SGOTM 07 - Xteam

[Frederiksberg]

Would it make sense to wait and see which way the other teams choose?

As Mad Professor noted, the signing of a PA will be visible in the score and power graphs. Anyway, there is no reason to hurry now and disclose early which way we have chosen.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Note that I haven't been missed . . . Great progress.

I still have limited time, but will try to play some of post-PA test that SCT has nicely provided. Interested to know if razing a city or two (and hoping our partner will re-settle the area) might be a useful tactic.

This is off topic, but hopefully of interest:

I've spent many hours over recent days, working in five sessions with four different Norton AntiVirus (NAV) technicians, to clear my computer (and I think it is now clear) of a virus designed to get me to buy antivirus ware (presumably bogus ware). Unfortunately, there is talent on the dark side.

Believe infection occurred when I carelessly clicked on a pop-up trap (been advised to use control/alt/delete, then task manager and end task to get rid of them in future). Desktop background turned bright blue and virtual beetles began crawling around eating my icons, followed by bogus (but very authentic looking -- even coming from my systems' tray -- warnings that my computer was infected with a virus (obviously) and instructions to click and go to web site to download antivirus ware (free 15-day trial).

I had enough sense not to do that, and instead ran a NAV full system scan. Found and fixed a couple of standard things, but that did not solve the problem, then tried to connect to NAV tech support. Couldn't make an internet connection to them (rest of internet still available through iexplorer).

Turns out the virus takes over system, changes firewalls (why I couldn't download Fred's save on page 25), and eliminates iexplorer's ability to contact any security system website (not just Norton's). I had to call Norton by phone to get help, which seemed expensive, but I think they ended up making about 50 cents an hour to take over my computer remotely and help me.

Moral of story: Don't click on pop-ups.

 

[ShannonCT]

Sorry to hear that CP. Malware creators should rot in prison for the rest of their lives.

I'm looking at a spreadsheet that has beaker values for the MM beeline of:
4000 = Physics
4500 = Electricity
6000 = Radio
3600 = Mass Media

Total = 18100

The actual number of beakers to reach Mass Media, according to the in-game science screen is 25,883. We are currently producing ~420 beakers per turn, and that number gets multiplied by 1.2 for having all of the required prereqs for a tech. 420*1.2=504. We can expect our BPT to gradually increase as our cottages grow, as our trade routes increase in value, and as we get another trade route from Free Market. Assume our BPT grows by 2 BPT per turn on average. We're looking at ~48 turns of self-research to get to Mass Media (including 1 turn for revolt). Great people could reduce this number. If our next GP is a GS, he will knock 2-3 turns off of Physics. The free GS from Physics will be able to knock 2-3 turns off of Electricity if we avoid getting Gunpowder. If our next GP is a GA instead, he'll be good for a couple turns of Radio. A GM would be pretty useless. So Mass Media would probably come in 43-46 turns.

And Fred estimated 17 turns to build the UN. I'm counting about 20 turns if we max out our hammers with Universal Suffrage and Organized Religion, but we can reduce that number by several turns by cash-rushing it. So 17 turns is reasonable. Then it's 5 more turns to get the victory vote option.

So the expected solo diplo victory vote would come 65-68 turns from now.

For the military PA route we might be going:
(I count beaker values as 75% of original value after the PA, this is an arbitrary value to account for increased cost of 50% but "double" the research power)

2800 = Communism
1350 = 75% x 1800 = Chemistry
2100 = 75% x 2800 = Steel
(trade for rep parts?)
1800 = 75% x 2400 = Rifling
3000 = 75% x 4000 = Physics
3000 = 75% x 4000 = Artillery
2400 = 75% x 3200 = Steam Power
(trade for corporation?)
3750 = 75% x 5000 = Assembly Line

Total = 20200

So we could have artillery and almost have infantry by the time Mass Media would be researched.

The additional tech cost for being in a PA is only 39%. The 50% increase gets added to the Deity modifier of 1.3. 1.8 is 39% greater than 1.3.

As far as double research with Asoka, this is probably a good guess. Right now, Asoka is a little ahead of us in GNP. In Vanilla, GNP does not factor in science multipliers. So we should be ahead of Asoka in BPT. That should change after a while though. Asoka doesn't have Astro or PP yet, and both of those techs will increase his GNP. Also, as Asoka conquers more cities (especially Washington and Berlin), his BPT will go up noticeably. If we decide to go for a PA with Asoka, we might consider gifting him a GS so that he can build another Academy. So we could probably get more than double the beaker output from our PA if we focus on this goal. Currently, the 75% multiplier is probably pretty close to what we'd see after signing a PA. We can probably reduce that to 65-70% in time.

For tech path in a PA, I would prioritize Assembly Line over Artillery. With the AI's poor use of seige weapons, we're probably better off doing most of the bombarding ourselves, with Frigates and Cannons, and letting Asoka run around with high strength Grens/Rifles and later Infantry. If our tech path is to go for Chem, then Steel, then Rifling, then Assembly Line, how early would we have Infantry?

That depends somewhat on which techs we can trade for. Cyrus has Banking already and should be good for Economics eventually, and maybe Constitution. Several AI are capable of researching Gunpowder right now, so we may or may not be able to trade for that in 8 turns. And we may be able to trade for Replaceable Parts, especially if we trade away Printing Press. Best case scenario is ~40 turns to Assembly Line. Worst case may be ~48 turns. From there, we could pick up Physics and Artillery. If we could have Infantry 20-25 turns sooner (in a PA game) than we could get a diplo victory vote in a solo game, I like our chances for an early domination.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

This is also how I feel but I'm still curious if JT (or anyone else for that matter) can build a convincing case for trying a solo diplomatic victory.

I'm not able to be any more convincing than before. I wanted to make sure we didn't ignore it as a possible option. Solo diplo has a high likelihood of something going wrong, and a severe consequence if something does go wrong. The only benefit is that there is a remote chance that it will work out OK, and if it works out it should be faster than domination.

PA domination is a very strong choice, and I am very happy to go this way. We will have a good deal of control and we should be able to achieve a victory date only marginally slower than for solo diplo. We seem to have done everything right so far leading up to an early PA. I also think that it is a much more novel way to get victory and will be a lot of fun!

On a different note:
I'm a big fan of artillery before infantry. We should have fast conquest speed if we have our own stack of 8-10 artillery moving from one ctiy to the next, bombarding and leaving a single wounded defender for Asoka to follow up on. With artillery we get an 18 strength unit that can get City Raider promotions, and it is pretty easy to tech to. A stack of high strength seige units in the hands of a human player is the best way to destroy the large numbers of city defenders we will be up against. Artillery have much more survivability than cannons.

 

[rrau]

I like artillary spam in Civ4 and warlords....doesn't work in BtS

 

[ShannonCT]

On a different note:
I'm a big fan of artillery before infantry. We should have fast conquest speed if we have our own stack of 8-10 artillery moving from one ctiy to the next, bombarding and leaving a single wounded defender for Asoka to follow up on. With artillery we get an 18 strength unit that can get City Raider promotions, and it is pretty easy to tech to. A stack of high strength seige units in the hands of a human player is the best way to destroy the large numbers of city defenders we will be up against. Artillery have much more survivability than cannons.

Good point. I was thinking in terms of BtS artillery that can't kill anything. Artillery in our human hands sounds like a good way to clear out defenders. And it looks like the timeframe for getting Artillery is the same as for Infantry.

 

[Mad Professor]

Good point. I was thinking in terms of BtS artillery that can't kill anything. Artillery in our human hands sounds like a good way to clear out defenders. And it looks like the timeframe for getting Artillery is the same as for Infantry.

Artillery seems to work fairly well in that post PA test game SCT provided. SCT is right about the AI's poor handling of seige weapons, but we don't have to give our PA partner any of what we produce. Even if we go the artillery before assembly line, we should still then rush to assembly line thereafter because the infantry really kicks butt when it's up against grens and lbows! Even does fine against rifles, especially if you give your PA partner CR grens which he then upgrades to infantry CR infantry really kicks butts!

We should have fast conquest speed if we have our own stack of 8-10 artillery moving from one ctiy to the next, bombarding and leaving a single wounded defender for Asoka to follow up on.

Yes! The AI will mostly just go take a city if there's not much defense there but when there's a decent stack there, the AI will wander around the countryside in circles plundering everything and destroying his own future empire instead of attacking the city - even if he has the forces I'd normally be very confident of taking a city with. So we want to use the (usually painfully long) time the AI takes to move a stack to an enemy city by removing cultural defense of picking off defenders. A mix of seige weapons and advanced other units will do well.

Another tactic I've discovered from playing with SCT's test game is to pick the order of opponents by where the AI PA's forces currently are rather than by other criteria. A couple of times I had Capac's stack sitting doing nothing for a while because it was a long way from the front. I found that by choosing the next opponent by where Capac's stack was produced better results (usually!). This implies that if we're going for PA domination, then we might like to think about the orer we take out the civs on our continent before we make the first war declaration.

 

[leif erikson]

Artillery seems to work fairly well in that post PA test game SCT provided. SCT is right about the AI's poor handling of siege weapons, but we don't have to give our PA partner any of what we produce. Even if we go the artillery before assembly line, we should still then rush to assembly line thereafter because the infantry really kicks butt when it's up against grens and lbows! Even does fine against rifles, especially if you give your PA partner CR grens which he then upgrades to infantry CR infantry really kicks butts!

Just completed another test game based upon SCT's post PA game. Completed taking all cities on our continent in 64 turns. It works out to one city every 4.5 turns.

The game starts on turn 175.
Turn 191, we got Artillery.
Turn 200, Assembly Line.
Turn 235, Industrialism.

I followed a general North to South progression thinking that if HC's units were near the borders, they would more readily advance on the civ we wanted to conquer (didn't always happen, but not too bad). Some dates:
Turn 183 - Paris taken.
Turn 186 - New York taken, Louis gone.
Turn 197 - Orleans taken
Turn 198 - Washington taken, Washington sent to two islands totaling three tiles between them.
Turn 202 - Hamburg taken and razed.
Turn 207 - Berlin taken, Bismarck gone.
On turn 214, we declared on both Peter and Khan, using a group of infantry and artillery against each.
Turn 216 - Paris retaken from Khan.
Turn 222 - Orleans retaken from Peter.
Turn 223 - Moscow and St. Petersburg taken, Peter gone.
Turn 223 - Beshbalik taken by us and razed (couldn't find HC and got tired of waiting).
Turn 229 - Karakorum taken, Khan gone.
Turn 235 - York taken.
Turn 239 - London taken, Lizzie gone.

A couple of things we may want to think about before we get started. Once there were enough units, I made two stacks of Artillery protected by three Infantry each. I should have had a medic in each stack. This slowed me down, I think, by at least 5 turns. We should have a medic ready to go with each stack.

If we can have some CR2 Maces ready for upgrade to Grenadiers, that would be ideal for CR2 Infantry when we're ready. Also, the more siege units we have to upgrade, the faster things will go.

Another interesting thing was that HC was like a money machine. I went to him twice and asked for half his gold and he gave it with a smile (1000 Gold the first time and 1400 Gold the second ). No need to worry about upgrades with a rich PA.

I used the infantry as well as the Artillery to make sure there was only one weak unit left in the city for HC to easily take. I did have to wait a few times. But he beat me to a city a couple of times.

If we are prepared, I think we can possibly do this faster by 10 to 15 turns. Once Artillery are in play, it moves along. Infantry are also a big bonus, especially when the AI's do not have them!

EDIT - I also built Globe Theater because the War Weariness was getting us down. Better to have Globe and forget about Happiness!

 

[Cactus Pete]

Interesting, leif. Glad to know we can ask for gold and get lots of it. Does our begging have any effect on PA's upgrading or critical researching? What about population? How close to the requirement were you?

 

[leif erikson]

Glad to know we can ask for gold and get lots of it.

He gets it from taking those cities. We deserve our cut?

Does our begging have any effect on PA's upgrading or critical researching?

Didn't seem to bother him. On completion of a tech, all his units seemed to be upgraded almost immediately.

What about population? How close to the requirement were you?

The Victory Conditions screen on turn 239 says we have a requirement of 34% and we actually have 44%. I included Biology in our research to assist in pop growth. I have a log if you need it. I will also attach two saves.

 

[Mad Professor]

Just completed another test game based upon SCT's post PA game. Completed taking all cities on our continent in 64 turns. It works out to one city every 4.5 turns.

I was a little slower.

The game starts on turn 175.
Turn 191, we got Artillery.
Turn 200, Assembly Line.
Turn 235, Industrialism.

With a military objective, this is the way to go. I insisted Capac study the same techs as us, keeping the whole PA beelined. In mine, he wanted to keep studying democracy as soon as Steam Power was done...

I followed a general North to South progression thinking that if HC's units were near the borders, they would more readily advance on the civ we wanted to conquer (didn't always happen, but not too bad). Some dates:
Turn 183 - Paris taken.
Turn 186 - New York taken, Louis gone.
Turn 197 - Orleans taken

this is where you did it faster than me. After FRance was gone, I went for Germany then went south leaving America til later. Mistake. That's where I learnt the bit about declaring near where the AI PA's stacks are! We really need to keep the carrot just in front of the donkey's nose...

Turn 216 - Paris retaken from Khan.
Turn 222 - Orleans retaken from Peter.

Perhaps there's something to the AI's propensity to leave big stacks behind huh?

A couple of things we may want to think about before we get started. Once there were enough units, I made two stacks of Artillery protected by three Infantry each. I should have had a medic in each stack. This slowed me down, I think, by at least 5 turns. We should have a medic ready to go with each stack.

Yes. I found the stacks I had in enemy territory often spent several turns waiting for Capac to get in there. Having a medic with the stack is a huge bonus. You can use the waiting time for at least a little something like healing!

If we can have some CR2 Maces ready for upgrade to Grenadiers, that would be ideal for CR2 Infantry when we're ready. Also, the more siege units we have to upgrade, the faster things will go.

YEe. This things about having some CR units ready for upgrade is a big one. When those units become infantry, the difference is enourmous. A CR2 unit has +45% attacking a city and for infantry that means +9 strength. When it's only attacking a 12 or 14 strength unit such as a gren or rifle, that extra 9 strength really kicks butt. It makes the infantry a near walkover. It's good to have your AI PA partner walking around with thes kinds of units when you want him to take cities!

Another interesting thing was that HC was like a money machine. I went to him twice and asked for half his gold and he gave it with a smile (1000 Gold the first time and 1400 Gold the second ). No need to worry about upgrades with a rich PA.

I wonder if Asoka will be so rich in the real game? It would nice if so. In mine, when I got artillery, I gave my canons to Capac so he could upgrade them (And hopefully he'd not build too many of the things himself), and built more artillery for myself. I'm not sure if this was a good thing or not. If I had asked Capac for a bunch of money instead and just updraged my canons, I might have done better!

I used the infantry as well as the Artillery to make sure there was only one weak unit left in the city for HC to easily take. I did have to wait a few times. But he beat me to a city a couple of times.

An important lesson. Make a city dead easy to take and the AI will more often waltz in and take it instead of all that stupid counter-productive plundering! I'm surprised he beat you to some cities though. I had to do more cajoling...

EDIT - I also built Globe Theater because the War Weariness was getting us down. Better to have Globe and forget about Happiness!

Yes. I had BEijing shrink a little a couple of times trying to manage happiness. This is something for us to consider. We maybe need to analyse hammer spent on the globe compared to hammers/science gained because of no unhappy faces...? With constant war it's going to be a goer I think. I used police state in mine to manage things because Paris had the pyramids and that was the first city to go down. I can't remember where the pyramids are in the real game...? We might not have that luxury which will make the globe momre important.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

It seems we are getting some agreement about steering towards PA domination.

Has everyone weighed in with their thoughts about diplo vs domination?

When we sign a PA, I think we should prevent giving the PA date away to our SGOTM opposition. We need to create a save on the turn before we sign the PA and then play a relatively long turnset before the next save submission. This is the best way to disguise our early PA agreement from any graph-gazers out there in other teams.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

A CR2 unit has +45% attacking a city and for infantry that means +9 strength. When it's only attacking a 12 or 14 strength unit such as a gren or rifle, that extra 9 strength really kicks butt. It makes the infantry a near walkover.

In SGOTM6 I found out how combat calculations work. The CityRaider2 +45% is actually applied to reduce the defender's strength rather than increase the strength of the attacker. Only the Combat (star) promotions increase the attacker's strength. I read it somewhere in the war academy.

 

[Cactus Pete]

I'm in for Domination, but my meager knowledge of Diplomacy makes my opinion of dubious value.

Do I understand correctly that by researching the same tech as our PA, we combine research efforts and therefore the tech is learned twice as fast?

 

[ShannonCT]

So maybe Fred can play the 7-8 more turns needed for Communism so that we can confirm that we can get a PA with Asoka. Start some wars. Build more archers and get them in position to gift them to Asoka.

Do I understand correctly that by researching the same tech as our PA, we combine research efforts and therefore the tech is learned twice as fast?

Something like that, except the beaker cost goes up by 39%, so it won't be twice as fast until our PA partner's BPT is significantly higher than ours.

 

[Mad Professor]

In SGOTM6 I found out how combat calculations work. The CityRaider2 +45% is actually applied to reduce the defender's strength rather than increase the strength of the attacker. Only the Combat (star) promotions increase the attacker's strength. I read it somewhere in the war academy.

Mmm. Yes - I remember reading that now that you mention it. Whatever the maths, the end result is good to have

Just thinking - now that means a unit with CR promotions would also do nicely from first strikes as well wouldn't it? With the defender's strength reduced, the first stikes would be taking a bigger percentage of the enemy's total HP...

Not that this is terribly relevant to us in this game...

 

[Mad Professor]

It seems there’s a fairly general lean towards domination…? I certainly prefer it that way, but I confess that’s mainly out of bad feeling I get about the potential frustration of going diplomatic more than any hard data I have that tells me it will be difficult… I had some questions about going for domination that we might like to discuss if that’s the way we’re going.

If domination, which attack order?
I’ve been gazing at the save for the real game trying to pick an attack order if we were to go for domination with Asoka as PA partner. The order is not evident.

On one hand it makes sense to knock over Buddhists and Capac while we still have Hinduism in common with the others. To do that though, we’d need to lead Asoka’s units around a bit of a long route. We’d also be starting near the bottom of the map, and leaving a potentially powerful Elizabeth for later (financial plus redcoats or maybe better before we reached her, though by then maybe that wouldn’t be a problem?). On the other hand, picking the shortest route for unwillingly lead AI units would start us with America then England, ticking off our other Hindu friends badly before ending with old enemies near the bottom of the map.

If domination, how long waits a PA?
Building more archers would be handy, but we want to supply Asoka with a bunch of CR2 maces as well don’t we? They’d come out of Beijing CR1 with 4XP. One battle and they can be CR2, then given to Asoka. Before chemistry, it’s not necessary to delay the PA to do that. What’s the timing do you think?

Then there’s JT's thought of ending a turn set and posting a save just before signing the PA. So we need to think about the PA timing and the coming turn sets from that perspective too.

On the subject of building units for Asoka to upgrade, how many archers/maces do we want to build before going to war? Is there a number, or should we just build as many as we can before the PA, the timing of which we decide by other means? A measley 26 hammers for an archer is it? Followed by 1/20th of the upgrade price (paid by Asoka)? Sounds like a good deal to make the most of. Bearing in mind that overwhelming strength is a good way to get an AI to attack faster, maybe we want a really big stack of archers/maces ready to give Asoka before we go to war? I guess going to war (the big final push for domination, I mean!) does not necessarily equate with the PA date does it? Building archers stop at the PA date though.

 

[leif erikson]

It seems there’s a fairly general lean towards domination…? I certainly prefer it that way, but I confess that’s mainly out of bad feeling I get about the potential frustration of going diplomatic more than any hard data I have that tells me it will be difficult… I had some questions about going for domination that we might like to discuss if that’s the way we’re going.

I seems that domination will be the easiest to control and, if done well, may not be that much slower. Besides, it seems that it is what we are best at!!

If domination, which attack order?
I’ve been gazing at the save for the real game trying to pick an attack order if we were to go for domination with Asoka as PA partner. The order is not evident.

Been thinking about this. What about going from south to north and west to east. In the south we have the Mongols, then working up towards the Incans, then Alex. Once this is completed, we can decide on Lizzie (the earlier the better), Washington, Fred, Toku, Izzie and Julius? Not sure exactly how that will work out. As I am typing, it seems more like a wheel or circle?

I think our current brothers and sisters of faith should be gifted Liberalism and see if they adopt Free religion and that may break up our little block and make things easier?

Some of our civs are more powerful than Asoka. I think we need to be prepared before we take them on! Taking out the Buddhist brotherhood will give us time to get units produced, build Globe and Heroic Epic and get a tech lead, I hope...

If domination, how long waits a PA?
Building more archers would be handy, but we want to supply Asoka with a bunch of CR2 maces as well don’t we? They’d come out of Beijing CR1 with 4XP. One battle and they can be CR2, then given to Asoka. Before chemistry, it’s not necessary to delay the PA to do that. What’s the timing do you think?

I wouldn't wait very long. The only thing we should watch is whether there will be units we can't build because of tech development.

Then there’s JT's thought of ending a turn set and posting a save just before signing the PA. So we need to think about the PA timing and the coming turn sets from that perspective too.

Yes, I agree with this. Fred, are you willing?

On the subject of building units for Asoka to upgrade, how many archers/maces do we want to build before going to war? Is there a number, or should we just build as many as we can before the PA, the timing of which we decide by other means? A measley 26 hammers for an archer is it? Followed by 1/20th of the upgrade price (paid by Asoka)? Sounds like a good deal to make the most of. Bearing in mind that overwhelming strength is a good way to get an AI to attack faster, maybe we want a really big stack of archers/maces ready to give Asoka before we go to war? I guess going to war (the big final push for domination, I mean!) does not necessarily equate with the PA date does it? Building archers stop at the PA date though.

As we are now about to get to PA, completing phase one, we need to look at how we proceed with phase 2. First, I think we need to change civics. Pacifism is no longer useful to us. I think we need to change to Theocracy as this will give us units off the mark with two promotions (read CR2 Maces and, more importantly perhaps, Pikes). Once we get to Chemistry, we can pump out CR2 Pikes and Asoka can upgrade them to Grenadiers. However, I am more concerned with building our own army as that proved more effective to me. For the short term, CR2 Maces for either our use or for gifting to Asoka.

I think we also should MM Beijing for production. By using the Stone, Marble and a mined hill, we can build CR2 Maces in two turns each. Our beaker rate will drop from 426 per turn to 399 though. Perhaps during the run to Communism, we just use the Marble hill, that leaves things unchanged as far as beakers and allows us to build Maces every two to three turns. Once we have the PA, depending upon our combined research rate, it is a dance between targeted research and production.

BTW, I had the same problem with HC in the test game, he wanted Democracy and I couldn't dissuade him...

 

[Frederiksberg]

Thanks for testing, guys. Lot's of good observations I plan to do some testing myself on Sunday.

Completed taking all cities on our continent in 64 turns. It works out to one city every 4.5 turns.

If we can keep this pace in the real game capturing 16 cities will take 72 turns. We are 8 turns from the PA and we probably need some additional turns of anarchy and some time for cultural expansion. 90-100 turns seems like a realistic estimate of the time required.

EDIT - I also built Globe Theater because the War Weariness was getting us down. Better to have Globe and forget about Happiness!

Building the Globe also offer the option of using the whip more freely and when
we are near discovering Assembly Line we can contemplate switching Civics to Nationhood which would allow us to draft Riflemen for one pop and Infantry for two pop.

If we are decided on going for PA domination we should also consider switching to Free Religion (unless we want Theocracy) as soon as the PA is signed. This will give us 10% extra beakers. It would be even better if Asoka also switches - should we ask him to do this before signing the PA. It depends on whether we can afford to loose the shared religion diplomatic bonus. One other reason for getting Asoka to adopt Free Religion is that we will get culture from all religions and we may need this to get cultural expansion in captured cities. How did that go in the test games? Any problems with expansion to fat cross in captured cities?

Shannon proposed that we gift our next GS to Asoka hoping that he will build an Academy. How do we know that he will not use it for a golden age? If we get any GA's we should probably hang on to them and settle them in one of the captured cities that need to get 2nd expansion to cover enough tiles. One of the "OCC with PA" articles mentioned that you can't culture bomb your PA partners cities but that it is possible to settle a GP there. Maybe we should test this.

Another interesting thing was that HC was like a money machine. I went to him twice and asked for half his gold and he gave it with a smile (1000 Gold the first time and 1400 Gold the second ). No need to worry about upgrades with a rich PA.

This raises an interesting question. Obviously it's more economical to let our PA partner upgrade troops but on the other hand a big part of his military will sit idle so upgrading some of our own might prove a good investment. What is the experience from the tests regarding the balance between building our own army and gifting cheap units to our PA partner? If most cities are going to be taken down to one defender by us then it might be bad to supply too many units to our PA partner?

So maybe Fred can play the 7-8 more turns needed for Communism so that we can confirm that we can get a PA with Asoka. Start some wars. Build more archers and get them in position to gift them to Asoka.

I can play the 8 turns up to (but not including) the signing of the PA on Sunday if the team wants.

 

[leif erikson]

Thanks for testing, guys. Lot's of good observations I plan to do some testing myself on Sunday.

Will be interested to see what you come up with for observations.

If we can keep this pace in the real game capturing 16 cities will take 72 turns.

It started fairly slowly. We shouldn't get frustrated early on. The pace picks up with technology and the number of attack groups we can put together. 2 to 3 Infantry type units to protect the 5 to 7 Siege units seems to work well. Got to love watching those Artillery units tear through Rifles and Grenadiers!

Building the Globe also offer the option of using the whip more freely and when we are near discovering Assembly Line we can contemplate switching Civics to Nationhood which would allow us to draft Riflemen for one pop and Infantry for two pop.

This is a good point. The toughest part is scheduling the build so as not to hurt the war effort. As each AI has only one or two cities, it is easy to take a quick break if needed. However, I think we have to push relentlessly to drive an early date. As the Siege units become more experienced, it gets even easier. I was promoting them to CR1, Accuracy and then CR2. In some cases, we need a few directly promoted to CR3, skipping accuracy. Promoting them during the sieges also helps to maintain the momentum of attack as the promo heals them 50%, very helpful in some cases.

If we are decided on going for PA domination we should also consider switching to Free Religion (unless we want Theocracy) as soon as the PA is signed. This will give us 10% extra beakers. It would be even better if Asoka also switches - should we ask him to do this before signing the PA. It depends on whether we can afford to loose the shared religion diplomatic bonus. One other reason for getting Asoka to adopt Free Religion is that we will get culture from all religions and we may need this to get cultural expansion in captured cities. How did that go in the test games? Any problems with expansion to fat cross in captured cities?

Once the PA is signed, I think Theocracy is the better way to start. As we capture cities, Asoka should gain more and more research capacity. He is also Organized, which can't hurt!

Once the PA is signed, I think shared religious bonus is no longer a factor. We're going to take them all out anyway. If they aren't the same religion as us, there won't be so many hard feelings...

I didn't see any problems with border expansion beyond the usual wait for resistance to subside. In fact, HC built Theaters as his first build in nearly every case. Hope Asoka does as well. On our continent, Asoka is the dominant cultural force atm.

Shannon proposed that we gift our next GS to Asoka hoping that he will build an Academy. How do we know that he will not use it for a golden age? If we get any GA's we should probably hang on to them and settle them in one of the captured cities that need to get 2nd expansion to cover enough tiles. One of the "OCC with PA" articles mentioned that you can't culture bomb your PA partners cities but that it is possible to settle a GP there. Maybe we should test this.

We have a Great Person due in about 7 turns. Let's see what he will be and, perhaps try an experiment?

I would test the Artist thing. There are two Scientists in Beijing in the test save I attached that we can try it with.

This raises an interesting question. Obviously it's more economical to let our PA partner upgrade troops but on the other hand a big part of his military will sit idle so upgrading some of our own might prove a good investment. What is the experience from the tests regarding the balance between building our own army and gifting cheap units to our PA partner? If most cities are going to be taken down to one defender by us then it might be bad to supply too many units to our PA partner?

My feeling is that we can be more effective in managing this that can the AI. We may wish to gift the Asoka a small force at the start to get him going. After that, I think we need to maintain a minimum of one group of siege and infantry units growing to two as we can do so. After that, we can gift more units if Asoka needs them. If we do most of the dirty work, Asoka will need units to defend his gains more than defeat the enemy. Too bad we can formalize that agreement.

We do need to be a bit careful as the AI will leave only a unit or two in the captured city and move on. He had to go back a couple of time to reconquer a city.

I can play the 8 turns up to (but not including) the signing of the PA on Sunday if the team wants.

Fine by me.

It will give others a chance to do some testing and verify my observations and add to the methods of dominating this continent.