SGOTM 15 - Kakumeika

[Walter_Wolf]

If you go into the city editting mode with world builder you can edit the wealth amount manually.

I was talking about hammers in sheeptown.
I might do it tomorrow, as it's the middle of the night here.

I thought I will have time to update the game and run a OCC space colony game tonight, but no deal .

 

[bcool]

We still need four XP for a gg. Are we going to hope for GG points from defensive attacks form Hammurabi (lower XP yield). Do we risk mobilizing our Axemen see if we can catch some troops west of Hammarabi's closest city on open ground? How soon do we expect Toku to be bribed back into war. I have not seen a situation when an AI we recently made peace with declared right after the treaty ended.

I think it would be foolish to seek this xp. I expect defensive xp in our territory is the way to go. (xp in our territory is doubled for GG by the way even without the Great wall)

 

[mabraham]

Don't worry about the four missing hammers, that's easy to fix when we next update the test game - four turns of railroad on the gold mine. Sheeptown builds are not critical this turn set.

 

[mabraham]

I checked out http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/apostolicpalace.php for planning purposes.

4. Open Borders
Prerequisite: The Resident or a Full Member currently does not have an Open Border treaty with one or more Full Members.
If passed, all Members now have Open Borders with each other.

The AP permits us to enforce open borders among all members (full and non-full) only if a full member lacks OB with another full member. Since we expect that we will be the only full member (i.e. in Hinduism) for quite some time, this is not useful. However if we time an espionage flip of someone to Hinduism in time for a vote, then we can get OB with all members, which will allow us to mass convert someone in time to become our voting ally for victory. For example, we might see Hinduism spread to some Toku/Hammu city, so we run an espionage mission there to flip them to Hinduism and full membership in time for a vote to get OB with some third party who lacks a holy city and already has a spontaneous spread of Hinduism, to permit us to spam missionaries to them to start to set them up as our voting ally.

7. Diplomatic Victory
Prerequisite: ALL Civs in the game must be Members. To be eligible for Victory the Civ must be a Full Member or AP owner. This proposal requires 75% of the vote and cannot be Defied. A Civ cannot win a Diplomatic Victory if it supplies at least 75% of the vote on its own.

In order to be eligible for the victory vote, a civ must own the AP or be a full member, so if our voting ally is a full member, then we need to have arranged for another full member who has more Hindu population (I think). That might be too hard to achieve, in which case we might need to use Hinduism to leverage our diplo with our voting ally up high enough that we can sustain flipping them out of Hinduism so there's only one team to vote for (us).

2. Trade Embargo against X
Prerequisite: One Full Member must be trading with X, and X must be a Non-Member.
If passed, all Members now have Closed Borders with X and all trade agreements with X not made within the last 10 turns are cancelled.

If we give (say) Toku a resource and he doesn't get Hinduism, then this will be available T105-6. It's hard to see how this could be useful for us, though.

 

[mabraham]

frogdude's wife came up with a cute idea last night over dinner - we might be able to get an AI with Hinduism to switch to Hinduism as part of a peace deal.

 

[mabraham]

If we don't like the road for Sneaky, then Eiffel should probably go and chop the granary for Crabsville. We can't get that done before the growth to size 2, but we have time to finish a little something for Sheeptown before heading off. Since the mine 2W of Sheeptown has a turn on it already, we could do

Eiffel
T90-2 mine 2W of Sheeptown
T93 a turn on some improvement 1N or 2N of gold
T94 move to marble
T95-7 chop 1E of Crabsville
T98 mine 1N of Crabsville
T99-101 chop 2N1E of Crabsville (completes granary with the food box 8/24)
T102- more stuff for Crabsville

If Fritz is still busy with DeerGold, and Hoover going to the island, this means from about T98 Karl will have to choose between improvements for Delhi, or the soon-to-be-growing SheepTown. I suspect the latter will be more urgent.

 

[mabraham]

If we'd rather gift Toku a city 3E of Cowtown with Hinduism by the end of this turn set, we could do

Cowtown
T90 spy
T91 grow to size 5, work Gfarm 2Gmine
T92 finish spy, start missionary
T94 grow to size 6, work Gfarm 2Gmine Gforest (need MP from Sheeptown), switch to settler
T96 3-pop whip settler with 24+ overflow, work Gfarm
T97 finish settler, overflow to missionary
T98 finish missionary, start temple, don't plant settler yet
T99 grow to size 4, work Gfarm Gmine, plant settler, spread Hinduism and immediately gift to Toku
T100 finish temple

This city will be a piece of cake to threaten during peace negotiations and will come under serious culture pressure from Sheeptown, so we might get to gift it repeatedly. Or does our existing culture on the tile prevent Toku from wanting to accept the city gift? Edit: tested with the test game - Mansa accepted the city and gave us +4 fair trade. It revolted a turn or two later, and rejoined our empire about 15 turns after the gift. Further edit: and a subsequent repeat gift of that city did not give a liberation diplo bonus

 

[bcool]

I like it. Maybe we will get lucky and will be able to bring Toku into war with us against Hammy and Shaka. (need to wait for several turns where Toku could be bribed into the war). And while at war he will open borders with us...

 

[mabraham]

Here's a revised PPP. Some entirely new content regarding planning possible conversion of Toku. Various revisions based on discussion. I propose to play at least the first half about 40 hours from this post. I estimate the AP build will trigger a pause for discussion at that time. If not, then I will play on per PPP.

Diplo
Even if we have war success (e.g. galley kill), don't bother getting peace with Hamm or Shaka without them giving us stuff, unless they show up and look really scary
Gift deer, stone and marble to Toku, which should lead to +1 shared resource in 17 turns. We don't need these resources, don't care if he saves about 6 hammers per wall, and we have another deer if we meet another AI who might benefit us trade-wise from it.
Be prepared to gift small techs to newly-met AIs for big immediate diplo benefit. Apparently a Theology gift is acceptable if nothing else will do. I assume an MC gift is not acceptable.
Consider accepting a demand Toku makes.

Tech
100% Maths, inserting a turn of research build from Sheeptown to get completed in 2 turns, then 0% on IW until AP completes (in case we get to trade for IW with distant AI), then 100% IW, then 100% Compass. Or what about Aesthetics-Lit after Maths?

AP
Resident election IBT95-6, vote for ourselves. First real vote will be IBT105-6. What might be available and how do we plan for it? If we've succeeded in gifting Toku that city, then we can force him to DOW Hammu or Shaka on the first AP vote, and maybe we can flip him to Hinduism to enforce OB with all members on the second AP vote. Once we have OB we spread Hinduism enough to lock him in Hinduism, and hope to get +4 fair trade, +2 shared war, +1 religion, +1 peace and +1 shared resources to offset the negative from border tension, and hopefully get him to Pleased (requires +5).

Espionage
Still on Toku, assuming he'll come again some day, or we might want to flip his religion

Cities
Delhi (corn, FP, copper throughout)
T90 Engineer 2GMine, Cook arrives as MP, continue AP
T91 grow to size 7, Engineer 3GMine (no tile changes in rest of set)
T92 Cook leaves, replacement arrives
T95 AP completes, start settler
T99 settler builds, heads for galley, library monastery starts

DeerGold (deer, gold throughout) - REVISED
T90 GFarm 2GMine
T91 grow to size 6, GFarm 3GMine (no tile changes in rest of set), axe from forest arrives as MP
T92 chop completes
T93 library completes, start monastery
T94 chop completes
T95 monastery completes, start temple
T96 temple completes, start archer (or maybe research if things look peaceful, or spy if Argo has died)
T98 archer completes, start archer
T99 archer completes, start spy

Sheeptown (sheep, gold throughout; add corn whenever it becomes available, and make GMine available to Cowtown when corn is being worked)
T91 build research to speed Maths up if necessary
T92 grow to size 3, GMine
T93/4 granary completes, start library

Cowtown (deer, cows throughout) - REVISED
T90 GFarm GMine
T91 grow to size 5, GFarm 2GMine
T92 spy completes, start temple
T94 grow to size 6, GFarm 2GMine GForest (unless Sheeptown's GMine is available) - might need an MP now
T96 temple completes, start monastery
T97 2-pop whip monastery
T98 monastery completes, start barracks
t100 barracks complete
T92 finish spy, start missionary
T94 grow to size 6, work Gfarm 2Gmine Gforest (unless Sheeptown's GMine is available; need MP from Sheeptown regardless), switch to settler
T96 3-pop whip settler with 24+ overflow, work Gfarmriver Gmine
T97 finish settler, overflow to missionary, move settler 1SE of CowTown, and definitely don't plant settler anywhere yet
T98 finish missionary, start temple, plant settler and spread Hinduism using Eiffel's new road, and immediately gift to Toku. If Hindu spread doesn't work, still gift to Toku on the theory that we'll soon have another chance to spread Hinduism after it revolts back to us. Toku gets no culture from Hinduism regardless, as it's not Toku's state religion. If Toku DOWs us start T98 (not sure if this is possible), then move to settle fish-marble or island according to what looks sensible.
T99 grow to size 4, work Gfarm Gmine
T100 finish temple

Pigsgems (pigs, gems throughout)
T90 GMine
T91 wb completes, start galley, GFarm
T92 2-pop whip galley, start trireme
T94 grow to size 3, GFarm
T96 grow to size 4, GFarm GMine
T99 grow to size 5, may need MP, start temple

Crabsville
T90 start granary, work quarry
T92 work crab nets
T98 grow to size 2, work crabs and quarry

Units
Name the spy Sneaky, head for Toku capital via Eiffel's new road and aim to get to the other side of Toku ASAP. If he's cornered by mountains somehow, scout the coastline for evidence of more land.

Name the trireme Argo, keep scouting Hammu's coast taking Alt-S notes on units seen. Seek combat where possible, but avoid combat if there's two galleys that might pick us off when wounded. Prefer to keep moving than loiter. Pillage seafood improvements where possible.

Name the scout workboat Magellan and send him counter-clockwise around the island, maximizing chances to see connecting land (so not cutting corners around peninsulas). If we find a barb galley, run for safety.

Name the galley Ferry and transport Cook to island to scout a city site. Return and wait for Hoover and settler out of Delhi. Scout in the opposite direction to Magellan if time permits before the next pickup. Avoid barb galley conflict, kiting as required to avoid losing units.

Cook to Delhi as MP, then leave T92 when relief arrives and move to load on Ferry and scout the island

Axes in Cowtown head to Delhi and DeerGold as MPs.

Axe 1SW of Sheeptown moves to Cowtown as MP

Newest axe on forest near DeerGold moves back as MP, and back to the forest as soon as MP relief and/or happiness permits, or some AI shows up with significant units.

Edit: Amundsen (the medic) moves to somewhere near Delhi that takes the same number of turns to get to Sheeptown or the forest choke point.

Other axes remain fortified

If we get a GG, move it to 1NW of Delhi and fortify until we can do something useful

Workers
Edit: If we get IW, adapt to mine BFC iron ASAP. No rush for non-BFC iron.
Eiffel - REVISED
T90 SE, mine and wake
T91 SE-SE, farm and wake
T92 NE, road on the hill 1SE of Sheeptown (for Sneaky to use)
T93 finish road in time for Sneaky to use
T94-7 mine
T98-101 SW, farm
T90-2 mine 2W of Sheeptown
T93-4 road 2W of Cowtown to accelerate the city gift
T95 move to marble
T96-8 chop 1E of Crabsville
T90 mine 1N of Crabsville
T100-102 chop 2N1E of Crabsville (completes granary with the food box 10/24)
T103- more stuff for Crabsville

Fritz - REVISED (skipping completing second western farm in favour of faster chops for faster library and AP hammer buildings; note that road is being built on the eastern side of the river, which is 50% less useful for travel to the choke point from the south, but much more useful for travel from DeerGold)
T90-2 chop 1W of DeerGold
T93-4 chop 1S of DeerGold
T95-6 road 1W of DeerGold
T97 move to GForest hill 1S2E of DeerGold
T98-100 chop GForest hill

Hoover
T90-2 chop 2N of Delhi
T93 chop 1S1E of Delhi
T94 chop 1S1W of Delhi
T95-7 farm 1N of Delhi
T98 cottage 1N1E of Delhi
T99- move with settler to galley

Karl
T90 cottage 1N1E of Delhi
T91-3 chop 1N2E of Delhi
T94-5 road cows (since health will soon become an issue for larger cities without forests, and we might want the trade value, and this is likely the last convenient chance)
T96-7 road 1N2E of Delhi
T98-9 cottage 1N1E of Delhi, or head for SheepTown if that looks more pressing

Every turn
check if some AI will give us peace with them giving us some stuff
look for AI culture on globe view
save game
record corn tile culture
check tile micro, including which city gets shared tiles
kill Hammu or Shaka scouts if they appear
kill Hammu or Shaka boats
turn on show AI moves so stuff gets seen
watch for AI build-up via power ratios
laugh at Toku build-up
check if horses seen, so a spear is needed for NW front, and build same in DeerGold
look for Toku having Construction (easy once we have Maths)

Stopping points
AP completes, if there's new AI contacts so that we can discuss how best to manage the diplo
AP is lost
new contact with AI from spy, boats or them finding us
don't bother stopping if a barb galley appears somewhere, but consider whipping the next trireme to cope with it

 

[mabraham]

Please let me know if you think I could improve this summary of how we played the game. bc, please edit this into your post on the front page.

T50-60 WastinTime was concerned Toku was coming for us, but since there was no WHEOOHRN fist, we assured him we were OK. How wrong we were to be... We put a bunch of hammers into stone-fueled Great Wall for the fail gold. Worked towards T63 Oracle in SheepTown. Gifted some health resources to AIs to try to keep them happier (eventually). We worked out Toku will give OB at Pleased when he is +5. With Stonehenge, DanF worked out that AI_STRATEGY_DAGGER will not be possible for Toku. We started to work out that it was not efficient to try to use GScientists to bulb towards Optics, given the constraint of needing to get the AP before that. T53 settled SheepTown. T55 discovered PH. T56 someone completed TGW (130 fail gold for us). T58 Judaism founded somewhere. T59 Pottery discovered.

T60-70 Decided not to get more than four workers for the moment. We worked out not to bother trying to organize for maximum beaker overflow onto Writing, because the bug with beaker overflow is fixed. Toku built a library in Osaka to slow down our culture-capture of the corn Got Oracle->MC T63. Settled CowTown about T61. T64 built Kashi Vishwanath in Delhi after significant debate on its merits. In the T62 save finally DanF noticed that Toku is WHEOOHRN on the diplo screen and there is no fist icon for him on the BUFFY scoreboard... Retrospectively we found he's been in that mode since T44, but without border pressure at that time, we didn't think we were the target. However, we added an axe in SheepTown, and started banking gold for possible upgrades. T68 Toku stack spotted on our border 2 axe 3 spear 1 archer. Panic axe-whipping time, we're defended by four warriors only. DanF identifies probable bug in BUFFY where the first icon is controlled by a lookup via player.getID rather than team.getID, and with an AI team of two players this is broken. Apparently nobody noticed this in SGOTM14. Scrambled a bunch of axes. T69 Toku DOWs and bribes in Hammu. His stack crosses the river and SheepTown looks in trouble. Got Fishing and Sailing somewhere in this set or next.

T70-80 We explored baiting AI stacks, and resolved to do so with a scout. We explored whether the Toku stack was actually one stack or not, and whether he would move to the gold hill tile before attacking (probably yes, when we have four axes on defence in Sheeptown), and then whether he would attack a bait scout to the SW (yes). STW did some extensive testing of the war baiting scenario, which if successful will let us get to 40% culture defence before Toku attacks us. We resolved to defend a forested chokepoint with Woodsman I axes against Hammu. Scout bait worked. T74 Toku attacked SheepTown with 5 units and lost all 5! We healed and moved on Osaka, but he organized too much defence, so we retreated with no losses. Toku continues to build up again.

T80-90 Much debate on the relative merits of fast Pyramids or fast AP, trying to get maximum fail gold from a side city building the Pyramids if we delay them until after the AP. Resolved to build AP first, with various misgivings. DanF rediscovers that AI_STRATEGY_DAGGER is possible for Toku after all :-( However he also works out that with Aggressive AI enabled, and lots of war losses, if we position units to threaten more cities than he is threatening of ours, that Toku might well gift us techs to end the war. Resolved to get Walls in SheepTown to increase our survival rate in SheepTown to try to maximise this possibility. T81 met Shakagawa. Also Christianity founded somewhere, so the AP is under threat. T82 Toku willing to talk. T83 distant AI steals Pyramids, so we get 493 fail gold from our four(!) partial builds. T84 done Writing. T85 Toku moves another stack 1S of SheepTown. T86 Toku stack to gold tile. T87 Toku loses four axes and four spears on our pile of 7 axes behind walls. T86 GPro pops. DanF notices that with a few more axe builds we can get to 5/6 of Toku's power which will make his calculation of his EndWar value much more favourable to us - we could get more than Alphabet from it. T87 GPro bulbs Theol, and post-Maths chopping T95 AP plan is set in motion. T88 we work out that with our three axes and our last warrior upgrade we can just sneak over the 5/6 threshold and we get Archery plus Alpha (less one turn of beakers) from Toku in return for peace. Total war losses for us: one scout! Not bad for a situation where we had only a turn or two's notice that we were the AI target and had only four warriors! T89 Hammu bribes in Shaka. Started running an engineer to hope for a ~45% GEngineer ~T109.

 

[bcool]

thanks mabraham for the summary. I editted into the first post and updated the grand strategy to reflect our slight change of skipping currency.

The PPP looks very nice.

 

[bcool]

Perhaps we don't need 7 axes in sheepgold. Maybe we can send one of them to Delhi (or a more centrally located tile) so it is in a better position to reinforce DeerGold if needed

 

[mabraham]

Perhaps we don't need 7 axes in sheepgold. Maybe we can send one of them to Delhi so it is in a better position to reinforce DeerGold if needed

Sure. Will send the medic (Amundsen) to a tile that is an equal number of travel turns from SheepTown and the forest choke point.

 

[mabraham]

If we get IW at some point, then organize to mine it if in a BFC, but if it's not in a BFC, hook it up whenever convenient, since we don't need it yet.

 

[shulec]

T98 finish missionary, start temple, plant settler and spread Hinduism using Eiffel's new road, and immediately gift to Toku. If Hindu spread doesn't work, still gift to Toku on the theory that we'll soon have another chance to spread Hinduism after it revolts back to us. Toku gets no culture from Hinduism regardless, as it's not Toku's state religion.

Someone please set me straight on this... I don't have time to test it. If we give Toku a city, I don't think it will flip back to us. I say this based on the two city gifts we made in SGOTM 14. They went in to civil revolt, but never flipped back to us.

The chance of Hinduism fail is very low, so this should be a non-issue. But if the missionary fails, I recommend we get another one ASAP and delay the gift while building research.

 

[bcool]

Someone please set me straight on this... I don't have time to test it. If we give Toku a city, I don't think it will flip back to us. I say this based on the two city gifts we made in SGOTM 14. They went in to civil revolt, but never flipped back to us.

The chance of Hinduism fail is very low, so this should be a non-issue. But if the missionary fails, I recommend we get another one ASAP and delay the gift while building research.

This sgotm is different because the city flipping after conquest option is checked. So a city gift is like a conquered city, so ordinarily would never flip back but in this game it will.

If a city has no religion there is 0% chance of failure to spread the religion.

 

[mabraham]

Someone please set me straight on this... I don't have time to test it. If we give Toku a city, I don't think it will flip back to us. I say this based on the two city gifts we made in SGOTM 14. They went in to civil revolt, but never flipped back to us.

I reported a test in #1627. I don't know why we didn't observe that in the last SGOTM. I can't see anything in the conditions that applies, unless "City flip after conquest" in this SGOTM applies to cities that changed hands other than by conquest.

The chance of Hinduism fail is very low, so this should be a non-issue. But if the missionary fails, I recommend we get another one ASAP and delay the gift while building research.

Since this version of the PPP has a road to the city, there's a trade route and some chance of a random spread, so I don't greatly mind retaining the city if Hinduism fails to spread. It does cost us something like 5-7 per turn in increased maintenance across all our cities, however, so given that Toku will be able to put in no culture, and may not even be able to get anti-revolt MP units to the tile, I think waiting for it to flip back before making it Hindu might be a lesser evil.

 

[bcool]

I tested religion spreading with no religion in the city... 106 successes out of 106 attempts. I think it is safe to assume it is 100%.

 

[mabraham]

I tested religion spreading with no religion in the city... 106 successes out of 106 attempts. I think it is safe to assume it is 100%.

In anybody else's hands but mine...

 

[DanF5771]

Well done Walter_Wolf.

Wow that was really close! In my calculations I missed the growth of CowTown, but that additional population point gave us the necessary 1000 Soldiers to climb above the threshold!

~~~~

I believe Toku now has Construction for Catapults. The Catapults don't show up in the 'Strategic Advantages' tab of the Military Adivisor screen, but Construction disappeared from his 'can research' column.

There is another interesting fact for Shaka-Toku: he appears to be land-locked, because according to F5 we have Galleys and he does not - he probably can't build them in spite of knowing Sailing due to the lack of coastal cities.

Let's see what Argo can discover, but I'm afraid we'll find a land layout similar to the Kyoto area (no water passage to the north?). Shaka met us by Scout and not WB. Fog gazing tells us, there is a very long north-south peak ridge west of Hammu's lands.

Are we confined to some peak-encircled lake district? We might have to break through one of the capitals (Kyoto, Babylon) to get our Caravels to the rest of the AIs via Fort-Channels.