SGOTM 07 - Xteam

[Jimmy Thunder]

We can gift a missionary to someone in Theocracy and see if they use the missionary.

Do this!

Good going Fred, the shared wars and the trading game seems to be going very well.

It might be a good time soon to work out our victory type and rough plan towards it. Remember that if we go with a diplo victory with a PA our voters have to be friendly with us AND Asoka if they will vote for us.

 

[leif erikson]

Nice work Fred. Great progress!!

My argument for SCMETH with LIBERALISM is simply that if we can get Astro in a trade that would be faster than having to research one of them. My experience is that Astro is a priority with Asoka, but SCT has calculated that the savings would not be very great, so nevermind. It is a risk.

As I read the tech chart, Astronomy is required before we can research Scientific Method, unless we have researched Chemistry? And we would need Printing Press. Don't see how we can choose Scientific Method??

BTW, I can't download Fred's save. Am I the only one with that probem? If so, could someone PM me with a solution. (My computer was infected, and some things may have been changed in order to expel it.)

Got it without a problem. Hope your computer gets fixed up from the virus.

Nice idea about gifting the Missionary rrau!

We should be careful at Cuzco. We can't take the city and it looks like Washington has the most troops nearby. Would rather have Asoka get it if possible.

 

[DJMGator13]

BTW, I can't download Fred's save. Am I the only one with that probem? If so, could someone PM me with a solution. (My computer was infected, and some things may have been changed in order to expel it.)

Just dl'd it from Fred's post without any trouble.

 

[leif erikson]

Just counted tiles. Came up with:
Our continent = 293 tiles
Other continent = 199 tiles
Saladin's Island = 48 tiles
Total of 540 tiles
51% = 276 tiles

Better check my count...

 

[Frederiksberg]

No, you can't form a PA with more than one civ.

That's also what I expected.

We can gift a missionary to someone in Theocracy and see if they use the missionary.

That's an excellent idea! I assume that Sal would use the missionary to get religion since he doesn't have any now.

How about building a missionary for Paris as well. Louis could be a useful ally and we could probably get him Friendly quite fast if we share religion and a war and use his favorite civic. Mansa can also be converted quite easily since he seems to have no religion.

I think we should be safe to open borders with some of the more powerful AI on the other continent. With all of our friends at war at home, it's unlikely that they'll consider any of the Confucians their worst enemy. We'll want open borders so that when we get Astro, our trade routes are with big intercontinental cities.

Yes, I will do this when resuming the game.

My argument for SCMETH with LIBERALISM is simply that if we can get Astro in a trade that would be faster than having to research one of them. My experience is that Astro is a priority with Asoka, but SCT has calculated that the savings would not be very great, so nevermind. It is a risk.

I'm quite convinced that Asoka is researching Education because he wants Education+350 gold in a trade for Music. This means that we will not be able to trade for Astronomy in the near future and, as Shannon has calculated, we only gain around 1 turn by taking the risk of waiting with Liberalism for another 10-11 turns.

BTW, I can't download Fred's save. Am I the only one with that probem? If so, could someone PM me with a solution. (My computer was infected, and some things may have been changed in order to expel it.

I can download it without any problems so I think the problem is your computer. Maybe you have a firewall that will not allow the download unless you set it up correctly?

It might be a good time soon to work out our victory type and rough plan towards it. Remember that if we go with a diplo victory with a PA our voters have to be friendly with us AND Asoka if they will vote for us.

I agree. We should start thinking about this. Right now our plan ends with Communism and PA with Asoka. By then we will be a tech monster producing close to 1000 beakers per turn combined. We need around 26000 beakers to get to Mass Media and assuming a PA research penalty of 50% extra cost this should take around 39 turns. Add to this 17 turns to build the UN and we arrive at an estimated UN date of 56 after Communism is discovered. Then there will be a delay of another 4 turns or so before the first vote for diplomatic victory. A few GP's could shave off an odd turn or two so maybe it can be done in say 55 turns. The question is now, if we can get Asoka to capture enough land for domination faster than this? I counted 293 tiles on our continent and we need 283 (please check these numbers).

 

[Frederiksberg]

Just counted tiles. Came up with:
Our continent = 293 tiles
Other continent = 199 tiles
Saladin's Island = 48 tiles
Total of 540 tiles
51% = 276 tiles

Better check my count...

Thanks for counting! Seems like the count on our own island is correct. Did you remember to count the 12 tiles on the small island shared by Cyrus and Saladin? I got my domination percentage by using the land percentage number in the victory screen combined with the knowledge of how many tiles we have now inside our cultural borders.

 

[leif erikson]

Thanks for counting! Seems like the count on our own island is correct. Did you remember to count the 12 tiles on the small island shared by Cyrus and Saladin? I got my domination percentage by using the land percentage number in the victory screen combined with the knowledge of how many tiles we have now inside our cultural borders.

Nice catch...

Missed them. So it is 552 total with a requirement to get 282. That is mighty close to 293...

 

[Frederiksberg]

A conservative estimate of the number of shared war turns is now:

JC: 31
Asoka: 29
Toku: 20
Fred: 31
Washington: 10

A conservative estimate of the time to Communism is 27 turns (T144) - I would, however, be surprised if we don't get it before T140.

To achieve domination Asoka must capture 16 cities. I doubt that he can be easily manipulated to focus on many cities in parallel. In order to beat the 55 turns needed to get to the first diplo victory vote he can use less than 4 turns per city. Is this realistic?

 

[DJMGator13]

I'm quite convinced that Asoka is researching Education because he wants Education+350 gold in a trade for Music. This means that we will not be able to trade for Astronomy in the near future and, as Shannon has calculated, we only gain around 1 turn by taking the risk of waiting with Liberalism for another 10-11 turns.

Asoka is the only competition for Liberalism at the moment. If the AI's traded amongst themselves it would be different. Some AI's are still short the prerequisite techs.


Liberalism Status check:

Education requires Paper which requires either Civil Service or Theology
Philosophy requires either Code of Law or Drama

• Fred: lacks Philo, Paper & Educ
• Monty: lacks Philo, Paper & Educ
• Washington: lacks Paper & Educ
• Caesar: lacks Philo, Civil Service or Theology, Paper & Educ
• Hatty: lacks Philo & Educ
• Asoka: lacks Educ
• Elizabeth: lacks Philo, Civil Service or Theology, Paper & Educ
• Cyprus: lacks Paper & Educ
• Kublai: lacks Philo, Civil Service or Theology, Paper & Educ
• Salad: lacks Philo & Educ
• Alex: lacks Philo, Civil Service or Theology (needs Monotheism first), Paper & Educ
• Toku: lacks Philo, Paper & Educ
• Capac: lacks Civil Service or Theology, Paper & Educ
• Louis: lacks Philo, Paper & Educ
• Issy: lacks Philo, Paper & Educ

But if we don't save significant turns towards Communism, it might not matter. We're sitting on right about 30 turns of shared war with Asoka right now (T117) so we need 10 more turns for the PA with Asoka. A few turns less with Caesar.

 

[DJMGator13]

Just noticed something else about the map & our "unmet" civs the Russians and Mali.

Mansa has lost 2 cities either to war or culture pressure. More than likely war. Djenne is now Russian and Kumbi Saleh is French. We can confirm if it was through warfare once we establish contact. It should show in their diplo rating towards the Russians (Cathy or Peter) and Louis.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

To achieve domination Asoka must capture 16 cities. I doubt that he can be easily manipulated to focus on many cities in parallel. In order to beat the 55 turns needed to get to the first diplo victory vote he can use less than 4 turns per city. Is this realistic?

Lets talk more about a diplo victory.

We need around 62% of the votes for victory (is this the correct %?). For a civ to vote for us they must be around +7 to +8 and Friendly. They must also be +7 to +8 and Friendly with Asoka, our PA partner.

One way of going for it would be to get Julius, Washington, Fred, (Saladin? Louis?, Toku?, Liz?) to vote for us and to conquer HC, Kublai and Alex. We could research Biology and farm every tile once we have researched MassMedia (also gifting Biology to our voting allies too). If Cyrus was our competition, how many votes would we have? Enough for victory?

The main trouble with diplo will be making sure that one of our friends is not the competition in the vote AND making sure that our allies are at least as friendly with Asoka as they are with us. Obviously, it is more difficult to massage their relationship with Asoka since we won't be able to gift techs on his behalf or change civics etc.

 

[leif erikson]

Lets talk more about a diplo victory.

We need around 62% of the votes for victory (is this the correct %?). For a civ to vote for us they must be around +7 to +8 and Friendly. They must also be +7 to +8 and Friendly with Asoka, our PA partner.

Perhaps the attachment can assist in the discussion.
Should have put Cyrus and Saladin in?
Cyrus is:
+2 and Annoyed from Montie
+12 and Friendly from Hattie
0 and Pleased from Asoka
+2 and Cautious from Saladin
+7 and Pleased from Louis

Saladin is:
+1 and Cautious from Montie
+5 and Pleased from Hattie
+2 and Cautious from Cyrus
+4 and Pleased from Louis

Cyrus is tops in Pop (11%) while Saladin has the most land (8%)

 

[DJMGator13]

More discussion fodder:

Isn't your number of votes determined by your population size? If you mouse over our score it shows us that we are earning 147 points of our score from having 14/476 population. Important number here is that it tells us that the world population is 476. In adding up the pop from the cities as they currently appear, we get 395 (I estimated Alex's capitol as size 14). The Victory Condition screen tells us there are 402 votes currently available.

So a rough estimate gives us the following votes per Civ (worksheet is attached also so we can update as map is updated).



EDIT: At 11% of the world pop Cyrus should be closer to 52 votes, but this is probably close enough for planning purposes. Interesting thing to note is the larger size of some of the empires on the other landmass.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

The high populations on the distant continent are a concern, both for diplo and domination. For a diplo win we would probably need all the votes from our continent (via friendship and conquest) and 1-2 civs from overseas to join us as well.

If we target Saladin and Louis, for example, do we have the means or the time to get them to Friendly with Asoka by the time we have the UN built?

I think that war on the other continent would be great for us:

• to lower their technological development
• to lower the overseas population (although we don't want the dominant civs to get too large)
• to gain diplo points with targetted allies

 

[leif erikson]

When the PA is signed, how does diplomatic activity get counted. As a PA team, does each diplo move count the same for both us and Asoka? If so, I think we may be able to work that in our favor?

I think JT makes some good points concerning the benefits of war on the other continent. I wonder how successful we can be creating dogpiles of the weaker versus the more dominant? Whatever we do, I am not too optimistic that we can touch Saladin because of the AI's poor skills of amphibious warfare. Perhaps our best bet is to go after Cyrus, cutting him down a bit and working to isolate Salad? Trying to have other civs declare on him to lower their diplo tsatus and then running against him?

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I don't know the answer to leif's question about diplo modifiers and how they get applied for certain actions we/Asoka make after our PA is signed...

I'd doubt we would ever want to war vs Saladin. We should try converting Saladin to Hindu as Fred suggested.

If we choose diplo, we should try to manipulate things so that Cyrus remains the 2nd largest in popn at will be our rival.

 

[ShannonCT]

Isn't your number of votes determined by your population size? If you mouse over our score it shows us that we are earning 147 points of our score from having 14/476 population. Important number here is that it tells us that the world population is 476. In adding up the pop from the cities as they currently appear, we get 395 (I estimated Alex's capitol as size 14). The Victory Condition screen tells us there are 402 votes currently available.

Actually, 476 is just the theoretical maximum population for this map. 402 should be the actual population right now.

 

[Mad Professor]

Nice going Fred.

I shudder when I think of diplo victories because of my lack of understanding of just how an AI decides to vote. Domination is easier to control! I agree however that we have a chance of getting a victory faster with diplo than with domination, even though the PA further complicates the diplo voting.

A war on the other continent seems to be a desirable thing though whichever way we go. JT sets it out nicely. The more space over there is an interesting twist. I'm surprised more civs aren't more advanced over there. We've done remarkably well tech wise - well played!

As for Liberalism's free tech, I agree we should just take astronomy and soon to make sure we get it. Sci meth would be nice, but as has been pointed out, not a big extra advantage while carrying a risk of losing the free tech.

Let's hope Asoka stays at war for another ten turns now - that will save us bribing him again... Let's also hope he takes a different tech path to us while we're rushing to communism - that will increase the number of techs we get when the PA is formed

Edit: It would be good to meet Russia and Mali ASAP to complete our understanding of the diplo intracasies on the other continent. That's a must before we meddle too much trying to start wars.

 

[ShannonCT]

Possible victory paths:

1) Domination: Fairly straightforward. After getting PA with Asoka, research toward a dominating military tech, either Chemistry/Steel or Rifling. Build cheap units like Cho-kos and feed them to Asoka for cheap upgrade to grenadier/rifleman. First conquer the Buddhists and Capac with help from the Hindus. Then pick off the Hindus one by one, starting with the weak ones like Toku. Research Biology and farm over conquered land to get population over domination limit. Encourage war on the other continent to reduce world population and make overseas conquest (if necessary) easier.

2) Diplomatic with PA: After getting PA with Asoka, start the same as with domination. Conquer the Buddhists and Capac with help from the Hindus. Convert as many AI on the other continent to Hinduism. Declare war on the remaining Confucians and get shared war bonus with the new Hindus (Asoka gets the bonus too). After researching Chemistry and Biology, research toward Mass Media. Give Biology to all allies. While building UN, research toward Democracy for Universal Suffrage (for rush buying UN). Farm over most of our land to increase our population.

3) Diplomatic without PA: After SciMeth, skip Communism and tech straight to Mass Media. Keep the Hindus dogpiling on the Buddhists and Capac. When one of them gets Chemistry or Rifling, start gifting them obsolete units. Try to keep any one Hindu from getting bigger than Cyrus. Convert as many AI on the other continent to Hinduism and win over these new Hindus with gifts, shared war, and civics. Give our allies Biology and research Democracy to rush buy the UN.

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Diplo with the PA has the advantage of a faster tech rate for getting to Mass Media, Chemistry, and Biology sooner. The disadvantage is the possible difficulty in getting our allies happy enough with both of us to vote for our victory. Diplo without the PA makes it easier to control who will vote for us, but will give us the UN later. Domination has the advantage of a fast tech speed to military techs and no hammers wasted on a victory condition that may not materialize.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Came across this while browsing the Strategy Articles forum:

Trade Routes

One important thing is that trade routes to other continents get a 100% bonus!

Some info on AI attitudes:

AI attitude

Diplomatic victory:

Diplo Victory

I'm starting to doubt if we can create the diplomatic environment that will allow us to get a Diplomatic Victory anywhere near the first vote after 50-60 turns. Lack of exact knowledge of the game mechanics when in a PA further increases the difficulty.