SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[LKendter]

Lee, I continually editted in comments as I continued to play, so Bugsy said that before I wrote that I made peace with everyone.

Well I am lucky I read it when I did. That type of editing always seems to cause confusion and that is exactly why I ban it in the LK series.

 

[LKendter]

Summary:

The best news is we are at peace with the world again. We are #10 in soldiers, so military doesn't feel nearly as critical as before. What I see as our short term goals:

1) With 5 axes and a spear, I am no longer worried about Yaroslavl. After the current axe, I would like to get that city going again. What I would like is workboat for clams, workboat to explore, and then get to work on infrastructure starting with Granary. I will concede building Colossus in Yaroslavl.

2) Now that the first war crisis is over without much damage, I would like to propose we go back to Hanging Gardens in Moscow. While I would like the worker, we are almost out of time to try for more engineer points.

3) We should keep Novgorod on military production. We don't know where the next attack will come from, and our northern cities are still week. I would send that galley almost complete exploring. If nothing else we can travel around Gandhi's land.

4) With Rostov being shield light, and food heavy I would like to swap to library with intention to whip it ASAP. If the city is working a 1 food, 2 commerce tile along with an engineer it has the pop to spare. After that, a lighthouse would be nice.

5) St. Petersburg is food heavy, and will even be more so after the lighthouse. I would like to see some workers from that city.

6) We really need to start improving relations. Would a trade of gems for silks deal be worth it with Rome to start working on that?

7) For a tech path I would like to propose: Compass, machinery and optics as possible option. This gets us caravels that can explore anywhere despite closed borders. Our tech pace need to improve, and the best thing to do it is to find more civs.

8) Please add 2 scientists to St. Petersburg. The choice between a 1F, 2C tile for 6 beakers and 3 GPP should be automatic. That really cuts down the next GS. I feel we are running behind, and anything to speed up science is worth it.

9) We can trade metal casting to Gandhi for calendar. He will throw in mediation if we want to waste the tech cap on something that cheap. We need to catch up, and calendar is on the path to the UN. We add another happy resource with spices by doing that.

 

[Compromise]

Well done Kodii! I would not have guessed that our losses would be so low with an early triple-dogpile on us. Did the forge survive the exchanges of hands?

I've briefly looked over LK's post and largely agree. I'm still having trouble getting back to Civ on a computer so I'll post more specific thoughts on the game when I look at the save.

I think we're at a very critical point in the game, however. We've expanded very well and landed the Pyramid (I just recently noticed that's singular!) and the Great Library. We've got early Metalcasting which is great for the forges.

What we need is a long-term plan. I outlined a thought a while back--turtle through Theology-Education-Liberalism (Astronomy)-beeline cossacks, conquer while teching to Mass Media--but I'm not convinced it's the best plan.

I think we need to consider the effect of so many civs, so many religious blocks, all of the tech traders out there, and so on. Whom do we befriend? Do we want to foster AI-AI war if we can? When do we start our own conquering? And who first?

(Note: when I ask who here, I'm not looking for names of specific civs since we don't know who's where and what faiths they will adopt. But we might be able to think generally: good techer, close-by, religious foe, big, small, etc.)

How many great people do we realistically expect before the end? We've got the 150-pointer already. We'll easily and quickly get the 300-, 450- and 600-pointers. Do we want those all to be St Pete scientists? If not, we need to start planning. What do we want to do with them? [I don't think we want to found any religions. Better to have AI-AI strife, I think.]

Another thing. We're in real danger of losing the competition because we get a domination rather than a backdoor domination victory. The population threshold is 33%, but the land threshold is just 51%. We want just over 50% to vote ourselves in. That means we have to be careful not to conquer too many cities. This might mean we can't use slavery toward the end of our conquest because we'll want high pop for our land.

Maybe this will mean that we need at least one close friend who will vote for us. Who will that be?

Or, we might have to time a capture binge right before the vote so that we're elected winners while cities are still under resistance. (Would that work?!) Or capture cities with food on one side and another civ's culture on the other side so we get the population but not all the land. It could get tricky.

I think the time to think seriously about these issues is right now because we're at a fork in the tech path. We either want to tech: explore (Optics), conquer (Construction), beeline (Theology-Education), or commercial infrastructure (Currency, Code of Laws). Did I miss one or two?

Also civics and religion: Each turn of anarchy (and it gets worse later) will delay our victory. For example, we might want to be in Universal Suffrage at the end if we have a great economy.

A final question: Does anyone know what the likely effect of these early wars will be on later AI war declarations? Will they be more or less likely to attack us again since they got little gain here and our power rating will be higher (I hope)?

 

[Swiss Pauli]

What we need is a long-term plan. I outlined a thought a while back--turtle through Theology-Education-Liberalism (Astronomy)-beeline cossacks, conquer while teching to Mass Media--but I'm not convinced it's the best plan.

It's the best you've got so far...

How many great people do we realistically expect before the end? We've got the 150-pointer already.

Lots, but remember to time Moscow's GE for Mass Media...

Another thing. We're in real danger of losing the competition because we get a domination rather than a backdoor domination victory.
[...]
Or, we might have to time a capture binge right before the vote so that we're elected winners while cities are still under resistance.

I think there are too many skilled micro-analysts for dom to happen and these skills will let you calculate just how much is required, including last minute city grabs to reduce oppposition pop.

I think the time to think seriously about these issues is right now because we're at a fork in the tech path. We either want to tech: explore (Optics), conquer (Construction), beeline (Theology-Education), or commercial infrastructure (Currency, Code of Laws). Did I miss one or two?

If you can get a WB beyong Ghandi, then he should be good to explore a decent chunk of the world. Currency should be traded in, CoL will open Philo for a lightbulb (to speed the path to Liberalism, not for Taosim), and Construction is not just for conquest: cats are great value defenders if you're teching.

A final question: Does anyone know what the likely effect of these early wars will be on later AI war declarations? Will they be more or less likely to attack us again since they got little gain here and our power rating will be higher (I hope)?

In my experience, if the AI attacks you once, it'll do it again, especially on Agg AI.

My suggestion would be turtle and trade with Gandhi up to WFYABTA then kill him. Turtle again til Liberalism/Oxford/Cossacks. Kill Caesar and Mao. Beeline to Mass Media, taking out other civs as needed.

 

[LKendter]

We really need those exploring ships to answer things better. We still don't have a very good clue how the religious blocks are setup.

 

[LKendter]

Another thing. We're in real danger of losing the competition because we get a domination rather than a backdoor domination victory. The population threshold is 33%, but the land threshold is just 51%.

Are you sure about those numbers? They just don't sound right.

This does make me want Hanging Gardens even more. Any source of additional health / happiness gets our cities larger.

 

[grangerm]

We've got the 150-pointer already. We'll easily and quickly get the 300-, 450- and 600-pointers.

We've got the 150 and 300 already and if we are running 2 scientists along with the 2 GPP and 2 sci from the GL, we'll be getting 28 GPP/turn I think.

8) Please add 2 scientists to St. Petersburg. The choice between a 1F, 2C tile for 6 beakers and 3 GPP should be automatic. That really cuts down the next GS. I feel we are running behind, and anything to speed up science is worth it.

Always, always worth it to run the scientists in St. Pete. Now that we can build the NE, should we do that soon in St. Pete? After a couple of workers, maybe? As it is a low-shield city, it may take a while and we may want to whip much of it.

The population threshold is 33%, but the land threshold is just 51%. We want just over 50% to vote ourselves in.

I have seen some of these numbers change during a game when I am going for domination. I don't know why they change (possibly based on # of civs left on the map), but I don't think that they will be the same by the time we are nearing our victory. We definitely should keep an eye on them to avoid the accidental domination win as Compromise suggests.

I think the priority of Optics depends on how many civs we can meet with our galleys and WBs. If we can meet most of them and possibly even get the circumnavigation bonus, getting Optics is only important as a prereq to Astronomy. If we do decide to go for Optics, I'm sure our 1st GS will come before we are done Compass and Machinery, so we could lightbulb Optics (as long as we haven't opened up Philosophy).

Are we still planning on going into Pacifism? I haven't seen the game, but I think I understand only 2 of our cities to have religion and neither to be St. Pete or Moscow, so at this point Pacifism doesn't help our great people generation.

I agree that we should go for the Hanging Gardens in Moscow, as much for the meager engineer points as the pop bonus. We'll need all the engineer points we can get to try to keep up with St. Pete. But if we do that, we definitely need to keep Novograd on military to protect us.

 

[Tatran]

Lurker's comment:

Are you sure about those numbers? They just don't sound right.

No, they don't.
I had 2 diplomatic victories lately and in both cases I needed 62% of
all the votes. Refering to the posted Augustus Caesar game, that one
was close to a Domination win. I had already more than 52% territory.

The phony wars are over, you're still alive and I don't have to start
to follow one of the other teams. That's great.

 

[Iainuki]

There's a lot going on here and I need to look at the save to give thorough analysis, so here are my off-the-cuff comments.

Good job on the defense of Mother Russia, Kodii. I don't suppose Yaroslavl's forge survived its near-death experience?

This would be an unusual archipelago map indeed if we needed Optics for circumnavigation, so our exploration should be fine without it. Now that we've survived the AIs' attack, I think we need to prioritize exploration ASAP.

Has Taoism been founded yet? The Pacifism route is not viable without it, I think, or if both the key cities get contaminated.

Should we consider taking out one or more of the AIs?

Remember that water under your cultural control doesn't count to the domination threshold. I don't think we need to worry about accidental real domination while going for backdoor domination.

 

[LKendter]

Good job on the defense of Mother Russia, Kodii. I don't suppose Yaroslavl's forge survived its near-death experience?

We still have a forge down there IIRC. We lost the obelisk, but that is trivial at this point. I took a look at the game after Kodii played before making my list of comments.

This would be an unusual archipelago map indeed if we needed Optics for circumnavigation, so our exploration should be fine without it. Now that we've survived the AIs' attack, I think we need to prioritize exploration ASAP.

We have too many hostile AIs that won't open borders. Right know the *only* exploration path is via India.

 

[Compromise]

I had a brief moment to look at the save. The forge is the only building that survived the brief Roman occupation.

We are seriously axe-heavy! Something like 13 axes and some warriors.

Looking at the power graph, Mao and Caesar are both ramping up. If we don't prepare for them--and maybe take them on--they'll be back.

I'm starting to think we've missed the workboat-circumnavigation window. Too many civs with too many different religions.

I'm starting to lean toward a run to Construction, followed by a run to Optics, then Theology-Education. Maybe we can trade for math?

I think pacifism is out.


I also think we're going to need to nip Mao and/or Caesar. If we can capture Roman territory down to Rome, we'll be good. Also, go through Alex's northern cities (I see he has another competing with Mao SE of Yaroslavl') and take a few of Mao's. His capital can't be that far down there.

I think the goal is to stop their progress, not necessarily wipe them out. We need swords and cats with axes and spears for defense and something to leave behind for new city MPs. If we're good, this might enable pointy-stick research.

I agree with LK's post. Still looking over the others.

Question: do techs we extort for a peace treaty count toward the WFYABTA limit?

 

[Kodii]

We have math. I traded for it with Gandhi, giving him Iron Working and Pottery.

 

[Compromise]

We have math. I traded for it with Gandhi, giving him Iron Working and Pottery.

Nice work! I'm still catching up.... And don't take the axe-heavy observation as a criticism. They'll upgrade nicely to maces and are reasonably inexpensive city garrisons.

 

[Iainuki]

Axes are the universal ancient-age counter, so being heavy on them really isn't much of a problem. Spears kill mounted units more effectively, we haven't seen many of those yet.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Well I am lucky I read it when I did. That type of editing always seems to cause confusion and that is exactly why I ban it in the LK series.

I'm with Lee. write a new post each time. Most folks don't go back and read a post after they have already read it once. Valuable information is sometimes not passed on.

I have to say this is a crazy team to play on. Some folks play five turns, some play fifteen.


To Do List:
1. Continue trying to circumnavigate whichever way we can.
2. Add two scientists to St. Pete
3. Hanging Gardens in Moscow
4. Trade with Gandhi

What else?

I think we need to plan on killing Alex very soon.

 

[Kodii]

That looks good. In terms of tech, follow your instinct. At this point, I think any of the paths Compromise listed looks promising. Of course, it all depends on what our nearest goal is. (If it is to destroy Alex, or at least remove him from that island, then perhaps Construction is the wisest option.)

As for the post editting, I don't normally do that, but I wanted to get the information out as soon as possible, so I just continued editting. I'll keep in mind not to do that in the future.

 

[Compromise]

I want to make a few more observations and throw out some ideas.

1) We have a great scientist coming from St Pete in 13T and another ~21T after that. We can use it for Optics if we get Compass and Machinery quickly (~20T for both). Or we can save them both for Paper and/or Education. We should decide before the next turnset which of these we want to do.

2) Religion. From the religion advisor screen, it looks like the world is split between Buddhism and Hinduism now. We are very close to being able to switch to Organized Religion. If we switch to Buddhism and OR, we could pump missionaries out of Yaroslavl' and convert our neighbors. Or, we could convert one to one religion and another to another. And/or we could get a 25% building bonus if we're willing to adopt a state religion ourselves. I'm not sure that we are.

3) I'm worried about Mao and Caesar's power. They're going to be itching to attack again soon. With aggressive AI, I think that means we're the target. This time, I think we should be prepared and ready to counterattack.

Here is my medium-term suggestion: Finish Monotheism. Decide whether or not to play missionary games. Send a workboat west past Gandhi. Build a few spears, a few galleys, and many swords. Research Compass (we get cheap Harbors) and Machinery. Pop Optics. Get circumnavigation. Trade for Construction, CoL and Currency. Build lots of catapults and some Markets. Research Theology, Paper. Pop (part of?) Education. Re-evaluate.

Chances are, we'll be putting those troops to use before we get Education. We'll have to see how far to push things. I think good goals would be: Athens, Rome, Beijing, and all cities on our side of those. This will sufficiently weaken them that a last-minute pop-grabbing romp will be feasible.

Personally, I guess I lean against doing anything with missionaries. But that's mostly because I'm completely inexperienced at it. I usually make the assumption that the religions will spread on their own and that the hammers are better invested in troops.

Open to criticism and comments.

(Oh, and Yaroslavl' needs a Granary again.)

 

[Iainuki]

Ok, I've looked at the save and here are my feelings.

1) I don't think playing the religion game is worthwhile. We'd like to make friends with someone, but the religious blocs aren't really settled yet. We only have religions in two cities, which means we'd be spending a lot of money on OR for not much benefit. We also don't have a shrine so spending hammers on missionaries is a low-return game, IMO, especially since natural religion spread is likely to undo any benefits we accrue.

2) Our diplomatic situation is awful, but I don't know what we can do about it with aggressive AIs.

3) Do we want to lightbulb Philosophy? I think that's a really big question. Given the current religious situation, it's a valid play, since Taoism is likely to be founded in St. Pete or Moscow, and no one has claimed the religion yet. We'd want to research Drama and Meditation next to open Philosophy, if we do. If we don't lightbulb Philosophy, what do we do with the scientist? I think the only other tech we can make it to in time is Optics. Of course, we can always build academies.

4) At the moment, if we can trade for Code of Laws, I'm leaning towards going to Paper via the more traditional Civil Service route: it's more expensive, but the technology is much more useful to us as Christianity has been founded and it appears Louis has Marble, so is all but certain to get the Sistine. We might consider using Philosophy as trade bait, if we can find someone to trade with.

5) The AI tech pace has been blistering! They already have Music and it's 260 AD, and they also have Alphabet. We need to find trading partners so we can catch up in tech.

6) I think we should arrange for future wars to happen on our terms, if at all possible. We will need at least one more city to build Oxford, and if done right, I think war could increase our net science rate over the space of the game. We will want to think carefully about which cities we capture: the AI has been packing cities onto its islands, and many of them are total junk. I wish we had a better way to win culture wars, but I don't think there's much we can do except capture cities selectively, build theaters, and pray.

7) Are we going to try for the Colossus?

8) Rostov needs a library, lighthouse, or some cottages/mines ASAP, since it's out of good tiles to work. We need to irrigate over that cottage near St. Pete, since it's the only way to get water to the northern half of the island. In general, St. Pete should farmed, not cottaged. Yaroslavl' needs another workboat soonish. (Maybe send it from the main island?)

I'm sure there's more, but I can't put my thoughts in order, so I'll conclude here for now.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I will hold off playing until we get some sort of concensus on science.

We haven't taken much in the way of making contact or circumnavigation. I think finding trading partners needs to be our number one priority. Therefore I woud lean towards optics.

Let's avoid the religion game, unless we want to get theology and that civic. The military bonus would be nice with that.

let's focus on meeting the world.

 

[Kodii]

I agree. I think that Pacifism isn't of importance as of now, especially since several unnecessary techs are required to get there. I am in favor of the lightbulbing of Optics.