base hammers right now, add in another Plains hill (4 hammers) thats 20. With Buro, Forge, HE and Police state we have 300% building units.
That is still "only" 60 hammers/turn (Samurai = 105 hammers). Growing to the max, Cottaging the Grass and farming the Plains... we add 5 hammers @ 300% = 15 hammers
Grand total of 75 hammers....
If we really try maybe we end up with 4 samurais in 5 turns (~80-90 hammers per turn)

I would save Wall Street for one of our holy cities.

Being in paganism doesn't give you any culture for the religion in cities, we need free religion for that. So we should decide whether to be in OR or Theocracy. I think staying in OR would be great since we should be building up our new cities in Hokkaida and then later we can switch to Theocracy or Free Religion.

So what does everyone think?

Whats with the national wonders? and what with free religion?
Free religion = Liberalism = ~8000 Beakers of NON military techs.
Actually it was suggested that we do the Liberalism => Astro Sling...
OK we may have had time to build a University or 2, maybe 3. But Astro is 4400 where Paper=> Education=> Liberalism is 8000.
Thats 3600 beakers collected/saved... Or Theology + Guilds for free...
And that would only work IF we were first to get there... I think HC allready has Liberalism right?

Edit: A comment here or there and some typos....

 

[namliaM]

Sounds like we need a bit of discussion andsome consensus building about long term strategy and how we're going to achieve it. Maybe serendipitous that my machine was playing up a bit.
May as well put across my point of view. We need an army and there's no doubt about that. Whipping is certainly a way of producing things quickly but there is a cost to it namely that cities don't have the chance to grow. This can be a good thing in some circumstances; as I understand it distance maintenance increases with size so keeping BT cities small helps a bit, whether the increased commerce would match the increased cost is something I'm not sure about.

Growing is allways good. Except in BT they Cannot grow. + growing is a longer term advantage where we need Units now, pronto. Like you said quick production = whip.
Not only that we have (near) no other means than to use the whip... (IMHO)

However there's no point having a large army until there's somewhere to send it. At this point that means astronomy. The sooner we get an ocean going fleet established the sooner we can start conquering, the sooner we can win.

Not compleetly true... We could try to conquer the world from BT, but I doubt that woudl be possible ... so in essance yes...

I think I've long argued in favour of developing Hokkiado and I do think we need to improve our economy substantially and quickly. I also think that we need FP sooner rather than later; if we can achieve that through whip overflow that's fine by me.

FP in Kyoto? Doable... at 40 hammers per overflow thats just 7 whips... Or just 4 whips and a big one...
but... Maybe better in Cusco?

Minor points; you get culture for religions even in no state religion. Nerfing stonehenge by calendar was going to happen soner or later. It does mean we can build plantations. Culture can be replaced by religions or libraries so this is not a huge problem.
My overall conclusion is that we need to grow cities and grow richer now and then look at whipping out an army and navy (hopefully running feudalism and theocracy) when we're able to invade.

Feudalism = Vassalage? I think Buro is better with Theology... With theology you allready get +2xp for the second promotion. Vasalage just puts you 1 fight closer to the third...
With Buro we have more units faster which will be better (again IMHO)

 

[namliaM]

I agree with you Eektor... free.

I allready commented on this so I skip this...

Yes I used that scientist for an academy mainly because of poor science. With it we got only like 70 beakers happening in Osaka. What is lacking there is definitely a university and coin to up the science overall.

Yes Academy definatly the right choice... The other beeing joining the scientist to the city... In fact thats the only choice I think for any future Great Persons.

I have won more games with GP farm and popping lots of scientist than not doing that. Even Madrid would be an excellent GP farm. (making them as superspecialist can have a real impact on economy/science too)

I will say this again, as I strongly believe it... We have no need for any more techs... nice to haves yes... Needs NO....

Our score has slowed too in comparison to RatPack/VQ Red.

We just overtook the Rat pack... and the game is not desided on score rather on Conquest date....

EDIT: Totally agree as well as with your input too Pigswill.....

Commented on this too...

 

[namliaM]

Towards those points, I do agree that Hokkiado is in need of some tender loving care. I was suprised to see that we started whipping there. My intent was to abuse the whip in the BT because there's just so much darn food there it makes sense (to me).

TLC my foot...
Did you really check Barca and Madrid?
Barca has a rice (+2 food non Irrigated) and 3 sugars (+2 food each) and Clams (+2 food). Thats +12 counting the city center +13 counting a lighthouse. The rest is all normal grass land (under jungle or Forrest)
Madrid is a bit more balanced due to the Horses and Copper and beeing on a stone hill... But it also has 4 tiles producing 5! food and one 6 food tile The rest again Grasses all over...
4*3 + 4 + 2 = +18 food... You think Kyoto is "Whippable" at +16 food....
TLC...

We can land a force from BT at almost any time we want *without* Astronomy - as long as we can keep open borders with Bismark. Obviously we'll be much more free to do what we need to when Astro comes in. Remember that once we de-garrison the BT islands (by placing a landing force down), the whip unhappy will demolish those cities. Not to mention the war weariness that will crop up when we start losing units. This thought in itself really scares me... The cities will starve into nothing and might be defenseless enough that one of the AIs takes the gamble on an amphib landing and wins.

To be honest I DONT CARE if we lose those cities... Furthermore once we have Astro we get the happy resources from Hokkiado too, making more than good the Whip Angre... (which is at +4 at the moment) Also we can leave some LBs garrisoned to counter the whip where needed.

The rush I'm feeling is the desire to get Samurais into action before they are obsoleted. If on the other hand we want to ignore that push and tech to the lead in units... well I don't think it will be the fastest conquest win, but it will be a much more certain one.

I personaly dont think its possible anytime to tech to a lead in this game. I would love to read the thread of the team that does this.
Tho currently we have a (considerable) lead on Kublai...

BTW, once we start conquering the ring with Aggresive AIs and raging barbs... how will we keep the lands we've "cleared" free of follow on settlements and barb cities?

We want Bismark for a while as a friend right? Him and Hathy are buddies so either we take them first OR last....
I think Mansa first, then HC (for the Pyramids) then its more or less a toss up. North or East? Hathy is not only score but also Tech leader, so it makes sence to (atleast) slow her down...

I never intended Astro to be a tech that we traded to get back in the race. I saw it soley as a way to get our Hokkiado based units into the fray. I guess I'm trying to switch my typical mindset of "kill only what I have to and build like crazy" to "kill em all fast" That's a tough switch and so I've tried to reduce inserting my style and gone with what I thought the flow of the game was. Our drive to use the whip is a big reason there's the feeling this is not quite an SG.

This definatly isnt your typical SG, this is a lesson in conquest by the WHIP... Tho I am finding it great fun, I fear I am beeing somewhat overbaring and will start building banks and Universities if that is what we deside to do.... But ... Yeah... Not my oppinion... but you know that allready...

It might start feeling a little more like an SG when we start Conquering....

Re: whipping. I think everyone would agree that Namliam has a better understanding of the dynamics of the whip. The problem is (imo) that none of the rest of us really get it and so a good chunk of our turns has become "WWNamliamD"? I do know that whipping has its place even in modern times, and Namliam has made great arguments for whipping. If I could get my head around it better, I might be able to truly agree or disagree. I'm guilty of saying to myself - well if he said this is what works then it must.

Make a test game Epic, give yourself the techs we have now and make a look alike Kyoto ... find out... It works...
just look at Kyoto right now, that proves it...
"WWNamliamD" => Thats the feeling I get from Cosmichial as well... thats not good, I am just trying to help. I really feel the WHIP is the way to go to get to where we want to go fast (conquest).

I am also a Beta kind of person, therefor I have a nack for numbers.

Getting the Whipping just about right means a lot of MM-ing checking (nearly) every city (nearly) every turn for "should this be whipped or wait another turn" the windows for creating overflow whips are not that big (25% of 45 hammers = 12 hammer), again if we deside for building I join offcourse the majority...

I have no problem slowing down to figure out what we're doing, but lets not allow ourselves to get offended by comments. I've already seen somethings written that caused me to step back and . Its fine to feel frustrated, but lets continue the fun and enjoyable spirit that I've seen in other VQ games.

No offence taken... tho I had the as well... Rather from getting the feeling that I offended people. This was never my intension.... and will (again) appologize for anything I said or did that made people feel like "WWNamliamD"...

Wow this was one long session of posting, I hope this string of my posts doesnt offend anyone....

 

[pigswill]

NamliaM: I tend to agree with much of what you say, though not all of it. Whipping will be the key to keeping our army going. The way I'd see the invasion developing is that we raze most cities (keep useful wonders, shrines and additional resources (ie. if we don't have ivory then keep an ivory city, if we do have ivory then raze an ivory city)). The cities we do keep we whip hard; start with courthouse (2pop), barracks (1pop) then units all the way, forget unhappiness.
I also think that if we're round long enough to be building oxford and wall street we're taking too long.
I also agree that Bermuda Triangle is dispensible. However I do think we should buld FP in Kyoto (and fill Kyoto with longbows) because its better to have it in place before we start invasion.
I disagree about Hokkiado. I think we do need a solid research base as well as a source of units because I think we'll end up needing more advanced units. I myself am a big fan of city raider cannon, better in my opinion that rifles, grenadiers or cavalry because of i) defence stripping ii) collateral damage. So I think we will need a number of decent research cities in addition to troop producing machines.
I'm not going to quibble about each city at this point because I haven't studied the map closely enough and at this point I'm looking at the overall strategy rather than the details (though the details will be very important once we agree on how to achieve a fast conquest victory).
It does seem that you've got the most comprehensive strategy so far within the team and as you believe in it its natural that you're going to promote it. Maybe because no-one else has produced an alternative strategic picture other people in the team may feel slightly overwhelmed by your enthusiastic championing of your strategy.

 

[bobrath]

Wow... lots to read there. I do think that after this SG is over, I want namliam to start a thread about "optimal whipping" so that I can truly understand where the 25% come from (just picking one number out).

Re: whipping the newly aquired Spanish cities vs the original Hokkiado - I did not take the new cities into account in my TLC statement. The "pure" japanese cities aren't siting on food surpluses, but do have other benefits. Of course I may be completly off in that analysis!


Namliam, my WWND comment was meant partly to be a lighter moment and partially a realization that I am walking a bit blind in a whip heavy game. I thought I had a clue about whipping, but every time I read another of your ... essays I find out that, nope I was off. I knew from looking at the start that Kyoto was going to get hit over the head with the whip something fierce, I just didn't realize how fierce that really was!

Everyone else but Namliam, if you have an alternate theory (as pigswill mentioned), this is a great chance to put it forward. While you may not be able to churn out the sheer volume of "enthusiastic championing" , please put it out here so that we can make the choice that makes the most sense. and yes, I do know that there's already the basis of a much more tech/GP heavy theory out there. Can you flesh that out in terms of how it will help us arrive at a conquest win?

I'm not trying to be the inquisition here, I am just really feeling out of depth here and my only hope of keeping up is by asking as many questions as possible.

 

[Cosmichail]

Just got home and read your both your long posts Bob and NamliaM. If I came across as being insulted by your actions I apologize with up most sincerity. I can come across that way sometimes and really was just expressing my frustration perhaps. I think I understand now what you want to do NamliaM. Get us a huge army and start warring. Forget about any further infrastructure and proceed to go after the other AI's. I read the details and answers you had (to every one of my paragraphs/Eektors/Pigswill and Bobs) I can only deduce from this I struck a nerve and in a way I was aiming for that to get a clearer picture to see what exactly what your strategy is. You do have a keen mind but how shall I say are kind of all over the place. I am more a person that sees things in a straight line. (typical streber I hope NamliaM you know what I mean).

I am a big fan of war and like to fight with overwhelming numbers. In addition I usually have always one GP farm and one super science city to compliment advancement to getting an edge over the enemy. If you think we can take on the whole continent over there with Samurais and cats well maybe it can be done. Kylearan (sorry if I got his name wrong) certainly pulled it off but it does mean we need to produce much larger numbers to counter any more advanced units we will come against. You're right about TEAM and it isn't about me at all but I just like to play with some input. I could have changed the queues but was hesitant to do so as you did make the right choice. I wasn't complaining about your choices just that I felt like I had nothing to do. That's when it isn't fun anymore. I have thought and processes (likewise every other team member) that need to be challenged. Without that it's like BORING.

So here is a shortlist for everyone to consider:

1. We start an all out war immediately and focus on war building.
pros: We have a chance of winning earlier and getting the no. 1 prize
cons: It could backfire and we could have our majority of forces on the other continent and end up getting attacked on our continent. I believe right now our greatest threat is Mao although he isn't very big and MM is puny. Bismarck is a friend and so is KK so we should be alright there. HC/Hatty are also posing a risk to us. What a lot of people do in SG's is they leave their homelands defended by one archer in each city and that's it. I am too anal to do that (well in my SP games) and usually feel uncomfortable with it in a SG but learned to live with it.

We should attack MM first then HC and then Hatty as already stated by NamliaM.

This would mean building HE in Osaka and as already mentioned by Eektor if we get there build Wall street in a holy city. Osaka still could build Oxford eventually. The Spanish cities for the most part (Seville/Barcelona especially won't offer much help in warring other than the good ole whip.) Madrid is a gem and again can be whipped as pointed out.

Again I come to the conclusion that our infrastructure will eventually collapse unless we have some support there. We still have a long way to go for Astronomy and the BT could serve to take out MM. I don't see 10 cats and a few LBM/Archers doing much damage against maces/Cho Ko Nu's (or whatever they are called) for the rest.

Theoretically we would need two large stacks of Samurais/Cats to take on HC or Hatty so lets say 10 Sams/5 or 6 cats in each stack. Maybe compliment each stack with pikes to maybe 2 or 3 for attacks by Knights.

Go after MM and get our infrastructure going to move science faster. (here too I was confused as what we want). I wanted to see us get Astronomy quick to have galleons and Observatories to improve science. Now you want to fire all those scientist which is ok but we should work commerce then to compensate. Consider this BT can produce what 3-4 cats every 10 turns, which is pretty good with whipping. Lbm's/archer are good if we are sitting defensively and absorb attacks by enemy. As far as offensively they aren't that great. Conquest is a lot tougher than I ever realized. You followed that game with Sooooo and like that went well but I don't think we did it until 1814 ad and that was with constant warring (well we took a few breaks) and with Cossacks. That team too is a nonstop warring machine. We are trying another on prince level and we are barely beating the time clock on that one. Maybe you have had better luck with conquest but I have played two games of it and it's tough. You bring one city down and the AI plops another settler there again.

Could we not like compromise.

2. Pump up science/commerce on Hokkaido and whip the crap out of BT. We'll call BT NamliaM whipping experiment. Madrid will also have some serious science/commerce if we use it for that. Can we just get our science up to hurry Astronomy and then maybe trade for guilds/banking. Although I don't like trading Astro but the cat's out the bag so it doesn't matter now since Mao has it. Having knights would serve us better for homeland defense in the event we are attacked and allow us to move deeper into enemy territory for pillaging resources that will stop the enemy from building maces/knights.

Right now we have somewhat of an army but have a long way to go. We will need 3 or 4 galleons to start moving troops from Hokkaido. BT once we feel we have enough can go after MM. Once we take that use it for a launching ground for the rest. That Timbuktu is a gem indeed and he hasn't got very much. One galley is stuck way on the other side which should get back to BT for shuttling troops. We will need Bismarck's borders to get us there and currently HC's too to get to MM. (I am not sure about it and need to check it)

So stage 1: BT to continue building cats/Lbms
State 1a: Attack and take MM's cities
Stage 2: Pump up science in Hokkaido and accelerate Astronomy
Stage 3: Try to trade for Guilds/Banking
State 3a: Improve commerce with grocers/banks
State 3B: Get Chemistry to protect our shores and for Grens
Stage 4: Start building galleons/Sams/Cats for future war on AI cont.**
State 4a: Build frigates to protect our shores
Stage 5: Move troops to our new conquered lands for launching.

If we leave science the way it is we will have Astro in 22 turns. Compromise keep them in Osaka and remove them in Kyoto for fast growth/whipping.
**this could be done before chemistry

Stage 6: Go after Mao/HC or Hatty. (watch the domination clock) do we keep cities or raze.
Stage 7: At this point we will have Gren and maybe cannons to finish off the rest.

This is idealistic and not totally considering what the AI will throw at us. I have a feeling at some point Mao or HC will declare war. Maybe Hatty but we can change that by changing religion or going to no state religion. We can still benefit from our shrines by building missionaries but it takes us away from other things.

You may have stated this NamliaM but at what point did you want to go to 0% science. After Astronomy?

I am glad we have this out of our system now and I feel better now. I do understand what you want to do. Did you say HC has the Pyramids? If so he should be a priorty as with the Pyramids we could go to police state and with vassalage (expensive) but we could do a lot of damage.

I am tired and sorry dat ik heb je niet zo goed gevoelt hebt maken.

We all have different styles and so far this what I understand from the other players:

Bobrath feels we need to give Hokkaido some tender loving care.
Eektor too feel we need improve our infrastructure
Pigswill is also so inclined and does lean to whipping in BT

LuvtoBuild has been kind of quiet of late (as I did see him in his own SG and others just today) but knowing him he would want to improve Hokkaido too.

Bobrath on a more personal note I apoligize to you as I didn't mean to pick on you about that calender thing. After playing last night and just hitting enter a lot and moving some soliders to go after that barb city I just became frustrated when you said. "Why are we still in a religion we should go to no state religion". I reacted to that because first I had basically very little input during my turn and then when I read that I reacted. All I could think was ARGH NamliaM leaves whipping instructions (and did with all sincerety follow his plan as best as I could and felt I did it adequately) and now I was to change religions. My perspective was lost already trying to do the whipping thing which caused me to not look as hard as I usually do but just get BORED with it.

So in conclusion let's just play as a T.E.A.M. (Together everyone achieves more) and enjoy it.

(If we were on pangea conquest of the other continent would be a lot simpler but like any war that needs a lot of mobilization it becomes rather intricate and cumbersome)

One last point. Ratpack is 200 some odd years ahead of us and is at 2035 points. We are at 1250ad and have 1162 points. So I don't understand why you say we caught up with them. This doesn't matter as with your plan score is not likely to accelerate until we wipe them all out. Sounds easy but it's tougher than it looks.

EDIT: Osaka can build Samurais in 4 turns so that would be five by the time Astronomy is finished. We have two Samurais/swords/cat/axes heading to barb city who are highly upgraded and will compliment our army quite well. Build another 10 Samurais/some pikes (don't have engineering yet and spears don't do well against knights, plus the movement bonus helps too) and cats. That should be enough for the attacking someone else.

 

[namliaM]

Wow... lots to read there. I do think that after this SG is over, I want namliam to start a thread about "optimal whipping" so that I can truly understand where the 25% come from (just picking one number out).

There is a thread in the strategy forum about this...
I found it (I think) here it isnt illustrated, so is a bit of a numbers thing, scroll down untill you find Whip 'til your hands bleed

It works like so.
You have a "broken" production bonus (PB) (broken means not equal to 2 or 3, but 1.25, 1.50 or 1.75).
I.e.
- you are in OR and building a Building
- You have a forge in a city
- You are in Police state and Have a Forge and are building a Unit
Just to name a few, you can make up new ones I guess...

Now the games looks at what you want to whip and how much is left to finish is.
I.e. You are building a Catapult (60 hammers in our game) and have 2 hammers invested.
60-2 = 58 / (45 * PB) = Number of pop.
In this example if the PB = 1.25 you get 57 hammers per whip 58/57 = 1.01 (which obviously is >1) => Whip costs 2 pop, yield 90 hammers.
Now you put another turn into the Catapult (total 4 hammers in, leaving 56)
56/57 = 0.98 (<1) => 1 pop whip
HOWEVER, there seems to be a bonus/bug/exploit in the coding where on the calculation of the hammers to apply there is no taking into account of the PB.
This does something like...
56/45 = 1.24 (>1), 2 pop must be or have been whipped => 2*45 hammers applied to production.

Therefor anything whipped with a "left over production" between 46 (>45) and 56 (< PB * 45, dont know about <= but < for sure) will cost 1 pop to whip and will have 90 hammers applied to it. Thus have an overflow of between 34 and 44 hammers depending on the exact time of the whip, which doesnt matter much as long as the whip is applied within that window.
This same thing works for Multi whips too....
>90 and <112, Whip 2 pop, get 135 hammers (not 90)
>135 and <168, Whip 3 pop, get 180 hammers (not 135)

Let my try and Illustrate the Catapult/Archer whip for you visual folks (non Beta's), nothing demeaning meant by this tho !
Lets see, I went back in time to turn 1 of my previous turnset. Whipped the Forge and put the overflow into some building....
Now we have a clean start at 1106... Kyoto is at +2 at this time. Producing 2 hammers

Next turn we grow, and add the Engineer. Now producing 5 hammers (4 base + 1 from the forge)

Another turn later (3) we now have 7 hammers into the Catapult leaving 53 (Less than 57 and more than 45). As I am about to whip, you can see it only costs 1 pop.

After whipping, we now have produced 95 hammers on the Catapult (5 + 90), 35 will overflow + 5 of the normal production - 1 pop and +1

Turn 4, Catapult produced +1 we want an archer... just for this example. The archer will receive 40 overflow and produce 5 more. It costs 37, thus will finish in 1 turn and have 8 overflow.

Turn 5, we produced the archer +1, due to some rounding error (or limitations on overflow I dont know) we only got 7 overflow. With the 5 production from this turn we produce 12 hammers. Ready to start the whole thing over again...

+ after repeating this 3 more times 15 turns have past, and 1 whip angre has gone away...
Thus we produced 4 Catapults and 4 Archers, generating 4 whip angry people. but the 8 units produce 8 happy people. So we can use 4 units striaght away.
Once the unhappyness starts to fade we can pick up the second unit we produced....

Offcourse you can put the overflow anywhere, into an LB (75 hammers) for example. 2 Overflows from a catapult would "auto produce" an LB.
Or we can use the LB for the whip, if we whip between 19 hammers produced and 29 hammers it will work the same... Except you obviously need 4 turns @ 5 hammers per turn = 20 hammers & Whip on turn 5 (110 in the LB, 35 overflow)
Turn 6 produce something with the 35 + 5 - 1 (the error) Archer (37) or Warrior (22), or save the overflow into a building, a catapult or Galleon later on...
Turn 7, back at turn 1 again.
Do this 2 more times... We produced (atleast) 3 LBs and overflowed into some building or something...
Now the Unhappyness goes for the first whip and we can use that LB in the field.

Edit: again with the Typo's

 

[pigswill]

One of the things that occurs to me is that we build up significant unit maintenance costs by stockpiling units. Once we're at war and getting pillage money and losing units this ain't a problem but at present this is not a good thing because its slowing research (for astronomy, for example) thus delaying invasion.
Had a look at the 1250ad save. We're currently paying 87 in costs (50% of our economy). We're paying 18 gpt unit costs, 5 gpt out of area costs, 48 gpt city maintenance (26 distance, 22 number). We're getting free support for 16 units. Until we get significant pop growth we won't get much more free support; every unit we whip will cost +1gpt. A large proportion of city distance cost comes from the Bermuda Triangle. That's why I'm saying FP asap ( and I'll study the dynamics of the whip overflow exploit and the whip into wonders exploit if that's the advice I'm being given though I'm not fully comfortable with them), why I'm saying its too early to whip units and why I'm saying develop the economy on Hokkiado.

 

[namliaM]

Just got home ... (typical streber I hope NamliaM you know what I mean).

Well I felt it was the only "right" way of me beeing able to respond and not forget anything. In particular the bit about upsetting you and my team mates. The bit about I and team was more so refering to me as well....
Yes I know strebers....

1. We start an all out war immediately and focus on war building.....

Dont forget that
1) AI is bad at landings abroad
2) We will continually be producing units everywhere. So even if we have just 1 formal defender in each city, new respond units to any landing can never be far off...

We should attack MM first then HC and then Hatty as already stated by NamliaM.

Wow we agree on something?

This would mean building HE in Osaka and as already mentioned by Eektor if we get there build Wall street in a holy city. Osaka still could build Oxford eventually. The Spanish cities for the most part (Seville/Barcelona especially won't offer much help in warring other than the good ole whip.) Madrid is a gem and again can be whipped as pointed out.

Wow Oxford and Wall street... you really like to war, but are willing to invest 51 samurais into buildings?

Again I come to the conclusion that our infrastructure will eventually collapse unless we have some support there. We still have a long way to go for Astronomy and the BT could serve to take out MM. I don't see 10 cats and a few LBM/Archers doing much damage against maces/Cho Ko Nu's (or whatever they are called) for the rest.

No they will not? CR3 Catapults are a force to recon with... 8.75 power vs a city. And Maces & Knights even Chu ko nu's (China UU) get NO natural bonus vs Crossbows or LBs. With enough Catapults and LBs, we could take out the entire continent, Having Samurais just makes it that much easier.
Keeping up a little in tech, getting Grenadiers (higher power, but lower numbers) and Cannons (this too Higher power, lower numbers) is just extra's on top.
I dont think I would even consider building a single Grenadier, as they dont get CR promotions. Just build Samurais, get them to CR3 (or die offcourse) and promote them to Grenadier once they have CR3.
Maybe we could build a few just for stack(s) defence, defenders dont need CR promotions
A Grenadier is strength 12, add CR3 (75% city attack and 10% gunpowder) and the free Combat 1 (10%). That adds to 95% bonus attacking a gunpowder unit in a city (Rifle/Musketeer/Cavelry/Grenadier). Thats a whopping 23.4...

Even a Samurai (base 8) with that 95% bonus = 15.6
Musketeers are just base 9, OK with City Garison promotions (let alone CG3)and 25% fortification on a hill...... they become a problem. Thats what Catapults and suicide units are for. To take out the top ~2 or 3 defenders. The rest is easy pickings (after the removal of the culture defence bonus offcourse, which is what we need some City Bombard promoted catapults for (4 with this promotion or 7 without.) to bring defences down to 0 in 1 turn.

Theoretically we would need two large stacks of Samurais/Cats to take on HC or Hatty so lets say 10 Sams/5 or 6 cats in each stack. Maybe compliment each stack with pikes to maybe 2 or 3 for attacks by Knights.

That sounds about right to me....
But offcourse we need a continues supply of catapults and other units to replace the killed ones...

Go after MM and get our infrastructure going to move science faster. (here too I was confused as what we want). I wanted to see us get Astronomy quick to have galleons and Observatories to improve science.

Observatories?? 1 maybe 2... 1 in Osaka, probably. Maybe one more some place else... I still think (re above) all we need is production (hammers) we DONT have to many hills, therefor we can only get it using the whip. 1 or 2 cottages here or there (Cordoba seems a likely candidate to spam actually)

Now you want to fire all those scientist which is ok but we should work commerce then to compensate. Consider this BT can produce what 3-4 cats every 10 turns, which is pretty good with whipping. Lbm's/archer are good if we are sitting defensively and absorb attacks by enemy. As far as offensively they aren't that great.

True, but archers upgrade to Crossbows.... which have strenght 6, and natural 1 first strike and 50% bonus vs Melee units.
Give them a Combat promotion or go down Drill and they can do a decent job...
Also crossbows eventually upgrade to.... Grenadiers...

Conquest is a lot tougher than I ever realized. You followed that game with Sooooo and like that went well but I don't think we did it until 1814 ad and that was with constant warring (well we took a few breaks) and with Cossacks. That team too is a nonstop warring machine. We are trying another on prince level and we are barely beating the time clock on that one. Maybe you have had better luck with conquest but I have played two games of it and it's tough. You bring one city down and the AI plops another settler there again.

No doubt about it... we need a fleet of ships to complement the land troops so we can cordon of the land they occupy....

Could we not like compromise.

Any suggestions are allways welcome...

2. Pump up science/commerce on Hokkaido and whip the crap out of BT. We'll call BT NamliaM whipping experiment. Madrid will also have some serious science/commerce if we use it for that. Can we just get our science up to hurry Astronomy and then maybe trade for guilds/banking. Although I don't like trading Astro but the cat's out the bag so it doesn't matter now since Mao has it. Having knights would serve us better for homeland defense in the event we are attacked and allow us to move deeper into enemy territory for pillaging resources that will stop the enemy from building maces/knights.

Hmz.... Madrid and Barca are atleast as whippable as BT, actually Kyoto first, Edo next, Kogashima less so... (less food)

I can see us picking up banking (maybe on a trade maybe research it). Even building a bank or 2. But 6 banks and Wall street (needing Corporation too), that is one investment that will not pay off.... IMHO
Just to pay for Corporation (3500 beakers) and Economics (3100) we would have to build Wall street in a city that produces 100 gold (getting 100 gold bonus) and we would need 66 turns just to break even.
Not accounting for 6 banks + Wall street = 6* 300 + 900 = 2700 hammers we have to invest into buildings. Thats 27 samurais which when complemented with some catapults would be enough to raze a couple of cities maybe a dozen even?

Right now we have somewhat of an army but have a long way to go. We will need 3 or 4 galleons to start moving troops from Hokkaido. BT once we feel we have enough can go after MM. Once we take that use it for a launching ground for the rest. That Timbuktu is a gem indeed and he hasn't got very much. One galley is stuck way on the other side which should get back to BT for shuttling troops. We will need Bismarck's borders to get us there and currently HC's too to get to MM. (I am not sure about it and need to check it)

Long way to go... Well not that long... ~30 turns to Astro. We can whip 3 LBs and 3 Cats in Kyoto + Edo in 15 turns easy. Complement that with the cats we allready have and Mansa is Toast... before Astro...

So stage 1: BT to continue building cats/Lbms
State 1a: Attack and take MM's cities
Stage 2: Pump up science in Hokkaido and accelerate Astronomy
Stage 3: Try to trade for Guilds/Banking
State 3a: Improve commerce with grocers/banks
State 3B: Get Chemistry to protect our shores and for Grens
Stage 4: Start building galleons/Sams/Cats for future war on AI cont.**
State 4a: Build frigates to protect our shores
Stage 5: Move troops to our new conquered lands for launching.

If we leave science the way it is we will have Astro in 22 turns. Compromise keep them in Osaka and remove them in Kyoto for fast growth/whipping.
**this could be done before chemistry

Stage 2: HOW? we can spam some cottages, but it is going to take them 15 turns just to grow to Hamlett (2 coin) then 30 turns just to grow to Village (3 coins). Its going to take atleast 45 turns to get any significant change....
Stage 3: I would try and trade for Engineering instead of banking.
Why?
1) +1 movement on road will help with the troop movements considerably
2) We need it for Chemistry
3) It is 700 beakers more expensive
4) I think we can float our empire on conquest booty, banks are a nice bonus we can use when we cut off research when we reach Chemistry/Steel/MT.

Stage 6: Go after Mao/HC or Hatty. (watch the domination clock) do we keep cities or raze.
Stage 7: At this point we will have Gren and maybe cannons to finish off the rest.

Watch the domination clock... yes... And try and pick cities so with 1 or 2 border pops we bust as much land fog as possible...

This is idealistic and not totally considering what the AI will throw at us. I have a feeling at some point Mao or HC will declare war. Maybe Hatty but we can change that by changing religion or going to no state religion. We can still benefit from our shrines by building missionaries but it takes us away from other things.

At the very least we need to swap to Confused. Maybe taking no religion for now to boost relations (with Hathy in particular) would be smart.

You may have stated this NamliaM but at what point did you want to go to 0% science. After Astronomy?

I did allready a few times.... The best one is here in post #328 but those are just my considerations...
The short version? Beeline to Chemistry (no banking nothing special). Maybe add Steel for Cannons. Thats it.
At that point running 0% science some banks (in Osaka for example) may be verry good additions.

I am glad we have this out of our system now and I feel better now. I do understand what you want to do. Did you say HC has the Pyramids? If so he should be a priorty as with the Pyramids we could go to police state and with vassalage (expensive) but we could do a lot of damage.

You feel better? Good then so do I...
Pyramids & Policestate... Well I dont know... a lot of unit production will come from the whip. With this Police state doesnt help... The war weariness it does offcourse and Osaka would be producing mostly... Something to consider..
Vasalage? And lose Buro? Hmz...

I am tired and sorry dat ik heb je niet zo goed gevoelt hebt maken.

LOL, babel fish?

We all have different styles and so far this what I understand from the other players:

Bobrath feels we need to give Hokkaido some tender loving care.
Eektor too feel we need improve our infrastructure
Pigswill is also so inclined and does lean to whipping in BT

LuvtoBuild has been kind of quiet of late (as I did see him in his own SG and others just today) but knowing him he would want to improve Hokkaido too.

Lets see what we think as a team and go from there. Maybe some may go to agree with me Anyone *one one one* *echo cho cho cho*

All I could think was ARGH NamliaM leaves whipping instructions (and did with all sincerety follow his plan as best as I could and felt I did it adequately) and now I was to change religions. My perspective was lost already trying to do the whipping thing which caused me to not look as hard as I usually do but just get BORED with it.

the whipping is a bit of a pain and a lot of MM....

So in conclusion let's just play as a T.E.A.M. (Together everyone achieves more) and enjoy it.

Hear hear, But I would enjoy it just a little more if I know we are taking a stab at the ribon...

One last point. Ratpack is 200 some odd years ahead of us and is at 2035 points. We are at 1250ad and have 1162 points. So I don't understand why you say we caught up with them. This doesn't matter as with your plan score is not likely to accelerate until we wipe them all out. Sounds easy but it's tougher than it looks.

At our point in time 1200 something AD we are just ahead of Rat Pack in score. And just about on track to their power graph... Our score will start to rocket as we take over AI cities.... same as I am sure It is doing with Rat Pack....

EDIT: Osaka can build Samurais in 4 turns so that would be five by the time Astronomy is finished. We have two Samurais/swords/cat/axes heading to barb city who are highly upgraded and will compliment our army quite well. Build another 10 Samurais/some pikes (don't have engineering yet and spears don't do well against knights, plus the movement bonus helps too) and cats. That should be enough for the attacking someone else.

If we add HE into Osaka thats a samurai every 2 turns. Sure we lose a little now but catch up fast....
Those high XP swords and Axe' sure need upgrades to Samurais.... (a few 0% science turns should do the trick, along with capturing MMs cities)
You seem to agree that Engineering has a high priority, with +1 movement and Pikes...

I am just hoping that we can find a Cottage/Town spammed AI city out there.

OK So now I am late for work again ... 2nd time in 2 days

 

[namliaM]

One of the things that occurs to me is that we build up significant unit maintenance costs by stockpiling units. Once we're at war and getting pillage money and losing units this ain't a problem but at present this is not a good thing because its slowing research (for astronomy, forexample) thus delaying invasion.

Invasion isnt going to start from Galleons... We need Samurais and Catapults too...
So at some point we are going to hurt from unit upkeep. We should start shuttling Cats allready into Germany... and start some LBs... Start building a force near Mansa and take him out. The extra cities will earn us some gold and increase unit support.
We will most likely lose a few units too...
Win 1: earn gold to be invested in upgrades or Tech
Win 2: More cities/pop => More units support => More money for tech
Win 3: Less units => Less upkeep => More money for tech.

Also once we reach Astro, watch and see our tech rate "Sky rocket" as Osaka in particular gets some big trade routes. Do we have some Harbors in place on Horraiko to complete those traderoutes? If not... make sure we have atleast 1 before we get Astro...

 

[pigswill]

I like the idea of using units rather than piling them up. Mansa seems a good first target, whip BT for cats and LBs maybe a couple more galleys (overflow into FP in Kyoto).
Back on Hokkiado, take out barb city. An idea I like is increasing income quickly by whipping missionaries to boost shrine income, shrine cities do need market,grocer and bank. Maybe whip missionary overflow into a couple more settlers and some workers to finish settling Hokkiado coz I'm getting bored with barbarians. Good point about ocean trade and harbours.
I also tend to agree that we could probably shut down research after steel but by then we may not need to.
Be nice to get some input from the rest of the team when they're available.

 

[eektor]

Ok these posts are getting long and I'm going to try my best to keep this short

1. About Osaka - We have a palace already there so we can only have one more national wonder. Osaka with gems and gold and with some cottages will be a commerce monster. That's why I said we should move the palace there, to take advantage of the 50% of bureacracy. Now, namliaM says that its a waste of time to research the techs and then build the Universities to put the Oxford there. Maybe, but I like to keep my options open. (I'll talk more about that later on.)

2. Heroic Epic - Wouldn't it be easier to pick another city and specialize it to have more hammers than Osaka and build the Heroic Epic there?

3. Our plan to conquer the world with samurais - I know namliaM keeps mentioning that if we go this direction in tech we lose this amount of turns and if we build this we lose this amount of samurais. I just have to say we are very late to conquer the world with samurais. The best I see is we take out two or three civs and then we better think about something else.

The turns lost in spending tech research for corporation (Wall Street) doesn't have to be lost if we trade for it. I'm not saying lets beeline to these techs (we need to beeline the military techs), but I like to keep my options open.

The way I see it we should get up to rifleman and calvaries and then stop research. (Only then we would have a clear picture on whether we can stop research or not.) In this case I think its best to judge how many calvaries or rifleman we lose to build Wall Street or Oxford University in Osaka or one of our shrine cities.

 

[bobrath]

Heh, I can take off my TLC cap any time you kids want.

My "gripe" over switching to no state religion was basically cause I asked about it right after my last turn set and I think it got lost in the whip madness, so I brought it back up. I think at this time every one of our cities has at least one religion. Under NSR, it will get 1 cpt per religion (and shrine cities get 5cpt per shrine). With the couple shrines up and running, any new city does have a decent chance at getting a religion in its first 10 turns. Obviously not as fast as getting an oblisk from inception.

Thanks for the mini demo on whipping Namliam - it will sink in at some point!

I'll toss my hat into the war hard and fast ring.

- Invade now from BT (bye Mansa) via galley transported to german lands.
- The only cities we capture are those that are "just too good to pass up". In all other cases, raize away. Along with that, lets have a "pillage" squad that's sole purpose is to go behind the army and take out every improvement we won't use. Its free gold AND makes any resettlement have to start from scratch. Leave the roads tho! Barbs don't count against conquest victory (right?), and if they do spawn... they have just as much chance of attacking the AIs as us.
- remember the AI aggresive bit is set, so once war opens up, we'll probably get into it with multiple folks. Keep the relation high with one or two so that we don't get a full on dogpile going. Mutual struggle bonuses can be nice. (does any of the AIs have a real "he's my buddy" relation with MM?)
- research choices, I'll leave up to the group think: other then to say that researching anything non-military makes very little sense given our direction choice.

LTB, any input?

 

[LuvToBuild]

I've been quietly reading through the latest debates. I started to reply a few times but then I held off until looking at the latest save. I think I might normally want to go down the building path and prepare a solid infrastructure in Hokkaido but I don't think we have the luxury of that in this game if we want to win some laurels. So, as much as I dislike the whip, I think namliaM is right in whipping BT and probably in whipping Hokkaido to a certain extent. Maybe Barcelona should be farmed instead of cottaged, growing it quickly to whip out galleons and samurais. I don't think Osaka should really be whipped all that much, if any. It could be ok for that if we have farms on the floodplains but we end up trading mines for farms to grow and whip. I'm not sure which is better. I tend towards growing Osaka myself. Cordoba could be good for supporting finances but, again, can we really get anything substantial out of it in time to support the war effort? Probably not. We could lean towards using it as a financial center, maybe merchant specialists after a market. Spread those two faiths around Hokkaido and build a grocer plus bank. Wall Street will probably never come into play. The other cities on Hokkaido probably need to either be production centers or whipping centers. As namliaM points out, we just aren't going to get cottages up to snuff in time to help finances all that much. Build farms, workshops or watermills. Speaking of watermills, I think we should build those on the river in Osaka rather than workshops. They will give us the same hammers for now plus some commerce.

Whipping in BT is becoming a little more clear but I'm not sure I have it down pat just yet. Basically, with Kyoto's current growth rate, we can whip about every 3 turns and be producing a unit almost every turn. During that time, we have an engineer non stop and a scientist for maybe a turn or so until we whip again. With Hereditary Rule, our whipping unhappiness is cancelled out by the happiness from a new unit. The second unit produced increases the happiness cap. It can be used in the field without losing happiness in Kyoto. From the looks of things, we will only have about -4 unhappiness from whipping at any one time. So, stopping to put a building in Kyoto could be detrimental or at least throw us out of whack for a while. Maybe FP should go in Edo or the stone city.

Would putting HE in Kyoto benefit us any? Could we build more units with each whip or would it throw things out of whack? Building it would obviously require some MMing and careful allocation of overflow so as not to upset the delicate balance of whipping unhappiness and happiness from a new garrison unit. Maybe we do the same thing with the FP. This would all slow down unit production but we could possibly be building Samurai there with Astronomy soon instead of archers or lbms.

So I guess I'm kind of with namliaM right now. My builder instinct would normally side with the TLC in Hokkaido thought process but I think we need to be warring with a vengeance soon if we want to stay ahead of the rats. We also need to consider CFR. They worry me a bit because they have the highest score compared to everyone else around the 500BC mark. I kind of expect that they will start shooting up quite a bit earlier than the others. So basically, you can't look at how far ahead the rats are timewise, you have to look at how the teams compare at particular points in history. I just fear that CFR or somebody will creep along and beat the snot out of all of us.

In closing, lets get to putting the smack down on Mansa pretty soon. Take Timbuktu, convert to Judaism and get the borders popped plus some brownie points from Bizzy, Hatty, and Mao. Hopefully keep them at bay for a little while, Mao especially. Get iron in Kyoto from Timbuktu, possibly Hokkaido with Astronomy. Question though, can we still get iron from Hokkaido if it has to pass through Hatty and Mao's coastal waters and they close borders? Good reason to get iron in Timbuktu so that Kyoto can crank out Samurais. Grenadiers will be good later since we no longer need a resource but cannons will still need the iron.

Whose next after Mansa? Well my instinct says we should consider KK or Huayna. We could hit Huayna from Cordoba and possibly Mongolia in the beginning. KK would probably close his borders though and might come into the war on Huayna's side. We might be able to take them both but we would need to be careful about Bizzy and the others dogpiling on top of us. Part of me feels like we should consider war against Hatty, Bizzy, or Mao first. Trouble is, we might end up fighting all three of them. I'm concerned that when we clear the lands of KK and Huayna, they will settle in pretty quickly and then be even more powerful when we finally start to take them on. Whatever we do, we need to pillage like crazy and not let the AI take advantage of terrritory that we don't keep. If we don't take and keep a city, then pillage everything in site. Make the others work for those improvements. The pillaging will obviously help a lot in the war effort and science too. (preparing to post this, seems our leader is ahead of me in that regard, which is a good sign and yes, leave the roads, we want quick movement through unclaimed territory whenever possible)

Anyway, those are my thoughts, for what they are worth.

 

[LuvToBuild]

1. About Osaka - We have a palace already there so we can only have one more national wonder.

The palace is considered a national wonder but I'm pretty sure it doesn't count as one of the wonders for the limit. I think we can still build two national wonders in Osaka. I think the FP does count though.

My "gripe" over switching to no state religion was basically cause I asked about it right after my last turn set and I think it got lost in the whip madness, so I brought it back up. I think at this time every one of our cities has at least one religion. Under NSR, it will get 1 cpt per religion (and shrine cities get 5cpt per shrine). With the couple shrines up and running, any new city does have a decent chance at getting a religion in its first 10 turns. Obviously not as fast as getting an oblisk from inception.

Is this a sure thing though? I vaguely remember it being discussed some a page or two back but I'm not sure if it was confirmed. My assumption would be that free religion allows the culture and not just no state religion. I lean towards converting to Judaism for brownie points with the Jewish bloc and for getting culture in Timbuktu.

 

[pigswill]

My machine seems a bit happier now so I'm ready to play whenever. We certainly seem to have had a debate and we certainly seem to agree on war sooner rather than later. Now we need to agree some of the details.

 

[bobrath]

If you open up the religion advisor and hover over a state religion choice, you see how your cities will be affected. If you hover over NSR, you can see the culture generated.

Free Religion gives you bonuses for multiple religions in one city - dunno that it has any affect on single religion cities.


Next steps for pigswill's 10 turns? Get our second galley back to BT for transport duty. Perhaps get one or two of the caravels into BT to cover our food resources. Start transporting some of the garrison from BT to german lands and up to MM's borders in prep of the invasion while being mindful of the happy/garrison cap.

^^^Input?