SGOTM 11 - One Short Straw

[mystyfly]

I am in favour of keeping zhou. I don't think it's a problem getting the borders to pop the workers to camp/fortify the fur.

Galleon cargo is 3 so I think 6 maces is ok.

I don't think that building a wonder increases the chance of a certain GP, but rather that it reduces the rate of popping any GP. The hammers spent on the wonder means we can't be working that many specs at the same time. Also we are out of forests to burn on it.

 

[Silu]

Take into account that the barb Archers can morph into LBs pretty much any turn now. I'll try to look into the chances of that happening, in any case GO GO GO! And need to the revolt time for the city.

We need to check the barb coast to ensure it's 100% blocked by float-ice. If there's a sucker hole (diagonal counts) we might be able to connect it faster.

There might be a reason for this, but we have a WB idling on the Whale. Always happens to me for no reason when I play and build that WB before Optics...

 

[babybluepants]

Yeah, I forgot about the whale WB while playing.

Doubt there's a path south of ice, but we should definitely check.

Any chance we could transport one or both of the chariots over for worker chasing?

I am a little concerned that Japan is not currently planning to attack anyone. Currently he is only 7 pop larger than Mehmed. Maybe we should gift/sell him CS? At this point I can't see him beating us to liberalism, and having Samurai would boost his power rating, encouraging him to declare war, and making his conquest come faster. Currently both Justin and Saladin have longbows, attack them without Samaurai will be very difficult for the AI.

This has been my concern all along. Mehmed still has some half-dozen seafood he hasn't claimed. Gifting Samurai is an option. I wouldn't be worried about Lib.

We could try the ninja route, and convert him to Buddhism maybe. Doesn't look like that would work, though, since we have -4 in denied requests...

The point's moot if we get the GE for the Saladin-gift plan, but I don't really see a good contingency otherwise.

Edit: I also don't see how Hagia Sophia could pay off, given our schedule.

 

[mdy]

This has been my concern all along. Mehmed still has some half-dozen seafood he hasn't claimed. Gifting Samurai is an option.

As a last resort we could always invade Saladin/Justin (we should till get his votes due to religion once we make peace), and then gift any captured cities to Japan. A reason to build more maces perhaps?

Any chance we could transport one or both of the chariots over for worker chasing?

We should be able to use the galley near the barb area to transport the chariot in Justins land to the barb continent before sending it back.

 

[LowtherCastle]

screen shot of the barb fur situation, please

do we have enough galleons? do we upgrade the galley? could we gift TOku enough votes without even DoWing Sal and still win the vote?

is getting TOku to +8 out of the question?

 

[Mutineer]

I would not gift bureaucracy to Toky, too dangerous.

It Toky power become too big, he might be able to get war or peace vassals, which will vote for him.

 

[babybluepants]

screen shot of the barb fur situation, please

Spoiler :

do we have enough galleons? do we upgrade the galley? could we gift TOku enough votes without even DoWing Sal and still win the vote?

That would be my favourite way to go here, but it doesn't seem likely.
IIRC, we are currently at: +1 peace +2 resource +2 OB +4 trade -3 religion -4 requests -1 something else = +1
So we'd need +4 shared religion to get to +8. It would take us quite some time to even just convert him, let alone run up points.

do we have enough galleons?

We have two under construction. Two Fish will get one done in 9t, and Rice around the same time with a chop.

It Toky power become too big, he might be able to get war or peace vassals, which will vote for him.

Interesting point.

 

[mystyfly]

Well tokus most likely target is sally who is protective. We can gift him military techs as well so he can put up a fight... still it's not really controllable and dangerous. I'm against gifting CS.

To be clear, this is our plan B, in case we don't get the GE and don't rush / gift the UN to sally?
The problem is getting votes and reducing someone else's... but if we DOW anyone buddhist we'll get -ves so it could be either toku or sally. Since we already have one city on their landmass we'll be paying lots of upkeep very soon so we should probably stay away from this option until later. Still, who would we be attacking? Sally is probably the likelier target, but if we don't have rifling or steel it will be very bloody. And we can't afford this detour.

 

[Silu]

This plan B is a very important thing to think through right now. As I see it, if the vote opponent isn't the right one for us, the choices are:

1) Build the UN slooooooowly in a city that we can gift to Sally.
* Reminder: if he has 3 or less cities, has culture on the city tile or has owned it at some point, he will accept any city. Otherwise he can't be in financial trouble & city must be within plotDist 9 of an existing city of his.
* Number of tricks that we can use to alleviate the build time, as noted earlier, stacking prod modifiers and abuse whip overflow a LOT. Kremlin would help a LOT, reducing the rush cost of a 1hammer UN from 18k to 12k.
* I need to double-check, but we might be able to leapfrog-citygift any city to him (gift a city, which opens the option to gift more cities etc), as long as all the distances between the leapfrog cities are <9. Need to be reaaaally careful with this of course, since if we gift him 3-5 cities (one of which'd be our best prod city) and fail to instantly win (say, if he gets into financial trouble midway, or we aren't #1 in pop anymore), we're SCREWED. I forget, is our pop lead so solid that there's no danger of dropping to #2?

2) Go bonk some heads to change the pop order.
* Hard-ish on any grand scale, since our military techs suck. Seriously, just Maces and no siege?

3) Instigate head-bonking to change the pop order.
* If it works, by far the best option. Do we need either of Toku/Sally votes? If not, it might not be such a bad thing if Toku takes a big chunk out of Sally and capitulates him. Of course he can't capitulate him too early so he actually gets a lot more pop. After all, vassal pop doesn't count towards who the other vote candidate is.
* Does Toku even have Feudalism yet? If not, obviously he can't capitulate anyone yet...

 

[mdy]

I would not gift bureaucracy to Toky, too dangerous.

I don't think it is. On the contary I think it is dangerous not to gift CS to him. Liberalism won't be in danger given his tech rate. Vassals aren't a problem either. Saladin won't vote for us, so it doesn't matter if he vassalises to Japan, and we should easily be able to grow enough to win without Justins vote. On the other hand we can't win with Mehmed as our opponant, as it will split the UN vote. Helping ensure that Japan has the largest pop (other than us) should be a priority in my opinion.

 

[mdy]

but we might be able to leapfrog-citygift any city to him (gift a city, which opens the option to gift more cities etc), as long as all the distances between the leapfrog cities are <9.

I don't think this will work across water. For instance we can't gift Ivory to Zara despite being within 9 tiles of his capital. (we can gift other cities)

Build the UN slooooooowly in a city that we can gift to Sally.

As the only city we could gift him is the gold city this would only be viable if we get an engineer. As we only have a 59% chance of this we need an alternative plan C. Getting Japan to invade someone with Samurai would be the easiest way to do this.

Does Toku even have Feudalism yet? If not, obviously he can't capitulate anyone yet...

He doesn't.

2) Go bonk some heads to change the pop order.
* Hard-ish on any grand scale, since our military techs suck. Seriously, just Maces and no siege?

This would probably be a last resort, if we don't get an engineer, and we can't get Japan to take enough cities. Saladin looks week enough that we could take him down without siege, and then gift his cities to Japan.

edit: Justin would be an alternative target, but he might be a tougher nut to crack.

 

[Silu]

I don't think this will work across water. For instance we can't gift Ivory to Zara despite being within 9 tiles of his capital. (we can gift other cities)

Humm... Interesting. Need to look into this. I wasn't even aware he has more than 3 cities.

 

[shyuhe]

Hey guys, I'm back and I'll post some more after I look through the other posts. I looked at the save and my only two comments for now are (1) 2-fish should be running at least one engineer and (2) Do we need to prepare for the case where Mehmed grows larger than Toku?

 

[babybluepants]

(1) 2-fish should be running at least one engineer

I thought we'd want a certain GM this time. It takes us right through the research phase @ 100% slider. mdy's GP plan from two pages back called for this, too.

 

[mdy]

I thought we'd want a certain GM this time. It takes us right through the research phase @ 100% slider. mdy's GP plan from two pages back called for this, too.

Yes, at this point getting another merchant would be far more valuable than an engineer.

 

[Silu]

I don't think this will work across water. For instance we can't gift Ivory to Zara despite being within 9 tiles of his capital. (we can gift other cities)

Yeah, this is true indeed, sorry for missing that earlier So only way in which citygifting can leapfrog continents is

1) if they have 3 or less cities
2) if their culture encroaches over the water
3) if they settle a city on our continent

As for the barb city revolt time, it's the same as any revolt so 3+POP*0.5. Does not scale to speed. Culture bomb obviously grabs the Fur right away if for some weird reason we ended up with extra GPs to spare

As for barb teching, they do tech normally as well but without a Palace that's pretty harsh going. As for their freeload teching: Each turn, they receive 3% * (CIVS_KNOWING_TECH / CIVS_ALIVE) of each techs beakers. So, for them to get Feudalism, in a 7 player game, they need about 230 turns with 1 player knowing Feuda, 77 turns with 3 players knowing it, or 33 turns with all Civs knowing it. This is completely deterministic (contrary to what I've heard multiple times on these forums).

I haven't scrutinized the tech pace in this game, but from what I've seen we should have enough time to reach the barbs before they can up LBs based on this? Not sure when Feuda was researched by the ones that have it.

 

[babybluepants]

As for the barb city revolt time, it's the same as any revolt so 3+POP*0.5. Does not scale to speed.

So, it'll be 7t. We'll need 1t to pop borders, and then we'll need to camp and road the fur - which should be, what, 10-11 worker-turns. So, we're looking at some 12-14t after capturing Zhou, depending on number of workers available.

That's obviously too slow with mdy's current plan, but we could also send 6 maces (2 from Sugar, 1 from Bombay and 3 from Ivory) at T+16 and deal with the connecting city later? This would ideally get us Zhou circa T+28, and fur circa T+42.

 

[Silu]

A (very) minor detail I forgot: occupation timer is calculated from the "new" city (capturing means technically deleting the old city and spawning a new one) size, so its population is 1 less than the original since it's acquired through conquest.

 

[shyuhe]

I don't know if we can afford the logistics, but would it be faster to send a new settler to the fur instead of capturing Zhou?

 

[babybluepants]

Don't see why. We'll need some units down there regardless.

Now that I think about it, I also don't see any need to raze the city and lose 6-7 pop. Could we not just plant the spare settler 3W of it for fur and use a fort for trade network connection?

I think we can probably ship 1-2 workers over on the third sailing, in case we're lacking worker turns. We could also just upgrade one of the galleys, like LC suggested, if we need more room on the final sailing.