SGOTM 11 - Who Dat?

[beestar]

Couple of reminders:

- We have a GS saved up for bulbing after SciMeth. If we're really keen to get Astro early (Galleons to Fur Island, Observatory in our science city), we can trigger the bulb now.

- EACH of our cities must have our state religion. This is going to be Hinduism. Don't forget this includes Fur Island and anything we conquer. We can do this right at the end when we have nothing else to do.

- We cannot finish off any AIs. We can expect motherland unhappiness from any Spanish or Ottoman cities we conquer.

- We don't currently have Feudalism so we can't vassalize our enemies - not that we want to anyway, as having vassals really complicates the diplo situation

 

[Fluroscent]

Hmm, bulbing astro might be a very good move actually.

-It would allow us to take fur island on the way to Izzy.

-Observatory is good in a SSC.

-It is better to be able to build galleons right away, rather than upgrade galleys.

-Ensures trade routes+resource trades with friends. (assuming Justin might be blocked off by closed borders with Toku atm)

Another thing: Justin founded Islam right? He will probably convert eventually unless we do something. That something could be putting hinduism in his city on fur island.
We could send three galleons to fur island containing 4 maces, 2 cats, 1 missionary, 2 warriors. The rest of the army can use the galleys initially to get to Spain.

 

[beestar]

I've pinged orb again. Is someone else ready to play in case orb isn't? Time is running short - we have about 30 days and perhaps 100 turns left.

I think we want to attack Mehmed instead of Izzy - I don't see a good way of claiming silk without attacking Mehmed, and right now we have the best military tech advantage. Later on we don't plan on getting any more military techs, while our opponents will continue to tech military.

I hope the Caravel and spy will reveal that his silks are close to the border with Izzy, and we can easily attack from her territory into his and claim 1-2 cities including silk and dye.

Attacking Mehmed does imply we want galleons soon, as Isabella could easily close the border with us & cut off the galley supply lines.

 

[orb]

Cheers for the pings guys. = I've been following proceedings.

I can pick up and play tomorrow night and post again for Wednesday morning.

In terms of the game options:

We could leave our Hindu brothers to turf it out and hope for an Apostolic Palace vote to stop the war (saving us some tech lead for now). - How long until the next AP vote?- Is it worth the risk versus the -ve modifiers for "Refused to help us?"

I think bulbing Astro would be a great move to allow rapid access to the Barb Island via the Spanish straits for a force to capture Devil's gate, and to allow observatories. (Although I am slightly worried about the consequences of capturing the gates to hell...Will we get battered by the force on the other side? (And us without longbows.) - Devils gate and the land beyond also looks well developed so there could be a bit of a surprise waiting behind that fog....Go go gadget spy.

Also...If we do take Devils gate then our rivals will be able to pass through and attack the interior, so for me we should take Devils gate and the city beyond with our superior force now (via the fleet and whipping devils gate) and delay any attack on Izzy or Mehmed until after the fur goal is ours. (I think losing the fur city to Justinian is a higher risk than not having the resources right now.) - We are are still a long way off UN and the 4 GT people so I think there is time for silk wars later.(Once we've traded for Feudalism and can muster a force of longbows/trebs/maces)....(RULE check - We are allowed to raze cities in this game right?)

On that, I notice that Mehmed with 11 cities will be a pain for any invasion fleet, and we wont have any new military units on our tech path for a while (until we trade to backfill), but combustion/ transports is well off path so we need to plan to use Medieval fleets...Lots of Galleons.

And...We might be lucky...There might be a silk out there on an unknown island in the fog...i.e. We should wait a while before attacking Mehmed.

NOTE: It would be quite fun to capture the Buddist holy city and generate income from Memhed's population.

Also...In terms of game score....I notice we are way down on the other teams. - We've been doing a lot of whipping, but do we need to concern ourselves on this? (I'm thinking the game is earliest UN win...not highest scoring win...And we can grow population later....Any comments?)

In summary - I think the plan should be Bulb Astro, build/upgrade to Galleons/ fleet to Devils Island to secure fur (Lets's hope it's there) then pick up the other resources when we know more of the world.

 

[Fluroscent]

Yeah, our score right now means little. Rampant whipping probably has much to say in that department.

Agree on taking our forces to that island first. With galleons, We should have enough time to take it before we are done building our main invasion force.
I wouldn't upgrade our galleys yet, it is quite expensive. Just build/whip some galleons. The galleys can transport some stuff to Spain easily, as long as they don't go to fur island. Keep up troop production.

Preparations for war: Remember to avoid upgrading units until needed. War in this era is best done by having a few very strong stack defenders/counters and slowly sieging cities.
We should have stack composed of a charge elephant or two, a couple of shock maces, combat II elephants and a bunch of CR maces. And of course a lot of CR catapults. I never use longbows at this point, except to hold cities in danger of counterattacks. Between maces and phants with proper upgrades, the AI has little offensive options.

As for attack priorities: We need dye, so we must have a city that can hold them, same for silks. Which probably means taking a nearby city or two to stop cultural pressure on the dye/silk tiles. If we can get wonders/holy cities - great! But we should also consider a city that is a good UN candidate to gift back eventually. A city with choppable forests would be ideal.

Finally, we must make sure Izzy/Mehmed is not left with just 1-2 cities. It is too risky in case they get eliminated by someone else. Vassaling is an option, if we can stand the -1 across the board.

It is probably best to stop before declaring war, especially if we cannot find silk elsewhere. We need to plan the invasion carefully.

Agree on leaving the hindu war as is for now. AP vote to stop it is likely. We can always reevaluate at the end of the set.

 

[beestar]

Good points by both orb and Fluro. Let's do it.

Minor note, I started cultivating a city to specialize in gold (it's marked on the map - Patal?). We only have access to Market now, but eventually Grocer and Bank should go there. This way we can run merchant specialists and fund our slider efficiently.

We can raze cities.

P.S. Vassalizing Isabella/Mehmed is worse than -1 diplo from the other AIs; the other AIs' diplo attitudes toward us will be a mixture of their attitude toward us, and their attitude toward our vassal. It's very hard to control our vassal's actions to maintain good relations and we should avoid this risk, especially since we are going for a diplo victory.

 

[pnp_dredd]

Looks good.

We need to make sure that we are always focussed on producing great people! Caste+pacifism should definately be the default civics. Pacifism costs a little bit of cash, but +100% GP points is invaluable. See if we can plan to pop GP in a couple of other cities as well as our NE city.

 

[Fluroscent]

Pacifism, unfortunately, prevents us from getting the huge diplo bonus from theocracy. For now, we are actually building units, so theocracy also works as a beneficial civic.

 

[orb]

Quick post guys as I'm at work right now.

Fluro - Only just seen your post. (oops)

Played a quick turn set this lunchtime to take us to 880AD - The save file is still on my c drive but I'll post it later.

The game has developed. - I switched to caste/pacifism and we now have 4 GT people. (2 Gt Sci, 1 Gt Proph, 1 Gt Eng - Varanasi...will produce another in 11 turns (probably Sci)

Fur has been located on Devils island, way down in the south on the edge of the Antarctic. The other Barb city is small with Axe/archer defender. - The fur is outside the Barb area. - Justinian has not made any move on the barb's even though he has a mace on the island. - There is one roving Barb sword.

Toku asked us to join the war which I had to decline for a -2 point hit, but the same turn the AP vote for stop the war popped up. - The war stopped. Only Mehmed voted against.

The northern caravel/spy has explored some of the Ottoman territory (north of Spain) and located the Silks. - 2 are in the NW near the Arctic....but here's the thing...1 is in the SE just above the Spanish territory near the Ottoman city of Bursa...this city also has a dye resource, both resources being 1 border expansion from the city. - I say capturing this is now our major military target.

The army is now on the Ethopian island. (Quite large..I dont have the numbers, but it's approx 6 mace/6 ele/8 cats from memory)

2 Galleons are in production on our northern coast. (Oh we got Astro and went Sci Meth) Sci Methods is 17 turns away at 0% slider with +34Gold.

Couple of points....I think we can safely convert 2 Gt Sci into Academies for both Varanasi and Delhi...Given that more Gt people are on the way. (I'd normally do this as a matter of course, but wanted to confirm with the team before going that way.)

Saladin tried to cancel a trade deal, so I gave him horses to sweeten the deal and he's stayed on +2 for trade relations.

I think the next stages are to swithc civic's for diplo bonus, create the Academies/ Galleons take the army to Devils island. (Note: We have a settler from Calcutta...We could take him along for the ride and build instead of capturing a Barb city...might save us a few turns waiting for a border pop)

Remainder of the army moves to the Spanish border and we DOW on Mehmed. - If we can stop the war in time then we could end up with all the resources and all the Gt people before the warriors and Gt people make it across to Devils island.

Note 2: - I'll post the save tonight, but I had forgotten that I have tickets for a show tonight so I cant play any more. - Tomorrow I'm off to Spain on a business trip. So.... to keep the game rolling I should pass over now after this very short (but fun) turn set.

 

[beestar]

That was a pretty good lunchhour orb

I would definitely not build the academies, as I doubt they would produce enough beakers to make up for our plans to bulb like crazy for Physics and Electricity. We stop teching after Mass Media, so the window for the academies to help us is quite limited.

Current GP plans are something like this:

GE: reserve for UN
GPro: Greet Eldine
GS1: bulb Physics
GS2: bulb Physics
GS3 (from Physics): bulb Electricity
GS4: bulb Electricity
GG (from war): Greet Eldine
GPerson: Greet Eldine
GPerson: Greet Eldine


The fact that Silk is near the border between Isabella and Mehmed is great news. This really supports the idea of a limited war soon to grab the territory. Now that the internecine Hindu war is over, maybe we can bribe some allies into joining in. Bringing in Toku would help keep him busy and stop him from targeting Justinian; bringing in Zara would help with some military muscle and cut Mehmed's trade routes.

P.S. We should not feel bad about declining war requests against our friends. "-1 you declared war on us" never goes away, and Eldine only allows two of them ...

 

[Fluroscent]

Couple of points....I think we can safely convert 2 Gt Sci into Academies for both Varanasi and Delhi...Given that more Gt people are on the way. (I'd normally do this as a matter of course, but wanted to confirm with the team before going that way.)

Just to reiterate, in clearer fashion. We have absoulutely no reason to create any more academies. We have what ~40 turns of teching left? Bulbs are the way to go. beestars GP plans seems reasonable.

I want to see fur island. Do we need to settle a city there to ensure no AI does and grabs fur? Or is it just a matter of getting 2 border pops?

Also want to see the layout of the silk/dye city. We need to make sure that we don't run in to culture problems (imagine a revolt the turn before the vote ). Do we risk declaring on both Isa+Mehmed? Or do we declare on one of them, and let the other get dragged in? In that case, we should declare on the most advanced one of them.

And we need to remember to spread hinduism to all cities. Perhaps we could let Delhi begin non-stop missionary production once done with the observatory.

We also need to work out how many turns to build gold reserves at 0% scimeth. Probably some 10-15 turns (no idea though)

 

[cas]

Excellent news.

NO ACADEMIES.

Need to see the map to determine much more detailed war/settle plans. If the dye-silk city is on the interior, we will need another city on the coast to get a trade route...correct ? I'm also concerned about the culture problem capturing an interior city...we may need to capture 2-3 other cities around it for breathing room.

Also might settle on the fur, take both barb cities...we could gift one (Devils gate) if needed for +diplo points.

cas

ps...

Tomorrow I'm off to Spain on a business trip.

I didn't realize Spain still had an economy other than tourism...better ask for your money up-front if you bill them for services.

 

[orb]

OK.

Saves up. - Comments from previous post...and good point about the academies. - I hadn't caught that.

Here are some screenies:

 

[beestar]

Had a look at the save and updated the stickies. I've also added our Great Person plans and listed which cities still need Hinduism. Looks like a good turnset (I'm impressed orb managed to pop that extra Great Prophet!) ... next one should be exciting as well.

war

Isabella has maces! Mehmed, amazingly, lacks COL so he doesn't have CS or maces. Better attack soon though.

Mehmed's Bursa looks like a great target. We can put our units on the Spanish border and get them adjacent to Bursa in 2 turns. Will take many turns to transport them there though, I would start now.

Having our units abroad (and being under Pacifism) is costing a lot of unit maintenance/supply. War soon.

tech

Toku is backward and we can safely trade Paper, CS, Literature to him. Probably use those techs to bribe him into war.

Keep careful eye on Justinian and Zara, once they complete Education we need to think about triggering Liberalism. We would like to be as far up the tech tree as possible at that moment, so that we can liberalize Radio instead of Electricity.

micro

I would micro Delhi to work cottages and mines rather than specialists, to grow the city and get the Observatory up quicker.

Lahore needs a lighthouse very soon. Lahore Island also has some workers that need to go back to the mainland (my bad from my turnset)

In general we are working a bunch of unimproved tiles, could be time for galleons and units.

trade and diplo

30 turns have elapsed, it's time to beg our friends for 80-100 gold. Make sure not to beg Mehmed as we want to declare on him soon. Just before we attack, it might be worth threatening Isabella for 5 gold, assuming our power rating is high enough - would keep her out of the war.

Probably safe to trade Stone to Toku in exchange for his Gold resource.

Switching into Theocracy will give us extra diplo points which will help bribe Justinian into war (I think he needs to be Friendly before he can be bribed into war). Would also help with our Pacifism military cost penalty.

 

[beestar]

Need to see the map to determine much more detailed war/settle plans. If the dye-silk city is on the interior, we will need another city on the coast to get a trade route...correct ?

I believe we can hook up resources with a coastal fort.

I'm also concerned about the culture problem capturing an interior city...we may need to capture 2-3 other cities around it for breathing room.

I agree. We may want to consider settling a crap city as close as possible to the Dye to make sure Isabella's culture doesn't grab it.

 

[pnp_dredd]

ok I guess I'm up! I'll post a detailed plan tonight or tomorrow night.

 

[cas]

I had a look at the save. Couple of comments on the tech/GPP.

I think Radio from Liberalism is a lost cause at this point. Each GS bulb is ~2650 beakers.

We still have 3901 beakers left to go in SciMeth.
Physics is 9360 beakers = 3 GS bulb + some research
Electricity is 10530 beakers = 4 GS bulb (1 free from Physics)
We still have 1152 beakers left to go in Liberalism

That means we need 6 GS bulbs + research into SciMeth and a little bit of Electricity. *Or* you can say we need less GS...but then we need a lot more research. BEFORE Justinian or Zara get Education...which they can both research right now. And I think they both have Philo already.

We only have 2GS. The next ones are not due for another 14 turns from Varanasi and then 25ish? turns from Dehli assuming we don't have Dehli switch to cottages instead of 5 sci specs. And that is under Pacificsm ...if we switch to Theocracy, it will be even worse.

I'm 99% sure we are not going to be able to get 4 more GS and the necessary research before Just/Zara get Education. Rough estimate we are looking at 40+ more turns research + GPP to bulb Radio from Liberalism. Zara or Justinian will finish education before that.

I was worried about this quite a while back. By building an army (which I agree was necessary) we have missed the opportunity to pop a couple of GS using caste + lots of scientists in our 2 western cities...which have high food and little production except slavery whips.

Our army is decent. We need to attack asap and grab the Mehmed city that can encompass both Dye and Silk. And one more city to gift back once it completes UN.

cas

 

[beestar]

Hmm, good analysis cas, and an important point. What's at stake here is the extra beakers from liberalizing Radio (14,000 beakers) rather then Electricity (10,500 beakers), and the fact that Electricity can be bulbed by GSes while Radio is cannot.

(What's our breakeven beaker rate right now? As I recall it's currently low because of army maintenance, but we could probably beg some gold and do some merchant specialist micro to lift that.)

The other option is to bulb Electricity. We could probably go into food deficit in our GP Farm and pump out a third GS quite soon, even if we're in Theocracy, and then triple-bulb Physics while finishing SciMeth and Liberalism. Possibly could be done within 15 turns. A lot lower risk, but it would cost us 3,500 beakers.

This would free up Education and Philo to trade to our more backward friends for backfill techs, or to bribe our foreign policy. Must avoid distributing Liberalism and Free Religion though.

 

[pnp_dredd]

The Plan:

Civics/Tech:
Going to switch to Theocracy, which is ~14 gold/turn more expensive but should save us ~10 gold/turn overall (due to reduced military costs)

Maximum sustainable beakers is around 350/turn, losing 11 gold per turn. Could be a bit more if building wealth rather than units. Unit cost is 44 gold per turn.

10 turns for Sci Meth
3 turns for Liberalism

Varanasi will complete a GS in 12 turns (under pacifism). Will be a few turns longer under Theocracy. Don't really want to waste pop in Varanasi, as it can still grow to work 5 extra farms (3 more specialists).

So we're good to get Physics in ~15 turns, and then take Electricity. I'll play my set till we have Electricity.

We will get lots more than 4 more Great People after that. What's the best thing to do with them? Merchants to fuel deficit teching?

War:

It will take around 10 turns to get our troops into position to declare and take Bursa. 7 maces, 3 'phants, 8 cats. [once I've finished ferrying I'll rescue those two poor bored workers off sugar island]
Promotions: 1 elephant to charge (anti cat), 2 to combat2 (for formation - anti-horse)
2 shock maces, the rest CR2
3 accuracy cats (+8% barrage), the rest CR2. I'll lemming up to 3 cats to take Bursa

We have another cat and another mace currently under production on the mainland. I'll build 3 more cats, 2 maces and 2 'phants. Then some Longbows too.
Before I start those units, I'll slow-build a settler in one of our production cities (~8 turns), so that we can build a city to secure the dyes.

We'll have 3 cities wedged between Mehmed and Izzy. Building these extra units allows us to leave 1 mace + 1 elephant in each city when we set off for the furs, with Longbows nearly there.

Once we have Bursa (+ another city next 'set) it's only 3 turns to FurIsland by Galleon. Less if we set sail from Izzy's land. We'll have 2 galleons in 7 turns. Might need one more (although will 4 spaces each, two will do in a pinch).

Micro:

I think we should work scientists rather than whipping anything. Faster tech will get us a faster win, but I'm not sure that production is a limitation right now.

Just checking, and we have up to 76 turns of unhappiness in some of those cities (which is OK - they can still grow another 5 or so pop!). But let's no whip them any more unless absolutely necessary.

Diplo:

This is where I'm weakest.
Trade gold for stone with Toku
Beg all pleased/friendly AI for 80 gold each (after switching to theocracy)
Bribe Toku into war (paper, CS, Lit)
Do we want Archery and Feudalism from Toku? Longbows would help secure our cities between the Ottomans and Spanish.
Bribe Justinian into war? mainly to keep him away from Devils Gate (should I use Printing Press? the options are Astro and Edu)
If I focus spy points on Izzy, i should know our relative power ratings by the time I declare on Mehmed. What's a safe relative weighting to attempt bullying 5 gold to keep her out of the war for 10 turns? I don't think we want Izzy to join this war!

Deny any AI request to join a war, or to gift Edu. (would we gift Philo?) Give into anything else. (how about "stop trading with X"?)

Comments? I'll plan turns probably Saturday evening.

 

[Fluroscent]

If we can construct a trade deal with those that can research education that:
1. Can extract max value from selling education
2. Get the price in smaller bits (several lower techs, or non-max gold),
then we can check every turn whether the AI has begun researching education yet, since the price will drop then. (Not every turn is neccesary though, as long as they don't finish something else)

If we can do this, we don't have to panic yet. The AI usually researches a lot of other techs before education (banking, nationalism, divine right, gunpowder - most notably). None of them (IIRC) have any high priority techs that education unlocks.

We can get gold in trade/begging and since we will conquer a city, where units stationed will be cheaper (+conquest gold), and we still only need three scientists to do get the majority of beakers (since we get one from physics), and we can speed up the last by starving the GP farm.

Bottom line: Let's get close to completing physics, then, if no AI has made progress on education, we go for radio. Else, we take electricity.