SGOTM 08 - Fifth Element

[berserks01]

RE: willing to be vassal...
Can't you just check and see if they would offer capitulation for peace? That tells you they're ready.

That is the best (and probably the only) way to tell if an AI is willing to capitulate. As soon as it turns white, they're willing.

I agree that we don't have time to wipe out Gandhi completely. I believe our main slowdown in term of time is that we always aim to completely wipe out the AI.

We can probably cut a path directly to the wonder cities, the AI will probably be willing to capitulate by then.

 

[Mesix]

I think we should finish Gandi totally. I don't want the "we yearn to join our motherland" penalties in the cities we capture from him. We can capitulate/vassalize everyone else. I think it is important to have a good foothold on the other continent without the penalties of vassalizing the original owner.

If domination is taking too long, I still think that the UN may be a possible win. If we vassalize enough AI civs they will vote us the victor.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Did anyone notice when Gandhi would have capitulated?

Does anyone know how quickly the others would agree to that?

Our land is very low. We need to triple our land in the next 50 turns. So I'm wondering if it's faster to just take the wonder city of each remaining AI and then vassalize. I don't imagine they'd agree that soon though.

Doesn't anyone read my intricately constructed reports?

Turn 218/500 (1540 AD) [04-Dec-2008 16:31:32]
Sweetacshon: Gandhi is now willing to capitulate, btw.

This was after Madurai was razed, but perhaps he would've done it the turn before. In my experience bts 3.17 AI is willing to capitulate fairly quickly, as little as 1/3 of their cities and a good power rating. Probably depends on the leader tho.

I'm not sure we have time to chase down G's islands either. I see us finishing off mainland G, vassalise, take a chunk of Boudi, vassalise, take a chunk of Charlie, vassalise, take a chunk of Augie, vassalise, take a chunk of Peri, vassalise. Did I miss anyone? If we have the settlers ready to go, and take the barb cities near the end, we should have no problems with dom. Maybe UN could be ok too, I'm not sure.

The AI should have a fair few units, it's true,and with grenades around, and perhaps rifles soon, it could be a hard slog. Just keep a good mix of cav and rifle, and boost cannon/ airship production. Airships are great, knocking 1/4 of the top defenders HPs off at no risk really helps. But for knife thru butter type conquest, we should be at inf (and maybe arty) soon,and that should be that. Do not trade steam, as it puts them closer to MGs which will suck for us.

BTW, I am away next weekend with no civ, but probably net access.

 

[berserks01]

I have a feeling that that HUGE stack of Boudica is her only stack. She's probably building it up to declare on someone when we declared on Gandhi. Taking that stack out will significantly weaken her and she'll most likely be a mop up afterward.

I'm for kicking Gandhi off that main mass and vassalizing his islands. We should push out some settlers to take those islands by us and to fill up the land. At this time we do not need "optimal" city placements, but we need to place cities to best take up land with culture pops.

I suggest not razing the barb cities but keeping them instead. It cost more to plant a new city than to keep an existing city.

 

[BLubmuz]

If we are for vassallize G, better do it now, as i said before his mainland cities can help us, not the contrary.

If we do so we can immediately give him OB, some strategic resource in change of his luxuries, and hope he helps in some way our war effort.

I'm all for take and keep the barbs cities, mainly the one S of Nongoma (our HE city, IIRC).
I even built a road n my TS to speed up this.

Better go fast, or we'll face barb rifles!!!

Wiping J is question of few turns, no point to have happy problems with his former cities.

Of course i agree to vassallize all the other AIs, if we can do it.

For the civics change i'm strongly against pacifism, we need the culture and the happiness from FR in indian cities.
We can consider near the end, after CR and if we need some GP for the corps.

 

[Mesix]

Definately do not let Ghandi stay on the mainland. I can concede that the islands may be more trouble than they are worth to take over, but ther is no to leave him any mainland cities.

If we get Infantry then the AI Gren/Rifel will fall very quickly.

 

[WastinTime]

We are starting to pile up some nice happiness. I'm not sure it will be a problem with G's cities. They are going to starve down to an easier to manage happy level.
I'll take a free island city from gandhi in the vassal deal unless I can get Corp instead...maybe both. Then exchange for resources.

Wiping J.
Keeping Barb cities.

Placing settlers for optimal land grab is wise.

So, Boudica...take on the stack? or swing around and grab the wonder city/capitol first?
Might be best to continue where we are instead of splitting forces. Keeps the culture borders moving away too. But I know some of you like to strike at the heart.

UN: Well we will have it built, so we can consider that. I don't want to count on it because I don't know how it acts with vassals and the whole self vote thing.

The rest of my TS plan:
We've already been put in Pacifism, so I'm going Confu on turn 1. Gem trade for cow.

workers: cancel all orders and build workshops, nothing else. No farms, lumbermills, mines, or roads to nowhere.

Builds:
No more observatories, etc. Just military and eventually some settlers, but probably not right now.

War: Kill J, Vassal G after mainland clear (very obvious attack pattern here). Attack barb city. Boudica...still in discussion.

Tech: Steam, elect

 

[berserks01]

Boudica's stack is very manageable if you throw a few arties or canons at it. Then it's just mopping up the injured.

 

[WastinTime]

Well, her stack won't be my problem. But my TS will set up for it, so I need to know if we're loading up the boats for the capitol or stay put. I think staying is faster which is all that matters. I'd hate to go around the capitol and then have her stack attack G's old cities. Not sure what the AI would do.

 

[BLubmuz]

I didn't opened the save, and it's too late now to do it.
How many island cities G has?

I clearly remember the one W of Portugal, how many more?

Anyway, i repeat: no point in conquer more cities, then vassalize him: better have a buffer for Rome's attack when we'll DoW, with cultural borders help, than keep a city with no borders.

So i propose again to vassallize him NOW, then attack Bou in the old way: walk to the capital, then try to see if she capitulates, after in case one more city to let the capital without much cultural pressure.

 

[berserks01]

... then attack Bou in the old way: walk to the capital, then try to see if she capitulates, after in case one more city to let the capital without much cultural pressure.

Well, does Boudica have any wonders? If not, then walking straight to the cap sounds fine. But if she does have wonders, a detour might be required.

 

[WastinTime]

B's wonder(s) is/are only in the capitol.

Blub, You can't be saying that you want to leave G's cities on the mainland?!? and vassalize now. Then his cities we have will have no tiles to work and will probably flip back to Gandhi. Please clarify.

G has at least 3 island cities.

Since a vassal's land only counts 50% toward dom. I'm thinking that if we quickly vassalize Boud, Charlie, and even Rome we may not have enough land. Which means we'd also have to do Perc and get a conquest. I'm going to have to study this UN thing. If our vassals always vote for us and they do not count as "self voting" that's probably the way to go.

 

[BLubmuz]

B's wonder(s) is/are only in the capitol.
wonders (2), capitol, right
Blub, You can't be saying that you want to leave G's cities on the mainland?!? and vassalize now. Then his cities we have will have no tiles to work and will probably flip back to Gandhi. Please clarify.

G has at least 3 island cities.

I'm saying exactly this!
if we raze Agra and Lahore we probably have the BFC in all our cities.
If we keep them, roman pressure will be unsustainable.
Better have poor cities and a buffer when at war with Rome, not to mention the resources those cities have and that we can just ask to G.

But if you think G's culture will be unsustainable, raze Agra and keep Lahore, or raze both.
If we plan to attack Rome last we'll have a route also from West, so Agra can be less important.

But please, before decide look at the map thinking to the chances to keep some decent city, and mainly to the war with Rome.

Vassallize G now can anticipate the Celt war by some 3-4 turns, and you see time begins to be short.

Anyway, you're up, decide for the best and pray to take the right decision

 

[Mesix]

We already have Lahore. Taking Agra will allow us to get all of the resource tiles in the cities that we have already captured. Agra will have some culture pressure from Rome, but it will also provide a culture buffer protecting other cities from Roman culture.

Aside from Agra, Ghandi has only 2 cities left on the mainland. They are both on the border with the Celts. I vote to take/keep them all.

The Celtic stack will not be much of a problem for our experienced rifelmen. It is mostly longbows. I agree the we throw a couple cannons at the stack and then pick away. It should fall in 2 turns or less. After the stack there is only one more city on the way to the Celtic capitol. We should take it too and then the capitol. After taking these 3 large cities we should check to see if Celtia will capitulate. We may want to considerr taking a couple more cities near the capitol. It would be a shame to lose the wonder that the Celts built for us to a culture flip near the end of the game.

 

[Mesix]

Ghandi has 4 island cities. It would probably take too long to conquer them, so capitulation after the mainland is secure is a good idea. There is one and only one island city of interest.

The island to the south of the Celts has the city of Bangalore. It is the holy city for Taoism. I do not think that the shrine has been built yet. If Parma (since it is generating prophet points from the Oracle/Shrine) has a chace of popping a great prophet before we finish this game, then taking Bangalore would be a good idea to get the additional shrine/wonder. If we are going to go this route then Parma should probably switch to running a bunch of priest specialists and get a couple of farms to support the specialists.

There is also a 20% chance theat Marbles will pop a GP in 6 turns. If it does, then conquering Bangalore and sending the GP there would be a good idea. This would of course negate the necessity to run priests in Parma.

 

[Mesix]

It may be a good idea to take out HRE before the Celts. Everyone hates Charlie. We can brible Rome and Greece into DOW Charlie and then get the shared war diplo benefits. This will help to offset the heathen religion penalties that we are going to get from switching to Confusionism. Speaking of switching religions, we may want to wait a bit. We aren't running too many specialists right now. If we switch religions now there is a good chance that we could get dogpiled when we DOW the Celts since 3 out of 4 AI civs share the Hindu faith.

Maybe we can bribe some of the AI in switching to Conf. That may be easier.

 

[WastinTime]

Gandhi will have MilSci (grenadiers) any turn now. Boudica is next on that list. I think taking her on before that happens is best. HRE is way behind and should not pose any threat.

I'm keeping Agra and the rest of the mainland cities. WARNING: Colony maintenance. I know almost nothing about this. I hope we don't get economic collapse from this feature. I get the impression that the game designers wanted to force the player to spin off a colony when it gets large. If it's anything like corporation maint, we could be in trouble.

 

[WastinTime]

Maybe we can bribe some of the AI in switching to Conf. That may be easier.

Good idea. But I looked into it and the conf. seeds we planted were only cultivated by Gandhi. The others never spread it at all.

I like taking on Conf now. 50 turns is not a lot of time to sort out our GP issues. And an extra GE is always good.

 

[WastinTime]

We have less than 300 tiles. Dom limit is 790!!!
I think we should take a G city in the vassal deal even if it's a bad one. Anyone disagree?

790 seems so far. We should get serious about this UN thing. No one will vote for us because we have to attack all of them for wonders. So it's really that vassal voting thing we need to nail down.

 

[WastinTime]

I could probably get Corp for free, but that kills the GLHouse. The only reason to get Corp now is if we want AssLine badly. I think getting to MassM for the wonders is better. AssLine can wait until we finish with Boudica/HRE. (unless Boudica gets Grenadiers).

Oooo, I forgot about WallSt. That's a reason for corp.

Anyone want me to take Corp instead of a city from G?