SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

A Great Person spawned in Delhi

If we get a Great Engineer in 4 turns (> 50% odds), I will put him on ice in Delhi. If we get a Great Scientist, I will immediately have him bulb part of Education. If we get a Great Prophet, I will settle him in Grt. Person Farm (or should I settle him in Delhi or save him for a Golden Age). If we get a non GS, I will push for another quick great person by running scientists in Delhi in the hopes that we get a GS in time to bulb half of Education. When we’re close to getting this next great person, I may run the slider at 0% for longer than normal to prevent researching too many beakers into Education such that a GS bulb will not waste any beakers.

Sounds good for the Great Engineer or the Great Scientist.
As for the Great Prophet, I would settle him in Delhi.
Great Prophets are one of the most powerful Great People to settle.

Consider that in Delhi, a settled Great Prophet automatically gains 1 Hammer and 1 Gold per turn over settling him in Grt Person Farm, due to Bureaucracy and having a Market in Delhi.

Under Representation, he'll make us:
3 Hammers, 6 Gold, and 3 Flasks plus bonuses (once Oxford is there, it'll be at least 7 Flasks per turn when we are running Representation). That's a pretty powerful boost from 1 Great Person.


Gold Surplus--How much is too much?
An alternative is to manually research part of Compass, if you fear that our Gold reserves are getting too big (bigger than 400 Gold). Consider that an AI will demand almost all of your Gold surplus in a Demand. We might never see that Gold again.

Partially researching Compass (while still maintaining a REASONABLE Gold surplus to continue on with Education and Liberalism) would also make Compass cheaper to trade for, so the Flasks wouldn't be wasted like they might be if we had planned to get Compass via a Great Scientist, for example.


World Map

Keep our World Map to ourselves. Do not trade it away. If it is demanded, give it away to Tokugawa, Saladin or Justinian. Isabella?

It's nice to be able to horde our World Map for as long as possible, as I don't really see the value of selling our military intelligence for a tiny bit of excess Gold--it's not like the AIs have big surpluses of Gold, and even if they did, we'd be better off selling techs that have already been mostly-traded-around and as just asking to be traded for Gold.

That said, I'd accept any Demand for our World Map. The AI in question would have knowledge of our land area but wouldn't be allowed to leverage that info in an attack, since by accepting their Demand, there should be an automatic no-war period declared. Now, I'm not quite sure what the difference between "Demand Tribute" and "Ask for Help" means, but presumably either one would set up an automatic no-war period if we accept the request, so just go ahead and accept. If the AI trades around our World Map, not much we can do about it.

That said, think about the AIs in this game:
Isabella requires you to be Friendly with her before she'll give away her World Map, which would mean that if her World Map included a copy of all of the land that we've explored, she wouldn't trade it away to anyone.

Toku requires you to be GREATER than Friendly with him before he'll give away his World Map, which is NOT POSSIBLE without playing some kind of a Mod that adds in extra Attitude levels, so if he demands our World Map and we get peace with him, it's a great bargain--no one who could attack us would get that strategic info.

Saladin requires someone to be Pleased with him before he'll give out his copy of his World Map, while the others will give our their World Map to just about anybody. So, we won't be able to keep our World Map knowledge to ourselves forever, but for as long as we can, we should hold onto it.

One other consideration is that if we get an enforced no-war time period, we'll have plenty of time to switch into Police State, Vassalage, and Theocracy within the next 10 turns and get a couple of more defenders. Since none of the AIs have Paper yet, we'd only (until they start learning Paper) really be worried about the AIs to whom we gave our World Map.

Finally, if an AI has all of your World Map, they won't waste a "demand" on asking for it and will instead ask for something that we don't want to give them, like Gold or a monopoly tech. It would be better to "hold onto" our World Map for as long as possible, just to trick the AIs into Demanding it instead of Demanding something else that we don't want them to ask for.

Since we're playing a Diplo game, it would be nice if they all Demanded our World Map and if we got +1 Relations with everyone, instead of 30 Gold here, 20 Gold there when we can just as easily get that Gold when we have a tech that almost everyone else knows to be traded around.


University-whipping

Since all of our University cities have our current state religion, we should be able to whip the Universities immediately.

I suppose that the worst case would involve an AI asking for us to switch to Buddhism on the turn that we learn Education. Oh well, I think that in such a case, we'd just wait for 5 turns to switch back into Confucianism before whipping. Considering that we want the overflow Hammers to go into Military units under Theocracy, we'll want to be in Confucianism, or else the Theocracy bonus will only apply to Cities that have Buddhism in them, so waiting for those 5 turns would be justified two-fold.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Minor Tweaking Suggestions for the Worker Actions
Overall, very well done on the Worker actions! There's hardly anything there for me to nit-pick on at all!


Worker 3

chop forest N+N of Silverado (into Moai) -> chop forest W+W of Delhi (into Parthenon)

I would suggest reversing these two actions, so that the next action:

chop forest NE of Silverado (into Moai)

can be done without delaying for 1 turn by performing a partial Worker action "on the way" to the last Forest.


Worker 5

road GRiv farm W+W of Riverdale -> road GRiv farm NW of Riverdale -> road GHill W+W+SW of Riverdale (we now have a road connecting Delhi to Riverdale for faster troop movement, if needed)

I would suggest the following order of actions, as well as switching one of the squares that you will put a Road on:
road GRiv farm NW of Riverdale -> road GRiv farm W+W of Riverdale -> road GFor W+W+NW of Riverdale (we now have a road connecting Delhi to Riverdale for faster troop movement, if needed)
That last square can be Roaded a turn sooner, since you won't have to use up a movement point walking to there. Of course, you might have had a reason for putting a Road on the GHRiv For SW + W + W of Riverdale, so if you do have a good reason for doing so, there's no real need to make this change.

As for your idea to chop into Riverdale, although I think that we should keep the 2 Forests in our big fat cross alive, NOW is the perfect time to chop any of the Forests that BLubz indicated would go to Whale City.

Yes, Whale City could benefit from a Forest Chop or two, but if you think that saving the population in Riverdale is even more important, then do so by chopping one or two of the Forests that would otherwise go to Whale City by chopping them now (or at least get us set up to chop them, like perhaps how you were doing by moving to the GHRiv For before I started to butt in ).


Worker 6

Galley to mainland -> farm W of Risaia

You likely already know this tip, but you can get a free Worker action if you move our Galley into a City and then unload the Worker, rather than disembarking the Worker directly onto the shore from the Galley, as the Worker would retain all of his movement points for that turn.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Tech Trading

Trading Techs to Saladin, Tokugawa and Justinian Only
If we trade a tech to one, we should also be prepared to trade it to the others on the same turn, even if we only get 20 Gold or so, otherwise the three will trade with each other and will become even more advanced than before.

I would make an exception to this "trade to everyone" rule in that if we trade with Toku, we don't need to trade to the other two immediately, since he doesn't treat either them with a Friendly attitude and thus will horde the tech until... whoa... 100% of players know it? That's what the XML says, anyway. Hmmm, I guess until he is Friendly with us, or makes a Tech Demand of us (which he rarely every does), this point won't really apply anyway.

Has he really been teching that well? Not trading with anyone? I suppose that he could be BUYING techs from the other guys using Gold, but man, he's the relative tech leader amongst the AIs and that's apparently without trading techs.

Since both Sal and Justinian know Civil Service, I will consider trading it to Tokugawa once he has something worth while, even if it is ~100 gold.

Given the above info about him not treating the others as Friendly and about him not trading techs to non-Friends until 100% of people know it (I'm not even sure what that means--everyone but one player knows it or else never trading), I would suggest that we DO NOT trade techs to Toku "just to get some Gold" out of techs that Saladin and Justinian know. Partucarly not Civil Sevice, which not only would let his insane-teching-pace take off even further with Bureaucracy, but would virutally hand him Samurai (since he has Metal Casting and is likely on his way to Machinery, if he doesn't have it already).

We just have to count our lucky stars that he has not decided to be Friendly with either Saladin or Justinian, or else the tech pace would have been much faster on the Buddhist continent.

Let's hope that "stupid things" convince them to get angrier at each other further, such as increased Close Border tensions or Spies getting caught in each others' territory.

In regards to the Espionage topic, my "trick" has been validated: Zara has invested more than TRIPLE the amount of the next AI in terms of Espionage points invested in us.

Since we’ve completed the Great Library already, we can consider trading our monopoly on Literature if a good trade comes along.

I'd even NOT sell it for Gold for quite a while, as, once Music is gone, the AIs will probably completely ignore self-teching this tech, now that The Great Library is gone. So, likely only one more AI will get this tech, on their way to Music.

AI Demands for Techs
If either Justinian, Saladin or Toku demand a tech, even if it is one of our monopoly techs, I am afraid that we'll have to accept, so as to hopefully dissuade them from going to war with us and hopefully going after a different target (like Zara or perhaps no target at all). If one of them asks for Code of Laws, Philosophy, or Paper, the team should be consulted on the situation before deciding.

Just as a reminder, Saladin came to us offering some (40) Gold, but not all of his Gold, at the start of T192, for Code of Laws. So, expect him to manually research this tech in a turn or two.
EDIT: It seems that you already captured this point in the PPP. You're making it really hard for me to come up with things to comment on, you know?!

 

[Mitchum]

Worker 3

I would suggest reversing these two actions, so that the next action:

can be done without delaying for 1 turn by performing a partial Worker action "on the way" to the last Forest.

I already have this switched around so as not to lose a worker turn and to have the chop go into the Parthenon on the correct turn. No turns lost.

Worker 5
I would suggest the following order of actions, as well as switching one of the squares that you will put a Road on:
road GRiv farm NW of Riverdale -> road GRiv farm W+W of Riverdale -> road GFor W+W+NW of Riverdale (we now have a road connecting Delhi to Riverdale for faster troop movement, if needed)
That last square can be Roaded a turn sooner, since you won't have to use up a movement point walking to there. Of course, you might have had a reason for putting a Road on the GHRiv For SW + W + W of Riverdale, so if you do have a good reason for doing so, there's no real need to make this change.

I had already made the first change. I was putting the road on the tile SW+W+W because I thought that is where you had indicated in the real game. This change is easy to make and I have no issues with it.

As for your idea to chop into Riverdale, although I think that we should keep the 2 Forests in our big fat cross alive, NOW is the perfect time to chop any of the Forests that BLubz indicated would go to Whale City.

Yes, Whale City could benefit from a Forest Chop or two, but if you think that saving the population in Riverdale is even more important, then do so by chopping one or two of the Forests that would otherwise go to Whale City by chopping them now (or at least get us set up to chop them, like perhaps how you were doing by moving to the GHRiv For before I started to butt in ).

Good idea. I don't want to put a road here as it would prevent future forest re-growth, but I will partially chop the two forests that would go to Whales with the intent to put them toward Riverdale's University. Now I have to go back and re-read which ones they were...

Worker 6

You likely already know this tip, but you can get a free Worker action if you move our Galley into a City and then unload the Worker, rather than disembarking the Worker directly onto the shore from the Galley, as the Worker would retain all of his movement points for that turn.

Yup. It's in the plan and I did this with the Buddhist Missionary as well.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I had already made the first change. I was putting the road on the tile SW+W+W because I thought that is where you had indicated in the real game.

I listed both spots as possibilities for laying down Roads. The southern one, that you picked, would get us more of a Road towards Whale City, but if the goal is just to get a Road connection up to Riverdale, either Road would work equally.

This change is easy to make and I have no issues with it.

Honestly, I don't have any preference. Use whatever other reason you can to make the decision for you (such as what you said about possibly chopping the GHRiv For and then not having a Road on that square for a hopeful Forest regrowth).

If you don't NEED all of the Forests for Riverdale, one could be saved for Whale City just so that it can whip a Granary at Size 2 instead of Size 4. Other than 1 Forest for Whale City, though, feel free to chop away!

Of course, if you can justify the NEED for Riverdale, take the last Forest, too, but if not, then 1 Forest would be helpful for Whale City to have.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

You missed one important point. Each population point gives the GE 30 extra hammers when he rush builds the UN. So, those 3 population points are equal to an additional 90 hammers above what you calculated!!!

1 Forest = 45 base hammers (56 with forge)
2 Pops = 60 hammers (from GE) + 30 hammers (from whip - 37 with forge) = 90 hammers (97 hammers with forge)

I think we need as many pops as possible, right?

Do you think that getting the GRiv For Farmed ASAP will pay off, in terms of +1 Food for, say, 100 turns, compared to the Forest? I would think that 100 Food equals 2 to 3 more population points, depending upon what your City Size is at, so it sounds like a fair tradeoff.

I see no reason to chop the Tundra For, though, as that square will only get WORSE in value once it is chopped.

Now, the question is... do we want to have +1 Health in the City from having those 2 Forests there?

If yes, then maybe don't chop the GRiv For.

If no (then we'd only have 12 Health at present, going down from 13 Health, without whipping an Aqueduct or something), then we should probably aim to chop and Farm that GFor Riv square asap, even before finishing the Farm on the PRiv square.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Comments on the Cities

*Riverdale:
Christian Monastery (no whipping this turnset)

Awwww, shucks! Well, that's the power of a team game--if we work together, we can balance each others' bad tendencies (such as over-whipping nearly every City in our empire down to 1 population point ).

I will check this city every turn and switch to working the cow if/when we get it. Zara currently holds this tile at 51% vs. 48%.

Well, at least all of that whipping seems to have (almost) paid off!

We did at least gain one Grassland Riv Irr square so far out of all of those whipped Cultural buildings...

Crabs:
Buddhist Missionary (just whipped) -> Buddhist Missionary (whip for 1 on a turn where we’ll be able to build another Buddhist Missionary to catch the overflow hammers) -> Buddhist Missionary (whip for 1).

Kindly consider either getting Confucianism here very soon, whipping a Monument, or whipping a Buddhist Temple. Do so at least 1 turn before Saladin's Culture steals our Crab Resource, and we should be able to hold onto the Crab Resource. If you wait until he steals it, you might need 2 such sources of Culture before we can get the Crab back.

Crabs:
One turn before growing to 3 pops, it will whip 1 pop into a Buddhist missionary, thus never growing above 2 pops. If needed, it can steal a GFarm from Grt Person Farm.

Since Crabs is the only City that can work the non-River Flood Plains square (which is equivalent to a GIrr square pre-Biology), you wouldn't even need to consider stealing a GIrr square from Grt Person Farm unless we grew to Size 4 or greater.

*Three Clams:
Currently 1 pop and +3F working a cow tile. As it grows, new citizens will work the 3 clams tiles

Don't forget that we'll get the most efficiency out of this City by working the PCow on T192 then the Clam on T193 until it grows, at which point you can choose between the PCow or a 2nd Clam square for the second square to work at Size 2.

Goldfish:
Buddhist Missionary (just whipped) -> Granary -> Monument for culture? I will fit in a Buddhist Missionary when possible, but I’d like to work the fish and at least 1 gold (if not both) as much as possible, which means that I would want to whip this city the turn before growing to 4 pops.

Kindly consider building a Monument and/or Buddhist Temple here, say, whipped once we are at Size 3 with an almost-full Foodbox. The more base Culture that we build up here, the greater our chance of getting this City back via an Apostolic Palace vote. We don't need a LOT of Culture, but we do need SOME, since whoever captures the City will get +1 Culture per turn from the Buddhist Religion being in the City, for every turn that the City is out of revolt.

Ivory Towers:
Worker -> Work Boat -> Granary
Currently 1 pop and +2F while building a worker. I will switch to Caste System for 5 turns to let the whipping anger drop a bit. This will allow Ivory Towers to hire an Artist for 4 turns

We probably only need 3 turns of running the Artist, due to Confucian already helping out with Culture there. After that point, since we have a Work Boat already prepared for this City, we can immediately start working the Fish there.

You'll also be prompted to move the Galley, which is currently on a Blockade mission. I don't know if they really work on islands in between continents, but if they do, then we are potentially blocking Trade Routes between Zara and the other two AIs up there, without blocking our Trade Routes with Zara and Isabella. Or, perhaps, there is no effect at all. I don't know that much about Blockading.

What I do know, is that if you want to keep up the Blockade (it beats just Fortifying the Galley), you'll have to move 1 square outside of our territory to do it, say, 1W of Ivory Tower's Fish Resource.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Since we plan to eventually switch into a Religion different from both Zara and Isabella and since they are both very demanding Civs, we can always watch out for the following kind of situation:
Multiple Religion-changing Demands

Note that you have to read the user-added text below the image to understand the context...

 

[Mitchum]

Do you think that getting the GRiv For Farmed ASAP will pay off, in terms of +1 Food for, say, 100 turns, compared to the Forest? I would think that 100 Food equals 2 to 3 more population points, depending upon what your City Size is at, so it sounds like a fair tradeoff.

I see no reason to chop the Tundra For, though, as that square will only get WORSE in value once it is chopped.

Now, the question is... do we want to have +1 Health in the City from having those 2 Forests there?

If yes, then maybe don't chop the GRiv For.

If no (then we'd only have 12 Health at present, going down from 13 Health, without whipping an Aqueduct or something), then we should probably aim to chop and Farm that GFor Riv square asap, even before finishing the Farm on the PRiv square.

I will not chop either forest during my turnset. The minus 1 in health from chopping nixes the extra food when unhealthy anyway, right?

We'll need to run a calculation to see how many turns it will take to get Riverdale up to 16 pops without this farm, keeping the cottages and whipping 2 pops into a University. If we can't make it to 16 in time, we can consider farming over one or more of the cottages and putting a windmill on the mine. If we still can't make it, we'll have to forego whipping the University or just chop the damn forest and farm it. We should be getting some more health resouces anyway (wheat = +2 with granary), so unhealthiness shouldn't be an issue at 16 pops (with an aqueduct).

The key is 16 pops...

 

[Mitchum]

If I don't make a comment, assume that I am taking your advice.

Crabs: Kindly consider either getting Confucianism here very soon, whipping a Monument, or whipping a Buddhist Temple. Do so at least 1 turn before Saladin's Culture steals our Crab Resource, and we should be able to hold onto the Crab Resource. If you wait until he steals it, you might need 2 such sources of Culture before we can get the Crab back.

There is no way to get a Confucian Missionary here in time. The only option is to have the overflow hammers from the first Buddhist Missionary flow into a Buddhist Temple and then whip it for 1 pop as soon as Crabs grow to 2 pops. Does that sound okay? It will slow down our Buddhism spread by a few turns, but we NEED to keep this crab or else the city is worthless... and we'd have to change the city's name!

You said in the test game that the culture from Saladin't city may be off. What should I change it to in the test game to make it more accurate?

Since Crabs is the only City that can work the non-River Flood Plains square (which is equivalent to a GIrr square pre-Biology), you wouldn't even need to consider stealing a GIrr square from Grt Person Farm unless we grew to Size 4 or greater.

FYI, I wrote all of my worker actions by looking at static screen shots since I didn't have an accurate test game and I didn't want to mess with the real save. When I played through this part with the test save, I noticed the flood plains tile and I did in fact work this tile before stealing the farm from Grt. Person Farm.

Three Clams: Don't forget that we'll get the most efficiency out of this City by working the PCow on T192 then the Clam on T193 until it grows, at which point you can choose between the PCow or a 2nd Clam square for the second square to work at Size 2.

How could I forget? You've mentioned it at least three times...

We probably only need 3 turns of running the Artist, due to Confucian already helping out with Culture there. After that point, since we have a Work Boat already prepared for this City, we can immediately start working the Fish there.

Yep, this is what I did in my test game. I wrote this before actually playing anything, so there were bound to be a lot of mistakes like this.

Back to writing the detailed PPP. It looks like I'll finish the Parthenon on T200 (400 AD). Then, I plan to build a few longbows before starting on the UofS. Hope to finish tonight...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I will not chop either forest during my turnset. The minus 1 in health from chopping nixes the extra food when unhealthy anyway, right?

Well, to be absolutely fair, we do have a ton of Health Resources at our disposal, which would mean that no, the extra Food would not be a wash.

We're also trading away our only source of a few of them:
Crab +1 Health
Wheat +2 Health (Granary)
Deer +1 Health
Pig +1 Health (we haven't traded it away but we also haven't connected it up yet, either, hehe!)

A Grocer would also give us:
Spice +1 Health (received in trade right now)
Wine +1 Health (received in trade right now)
Sugar +1 Health


While we probably won't have all of those Resources for our own usage, since some are good "trade bait," we can certainly get several more Health points. So, realistically, it's worth putting a Farm on that GRiv For ASAP, since we are about to grow large enough to not have any 3+ Food squares to work. The longer that we delay Farming (and working) the GRiv For as a GRiv Irr, the less value that it will have and the worse of a tradeoff it will be.


Even if we didn't have these Resources, the extra Food would only be a wash until we grew to our Health limit; up until that point, we'd gain +1 Food and +1 Commerce per turn.


So, we might as well just take the Hammers now (for a Cultural building) and get to work on working the newly minted GRiv Irr square. Remember that the investment in Cultural buildings can pay off with us getting the GCow that much sooner, as well as hanging onto it for a longer period of time.

The key is 16 pops...

We should easily be able to have enough Health, especially if we can build a Grocer, but if not, some creative trading could make it work. Besides, as I said, it's "growing to the larger sizes faster" that we're interested in most by Farming that square now.

Finally, we might even get lucky and have the Tundra Forest spread to the west onto the empty PRiv square, which means we should delay Farming that PRiv square (although you can complete the Farm on the other PRiv that we already started to Farm--just do so after Farming the GRiv For square).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

There is no way to get a Confucian Missionary here in time. The only option is to have the overflow hammers from the first Buddhist Missionary flow into a Buddhist Temple and then whip it for 1 pop as soon as Crabs grow to 2 pops. Does that sound okay?

Yes, that sounds reasonable.

It will slow down our Buddhism spread by a few turns, but we NEED to keep this crab or else the city is worthless... and we'd have to change the city's name!

Indeed, losing one of our two Food sources for a whipping City greatly reduces the value of said City, to the point that this delay in building Buddhist Missionaries will be a worthwhile tradeoff.


This extra time might even buy you the opportunity to "wait" a Buddhist Missionary in a City for a bit longer before attempting to spread it.

You said in the test game that the culture from Saladin't city may be off. What should I change it to in the test game to make it more accurate?

I don't know that you can accurately adjust things at this point. Part of the problem is that Isabella's borders expanded sooner than they did in the real game, meaning that +1 Culture was added to the Crab square for a few turns before I caught the discrepancy. When I noticed it, I went back a couple of turns and reduced the City's Cultural value, but it was my fault for having "set up" the land and Cities at the start of the test saved game to match what we saw at the end of my turnset... I did so in order to be able to have my Work Boat and Warrior 1 get reasonably similar exploration levels, but the problem is that I started the City off with Buddhism, so it got more Culture that it should have gotten. Most other Cities don't matter if their values are accurate, since they don't border our Cities.


The real game has us at about 77% Culture on the Crab while the test saved game has us at just over 50%. So, probably the best thing that you can do at this point is to set the Cultural level in Isabella's Basra to a smaller value, such as, let's say, about 8 Culture.


All of this stuff goes to pot if Saladin is the one to get the Great Artist--either we'll lose the western Gold or we'll lose the Crab, depending upon which City he Culture Bombs. So, in that respect, it might make sense to trade Literature to Toku ASAP, since he has the highest tech rate, the best chance of beating Saladin to Music, and won't trade around the tech. If Zara weren't Toku's Worst Enemy, I'd say give Literature to Zara, too, since he favours Music reasonably strongly, but we can't trade to Zara without angering Toku for the rest of the game...


Justinian would just turn around and give Literature to Saladin, and we shouldn't really trade techs to Isabella while she's still at war, so Toku's our best bet. Too bad I just got all of his Gold, but I'd rather have Toku Culture bomb one of the other two AIs on his continent than have Saladin do so to us.

 

[unclethrill]

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. RL has been really crazy. On top of all that now I'm horribly sick. I don't see how I'll have any time to play or contribute much in the next 2 weeks. Please bypass me until around July 30th. Sorry!

 

[BLubmuz]

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. RL has been really crazy. On top of all that now I'm horribly sick. I don't see how I'll have any time to play or contribute much in the next 2 weeks. Please bypass me until around July 30th. Sorry!

I hope you recover for your vacations.
I already planned your TS after you're back from Roma. Take a look on my #3 to see the schedule.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The Future holds... War?
Okay, this discussion is a little bit forward-thinking in nature, in that it won't apply to Mitchum's turnset or the turnset afterwards (Irgy's turnset), but possibly starting in the following turnset (BLubz' turnset).


Now, we all know that BLubz claims to be a warmongeror.


The question becomes... should we consider putting these skills to good use?


If yes, then since we are playing a Diplo game, the PRIMARY goals of any war should be, in this order:
1. Prevent any AI from being vassaled by any other AI
2. Collect Mutual Military Struggle positive Diplo modifier points with our war buddy
3. Capture Cities to increase our population and number of Tradeable Resources, AS LONG AS we do not violate points 1 and 2 above.


For example, if we attack Zara and capture his capitol shortly after bringing another AI into the war, we will likely see that AI capitulate Zara (which would be goal number 1 being failed) and would not get even 1 permanent Mutual Military Struggle positive Diplo modifier (which would be goal number 2 being failed). So, such a war would be considered to be a MAJOR FAILURE.


What does that mean? Well, we either should not capture any Cities during a war, or if we do so, it should only be from an AI that is large enough not to vassalize to another AI. Therefore, while keeping goal #1 in mind, the primary reason for the war would be to drag out the war and gather Diplo points from goal #2, by not capturing any Cities and keeping the war target from being vassalized (goal #1).


Okay, let's think about our possible war target options:
If we declare war on an AI, the following AIs will join us in a war if we bribe them, if we can get them up to the following Attitude level towards us and towards the war target:
ISABELLA = Pleased or Friendly with us; Furious through Pleased (inclusive) with the Enemy
JUSTINIAN = Friendly with us; Furious through Cautious (inclusive) with the Enemy
MEHMED = Cautious, Pleased, or Friendly with us; Furious through Cautious (inclusive) with the Enemy
SALADIN = Pleased or Friendly with us; Furious through Annoyed (inclusive) with the Enemy
TOKUGAWA = Pleased or Friendly with us; Furious through Pleased (inclusive) with the Enemy
ZARA_YAQOB = Cautious, Pleased, or Friendly with us; Furious through Pleased (inclusive) with the Enemy


What does that mean? Not a whole lot, as long as we have several AIs who are claiming that they have "too much on their hands."


But, let's fast-forward and assume that Justinian and Toku have declared on either us or Zara and have had the war with them stopped via the Apostolic Palace. If we ask them to join a war on THAT TURN, then they won't have time to tell us that their hands are too full. Now, it is possible that they might not have their hands full for a long time after this forced-peace declaration, but it is also possible that they WILL get their "hands full" on the next turn, so our window of opportunity is potentially a very small one (a one turn window of opportunity), so we have to prepare in advance to know what to do with this window of time.


So, who would we want Justinian or Toku to attack?

Well, in BTS, the AIs hate you a lot for bringing in War Allies against them (they hate you twice as much as they did in Vanialla and Warlords), so whoever we pick to be the war target is probably someone whose votes we will not be able to count on.

We also want to avoid that AI being vassalized.

Finally, although Zara is a tempting target, I say that we treat him as being immune from being a target, since we are REALLY COUNTING on making him our UN opponent. The game will be CONSIDERABLY EASIER if we can keep Zara out of wars and thus give him the best chance of remaining an independent nation by avoiding capitulation (and he's not very likely to peacefully vassalize to his Religious Enemies).


If we get the Buddhists to fight amongst each other, we'll probably just end up creating one Super Power on that continent that vassalizes all of the Buddhists and then goes on to vassalize the world. We can't declare war on an AI once they have 2 vassals (due to the game's rules, plus fighting 3 AIs at a time sucks anyway), so let's not even consider an inter-nicene war (one where we get the Buddhists to fight amongst each other).


Therefore, that really just leaves one of Isabella and Mehmed as our war target.


I would say that we can certainly plan to collect Mutual Military Struggle points against one of them. PREFERABLY, we will have ONE OF Toku or Justinian join the war with us, but not both of them at the same time. That way, we will avoid them collecting Mutual Military Struggle points with each other.

Saladin might also be a good initial ally to bribe into a war, because unlike Justinian and Toku, he is NOT saying that his hands are "too full." The trickiest part is that he really has to dislike the war target to be bribed into a war, but we'll see how the Diplo situation has shaped up when the time comes around.


As I said, to satisfy goal #2, we actually want to drag the war on for a LONG period of time, so that we can collect Mutual Military Struggle points with our AI war allies (one at a time) for a long period of time.


So, who should be the war target? I would vote to attack whoever WINS the war between Mehmed and Isabella. Whoever "wins" is the one that ends the war with more Cities than the other of the two of them.

That AI would make it easiest for us to satisfy goal #1, because their larger size would help to prevent them from capitulating.


Now, interestingly, unlike our "war" against the Barb City, a defensive NAVAL ARMY would probably be best here. Assuming that we can get Metal Casting in trade, we can build a few Triremes after we build our Barb City land army (and supporting units, like a Settler, Worker, and Missionaries).

The good part is that we have Ivory Towers' island as a suitable chokepoint.

There are two spots around Mehmed and Isabella's continent where there is a possibility of there being a "Coastal bridge" to another island or continent in the hidden squares, which may eventually lead around to our continent. However, since we've got good exploration coverage around our continent, this theoretical connection to our continent would have to span the northern part of the map and then connect all the way to Justinian or Toku's area. So, even if such a connection exists, it'll take an AI way too long to traverse such a passage to matter for a war. Plus, if we get even one of the western AIs helping us out, such a passage's boats would be intercepted by a war ally.

Therefore, we can safely proceed with the assumption that Ivory Towers is the ONLY area that we need to defend navally until the discovery of Optics. Although we don't know Mehmed's tech level, the fact that he can only get 4 Trade Routes with Zara (the bug that we used on the F4 -> GLANCE screen works both ways--we know that no one else has met Mehmed because they'd also say "War with Mehmeh II" in terms of Isabella's attitude, and only Zara shows this little quirk), so it is unlikely that his tech pace is ahead of the apparent AI tech leader, Toku, who only recently learned Metal Casting (which means researching 3 more techs just to get Caravels).


So, an army of Triremes would go a LONG WAY to allowing us to accomplish goals #1 and #2.


Note that once again, we have proven that building a Barracks now is a poor investment, as our Barb War units can get promos from fighting Barbs and our Triremes can't get experience points from Barracks.


Later in the game, once we've racked up Mutual Military Struggle positive Diplo points with several AIs, we can push for goal #3 and capture our war target's Cities for extra votes. Even if said AI vassalizes to another AI at that point of the game, it will not be a bad thing, as we'll have already maximized goal #2 (Mutual Military Struggle points) and will have gotten more of the target AI's votes via goal #3 (capturing our war target's Cities).


That means that we won't have to kill our economy now fielding a large army (6 to 8 Triremes should be plenty), nor will we need to whip out a huge land army and shrink our Cities which should instead be focusing on growing so as to be able to run a lot of Scientist Specialists. We can even afford to run Pacifism, since we won't have a large standing army.

With two stacks of Triremes placed in what is currently Isabella's territory, we can prevent our war target from even landing any land units at Ivory Towers, keeping the entire focus of the war on a few naval battles. Alternatively, if we have a few superior land units in the area, we can allow small amounts of enemy land units to land near Ivory Towers and then collect more Great General points and experience points fighting them.


One CAUTIONARY POINT to watch out for would be the winner of the Isabella-Mehmed war VASSALIZING the other. So, we'll have to monitor Isabella's number of Cities. If she loses any, being already only at 4 Cities, we should immediately consider Mehmed to be the winner, go and meet him, and be prepared to declare war on him before he meets the world (that way, there will be less AIs that will hate us for having declared on their Friend). Likewise, if Isabella jumps up to about 6 or 7 Cities, we should immediately go and meet Mehmed to see if he's running out of Cities or not. If he has expanded during the war, then either AI will be a suitable target for us to attack. If he's low on Cities, then Isabella will have to be our war target.

No matter who we pick as a war target, we should discuss the Diplo situation as a team before declaring war, because this aspect of the game could have a major impact on our easy success in getting voted as leader of the world or not. Yes, the "leader of the world" is the one who can strategically manipulate the others with the use of a minimalistic army of Triremes...


P.S. Get well soon, UT! We want you to enjoy your trip!!!

 

[BLubmuz]

I'm not a total warmonger, my preferred VC is Space.
Perhaps you was duped by my "Diplomation" concept of a Diplo win.

OK, let's forget that usually i go to space with some 50% or more of the land or at least i own my continent. Peacefully? hmmm.

But we have 2 declarations at disposal.
All your points about war are important, but you're forgetting the main one: own the resources requested to win this competition.

- We already have our own Ivory
- Hopefully we soon have the Furs, capturing the Barb city
- Dyes and Silk are under control of Izzy and/or Mehmed

Our criteria to pick who of them would be our target is who owns both if possible.

Or we can hope to obtain them in trade, avoid any war and win peacefully.
Much will depend by how those resources are distributed in their continent and by their will to trade them.

A war is expensive and we can build science or wealth instead of a very good sized army to fight any of them.
BTW, Mehmed is a good warmonger, he owns the GW and he seems to have a wide land, so a good production.
Surely we must avoid he vassalizes Izzy, otherwise he can be the first in pop.
So, he can be our target and we also gain diplo points with an AI without need to bribe it.

So, i'm all for peace and love if we can secure those resources until the end of the game.

Also, once secured and connected the furs, better send the 4 requested warriors soon in that area.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm not a total warmonger, my preferred VC is Space.
Perhaps you was duped by my "Diplomation" concept of a Diplo win...
OK, let's forget that usually i go to space with some 50% or more of the land

My apologies if I offended you by refering to your war-making abilities, but surely you must have some of them if you can consistenly own 50% of the Land Area in your games.

But we have 2 declarations at disposal.

Indeed, but I would prefer not to have to use both of them on a "combined Isabella + Mehmed" Master + Vassal arrangement, so that we can remain flexible.

All your points about war are important, but you're forgetting the main one: own the resources requested to win this competition.

- We already have our own Ivory
- Hopefully we soon have the Furs, capturing the Barb city
- Dyes and Silk are under control of Izzy and/or Mehmed

Isabella has 3 Dyes and Mehmed has 1.
A Barb City that is "protected" by Mehmed from Isabella capturing it owns 1 Silk.
Those are the Resources that we know about.

Our criteria to pick who of them would be our target is who owns both if possible.

This statement is not mutually exclusive of going after the largest AI. Actually, the two approaches fit well together, as the largest AI is going to be more likely to have at least one of the Resources, if not the other. Also, by joining the war against one of them, the other will become Friendlier with us and will be more likely to trade us whichever Resource or Resources we cannot capture ourselves (although we'd only be doing the "capturing" after a long war that allowed us to rack up many years of Shared Mutual Military Struggle points with other AIs).

Or we can hope to obtain them in trade, avoid any war and win peacefully.
Much will depend by how those resources are distributed in their continent and by their will to trade them.

If we really wanted to play completely peacefully, we could go and meet Mehmed ASAP and pay them to declare Peace with each other. However, we'll likely still get demands from one or the other to stop trading with each other, due to the war declaration hatred.

Their relationships with other AIs are not fully known, either. It is quite possible that of the remaining relationships, Isabella or Toku could hate the other, while Mehmed could hate any AI or any AI could hate Mehmed.

Going the purely peaceful route has the challenge of there being MANY Worst Enemies in the world. If we can unite the world against a common foe, one at a time, then we can focus the hatred on one AI, due to Open Borders and Resource Trades being halted with that AI.

The other fear with peace is that right now, Mehmed's chances to pick up Religions is limited. As soon as he goes peaceful with Isabella, the chance of him getting Hinduism via natural spread goes up, and we aren't prepared to spam Buddhism to him yet. The worst case scenario would be that since he is closer to all of the other 5 Founded Religions than he is Buddhism, he would get all 5 Religions and switch into Free Religion.

That's part of the reason why we want the war between the two of them to continue--so that we will be ready to spread Buddhism by having Buddhism in almost all of our own Cities first. At that point, we may be better off going to war with one of the two of them; I simply raised this possible alternative approach to peacefully meeting Mehmed, paying for Peace between the two of them, Opening Borders, and spreading Buddhism as quickly as possible (even possibly Closing Borders right afterwards).

A war is expensive and we can build science or wealth instead of a very good sized army to fight any of them.

While in general, a war can be expensive, this suggestion is not very expensive:
1. We only need a few Triremes for most of the war
AND
2. If and when we do get around to capturing Cities, we'll have larger Cities ourselves, so fielding a larger army won't cost us as much in Maintenance, since you can field a larger army with more population in your empire "for free" in terms of Maintenance costs.
AND
3. If and when we do capture Cities, we'll get Gold from capturing them.


I do see what you are saying, though--if we declare war and bring in a bunch of war allies, we won't be able to get any Resources from that AI in trade, which would FORCE us to capture the relevant Resources. However, after 100 turns of war, an AI will be more than happy to take peace, so we can quickly capture the relevant City or Cities with the Resources that we need and immediately declare peace.

BTW, Mehmed is a good warmonger, he owns the GW and he seems to have a wide land, so a good production.

I wouldn't count Isabella out, yet, either. She has Moai, several Hills, a Stone, a Cow, etc, so she has good production. Her Cities all have Walls, so she can withstand several assaults. Finally, her source of Copper is "well protected" at the back of her empire, so she can field nearly infinite Spearmen and Axemen.

I would be very hesitant to trade her techs though, as, if she gets too many, she could just pay for peace and then Mehmed would hate us for having traded with his Worst Enemy. After the war is over, we might be the new Worst Enemy and we would have a really hard time getting Open Borders to spread Buddhism to him before all of the other 5 Religions spread, giving him the perfect excuse to run Free Religion.

Surely we must avoid he vassalizes Izzy, otherwise he can be the first in pop.

Absolutely. Neither one can vassalize the other, or our UN-gifting strategy could be in danger--gifting the United Nations won't work if we are unable to be the largest Civ population-wise in the game. So this criteria is the one that will probably force us to make the decision... until that time, we can afford to sit back and let them fight each other, both being unable to ask us for help in the war.

So, he can be our target and we also gain diplo points with an AI without need to bribe it.

Do you mean that we'd get Diplo points with Isabella? Sure, that sounds reasonable. But, if we declare too soon, she could get the upper-hand and capture more of his Cities and then turn him into a vassal.

Timing is very important. Your turnset seems to be the time when we might first be ready to proactively declare war. For now, we will just have to sit back and watch the outcome by paying attention to how many Cities Isabella has, and if she loses one, we'll have to jump in to help out before we are ready to do so.

So, i'm all for peace and love if we can secure those resources until the end of the game.

We could probably get the Resources, but could we keep Mehmed out of Free Religion if we go and enforce Peace on the two of them now? I think that we'd face trouble if we met Mehmed now and enforced peace upon them.


Also, the question of multiple AIs hating each other becomes an issue. Already, we can't trade with Zara or Isabella. It could be that we wouldn't be able to trade with Mehmed without angering another AI, or worse, it could be that once peace is declared, Mehmed won't like Justinian or Saladin, who are currently our best bets for getting techs in trade. Then we'd either have to research everything ourselves (which would be very slow) or else we'd anger Mehmed into not wanting to trade his Resource or Resources with us.

Also, once secured and connected the furs, better send the 4 requested warriors soon in that area.

Should we do so in two stages of 2 Warriors at a time? That way, we'd keep Unit Supply costs down, and if our Warriors get "teleported" due to a war Declaration by Justinian or Toku, they won't necessarily all die together in one turn.


It's not clear what the safest way to get our Great People there would be. If there's a war, our Warriors can be rebuilt. Great People can't be easily "rebuilt," however.

So, we want to wait until we have Optics or Astronomy and then ship the Great People over by boat.

Obviously, we'd wait to send the Warriors over there until:
1. We ensure that the Fur is actually there!
AND
2. We have captured the City, so that the Warriors can stay within its cultural borders, in order to reduce Unit Supply Costs

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Talkin'bout links, i personally use Firefox and i linked in the main bar (no need to open bookmarks) the main thread instead of this one. In this way i can see if there're posts i haven't read yet without the need to actually open and search the last page of this thread.

You could also just set your link to open our team thread so that it will bring you to a very large page number. If the page number doesn't exist (yet), the thread will open on the last page.
For example you could make your link look like the following:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=362029&page=187

Presumably, you'd expect that Page 187 would load, but since that page doesn't exist (yet), the thread instead loads to the last page (Page 113 and counting).

 

[Mitchum]

I've updated my PPP here. Updates are in RED.

I've played all the way through, but I have not had time to finish typing in my turn-by-turn notes.

I think I've captured all comments so far. If not, feel free to point out any errors.

 

[BLubmuz]

So, Whales is decided.
Go ahead, good luck!