Is there a way to play test this? We are quite far ahead of the other teams at this point, so I think we have time to halt once we have Communism if we need to do some testing?
SGOTM 07 - Xteam
- Thread starter AlanH
- Start date
Frederiksberg
Deity
leif erikson said:
Stopping for a while when we have Communism sounds like a good idea since it's really an important decision whether we should beeline for Mass Media or simply beeline for military techs.
We might learn something by creating a couple of saves where we are in a PA and playing from there to evaluate the diplomatic difficulties and the speed of conquest. Hard evidence describing game mechanics for Diplomatic Victory when in a PA is, of course the best.
ShannonCT
Deity
Here are some Permanent Alliance game mechanics I can confirm:
1. Gifting a tech to an AI can improve that AI's attitude toward you, but has no effect on that AI's attitude toward your partner.
2. You can't ask your partner to change civics.
That eliminates two potential ways to improve the relations between the AI and Asoka.
Of the AI that we would want to like Asoka better, Toku's favorite civic is Mercantilism, Lizzy's is Free Religion, Sally's is Theocracy, Mansa's is Free Market, and Louis's is HR. Asoka will probably stay in HR until/unless we get Democracy. Asoka might be convinced to adopt Theocracy before we make our PA (we'd have to adopt it as well). Free Religion would be bad, because he'd lose a lot of positives from the Hindus. He may adopt Mercantilism after getting Banking, and Free Market after getting Economics.
Shared war is the main diplo modifier that we can control after the PA. The maximum diplo boni from shared war for our target civs are:
Lizzy: 2
Louis: 2
Mansa: 3
Sally: 4
Toku: 4
The shared religion maximum boni are:
Lizzy: 4
Louis: 4
Mansa: 6
Sally: 5
Toku: 3
Can anyone think of any other ways to manipulate the AI's attitude toward Asoka?
It seems like Toku may be the hardest to get friendly with Asoka. Toku can be Cautious with some AI despite a high positive diplo rating. It may be best to just plan on conquering him.
1. Gifting a tech to an AI can improve that AI's attitude toward you, but has no effect on that AI's attitude toward your partner.
2. You can't ask your partner to change civics.
That eliminates two potential ways to improve the relations between the AI and Asoka.
Of the AI that we would want to like Asoka better, Toku's favorite civic is Mercantilism, Lizzy's is Free Religion, Sally's is Theocracy, Mansa's is Free Market, and Louis's is HR. Asoka will probably stay in HR until/unless we get Democracy. Asoka might be convinced to adopt Theocracy before we make our PA (we'd have to adopt it as well). Free Religion would be bad, because he'd lose a lot of positives from the Hindus. He may adopt Mercantilism after getting Banking, and Free Market after getting Economics.
Shared war is the main diplo modifier that we can control after the PA. The maximum diplo boni from shared war for our target civs are:
Lizzy: 2
Louis: 2
Mansa: 3
Sally: 4
Toku: 4
The shared religion maximum boni are:
Lizzy: 4
Louis: 4
Mansa: 6
Sally: 5
Toku: 3
Can anyone think of any other ways to manipulate the AI's attitude toward Asoka?
It seems like Toku may be the hardest to get friendly with Asoka. Toku can be Cautious with some AI despite a high positive diplo rating. It may be best to just plan on conquering him.
Frederiksberg
Deity
Plan for the remainder of the turn set:
Tech Path: Liberalism -> Astronomy (free tech) -> Printing Press (bulb) -> SciMeth
Builds: Work boat -> Missionary -> Archer -> Archer
Trades & Diplomacy: Open borders with Cyrus, Louis, Hatty. Look for resource trades.
I plan to gift our current missionary to Saladin and the next one will be sent to Paris. Venture south to meet the russian leader and Mansa. I'm not planning to start any wars on the other continent.
Tech Path: Liberalism -> Astronomy (free tech) -> Printing Press (bulb) -> SciMeth
Builds: Work boat -> Missionary -> Archer -> Archer
Trades & Diplomacy: Open borders with Cyrus, Louis, Hatty. Look for resource trades.
I plan to gift our current missionary to Saladin and the next one will be sent to Paris. Venture south to meet the russian leader and Mansa. I'm not planning to start any wars on the other continent.
Frederiksberg
Deity
ShannonCT said:
This is bad! As far as I remember Asoka's favorite civic is Free Religion so he is likely to loose all diplomatic points coming from shared religion.
ShannonCT
Deity
Maybe open borders with Sally too? And could you make note of how our trade route values change after we get Astro. I'm interested to see the effect of intercontinental routes.
It's actually Universal Suffrage.
Frederiksberg
Deity
ShannonCT said:
I think borders are already opened with Saladin. I will make note of the trade route change.
ShannonCT said:
Not according to the info here:
Civilopedia
Not to throw a fly in the ointment... 
Should we consider any other civs as our PA partner? Would JC provide us a more positive choice? Fred is pretty low on the power curve iirc.
Should we consider any other civs as our PA partner? Would JC provide us a more positive choice? Fred is pretty low on the power curve iirc.
ShannonCT
Deity
Asoka's favorite civic is Free Religion in Warlords and BtS, but it's Universal Suffrage in Vanilla. You can check the Info tab of the Diplomacy screen to see everyone current civics and favorite civic.
JC and Asoka are nearly equal in power but Asoka is way ahead in techs and GNP.
Frederiksberg
Deity
I'm thinking about sending our mace and cat to Madrid hoping to find archers there we can kill.
Diplomatic victory seems quite difficult to achieve without extensive warring so maybe it's better to go straight for domination. It would be nice to know if the PA partner can be manipulated to attack multiple cities since that would speed up the task considerably. Maybe some play testing will show. Is there a danger that Asoka would start razing captured cities? And how is sufficient cultural expansion achieved?
Diplomatic victory seems quite difficult to achieve without extensive warring so maybe it's better to go straight for domination. It would be nice to know if the PA partner can be manipulated to attack multiple cities since that would speed up the task considerably. Maybe some play testing will show. Is there a danger that Asoka would start razing captured cities? And how is sufficient cultural expansion achieved?
ShannonCT
Deity
In some of my practice games, the AI was willing to attack multiple AI at once, given enough military might. The AI is always overly cautious with how many units it keep in its cities. But feeding our ally a lot of cheap, upgradable units in the early stages gets them the units they need to start being aggressive.
As far as razing, the AI will tend to raze cities that would have few usable tiles at the time of conquest due to cultural pressure from other AI. But eventually, when the map starts clearing out, the AI will never leave a good city location unsettled. So they might raze a city and later decide to resettle it.
Frederiksberg
Deity
It's getting late here in Denmark, so I won't continue the turn set until tomorrow evening. So there is still some time to make suggestions.
DJMGator13
Still breathing
I won't have time to play until the weekend and I may be headed out of town also. So unless MP has time during the week to play you may want to run us all the way to Communism. This would allow for the "planned" break and evaluation of the game.
Mad Professor
Deity
Mad Professor
Deity
Well we do still need a 10XP unit in order to get the HE.
There'll be considerable warring no matter which way we go I suspect. I think we should expect to go to war big time very soon after the PA. The main question in my mind is the effort to get Mass Media and build the UN worth the possibility that a diplo victory will come before we're fairly close to domination anyway? My quick answer is yes, but I haven't analysed that.
leif erikson said:
ShannonCT said:
And the problems getting a diplo victory with Caesar as PA don't look to be significantly reduced compared to Asoka either.
It sounds to me as though we know that there is 
in our near future. Whether we will be able to achieve a Diplo victory in this game is a big question mark? Given this is a Deity game, I don't know that we can predict what the situation will look like by the time we reach Communism.
In reading the thread, I think we should plan for war against the non-Hindu civs. Our objective in doing so would be to strengthen Asoka's position by feeding him troops for upgrade. Tech path to Chemistry and Steel then Physics, which gives us the choice of heading for either Mass Media or Artillery. Other objectives are to weaken the other continent and target certain civs to develop favorable relations with them, namely Saladin. Others?
We may want to consider heading for UN as a means to deny it to rival? Although depending upon where we are diplomatically, perhaps it might be better to decide if another civ having it would be helpful?
in our near future. Whether we will be able to achieve a Diplo victory in this game is a big question mark? Given this is a Deity game, I don't know that we can predict what the situation will look like by the time we reach Communism. In reading the thread, I think we should plan for war against the non-Hindu civs. Our objective in doing so would be to strengthen Asoka's position by feeding him troops for upgrade. Tech path to Chemistry and Steel then Physics, which gives us the choice of heading for either Mass Media or Artillery. Other objectives are to weaken the other continent and target certain civs to develop favorable relations with them, namely Saladin. Others?
We may want to consider heading for UN as a means to deny it to rival? Although depending upon where we are diplomatically, perhaps it might be better to decide if another civ having it would be helpful?
Frederiksberg
Deity
leif erikson said:
You are probably right that we need some military techs to ensure a tech superiority before going to war. This means that the UN becomes even less attractive because it adds many turns compared to the direct beeline for Mass Media.
Anyway I will build some archers during my remaining turns. Possibly also work boat and missionary. Do we really need the work boat? I would imagine that we want to build the Globe at some point to free up the garrison in Beijing and possibly to adopt Nationhood in the late game so that we can draft rifles for one pop in adition to the units we build.
ShannonCT
Deity
Go ahead and build the workboat. We still need the happiness for a while, and later we can gift all of our happiness resources to Asoka. I like loading up on archers right now. If we can gift a lot of archers to Asoka soon, we can get a head start on domination. No need to wait until Chemistry to start cracking some heads. Most of those archers will end up as Grenadiers/Riflemen in Asoka's hands. It might also be worth our while to build an extra caravel or two to upgrade to frigates when we get Chem. Most of the cities we want to conquer are coastal, so frigates would help to speed up Asoka.
If we are ruling out the possibility of solo diplo victory, Fred can play through to Communism and PA with Asoka.
ShannonCT said:
Does the strategy of solo diplo depend upon our ability to convert the civs on the other continent to Hinduism?
I do not have the experience to know the likelihood of a successful outcome with this strategy.
In some ways, it seems as though it may be the fastest way to go? But I do not have a picture in my mind of how it will go. I think we should consider this a bit more perhaps. EDIT - I also do not really understand the risks versus the reward of trying this. To win, perhaps we need to stick our necks out a bit and see if the axe falls, or not?
We have worked quite hard, and I think successfully, at getting to the PA. I do not wish this objective to blind us into thinking it is the only way. Can we talk some more about this possible path to victory?
Frederiksberg
Deity
leif erikson said:Does the strategy of solo diplo depend upon our ability to convert the civs on the other continent to Hinduism?
I do not have the experience to know the likelihood of a successful outcome with this strategy.
EDIT - I also do not really understand the risks versus the reward of trying this. To win, perhaps we need to stick our necks out a bit and see if the axe falls, or not?
We have worked quite hard, and I think successfully, at getting to the PA. I do not wish this objective to blind us into thinking it is the only way. Can we talk some more about this possible path to victory?
Based on my experience from SGOTM3 I would say that a solo diplomatic victory requires a lot of luck and I doubt that it is feasible. One of the problems is that by the time that we have built the UN many civs will have adopted Free Religion and thus we will loose the benefits of shared religion.
I will anyway not play beyond SciMeth tonight so there will be more time for discussing this.
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