SGOTM 07 - Xteam

[ShannonCT]

The result of this is that we should be able to research our first tech very quickly after signing a PA (I think there's often been enough beakers from the AI partner to research an expensive tech in 1 turn!). A possible gambit for this would be to direct this massive amount of beaker to research Physics quickly (as well as using our current GS if needed) and then use the GS from Physics to bulb toward Chemistry. This allows us to use 2 GS's on our Artillery beeline path.

Maybe whoever plays next can first sign the PA with Asoka and then post the save so we can see what's what. I'd like to see how long Physics will take with Asoka's help and whether going directly for Chem would waste beakers. I'd like to see how many beakers Bombay would gain if we built an Academy there. I'd like to see what other techs Asoka had and how close we are to Economics (for a double switch to Theocracy and Free Market).

Now that Asoka is at peace with Capac, should we plan to take down Washington first? If so, it would be good to start building some cats to help with Washington (the city).

 

[Frederiksberg]

Maybe whoever plays next can first sign the PA with Asoka and then post the save so we can see what's what.

I had the exact same thought. Maybe it would be an idea if Gator picked up the save at some point in time and does the Education for Gunpowder deal, signs the PA with Asoka and posts an intermediate save for our eyes only

EDIT: We have to finish the culture expansion discussion first.

 

[DJMGator13]

Here's a look at the map with only first ring boxes around the soon to be Xteam cities. This should help target which cities need cultural expansions. Right off it looks like Cuzco, Berlin, Antium and Madrid can use them. Some of the cities on the western side of the map will need them also. Looks like Athens and Sparta. Sparta is definate, Athens may depend on Cuzco. The London, York and Athens area has a little hole but won't pick up a lot of tiles. Hopefully a single expansion from 1 of these 3 should do the job.

Northern Half



Southern Half


Trade for gunpowder looks like a good one, too bad Asoka doesn't have it yet or we wouldn't even need to trade with Washington.

I was looking at another possible solution to the cultural expansion issue. Fred gets +2 culture per turn, but has a city raze rate of 50%. That is too high to risk. So that crosses him off the PA partner list.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

I count 16 tiles that will not be covered by a single border expansion (i.e. big fat cross) of the existing cities, 4 tiles in the northern shot and 12 in the southern.

However, if Cuzco and Madrid get a second border expansion then this will cover an additional 11 tiles leaving only 5 uncovered on our continent.

Question: who built the Sistene Chapel?

 

[Frederiksberg]

I count 16 tiles that will not be covered by a single border expansion (i.e. big fat cross) of the existing cities, 4 tiles in the northern shot and 12 in the southern.

However, if Cuzco and Madrid get a second border expansion then this will cover an additional 11 tiles leaving only 5 uncovered on our continent.

Question: who built the Sistine Chapel?

Louis built the Sistine Chapel.

Madrid is a holy city so it should get some culture from that. Cuzco is more of a problem. It does have 2 religions and if we spread Hinduism there it will be 3 religions meaning 3 cpt with Free Religion. Is it 100 c that is needed for 2nd border expansion? In that case it would take 34 turns - probably a lot less because it's likely that Asoka would build a Theater or Library there sooner or later.

 

[leif erikson]

Question: who built the Sistene Chapel?

Louis built it in Paris.

Not many wonders have been built on our continent!
Germany built the Pathenon.
India built the Hanging Gardens.
England built Angkor Wat.
The rest, Stonehenge (France), Oracle (France), Pyramids (Aztecs), Chichen Itza (Egypt), Colossus (Arabia), Hagia Sophia (Persia), Notre Dame (Arabia), Kong Miao (Egypt) and Sistine Chapel are all on the other continent.

This list means that Asoka has not built any of the religious shrines yet? So much for a lot of gold...

EDIT - Just reading the Civlopedia and realized that Asoka is Spiritual and has double production speed of Temples. I wonder if he would go for a Temple first or a Theater?

EDIT2 - Asoka does not yet have Liberalism. How likely is he to change to Free Religion once he gets it?

 

[Frederiksberg]

Did a little testing in world builder to confirm my assumptions:

Madrid will get 5 cpt as the Buddhist Holy City, but ONLY if Asoka adopts Free Religion, otherwise it's 0 cpt. And yes, it's 100 c to get 2nd border expansion i.e. 20 turns for Madrid with 5 cpt. Culture producing buildings are Temple (1 cpt), Library (2 cpt) and Theater (3 cpt). The question is how likely it is that the AI will build these soon after capturing a city. And is there any likelihood that the AI will hire artists? If the captured city doesn't have an Academy we can build one with a GS and get 4 cpt. Any way to determine if a city has an Academy before it's captured?

EDIT: Asoka can't hire artists because he's not using Caste System.

 

[Frederiksberg]

India built the Hanging Gardens.

Does this mean that we get an extra health when we sign the PA?

EDIT2 - Asoka does not yet have Liberalism. How likely is he to change to Free Religion once he gets it?

We can give it to him and see what happens. We have to make sure though, that he will remain Friendly after the shared religion bonus is gone. We would go down to +8 with an option of increasing this to +10 by donating some techs.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

We can give it to him and see what happens. We have to make sure though, that he will remain Friendly after the shared religion bonus is gone. We would go down to +8 with an option of increasing this to +10 by donating some techs.

We have no guarantee that he will stay in Free Religion. I have a strong suspicion that with all the wars we will be having, he will want to have state religion + Theocracy anyway and may just switch straight back as soon as he gets the chance.

Is it worth losing the modifiers for same religion and the turn of anarchy in order to bribe him into Free Religion before we sign the PA?

There is a chance that he will switch to Free Religion himself after we sign the PA; although my guess is that this will be unlikely because of the war/Theocracy argument.

Using a GS for an academy is a good idea to have up our sleeve (although Fred's question hints to the problem that this won't work if the city already has an Academy since I'd assume a captured academy does not produce culture).

 

[Frederiksberg]

We have no guarantee that he will stay in Free Religion. I have a strong suspicion that with all the wars we will be having, he will want to have state religion + Theocracy anyway and may just switch straight back as soon as he gets the chance.

My (limited) experience is that the AI tends to stay in Free Religion once they have adopted it

Is it worth losing the modifiers for same religion and the turn of anarchy in order to bribe him into Free Religion before we sign the PA?

If we are sure that he stays Friendly at +10 I don't see how it can matter that we loose a few points.

 

[leif erikson]

Perhaps we should save a Great Scientist to use to build an Academy in a city that needs the cultural expansion as it provides a +4? Perhaps Cuzco?

EDIT - I guess I should read the thread a bit more thoroughly. Great idea Fred, sorry I didn't give you credit...

If we try to build it in a city and we can't, we will also know that it has one...
Although, iirc, we can look into our PA partner's cities.

 

[ShannonCT]

If the captured city doesn't have an Academy we can build one with a GS and get 4 cpt. Any way to determine if a city has an Academy before it's captured?

If you zoom in on a city, you can see an academy. It is an arch with a sloped yellow roof. Cities with academies are London, York, Athens, Sparta, Kyoto, Dehli, and Rome. So Cuzco and Madrid could both take an academy. A captured academy does not produce any culture.

Looks like we just need to prioritize the capture of Madrid and Cuzco so that we can give ourselves time to make sure those cities get 2 border expansions. We also have the small island that Asoka should be easily persuaded to capture from Sally and Cyrus.

 

[leif erikson]

I'm not holding out a great deal of hope for this suggestion. However, with the construction of a Theater (we can hire two Artists) and the Globe (+1 for Artists), we could try to get a Great Artist and gift him to Asoka in either Cuzco or Madrid. No telling how he'll use him????

There is way more in this than I would like.

 

[Mad Professor]

Looks like we just need to prioritize the capture of Madrid and Cuzco so that we can give ourselves time to make sure those cities get 2 border expansions. We also have the small island that Asoka should be easily persuaded to capture from Sally and Cyrus.

Madrid is a bit far south to start on IMHO, but certainly we could make sure we sweep down the east coast before going west, giving MAdrid more time in Asoka's hands.

Perhaps we should save a Great Scientist to use to build an Academy in a city that needs the cultural expansion as it provides a +4? Perhaps Cuzco?

Well I've never used an academy mostly for culture before but I'm not averse to there being a first time if we have a GS to use and no artists in sight!

My (limited) experience is that the AI tends to stay in Free Religion once they have adopted it

This is my observation also. It is also unusal in my experience for either of the Indian leaders to hold out very long before adopting Free Religion either. I suspect we won't have to try convincing Asoke to adopt free religion before the end of the game. The war thing and wanting theocracy may slow his adopting of it, but I'd be very surprised if he didn't go that way eventually.

Is it worth losing the modifiers for same religion and the turn of anarchy in order to bribe him into Free Religion before we sign the PA?

The modifiers for same religion are my worry too. We can't do domination without a PA, and our chances of winning any other way are rather small. We need that PA, and I'm nervous about making sure we get it. This nervousness comes as much from not knowing exactly how all that works (no experience) as anything else. I guess I'm saying we can't afford not to have that PA, and Asoka is very much the best option I think. That coupled with my belief that Asoka will go to free religion eventually anyway makes me wonder about the benfits of bribing him to go there before getting the PA.

We want him to have free religion to help with culture expansion of the last few cities he captures right? So surely we really only need him to have free religion a bit later on? I think he'll adopt it himself by then anyway...

 

[DJMGator13]

Originally Posted by leif erikson
India built the Hanging Gardens.

Does this mean that we get an extra health when we sign the PA?

It should, the 'mids work that way. I just did a resource check of the map which I meant to do earlier. There are 3 sources of rice (Washington area, Kyoto area, and German owned between Berlin and Sparta); only 1 source of corn and no wheat. So we can gain another health point from the granary eventually when Kyoto and Washington fall, as Asoka will give us the extra supply. Because there is only 1 corn he'll keep that for himself. There is no point messing with a grocer later as there are only a single source of bananas and wine.

One cultural option to consider later, after we get some military units in the field, is Radio and Effiel Tower's free broadcast towers. It a 50% boost to culture in each city, but if a city has no culture it won't help.

Even without the Effiel Tower we could make Hindu missionaries and spread it to the formerly Bud cities after capture. To make sure cities are producing some culture and get the first expansion. This way we keep Asoka in Organized Religion were he gets an additional 25% production bonus on top of the double speed temples, especially if we send in "Battle Missionaries".

A look at the Power Graph over the last 50 turns shows the following order of power (off-continent in red):

Cyrus
Salad
Hatty
Cathy
Elizabeth
Asoka
Caesar
Alexander
Washington
Monty
Louis
Fred
Mansa
Capac
Xteam
Toku
Kublai

 

[DJMGator13]

I'm not holding out a great deal of hope for this suggestion. However, with the construction of a Theater (we can hire two Artists) and the Globe (+1 for Artists), we could try to get a Great Artist and gift him to Asoka in either Cuzco or Madrid. No telling how he'll use him????

There is way more in this than I would like.

If we get a GA, we can settle it as a specialist for +12cpt in any city we choose. I did it in the the test game. We just can not culture bomb with a GA.

Once Globe is built we'll be at 2 source for a GA, 2 sources for a GS and 1 for a GM. But not for equal turns. So we'd need to hire the artist as you suggested to try gain an edge towards a GA. At current pace it will take 33 turns for another GPP to appear, but if we change civics (+100% modifier) it will take longer.

 

[ShannonCT]

If we get a Great Artist, we should settle him in a city that we want to get 2 border pops. A settled GA will give a second border pop in 9 turns. Once we are at the point where more units wont help capture the final cities faster, we could revolt to Caste System and Pacifism to generate a GA quickly.

 

[Mad Professor]

One cultural option to consider later, after we get some military units in the field, is Radio and Effiel Tower's free broadcast towers. It a 50% boost to culture in each city, but if a city has no culture it won't help.

An option to consider. Its problem is that the Eiffel tower requires so many hammers which means it will take a while to build. That critical moment when we're not going to need more military units to finish the conquest probably won't come enough turns before the end of the game that we can build the ETower in time for it to significantly help us with those last few expansions. But let's see anyhow. It's something to have in the back of one's mind in case it's useful.

Even without the Effiel Tower we could make Hindu missionaries and spread it to the formerly Bud cities after capture. To make sure cities are producing some culture and get the first expansion. This way we keep Asoka in Organized Religion were he gets an additional 25% production bonus on top of the double speed temples, especially if we send in "Battle Missionaries".

I'm not sure Asoka is going to stay long in org rel, but maybe I'm wrong. As long as we can build the missionaries though we should be able to do this no matter what Asoka's civics right? Sending in Hindu missionaries will get extra culture whether Asoka adopts free rel or not won't it? Good idea then!

A look at the Power Graph over the last 50 turns shows the following order of power (off-continent in red):

Cyrus
Salad
Hatty
Cathy
Elizabeth
Asoka
Caesar
Alexander
Washington
Monty
Louis
Fred
Mansa
Capac
Xteam
Toku
Kublai

The other continent civs have bigger power because they have more space and were able to settle more cities.

 

[leif erikson]

The other continent civs have bigger power because they have more space and were able to settle more cities.

I'm not sure there has been much war either. Although, I'm sure we can fix that...

 

[Mad Professor]

If we get a Great Artist, we should settle him in a city that we want to get 2 border pops. A settled GA will give a second border pop in 9 turns. Once we are at the point where more units wont help capture the final cities faster, we could revolt to Caste System and Pacifism to generate a GA quickly.

Yes. This critical point where we don't need any more military is one to look out for carefully. It will help to plan, plan, plan. What I noticed from the test game in PA with Capac was that at the beginning Capac needed a lot more encouragement and cajoling, but later on because his stacks were much bigger and his dominance so much more extreme, the juggernaut tended to roll along more on its own and he had heaps more units than really necessary near the end. We can't stop him building lots more than necessary, but we can control our own production OK...! Let's be watching carefully!