SGOTM 16 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Mitchum]

I just ran a massive diplomacy test to see what we could get for plus mods and here are my findings:

1. The +4 "Fair Trade" bonus will be easy, as expected. With all of the techs we'll be trading, gifting and selling, this is a given for our chosen Friendly AI.
   
   
2. The +1 "Years of Peace" bonus kicked in on T60. We already have this in our game with everyone but Brennus. I did not see when it changed to +2...
   
   
3. The "Shared Civic" bonus started out at +1 on T0 and then added +1 every ten turns until the max. Qin = +6, Ram = +5, Ham = +5, Bren = +4 (I did not test with Sal but we're not likely to run Theocracy in the short term anyway).
   
   
4. The "Open Borders" went to +1 in 25 turns and +2 in 50 turns.
   
   
5. The "Shared Resource" bonus goes to +1 in 50 resource/turns. If trading 2 resources, it goes to +1 25 turns and +2 in 50 turns. If trading 3 resources, it goes to +1 in 17 turns and +2 in 34 turns. It caps at +2. It doesn't matter if the trade is even (corn for rice), lopsided (horse for wheat) or free (horse for free).
   
   
6. The "Traded with Worst Enemy" in my example went from -4 to -3 in 15 turns, -3 to -2 in 7 more turns, from -2 to -1 in 16 more turns. This was consistent with the two AI that were worst enemies of each other. I did not continue to make tech trades, but I kept my OB and resource trades with each. With one AI, I let it drop to -1 and then gave a tech to his worst enemy and it jumped right back to -4. -4 seems to be the cap. This penalty stayed even once the worst enemy status went away.
   
   
7. Hammy came to me for help (+1) once and to stop trading with is enemy (-1) once, which lasted until the end of my test. Sal came to me once to stop trading (-1) which went away after 9 turns. Brennus came to me once to stop trade (-1) which lasted until the end of my test.

So, what does this mean? We'll, we start with +5 with Sal, Qin and Hammy (+1 Peace and +4 Trade). We'll likely have the -4 Trade with Sal for a LONG time, so let's just deal with it. So, we have a base of Qin (+5), Hammy (+5) and Sal (+1). This assumes that we liberally trade with these three AI.

If we OB with all three (we may need to give Sal enough techs to get the +4 trade before he'll do it), we'll get +1 in T+25 and +2 in T+50.

Let's say we get the GArt, run a GA, bulb part of Astro and get CS in 8 turns (possible if things go our way), then we'll get a +1 Shared Civic bonus with Qin and Hammy on T+8, T+18, T+28 and T+38.

Where does this leave us?

Qin -> +5 (T0 – peace + trade) -> +6 (T+8 - civic), +7 (T+18 - civic), +8 (T+25 - OB), +9 (T+28 - civic), +10 (T+38 - civic), +11 (T+48 – civic), +12 (T+50 – OB), +13 (T+58 – civic)

Hammy -> +5 (T0 – peace + trade) -> +6 (T+8 - civic), +7 (T+18 - civic), +8 (T+25 - OB), +9 (T+28 - civic), +10 (T+38 - civic), +11 (T+48 – civic), +12 (T+50 – OB)

Sal -> +1 (T0 – peace + trade – enemy), +2 (T+25 – OB), +3 (T+50 – OB)

This assumes that we don’t accept or refuse any demands/requests, no resource trades, and no liberating cities.

It’s clear that getting Sal to Friendly is going to be nearly impossible for quite some time, even if he drops his worst enemy status for Hammy. Plus, we get no Shared Civic bonus with him unless we want to switch out of OR and into Theocracy (need Theology first). Even with that, it will take a LONG time. So, in the short term, I suggest that we forget about trying to please Sal at the expense of continuing to trade with Hammy. Hammy is a powerhouse and we want him as our Friend, right?

So, if Sal asks us to stop trading with Hammy, I suggest that we refuse. If any of them ask for gold or a tech, we give it to them.

But, waiting until T38 to T50 to get them to Friendly is just toooo long. So, I think Dhoom’s Liberating Cities idea has a lot of merit. I tested it out. All we have to do is found an ice-ball city near an AI’s culture and he’ll take it (+1). Find two such cities and we get +3. This allows us to get to Friendly around T25, assuming we can learn Astro, ship settlers to the other continent, find a place to settle them, and Liberate them.

I don’t think we’ll find a spot for 12 such cities, but I do think it will be quite easy to find one or two per civ. Think about how often the poles go untouched. Think about how late in the game you’ve seen some open land in the middle of a continent due to barb cities (we have such a case on our continent).

I think we should go for a combination of Shared Civic (i.e. Civil Service -> Bureaucracy) and Liberating cities to get them to Friendly status as soon as possible. At that point, I expect our tech rate to nearly triple!!

 

[Jastrow]

I agree with everything, but would try to time liberating the cities so that we give them on as close as possible to the turn they will trip the AI to friendly. We should not build them before we need them.

 

[Mitchum]

I agree with everything, but would try to time liberating the cities so that we give them on as close as possible to the turn they will trip the AI to friendly. We should not build them before we need them.

The risk of not building them soon enough is that we may not have enough spots to place the cities. If the settlers just sit on the spot waiting for the right turn, we pay maintenance and supply for them. What I'm thinking is that we slow build them to within one turn of completetion. This slow build process can happen any time between now and the time we have Civil Service and can start building macemen. They can sit in the build queues and get completed on a turn or two before Astro (however long it takes them to get to the city that will be whipping the galleon).

@mscellaneous

I know that you're working on the PPP for the next 3 turns until we have Music. In parallel, I'll work on the high-level plan that I think we're all agreeing on. It will include your 3-turn Music PPP and go all the way out until Astro + CS. So your PPP shouldn't alter what I'm doing and vice versa. I don't want you to think that I'm working on a PPP that will compete with what you're doing.

 

[Jastrow]

Yes, that seems reasonble. Also, by then, we may have a better view already of where we want to put them, and how many we need, depending on what our caravels continue to reveal.

 

[cas]

...Sorry, cas. You won't get to see the blood bath that I promised you would work (i.e. swords/cats vs. archers). For fun, if you're intererested, you and I could take it offline once the game is over. We could pick up this save, forget about Civil Service, and see how far our swords could take us. Now that Macemen are on the table, there will still be a bloodbath, but the river will be flowing the other way...

I'll assume you mean swords/cats/xbow against duns/archers/axe/Gwarriors.

Too bad. I wanted to see war weariness + whipping unhappiness stagnate your war machine / economy while you lost a minimum of 4-5 units against each Brennus city in a slow-plodding war.

maces/cats should work if you target a path to Brennus' heartland to take his capital plus a couple other developed cities that contribute to his economy. Ask for gold/tech or a small strategic city for 10t of peace. Resupply and repeat as necessary. May not be useful to take ALL his cities in one swoop depending on the economic impact. Buddhist holy city would be nice to have.

cas

 

[Dhoomstriker]

By the way, just to be clear, I am not against going to war with Brennus.

I normally run my wars differently, with more Bombarding, but I admit that Brennus loves his City Walls more than most AIs, so special circumstances apply here. As long as we go in with "more than enough Cats" when we approach a City (i.e. if we plan to suicide 2 or 3 Cats, I'd prefer to have 4 or 5 in our stack), then I'll be okay without Bombarding. I would like to have a couple of extra Cats on hand since we'd use them on the next City anyway (so they won't be wasted), but this way we have some extra insurance in case we find that 2 or 3 Cats weren't enough against a particular City. For example, we may find that Brennus moved his stack into a City, and with 8 units inside of there, our planned 2 or 3 Cats might not do enough Collateral Damage, since the Collateral Damage would be spread out. Then, we'd have a couple of extra Cats to make sure that our Maces would still have decent odds for most of the fights.

Note that against Brennus' capital, we may want to Bombard for a little bit, since its expanded Culture will mean that Bibracte (his capital) will have more than a 50% Defensive Bonus. Unfortunately, his likely-to-exist Dun's existence will mean that we will still only be able to take off 4% City Defences per Catapult per turn (I'm not 100% sure about that number, but it's basically half the amount that you can Bombard if no Dun exists), so maybe 1 or 2 turns of Bombarding for Bibracte should be part of our plan, if the City is not lightly defended when we arrive, in which case we'd just try and take it without Bombarding before Brennus had a chance to reinforce the City.


I am even tempted to bribe Ramesses into war with Brennus as soon as their 10-turn Peace Treaty expires. I'm not sure when that will happen, and whether we'll need to wait until we get Music before Ramesses would accept the bribe, but if we can bribe him before Brennus captures Sugar Barb City, perhaps one or both of Brennus' visible stacks will move toward Ramesses instead.

 

[Mitchum]

Plan A: We get the Great Artist from Music

1. We go for Music in 3 turns by hiring scientists and/or building Research. Gift/sell Music to Ramesses so that he can build us the Sistine Chapel.

2. Run a Golden Age in T+3. Revolt to Caste System and Heredity Rule.

3. Get a GS from Pigs (GP Farm) in T+5 and bulb into Astro.

4. Tech Civil Service on T+6 or later, but get it ASAP (should be T+7). Gift/sell CS to both Hammy, Qin and Sal.

5. Revolt to Slavery and Bureaucracy as soon as we can (T+8?). If Qin or Hammy are not in CS yet, use a tech to bribe them into it.

6. Self-tech the rest of Astronomy.

NOTE: We could try to get two GS to double bulb Astro, but based on ingentingg’s testing, that would take until T+13. Should be delay CS and macemen by 6 turns? Double bulbing Astro gets it in T+12. By T+7, we’ll be out of gold if we single-bulb Astro, so it will likely take us about 10 turns to research the other part of Astro (could be quicker if we get fail gold or decent gold for selling techs). That would give us Astro in 7 + 10 = 17. So the options appear to be:

Single bulb: CS in T+7 and Astro in T+17
Double bulb: CS in T+13 and Astro in T+12

Plan B: Ramesses gets the Great Artist from Music

1. Abandon research on Music.

2. Self-tech half of Astronomy. Use Pig’s GS to complete it T+13.

3. Research Civil Service to one turn from completion, to be completed on T+14 or as soon as possible.

NOTE: This plan is only one turn worse than the Double bulb plan above, assuming we can actually research CS by T+14.

Plan C: Hammy gets the Great Artist from Music

1. We finish Music and gift it to Ramesses. The Sistine Chapel could be a make/or break wonder for our Cultural victory, so we really want it…

2. Same as Plan B above.

Diplomacy

1. Open Borders with Sal, Hammy and Qin on T0. Sal won’t open borders, so we need to gift him CoL on T0, which will hopefully get him up to Cautious (he is currently Annoyed). Do this before OB with Hammy, which could piss Sal off even more.

2. If Saladin asks us to stop trading with his Worst Enemy, we refuse his Demand/Request

3. If Sal, Hammy, Qin or Ramesses demands/requests a tech or Gold, we give it to said AI

4. If SB asks for a tech, we give it to him. If he asks for gold, say no. Gold is more precious than a +1 with SB.

5. If Brennus asks us for anything, we refuse. We do NOT want an enforced 10-turns of Peace.

6. On the turn that someone learns Music, sell Currency to Hammy.

City Builds and Management

1. No whipping in any cities as we’ll hopefully be in a Golden Age in T+3.

2. Cities with high hammers (either through mines or the whip) should build barracks.

3. Cities with lower hammers without barracks should build Cats (we’ll be suiciding them and a promotion makes very little difference. It would be good to plan to have 6 to 8 cats for the initial SOD.

4. After completing the above, cities can build critical infa (i.e. granaries, forges, LH, CH, etc.) which will be different for each city or xbows (I think we can use 1 or 2 Combat xbows as stack defenders to keep our macemen healthy and free to promote up the City Raider or Combat lines when the time comes)

5. Start slow-building 4 settlers somewhere (2 for Hammy and 2 for Qin) to within 1 turn of completion.

6. Once CS is done, we crank out as many macemen as we can. We can whip if we’re not in a Golden Age or if the citizen isn’t producing much in the GA.

7. DeerHorse will not whip but will grow into its last mine. It will stop building The Great Library and will build a Barracks -> Military

8. Whip two Galleons once we learn Astro. Somewhere in the West would be best as that’s closest to Qin and Hammy.

Sugar

We'll try our best to get to Sugar Barb City ahead of Brennus, but if he captures it, we'll retreat our Archers and Chariots to Wine City's area

Workers:

One worker at DeerHorse can finish the GH Mine and then build farms on Oracle City’s FP squares.

The other worker at DeerHorse can help hook up silk/incense and build the road network.

The two workers near the silk/incense will both plantation the silk, then partially Farm the Flood Plains square 1E of the incense, then improve the incense and then build roads.

The workers near Gems will improve the pig. After that, one can optionally build mines there and the other can build roads.

The worker that was just whipped from HE city can farm the wheat and then build PH mines.

I’m not sure that we need more workers, but if so, we’d need concrete plans for them…


Open Items

Should be build an explorer and pick him up with our east coast caravel (the one near SB)? That would allow us to scout out locations for Liberating cities.

Do we need more workers?

In Plan A, should we single our double-bulb Astro?

EDIT: Give up on GLib or go for it?

Others?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Thanks for putting that plan together, Mitchum! Hopefully, it will help mscellaneous out in putting together his PPP.


Poisoned Wells for Poisoned Relationships

Diplomacy

Sounds good. To this list, I would add:
Sell Code of Laws to Sitting Bull on T0.

If he manages to found Taoism, we'll be sitting prettier for getting 3 Holy Cities than if, say, Qin founds it.

Also, it would be nice if Sitting Bull built some Courthouses and used the Espionage to Poison the Wells of his neighbours... and in the process got his neighbours angrier at him. Maybe they wouldn't even care if we declared war on Sitting Bull later, with enough Poison Wells missions (Sitting Bull loves them and Courthouses would give him the Espionage to run said Espionage Missions).


Whipping Settlers

5. Start slow-building 4 settlers somewhere (2 for Hammy and 2 for Qin) to within 1 turn of completion.

If we get our Silk, Incense, and Wine connected, we'll have +3 Happiness everywhere.

3-pop-whipping Settlers is stronger than building them using Food in Cities with a Food surplus of +3 Food per turn or more (more is better), and even more so in Cities with a Forge and a Granary.

Building Settlers using Food gives you 1 Hammer for every Food earned. Assuming an range of around 16 to 22 Food needed to grow to the next City Size with a Granary, you're trading 16 to 22 Food just to get 30 whipped Hammers, instead of getting 16 to 22 Food.

On top of that, whipped population produces Hammers, which get multiplied through the Forge, while Food converted to Hammers via slow-building Settlers does not get multiplied through the Forge.

So, what could be an average of 19 Food would net you 30 * 1.25 = 37.5 = 37 Hammers.

The other nice thing is that we can continue to focus on growing our Cities without needing to plan ahead much on when to start our Settlers. Given your plans of getting Astronomy on T + 12, 13, or 17, we wouldn't have to think about starting on Settler builds until about T + 9 at the earliest (we might as well convert some extra Food into Hammers by 3-pop-whipping for maximum Hammer overflow, since we don't have a lot of high-production Cities for raw Hammers).


Worker Micro

The other worker at DeerHorse can help hook up silk/incense and build the road network.

The previous (approved) PPP had both Workers finishing this GH Mine, so this second Worker might as well spend 1 turn
finishing it off faster, so that we can grow DeerHorse City on a GH Mine instead of working a PH Mine, right?

Also, are there other squares that might benefit from improvements? I was actually thinking that one of these Workers could finish off the PRiv Cottage 1SE of here, so that Paris has another useful square to grow into (or both of the Workers on the GH could partially help out with, on their way south). If we're going to get a Golden Age, a PRiv Cottage is a great square to work, since we'd get +1 Hammer and +1 Commmerce per turn (a PRiv Farm could also work in this way, but we've started on a Cottage there already).

Hammer overflow could be captured in build items like Spearmen or Catapults (not in Macemen, which would turn the Macemen into 1-pop-whips).


Explorers

Should be build an explorer and pick him up with our east coast caravel (the one near SB)? That would allow us to scout out locations for Liberating cities.

Sure. If we built 2 of them, then we could send 2 Caravels back to get them while the third Caravel went for Circumnavigation.

The Explorers would be good fog-lookers that could scout ahead for our Settlers and could act as defenders for our Settlers in case of Barb units... allowing our Settlers to risk using all of their movement points instead of ending their turns after only partially moving, due to fear of encoutering Barb units.


Great Library

Give on on GLib or go for it?

I would be okay in giving-up on it. As per the Know Your Enemy thread, Hammurabi has a 8/10 chance of randomly building a Wonder and he has had Literature since before we met him. Ramesses has a 10/10 chance of randomly building a Wonder. Either of them getting a couple of Academies could be good for the global tech pace, since Hammurabi is already the top techer and since Ramesses is already Friendly with us and will trade whatever he researches willingly with us (although, timing may matter if such a tech unlocks a Wonder--we might be unable to trade with him if we wait until the turn after he learns a tech, as if he has started on the relevant Wonder by that point, he won't give us the tech in trade).

Given our impending war, those Hammers will be of more use to us directed toward Military Units than they will be for any other purpose.

By the way, if we were to build more Workers (if we're lucky at Sugar Barb City, we won't need any and I'm not sure that building more Workers now will be a better play than gearing up more for war), I would not build them in a Hammer-heavy City like DeerHorse (in place of building The Great Library) but would try to 2-pop-whip them in a City that could regrow quickly, or else slow-build them in a Food-heavy City (not as ideal as whipping but since we have a Golden Age coming up, those population points are probably more valuable as citizens rather than being whipped away).

That said, I think that Mitchum makes a valid point that we should have a plan in mind for what tasks these Workers need to do, in order to justify taking Hammers away from our war-preparation efforts.

 

[Mitchum]

I'm fine gifting CoL to SB.

OK, so if we 3-pop the workers, which looks good, we won't need to start on them for some time, possibly even after the Golden Age. We should revisit the timing of settler builds in 8 turns or so.

With workers, we just need to make sure that we have a road network to the front lines once we start building maces. Any cats we build before then can slow march if needed. It's those last few units built that matter.

The cottage for Paris is a great idea.

Since we've met all AI (mission accomplished), we can afford to send two caravels back to pick up explorers. I want to be sure to circumnavigate soon, so that we can get our explorers back quicker and get our settlers in place quicker.

I assume that you agree with everything not specifically mentioned in your post, yes?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I assume that you agree with everything not specifically mentioned in your post, yes?

Pretty much.


Which Plan A?
I'm not sure if your Plan A or ingentingg's version of Plan A is better. We won't to decide for 3 turns (and we won't need to decide at all if we don't get the free Great Artist).


The next Great Person from Mitchum's Plan A
If we do go with your Plan A, then perhaps we'll time GLH to generate its next Great Person as soon as possible after Pig City generates a Great Scientist. That second Great Person would be too late to Lightbulb Astronomy (if it were a Great Scientist), but it could get us maps of the overseas' continent via a Paper Lightbulb, as well as a pretty solid lock on building The University of Sankore... or gifting Paper to Ramesses and letting him build The University of Sankore.

With a Great Merchant, we could send him overseas in a Caravel for a Trade Mission (since it would be too late to Lightbulb Civil Service). The extra Gold would be quite useful in getting us to Education.

With a Great Engineer, we'd have the option of building The Sistine Chapel ourselves or holding out for The Apostolic Palace.

 

[Mitchum]

For the record, they are both ingentingg's plans. The double-bulb option came first in post 2160 and the single-bulb option was an update to the first in post 2163, which was more focused on getting CS and going after Brennus sooner.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

More on Worst Enemy Trading
I traded a huge number of techs to two AIs that were each others' Worst Enemies. 41 turns later, neither of them had forgotten even down to -3. So, total value traded likely plays a large impact on how longer they will hate you as their Worst Enemy.

Essentially, all this means is that we'll eventually (not in the short term) want to Liberate Cities to Saladin, in order to curry his favour.


More on Liberating
I did some more testing. So, it turns out that if we want to Liberate one of Sitting Bull's existing Cities to Saladin, we'll have to completely eliminate Sitting Bull, otherwise Sitting Bull would be the "target" of the Liberation action (and while we're still at war with Sitting Bull, no one will be that "target").

But, if we raze Sitting Bull's City and refound it with our own Settler, it can be Liberated to the AI with the closest capital... as long as we know where each AI's capital is located, if it's pretty close (it's hard to know whether "diagonal" counts the same or differently, and how differently, from "horizontal" or "veritcal" without testing it to figure it out), then we can just throw together similarly-distanced capitals and a gift City in a test game, to see if the gift would be possible, given Sitting Bull's capital at that time.

Given that Cultural Borders expand over time, and are often pushing against a neighbour's Cultural Borders, razing 1 City might let us squeeze in three newly-created Cities. The cost of a Settler is quite cheap for this bonus Attitude.

This concept is obviously for later on in the game, but it's nice to know that there is a work-around where we don't necessarily have to fully eliminate Sitting Bull before being able to get Saladin to Friendly... essentially, we move in on Sitting Bull from Saladin's area and then settle new Cities for Saladin in the wake of a razed City or two.

 

[Mitchum]

Great. So it appears that we're mostly on the same page with the high-level strategy for the next 15 turns or so. We still need to agree on the war plans with Brennus (i.e. where to attack first, one front vs. two fronts, etc.). However, that won't really affect this turnset other than knowing where to position the cats.

@ mscellaneous

What are you plans for generating a PPP and when can you play. We lost a little momentum there, but I'm 100% confident that the plan we have now is much better and more defined than what we had 4 days ago.

BTW, I was thinking about us vs. the other teams. It appears that some of them went for earlier Civil Service and will be hitting Brennus before us. However, I highly doubt that they have already met the other continent (i.e. they don't have Optics yet), so we need to use that to our advantage. They may have a bigger empire than us in 10 turns, but we should be a lot further along at getting multiple AI to Friedly status. Let's keep up the good work!

Also, just so the person who's on deck after mscellaneous can get mentally ready, it seems that Jastrow can't play any turnsets for a month or so and I think cas is tied up as well. So that makes the order:

1. mscellaneous - playing
2. ingentingg - on deck
3. Mitchum
4. Dhoomstriker

@ cas and Jastrow, both of you guys are actually before ingentingg. We'll skip you for now but as soon as you're ready to jump in, just say the word and you'll be slotted in after the "up" player. Does that work or did I misinterpret the situation?

 

[mscellaneous]

@ mscellaneous

What are you plans for generating a PPP and when can you play. We lost a little momentum there, but I'm 100% confident that the plan we have now is much better and more defined than what we had 4 days ago.

I am about to to start on the PPP and thanks to your and the teams input I should be done in 1-2 hours from now.

I can play tomorrow night (in 24 hours), saturday & sunday looking good as well, including early next weekd (mon - wed).

 

[Mitchum]

Very cool!!

Instead of a PPP for just 3 turns, you should probably put one together for the next 10 to 15 turns. The plan could be per Plan A (we still need to agree on single or double bulb Astro) with fallback plans if we lose the Music race. That way, you don't have to go through the process of writing and approving a whole new PPP...

For the record, here are my votes:

Should be build an explorer and pick him up with our east coast caravel (the one near SB)? That would allow us to scout out locations for Liberating cities.

Yes, build two explorers and bring two caravels back (one from each coast). Knowing where to settle cities for the Liberation bonus is critical to our strategy of massive tech trading.

Do we need more workers?

I don't think we need any more than the one that was already whipped in HE City. I guess if you determine that you don't have enough workers to do what you want to do during your turnset, it would be good to propose it.

In Plan A, should we single our double-bulb Astro?

I would single bulb Astro and get CS sooner. This seems to be a fair compromise between fastest war (i.e. research CS right now) and slowest war (i.e. double bulb and then get CS). I want to hit Brennus' capital before he gets LBs. After that, I don't care what he researches.

Give up on GLib or go for it?

Give up on it. The fail gold will come in handy too.


FYI, as you're writing your PPP, if you come up with any open items, post them here as they come up. Now seems to be the time when everyone on the team can access the team thread. The more issues we can resolve today, the more likely you'll be playing tomorrow night!

 

[mscellaneous]

Here is the PPP for the next 10-15 turns. It is a little rough at the edges, but wanted to put this up for discussion ASAP. Open topics at the end.

PPP
Research
T141, 620 AD Research at 100% on Music, switch to Mitchum’s plan B or C if AI researches it.
To get Music in 3 turns I change the builds in cities: Paris & DeerHorse (see city builds)
Assuming we get Music:
T144: switch research to Civil Service at 100% (we can research it 4 turns with the same city builds as we used to get Music in 3 turns, maybe also when in golden age)
T148/T149 (1 turn before finishing CS): switch research to Astronomy at 100%, research upto 1600 beakers

Espionage (copied from Dhoom’s PPP)
Set all espionage toward Ramesses at a 0% slider

Tech Trading (copied from Mitchum)
1. Open Borders with Sal, Hammy and Qin on T0. Sal won’t open borders, so we need to gift him CoL on T0, which will hopefully get him up to Cautious (he is currently Annoyed). Do this before OB with Hammy, which could piss Sal off even more.
2. Trade CoL to Sitting Bull on T141
3. If Saladin asks us to stop trading with his Worst Enemy, we refuse his Demand/Request
4. If Sal, Hammy, Qin or Ramesses demands/requests a tech or Gold, we give it to said AI
5. If SB asks for a tech, we give it to him. If he asks for gold, say no. Gold is more precious than a +1 with SB.
6. If Brennus asks us for anything, we refuse. We do NOT want an enforced 10-turns of Peace.
7. On the turn that someone learns Music, sell Currency to Hammy.

Great People (copied from Dhoom’s PPP)
Assuming we get the GA from Music, immediately launch a Golden Age (T144).
Great Person #3 = Pig City Great Scientist
Great Person #4 = GLH City Random Great Scientist/Engineer/Merchant
Great Person #5 = Clam City Great Scientist
Note: If we want to double bulb Astronomy, then first GS comes from Clam, second from Pig-GP.

Civics (copied from Mitchum)
After starting Golden Age:
- Switch to Hereditary Rule & Cast System immediately
- Switch to Bureaucracy once we learn Civil Service
- Switch back to Slavery one turn before Golden Age ends
The above is not feasible, of course...
- Switch to Bureaucracy & slavery once we learn Civil Service
If we do not get a GA (and a Golden Age) no civic changes are foreseen.

Unit Movement
Workers
Big Island Worker:
On Big Island there is not much more to improve, besides some grassland cottages. Therefore I propose to move this worker to Wine City after it has finished the GL river cottage (4 turns)

Worker 7 – improve to Silk, farm FP for 1 turn, improve Incense, continue farm FP
Worker 4 - Plantation on Silk (5 turns to go), farm FP for 1 turn, improve Incense, continue farm FP

Two northern Workers (3N1W of Paris):
Finish mine, then finish road 1W of Paris then go south ASAP to improve tiles around HE city

HE city workter:
chop forest 2W1S of HE city.

Two south-eastern Workers (Gem City):
workers: Chop jungle Pig, pasture Pig, afterwards:
worker 3: mine hills
woker 5: build road from 2E of southern Iron to HE City

Caravels
Northern Caravel goes south-west to get circumnavigation bonus, scouts coast where possible
Southern Caravel returns home to pick up an explorer
Eastern Caravel returns home to pick up an explorer

Military Units
Chariot in Wine City - move towards barb city
Archer in Wine - board galley to be move to Big2Horse for coty garrison
4 archers & chariot continue towards barb city


City builds
Paris: assign 2 GS for 3 turns, switch to Explorer, Catapult, Catapult
Oracle: Barracks, Explorer, Catapult, Catapult
GLH: Market, switch to settler once grown to size 6
Desert Island: Moai Statues for 1 turn, granary, switch to settler once grown to size 6
Clam City: lighthouse
Pig-GP: forge, catapult, catapult or settler
Big1FP: start Lighthouse (whip at some point), overflow into Harbor
DeerHorse: build research for 3 turns, switch to barracks, catapult
Big2Horse: finish Courthouse, start barracks, catapult
HE City: finish worker, start granary, barracks, catapult
Double Fish: 1 turn Forge, switch to granary
Gems: granary, forge, catapult
Wine: 4 turns of anarchy, forge (supported by 1 or 2 chops), barracks (?), catapult


Open topics
+ Double bulb Astronomy? I think we should NOT do this and get CS ASAP (taking Astro in account, of course)
+ Do we need more workers? I am in doubt, so for the moment I’d say no.
+ Do we give up on the GLib? I vote yes.
+ All city builds

I can play tomorrow night (in 24 hours), saturday & sunday looking good as well, including early next weekd (mon - wed).

EDIT: changes some silly civic changes which are not possible

 

[ingentingg]

If we want to double bulb Astronomy we have to delay the Golden Age since otherwise we won't be able to revolt to Bearaucracy for free.

 

[Mitchum]

That was fast! Nice work.

I have a few comments:

1. DELETED (too lazy to renumber)

2. When in a Golden Age, you'll for sure be able to get C.S in 4 turns. So plan on switching any Research builds to something else.

3. It appears that this is the single-bulb Astro plan. If that is the case, as soon as GS#3 is born and has bulbed into Astro, you can complete Civil Service to start the macemen buildup.

4. I'm pretty sure that ingentingg's plan for getting a GS two turns after Music has him hiring a ton of Scientists in Pigs. During this time, it may also make sense to hire a few extra in GLH as long as it doesn't beat Pigs to a 100% GS.

5. Someone needs to calculate the approximate beakers needed in Astro, but I think 1600 is too many. If we're only single-bulbing Astro (which will happen in the next 5 turns), you can just work on it until it's finished. If we're going with the double bulb option, there will be nothing to research.

6. On the second civic switch, you'll have to revolt back to Slavery on the same turn you revolt to Bureaucracy.

7. Of the two northern workers, one could finish the PRiv cottage near Paris. That will be a strong tile during a Golden Age.

8. In order not to lose worker turns, the worker on Gem's pig (worker 5), could build a road at pig-NW (i.e. 1 tile NW from where he is. He could then build a road where National Park City goes and then to iron-2E.

9. I wonder if the worker from HE City should improve the Wheat first. We're getting close to our health limits in some cities and we'll be growing them soon.

10. We could use a road south of Silk so that our troops coming from DeerHorse and Oracle City have a continuous road going south.

11. I wouldn't move an archer from Wine to Big2Horse. Big2Horse can build its own archer when needed. There is currently two spare happiness there (about to get +3 more with wine, silk and insense) and that city isn't growing past 4 pops any time soon. This archer may be needed to capture the barb city (Sugar)...

12. The Paris chariot may be able to help with the capture of the barb city. Oh wait, if you fire the miners and send them to the library, the chariot will take more than 2 turns to finish. If we think getting the barb city is critical, I'd finish the chariot in 2 turns and build Research/hire scientists somewhere else...

13. Oracle should build the explorer before the barracks. The caravel will be back just about the time the caravel gets there. In fact, it would be a good idea to use the galley to shuttle this Explorer to the Big Island so that the caravel doesn't have to travel all the way to our main continent. The galley will already be moving back and forth delivering troops built on the islands to our mainland...

14. Recarging GLH, we really don't have to be starting any settlers until T+8 or so. It would be better to continue to grow cities with our happy cap about to raise and an impending GA. Even coast squares are good at 2F3C in a GA. I'd build a cat instead of the Market.

15. In Desert Island, you say "granary, switch to granary once grown to size 6". Is this a typo? I'd actually either grow the city during the GA or 2-pop Cats into Moai.

16. Big2Horse has limited production and can't afford to whip since it's so low on food. Thus, I'd skip the Barracks here and just start building cats.

17. HE City is a disappointment to me. That city has such huge potential but we've had to whip a lot of archers from here. Maybe after the granary it should just start on cats. If we go granary -> barracks -> cat, the cat is likely to arrive after the war is over. If we plan to start improving tiles here (i.e. wheat, PH mines, etc.), it may be a good idea to let the city grow and let the 18 turns of whip unhappiness wear down.

18. I wouldn't build a barracks in Wine just yet. Maybe two-pop the forge into cats. Or, maybe just let the city grow as there are good tiles to work...

So, if we don't build the barracks I removed from the plan above, we'll only have barracks in three cities: Paris (existing), Oracle and DeerHorse. If we can get 2 maces from these two cities quickly, we'll have 6 experienced maces for our war. Not all of the maces we build have to be promoted as once the top defender in each city is dead, the other units should have pretty good odds without promotions.

 

[Mitchum]

If we want to double bulb Astronomy we have to delay the Golden Age since otherwise we won't be able to revolt to Bearaucracy for free.

We need to decide that. Based on your latest post on the matter, I thought you were leaning toward single bulbing Astro and getting on with Civil Service and the war with Brennus. Or are you in the double bulb camp?

 

[Mitchum]

I forgot to read the bottom of mscellaneous' post. It appears that both he and I are in the single bulb Astronomy camp. The thing to be careful of is that under a Golden Age, during which our science output should go up substantially, you don't accidentally learn CS before you've gotten GS#3 and bulbed him into Astro.

@ mscellaneous Did you play around with ingentingg's test game to make sure you know how to get a GS 2 turns after learning Music? I'm not sure if he had to starve the city, massively grow the city in the next 3 turns, or what, but it's a good idea to test it out.

BTW, which cities, if any, do you plan to whip in the next 11 turns (3 turns to grow and 8 turns of the Golden Age)? Notice how I'm already assuming that you'll get the Great Artist!