SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Mitchum]

If it's going to be a 'proper' diplomatic victory rather than diplomation, we shouldn't be building a huge war machine.

What is the difference between proper diplomatic victory and diplomation? I always thought that they were the same thing.

 

[Irgy]

Brakes on!

It's ok, I'm not going to play out the whole turnset based on that post. Especially without some agreements first. I'm just trying to start discussion.

- What if that hill is the only one we have? we'll gain 1 hammer for 20 or so turns and we'll lose 2H+1C for the rest of the game, not mentioning the forested GL hill 2N+1E of the settler.

If it's the only hill we have, then we need to run a food economy (i.e. whipping). A well run food economy will do just as well as hill hammers. It will get a free hammer for a number of turns to come because we'll be working farms anyway. Even food economy aside, we're not losing 2H+1C at all. Comparing settling in place and working the mined hill to settling on the hill and working the farmed plains we've left behind, we're only exchanging 2H for 2F, not losing anything at all even in the medium or long run.

The danger is only that there may be a hidden resource on the hill itself, at which point we are indeed a couple of hammers down compared to mining it.

In any case, if there's other hills, then (except for one forest hill NE) we can already see they're not on the tiles we're giving up by moving SE.
EDIT - Actually sorry it looks like the fogged tile to the SW is a forested hill of some sort as well.

- We're Gandhi: what about an early religion?

Early religeons on Emporer are unreliable and unneccesary in my opinion.

To me, the turn we start working that irrigated corn is the turn our empire begins. Every turn we're not doing that is pretty much a turn lost for the rest of the game.

Once you'll have the save, you'll move the warrior and post a screenie. then we can discuss where to settle, the research and therefore if go worker first or warrior first. After that, we probably need a week or so to define a strategy for the early game.
- Beeline to Alpha to trade for all workers techs but Agri? (this time i think Agri is mandatory)
- In case, which path? (pottery, AH or PH?)

That's fine. The first thing we should decide then is which direction to move the warrior.

Unfortunately, we need to climb the hill to better see the East, but this delay our settling by 2 turns, since any tile around the river is forested. And this can hurt even on Epic. I usually spend 1 turn to try a better site for the Capital, but settling E of the hill will bring the corns outside the BFC.

The plains hill will lose 1 turn to move there, and 1 turn more to get the worker to the corn (compared to in-place or, say NW). However, assuming we settle on it, we will get back 5 turns by building the worker faster.


Personally I propose moving the warrior NW. The warrior cannot tell us anything useful about the plains hill SW. The only thing he might do is spot some resources NW that are worth settling 1NW for.

Unless he sees something spectacular NW that's worth foregoing riverside. I think settling on the plains hill is the best move. We basically end up 3 turns ahead settling there compared to anywhere else. I'm strongly against mucking around looking for a better spot, I think we should either settle turn 0 or turn 1 on a plains hill, anything else is lost turns that we're very unlikely to get back.

Techwise, I suggest Agriculture -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Bronzeworking to start with. Granary and whipping FTW If we see resources in our eventual BFC that require other worker techs we should obviously consider inserting them after Agriculture.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm going to create a test map now. By fog gazing (hard to do on a screen shot compared to the actual save), I see water SW of the southern Corn and possibly water 2W from this same corn. If that's the case, then we are likely on the SW corner of our continent. This may have some influence on where we settle.

Moving the warrior SW will expose these tiles and tell us for sure. I'm not voting for this move, just stating my thoughts based on the fog gazing I've done.

Edit: It looks like there are more hills in our area. I think there is another plains hill SE of the one Irgy is proposing we settle on. I also think there is another one (grassland forested) N-NE of this same hill. So by settling on the hill, I "think" we'll have at least two other hills in our BFC.

Here is the save as promised.

 

[Irgy]

What is the difference between proper diplomatic victory and diplomation? I always thought that they were the same thing.

An extreme version of a 'proper' diplomatic victory would be one where you:
* Don't declare war at all.
* Don't have a population lead.
* Win a diplomatic victory by convincing a number of free AIs to vote for you, by skillfully getting them to the required +10.

An extreme 'diplomation' victory is where you:
* Play like a warmonger
* Could easily carry on to win domination or conquest, but decide that diplomatic victory will be quicker and/or less effort.
* Only yourself and your vassals vote for you. You might even for instance mass nuke the other civs just to get their populations down.

Those extremes have almost nothing in common as far as strategy goes. Obviously there's a continuum in between those two extremes where you may have a fairly high population, declare a few wars, and have a mix of vassals and allies voting for you.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Agreed. But likely we wouldn't switch to the predominate state religion only two turns before the vote. We would want to do it much earlier so that the diplo bonus has time to grow to its maximum.

For those of you who aren't aware (if you're a non-Diplo player, that may mean you), Vanilla and Warlords would "save up" Diplo modifier levels of "same religion" and "opposing religion." So, if you were Hindu and Isabella was Buddhist and she knew you for 150 years, then you switched to Buddhism for a few turns and then you switched back to Hindu, she'd hate you the full amount possible (which is a lot of hate when it comes to Isabella). In BTS, at least the version of BTS that we're playing, this "religious memory" is forgotten.

This effect can work both in our favour and against it.
If we find that we have multiple AIs' religions, near the end of the game in a Diplo game, we can "cycle" through many of their religions, so that we'll temporarily share the same religions as them. Then, when we switch to an opposing religion, their "opposing religion" Diplo modifier will have been reset--meaning that this fact may be A VERY STRONG KEY to victory in a Diplo game where many of the AIs share differing religions.

A downside to a Diplo game where the AIs are in multiple differing religions is that we need the votes of many AIs but they must also all HAVE a religion, so we are more likely to be hated than liked due to religion. My "last minute switching around" trick can be a way to have -1 to -3 from each AI (a small amount) for having an "opposing religion," while other teams who don't think of this trick will be stuck with much bigger negative religious modifiers.

This effect works against us if we switch out of a religion that we share with many AIs, as we will lose all of the "built up" shared religious bonus, meaning that if another AI asks us to switch religions, there will be a bigger consequence to switching than in Vanilla or Warlords (where you could just switch back in 5 turns and still get the full "shared religion" built-up bonus). Soooo... overall, this change in BTS is a point in favour of a Cultural game, as the Diplo situation gets even trickier--we can't just "accept all demands" for religious switches, as doing so has a HUGE impact on world relations.

Regarding our state religion vs. theirs, in my GOTM diplo victory, I spread my state religion to every city of my AI voting block well before the vote took place so that everyone was in MY state religion. If we have the time and hammers to build a bunch of missionaries, this could be a viable option in this game as well. It all depends on the religion situation in our game.

It certainly helps to spread our religion if either or both of:
a) the Holy City belongs to an AI
b) we own as many other Holy Cities as possible

While you CAN get SOME AIs who have a Holy City to switch out of their religion, they will often switch back to a state religion where they control the Holy City. The Apostolic Palace's religion might be a "bit more" incentive for them to stay with the religion that you asked them to switch to, should we manage to be lucky enough to be spreading the same religion as the Apostolic Palace's religion, BUT, the easiest way to get the AIs to comply is to own the Holy Cities.

Tech-path-sacrificing and conquest are the two best ways of obtaining religions, but the conquest option is quite limited to us here.

So, our first turnset will potentially be the most important turnset of the game. We could choose to chase after Buddhism and Hinduism, following up with 1-3 Worker Techs and then Monotheism. The trade off is that we have 2 Corn Resources visible but we don't start with Agriculture. Going for Agriculture first will probably mean that many different AIs will grab the religions.

We could gamble and play a middle-of-the-road scenario and just chase after Buddhism and hope that an AI like Hatshepsut will found both Hinduism and Monotheism, but that situation happens a lot less in BTS than it did in Vanilla and Warlords, due to the greater number of differing AI personalities. At least in that case, we could adopt ONE of Hatshepsut's religions as our state religion and spread it, followed by teching after the other religions, such that the only AI with a Holy City would be the AI that owns two Holy Cities and thus everyone else would be willing to switch to the religion of our choice. With all of the AIs being buddy-buddy, we'd probably have to gift the United Nations to an AI that does not have that same religion and thus would be most likely to be hated--at the potential cost of -4 You Traded With Our Worst Enemies with everyone else and losing the Diplo game... or else having that AI have only a couple of cities with the "world's religion," get that AI to switch to it so that the other AIs don't treat our "target AI" as their worst enemy, then trade our "target AI" the United Nations, and then later spam the "opposing religion's" missionaries to our target AI... but they would be far less likely to switch away, unless they themselves were the Holy City owner and even then might not switch away if the rest of the world shares the religion that they currently are in thanks to our bribe.


So, while what you say is true, in order to "solidify" our hold, we will want to control many of the Holy Cities, which has a big impact on our early game, due to having 2 Irrigatable Resources but without starting with Agriculture.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It's ok, I'm not going to play out the whole turnset based on that post.

That should be "I won't play out any of the turnset until we've had some good consensus on our overall strategy, goals, and then, only then, gotten consensus on the PPP." I, for one, won't be looking much at your PPP until we've worked out the other details, as the PPP will potentially greatly change after figuring out the other details. So, we won't even be having you move the Warrior for a long time, as where the Warrior goes requires insight into our overall strategy and where we plan to settle as our "primary" location versus our "well, let's potentially settle at this other place if it is way better" location, and we won't know what those 2 locations are for a while yet.

See the practice game on the subject of the initial Warrior's movement, as well as the discussion in the BOTM 27 Results and Congratulations Thread (read the whole thread if you aren't convinced by me just claiming that the Warrior movement is important and by the end of reading it, you should be convinced), if you want to get a feel for how a person's perspective will completely change how they should approach where to move their Warrior initially.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If it's the only hill we have, then we need to run a food economy (i.e. whipping). A well run food economy will do just as well as hill hammers. It will get a free hammer for a number of turns to come because we'll be working farms anyway. Even food economy aside, we're not losing 2H+1C at all. Comparing settling in place and working the mined hill to settling on the hill and working the farmed plains we've left behind, we're only exchanging 2H for 2F, not losing anything at all even in the medium or long run.

Okay, here's the deal: For a cultural game, we will want to have a minimum 3 Hills squares (a Copper Grassland square or a Marble or Stone Plains square could "count" as such a Hills square) to be Mineable within our capitol's fat cross. The only exception to this rule that I could see us making is if moving will cost us a religion-beeline--in that case, we'd have to weigh whichever option is more important--a stronger chance at building Wonders down the road or a stronger chance at getting that first religion ourselves.


I don't even see how you can be discussing starting location until you've "read the fog," so it would be great if someone where to post a screenshot with "fog reading" performed. From my poor skill at doing so (although my predictions were dead-on in the Practice Game, I will still say I am an amateur at this craft), I believe that there is a Hills square to the SE+SE of the Settler--although I can't tell if it is a Plains or Tundra square from AlanH's screenshot. CAREFULLY DONE in-game "fog reading" could probably tell us more. But, if it's a Plains Hills square, then sending the Settler 1E would give us what I would call a "minimum requirement" for a Cultural game's Capitol City.


I, personally, think that settling on the Plains Hills square is a potential trap. You will lose the Plains Hills square and the Grassland Hills Forest square located to the NE+N of the Settler. If the Map Designer wants to make settling on the Plains Hills square a favourable position, he will have put more Hills squares to the south and east, but there is no rule or law saying that the Map Designer needs to do so.


Settling in-place would give us the best shot for founding one or more religions, thus getting a stronger monopoly on the Holy Cities.


For a Diplo game, I still wouldn't feel very comfortable with a small number of Mineable Hills squares in our capitol's fat cross, but I might be more inclined to take the risk of settling on the Plains Hills square, as production via Hammers in the capitol will not be as big of an issue as it will be for a Cultural game.

The danger is only that there may be a hidden resource on the hill itself, at which point we are indeed a couple of hammers down compared to mining it.

I would not be surprised at all to find Copper or Iron on that Plains Hills square. It would make the "build 4 Warriors" challenge actually have some meaning. Now that BOTM 28 is over, I can say that this kind of a trap was used there, where Copper was placed in one of the "obvious" places to settle the capitol, thus wasting it, and also, as soon as it was mined, since it was on a River (or as soon as Bronze Working was learned for those who settled on it), Warriors could not be built except in a city that does not take advantage of domestic trade routes.

So, I would strongly bet that Copper or Iron is placed in that Plains Hills square, mostly just to "mess with" the teams that don't get a lot of Warriors before they research Bronze Working or Iron Working.

EDIT - Actually sorry it looks like the fogged tile to the SW is a forested hill of some sort as well.

From the screenshot, I would think that the squares to the SW+W and SW+S of the Settler's initial location are both flatland, with a Lake/Coast square being SW+SW, but that kind of guesswork can be reduced if we get someone to CAREFULLY (no unit movements, please!) provide us with some "in-game fog gazing."

Early religeons on Emporer are unreliable and unneccesary in my opinion.

Again, our strategy will be GREATLY impacted by whether we chase after early religions or not. It could mean the difference between winning and losing. If we do go for an early religion or two, then our first build might even be a Warrior, so that we can grow to Size 2 and work 2 Corn squares for maximum Commerce.

To me, the turn we start working that irrigated corn is the turn our empire begins. Every turn we're not doing that is pretty much a turn lost for the rest of the game.

Which is a tradeoff that we will have to carefully weigh, as an early religion or two might slow down our empire's progress but might mean that we don't spend 100 years after building the United Nations just to get enough AIs to vote for us. Early game turns multiply a lot, but if losing those turns helps to solidify victory down the road, then we might consciously choose to give up the early gain of starting with Research on Agriculture.

That's fine. The first thing we should decide then is which direction to move the warrior.

Actually, that'll be one of the last things that we decide, once all of our other ducks are in a row.

The plains hill will lose 1 turn to move there, and 1 turn more to get the worker to the corn (compared to in-place or, say NW).

I hadn't considered settling 1NW, but keeping that possibility in mind WOULD change where we'd want to move the Warrior.

However, assuming we settle on it, we will get back 5 turns by building the worker faster.

Those turns could be meaningless if missing an early religion costs us an early win down the road, due to religious strife. Also, those turns could be meaningless if we don't get enough Hammers from Hills squares to build the Wonders that we might want in our capitol.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

II hope that the game designer have chosen AIs with OR, Theo or Pacifism as their favourite civic, so they won't switch to FR until very late in the game.

I wouldn't count on having all AIs to have a Non-Free-Religion Favourite Civic. I can't remember which XOTM it was, but there was one recently where we asked the staff in the Pre-game thread not to include such an AI and yet one was included anyway. Since it's the same staff that are making this game, no guarantee exists.


One point that I do not think anyone has mentioned is that WAR is one way to get an AI to switch their Civic choices. However, you have to have defeated a number of their units and have taken relatively less losses than the AI did for you to be considered the "winner" of the war. Being the "winner" of the war means that you can make a Civic-change demand (or a Religion-change demand), but you can't become the "winner" if you just declare war without fighting any battles.


Now, consider that we only get to declare war against 2 AIs. My suggestion is NOT to declare war on an AI just because they are a neighbour. An early Worker-steal or city-theft operation is going to be a strategic mistake, as we will likely want to do something like the following:
a) Get 2 AIs that are hated and get various AIs that like one but not the other to declare war on that hated AI at the same time that we declare war on the hated AI, for extra Diplo modifier points
b) Gift the United Nations city as part of a Peace Treaty to one of those hated AIs, in order to SNEAKILY AVOID the -4 Traded with our Worst Enemies modifier

These points can equally apply to a Cultural or Diplo game, but would be of more use in a Diplo game, as avoiding all war in a Cultural game often gives you a similar result as a player who steals an AI capitol or two for their Legendary Cities, while if we don't declare war in a Cultural game, then AIs will less likely have the "desire to avenge our earlier war declarations."


So, the above points could be major keys to our success in a Diplo game and thus an early war would be a big, bad way of throwing away this strategic advantage, if said AI becomes a well-liked AI later on in the game (since we cannot kill any AI, we can't just say "oh well, that AI is dead, so it doesn't matter if anyone likes them or not"). Likewise, any AI that gets ganged-up on will need to be done so carefully--if they lose too many cities (or don't build many because we kill all of their Settlers early on), they will very likely vassalize to someone else, greatly complicating the Diplo situation.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

While writing, one thing comes in mind: what if the mapmaker has placed the furs in a single tile island guarded by a Mech infantry? Do we attack it with maces or rifles? how many?

Not a concern, in my mind. Consider the following:
Barb City builds Warriors or Archers. AI or Human unit moves to near the city. Barb's strongest unit (the Mech Infantry) will attack. With a sacrificial unit or two, the Mech Infantry will end its turn outside of the city and we can take the city. Then, we move all of the Warriors and Great People to the Fur, along with a couple of stronger defenders (or even more than a couple). The Mech Infantry, even if it wins 100% of its battles, will continue to target the defending units that are stronger than Warriors.

So, one possible answer is that we'd only fight defensively against the Mech Infantry and thus its existence wouldn't be a problem for us at all.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

About the war declarations, i think that we can spend one in an early war to gain land and possibly cities, without crippling the AI too much but vassalizing it.
And keep the second if we need to fight on a later stage.

Okay, I already commented against the idea of an early war so that we can use our war declarations for Diplomatic Shared War Modifying points, but I also want to comment on the vassal idea: let's avoid getting vassals, if at all possible.

A Diplo game where you need non-Vassals to vote for you becomes immensely difficult to win as soon as you take on one or more Vassals, as the AIs will take their like or dislike of your Vassal into account when deciding if they will vote for you. It's going to be tough enough to be well-liked, but nearly impossible to be both well-liked and for our Vassal to be equally or better well-liked.

Since we can't have a Diplomation game unless we get a bunch of AIs to declare war on us--and that situation is even less likely to happen the more that we collect vassals, we'll be stuck between two worlds: vassals may help to vote for us, but the other AIs will not vote for us and we won't be able to "convince" said AIs to join us as their vassals. Getting rid of a vassal is VERY, VERY, VERY DIFFICULT. I played well past 2050 AD just to be able to get rid of my vassals in one WOTM game (the Time Victory option was disabled), so consider the reality to be that once you get a vassal, you will never get rid of it, and once you get a vassal, most or all of the other AIs will stop voting for you. For a Diplo game, we will want to avoid taking on vassals (and I don't see how they'd help us much in a Cultural game, either).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We can also try to piss off some AI, but we need to be sure it will declare and that we can vassal it. But i don't think this will fit much with a Diplo game.

Doing so is a possible strategy. The best negative Diplo modifiers to use would be ones that are potentially temporary.
For example:
- Negative Diplo modifiers from Opposing Religions
- That's about it, really

Any other Negative Diplo modifiers that I can think of either never wear off (such as demanding Tribute or Declaring War) or else take 200 turns to wear off (maybe more turns on Epic Speed), such as Refusing to Join a War or Refusing to Stop Trading with an enemy AI. Since we won't have 500 turns to play, even these "somewhat temporary" Negative Diplo modifiers can be essentially permanent if we want to compete for a top spot in the rankings. Traded with our Worst Enemy modifiers can randomly be removed over sometimes, so they MIGHT be an option to get an AI to dislike us if acquired early on, but they tend to stick around for a long time, too, so they're best avoided, if at all possible.


Having a weak power level is more conducive to being declared upon, but then can we win such a war without destroying our economy, becomes an important question.


Of course, there is this alternative philosophy, which I read in a SGOTM 10 (not 11) thread:

Isn't it obvious that the approach from last game will work best. Beeline Kremlin and Manhatten Project. Nuke a couple Civ's into Vassals. Rest of Civs will DOW us. Nuke them into Vassals. Demand the resources. Win Diplomation. Welcome the goddess.

All this waiting and same game as before, how disappointing.

This idea is kind of funny and if we end up totally losing the game but haven't finished it yet, it might make for something fun to try, but otherwise, it's a pretty big joke of a strategy for this game.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Links to the threads you mentioned are already provided in my #4.

Can you please add the following links to your message? Since it seems that we might have at least one non-XOTM player on our team (havr), this info is important to know before playing:

Here are a couple of related GOTM (Game of the Month) links to the rules and such, in case you have never played a GOTM before. Note that XOTM simply means Game of the Month where the X can represent any one of Civ4 Vanilla, Civ4 Warlords, or Civ4 Beyond the Sword:
Welcome to the C-IV Game of the Month
Game of the Month: Summary and Overview

 

[Irgy]

That should be "I won't play out any of the turnset until we've had some good consensus on our overall strategy, goals, and then, only then, gotten consensus on the PPP."

Agreed. When I said "I won't play out the whole turn set", I was saying "The impression you may have that [I'm about to play out the whole turn set] is false" (brackets added for extra disambiguation). I didn't mean to imply that I'd instead play out most of the turnset instead or anything.

Re: early religeon
I can see the arguments for why, but I'm thoroughly against it.
* On Emporer, we could easily go for one and still miss it. Judaism we could probably reliably get, but that's a huge delay for worker techs to beeline it.
* The benefits of having an early religeon are quite nebulous. It may make a big difference, and I can see the reasons why you say having it may be better. However, so much depends on details that we simply don't have a clue about at this stage. It may not turn out to be beneficial at all to get an early religeon, at which point we're many turns behind for next to nothing. Dealing with the religeous situation will be important, but we'll have a lot more resources to spare in the mid-game to deal with the situation. We'll also have more trading chips mid-game if we're not miles behind in development.
* The costs are high, and we don't get anything that will replace them.
* I contend that the best game is going to be one which does not spend time getting an early religeon, but instead gets out of the starting blocks fastest. There may be some very bad, failed diplomacy games that didn't spare enough effort to manage the religeous situation, but if we're trying to submit the best game then I think early corn is almost compulsary.

Re: Starting Location
I see four options:
1. Spend some number of turns examining the surroundings to find the best settling location, at the cost of not settling there as early as we could have.
2. Settle in place, without examining the option of settling on the plains hill.
3. Move the settler to the plains hill. Once we're there, we should almost certainly settle on it (if we don't plan to then this really comes under (1)), although we obviously still have the option not to.
4. Settle NW after discovering a windfall of resources in that direction.

I strongly dislike (1). I include it specifically to point out that anything other than 2, 3 and 4 probably comes under the banner of (1), and that I therefore don't like those other options. I basically cannot imagine any reason to settle on a square other than those three that we are going to be able to discover in one turn. There simply isn't going to be a better place to settle than somewhere near these two corn, so there's no point trying to explore far afield.

To decide between (2) and (3), we already have all the information that we could possibly use to make the decision. The warrior cannot do anything that would help this decision. There is one fogged tile it can reveal, but it's forested so there is no resource on it that will have a significant bearing on where to settle. The location of the coast to the SW or NE will not significantly help resolve (2) and (3). So we really just need to decide.

(4) can be resolved quickly and easily by moving the warrior NW. There is nothing more important for the warrior to do on the first turn than help resolve where to settle. The warrior cannot help resolve between (2) and (3), so I would conclude NW is the best spot for it.

Re: Overall Strategy
I actually honestly don't think there's anything in the overall strategy that could convince me to do anything other than settle either in place or 1SE, and research agriculture first. Partly for the reasons given above against going for an early religeon.

That said, I accept that we need to be clear on it before we start.

My broad approach would be to:
* REX like crazy early on, claiming as much land as we can peacefully. If we see one of the required resources, then prioritise it.
* Research economy techs, towards Education and Liberalism. Use great scientists for an academy, and to bulb Philosophy and Education.
* Once we have universities and oxford, make a beeline for Mass Media.
* Manage the diplomatic situation as it comes. While being very very careful about it of course. I don't mean make it up as we go along, I just think we can't make most of the decisions until we've actually met a few AIs.
* Try our best to spread a single religeon to as many AIs as possible. That said, make absolutely sure we don't end up with, for instance, four AIs best friends with each other only to discover we need to declare on one of them to secure one of the required resources.


Overall, I think the early turns actually don't have a lot of decisions, while the midgame diplomacy is where we really need to be careful and spend a lot of time making plans.

 

[BLubmuz]

Not a concern, in my mind. Consider the following:
Barb City builds Warriors or Archers. AI or Human unit moves to near the city. Barb's strongest unit (the Mech Infantry) will attack. With a sacrificial unit or two, the Mech Infantry will end its turn outside of the city and we can take the city. Then, we move all of the Warriors and Great People to the Fur, along with a couple of stronger defenders (or even more than a couple). The Mech Infantry, even if it wins 100% of its battles, will continue to target the defending units that are stronger than Warriors.

So, one possible answer is that we'd only fight defensively against the Mech Infantry and thus its existence wouldn't be a problem for us at all.

what if the mapmaker has placed the furs in a single tile island guarded by a Mech infantry? Do we attack it with maces or rifles? how many?

Please explain us how a MI can attack from a single-tile island
Any other placement can give us some chance, but the 50% penalty for amphibious against the already powerful fortified MI... let's just hope my imagination is sick.

Well i comment later on all your posts.
For now, only 2 points:

1) no new member posted here, so i will inform Alan
2) i got the save!

 

[Mitchum]

I got the save as well (very careful not to move anything). Attached are my best guesses based on fog gazing. If my guesses are correct, we'll have plenty of production (both chops and mined hills) regardless of whether we settle in place or on the plains hill.

As I said before and I think Dhoomstriker stated as well, it looks like we're near the coast (or a large lake) with the river emptying into it. If we settle in place or on the plains hill we will lose out on a coatal capital. Plus, if there happens to be seafood nearby, it may be difficult to pick it up with another city...

 

[havr]

This is just to confirm that I am going to play.
I still have to read all the long discussions...

Good luck to us.

 

[Mitchum]

This is just to confirm that I am going to play.

Hi Havr. Welcome to the team!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We can win a diplomatic game without a big empire as well. We should be self-building the UN regardless, so there's no need to be the population leader.

It is easy to say that we won't have to be the largest Civ, but if we aren't, we throw away all strategies related to gifting the United Nations Wonder. These strategies are what allow you to have a bunch of large AIs liking you and liking each other (usually they'll like each other more than you) due to factors such as shared religion, while still having all of those AIs voting exclusively for you, as your rival is a hated, small opponent.

With us reliant on the game conditions of having EVERY AI and OURSELVES in a religion, the parameters for a Diplo game are VERY TIGHTLY WOVEN--religious bonuses almost certainly must be on our side, as those bonuses that aren't shared will be negative Diplo modifiers from differing religions. The only surefire way to get large AIs that share your religion to vote for you is for our Civ to be the biggest (population-wise, but that usually comes as a direct result of having the most land area) and to gift the United Nations to a small, hated AI (or wait for said AI to built it themselves, which is pretty unlikely to see happen).

At the time of the vote, I imagine we should have:
* 2 vassals
* 2 or 3 AIs who we are on good enough terms with to vote for us
* 1 or 2 hopefull smaller AIs whose votes we don't need. We should still try to please these but not at the cost of others.

I think that I already spoke to this point, but I want it to be extremely clear: any Vassals that we have need to be "the most-well-liked" in the world, otherwise our relations with other AIs will be dragged down. Since that scenario isn't really going to happen, we can't expect to get votes from both Vassals and non-Vassal AIs. Since we can't get enough Vassals and Land Area ourselves (an assumption, but probably a safe assumption) if we only get into 2 wars, we must go for the ZERO Vassals route. Unless you want to share a sure-fire trick that will get AIs to declare on us that you can consistently reproduce in our games, while still being able to get said AIs back to Pleased or Friendly by turn 300 or so, in which case I'd like to hear it. Absent any such trick that consistently works, we can't rely on getting 3+ Vassals and thus we'll have to stick with 0 Vassals.

Basically I can't see why we would have better relations with AIs in a culture victory than a diplo victory. Diplo we should be focusing entirely on having as good relations as possible with other AIs

With a Diplo game, we have to keep many AIs as Pleased as possible or better yet, as Friendly as possible. With a Cultural game, we would be perfectly okay with several "moderately Pleased AIs." The difference is huge. In the Diplo case, we have to carefully weigh each request to "stop trading with our enemy," while in the Cultural case, we can afford to refuse a couple of "stop trading" and "join the war on our side" requests without being in danger of throwing away our victory condition while still keeping most or all of the AIs sufficiently pleased to not declare war on us. Those few Negative Diplo modifiers make the difference between a victory and a loss for a Diplo game, but they are relatively meaningless in a Cultural game. That's your difference, and it's a big one.

?! I can't imagine a culture victory before the AIs have yet to even research as far as Liberalism. Maybe some are happy to skip it, but they'd certainly be able to reach it by the victory turn. The AIs that skip it are the AIs that probably won't run free religeon anyway.

I strongly encourage you to open up some Cultural games. Look in the XOTM games or the HOF games. Any info that you find, please report in the team thread. One example would be to open up a Cultural Victory game (with a good victory date) and see how many of the AIs have Liberalism. Count how many do and how many don't, as well as the AI-Player relationship with each of them... i.e. make a table like the following:

Game Version (just say Vanilla, Warlords, or BTS), Where it came from (HOF, GOTM AA, WOTM BB, BOTM CC), Player Name, Cultural Victory Turn, Cultural Victory Date, AIs with Liberalism and their relationship with the Player, AIs without Liberalism and their relationship with the Player

Warlords, WOTM BB, GreyCardinal, 3XX, 17XX AD, 3-FrPC, 2-AFu


Fr = Friendly
P = Pleased
C = Cautious
A = Annoyed
Fu = Furrious

It's a bit of work to go and grab this info, but you'd be doing something helpful for the team and you'd be learning more in the process. BTS tech dates don't tend to be that different from Vanilla or Warlords (Aesthetics is only one new tech early on, after all) and we don't have a big pool of games to compare against, so for the Liberalism knowledge, it would be acceptable to check Vanilla and Warlords games, as well. Some XOTM games are relative anomalies (one BOTM game started us with 3 Cities, which made an early Cultural game far easier to achieve than normal), but even in such a case, a detail like which AIs know Liberalism can still be gathered and compared effectively.

Maybe it's just that I play exclusively on higher difficulties, on Cheiften or something I can imagine it's possible. This game is on Emporer though, and I can't see it happening.

AI tech levels are HIGHLY dependent upon the Player's actions.

What exactly are we spending our hammers on in a diplo game? If it's going to be a 'proper' diplomatic victory rather than diplomation, we shouldn't be building a huge war machine. We don't need to build anything at all in a diplo victory other than the UN. The only thing we should need to go to war for is the resources, which is a requirement of any strategy.

Well, Missionaries is one item that Mitchum will definitely opt for building a lot of.
However, I still question the feasibility of winning Diplo if we don't have the largest population in the world and the ability to gift our United Nations city.

I don't think it is worth it to put additional constraints on ourselves, such as trying for a "purist Diplo game" where we do not get any territory from wars--we are already constrained by the religious requirement (all Civs must have a State Religion) as well as the war declaration requirement. As a result, we can't win a Diplo game where we only join wars for Diplo bonus points as easily as we could in a game without these restrictions. Thus, war WILL be a BIG factor in a Diplo game.

Overall, I think diplo is indeed riskier than culture (although both have their risks), but the best game is going to be a diplo game. If we're playing to win rather than safely make our way to the middle, we should aim for Diplomatic.

That's easy to say and if I don't think about the details, I would tend to agree. But the more and more that I look at the details of the constraints and what they mean, the more and more I see that getting that perfect Diplo game will require so much finesse that our team might not be experienced enough to pull it off. I take back my earlier statement and am now thinking that 3rd place will be perfectly achievable from a strong Cultural win, while those that win Diplo will have had a lot of lucky factors on their side that just happened to fit into the approach that they followed.

We can greatly reduce the luck factor by planning out a lot of details and preparing for the worst--what happens if our two best allies want to declare war on each other, for example--but I am not convinced that this team wants to play with the required level of detail needed to succeed at a top Diplo spot. If you want it badly enough, you'll have to work hard for it--perhaps to the point that our turnsets will even be 8-10 turns at a time for the first few turnsets, so that we can better analyze the situation and keep on top of potential problems. Are you honestly willing to play the game that seriously? I would be, but I am not certain that we are all on the same page with the concept of serious, detailed play.

 

[BLubmuz]

This is just to confirm that I am going to play.
I still have to read all the long discussions...

Good luck to us.

Glad to see you, welcome aboard.
Good luck to you too in reading all our delirious.

Can you please tell us where are you from or at least your time zone?
And if you want a short introduction of yourself.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I got the save as well (very careful not to move anything). Attached are my best guesses based on fog gazing.

Excellent! Thank you.

If my guesses are correct, we'll have plenty of production (both chops and mined hills) regardless of whether we settle in place or on the plains hill.

How confident are you in your fog-gazing for the squares to the E+E and NE+E of the Settler being Hills squares? If they both are Hills squares, then in-place looks a lot stronger than I thought originally when I thought that those squares were flatland. Even if only one of those two squares is a Hills square, I'd still be really tempted to settle in place for any strategy that we pursue that starts us beelining a religion.