SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

WFYABTA Trading Limits
We have the following tech trades allowed with non-Friendly AIs remaining to us:
Zara: 4 techs
Saladin: 4 techs
Toku: 5 techs
Jusinian: 18 techs
Isabella: 5 techs


So, other than trading with Justinian or with a Friendly AI, we will be shortly shut out of the tech-trading game.

Here are some techs that might be offered up in trade:
1. Metal Casting
2. Machinery
3. Compass
4. Optics
5. Horseback Riding
6. Guilds
7. Banking
8. Drama
9. Engineering
10. Music
11. Divine Right
12. Gunpowder


We don't have to decide immediately, but start to put your "thinking caps" on to think about which techs we should take in trade and which techs we should ignore.

We played this game well by getting techs like Archery early on before we knew more than 2 AIs.

But, now we will have some tough decisions to make.


Here are the techs in that list that we MUST get either in trade or research ourselves, as they are techs on the way to Mass Media:
1. Metal Casting
2. Machinery
3. Compass
4. Optics


Here are some of the techs that I consider to be optional to receive in trade, but all of them have interesting uses:

Should we take Drama in trade? It is not on our Mass Media beeline path. Yet, it does offer us the ability to build a cheap cultural building in Riverside and in Wheaties, to keep Zara's culture at bay. It also offers us the chance to build The Globe Theatre.

Should we take Divine Right in trade? The Spiral Minaret is a great Wonder for a Spiritual Civ and it pairs nicely with the University of Sankore. The Spiral Minaret also requires Stone, so there is a good chance that we can beat an AI to buiding this Wonder, even if we get Divine Right as a tech trade.

What about Engineering? Trade Route income makes up a good chunk of our economy right now. A harbour only adds 0.5 Trade per Trade Route, since it adds a 50% bonus ALONGSIDE the "overseas" and "sustained peace" and "connection to the capitol" trade route bonuses; it does NOT multiply against these bonuses. On the other hand, in a game where the AIs have a lot of overseas Cities, one extra Trade Route per City (or even in just a few of our big Cities) can make a big impact on our economy and thus building Walls + Castles using Stone in a few of our big Cities can very quickly pay for itself. Pikemen to deal with all of the Ivory that is floating around and Trebuchets should we go attacking Mehmed's Cities later in the game would be very useful Military units to have.

Horseback Riding would give us access to War Elephants. It would let us build a Stable or two and would open up the possibility of getting Knights, should we trade for Guilds. This tech has a militaristic-slant and if we aren't going to be building the relevant Military units, it can be skipped. If we want to take this tech in trade, we have to consider that we might be unable to trade for a tech like Optics.

Guilds and Banking would definitely improve our economy by way of Grocers and Banks. We're probably not going to need the Workshop bonus from Guilds, but Knights are always nice to have access to build. Knights are the perfect counter unit to Zara's Oromo Warriors, for example, since they start with immunity to First Strikes and have a higher base strength than Oromo Warriors (aka Musketmen with extra First Strike attacks). Zara doesn't even have access to Metal or Ivory, to build units that counter Knights. The only problem with Knights is that we must ALSO take Horseback Riding in trade, otherwise we won't have the ability to build Knights. So, going for Knights actually counts as two techs on our "wishlist."

Music... well... we probably don't need it, but a Cathedral could allow us to get +2 Hammers or +2 Flasks in a big-sized City like Delhi, due to the Apostolic Palace and University of Sankore bonuses. It's an expensive building to build, even with the Resource-bonus, just for an extra 2 Hammers or 2 Flasks, though, so it's a pretty questionable tech to get. Desipte the fact that the Sistine Chapel would give our Scientist Specialists more Culture and we DO plan to run a lot of Scientists, I don't really see any use for that extra Culture except maybe in the two Cities that border Zara and in Goldfish. It's not worth building that Wonder just for those minor use cases, so we would not be buiding this Wonder. I think that Music is the easiest tech to drop off of our "to trade" list of techs and thus I'm also glad that we decided not to research it ourselves.


Gunpowder would be nice to get, but by the time that it becomes available, chances are that only Justinian (or perhaps a Friendly AI) will still be trading with us. If we follow my advice and delay meeting Mehmed, it is possible that we can get this tech in trade from Mehmed, too, since his WFYABTA trading limit will not increase as long as we do not meet him.

 

[Mitchum]

Hi, I can play the next turnset, but won't be able to play until Monday. This gives me 4 days to write a PPP and get it approved. If everyone is fine with this, I'll swap with Irgy.

I'll start on the PPP tonight on the airplane (I'm on a business trip at the moment) and try to finish it on Friday. That gives us the weekend to finalize it.

Cool?

 

[BLubmuz]

Some answers:
sure, i noticed the player UP next has only 3 days, but this is the time we can have.
It's not a flaw in my scheduling, it's the only way to have it work.

But if Mitch has no objections, it's pointless to discuss it. OTOH, Mitch will go in vacation the 21st, so he won't have much time to play after the 18th.

I don't wanna be too accurate in setting the time zone for the save. I hope anyone of us will do his best to post the PPP and play/post possibly sooner than the scheduled day.

Yes, the players to be decided are "all but Dhoom".
But you raised another problem: we have set turn 330 as our target, but we can't know if it can be 320 or 340, provided everything goes as planned.
My schedule does not let time to post a report, discuss it, post a PPP and play 'til the end.
Also, we have no time for partial TSs, no more. The time is tight!
We can shave 1 day/TS to have one more TS to plan after turn 330. But i counted the vacation days and everything is stretched.

So, if the final rush won't go as planned, we have 2 choices:
a) shave 1 turn/day from the schedule

b) let Dhoom play until the end in a unique TS.

Now, a question: how can you know there's Mehmed if you do not met him?

Just this for now, more comments later.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Some answers:
sure, i noticed the player UP next has only 3 days, but this is the time we can have.
It's not a flaw in my scheduling, it's the only way to have it work.

But if Mitch has no objections, it's pointless to discuss it.

But Mitchum did raise an "objection" by stating that he would not have time to play until Monday, July 19th. If that date is too late for you, then make it clear that Irgy is still the UP player. If that date is okay with you, say so and Mitchum will be the UP player.

Make the call, so that we know what we're doing.

Also, we have no time for partial TSs, no more. The time is tight!

If a player has 6 days, they can equally post a partial PPP, and play it by day 3 or 4, then take care of posting another partial PPP and playing the remainder of their turnset in the next couple of days. I do not see that you need to set additional rules of HOW a player uses their 6 days.

Kindly set the schedule and let the player work out HOW they will use those days the most effectively. If 6 days isn't going to work, adjust it to 5 days or whatever.

Mitchum made it clear that he can't play until Monday, so we're either going to have to adjust the schedule already or else you're going to have to tell Irgy that he's back up again. Whatever you do, try to set it up soon, please, so that we don't have time lost by people not being sure what is happening.

I don't wanna be too accurate in setting the time zone for the save. I hope anyone of us will do his best to post the PPP and play/post possibly sooner than the scheduled day.

Okay, so which option did you pick? "End of the day for the current player"? Because "the end of the day on the 17th" for you means something different to Irgy.

My schedule does not let time to post a report, discuss it, post a PPP and play 'til the end.

That's going to be a big issue. We can't go forward with playing without some kind of a plan laid out and discussed. Civ 4 is too complex with too many little issues that are interrelated to just have someone jump in without a plan. The level of detail in the plan is going to be debateable, but we should all be able to be "clear" on what the UP player plans to do before they go and do it.

If there are questions about the plan, they need to be answered by the UP player before play proceeds, or mistakes will happen and your schedule will FAIL, as the number of game turns can easily get drastically extended beyond what you scheduled if we fail to plan.

b) let Dhoom play until the end in a unique TS.

I'm fine with doing so, as playing the turnset itself doesn't take that long. It's the planning where I spend the most time. So, with a plan in place, I can easily play a day or two before submissions are due, just to give us a bit of buffer time, and then bring the game home.

Now, a question: how can you know there's Mehmed if you do not met him?

That info is in my PPP3 Partial Turnset Report. Allow me to quote it:

The identity of the 6th AI is learned: it is Mehmed II!

Spoiler :

Isabella and Mehmed II are at war with each other... and therefore, since Zara knows them both, but we have yet to meet Mehmed II, we can find out who Isabella is at war with just by querrying the relationship between Zara and Isabella on the F4 -> GLANCE screen. Muahahaha.

 

[BLubmuz]

Hi, I can play the next turnset, but won't be able to play until Monday. This gives me 4 days to write a PPP and get it approved. If everyone is fine with this, I'll swap with Irgy.

I'll start on the PPP tonight on the airplane (I'm on a business trip at the moment) and try to finish it on Friday. That gives us the weekend to finalize it.

Cool?

It's fine for me, provided that Irgy can post his save for the scheduled date. Not clear if he has an advantage from his time zone or the contrary.
You never know with this people walking on their heads.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Stopping the Trading with Zara and other AI-related Info dug up from the XML
I thought about the issue of trading with Zara some more and I think that we can afford to agree to Toku's request to stop trading with Zara. He hasn't asked yet, but with him having Zara as a Worst Enemy, the request is bound to come up at some point.


Toku CARES A LOT about this kind of a request and will hate us doubly compared to most AIs if we refuse it... only 2 other AIs in the game treat this request so seriously and those AIs aren't in our current game.

Now, the only question becomes: should we proactively stop trading with Zara before being asked to do so?

It seems that AIs are programmed to "remember" that we MANUALLY cancelled Open Borders with them for 10 turns (which might scale to 15 turns on Epic), while they will remember that we Closed Borders with them due to another AI's request for 100 turns (maybe 150 turns on Epic?).

So, I am strongly tempted to cancel our deals with Zara. At best, Zara could trade Clam with Mehmed--we don't know for sure. All of the other AIs do not want Clam, with the exception of Saladin, to whom we are already trading Clam.

Thus, if we cancelled our Wheat to Zara for his Clam deal, his trading options would be limited at best.

It's all about risk... if we keep our Borders Open with Zara until Toku requests us to cancel deals, we'll get slightly more Trade Route income, but we may have a tough time Reopening Borders later when we want to spread Buddhism to Isabella. Therefore, I'm going to recommend that we shut down trading with Zara manually, it's just the timing of when to do it is a question.

If we do so immediately and Zara choses to go to war with us, we're in trouble. So, maybe we should wait a bit, but then cancel Open Borders and the Resource Trade with him as we get closer to the time of being able to whip Universities into Military units for overflow.


Toku REALLY Hates it when you Refuse his Requests
Interestingly, Toku gets really annoyed if you refuse his demand for a lot of different types of demands. He gets:
1. doubly annoyed for refusing to stop trading with his Worst Enemy (as mentioned above)
2. doubly annoyed for refusing to switch to his Religion
3. doubly annoyed for refusing to switch to his favourite Civic (Mercantilism, which comes with the Banking tech)
4. doubly annoyed for refusing to join a war on his side
5. doubly annoyed for refusing his demand (presumably a demand for a Tech or a lump-sum of Gold)


Being asked to Switch Religions
Isabella, Saladin, and Zara are the most likely AIs to ask us to switch Religions, while Toku is hardly ever going to ask us to do so.


AIs Asking for Help and Demanding Tribute
Not surprisingly, Zara and Isabella "ask for help" a lot, while Saladin and Toku hardly ever do so. Thus, while the first two AIs can be annoying, the last two are harder to "rack up" positive Diplo modifiers with.

Isabella also likes to "demand tribute," with Saladin coming in second and most of the other AIs in our game doing so rarely.


AIs Choosing to Attack based on Attitude Level
The following AIs will not attack us if they are Pleased with us:
Justinian, Mehmed, and Saladin.

The others will consider attacking us at Pleased, but have a small probability of attacking if they are Pleased with us.

Of course, Justinian decided to go to war while he was still Cautious with us, even though he is now Pleased with us, so we could still be his intended target.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, I am strongly tempted to cancel our deals with Zara.

Okay, I'm going to quote myself and give an answer.

At the start of the turnset, we should cancel the Wheat to Zara for Clam from him deal and then REMAKE the deal immediately.

If we are asked to cancel deals with Toku during the next 10 turns, the deal will remain active.

After 10 turns of play, we should cancel the deal again, but this time just gift a Resource (probably the Wheat again) to Zara, since we'll already have our own source of Clam connected and won't need his Clam (he won't even offer it up for trade, anyway).

That way, if Toku asks us to stop trading, we can agree to do so, but we will still retain the +2 "We appreciate the years you have supplied us with Resources" bonus with Zara.

Also, we might as well just cancel Open Borders with Zara immediately. Doing so will likely bring him down to Pleased, but at least he'd still be at a 90% "don't attack" level and then we can always Re-open the Borders with him in the future. The greater risk is that Toku makes us Close Borders with Zara and thus Zara won't want to talk with us for a very long time, which could prove to be troublesome in spreading Buddhism to the east pre-Optics. There'd still be the chance to spread it post-Optics, but it is nice to keep our options open.

 

[BLubmuz]

My previous post was xposted with Dhoom's one. I started it right after the previous, but get interrupted.

ok, so:
I see how we know who the last AI is, i missed that part of the report.

Sure everyone of us is free to use the days as he best likes. Fact is that
- post a partial PPP,
- discuss it,
- play/ report,
- post a second partial PPP
- discuss it,
- play/upload/report
can't fit in 6 days.
Less in 5, as i'm going to propose, to let Dhoom time to report the situation on the turn he completes the UN, so we can see hat he's doing.

Teere's another chance: insert one more TS (if we decide to shorten to 5 days with the only exception for Mitch) and let Dhoom play from the turn before the UN completes to the end. If everything goes well, there will be 10 turns. Otherwise, we can't know. Sure he must have time to play until the end.

Now, i'm almost sure to have seen the "whale city" in some post. I'm fine to not build it, but aren't we looking to max our pop? even a modest city can help, not mentioning the resource.

Military: i'm fine with no barracks and running "military civics" while building our army, for defense and for anything else. Sure we need at least 8 units to take and secure the Barb-Fur-City, so 4 Galleys are needed. Possibly 3-moves galleys thanks to our circumnavigation bonus, escorted by a caravel with a missionary inside to immediately spread our faith there.
Proposed army:
- 2 siege
- 1 chariot/HA/Knight,
- 1 Lbow
- 2 maces
- 2 Xbows

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Whale City--Testing Required

Now, i'm almost sure to have seen the "whale city" in some post. I'm fine to not build it, but aren't we looking to max our pop? even a modest city can help, not mentioning the resource.

Okay, I'll say it again.
The plan is to:
1. Keep Zara from being capitulated as a vassal by using The Apostolic Palace to vote for anyone that attacks him into stopping the war.
2. Build The United Nations in Riverdale ASAP. That means using 1 Great Engineer and some Forest chops, followed by whipping it on the next turn, in order to get it built two turns after Mass Media is available.
3. Gift Riverdale to Zara OR declare war on Zara and allow Zara to capture Riverdale. Declaring war gives us the advantage of taking Zara's capitol as part of the bargain, hahaha, but that possibility will depend upon how many war declarations we have remaining to us at that time of the game.

The problem with Whale City arises with step 2. Whale City MIGHT get some of the Forest chops that we are saving for Riverdale.

Someone needs to find the time to run a test game to see WHICH Forests will go to Riverdale and WHICH Forests will go to Whale City. Then we will need to decide if buildng Whale City will delay our completion of the UN and thus will delay our victory date.

It is an important test. I asked Mitchum to do it, but now that you've made him the UP player when he is busy, I asked if you could do the testing for him. I am at present unable to open the game and when I finally get some time, I will need to spend all of that time getting our Test Saved Game up-to-date ASAP, so that we can properly prepare the next PPP.

If you don't want to do that testing, fine, say so and maybe someone else will volunteer to do it.

 

[BLubmuz]

Okay, I'm going to quote myself and give an answer.

At the start of the turnset, we should cancel the Wheat to Zara for Clam from him deal and then REMAKE the deal immediately.

Since you're our expert on this, can you confirm IF an AI won't ask us to stop trading if we have a trade we can't break?

If and *if* this is correct, we can cancel deals every 10 turns to immediately renegotiate them, to ensure we will not be asked to "stop trading".

Please confirm if this can work. It would be a great way to keep Zara pleased/friendly and to not incur in penalties with other AIs.

 

[BLubmuz]

Whale City--Testing Required

The problem with Whale City arises with step 2. Whale City MIGHT get some of the Forest chops that we are saving for Riverdale.

If you don't want to do that testing, fine, say so and maybe someone else will volunteer to do it.

I can do it, it's just to create a city and WB 150 culture, right?

Can you please post or link the latest test save? I'll spend more time in finding it than in testing, since the forest chops are to only thing for this test, correct?

I can WB a couple workers, position them in the forests and just see where the chop goes. 5 minutes, i think.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Being Asked to Cancel a Trade

can you confirm IF an AI won't ask us to stop trading if we have a trade we can't break?

I do not know 100% how that dynamic works.

However, if we close borders with Zara, there is a good chance that Toku will be less likely to ask us, should he still be "able" to ask us when there is an uncancellable trade deal, as we'd only be performing a Resource Trade and not both a Resource Trade PLUS an Open Borders Trade.


I have only ever SEEN an AI ask when I have both an uncancellable deal AND a cancellable deal, but that is not a 100% guarantee that an AI CANNOT ask us to cancel deals when the only deal being made is an uncancellable one. I've never seen it happen, but that is not PROOF.

The only way to get proof would be to read through the SDK.

What I can say is that there is very likely going to be a much SMALLER chance of Toku asking us to cancel deals.


Now, a related item that I thought about could actually help us out a lot here:
The Open Borders agreement for the Apostolic Palace. If you read the link that I provided recently about the Apostolic Palace, you will recall the voting option about Opening Borders:

4. Open Borders
Prerequisite: The Resident or a Full Member currently does not have an Open Border treaty with one or more Full Members.
If passed, all Members now have Open Borders with each other.

One interesting strategic choice that you can make is as follows:
1. Close Borders with a Full Member. In this case, Zara will be a Full Member.
2. Remain a Full Member for when the next vote comes up. That means if we are asked to switch into Buddhism, we will agree to switch into Buddhism, but we will have to switch back into Confucianism as soon as we can, to hopefully be running Confucianism when the NEXT vote comes up.
3. As long as we are still running Confucianism when an Apostolic Palace vote comes up, there will be two Full Members who do not have Open Borders with each other (us and Zara). As a direct result, the Open Borders Apostolic Palace Voting Option would be available and we would select this Open Borders Voting Option.
4. Vote "Yes" to Open Borders with all MEMBERS. Note that this point would include Tokugawa Opening Borders with Zara, which over time would make Toku like Zara a bit more.
5. Switch into Buddhism, since we won't need to be in Confucianism anymore and can start to please the Buddhist AIs. EDIT: We probably want to wait a couple of turns until the Open Borders resolution passes before switching into Buddhism, so that we get double-value for our votes and so that there isn't some programming logic that cancels the Open Borders option because we've stopped being a Full Member (by running a Religion other than Confucianism as our State Religion).
6. After 10 turns, cancel Open Borders with Zara if Toku still dislikes Zara at an Annoyed level
7. Re-open Borders with Zara sometime in the future, once Toku starts to like Zara for having shared Open Borders with each other for quite a while and has moved from an Annoyed attitude towards Zara to a Cautious attitude towards Zara

During all of that time period, we'd probably have to keep cancelling and re-gifting the Wheat to Zara every 10 turns. That's not hard to do if we know that on T192 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 (i.e. turns always ending with a "2") we will have to cancel and remake the Wheat gifting deal.

If and *if* this is correct, we can cancel deals every 10 turns to immediately renegotiate them, to ensure we will not be asked to "stop trading".

Please confirm if this can work. It would be a great way to keep Zara pleased/friendly and to not incur in penalties with other AIs.

That would be the right idea. I have no way of confirming if it would work without sifting through the code, so don't expect a concrete answer out of me.

That said, it's probably the least risky option that we have, so we're probably still best going with it, even if there is no "guarantee."


Zara will eventually get up to +8 with us for a Shared Religion, so if we lose the +2 Open Borders bonus but keep the +2 Traded Resources bonus by cancelling and regifting him the Wheat every 10 turns, it should not be too long before he is Friendly with us again (and thus unable to attack us).

 

[Mitchum]

WFYABTA:

@Blubmuz

Can you update post 3 as follows:

Zara: 10 of 14 (T150 - Fish, T150 - IW, T151 - Sail, T151 - Hunt, T151 - AH, T154 - Monarchy, T154 - Archery, T165 - Calendar, T190 - Construction, T192 - Feudalism)
Sal: 10 of 14 (T150 - Fish, T150 - IW, T151 - Sail, T151 - Hunt, T151 - AH, T154 - Monarchy, T154 - Archery, T165 - Calendar, T190 - Construction, T192 - Feudalism)
Toku: 3 of 7 (T165 - Calendar, T190 - Construction, T192 - Feudalism)
Justinian: 3 of 21 (T165 - Calendar, T190 - Construction, T192 - Feudalism)
Isabella: 3 of 7 (T165 - Calendar, T190 - Construction, T192 - Feudalism)
Mehmed: 0 of 7

It is highly likely that some of these techs learned have been "forgotten" due to the decay algorithm (~1 tech decay per 20 turns), so this represents the worst case.

To answer Dhoomstriker's post, I think we should focus on getting techs on the Mass Media beeline in trade. Once we’re reached the WFYABTA limit with Zara, Sal, Toku and Isabella (all at 4 more techs each), we can still trade techs with Justinian and sell techs for money to the others.

So, I suggest that we focus on getting the following Mass Media beeline techs in trade in the following priority order:

1. Metal Casting
2. Machinery
3. Compass
4. Optics

Once we have these four techs, we can freely trade for any of the other techs on Dhoomstriker’s list if/when they become available.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I can do it, it's just to create a city and WB 150 culture, right?

That would be my suggestion. You can also try the test a second time for the next Cultural level, (750 Culture, I believe), if you have the time, just to see if it would make a difference.

Can you please post or link the latest test save?

The most recent Test Saved Game (it still needs to be updated, but should be fine for this level of testing).

Since the forest chops are to only thing for this test, correct?

Yes. If you can make a graphical map or something (maybe just put signs on the map and take a screenshot), it would make it really easy to communicate the info back to us. If you can put in the Hammer value of each chop, too, it would be an awesome bonus.

I can WB a couple workers, position them in the forests and just see where the chop goes.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

So, I suggest that we focus on getting the following Mass Media beeline techs in trade in the following priority order:

1. Metal Casting
2. Machinery
3. Compass
4. Optics

Sounds fair to me. I'd miscalculated and thought that some AIs had 5 trades left... thanks for clarifying that it is 4 trades left for most of the AIs.

Just because you won't be trading for that many techs doesn't mean that you can't keep your eye open for trading opportunities, especially, say, selling a tech that nearly everyone already has for 100 + Gold to an AI that isn't someone else's Worst Enemy. That would mean not trading with either Zara or Isabella (the latter of which we can safely assume is Mehmed's Worst Enemy).

 

[Mitchum]

Sounds fair to me. I'd miscalculated and thought that some AIs had 5 trades left... thanks for clarifying that it is 4 trades left for most of the AIs.

Just because you won't be trading for that many techs doesn't mean that you can't keep your eye open for trading opportunities, especially, say, selling a tech that nearly everyone already has for 100 + Gold to an AI that isn't someone else's Worst Enemy. That would mean not trading with either Zara or Isabella (the latter of which we can safely assume is Mehmed's Worst Enemy).

As long as we have not yet met Mehmed, can't we trade techs with Issabella all we want?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

As long as we have not yet met Mehmed, can't we trade techs with Issabella all we want?

We can, but he will still count these trades as meeting his "Traded with my Worst Enemy" criterion. Yes, the AI "cheats" by knowing about things that it shouldn't be able to know. What can I say? If we had this same info presented in a better format (i.e. informing the human player whenever an AI-AI trade took place), would the code seem to be "more fair"? Maybe yes, but it would also be a hindrance to newbie players to keep seeing how much the AIs are trading amongst themselves. It's probably a detail that is only really going to be apprecited by advanced players.


In fact, we likely got a -1 with him for Opening Borders with Isabella when we have more than 10 Cities and she has less than 10 Cities. A worthwhile "hit," as it will wear off, but when we first meet him, it may appear as "-4" for a turn or two, since the length of time that we have contact with Mehmed will be factored into his negative and positive Trading modifiers towards us.

 

[BLubmuz]

OK, report:
- updated #3 with techs
- updated #3 with a 2nd schedule, shortened to 5 days, with room for a TS starting the turn before we build the UN, the one for Dhoom

- downloaded and tested
i deleted Addis Abeba, why it was there?
created whale (Bombay), gave 150 culture, garrisoned with a Panzer (!?)
- the chop 2N and 3N of the silver (plains and GLHill) go to Bombay
- the one 3N of the city goes to Dehli, it's in its BFC
- the other 3 go to Riverdale
-- GL 1S of mountain (2W+1N of R.) for 39H,
-- GL 2N+1W of Riverdale for 44H
-- Tundra 1SE of Riverdale (provided it won't go inside Ethiopian borders) for 44H

Now we can decide if plan that Whale city.

I'd like to have feedback on my proposed new schedule. I think it works better since it gives room for a longer last and second last TS.

 

[BLubmuz]

Dhoom, you have not mentioned this, but i opened the official save just to take a look.



Our heroic WB can probably give us the circumnavigation bonus: it's at present @180° W and we can already see the ocean @171° E, probably thanks to a map trade with Izzy?
If this is correct, we're only 3-4 tiles away from circumnavigation!!!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'd like to have feedback on my proposed new schedule.

Thanks for trying to keep things up-to-date.
One bit of feedback is that I find it confusing to read your message #3 when you only update part that message. For example, Irgy is still listed as being "UP," which I think that you have decided is now not the case.


Also, if we play until T212, then T232, etc, it will be easy to remember when to "retrade" the Wheat to Zara.


To be honest, giving me the saved game just before the UN is to be completed doesn't leave me a lot of room for improving our Diplo relations. Either we've won and the game is trivially over, or we'll need to increase the Diplo relations with one or more AIs. and we will lose the first Diplo Victory vote

Having 10+ turns prior to the Diplo Victory Voting date gives a reasonable chance for me to set up a war for Mutual Military Struggle points or set up other conditions that need "10 turns" for us to receive a +1 Modifier, such as using Espionage or Bribery to switch someone to our Religion or into their Favourite Civic. The player who puts a focus on "just completing the UN" will not be focused on these other issues and we could easily lose the first vote with me not having enough turns to change the outcome--the outcome will already have been decided before I play.

I preferred the original schedule in this regard, as the goal should not be "build the UN ASAP" near the end of the game but instead should be "spend some time so that our Diplo relations are in a good position for the time that we will be able to complete the UN." It's a subtle yet important difference in terms of the turnset's goal, so I don't really want to have us playing a turnset where the main goal appears to be building the UN. If we do so, what I may end up having to do is just delay completing the UN for a good number of turns just to get our Diplo relations in order, which, had I started playing earlier, could have been set up already so as to be able to build the UN ASAP without worrying about not winning the first Diplo Victory vote.

Does that make sense to you?

- downloaded and tested

Thank you! Hopefully, that'll be enough info for Mitchum to let us know how the chopping will work out around Riverdale and if we can afford to settle Whale City.

i deleted Addis Abeba, why it was there?

In our real game, Zara settled on his east Coast with his 4th City near the end of my 3rd Partial turnset. In our test game, that 1 square of land wasn't there, which meant that his capitol and southern City effectively blocked all settling spots to the east (due to the "no settling within a 2 square radius" rule) and he had no choice but to settle near the Silvers in our test saved game.

I didn't know at the time that the land to the east in our test saved game was not representative of the real game. As I said, the test saved game has yet to be updated to reflect the new info gleaned from the actual game, which I hope to try and rectify tomorrow.