SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Swiss Pauli]

I do agree, we need to find friends sooner than later. It seems that we have already begun befriending Huayna. Was he Buddhist? We may consider changing religions soon. We have met all but four civs: Hatty (who's borders we can see), Kublai/Genghis, Washington/Roosevelt and Mansa. I forgot to check what religions Cyrus and Monty had.

If we need tips on getting friendships, I'll copy the discussion from Rabid Dog into here.

I'm not sure Rabid Dog is so helpful for this game: I'd say you're better off with far-away friends and enemies nearby, given the goal of backdoor domination.

 

[LKendter]

Hopefully we can find a few more of the missing civs the next round. I know I exposed more of them.

 

[Kodii]

Hatty's borders are directly above Alex. Since our open borders are cancelled with him, we'll have to wait for a caravel to make contact. Hatty also has faint borders to the northeast of our island.

 

[Kodii]

I'm not sure Rabid Dog is so helpful for this game: I'd say you're better off with far-away friends and enemies nearby, given the goal of backdoor domination.

I thought it might be a good idea just to copy the discussion on what sort of things please the AI, rather than how to befriend then kill them

EDIT: This one:

Here are our sources of relation:
1) Demands. By far the easiest source of relationship is "inane demands" since they have no diplomatic negatives with others. Coughing up techs is a way to get fair-trade without suffering "You traded with our worst enemy". GIFT
2) Civic Bonus. Probably actually one of the eaiest to manipulate since there's no downsides to getting the civic bonus other than not being able to run better civics (or the case where one civ likes Rep and another HRule) : CIVIC.
3) Mutual Military Struggle. Once we are friendly with someone, we can declare war on them and invite everyone else to join in. We want to avoid killing them ourselves because we want them to live for ages for lots of MMS.
4) Religion. This must be used with great care, because it usually means someone else wont like us... just as important is the religions the AI chooses to run - we may not want them friendly with each other because that would make it harder to get MMS. Note that some leaders like Mansa Musa are easily bribed into a religion even if they have one of their own. FAITH. The HEATHEN penalty being the counterpart.
5) General trade. This can have the large downside of you traded With Our worst Enemy - The WOE penalty.

Except that all this stuff is in relation to our goal in Rabid Dog. Obviously we aren't going to worry about WOE penalties with 18 AIs.

 

[Kodii]

Religious Standings (in order of score):

*Mao Zedong
The Real Ms. Beyond
Louis XIV
Victoria
Tokugawa
Huayna Capac
Isabella
*Julius Caesar
Cyrus
Montezuma
Gandhi
Saladin
*Alexander
Frederick
Genghis/Kublai
Roosevelt/Washington
Hatshepsut
Mansa Musa

*- To be exterminated
Orange - Buddhist
Blue - Hindu
Brown - Christian
Black - None/Haven't Met

The Buddhist Block:
We want to eliminate Alex and Caesar. Victoria will eventually switch to Taoism, as she founded it. Tokugawa and Montezuma will be almost impossible to befriend. Therefore, I don't think we should be Buddhist.

The Hindu Block:
We want to eliminate Mao. The other three members are rather weak. Therefore, I don't think we should be Hindu.

The Christian Block:
We tentatively decided to befriend Gandhi, which isn't very hard. Same thing with Huayna. He is already Friendly with Louis XIV, who is rather powerful. At the moment, I would want to side with this block, but Christianity hasn't even spread to us yet. We have the best relations with the Christian block ATM. Louis +6, Huayna +5, Gandhi +3. For the record, Louis and Huayna both like Hereditary Rule.

Conclusion:
Don't switch religions yet. Perhaps ever.

Notes:
Mao is now up to TEN cities. Caesar is still at SEVEN. I think war should come sooner rather than later. If we eliminate Alex first, then go for Mao, then Mao will probably never attack our mainland. Instead, he'd attack the Greek cities.

PS: grangerm, wanna give us a shout?

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Hatty is usually another one that is easy to befriend, although she may be too close for that.

 

[Kodii]

I'll play tomorrow if I don't hear from grangerm.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Lurker's comment :
You can earn this bonus also by map trading or better map buying.

You need paper for that. With two caravels you can be around this world before you get to paper.

 

[grangerm]

Well, I was writing a post and alt-tabbing to Civ and one time it hung my computer. I'd heard that people hadn't had good luck with Civ 4 and alt-tab, but this was my first problem. Anyway, now what was I saying...

I should be able to play sometime tonite if that is ok with everyone.

As LKendter said, St. Pete is close to being able to whip the NE. I am in favor of whipping it ASAP. Courthouse next is good if for nothing else than to allow us to build the FP eventually.

I would rather attack sooner rather than later. I think we've been builders a little too much in this game and should start throwing our weight around (intelligently). We are probably 8 turns from CS. Should we wait till we can field some maces before attacking? In the meantime, we can build another caravel and cats. Let's not forget that Mao has his UU that will eat anything we have now alive. I've always countered crossbows with knights or my own crossbows, but knights are quite a ways off our tech path.

Speaking of which, what is our tech path right now? Are we going for Liberalism? We'll have a GS in a couple turns who would help us with Education once we finish CS and paper. We should get another GS in ~20 turns that can get us Philosophy to open up Liberalism, if we haven't traded for it or researched it manually.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but another way to make friends is when we meet new civs we can gift them with a tech. It's the "first impression" bonus.

EDIT: What's our plan for trading resources? We are +6 with Louis and can trade our spices for 2 gpt. We can trade our clams for Ghandi's pigs. We are best friends with Louis (+6) and HC (+5) and it just happens that they are really tight (+7,+10). Collectively, they don't like Cyrus, Montezuma, Frederick and Isabella. I'm not used to playing with 18 civs, so I'm not sure what we can do, but the path of least resistance seems to be "be nice to Louis and HC and shun Cyrus, Monty, Frederick and Izzy".

 

[LKendter]

Well, I was writing a post and alt-tabbing to Civ and one time it hung my computer. I'd heard that people hadn't had good luck with Civ 4 and alt-tab, but this was my first problem.

If I don't play in windowed mode alt-tabbing is a disaster for me.

I would rather attack sooner rather than later. I think we've been builders a little too much in this game and should start throwing our weight around (intelligently). We are probably 8 turns from CS. Should we wait till we can field some maces before attacking?

At this point I would like maces. For now we can keep plenty busy just building ships. IMHO we need several galleys just for landing troops. I think we can talk targets after your turn. I don't see war on your turn. We still lack catapults.

I agree we need to start on backdoor domination goal.

Speaking of which, what is our tech path right now? Are we going for Liberalism? We'll have a GS in a couple turns who would help us with Education once we finish CS and paper.

I think it would be crazy not to with the fastest winning goal. However we use the free tech will help us.

 

[Kodii]

Just follow Lee's summary that he posted following his turnset report. I agree that we should go for the Liberalism beeline now, and we can trade for other techs.

Build ships now, and macemen/cats later. We'll decide who'll be our first victim later.

Its probably not a good idea to completely rely on our own population and land area to win a backdoor diplomatic victory. Right now, I'm really liking Louis XIV and Huayna. Since we haven't found Louis's land yet, theres a good chance that some other civs we haven't met are Christian as well. There's also that same chance for Hinduism though. Also, Huayna and Louis are far enough away. That gives us a lot of room to conquer, without having to conquer them.

 

[grangerm]

Starting my turn now.

 

[grangerm]

725 AD - 0)

Trade Louis spices for 2 gpt.
Swap Moscow to a caravel for 1 turn quicker caravel.

IBT: Sweet! Got a new source of gems at Moscow (-1 hammer, +6 commerce)

740 AD - 1)

Up science to 100%, CS due in 7.
Trade clam to Ghandi for pig. (he's another in the Christianity, Louis, HC bloc)

IBT: Frederick demands we cancel deals w/ Louis. I refuse. In a huff, he leaves and converts to Buddhism.

755 AD - 2)

Yaroslavl: galley->galley

IBT: Persia demands Machinery. I refuse. He, at least, isn't so pissed that he renounces his religion.

770 AD - 3)

GS born is St. Pete, I put him to sleep.

IBT: Judiasm spreads to St. Pete.

785 AD - 4)

Nothing

800 AD - 5)

Novograd: caravel -> cat. send him exploring W.

815 AD - 6)

Moscow: caravel -> spear. send him exploring E stopping by Egypt 1st.
Trade Ghandi gems for 3 gpt.

830 AD - 7)

CS in, revolt, science set to paper.
Moscow: spear -> mace
Rostov: Monastery -> hindu miss
Yaraslavl: galley -> galley
Meet Hatty w/ East bound galley. Already -3 with her . I tried to gift her clams to get the "first impression" bonus, cause she only wanted CS or mach. Didn't work. Next player should cancel this when it expires. FYI, she is 2nd in score, barely ahead of us.

IBT: Mao converts to Christianity . Checked diplo with him and we are at 0, with no modifiers...weird.

845 AD - 8)

Out of anarchy. Beauracracy bonus is 26 and 6 .
St Pete 5-pop whips NE (of course now it's 5-pop, once we get to 12 pop).
Met Mansa's skirmisher in Hatty's land. He's 4th to last in score. Could trade him Compass for 20 gold for the diplo bonus but since he's -3 with HC, I decide not to.
Science to 0% to build for paper.

IBT: Toka declares on Ghandi, lands a 6 unit stack next to Dehli. Yikes.

860 AD - 9)

St Pete: NE -> Jewish Monastary
St Pete's borders expand, Lahore now only 9% Indian.
Science back to 100%, paper in 5.
Next GP due from St. Pete in 14 turns.

IBT: Dehli survives...at least so far. 1 healty sword, 1 injured crossbow left, but probably 3 defenders left.

875 AD - 10)

Nothing

--------------------------

I've started irrigating St. Pete and up towards Lahore, cause it should flip soon enough. St. Pete gave the fish back to Novograd and is using its newly farmed land instead.

Next player should cancel clam gift to Hatty when possible.

Only HC has Paper, so we'll get the liberalism slingshot.

Caravels are on the way around. Probably 5 or 6 turns before the circumnavigation bonus.

Next GP in 13 turns. Probably end up being 10% GA, 90% GS. When Paper comes in, we should find out how much our GS will research for us. Obviously, he'll do more than 1736 cause he'll discover Philosophy for us. If our GS will give us n beakers, if (4036 - n) > 1736, then we should use both GS on Education and research Philo manually to open up Liberalism. If not, use 1 on Education and the other on Philo. Of course, if we get a GA, we save it for later and use the 1 GS on Education.

Hatty will trade Feudalism for CS + 60 gold. Figured I'd give everone a chance to mull this over.

We're +5 w/ HC, but he's just cautious with us . He won't trade us any techs.

I was thinking that we could leave Moscow without religion and hope that Christianity spreads to it, so we can swap to it later before the UN vote. But I guess all we have to do is get one city with Christianity and we can conquer one probably.

I only whipped the NE. Moscow could use a whip for sure, it is closest to the happy cap. Possibly a 3-pop whip for a barely started mace to get the most at once. Say we had 10/105 into the mace, would the whip be 2-pop cause (90 *1.75) > 95? Or does whipping not take into account hammer bonuses before determining whip pop which would make it a 3-pop? I don't know, but it would be sweet to be able to get 135 * 1.75 from a whip.

 

[Kodii]

I'm next and I've got it, but there's a definate need for some discussion.

Just before I forget: An axeman to maceman upgrade is 179 gold. Thats two turns of 0% research.

I can't believe we popped one ... Too bad its gems. We already have.. a few of those.

I wouldn't mind killing Hatty at some point, but we have other AIs to take care of. Tokugawa already has the largest land area. We don't want him to run away, and he'll probably mow over Gandhi. On the bright side, Tokugawa is rather backwards, so we can probably gain a lot of population by using Cossacks against his obsolete units.

We can probably get Feudalism, Drama and Theology by trading CS around to Hatty, Gandhi and Louis

 

[Iainuki]

I'm leaning towards using the GS for an academy in Moscow. (We have Bureacracy, cottages, and now gems--is there any reason to hold back?) I'll look at the save tomorrow and try to put together some ideas about where we should head from here.

 

[grangerm]

We can probably get Feudalism, Drama and Theology by trading CS around to Hatty, Gandhi and Louis

I know Ghandi and Louis would only trade Drama for CS. Maybe if we traded for Feudalism and packaged it with CS, they'd give us Theology. But since Theology isn't important to our plan (except for the bonus to Education), I didn't really worry about it.

I'm leaning towards using the GS for an academy in Moscow.

I actually hadn't thought of that, it just slipped my mind. It'll probably still pay off in the long run. Moscow has 64 commerce after the beauracracy bonus, plus the 3 from the engineer, so would get an extra 33/turn at 100% science. And that's without matured cottages and +1 from PP.

I think we should attack Alex first. He's close, so maintenance won't be much and he's weak. Only problem is that Louis is +5 and pleased with him.

[Toka will] probably mow over Gandhi.

All Ghandi had were archers in Dehli to defend. Then he made a brilliant tactical maneuver sending two of his garrisoned archers out in a galley to attack Toka's homeland, while Toka has 6 units on his doorstep. So you are probably right.

 

[Kodii]

I'll probably play right after lunch (PST). Any more comments?

EDIT: I'll wait for Iainuki's comments too

 

[Iainuki]

I still think the most important immediate task is to come up with a coherent diplomatic plan. Diplomacy, however, is one of my weaker points in Civ, so I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be the one doing it. (I always seem to pick the wrong allies, etc.) My one feeling at the moment is that we should stay atheist until we hit Free Religion.

Some status notes:

We should consider hiring more specialists, particularly in Rostov and Yaroslavl'. We may want to hire a GE in St. Pete, though maybe not until after we pop another GS.

Why are we building a Hindu missionary in Rostov? Is it for St. Pete? Monasteries are one of the most hammer-efficient science buildings after libraries (though note that our cheap universities are better than monasteries, in general). However, I don't think that spreading religion is a wise use of our limited hammers, in general.

We need to get markets in our cities. We're trading for silk and we can potentially trade for furs. At only 70% science, markets will pay themselves back fairly quickly. The two most important cities for them are Moscow and Rostov. Novgorod may have to stay on military, but St. Pete should probably whip one at some point.

We are paying a lot of money in unit maintenance. This basically means that we should start conquering someone: the new cities will decrease our unit maintenance costs even as they add to our city maintenance costs, and we should come out even or slightly ahead. We need more military: I think all of our new units should be catapults. We should probably upgrade some of our axes rather than building new maces.

I think that our current GS should go to Moscow to build an academy. We have 4 turns left on Paper, then 18 turns on Education, before the academy is constructed; we have another GS (hopefully) due in 12-13 turns, and I would plan to use him on Education. We should make sure we get the full beaker return: if we're approaching 2500 beakers left on Education and our GS hasn't appeared yet, we should turn off science and store cash until we birth him.

Lahore is bound to flip to us eventually; we should probably have workers clear the gems near it and irrigate up to before it does.

I think the most important thing we need to do in the next part of the game is start waging productive wars against the AIs: we need to keep our tech rate high while expanding our territory as much as possible.

 

[Kodii]

For my turnset:

Build an academy in Moscow (?) - Still need more opinions on that
Continue to build up military (cats, galleys)
Circumnavigate

I'm not quite sure about the academy. We'll get to Liberalism faster by saving the GSs to lightbulb.

If I don't hear from anyone else, I'll hold off playing until tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

 

[Iainuki]

I'm not quite sure about the academy. We'll get to Liberalism faster by saving the GSs to lightbulb.

Well, the question is efficiency. At this point, we should burning GSes on techs expensive enough so we get all the beakers, and not on techs that lots of AIs have researched, because GSs don't benefit from the research bonus (AFAIK). I think we'll get around 2500 beakers from a GS right now. What techs do we have available that can use all of those?