SGOTM 16 - Fifth Element

[Folket]

Brennus will soon be friendly with us. Unless random personalities is checked we should be safe.

I think we should drop three settler in the next few turns. two on the island and the clam/iron city west of uzbek.

I did not mean that we should beeline for education. Philosophy and literature seems like they will be helpful.

We could get Ramesses to friendly if we convert to Buddhism. But that will put us on the warpath with Brennus. It would be nice to have some courthouses so that we can see Brennus power ratings.

Nope I did the numbers and we can keep Brennus at pleased if we convert to Buddhism. If we happen to get Buddhism soon it might very well be worth it. It will give us quite some techs in trade.

 

[Folket]

Both those things assumes that we continue with organized religion.

 

[BLubmuz]

A conversion to Buddhism is very difficult: first, we don't have any city with that religion, second we need to have a good number of cities with it. Until Calendar we have problems of happiness. Last, we don't even have Meditation, which would be nice to build some monastery.

Then, i don't think we can afford a Renaissance war and be competitive. IMO we need maces and cats soon.

 

[Folket]

I think the most important aspect of beeing competative is going to be timing of the two LCs with the VCs.

Once Brennus is friendly can we beg him for archery?

 

[Shaandore]

Then, i don't think we can afford a Renaissance war and be competitive. IMO we need maces and cats soon.

I looked at the save. I see 8 strong cities, and 5 more sites that should be settled. (Yes, we should settle the one between Marseilles and Tours) With 13 cities, we could do an easy war with any unit with our tech advantage. I think that this is the best way now. Doing a war now would just slow us down.
Looking at the map, Brennus will have approximately 10 cities, and Ramesses about 8 on this landmass, so it shouldn't be a problem to take them down in a fast cuir war using 13 cities.

I suggest Meditation->Philo for next techs. We get a religion, which could be useful later for a shrine, we get more time until lib to get a very good tech out of it, and we get pacifism, so we can pop some GScientist to bulb our way to Edu and later lib, or whatever is on our path.

When expanding, we should chop some courthouses, mainly in the cities that are a far from Paris. The maintenance cost in those will exceed 6 gpt. (We should start with our new barb cities...)

We need more workers for those jungles and the new cities, Orleans should start one this turn. It will also prevent Orleans from growing into unhappiness.

Looking at the pace Brennus is teching, it is likely that we can tech to Edu, then guilds and run him over with knights before he techs to engineering. Then we could upgrade the knights to cuirs and finish Rammy off. Brennus doesn't even have alpha yet. I used to think that the AI will do a better job, that is why I was afraid of losing the opportunity for the knights war. But Brennus just sucks

 

[ZPV]

Paper is just a placeholder tech. I have no intention of actually researching it now.

I think I prefer Medi-Philo next too. That will more than pay for itself, in speeding up Education. In that case I will prepare Tours to generate us a great merchant quickly, rather than another GS.

Aesthetics->Literature has slightly smaller benefits, conflicting with the above, so I don't think they are worth it.
If we were in a position to take Music first and build the Mausoleum of Mausollos, then I'd suggest using the Great Artist to start a golden age, to make the spell in pacifism more powerful and save the two turns in anarchy. I don't think that will be possible though.

Machinery brings no benefit except maces. Not a priority.

I really hope we can trade for Calendar soon. Otherwise I'll have to shuffle units to provide military police for Paris.

New cities? We still need to be careful about which ones we commit to. It's important to get our production cities up and running, but the others are a wash. I'm happy to build the clam+iron one and the offshore 2-food site.
The one between Marseilles and Tours must wait until after Education - Paris needs those forests.

Uzbek only needs one unit. There is no attack coming.

 

[Folket]

I think the fish site on the island should be fine. It looks like there will be 3-4 FPs there. We will not defend against Brennus as he is pleased and will continue so as long as we are Hindu. Ramesses could attack us at any moment. but it will a painfully long march for him. I do not see how Uzbek need extra units.

If we only could tell what Brennus was researching right now.

What do we need the great merchant for?

 

[ZPV]

What do we need the great merchant for?

The GM will give us 1500 gold if Paris is size 14 when we carry out a trade mission in Thebes. That's a huge boost when we've just built Oxford and have research multipliers to put that gold through.
(1300 for sizes 11-13, 1700 for size 16-18, etc)

 

[BLubmuz]

ZPV, please correct me if i'm wrong:
your plan is
research Med-Philo (and maybe found Tao) right now, revolt to Pacifism to speed the GE from Lyons, then pop a GS to LB part of Edu, then a GM for a Trade Mission to Thebes.

Maybe it would be better to change from Slavery to Caste and have the GS first, then the GE (which will be used much later and will cost maintenance) and the GM.

I don't remember how many cities switch to 1 turn for any civic (actually 3 civics in 2 turns)

Then, paper - Edu or else?

 

[ZPV]

ZPV, please correct me if i'm wrong:
your plan is
research Med-Philo (and maybe found Tao) right now, revolt to Pacifism to speed the GE from Lyons, then pop a GS to LB part of Edu, then a GM for a Trade Mission to Thebes.

Maybe it would be better to change from Slavery to Caste and have the GS first, then the GE (which will be used much later and will cost maintenance) and the GM.

I don't remember how many cities switch to 1 turn for any civic (actually 3 civics in 2 turns)

Then, paper - Edu or else?

I'm not sure yet if the revolt to Pacifism should be immediate - it might be better to whip to make sure we have 6 libraries before the revolt.

The GE absolutely must come first. We can only run one engineer, and if we don't get it now, we never will (or at least not until we can open up more engineer slots which is a long way in the future).
I'm not sure yet which of the GS and GM should then pop next. They will happen in quick succession since we should run 5 or more specialists to get the last one quickly, before revolting back to OR+Slavery.
Those are the uses for the GS and GM I envision.

What else can slot in before Paper->Education? Possibly Calendar. The happiness is too important to ignore if we can't trade for it. Pretty much everything else should wait until we have Oxford multipliers.

Having 13 cities (dependent on settings) makes the revolt act like there's an extra civic being changed. 25 makes it act like two extra civics, etc.
So long as we have 12 cities or fewer it'll be fine.
(So instead of 1-2 in 1 turn, 3-4 in 2 turns, 5 civics in 3 turns, with 13 cities it'll be
1 in 1 turn, 2-3 in 2 turns, 4-5 in 3 turns, etc).

 

[BLubmuz]

Your plan is completely different from anything i've ever done.
But it can probably work. In any case, when i used a strategy different from the one i'm used to (but just slightly that time) FE won a Bronze. Let's see how your plan can work.

It was around the middle ages, or the late classical, the timeframe which i know i'm weak. So, i must trust you. If we won a medal, the merit will be mostly yours. If we arrive to the usual middle-of-the-pack...

Now, make us see a detailed PPP for the next 15 turns or so, decide if play in a row or in 2 frames and let's move this on.

 

[Folket]

Yes, I guess this 20 turns had a time table to be finished on Sunday if we do not want to eat up our margin.

 

[ZPV]

PPP

I'll play until the Great Engineer pops.

Tech:
Meditation-Philosophy-(Calendar if we can't trade for it)->>>Paper-Education.
------------------
Oxford planning:
Universities in Paris, Orleans, Lyons, Rheims, Tours, and Marseilles.
(A 4-pop whip with Org Rel and a Forge provides 180 of the 200 hammers needed, so they just need libraries and 8 citizens).
------------------
Great Person planning:
Assume that it'll take 10 turns to research to Philosophy. Revolt immediately to Pacifism+Caste System.
Then it'll be 6 more turns to pop the GE from Lyons. In that time, make sure Rheims and Tours get as close to 200GPP as possible.
Then they'll pop their GM and GS in quick succession - 3 or 4 turns each. If we're close to having enough to complete Education, the GS will then come next. Otherwise, the GM since it needs to travel.
------------------
City Management:

Paris:
Monastery-Monastery-Wealth until Education
Keep growing, and find a way to provide military police.

Orleans:
Worker-Hindu Temple-Library

Lyons:
(Settler)-Settler-Work Boat (for a new city)-Library

Tours:
Lighthouse-Library-Wealth
Just grow until Pacifism+Caste, then run a lot of merchants.

Marseilles:
(Forge)-Library-Wealth or Barracks, depending on how badly we need the gold.

New cities:
Granaries first. Then Forges.
------------------
Worker tasks:
These all need to be done
> Prechop Paris-north forests.
> Farm to Rheims
> Improve all the food at Apache - pasture the pig, farm the FPs.
> Chop the jungled resources at Uzbek
> Finish the road to Uzbek
> Prechop some forests at Orleans. They will build us a wonder or two, but I'm not sure which yet.
> Send a worker with the settler for the island.

I need to figure out how to move workers to the SW without losing too many turns.
------------------
Diplomacy:
We might briefly see Brennus at Friendly. If he has a tech to trade, the first choice of things to give him is Alphabet+Meditation. If that doesn't work, then probably CoL is next on the list (withholding Monarchy and Metal Casting).
------------------
Unit moves:
The southern warrior will move back to scout Brennus's land. If there's a barb city, send a sword to milk some XP.
A sword will move to the big island. Then the galley will ferry over a worker and settler. The work boat will return, to improve the fish.
I'll settle on the dotmapped spot ingame unless I see something interesting, in which case I'll stop and upload a screenshot.

 

[BLubmuz]

Seems a good plan to me (according to this usual strategy).

Just this: if you plan to prechop a lot of forets, it can be worth road them first. You lose only 1 worker turn by roading: 1 arrive, 2 road =3 if not road 1 arrive, 1 arrive again = 2.

 

[Folket]

I think we should build more temples, we will need them anyhow once we start building catherdrals.

 

[Shaandore]

I like this plan. It would be nice to build some more things though:
- 1 or 2 more workers. The faster we chop the jungles and improve the new cities, the better. We also have some farm chaining to do, and chopping... our worker force seems weak now. Maybe Marseilles could squeeze in a worker after the forge? Or Orleans could build two instead of one.
- Courthouses. In the newly conquered cities, the maintenance is already more than 5 gpt. We should consider a courthouse where it can be chopped or easily built/whipped and the maintenance is more than 5 gpt.
- It will probably end up in the next turnset, but don't forget to set research to 0% as soon as we get Education.

 

[BLubmuz]

I think we should build more temples, we will need them anyhow once we start building catherdrals.

I suppose you missed it, but we'll go for Space. Unless i messed something

 

[Shaandore]

I suppose you missed it, but we'll go for Space. Unless i messed something

I'm not sure about that. I still think that by not going for space, we get 5 turns minimum on the end date.

 

[ZPV]

Seems a good plan to me (according to this usual strategy).

Just this: if you plan to prechop a lot of forets, it can be worth road them first. You lose only 1 worker turn by roading: 1 arrive, 2 road =3 if not road 1 arrive, 1 arrive again = 2.

ok, I'll add some roads on pre-chopped forests. Not necessarily on all of them, but I'll work something out to make movement on them easier.

I think we should build more temples, we will need them anyhow once we start building catherdrals.

I guess I should address somewhat where our culture is going to come from, for the legendary cities.

Firstly, we'll do some great person management. We'll make sure to grow some of our cities (say 8 to 10 of them) to sizes 25+, and then each of them will starve out (i.e. run all 25 citizens as artists) a Great Artist at the end (taking advantage of pacifism+golden age).

We'll need temples for a few cathedrals, but for the time being they are expensive and we need other stuff too. The cathedrals start to have an effect once the cities generate some culture - focusing on improving base culture is more important.

Where does the base culture come from? Some from specialists, some from buildings, and some from corporations. Sushi is a start, and switching to creative constructions and civilized jewellers in the legendary cities are options if we have the right great people at the right time. (However, Mining Inc is too powerful to skip, to save our first GE for Creative Cons).

I like this plan. It would be nice to build some more things though:
- 1 or 2 more workers. The faster we chop the jungles and improve the new cities, the better. We also have some farm chaining to do, and chopping... our worker force seems weak now. Maybe Marseilles could squeeze in a worker after the forge? Or Orleans could build two instead of one.
- Courthouses. In the newly conquered cities, the maintenance is already more than 5 gpt. We should consider a courthouse where it can be chopped or easily built/whipped and the maintenance is more than 5 gpt.
- It will probably end up in the next turnset, but don't forget to set research to 0% as soon as we get Education.

I'll try and fit a couple more workers in. Lyons after the work boat makes sense.
Courthouses are probably third on the list for distant new cities, after granaries and forges.
Yes, 0% after Education, until Oxford is built, but that will be in the next turnset.

Edit: one more thing - During the pacifism spell, I might run a priest in Orleans, to run up the GPP there a bit. That way we'll be able to pop a Great Prophet if we need one.

 

[BLubmuz]

I'm not sure about that. I still think that by not going for space, we get 5 turns minimum on the end date.

I think that we lose nothing. To grow 3 cities to legendary is almost impossible without the culture slider well up and this does not pair well with the enornous research we need to arrive quickly to FT 1.

I doubt we can have 3 LCs only by GA bombs (not only, obviously). Once this game is finished i'll try the other option, just to see what can happen.