SGOTM 02 - VQ Black

namliaM · Aug 29, 2006

Versailles is in Egypt, but where?? I dont know if you get a message/popup saying where an AI builds a wonder?? I never take notice ... If you do, I hope Pigswill took notice

Putting the FP in Berlin will lose some of its appeal, tho it may take a while longer to get Versailles then it will Putting the FP up. Just 300 hammers/ ~3 samurai would safe us a bundle while warring with Hatty.

With 3 courthouses about to finish, saving about 6gpt in the next turnset and the 140g in the bank... I think we can continue whipping Cats in Kyoto and finish the Market, Globe and HE ASAP.

Each cat will:
1) Put 5 hammers in
2) Whip for 88 hammers Total 98
3) put 38 + 5 in something
Rince and repeat.
Not only do we tripple the spead at which we build the Market and stuff. We get Cats too... Which we will need badly and a lot of them...

Maybe we should squeze in 2 more cities.. 1 SW of Barca (just south of the hill). This would cost about 4 gpt (after courthouse)
and a city inbetween Barca and Madrid (maybe 5 gpt, after courthouse)
Working just 1 coastal tile (2 coastal + 1 CC + 2 Trade routes), they will pay for them selves... While adding to unit support and productivity.

pigswill · Aug 29, 2006

Starting objectives for the set were to take barb city Khoisan, knock out a couple of settlers, explore a bit, establish Cordoba as shrine city, keep economy afloat, start theatres for Globe in Kyoto.
Plan for ships: disband exploring galley. finish exploring with one caravel then to Kyoto, other caravel back to Hokkiado.

Round 0 1250. Change Osaka to settler.

Round1. 1256.
Barcelona builds forge, starts granary.
Edo builds cat, start theatre.
Kyoto build cat, start theatre.
Seville whips forge.
Move stacks to Khoisan.

Round 2. 1262.
Seville builds forge, starts theatre.
Stacks arrive at Khoisan, barb archers upgraded to longbows.
(computer freezes. have to reboot, thank goodness for autosave).

Round3. 1268.
Tokyo builds forge, starts theatre.
Kyoto whips theatre.
Barcelona whips granary.
Odds at Khoisan; CR2 Samurai 4%, CR3 sword 1%. Start bombarding walls with lone cat.

Round4. 1274.
Kyoto builds theatre, starts market.
Barcelona builds granary, starts courthouse.
Bombard Khoisan.
Barb archer appears.

Round5. 1280.
Osaka builds settler, starts settler.
Edo whips theatre.
(Mansa builds Hanging Gardens)
Bombard Khoisan

Round6. 1286.
Edo builds theatre, starts harbour (health)
Seville builds theatre, starts courthouse.
Cordoba whips forge.
Sam(urai) succesfully defends against barb archer !!
Bombard Khoisan.

Round7. 1292.
Cordoba builds forge, starts confu monastery.
Edo whips harbour.
Battle of Khoisan:
CR2 Sam loses to CG3 longbow at 23%.
CR2 Sam defeats CG3 longbow at 28%.
CR2 Sword loses to CG1 longbow.
CR2 Swords defeats CG1 longbow.
Khoisan captured and kept, 120 gold and a worker.

Round8. 1298.
Make deal with Mao: he gets sugar, we get wine.
Tokyo builds theatre, starts courthouse.
Edo builds harbour, starts barracks.
Madrid builds grnary, starts theatre.

Round9. 1304.
Biz asks us to convert to Judaism. Agree. 1 turn of anarchy.
Satsuma completes forge, starts granary.
(Hatty builds Versailles)

Round 10. 1310.
Cordoba whips confu monastery.
Kawisaki founded (fish/copper city).
Barcelona whips courthouse.

Postscript. Why market in Kyto? Bit of cash and whale happy. Not yet ready to start Globe. I thought we had no firm decision re HE.

pigswill · Aug 29, 2006

namliam: I started the set with astronomy 29 turns away at 40% (break even point) or 23 rounds away at 50% (would have been totally broke after 6 turns). We're now caught up 3 turns on astronomy despite the additional expense of two more cities (which will of course pay for themselves and turn a profit in the longer term but not yet).
As I've said before we can catch up on units easily enough once we're on a war footing.

bobrath · Aug 29, 2006

bobrath -->
namliaM -->
Cosmichail -->
Pigswill --> just played
LuvtoBuild --> UP
Eektor --> on deck

LuvToBuild · Aug 29, 2006

I've got it and will play this evening. I will try to check in here just before playing. I will see what I can do about meeting the HE/Globe objective while still growing and settling Hokkaido.

If we get a GE, I will save him for Gunpowder. Any GS or GP will get transported to Hokkaido for merging. At the moment, I would lean towards a GS in Osaka since I'm presuming that Oxford would be built in Osaka. A GP in Cordoba since I'm presuming that Wall Street will go in Cordoba.

If I manage to finish Astronomy, I will try to trade for Guilds and Engineering, with a preference towards Guilds if I can only get one. I will set the path to Engineering if I can't get it by trade.

I presume we want to settle the wheat/sheep city next with the settler pigswill started in Osaka and has ready to finish next turn. I think the last dot map was something like this unless there was one later on that I missed. Anybody want to create an updated dotmap for me to use? Also, how many more settlers do we want to create? I think Madrid could crank out a couple or so pretty quick and it would shut down growth there for a bit. I'm considering some workers from there too.

That's more or less the things I see for the immediate future. Any other thoughts before I get started later?

Cosmichail · Aug 29, 2006

Good job Pigswill. I think getting astro to 16 turns is great. We really need lots of markets as I believe we need to get science up as the other AI's are teching pretty good. Hatty now too has Astronomy and Mao. HC/Bismarck/Kublai/MM don't have it. So maybe we will be able to make some trades there however in 16 turns who knows.

Also re supporting 50 units, at this point it is more like 30 units. We could improve that by building markets and eventually grocers and banks.

We might consider trading for dyes with Hatty to help our happiness factor in Madrid since theater do not increase happy unless you have dyes. In addition she probably has other happy resources we could be trading.
Hatty/Hc are now cautious with us so trading is possible.

I notice too that Edo is not working clams/fish (whatever) and is working regular tiles. We have a cap of 9 on that city so growth won't hurt and help with the eventual whipping.

As to attacking MM with cats might work but I doubt for the rest. HC/Bismarck/Hatty/Mao/ have guilds which mean knights. They will take out whatever cats we send their way before we can even get them to a city.

Our military is very weak and will need lots of time to buildup. By the time we do that I fear we might be up against grens/cannons. Again I emphasize that science needs to be improved before we can take on the AI's. We have fallen behind in tech to the point that Kublai is even ahead of us. I think we should let our cities grow and work lots of cottages to up science and get back in the game so to speak.

I feel that we are going in different directions here. One: stop science and whip out an army. Two: up science and build an advanced or equal army. Realistically I don't see us getting conquest before the 1800's or if we go with option 1 we will find ourselves being outmatched by the AI.

In order to get a good army and support it we need money/science. I feel we should concentrate on improving our infrastructure and once we discover Astronomy trade for guilds and whatever else we can. It might be by the time we discover it that the others have it.

To be blunt we are trying to put the cart before the horse. I understand NamliaM's idea's and direction but do not agree other than the whipping techniques. We are still in a building stage adding cities, and tweaking them. Our science in Osaka is a measly 49 beakers. By this time in my own SP games that would be more like 100 or more. I know if say we should build an observatory in Osaka once Astro is discovered NamliaM will state that it's a waste and we should build units. We are already up against Knights and doubt that it won't be long before we are up against Grens. I think we have lost the window of opportunity for the Sams since we can't get any there until 16 turns from now.

Someone has to put forth a strategy to which of all us are agreed and since Bob you are teamleader take the reigns and make it so. You said earlier how improving science/GP's would help in conquest well here's a simple answer.

Advanced/equal units is better than units that are inferior. I feel that somehow the damage has been done science wise and unless we do some really aggressive trading through pointy stick (which at this point isn't likely as the AI's are ahead tech wise and military wise.)

Here's proof we have a problem:

1. We are deadlast in power.

Hatty/Bismarck/HC are through the roof.

If anybody thinks this is going to be a cakewalk dream on. We have time to fix this and building up military right now is not the answer as we can't afford it. If anybody attacks we will be up against knights/cats/maces. We need to improve our infrastructure for the next few turnsets and then once that is improved and we can build more advanced units start our military campaign. Let us get a foothold on that continent by going after MM first. Normally I feel the stronger is better but we just don't have the army to do that until we are doing better financially and teching better.

The idea to whip an army right after astronomy doesn't hold water with me since we are up against very powerful set of AI's. We will end up wasting a lot of soldiers. I do think we should try to go after MM with those cats which are just costing us and keeping Kyoto happy.

namliaM · Aug 29, 2006

Re Dotmap: The green I think goes 1 NW on the river... We have more overlap but its on the river and we lose 3 Desert tiles *to bad*

GE => Gunpowder??? Hmz... Is that so?

GS => Osaka GP => Cordoba.. Yes... Or reverse it, or put both in 1 city... Both cities will be commerce/beaker cities... But Wall Street? Oxford?? NO, or not for a loooooong while I think!

Re: Lots of markets... We (only) have 2 cities generating anything near commerce to validate a market: Osaka and Cordoba, maybe Madrid...

Re: Trading, try to trade Health for Happy, lets help them AI as little as possible.

Re: Knights, thats what we have/need pikes for...

Our military may be weak, but dont under estimate the power of a suicide cat. Maybe a few... Which is why I would like to keep whipping Kyoto, to stack up Catapults & get HE, Globe and Market done faster than building them by hand....
If you have to choose build Globe first, so we can start transporting like crazy....Then finish the market (now that we started it lets finish it), last finish HE. While we are whipping Cats and Samurais we have no need for HE.... Only when/if we get to Grens is when we will need HE...

Observatory in Osaka may do us some good, with currently 27 (raw) beakers out of Osaka... Thats 7 extra beakers. Lets asume we can trade for Engineering and Guilds, that leaves 2691 + 4036 = 6727 / 97 = 69.3 turns
6727 / 104 = 64.6 turns thats a full 5 turn win...
I count 22 raw commerce in Munich (from what we know, the cottages may have grown!) and any markets/grocers/courthouse that may be left after we conquer it. Even if Upkeep is 15 with a courthouse (Kyoto: 9) we still get the same effect. Getting the FP in Berlin (or there abouts) will save more money than the Observatory can ever hope to make.

Soldiers are there to be wasted... Techrace we are NEVER going to win. If we wait till we get Grens, they have Infantry. We wait till we have Infantry, they have Modern armour...
It not that we need to speed our tech, but slow theirs. Even just taking out MM and Bismark will hurt the (collective) AI severly (they lose 2 trading partners) and Power us up...
Mace = Samurai/Crossbow
Knight? => Pike
IMHO there is no AI even on monarch that can beat the 1 samurai (later 1 grenny) a turn from Kyoto. Stack 10 Samurais with an invinate number of catapults and we are done.
Samurai: 2 First strikes, Strength 8
Combat 1, CR2 = +55% vs city that is 12.4
Combat 1, CR3 = +85% vs city +10% vs Gunpowder that is 15.6.
Throw in a couple of catapults and ANY defence short of Infantry is toast
Grens dont get a natural boost to City defence, 5 turns of fortification = 25%
12 + 4 = 16 vs our 12.4 (with 2 first strikes) By no means without chance, even better with a damaged Gren.
Offcourse add CG promotions and our chances go down. I set up a test:

6 grenadiers on defence (all supposed to have CG3, but 1 missing...No biggy since the top defender is allways on top) They dont yet have any added Fortification bonus, that has to be mentioned...
On the left, odds for the samurai 2.1%.
On the right, after 7 catapult (yeah I know a bit more than I had hoped for) 1 of which withdrew... Now the odds are 78%, not without chance... and I dont think/hope we will meet a lot of CG3 grennies

Cosmichail · Aug 29, 2006

Techrace we are NEVER going to win

Ever heard of the saying never say never.

Well I quite frequently have surpassed the AI in my own SP games on Monarch and was behind. TOTALLY DISAGREE. With aggressive trading doubling up on trades it can be done. Choosing techs for trading will do the trick too.

We are in no position to take on any of the strong AI's they outpower us considerably and playing catchup there can't be done unless we get them warring with each other. (if anything we will likely be a target soon since we are deadlast in power)

Of course I mean build markets not everywhere but where it counts as well as grocers/banks. Again I am not saying wait let's go for Mansa NOW. Improve finances so that we can support a large army. We can at best maybe support 25 units once we finish settling and building galleons etc etc.
DO that now and no room to improve from there on. Improve infrastructure and then we have room to grow. (what happens when we take a few cities then the support will drop by 14-20gpt per turn)

Did you look at the power of HC/Hatty/Bismarck? It's through the roof. Good luck taking them on with a couple of cats and archers. DREAM ON. Cats move too slow and if there are knights involved they will intercept and take them out before they even get to the city. (just finished an SG against Monty and he poured Knights on if it had been only LB/Cats they would have been wiped out.) CR3 cats are only effective against a city and in the open field are useless unless they are being used to attack to weaken attacker.

You keep talking about Pikes but we do not have Engineering yet. We have 16 turns until Astronomy. Have you looked at the maintenance of the BT now it is more like -9 now in Kyoto, -7 in Edo, and -8 in Nara. These cities are killing us maintenance wise and we need to offset that somehow whether through citizens working commerce or putting up a merchant or two.

How were you intending to get the Sams to have CR promotion. We don't have theology but only vassalage which will affect our science/commerce output loosing bureaucracy. There goes our ability to support a large army. Again the sam will have one combat and one cr until they get experience in the field.

Let's for the next two turns (20 turns) improve our finances/science and then begin a buildup for the major offensive. Building units now will only cost and since we already have appeased the AI hopefully won't get attacked but I don't trust Mao he can be duplicitious. Now what are we going to do with one Jewish city. We won't receive any religious bonuses except for Kyoto. How about missionaries spread on our land only for the income since we have numerous shrines. (Hindu/Confused which wouldn't take a lot of missionaries to do). We might as well be on no state religion the amount of good being Jewish is doing us, other than keeping Bismarck/Hatty happy which btw the Bismarck was already pleased with us.

On top of that we lost Organized religion and now on Judaism for one city. So that 25% bonus is out the window too. Most of our cities are hindu/confused but isn't doing us a lot of good right now.

Finish Astronomy see what we can get (if anything) preferably Guilds/Engineering and then Kyoto will be able to pump out Sams to accompany cats. Our commerce will improve too and we will be able to trade with the other AI's as well improving commerce. In the meantime we have a settler soon to be placed, build HE/Globe in Kyoto (that seems to be the plan), some cities are working cottages and will improve too over time.

If we start pumping out units now it lessons are ability to get techs that are needed for the major offensive. A grocers/bank in Osaka would make a world of difference in the long run. Our other cities are poor in commerce because they haven't grown to their full potential yet.

bobrath · Aug 29, 2006

2 questions (really one for each side of this "discussion"):

Cosmic - Under what circumstances do you see us reaching parity tech wise with the other advanced AIs? By Parity, I'm really asking about how long (and effort) would it take to get to a point in techs that we can build and field a force that is superior enough to handle the AI units.

Namliam - While your scenario places a "perfect" stack next to a nearly perfect defense.. how would that stack handle getting between city attack positions safely? The cats are useless on defense, and the city raider promotions of the Sams do nothing on defense. We're in enemy roaded territory which means just about any AI unit will have the movement advantage. Suddenly we have to care about our stack(s) getting whittled while en route. Note that we don't have the navy yet to make a sea driven invasion that sure either)

See, the thing is, both have icky answers that will involve multiple assumptions and big argument inducing statements and thoughts. I don't see that either one will lead us to a "safe" choice. We can concentrate on teching hard, but what happens when Hatty decides to take her current advantage and drop some knights all over Hokkiado? We can go uber-warmongering, but what happens when we our pointy stick gets dull and we're stuck an age or two behind the rest?

EDIT: having read Cosmic's cross post, the point that we don't have pikes... well that just makes the thought of going to war much more scary. If we think we can benefit from taking Mansa out now... then I'm ok with that. Kinda iffy. Re: state religion, going with the demand was the important thing. We can drop back to NSR just as easily. Sure it doesn't give any bonus with OR, but I'd rather avoid the negatives of a heathen religion.

Cosmichail · Aug 29, 2006

Cosmic - Under what circumstances do you see us reaching parity tech wise with the other advanced AIs? By Parity, I'm really asking about how long (and effort) would it take to get to a point in techs that we can build and field a force that is superior enough to handle the AI units.

To be honest I believe we have missed the boat on that one but through trading and choosing particular techs we might be able to keep abreast. Perhaps we should have held off on Astro and gone for more science/commerce techs but it's too late for that now. Usually Paper/Education/Liberalism are great techs for trading. We are teching the hard way and as learned on Emperor the only way is trading and choosing techs wisely to research. We didn't do that here but in other SG's have. VQ06B is one such example where this was effective. You know well Bob if you have one tech that no AI has you gain likely three or four new ones. We haven't done this at all in this game. We are being sidetracked by the push to build a huge army through whipping and loosing the window on trading.

At this point we are needing to appease the AI since if we don't we stand to get attacked and loose since we are deadlast in power. These are only challenges we face and as team can make it work. I am not so much worried about science (we missed the boat or maybe can fix it at some point) but commerce. We basically have no commerce to speak of except in Osaka.

EDIT: Correction: the tech trading we did with philosophy and CS. That's what Great people are good for giving us a tech we can trade up to get what techs we need. But again no GP farm/No commerce/science city at least that's the impression I am getting. NamliaM would prefer to put HE in Osaka and just build units. With GP's popping regularly we could have some ability to trade.

bobrath · Aug 29, 2006

LuvToBuild said:
I presume we want to settle the wheat/sheep city next with the settler pigswill started in Osaka and has ready to finish next turn. I think the last dot map was something like this unless there was one later on that I missed. Anybody want to create an updated dotmap for me to use? Also, how many more settlers do we want to create? I think Madrid could crank out a couple or so pretty quick and it would shut down growth there for a bit. I'm considering some workers from there too.

I don't see that settling any more cities (after green) is really going to benefit us much more. Re: Workers... they count against the unit cap so we need to be sure that the benefit of another worker is worth the cost.

Cosmichail · Aug 29, 2006

Looked at the save again and a couple of small things:

Kiwasaki is building a CH but it would be better to build a work boat to get the fish there and commerce. (CH is 90 turns and only -4gpt main)

Osaka is working a cottage with one coin but north of the river is a cottage with two coins and more fully developed for more coin later.

Edo is working regular tiles and not sea resources.

Cosmichail · Aug 29, 2006

Some further observations:

Madrid would be an excellent GP farm. With 5 excellent food sources there it could easily hold 5 specialists. Suggested build path: theater—forge (already queued)—temple for happy—library—national epic—market
With these buildings we could put 2 scientist/2 merchants/ and 1 artist at least bring the GPP point to 36 with the Oracle. (this would pop many Great people and help with tech parity)
Not only will it provide lots of Great people it will provide science and commerce too.
Since Madrid isn’t heavy on production I feel it would serve well as GP farm.

Osaka could build the HE and Oxford. Suggested build path after settler:
Heroic Epic (although Kyoto is fine too but it would be built faster here)—Samurais until we discover Astronomy and then Observatory—once guilds is discovered—Grocer (in between keep building Sams) once Banking is discovered—bank.

Cordoba will grow one citizen next turn and could be used for the cottage with three coins to improve commerce. Also we could use a library/market. As city grows we could work more and more cottages improving commerce science.

Satsuma would be a good military production city. Add workshops to plains then we have 2h tiles and with guilds 3 hammers. We could also build a mine on FH for 1f3h and build soldiers here.

Seville also has good production add mine to grass hill but could use a library and would be good for building soldiers too.

Tokyo is also a good production city with many production tiles. We could build a workshop on the river to the north. It also could use a library. (5 beakers science) and after good for soldiers.

The newest city could be a good production city if it were placed with the three plains hills in its fatcross.

Kyoto could loose a scientist for citizen for better production of market. (won’t make a difference in science)

After looking around I see that in our entire empire at 1310 ad we have three libraries and one monastery as our backbone of science. It’s no wonder we are falling behind in science.

We need to build libraries in Madrid/Barcelona/Seville/Cordoba/Tokyo for now to improve science and as they grow will prove beneficial.

That would yield us as soldier production cities:
Osaka intermittently
Seville
Tokyo
Kyoto (whipping center)
Satsuma
Edo (to some degree whipping center)
Kagoshima is breaking even commerce wise and supplying happiness/trade options.

That would allow us a gradual build up of military and aid us in getting some tech parity. Having only three libraries is not enough and we need to do something about that without it costing us military possibilities. If we were to go all building units now we would fall behind in science to a point our military would soon become obsolete. Like Bob said attack promoted soldiers are vulnerable to being attacked in the open whilst heading to their target. Considering the power level of the strong AI’s that is likely.

We would gain science and add to our military at the same time. A little of both so to speak. Once we get some military happening and Astronomy we could take Mansa and have a base to launch from. In BT we only have like 9 cats and a couple of lbm/archers. I don't think it's enough to even take on MM without at least being accompanied by Samurais. The Cats do not have any promotions so they won't do much good on their own. I know NamliaM since we underestimate the power of a CR3 cat but I like to ask "what CR3 Cat". We don't even have them. They will all suicide before they get there. If we want that we need theology/vassalage and right now if we go off bureaucracy will loose a lot of commerce.

I also feel that we should carefully choose our tech path as to allow us some trading possibilities to "double" up our chances of gaining.

In my last turn I was so distracted by all this whipping and queued buildings that I never thought about that we might need libraries. Usually one of the first things I build (if the science is 4 beakers or more). I don't think I ever had an empire with 3 libraries as it backbone for science. Usually by this time have libraries/universities/monasteries and specialist pumping it up without sacrificing military.

EDIT: Not to mention we have only two markets in our entire empire???? (not even Kyoto is just being built and even this is questioned but to me makes sense considering we would only have one for the entire empire) To me this is definitely putting the cart before the horse. When the time comes we can apply the whip to provide us an army that will be sustained and backed by commerce. IMO we are just whipping cats that are useless with no promotions and will prove very ineffective in the battlefield unless they are accompanied by samurais/pikes/knights. Right now all they are doing is costing us and we should stop this right now and consider other options until we get astronomy.

pigswill · Aug 29, 2006

Something that hasn't really been considered is the commerce potential of BT if left unwhipped and allowed to grow; astronomy would make a difference in terms of health and happy; markets give additional happy as well as additional cash.
Re Kawisaki and workboat; we can build a workboat in Osaka easily enough and send it round. I put Osaka working mines to speed up settlers, it might be worth considering letting it grow a bit and getting a couple more cottages. Osaka may also benefit from a monastery (missionaries now buildable at Cordoba). I like the idea of Madrid as GP Farm, so worth thinking about Nat Epic there. I also like the idea of globe in Kyoto for later use. As I think I posted before I think we should take on Egypt and try to nab Versailles.So cats from BT would be useful if we joined them up with pike(s) and samurai. We don't really have a safe path if we're going for 'early' conquest; better to try and fail than settle for mediocrity. The good news is that everyone else is facing similar dilemmas

LuvToBuild · Aug 30, 2006

Finished my turns but its getting late. I will put a detailed report together later but for now here is the save

namliaM · Aug 30, 2006

Yes we dont have Engineering yet, but I am speculating we can trade for it...
Kublai and Bismark seem to be the slow AI, having Theo and Engineering on us (Visible that is).
Mao is straight out tech leader (He got Astro thru the Liberalism sling back in 1238)
and Hatty is not to far behind. Bismark, HC & Kublai are our partners in crime I guess, where we (hopefully) have Astronomy (4485) on them and want Engineering and Guilds (2242 each), maybe add Theo and if possible Gunpowder(2691, pretty expensive...)?
Engineering and Theo or Guilds and Theo, looking at the tech price (even trading with cheap AI) seems possible.
Then picking up Engineering on another trade... We could also pick up paper (1345) from HC and trade paper on

I have said this before, we are not in OR...

Re: techrace, I should have added: this game...
Offcourse you can outtech a Monarch AI, but this is a WAR game not a tech game. We dont win by flying of to space (need techs), we claim the planet for our selves... We dont need tanks to do that.
Check out the powergraph on the progress page, compare ours to Rat Packs... They have the same game as us, ~same power, ~same score, < Culture.
However Ratpack's score and power start to rocket, which means they ARE conquering. Offcourse this doesnt mean we can, but warring now is definatly a possibility.
If we want we can choose to go after Mao, he is nearly as strong as us (power) but is Techleader... Meanwhile tho Bismark, HC and Hathy are going to grow in power.
Power isnt all, AI do tend to have their power in City Garison. And buildings and techs add to power to, but they do not kill soldiers.
I.e. walls and Castles add Soldiers, sure they help but a few Catapults take care of them. There is a thread in stratagy out there some where about the power rating.

You are right on Vassalage vs Burocracy, at the moment not an option. But xp is got while in the field, not out of the barracks. Theo & field experience will get us to CR2 easy. I could have gone with CR3, but didnt because that would be rather extreem...
Also we can upgrade some of our Samurais with combat 2 and Formation (25% vs horses) that puts them on even pegging with Knights.

Grocers and Banks are nice, but count your coins...
A bank in Osaka is going to net us 15 gpt right now (tho nice). Assume we have to research banking ourselves... 1569 beakers. It will take a full 100 turns to make a profit on it. If we can indeed conquer 2 cities on average per turnset of 10 turns. Thats 20 cities closer to conquest, at which point its mute anyway (3 civs down - MM + 2 more).
Banks and grocers... Nice, but capture/raze a city and you earn 100+ gold too... which is as good as our entire economy at the moment.

Why in the world are we so worried about Tech parity? While its nice and all...
Grennies with Cannons can do a good job vs Infantry. This game isnt about getting our tech up, its about getting their tech down... We can do that by taking out atleast 2 AI (MM and Bismark?, maybe HC?) out of the trading game.
While it slows the (collective) AI down, it speeds us up....

Madrid can indeed be a nice GP farm, as can Kyoto. While whipping Kyoto we still run 2/3 specialists. 3 specialist = 11 gpp...
Madrid is nice too it can run lost of specialists if we want it too. But we dont need to... We dont need techs beyond what we have right now (Astro not included), with enough Samurais (1 every 2 turns from kyoto) and Catapults (every else) we can RULE this world. Getting Grennies is just making it easier.

Madrid isnt hammer heavy, true... 11 base hammers now... add 3 workshops (keep max food) an engineer and 2 Priest 21 base + 25% (forge) = 26 hammers. Thats a samurai every ~4 turns. And we can whip it every 15 turns for an extra Samurai, while GPs are nice they dont kill
Priests when joined to a city add 5 gold, which is a nice boon...

Why add a library to a city that is producing a whopping 5 beakers? We get 1 extra Whoopi! ! ! ! !
Tokyo: We need a farm for every Workshop to keep growing a little... I would add farms first on the Grasslands south then Workshops on the plains to balance that. farm/workshop the rest.

Kagoshima is breaking even? 9gold + 6 beakers vs -7 upkeep?

I thought we just went thru 3 pages to find out I was wrong about putting HE in Osaka? :crazyeye:

HE + Globe are 750 hammers.
Whip a Cat (from 5) netting 98 hammers into a Catapult.
38 overflow... we have HE + Globe 20 Catapults later. ~60 turns.
Actually we dont need HE for a while yet... because we can whip Samurais anyway without HE. Globe is most important at the moment, with 450 hammers ~12 cats or ~36 turns.
The ONLY way to produce ANYTHING at ANY reasonable rate is to WHIP Kyoto every 3 turns... Yes building a huge stack of Catapults, but we can start use them in ~16 turns. Get Globe into Kyoto ASAP so we can start using it to its full potential... Forget about the market, it will just slow us down.
For that matter, the only way to produce anything in BT is to use the whip :whipped:

Obervatory in Osaka? Nice, it will safe us 5 turns on Gunpowder => Chemistry. After which IMHO we can turn off science and it will be useless....

We need to build libraries in Madrid/Barcelona/Seville/Cordoba/Tokyo

Madrid? Maybe... so we can run 2 scientists there later on, but currently its producing 6 whole beakers... That is 1 extra beaker, maybe 2. Running scientists... OK we get 6+6 = 12 +25% = 15 from the 6 we have now... makes sence....

Barca, with all the food that place has we should IMHO workshop it up all the way not a cottage in sight... why add a lib? Again maybe later when we start to work some coast? or want to run a scientist.

Seville, maybe (again) currently its only bringing in 2 beakers... with near no food to spare we will not be running scientists... We can Cottage it up, for longer term benifits to Research (> 45 turns) or put some farms/workshops down for serious hammers. It currently is at 12 raw hammers if you mine that one jungle hill... adding 2 (later 3) hammers per workshop and add a forge.
Just 2 workshops (4 raw hammers) = 16 raw hammers = 1 sam every 5+ turns (105 / 20 = 5.2).

We dont yet have CR3 cats, but we dont need them yet either...
For that matter we dont have CR3 Sams either.... War means casualties, but we want to sacrifice "new commers" and keep the promoted once for clean up (> 80% odds) Like my test shows, sacrifice some (7) green 6 xp, fresh out off the Theocratic Barracks agains a stack of Grennies in a city with 0% culture defense and the odds go from 2% to 78% or 1 in 5 CR2 (also 6xp) Samurais will fail.
But we will not be facing Grennies just yet and we will not be facing a huge amount of CG3 Grennies... But CG2 with fortification bonus is the same as in my test, which is why I did it this way.

We will also lose some Sams in the field, and/or face fights in the field. Therefor we need some Sams to go down ie. Combat 2/Formation (6xp). Sadly Sams cannot get Pinch

Also we need some LBs/Crossbows to defend our stack and to defend any cities we deside to keep.

Osaka cannot build boats, its not on water... Satsuma can...

This game is won by :hammers:

not

expect losses in the field and raze city by city... replacing the green soldiers faster than they fall.
AI will counter our attack, ie. germany... It will send a formidable stack against us, but once we get Berlin... It is all over, and all we do is clean up....
I have seen a few SG run their economy on WAR money rather than their own. If you want something that makes money build a catapult or Samurai... Dont go for a market/grocer/lib that will bring 1gpt, I know long term... Yes... But we dont have long term... The window on sams is not closed yet, but it is closing. IMHO we can easy take MM = Bismark + Hatty before we have to lose the Samurai/Cat/Pike/LB combination for something better (grennies)
At 3 cities per 10 turns, Bismark have 9 cities currently, thats allready 30 turns... Hatty is slightly bigger... another 30...

Our current research sets us at ~50 turns to Grennies?

LuvToBuild · Aug 30, 2006

Pre-Turn
I took a long hard look around and did some tweaking here and there, trying to get the maximum accomplished that I could reasonably do in ten turns. Now that I have a better handle on whipping, I was looking at trying to optimize conditions for whipping in a couple of buildings at minimal population cost.

Turn 1
Completed Confucian Monastery and started on some Confucian Missionaries for Kyoto. Completed Settler in Osaka and started on Courthouse. Osaka has -4 maintenance from number of cities and had nothing else of particular need to build other than possibly units (in hindsight it did, should have built a theatre for the Globe) and I felt like picking up a couple more gold first couldn't hurt. Hatty came to us and wanted to trade her spices for our sheep. It sounded good to me for the happiness and we were only giving away health so I agreed. I noticed we had an extra stone and she had extra dye so I made a trade there too. I figured we weren't going to be competing with her for any stone based wonders so I didn't see any good reason to not get some extra happiness. It wasn't until the next turn that I realized I had meant to sign an OB with her so I could rescout her lands and determine her real power. There has been discussion about the Jewish bloc being too powerful and its my belief that they will only continue to grow in power so we need to see what they have now and plan accordingly. We have to hit them hard and soon, even if only to slow them way down and give ourselves a chance to get back in the tech race.

Turn 2
Founded..uh..Osaka? Ok, well I had noticed pigswill changed a couple of city names but since we no longer had an Osaka, the name came up Osaka and I left it that way. I then thought it was confusing, and to be honest, annoying. So I renamed it Fuji and I renamed Osaka Academy back to Osaka. Otherwise, any other cities we found are going to try and keep using the Osaka name. I left Cordoba Shrine...for now. :mischief:

Turn 3
Finished a Confucian missionary in Cordoba. I put him on the caravel and sent him to Kyoto.

Turn 4
:whipped:

Forge into Madrid with overflow going into Library, Courthouse in Satsuma with overflow going into Harbor (later realized this might not have been a good idea due to much slower growth), and Longbowman in Kyoto with overflow going to Market. Need to get some city infrastructure going so we can hurry along to building units and get to warring. We can't afford to play around here taking our time building.

Turn 5
Finished a Courthouse in Tokyo and started on a market.

Turn 6
Finished an LBM in Osaka and started another one. My intent was to get some garrison units for Madrid. We need more happiness there so it can grow and we need to free up the offensive units stationed there. We get a GS in Kyoto. He will give us Paper or an Academy in Kyoto. An Academy would be better in Madrid and we don't really need Paper right now so I put him on the caravel and ship him to Hokkaido as planned. He should arrive in that bay where Toledo used to be, just northwest of Osaka.

Turn 7
I screwed up my intended whipping of Edo. I missed the window that was probably there last turn. I went ahead and whipped the LBM to get him finished and to keep the city manageable. Not much overflow for the Market like I had intended. I did mage to whip Madrid again within the window to get a Library and overflow into a Theatre.

Turn 8
Completed another LBM in Osaka and start on a Theatre. At this point I realized I was a big dummy. I should have been getting another couple of Theatres going to make the Globe available. Crap, crap, crap. Well, nothing really wasted but that Courthouse could have certainly waited. Finished another Confucian missionary and sent him south to be used in popping the borders of one of the southernmost cities. (As I write this, I realize now that we have the state religion of Judaism so we need to get switched over to NSR or Confucianism in order to get that culture.)

Turn 9
Kyoto had grown to pop 9 and was unhealthy. I was looking to hit the window for whipping it at minimal pop cost. I hit it on this turn and whipped it for 2 pop with overflow going towards the HE.

Turn 10
Not much to report. I had been scouting the Egyptians and took a couple of screenshots to show her strength.

Spoiler :

Here's the latest save: (in case you missed it in my teeny post above)

Current Save

Here's the updated roster:

Current Roster:
bobrath --> on deck
namliaM --> Leader of the "Whip till you Bleed and Kill'em All" Party
Cosmichail --> Leader of the "We Need Science and Commerce" Party
Pigswill --> Cochair of "We Need Science and Commerce" Party
LuvtoBuild --> The Independent Middle of the Road Moderate Who can't make up his mind
Eektor --> UP

bobrath · Aug 30, 2006

namliaM said:
Check out the powergraph on the progress page, compare ours to Rat Packs... They have the same game as us, ~same power, ~same score, < Culture.
However Ratpack's score and power start to rocket, which means they ARE conquering. Offcourse this doesnt mean we can, but warring now is definatly a possibility.

Can we stop comparing to the meta-game graphs please? There's no way to get the "real" story behind the numbers until we finish our game and go read the other threads. Lets play THIS game to the best of our abilities instead of trying to play what we think some other team is playing. Thanks.

LTB, where are those screen shots you mentioned? My work comp doesn't have civ, so I always enjoy seeing what's going on.

LuvToBuild · Aug 30, 2006

namliaM said:
Mao is straight out tech leader (He got Astro thru the Liberalism sling back in 1238) and Hatty is not to far behind.

It's pretty neck and neck but I think Hatty is closer to being the tech leader. I saw she had Nationalism first and now it looks like Mao has it too. She probably traded it to him or he's close to her in science rate. He has a smaller empire so he can probably run a higher science rate. She has the Jewish shrine plus Versailles though and that makes a difference.

namliaM said:
Engineering and Theo or Guilds and Theo, looking at the tech price (even trading with cheap AI) seems possible. Then picking up Engineering on another trade...

This seems more doable than Guilds/Engineering but the AI's seem to be pretty stingy. I won't be surprised if they want to trade one or the other and a paltry sum of gold, refusing to give a second tech.

I'm posting these screenshots because I want to illustrate that you can't make an accurate judgement of an AI's real power just by looking at the power graph. Hatty looks kind of vulnerable right now in my opinion. She is more powerful than us RIGHT NOW because most of her units are up to date whereas ours are mostly outdated. This can change quickly and NEEDS to change quickly once Astronomy allows us to build sams, pikes, and knights in Kyoto. We need to get HE and the Globe in place first though. While we are doing that, we can be building cats for offense (I should have done that instead of the LBM, hindsight is 20/20) and putting the overflow into HE and the Globe.

Bottom line: I hate to admit it but namliaM has been right in emphasizing war over infrastructure. We have to drag the AI down and send them back to the stone age. We're not in a position to outtech the AI any time soon. It's just not gonna happen in the timeframe that we have for making a respectable showing. That doesn't mean, however, that I think Hokkaido needs to be a high production military industrial complex. I think the overemphasis on production in EVERY single city is too much. There are some cities that should be unit building cities (Osaka and Madrid). Others should be balanced to provide us with some beakers and gold to support the war effort, especially during those times when we might not be warring and bringing in war loot (although once we start, we should really keep it going if possible). Barcelona seems like it would be better as a commerce city. I've been somewhat back and forth since I'm not sure we could get cottages to grow quickly enough to do any good. However, it's never going to be a really good production city so why waste our time trying to make it into one? It COULD, however, be a really good commerce city given enough time and the right buildings. I also think that Kyoto is our best bet for keeping new troops in the supply line, which is why I hammered it so hard. It's almost like having a tank factory in Stalingrad. Send them out the door and right into the fight. Hokkaido is basically our support colony. It should produce commerce and enough units to launch backdoor diversionary attacks on the outer coastline of the ring.

bobrath · Aug 30, 2006

My biggest fear from those screen shots is that Thebes could very quickly have six knights invading one of our BT islands - one to two turns into any war. Not to mention they would pillage all of our nets. It does look like we are near parity in military techs at this *very* moment. I just wonder if we have the naval forces to allow the BT to actually ship units to the main ring AND keep our food resources hooked up so that we can keep the whip going.

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