SGOTM 11 - Smurkz

[Xcalibrator]

I completely agree on Argentina---I was supporting the argument that Hunting isn't that big a help for it, that what it really needed was Deli's corn, and then when it got to pop 2 (or preferably 3) it could sustain its growth without the corn. If Deli can get by without its corn and still build a settler quickly, then great.

I think it's more likely that Zara will take the ivory island than Isa--I'm surprised he hasn't already, since he had another settler built around turn 120 (or 125?) in my test games. Even if Isa takes the island, there are 2 ivories, so there's at least a chance of trading for one. If Zara gets it, we're in pretty good shape. In any case, if we need a war to take it, there's no need to panic now; we're going to be way ahead of Isa in tech and can stomp her down the line.

 

[Niklas]

Ok, here's my plan for the coming turnset. I'll play 15-20 turns until a reasonable hand-off point.

Diplomacy:
- Trade CoL + Meditation to Zara for Sailing + IW, exclude Hunting.
- Gift Writing to Isa. If that makes her happy, sign OB.
- If the Writing gift was overly successful, gift Meditation to Sal and hope that it has a similar effect. Don't gift CoL to Sal.
- Trade away Cows to whoever wants them.

Research:
- Slow-burn on Mathematics. Most scientists will be put to other work for a while.

Cities:
- Deli fires its scientists, working only mines while building a Settler in 7 turns.
- Oraclia completes its Axeman, then builds a Settler.
- Estonia fires both scientists to keep growing. Complete Granary, then Settler.
- Argentina steals the Corn from Deli to grow. Builds lighthouse.
- Incencia is pretty useless as expected. I'd be inclined to build a few warriors here.
- Marblia completes Granary, then starts a Galley. Those workboats will have to wait, sadly.
- Fishenzia completes Granary, then either a WB or a Library.

Espionage:
- Set all EP towards Sal.

Workers:
A bit tricky here. I'd be inclined to shift most workers over to the Deli-Argentina-Oraclia area to get a lot of farms up. And some cottages too. We don't need to do much more improvement around Fishenzia or Marblia. Estonia could use a few chops and some more farms. Incencia could use some chops too, but is the least important of all our cities.

Thoughts and comments?

 

[Backwards Logic]

I support the turn plan above, and reinforce the idea to send the workers to improve cities that need improving. Right now Oraclia and Argentina are good sites not living up to potential.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

How many missionaries will we need? Perhaps Incencia could build a monastery?

 

[Xcalibrator]

Don't chop all the way unless we need the hammers right now, so we can benefit from the eventual Math bonus. (When) are you planning to switch to slavery? If we're not going to run specs, and we're in a big rush to get settlers and a galley, then whipping could be very useful. No discussion of the pros and cons of dropping Confusion? And nobody's worried about Sal and Isa running theocracy to thwart missionaries? If this was discussed offline, please fill me in a little. Getting the game moving again is good, but not if we haven't thought things through adequately. If everybody else is happy, please go ahead, but at least humor me by sending somebody down to the silver peninsula.

 

[Niklas]

Good points all.

- A monastery in Incencia is a good idea, I'll go for that unless someone wildly complains.

- I will definitely send a warrior down to the silver peninsula.

- Agreed on holding off the chops until Maths, it's close enough.

- I plan to switch to Slavery right away, so that we can switch back as soon as we need Caste again. No immediate plans for the whip other than a galley in Marblia. I'll try to time that so that we can whip 2 pop and almost complete a WB as well.

- Dropping Confusion... I will readily admit that I haven't thought that one through properly. We surely want to be friends with Zara to have at least one trading partner. But dropping it temporarily certainly has its benefits in the short run. Tricky...

- Yes, Theocracy is a real threat to our missionaries. But (correct me if I'm wrong here) isn't it possible to build the missionaries, move them into our target lands, gift them to the AI in question, and have them spread it for us? IIRC the no non-state religion spread doesn't cover the case where you spread it yourself explicitly using a missionary - only spontaneous spread and missionaries from other nations. I could be mistaken though...

 

[Xcalibrator]

Yes, Theocracy is a real threat to our missionaries. But (correct me if I'm wrong here) isn't it possible to build the missionaries, move them into our target lands, gift them to the AI in question, and have them spread it for us? IIRC the no non-state religion spread doesn't cover the case where you spread it yourself explicitly using a missionary - only spontaneous spread and missionaries from other nations. I could be mistaken though...

I believe you're correct, although I don't know how likely AIs are to use the missionaries we give them, or what affects their decision if they don't automatically use them. Still, it's probably the best chance we'll have, and will probably work, although getting them to tip to Confusion is another matter--probably have to use espionage there, and Isa cranks up her level pretty high.

I'm happy with the plan. When can you play?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Just to clarify, the primary reason for making this huge, high risk attempt to sway them to Confusion is so they will be friendly and vote for us?

 

[Xcalibrator]

I think that's pretty much it, although the risky part is that we have to butter them up right now with techs and/or other gifts in order to set up the conditions that might let us convert them (short of espionage). There are some other advantages such as more trade routes (requiring at least open borders) and more lucrative resource/tech trades. When we eventually get a shrine (and we should keep Oraclia's GP DNA pure--run a prophet after we get a temple--we should keep an eye on opportunities to squeeze in an Oraclia GP pop) we'll be able to see units inside any Confusion-infected cities and will get shrine gold. The disadvantages are spending hammers on missionaries, that any benefits will be a long time in coming, and that the effort toward conversion may fail. If Zara cooperates and builds the AP, their Confusion cities can also benefit from Confusion-religious-building hammers--potentially good if they're our buddies, not so good if they're uncooperative for much of the game. The big unknown is how difficult it will be to get the other (unknown) AIs to be our buddies. If it's easy, and we don't need Isa and/or Sal, we'll have wasted hammers on missionaries, given the AIs access to AP hammers, and given/traded away resources and techs that make them more difficult adversaries (that we may have to cut down to size before the end). If there are some hard cases out there (Tokugawa?) then we'll probably be very glad we pursued this. I agree it's a pretty big risk, and until we meet the other AIs we'll be completely in the dark on whether or not it's a good idea. I'm uncomfortable, but willing to go along for now.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Please don't forget that we have only 13g and are barely (not quite) breaking even on maintenance at 0% research. Founding more cities will only make that worse, although taking off the specialists and working tiles with commerce for awhile will help. Once we switch back to running scientists we're going to need to work more/better commerce tiles than we have been. Unless a farm significantly speeds up growth I'd build cottages instead. We could run merchants if we get desperate, but at this stage they're not as useful as being able to grow or run scientists.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Like Xc, I'm a bit unsure of the missionary tactic, but at this point I think Niklas should play and we take our chances. We have to get this game going again. If Niklas can play on Friday or Saturday, I can make a turn plan on Sunday and play early next week.

 

[Niklas]

Sorry for my silence, I'm on a trip since Thu evening and expected to have net access, but it's been very flaky to say the least. But I have the save and the plan, and will proceed to play now. Hopefully I'll manage to upload the save when I'm done, worst case it'll have to be tomorrow when I get back home, but I'll try to report on my progress regardless.

 

[Niklas]

T132 (700 BC):
Trade CoL + Med to Zara for IW and Sailing. We have a source of Iron in the snow far south of Deli, inside our borders.

Gift Writing to Isa. She gets +4 fair trade and goes to Cautious, sweet. We're still her WE, should change over the IBT.
Gift Meditation to Sal. He also gets a +4 fair trade and goes to Cautious, excellent.

Set all EP towards Sal.

Settle our GSci in Deli.

More sea food near Ivory island.

Lots of MMing with citizens. We drop to -3 gpt, but it will only be for a few turns.


IBT: Incencia completes Axeman, starts Confu Monastery.

T133 (675 BC):
Sal and Isa are both still at +4 fair trade. Sign OB with both. No one is interested in Cows, pity.

Sal would trade Monarchy for CoL + Sail. I'm tempted, but I think we can get a better deal later.

Our many new overseas trade routes, at +3 gpt each, boost our income to +9 gpt at 0%. That should fuel our expansion for a while.

Oracle doubles its cultural output, which will help against the combined culture of Aksum and Gondar. Both have twice-expanded borders - but Oraclia will get its third expansion in only 12 turns now.

Still +4 fair trade on both, that bodes well.


IBT: Marblia completes Granary, starts Galley.

T134 (650 BC):
Nothing much to report.


IBT: Oraclia completes Axeman, starts Settler.

T135 (625 BC):
Estonia has grown to size 5, switch to Settler before completing the Granary.´


IBT: Sal hates Zara.

T136 (600 BC):
............... we meet our next neighbor. Tokugawa.

I'm going to stop here for discussion. We need to decide if this is doable diplomatically, or if we should switch gears right now.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Yea, switch gears now. I called it! Aethetics -> Drama very high on my list of things to tech (Music too), followed by Nationalism and Liberalism. Sistine Chapel now imperative here and I'd argue any GA producing wonder needs to be built. Delhi, Oraclia, and another high hammer city (Incensia if micro'd right) should be our three culture cities. We also need to cottage spam like crazy. Our specs should in the future all be artists and not scientists. We need to start bombing cities (read: not settle Artists) asap.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Tokugawa. Did I call it or what? Dynamic Spiriiiiiiiit!!! Well, I think that other than that little detail, things went extremely well. We've gotten right of passage for our workboats, have seen that Cote d'Ivore is even more desirable, and have perhaps laid the foundation for a beautiful relationship with Isa and Sal.

Even if we want to go cultural, I think we still want to pop another Scientist or two (plus a Prophet in Oraclia) before we start running artists in order to keep our research moving along, toward Education in particular, so that we can sustain research toward other things like Literature for the National Epic in Fishenzia, Music (for cathedrals), etc.

I'm weak on diplomacy, but not at all convinced we need to abandon that path. It seems that DS has presented a challenge for us--what's the worst case for the remaining 2 AIs, and could we handle them? Is Toku hopeless? Can we keep his population small short of a DoW? Gift settlers to his neighbors/our friends? I'd like to keep exploring and hope to meet the other AIs before we make a final decision. With a little luck we can get 3 of the 6 AIs on our side. We can DoW 2 of the others, leaving only 1 more to deal with, either by making him our buddy or by provoking him to attack us, although that will be hard if we get as big and powerful as we'd like--perhaps keep a stack of gold on hand for instant upgrades to keep our power artificially low. Or maybe he'll be a fearless psycho (wouldn't that be just like DS? ).

Regardless of which path we pursue, I think it may be vital that we control the AP so that we can stop the faithful from warring against the heathens to the death. If we follow the diplo route somebody is going to have to really study the code. I know that was done brilliantly in SGOTM8(?) but some of those players aren't here. Is somebody willing to commit the time and effort for that? If not, we should probably go cultural, although I doubt we'll be able to get a medal that way. I'm not sold on BL's choice of 3 cultural cities--wouldn't Fishenzia be a good choice, as the GP farm running tons of artists? Oraclia has the Oracle (with doubled culture ) but not many hammers, nor a ton of food. Sucrosia or Marblia, with the Moai for hammers, might be better.

As a reminder, I'll be mostly out of touch June 29-July 5.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Remember, we can DoW two people. I don't think diplomacy is hopeless. If we get Isa, Zara, Sal and us all happy religion partners, we could have a pretty good shot.

I was a bit surprised to see the western workboat moving south instead of north.

I would rather go for the diplo gold than a cultural medal or worse. That said, I am totally unable to read the code...

 

[ChrisShaffer]

One of the big drawbacks to cultural is the need to save four great people. Cultural needs to get and use its Great Artists. Diplo can more easily afford to save a few great people.

I would also be surprised if the last two AI are both difficult diplomats. Would DS really stack the deck that heavily against teams who choose the diplo route?

I like the challenge of making a Sal/Zara/Isa coalition.

 

[Renata]

I'm back home, but no brains until Monday.

 

[Xcalibrator]

We're still in Caste System. Whip that galley in Marblia ASAP if we're going to have a shot at settling Ivory Coast. Whipping also looks good in Fishenzia for the WB or library in your plan, or a lighthouse. Any sign of Zara's galley during your turns? If we can spare another unit, it might be good to send him east into Zara's territory as a lookout, especially along the coast.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Niklas, to be blunt, you're not getting the job done and you've been holding everybody else up when you disappear for days at a time with no warning. I hope that when I come back in a week things will be moving again and we'll be able to maintain momentum. If not, I'm going to play the save myself following the diplomatic route (with as much warfare as I can get away with ). Chris could try to beat me, and BL could try a cultural approach. I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that, though, since playing as a group can be a lot more fun and instructive. Good luck, and happy 4th to all the colonials!