SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[BLubmuz]

So, I would have to hear a very thorough description on the subject of UN-gifting from someone who claims that no more testing needs to be done on the UN-gifting aspect before I will believe that the testing of this issue is complete.

I'm claiming that update the test game is totally useless, but surely not the test game itself, for the purpose to test any possible UN strategy.

I think we got all the answers now.
Assuming (just to examine all the possibilities) we compete against Toku for SG, do we have any chance to win?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Mehmed getting The UN

In case we decide for the captured UN, we need a Buddhist missionary for Riverdale, better 2.

An excellent point! Essentially, we need a ton of Buddhist Missionaries.

The great part about Riverdale is that once we've learned Mass Media, Delhi can switch to working Mines instead of purely hiring Scientists, allowing it to quickly pump out a couple of Buddhist Missionaries for nearby Cities. It's the further-away Cities, like the one with Mehmed's Silk that have me more concerned, since you need to factor in the travel time.


Forts for Upgrading?

With the fort you indicatd the galley in Trebizond can move in our territory and be upgraded?

I have no idea.

I don't have time to test today because I have other things going on (a friend's wedding that I'm taking a break from to type to you guys, etc).

Feel free to test this scenario yourself and let us know.

Still, we'd probably only spend Gold on upgrading units after we've learned Mass Media.

Research can still potentially be our bottleneck if we don't hire sufficient Scientists and/or spend at least SOME of our Gold on research.


Voting for Toku to be the Secretary General

3. Similar to point 2 but the opposite--if Pacal wins the election (we can vote for him to win if we need to do so in order for him to win), then what happens after we gift The UN, should we happen to become the population leader before the next UN vote? Will a new Secretary General election occur? Will we still be left out of the running? Will Pacal be the one to control which item gets voted on but we will be one of the 2 candidates because we have hte largest population?

This test case, if you have the time, is the one that interests me the most.

If we were to vote for Toku to be Secretary General but could still get to win a Diplo Vote, then we'd have an easy way of making Toku happier by +2. We really are low on positive Diplo modifiers with Toku. Let's just hope that he stays at war, but if not, we'll have to re-bribe him into war 10 turns later.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Mercantilism
Mercantilism is Toku's Favourite Civic.

We can get positive Diplo modifiers with him if we are both running this Civic.

However, this Civic will cost us all of our Foreign Trade Routes, which will cost more than we can gain by running Mercantilism. Yes, we can get the Representation bonus on a free Merchant everywhere, but it'll be Gold, not +3 Flasks, that we'll need to replace those lost Trade Routes.


10 turns' worth of Mercantilism can greatly effect our game in a bad way. So, spending 10 turns in that Civic is a costly way to get +1 with Toku.


HOWEVER, we can be very cheap about it.


On the turn before the Diplo Victory votes are cast (which probably means on the turn that we see the vote, since we play the turn before the AIs play the turn, sound right?), we can switch into Mercantilism.

That way, it'll be a very cost-effective way to get +1 with Toku.


In the meantime, if we've gotten Banking in trade, Toku can ask us to switch int Mercantilism if we simply aren't running that Civic. BAM, that's +2 with Toku! We can even keep the Favourite Civic bonus if we agree to switch and then switch Civics out of Mercantilism, should we be more than 5 turns away from the Diplo Vote (as we'd need to wait 5 turns to switch back into Mercantilism).


If we're going to play to our Civ's Traits (Spiritual in this case), then let's maximize their value as much as possible.

 

[BLubmuz]

Still, we'd probably only spend Gold on upgrading units after we've learned Mass Media.

Let me understand: i thought we was in a rush to finish the game ASAP and you're speaking to do something after MM?
if everything goes in the right way, we have 6 turns until victory, 7 counting the turn we need to have the UN built for Mehmed. At that point, "le jeux sont fait" no time to move units, no time for almost anything. All our missionaries must be in place, if not all our cities are Buddhist.

Research can still potentially be our bottleneck if we don't hire sufficient Scientists and/or spend at least SOME of our Gold on research.


Voting for Toku to be the Secretary General

This test case, if you have the time, is the one that interests me the most.

If we were to vote for Toku to be Secretary General but could still get to win a Diplo Vote, then we'd have an easy way of making Toku happier by +2. We really are low on positive Diplo modifiers with Toku. Let's just hope that he stays at war, but if not, we'll have to re-bribe him into war 10 turns later.

Once, in one of my solo games, i conquered the AP city 1-2 turns after the APResident elections. The APResident was still the same, with less votes (obviously) but the same.
The same can apply to the UN.
If Toku wins the SG elections and he will never propose the Diplo victory, we'll lose some 30 turns

Rest assured that if he can't even be the Candidate for the Diplo victory vote, he will never propose this resolution, simply because he can't.

IMO, we have 2 options:
a) build the UN in Riverdale, try to win the SG Election against Toku and before the vote arrives give the city to Zara.
b) hope that Mehmed will siege his former city, build the UN there and evacuate it the turn it completes. Game over. Victory assured.

The problem is that we can't move the GEs quickly from Ottomans land to Riverdale in case we see Mehmed do not make any effort to take it back.

For the SG election this is the

Diplo situation:
		T	I	J	M	S	Z
FE		11	8	13	-18	9	7
Toku		-	4	10	-6	10	2

Sal is growing, he's got +7 with toku for shared religion and once this raises for us we can be in great shape.
If we manage to convert Izzy ASAP, she will raise quickly

I would also say that (with the UN in Riverdale), once we see how the votes for SG are casted, we can figure if it's worth to gift the city to Zara. You are the expert on Diplo, i can just say that if everyone but Toku votes for us as SG, they will also vote us for the victory. A side effect to have Toku as opponent is that we won't need to adopt Mercantilism.

Of course, if Mehmed will siege his city-UN-candidate with enough units and he won't suicide them the let it be conquered plan will work.

 

[Mitchum]

Great turnset, Dhoomstriker. You got us to Mass Media too quickly and now we're not prepared...

It looks like Great People is back on the critical path. We currently have 2 GEs and 1 GS. We'll get another great person in 2 turns in Delhi, making four total.

If we only need to use one GE on the UN, then we should be fine as Crabs should give us one in about 15 turn.

However, if we have to use 2 GEs on the UN, we'll either have to wait for the next great person from GP Farm 25 turns from now or the generation of a Great General, which could possibly come when? Or win the race to Economics (6 turns at 0% science)...

Then, of course, we have to get them to the fur.

So, we need to figure out where we want to build the UN. If in Riverdale (Zara as our opponent), we'll have enough great people. If in a city of Mehmed's (Mehmed as our opponent), we'll need a plan for generating that fourth great person and getting him to the fur, which will be our critical path.

FYI, there is a Galley asleep by Ivory Towers. Is this intended?

 

[unclethrill]

Okay, I've been looking at the save and cipherin' (english: trying to figure out) as best I can, on what to do on my 7 turns. Here is my overall plan. I'll try to be more specific before I play but in general this is what I'll do:


1. Keep all builds in the cities as they are until completed.
2. Move the GS that is on the Galleon to our Barb Fur city
3. Get the 4 warriors to the same said city. 2 in the barb city and 2 in Justin's borders
4. Get as many Buddists to Izzy as I can. 2 is the best in my turns by my count
5. Build all the buddist missionaries as I can. 3 by my count
6. Get all troops to the jungle E+N+N+N+N of Cordoba. Should be 10 to 14 there at the end of my TS
7. Finish Airships (2) and re-base to Cordoba. Use them to un-fog. Then use them to start hurtin' Mehmed.
8. Relocate all new galleons and all that are in troop transport mode to the specified army load points. Load 'um and send them up to the rally point on the Izzy-mehmed border
9. Move the troops by toledo over to the jungle rally point. These are included in the above count of 10 to 14.
10. Chop the 2 forests south of Mystic. Preserve two next to Delhi as prescribed by Dhoom.
11. Send Galleon with GS to Zara Land (Addis Ababa Coast) after the GS is dropped off.
12. Accept any trades proposed except for peace (from Mehmed).
13. Make reasonable trades that include us getting more gold so that we can increase research.
14. Keep research at a minimum of 0% (just a little joke there). Hope to be able to make a couple strategic trades so that we can get money and guilds to allow us to run around 20% and build knights.
15 Finish my TS with 7 or 8 turns left on MM, lots of money, a huge stack in Mehmed's land and Izzy almost ready to join the Buddhist PARTY.

I'm pretty sure that I can pull all the above off, no problem.

If you want more from my turns just ask and I'll do my best to work some FM.


UN Gifting

On another note, how about this idea:

Is it possible to take the silk city (Chinook), and take the UN city (Izmir) + any others on the way, then build the UN and on the same turn that it is done, request peace with Mehmed and give him the UN city in exchange for peace. This way we wouldn't have to count on him being able to reclaim the city on the exact turn we build it and we wouldn't have to worry about SG with Toko either. Just an idea but we might want to test it.

 

[Mitchum]

It may be too late, but should we consider directing our espionage toward Tokugawa? I'm not sure if we'd be able to use espionage to get Toku to switch out of Theocracy on the turn before the UN is built. This may be enough to get Sal and/or Justinian to vote for us rather than Toku.

Can we only "Influence Civics" via espionage to get an AI to adopt a civic that we're currently running?

Is there any other way we can use espionage to our favor?

 

[Mitchum]

UN Gifting

On another note, how about this idea:

Is it possible to take the silk city (Chinook), and take the UN city (Izmir) + any others on the way, then build the UN and on the same turn that it is done, request peace with Mehmed and give him the UN city in exchange for peace. This way we wouldn't have to count on him being able to reclaim the city on the exact turn we build it and we wouldn't have to worry about SG with Toko either. Just an idea but we might want to test it.

I don't think this would work. The UN would be built at the END of our turn. The giving of his city back to him to end the war would happen before the end of our turn, so the UN would not be built yet.

Can you use the galley up by the barbs to check out how well Chinook is defended? It would be nice to know what type of army we'll need to capture it. Also, I don't think we'll have enough time to march up to Chinook through Mehmed's cultural borders while taking cities along the way. We may need to ferry a boatload or three of troops up to take Chinook.

We'll need to take a city (the one for the UN) in the next 10 turns or so if we want it to be out of revolt in time to build the UN there. Will this even be possible with the troops we can muster in that short of time? Don't forget that we'll need to get the GEs up there too...

Should the Trieme near Ivory Towers be moved north to help scout the coast? I doubt Mehmed will be able to get a boat past Izzy and pillage our nets there...

 

[unclethrill]

I don't think this would work. The UN would be built at the END of our turn. The giving of his city back to him to end the war would happen before the end of our turn, so the UN would not be built yet.
.

I ran this test and as Mitchum said, the UN is not built yet. In the test, I used two GE to finish it but gave the city back on that last turn and the UN was never built. So that answers that!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

"After Mass Media"

With the fort you indicatd the galley in Trebizond can move in our territory and be upgraded?

Still, we'd probably only spend Gold on upgrading units after we've learned Mass Media.

Let me understand: i thought we was in a rush to finish the game ASAP and you're speaking to do something after MM?
if everything goes in the right way, we have 6 turns until victory, 7 counting the turn we need to have the UN built for Mehmed. At that point, "le jeux sont fait" no time to move units, no time for almost anything. All our missionaries must be in place, if not all our cities are Buddhist.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but you suggested that we upgrade a Galley that is located near the 2 western Barb Cities.

One of my suggestions was to form a chain of Galleons between Zara's area and the western Barb Cities' area.

We need somewhere around 4 to 6 Galleons to build a complete chain.

Since we have to have our Great People on the Fur when we win, we can effectively obtain a Great Person AFTER we learn Mass Media and still have time to get that Great Person to the Fur.

The more Galleons that we have in our chain, the more chance that we'll be able to have of moving that last Great Person not only safely but quickly to the Fur.

My assumption when I spoke about spending Gold to upgrade a Galley was that you wanted to use this Galley as part of our Galleon chain.

My suggestion to spend money after Mass Media was because after Mass Media is learned, we no longer need Gold for deficit research, so we potentially have more Gold to play with than before we learn Mass Media.

I suspect that the upgrading of a unit within a Fort suggestion will not work. It's not that the idea is not a good one--it is a great idea, especially since Forts act like Cities in many ways and you would think that basing a unit in a Fort within your own territory would be a logical place to upgrade a unit. However, I doubt that the programmers and/or designers thought to code in this scenario.

But, if it does work, I am simply suggesting that we wait until after we learn Mass Media to spend this Gold on upgrading a Galley to a Galleon, as we will still have time to make use of such an upgraded unit, as it will be one-turn-of-movement away from where it needs to be by the very nature of the fact that it can make up the "last unit" in our Galleon chain that stretches from Zara's lands to the Barb Area's Fort.

Does that make sense to you?


Secretary General

Once, in one of my solo games, i conquered the AP city 1-2 turns after the APResident elections. The APResident was still the same, with less votes (obviously) but the same.
The same can apply to the UN.

Are you basing your claims of similarity between the Apostolic Palace and The UN in this regard based on evidence or based on an assumption due to the fact that the two victory types are similar? I'd rather base our decisions on fact if it's only a matter of putting together a test to find out the answer.

So, it would be nice to know for certain who would be the Secretary General under these circumstances.

Further, your point doesn't answer the other aspect of the question, which is:
If Toku gets elected Secretary General, if we have the largest population, and if Zara controls The UN, who would be the two candidates in a Diplo Vote?


The UN in Mehmed's Lands

IMO, we have 2 options:
a) build the UN in Riverdale, try to win the SG Election against Toku and before the vote arrives give the city to Zara.
b) hope that Mehmed will siege his former city, build the UN there and evacuate it the turn it completes. Game over. Victory assured.

The problem is that we can't move the GEs quickly from Ottomans land to Riverdale in case we see Mehmed do not make any effort to take it back.

If we move our Great Engineers to Mehmed, we're committing to building The UN there.

The hope of not having to face Toku in a Secretary General election is not the only reason for letting Mehmed be the one to control The UN.

Let's say that it takes Mehmed 5 turns to capture The UN. We will still be better off Diplomatically with Mehmed owning The UN than Zara having The UN, as we will have the chance of counting Zara's vote for us. With Zara controling The UN, we will for certain have neither Zara nor Mehmed voting for us.


Just because we cannot get Mehmed to capture The UN immediately upon it being completed does not mean that building The UN in Mehmed's lands is a failure--far from it. Instead, it just may make it harder for us if Toku gets elected as Secretary General.


We really should know ahead of time what the implications of Toku becoming the Secretary General are. We should know, because if Toku becomes the Secretary General, then we will need to know if we should maintain control of The UN and do our best from that standpoint--if giving up The UN will give us a 0% chance of being elected, then obviously, giving up The UN under those conditions would be a mistake.

I don't understand the reasoning behind trying to short-change our testing. If we're going to do some testing, let's not be lazy about it, let's do it right, and let's get the facts. Then we can go forward with informed decisions.

If you don't want to go to the effort, fine, don't do it. Someone else can do it, and if no one volunteers, I'll end up doing it when I have the time. The only dangerous thing that can happen is to make assumptions, treat them as fact, and then convince the team not to do the testing because they believe that it has already been done when the reality is that it has not been fully accomplished.


Diplo Situation

For the SG election this is the
Code:
Diplo situation:

Thank you for that table. However, that table fails to capture some additional info which I believe really matters for us to be able to make informed decisions about those numbers. That info is:
1. Who is Friendly with whom
AND
2. If an AI is Friendly with Toku, how much above "just barely Friendly" with Toku are they?
AND
3. If an AI is Friendly with us, how much above "just barely Friendly" with us are they?

That info combined with your table will give us a map of who will vote for whom in a Secretary General vote. It will also give us a map of who will vote for whom if we face only Toku in a Diplo Victory vote (it doesn't list the Attitudes towards other AIs, so we can't say anything about them). However, before you go typing out all of the same numbers for every AI, you can go back to my uploaded screenshots and see a colour-coded screenshot of the F4 -> GLANCE screen that gives the same numbers but also addresses missing info #1 from above.

What is not revealed is missing info #2 and missing info #3, as that info comes from information that is not displayed in the game's interface and must be tracked separately.


Also, it should be made clear that if someone votes for us to be Secretary General, there is no direct correlation with that fact and whether or not they will vote for us to be Leader of the World in a Diplo Victory vote. Instead, you have to refer to the three itemized points above to determine who will vote for whom and who will abstain.

Justinian can be +13 and Friendly with us and he can still do either of:
a) Vote for Toku to win a Diplo Victory
OR
b) Abstain in a Diplo Victory vote


Further, the analysis can't just be limited to Toku. If we want to consider making someone else our opponent, we'll need to look at all of the numbers together, to see which AIs would be more likely to vote for us than a potential UN Opponent, and weight those options against each other, even against the option of selecting Toku as our opponent. In isolation, the numbers won't tell us nearly as much info as they can when used in the context of the info of Attitudes towards our other potential UN Opponents.


Your numbers make me believe that you are not aware of the inner-workings of how a Diplo Vote is calculated. I admit that I am not 100% certain of them, myself. I have heard that you need to be at "+7," that you need to be at "+8," that you need to be "Friendly," and all sorts of other rumours.

However, my current understanding is that:
1. In order for us to vote for us in an election, an AI must be at a certain minimum attitude level or else they will not consider voting for us.
AND
2. This threshold of this minimum attitude level is higher for a Diplo Victory vote than for a Secretary General vote.
AND
3. If an AI treats us and our UN Opponent equally in terms of attitude level, they will abstain in the vote.


Those above points are non-specific enough of statements for me to feel confident in their correctness.

The following is speculation:
4. I BELIEVE that we an AI must treat us as Friendly or just below Friendly in order to get their vote for a Diplo Victory.
AND
5. I BELIEVE that we an AI must treat us as Pleased or just below Pleased in order to get their vote for a Diplo Victory.
AND
6. I BELIEVE that "relative" values matter in terms of point 3, such that if Justinian looks at us and says "Friendly" and looks at Toku and says "Friendly," then he will look to the AMOUNT of points above the "smallest value required to be Friendly" with each of us and then use those amounts as a comparison point. We would have to have an amount that is greater than Toku's amount if we wanted Justinian's vote.
AND
7. I BELIEVE that if an AI is Friendly with us but is not Friendly with our UN Opponent, we will automatically get that AI's vote in a Diplo Victory vote.


Buddhist Isabella

If we manage to convert Izzy ASAP, she will raise quickly

Note quite. Her attitude with us would go up at the same rate as any other AI's attitude of an AI that shares our Religion and has not yet reached the maximum amount of "liking us" for sharing the same Religion.

This rate is constant across AIs and it is a rate of +1 per 10 turns. You will get a "free" +1 immediately. You will also get a "free" +1 immediately if the Religion's Holy City is controlled by the AI who is judging you.

What is DIFFERENT about Isabella is that, over time, she will like someone for having a longer period of Shared Religion. However, we cannot take advantage of this fact (unless we keep losing the Diplo Victory vote), so she isn't much different from any other AI in this regard for our current situation of being limited to a short period of time in which to please her Religiously.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Ivory Towers' Galley

FYI, there is a Galley asleep by Ivory Towers. Is this intended?

The Galley by Ivory Towers was being used to shuttle units between Ivory Towers and Isabella's lands.

Since we'd had Closed Borders with Zara, it was trapped and was unable to do anything else.

I suppose now that we recently Opened Borders with Zara, it could be used to shuttle troops from our mainland to Isabella's lands, but it would take a really long time to do so.

I think that it's best just used to shuttle the troops that get built in Ivory Towers to Isabella's area, so that we do not need to divert any Galleons towards Ivory Towers jut to pick up a unit every 6 or so turns.


The idea is that once a unit is built in Ivory Towers, it can move 1NE onto the Galley there and then that Galley will be automatically woken up. The Galley can then move into Seville and can unload the Military Unit in Seville on the next turn, giving that Military Unit its full movement points.

Thanks for bringing this point up, so that I could explain how I'd been using the Galley.


Do you have a different opinion on how we should be leveraging that Galley or does that approach work for you?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

PPP Comments

1. Keep all builds in the cities as they are until completed.

In general, that's okay. However, if you are able to gift a Buddhist Missionary to Isabella, please be prepared to immediately start building another Buddhist Missionary, probably in Delhi.

Yes, we may never complete the Trebuchet in Delhi this way, but getting Buddhism spread is far more important than a single Trebuchet at this stage of play.

2. Move the GS that is on the Galleon to our Barb Fur city

Sounds good. On the way, try not to end the Galleon's turn next to a Coastal square that may contain a Barb Galley, unless you're able to safely unload the Great Scientist at the same time.

Try and be prepared to load 3 Military units (Cats and Maces) onto this Galleon right afterwards.

Ideally, you'll send those Military units to Isabella's lands, unload them in one of Isabella's Cities (say, Barcelona), and then head back to get the remaining units.

Of the Military units that we have on the Barb area, we only really need to keep:
1. A Longbowman to stay in DevilsGate
2. A Longbowman to stand on the Fur to Fog bust
3. Our Warriors in Zhou

All of the Cats and Maces can feasibly sent to Isabella's lands, to do whatever bit of good they can do in the remainder of the turns that we have left.

4. Get as many Buddists to Izzy as I can. 2 is the best in my turns by my count

We only need her to spread Buddhism in 3 of her Cities, so we should only gift her additional Missionaries if her spreading failed (she can fail just as much as we can fail).

That said, it will be good to keep sending the freshly-built Buddhist Missionaries to her area, as we'll potentially need them for Cities that we capture from Mehmed and possibly to use in Ivory Towers.

Riverdale can be converted at the end of the game easily enough, so we don't need to worry about doing so now.

6. Get all troops to the jungle E+N+N+N+N of Cordoba. Should be 10 to 14 there at the end of my TS

I think that this timing will be too late. You'll definitely want to push northward during your turnset and start sieging her City.

Let's say that since you'll be sending 4 units as backup units in a stack of 4 units (instead of as two stacks of 2 units), that you can send in the 6-unit stack immediately, so that it can start sieging the City's defences.

Airships can be brought to Cordoba to help with the assault on the City.

Earlier, I was concerned that you would actually fight the City with only 6 units on hand, but with 4 "on their way," the Cultural defences will still be falling when those additional 4 units arrive, so my fears will be unfounded.

So, get your stack of 6 units next to the City and start sieging it!

7. Finish Airships (2) and re-base to Cordoba. Use them to un-fog. Then use them to start hurtin' Mehmed.

You may not need to use them to unfog if you're ready to attack the City. The timing is tough to tell at this point, but sure, if you aren't quite ready to attack, use a turn to do a recon mission. Just don't feel that you HAVE to perform a recon mission if you'd be better off attacking some of Mehmed's troops with an Airship.

8. Relocate all new galleons and all that are in troop transport mode to the specified army load points. Load 'um and send them up to the rally point on the Izzy-mehmed border

You are certainly free to come up with better locations. You're also free to set up a Galleon-chain if you feel that we only have a couple of units to move. For example, it looks like we'll just have 2 Maces to begin with that freshly-built Galleon 5, currently located in Sugar Daddy, can go and collect. Thus, Galleons 2 and 4 would probably be better used as two "links" in a Galleon chain based on where you think that Galleon 5 will end up.

Are you familiar with how to transfer units from one Galleon to another while they are out in the Ocean?


It's only if we have too many land units that we can't form a Galleon chain, but unfortunately, now that the Golden Age is over, it does not look like we will have sufficient land units to make it worthwhile skipping a Galleon chain. Thus, a Galleon chain is probably the best way to go at this point, but you'll have to be the judge based on the supply of available land units and be willing to react to changes in that supply situation.

9. Move the troops by toledo over to the jungle rally point. These are included in the above count of 10 to 14.

Sure, but please move them as a group. So, the Mace and Treb would only move on Roads twice on their first turn, giving the War Elephant and Longbowman a chance to end that first turn together, on the same square (likely on that GHRiv Gem Mine).

12. Accept any trades proposed except for peace (from Mehmed).

Careful here. We do not want to accept trades. We only want to accept one-way Demands.

If a two-way trade is offered, do not accept it, as we can usually do better at the negotiating table.

We will only get positive Diplo modifiers for one-way trades (aka Demands or Requests for Help), where we have to give them something and they don't give us anything back. Accept these Demands and Requests for Help.


Do not accept the actual trades that offer something on both sides of the table, such as "World Map" for "World Map" or "Music" for "Paper and 150 Gold."

13. Make reasonable trades that include us getting more gold so that we can increase research.

It would be good if you could detail what those trades are going to be.

We are going to be pretty close to our WFYABTA limits for most of the AIs, so it's important to only trade for the techs that we have a use for.

14. Keep research at a minimum of 0% (just a little joke there). Hope to be able to make a couple strategic trades so that we can get money and guilds to allow us to run around 20% and build knights.

Hmmm, you raise a good point, but it's not the one that you thought you were sharing. If we are building a Horse Archer, it will get "upgraded" to a Knight, which means that we may never complete the unit.

Chances are that if we start to build a Knight from scratch, it will never get completed, either.

We don't really want Knights, since I don't think that they will ever be completed (or at least not in time to matter) but we do eventually need Guilds if we want to get Banking.

15 Finish my TS with 7 or 8 turns left on MM, lots of money, a huge stack in Mehmed's land and Izzy almost ready to join the Buddhist PARTY.

We don't necessarily have to have a LOT of money. If you feel that you have collected a lot, go ahead and spend a turn on 100% Science Research. However, I would recommend that we try and keep a minimum of 200 Gold on hand, to deal with any potential temporary deficits at a 0% Science Rate, just to keep us from Striking long enough for us to resolve the situation.

If you want more from my turns just ask and I'll do my best to work some FM.

What does FM mean?

Is it possible to take the silk city (Chinook), and take the UN city (Izmir) + any others on the way, then build the UN and on the same turn that it is done, request peace with Mehmed and give him the UN city in exchange for peace.

It sounds like you guys already tested this idea. Thanks for doing so.

What I would like to comment is that staying at War with Mehmed will give us a free +1 Diplo modifier with any AI that is also at war with Mehmed at the time. For this fact alone, it is good if we can stay at war with Mehmed.

Of course, should we build The UN for him and he doesn't want to capture the City, we may have to use a Peace Treaty as a means to gift him the City, but doing so should only be used as a backup plan--if we proceed with sending our Great Engineers to Mehmed, then the primary plan will be to remain at war with Mehmed and let him capture The UN.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Espionage

It may be too late, but should we consider directing our espionage toward Tokugawa?

It's not about it being too late, it's about not having enough Espionage Points' output.

We can make 12 Espionage Points per turn. The cheapest City of Toku's would require us to have 1044 Espionage Points.


However, the moment that we start spending Espionage Points on Toku, he'll spend some of his on us. He is Organized, so he likely has his cheap Courthouses in just about every City. If you're good at "building gazing," you could probably look at each City on the map to confirm this fact, but let's just assume that if we start putting Espionage Points on him, he'll have at least 30 Espionage Points per turn spent on us.


Our best bet would be to spend several turns of 0 Espionage on Toku, followed by 4 to 5 turns with our Espionage Slider set to 100% and our Espionage Weights set to give 100% of our Espionage Points to Toku.

I don't think that we will be able to afford to do so, and as soon as we start the process, the price will start rising, since Toku will spend Espionage Points on us to "counter" the effects of our spending.


So, unfortunately, I don't see this idea working, unless we think that doing so is the only way to win. In that case, we'll see "spending all of our excess Gold on Espionage" as the only path to victory, so we'll do it.

Is there any other way we can use espionage to our favor?

Knowing which tech Zara is researching. Other than that, with us only earing 12 Espionage Points per turn, it has no real usefulness for us.


Influencing Civics

Can we only "Influence Civics" via espionage to get an AI to adopt a civic that we're currently running?

We can certainly use techs as a bribery tool to get an AI to switch Civics.

However, Toku has a sticking point in that he won't switch Civics upon request unless he is Friendly with you.

Plus, think about it this way:
If we switch to Organized Religion, we'd lose out on +0.5 of a positive Diplo modifier with the AIs that like Theocracy.

So, while it might work to get us the Secretary General position, those AIs might not like us in order to vote us in as Leader of the World for the first vote. If that's the price that we have to pay just to win on the second vote, then it's a price that we'll pay.

But, we can only pay it if we can get Toku up to Friendly.

Toku, as you know isn't a big fan of trading. So, he is not one of the AIs to whom you can "gift all of your techs" just to get positive Diplo modifiers for having "Shared your technological discoveries with us."

So, we'll just have to please him via war, hoping that the Worst Enemy trading value goes away, or running his Favourite Civic, just to get him up to Friendly, if we want to be able to leverage this approach.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

14. Keep research at a minimum of 0% (just a little joke there).

For what it's worth, I laughed.

If we had the turns to do so (we don't, though), we could have considered Pillaging Mehmed's lands for Gold. Unfortunately, we'll need to use every turn of Military mobility available to us just to be able to capture a couple of Cities.


Note that if it comes down to a choice of being able to capture a City sooner or waiting a bit and keeping more of our units alive, we should choose the latter approach and aim to keep more of our units alive.


We only have a fixed number of Military units that we can get to Mehmed, so the more usefulness that we can get out of them, the better. Plus, the more that you can keep alive in battles will mean the greater our chances will be of spawning a Great General.

 

[unclethrill]

What does FM mean?

Freakin' Magic.

Feel free to substitute any F-word you feel is appropriate.

 

[BLubmuz]

Are you basing your claims of similarity between the Apostolic Palace and The UN in this regard based on evidence or based on an assumption due to the fact that the two victory types are similar? I'd rather base our decisions on fact if it's only a matter of putting together a test to find out the answer.

So, it would be nice to know for certain who would be the Secretary General under these circumstances.

I don't know how to set up such a test, i'm sure to remember correctly and the 2 (AP and UN) are absolutely similar.

Further, your point doesn't answer the other aspect of the question, which is:
If Toku gets elected Secretary General, if we have the largest population, and if Zara controls The UN, who would be the two candidates in a Diplo Vote?

You missed this. The answer is 100% guaranteed.

If Toku wins the SG elections and he will never propose the Diplo victory, we'll lose some 30 turns

Rest assured that if he can't even be the Candidate for the Diplo victory vote, he will never propose this resolution, simply because he can't.

Mitch's point about the rush for Economics can probably save some turn: if we can run 100% research for only 1 turn we can win the race and start sailing the GM to the furs. Probably we can win even @0%, but better be safe.

 

[Mitchum]

Influencing Civics

We can certainly use techs as a bribery tool to get an AI to switch Civics.

However, Toku has a sticking point in that he won't switch Civics upon request unless he is Friendly with you.

Plus, think about it this way:
If we switch to Organized Religion, we'd lose out on +0.5 of a positive Diplo modifier with the AIs that like Theocracy.

So, while it might work to get us the Secretary General position, those AIs might not like us in order to vote us in as Leader of the World for the first vote. If that's the price that we have to pay just to win on the second vote, then it's a price that we'll pay.

But, we can only pay it if we can get Toku up to Friendly.

Toku, as you know isn't a big fan of trading. So, he is not one of the AIs to whom you can "gift all of your techs" just to get positive Diplo modifiers for having "Shared your technological discoveries with us."

So, we'll just have to please him via war, hoping that the Worst Enemy trading value goes away, or running his Favourite Civic, just to get him up to Friendly, if we want to be able to leverage this approach.

OK, what if we ask Toku to stop the war with Mehmed a few turns before the Sec Gen vote. Will he switch from Theocracy to Organized Religion on his own since he'd no longer be at war? Toku is currently getting +5 from Justinian and +2 from Sal for running Theocracy. Getting him out of this civic may be enough to win the vote for Sec Gen...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Toku and Civics

OK, what if we ask Toku to stop the war with Mehmed a few turns before the Sec Gen vote. Will he switch from Theocracy to Organized Religion on his own since he'd no longer be at war? Toku is currently getting +5 from Justinian and +2 from Sal for running Theocracy. Getting him out of this civic may be enough to win the vote for Sec Gen...

While that idea might work for the average AI, Toku switched into Theocracy pretty much as soon as he learned Theology. He has the Aggressive Trait, so being war-like is his default nature.

Theocracy is not his Favourite Civic, so there is a possibility of switching him out of it, as opposed to the Civs who treat Theocracy as their Favourite Civic, but otherwise, he'll likely prefer to run Theocracy as his default choice.


In looking at the relationships, it appears that we DO NOT have a bonus with Saladin for "Our trade relations have been fair and forthright." So, that's an easy +4 right there, which will be enough to get Saladin to vote for us as Secretary General, if I understand the math correctly.

Thus, I think that we'll be fine if we just stay in Buddhism and Theocracy, building up a few more passive positive Diplo points with Saladin and Justinian, and those points being enough to win us the Secretary General election.

So, the biggest related tip for Unclethrill is: If any AI asks us to switch out of Buddhism, please refuse to do so.

No one will ask us to switch out of Theocracy, so we don't have to worry about that possibility.


So, I think that we can mostly focus on getting to Mass Media quickly, while doing a confident-but-steady push on Mehmed.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Freakin' Magic.

Apostolic Palace
Well, it's not about working magic, but I think that it will be worth it to vote Zara as Resident of the Apostolic Palace. I only just recently voted "None" for the voting option, as nothing really good came up as an option.

The +2 from Zara for voting him as Resident might be enough to get his vote in a UN Diplo Vote, should we choose to make Mehmed our UN Opponent.



Resource Trading
You can always keep your eyes open for new trading possibilities, once we expand the borders of our western Barb Cities over top of our additional Wheat and Pig Resources.

I'm pretty sure that I cancelled all deals where we were giving out our last source of a Resource, such as our Deer. Therefore, there should be no need to cancel any existing Resource deals.

Presumably, you probably won't see any Resources offered for trade, but if someone wants to cancel an existing trade, you could improve the deal for them by throwing in a Pig or Wheat, should we have an extra source of said Resource at the time that they request to cancel a deal.

Alternatively, if they come up with 3+ Gold per Turn, then you can trade away an excess supply of whichever of those Resources that the AI wants. Mehmed won't give us his Gold per Turn since we are at war with him, so seeing any Gold per Turn from Mehmed on the F4 -> RESOURCES screen is just a "teaser" that you can safely ignore.


Tech Trading
I'm tempted to say "watch for Saladin to be willing to trade Divine Right."

Once he does so, then it will be time to "neutralize" Justinian and Saladin in terms of their tech levels.

In other words, once Saladin is willing to trade us Divine Right, we can execute the following trades:
1. Trade Education and Printing Press to Justinian for Nationalism, Guilds, and whatever Gold that he will give to us (which he'll currently trade but it would be too soon to do as then he might just trade Printing Press to Saladin--wait until we can get Divine Right out of Saladin)
2. Printing Press to Saladin for Divine Right and whatever Gold that he will give to us (which is a trade that Saladin would likely be willing to make, due to the high value of the trade for him)

3. On the next turn, Trade Divine Right to Toku for Music and whatever Gold that he will give to us (Music is a tech that he'll currently trade and would probably give to us for a high-valued tech like Divine Right)


With some AIs getting towards Friendly with us, we'll be able to make future trades beyond the WFYABTA trading limit, so I don't mind making these trades.

Music would open up a potential trade for Military Tradition, should a bunch of AIs learn it, which, like Guilds, would probably be too expensive for us to leverage, but if we aren't winning the Diplo Election results, it'll be nice to have high-tech Military Advantage option in our back pocket, to be able to blitz more votes out of Mehmed by spending our post-Mass-Media resources on upgrading units to Cuirassiers. That's all forward-thinking, of course, but when we make these kinds of trades, the AIs will increase their WFYABTA limits, too, making them less likely to trade around the more expensive techs.

That way, we'll have more of the expensive techs monopolised to ourselves for potential last-minute bribing, such as getting +4 from Saladin, getting AIs into wars, etc.


Actually, let's think about: near the end, we can potentially bribe Toku out of a war and back into a war with Mehmed on the same turn or at least on one turn after another (waiting one turn for more techs to be available to trade to Toku only if we've used up all of our techs to get peace between the two of them). For now, that would make Justinian a bit angrier at Toku.

Later, once Saladin and Mehmed have met, and after they start liking each other for having a shared Religion, Saladin might be a bit angrier at Toku, too. I don't think that we should play this trick now, but should instead save it for the end of the game, so as to not give Toku too many turns of a tech advantage over the others.

 

[BLubmuz]

So, I think that we can mostly focus on getting to Mass Media quickly, while doing a confident-but-steady push on Mehmed.

Probably you have missed that we lack a GPerson for the final 4. Next one is due in 2 turns, the 2nd next in 25. If we manage to trade for Banking (and i'm almost sure we can in 2 turns) we can then switch to economics to try to win the race and BAM! (can't remember where i've seen this ) all the needed GPersons will be ready with great advantage. This must be decided before UT starts his TS, since he can even complete Economics. Then we'll wait for Toku asking to switch to Mercantilism. In fact, we immediately gain +1 if we switch by ourselves, but a better +2 if we accept his FC and if we run it. We can compensate the lost of trade routes income with Merchants: 2C+3B each will do, mainly if we run @0 science.

Also, better find a way to speed our war, since a size 11 city will need some 8-9 turns to go out of revolt. We can hope that Mehmed will whip the hell, but we can't count on a size less than 8.