SGOTM 11 - Smurkz

ChrisShaffer · Aug 5, 2010

Whew, false alarm, empirical testing shows that:

Nation A score 2000 population 8
Nation B score 1000 population 16

Nation B, higher population, will be selected.

Honest, best effort is fine with me.

Xcalibrator · Aug 5, 2010

We are relieved. :whew:

Go ahead and play when you can--I don't think you need any more input from me.

ChrisShaffer · Aug 6, 2010

We own the fur island. It was easy, no units lost. My only regret is that I didn't leave a galleon behind to take the survivors to the northern barbarian island. The main problem now is that the cities are starving because they have motherland issues. We can't run artists until the starvation is over, because the artists starve before they have a chance to produce culture. There is a missionary just outside the fur city who will solve its culture problems in short order, and another on the way for the northern city on fur island.

I didn't have such good luck on the northern barbarian island, where Justinian has founded a city. We captured the southern city, but lost too many troops to attempt the northern city. We do have a settler and defender ready to found a city by the pigs. Ah well, the northern city was junk anyway.

Something didn't quite work right and both Fishenzia and Argentina were ready to pop a great person one turn earlier than predicted. I starved Argentina for one turn to force the issue.

We have 4 turns to go on Mass Media and enough money for two turns of research. Saladin will give us 350 gold for banking, which would pay for one more turn. We should probably take that trade.

There are three warriors headed toward fur island, another two about to board ships. We popped a great prophet which is sitting in Deli to leave our options open, and a great scientist who is on his way to the boats.

There are two spies about to board a galleon intended for Justinian near Marblia.

There are two airships, one in Justinian's land, the other in Tokugawa's land. The population counts on all the cities in their main continent should be accurate as of 1-2 turns ago.

Incencia is building a settler. Any city with hammers that doesn't have anything better to do and won't grow on its own should do the same. The settlers can be dropped in little pockets of land right before the UN is built, to boost our population.

This is an official handoff. As far as I'm concerns, you can probably take it from here and play until the end of the game.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm11/Smurkz_SG011_AD1180_01.CivBeyondSwordSave

Buffy Log

Spoiler :

ChrisShaffer · Aug 6, 2010

CivFanatics Log

Spoiler :

Xcalibrator · Aug 6, 2010

Lots to look at and think about--I'll work on it this weekend, and hope to play Sunday. Did you sell our map? No reason not to do it now. Unless it's going to be very close on population/voting it might be better to build gold rather than settlers. I'll have to work out if we should go for Communism and the Great Spy--with the slider set to 100% gold, teching will be very slow. Universal Suffrage will give us a few extra hammers from towns. Since the barb cities are starving anyway, why can't you run 4 artists and pop the borders in 1 turn? Will Toku accept any barb cities as gifts?

ChrisShaffer · Aug 6, 2010

Nobody will give us money for our map. I gifted it to Isa a few times.

I tried running artists in the barb towns. The artists starved and the effective culture production was zero.

According to your plan, this is the turn we revolt to Theocracy.

More later when I'm on a computer that has Civ installed.

p.s. I will be at a work meeting in Alaska Tuesday 8/10 - Friday 8/13. I'll have Internet access but won't have a copy of Civ with me, nor will I have much free time.

p.p.s. I'm reasonably sure Toku would take the northern island former barbarian city, since it offered us the opportunity to liberate it to Japan when we conquered it.

ChrisShaffer · Aug 6, 2010

Toku will take Gaul and Goldlandia.

Current population counts are:

Byzantine 132
Japan 129
Japan + Gaul + Goldlandia 135

It's going to be fairly close. One can hope that Japan will be willing to take the new city we found on the northern island.

Xcalibrator · Aug 6, 2010

Got it. We + Justy + Isa + Sal have 63.6% of the 712 total (well, plus 2 for that last barb city). We could safely give Toku up to ~10 pops but that would be overkill so we should be fine. I'm thinking of just using our northern island settler where he is to start growing and keep Justy under control--not sure yet. On the other island, I will use our captured workers to road to Justy's city--that should connect us to our resources, right?, and give us lots of happiness to run artists and halt the starvation. Pity we wasted so much population in the meantime, but it shouldn't matter much. Hooking up the wheat and fur will help our other cities, too. Very thoughtful of Justy to build that city to help us out.

With US, Deli can get 66 hpt which ain't bad. No AI has Education yet so it's just possible that they won't have Liberalism to cause us trouble. I'd like to take Mehmed's 300g for Compass and then start selling Banking (gifting it to Isa). Nice that we're up to +7 with her.

Would you like me to lay out a plan or just play? Unless the UN goes quicker than I dare hope I will probably stop and hand off to you to finish, but we can talk about that more later since I very much doubt I'll play more than a dozen turns in one sitting.

ChrisShaffer · Aug 6, 2010

Go ahead and play. Pity I didn't think of hooking a road to Justinian from the new cities - lots of wasted worker turns. +1 happy from Hinduism will help too.

Did you see my note about the Alaska trip?

ChrisShaffer · Aug 6, 2010

p.s. Good call on resource connection, which is required for victory conditions. Don't forget to get the final resource from Mehmed.

pps if we give away the northern island cities, no need to send missionaries to make them Hindu.

Xcalibrator · Aug 6, 2010

Oh yeah, resources connected, of course, it was all part of the plan. :rolleyes:

Huh, I wonder if we would have noticed? Just to be safe I think I'll build a fort on the coast, too. Or does just having a road to the coast do the trick? Well, the workers will run out of things to do soon enough so it can't hurt.

Yes, saw your note about Alaska. I guess it would be good to get this over with ASAP. I'll try to play tomorrow and see how far I get.

ChrisShaffer · Aug 6, 2010

Roads wouldn't do it. A fort would.

Xcalibrator · Aug 7, 2010

Played to T268/1230 AD. Marblia popped a Gt Sci so I've settled the Prophet in Deli (which has been poisoned :mad:

). We're teching Communism for the Great Spy. Status is 370/6552 beakers for Comm, 165 bpt and 314 bpt @0% research with 753 gold in the bank. You were quite correct about the US rush cost, and I was wrong about the amount of gold we'd be able to make :blush:

. After I've worked out how to optimize the UN build vs teching Communism I'll play again.

Toku will only take Goldlandia now.

I'm betting he'll take the northern barb city when we capture/raze/rebuild it. I haven't gifted Goldlandia yet because he's Isa's worst enemy. I may have no choice. Do you think I should do it now to be safe? Justy has 136 pop, Toku has 134. I'd rather give him 2 cities in one go to avoid getting dimplo demerits twice. My default plan is to gift two cities ASAP.

Otherwise, things are going just fine. All our cities are happy and Fish will pop a GP in 4 turns. I haven't revolted to US because that extra +3bpt from Representation specs helps a lot. Nobody has Education yet. I just traded Mehmed Astro (last one) for Gunpowder (only Toku and Isa are now without) and will gift Gunpowder to Isa next turn.

BUFFY log:

Spoiler :

ChrisShaffer · Aug 7, 2010

I would wait on Goldlandia - if you give it to him now, he might work the gold and forgo growth. Better to continue to concentrate on growth. Also, Isa might choose a different worst enemy.

Any way to use diplomacy/espionage to get Isa into war with Mehmed or Zara, so they will be her worst enemy?

Xcalibrator · Aug 7, 2010

I'll check, but I doubt Isa could be bribed to attack anyone. And we don't want to bribe anyone to attack her because that hurts our diplo standing with her. I'll keep an eye on it, though.

Looks like around 18 turns to build the UN and get Communism/Great Spy in time to ship over but perhaps it'll go faster once I start switching cities over from growth to specialists after they grow for the last time, etc. I'll play some more now.

Xcalibrator · Aug 7, 2010

Oh darn. On T273, Isa became a vassal of Mehmed, who is at +3 with us. That's just grand. FWIW, I reloaded the previous turn to see if she'd vassalize to us, but no, so it's not like we could have done anything about it. We have -3 from being a different religion from Mehmed, so if we could swing him to Hinduism that would be a quick net +4. We could also run Vassalage, his favorite civic. However, none of his cities have Hinduism and the "Influence Religion" option is still blank. Some day I'd really like to know what the hell unlocks that.

I suggest sending Hindu missionaries to him and hope they get used--maybe that will have some effect on Influence Religion. In any case, we'll still need his vote to be UN SecGen, I think--that's assuming we need 50% of the total world population. But perhaps it's just a plurality? Nah, I don't dare hope that, either. As I said before, I don't know how much an AI has to like us to vote for us for SecGen. Perhaps +3 is enough if it's higher than he has for Justy? Maybe you could test that?

BTW, a privateer just sank one of our galleons with a spy. We have a Gt Sci on his way to furland--I could pull him back this turn to a safe city. I could also rebase an airship to see that things are safe. Or I could wait to trade for Chemistry with somebody and build a frigate--most just got Chem recently. But there's nothing we'd like to trade away right now, just Education and SciMeth. SciMeth, maybe? No rush yet, since Fishenzia's new Great Merchant is making his way east across our continent, and we still have to wait for the Commie Great Spy. Hadn't thought about privateers--that makes things a little trickier, but still manageable.

[Edit: I spread Banking around after Isa, of all people, teched it. Only got a few hundred gold for it, and nobody would throw in Music, which I was hoping to gift to Isa. I think she immediately traded Banking to Mehmed for Music (she was the last one to get it, apart from us) because I could swear he didn't have Banking on the Tech Diplo screen at the beginning of that turn---weird.]

BUFFY log:

Spoiler :

ChrisShaffer · Aug 8, 2010

Influence Religion requires:

1) We have a state religion.
2) Target has a city with our state religion in it.
3) Spy in any city of target nation.

Cost is:

Spoiler :

For the boats and privateers, I'd prefer using the airships to scout a clear path and get the units over there.

Do we realistically have a chance of winning this game without Isa's vote? Is there any way we can get Mehmed or Zara to vote for us for a diplomatic victory?

ChrisShaffer · Aug 8, 2010

Do we have enough espionage points to do what is needed? Maybe the Great Spy needs to be used for espionage and we need an additional great person? Is that possible?

I don't really know how vassals and diplomatic victory / secretary general works, but from what I can find on the forums, it seems that the vassal (Isa) is free to vote as she pleases, as long as Mehmed isn't a candidate. Is this true? If so, we might be able to just play on.

Xcalibrator · Aug 8, 2010

I've always read that a vassal votes as her master, unless she is one of the candidates. Thanks for checking on the Influence Religion reqs. We had those conditions at one time with Zara but it didn't seem to do any good. But it definitely looks like we need to gift some Hindu missionaries to Mehmed ASAP--at least we guessed right and have been putting our few EPs toward him for awhile. Yeah, the Great Spy might be useful for flipping Mehmed. If so, Fishenzia is our best candidate to get the next GP. Since running Theocracy is now of little benefit (Justy and Sal are very friendly, Zara won't vote for us no matter what, and Isa isn't a free actor) I should probably revolt back to Pacifism to speed up Fishenzia's pop, right? I don't think that hurts anything even if we don't end up using the Great Spy for espionage. Assuming that Influence Religion costs about the same as Inf Civics, we shouldn't need a ton of EPs so we can probably just run up the espi slider at some point.

Here's another question, though: I've pulled our spies back to our borders to avoid the possibility of detection, since I think that causes diplo demerits. Is that true, or only when we run an espi mission and fail? There's no benefit to having spies in place more than 5 turns before we'd use them, so it's not hurting anything at the moment.

I'll have to check the numbers again, and I'm doubtful, but it might be possible to attack and vassalize Zara to get enough votes if we really crank up our population. I don't see any way to get him to +8 by being nice. I'm planning to bring back all excess military units after we've wiped out the barbs to have ready to go after Zara just in case. If it looks like it might be possible then I'll start pumping out military units now.

So, barring further input, and assuming that there's no hope of winning by vassalizing Zara (I'll do a census to check), my plan is to:
Revolt immediately from Theoc to Pacifism. Hold off on US for now to keep the Rep +3bpt bonus (and +3 happiness for Fishenzia).
After rushing the UN (before the end of turn), revolt to Vassalage to gain points with Mehmed.
Immediately cancel resource gifts to Isa and give them to Mehmed.
Gift Hindu miss's to Mehmed.
Get multiple spies in position. Do not use them to Influ Rel (assuming we can) until just before the victory vote. If we lose the SecGen vote, then use spies to flip Mehmed to Hinduism for the next SecGen vote (which I assume will be 6 turns later?).
Use airships to check for safe passage of our ships.

I won't play until I get approval. More discussion would be fine, too.

ChrisShaffer · Aug 8, 2010

Go for it. At this point, we might as well run with it and hope for the best.

SGOTM 11 - Smurkz

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