SGOTM 17 - Fifth Element

[Folket]

With PP in we generate enough gold to make it worth it to wait.

As for Peter. He is no longer willing to trade us economics. To bad we missed that chance.

 

[BLubmuz]

Peace deals are always a problem, but i think we obtained a good deal. Maybe you could have killed the settling party before it. Let's hope he resettles in the same spot.

I suggest to build culture for 1 turn in Angkor, so it can expand borders.

You have a worker and a missionary stacked with our SoD. Send the missionary to Yasoda and skip this turn. Do what you like with the worker.

Bring a knight to Hammer, to help pillage and to have another good unit for Khazak.

After you take the 2 barb cities, we can consider to pillage a railroad.

I see you're more than ready to start with Qin. Do it! good luck

I checked the turn before you took Nagara and we needed 1 turn to revolt. 2 are definitely much. You can't hire more specs in Ulm without losing pop. Better wait, then launch the GAge and revolt.

Priority to the dyes. Waiting for your PPP.

This is your 11th turn. Don't hope to play more than 9 it's me after you.

 

[Folket]

Is this the turn you made peace? If so it is sad you did not take your chance to kill the Khmer settler.

I would get a theatre in Ankor Thom to fight Khmer culture. I think we should revolt to caste system and pacifism as well in the golden age. I would be fine with entering free religion on our way out of it keeping caste system.

Sell ivory to China and Japan. It is 20 gpt. Only 20 gold but that is always something.

If we plan on using spies you should plan to build one spy a turn. Keeping AIs without strategic resource is a high maintenance job.

Our empire looks very strong. The game from here on should be a breeze. Well played.

 

[Folket]

Bridge should get a harbour and hire a engineer.
Let Vienna work pigs to faster grow to health cap.
Don't work mine and workshop in Timbuktu when it is building wealth. Let Gao works some sea tiles instead.

We are close approaching the limit where free speech is better then bureaucracy. At the start of the golden age we should change out of bureaucracy. We could consider nationhood.

 

[BLubmuz]

Is this the turn you made peace? If so it is sad you did not take your chance to kill the Khmer settler.
What i said
I would get a theatre in Ankor Thom to fight Khmer culture.
I see it: culture for 1 turn, finish grocer, Buddhist and Christian Monasteries - we can want to spread the religions of our Shrines. Surely not units.
I think we should revolt to caste system and pacifism as well in the golden age. I would be fine with entering free religion on our way out of it keeping caste system.
Pacifism can be used for few turns with the army we have.
Caste can be considered, but we lose the ability to whip structures in starving cities just out of revolt. Do you mean for few turns or as a final choice?
Sell ivory to China and Japan. It is 20 gpt. Only 20 gold but that is always something.
No, not ivory. We're declaring to China this turn and better do not give to our next target such a good unit.
I just checked what Toku wants and he has NO metals. We can trade him many resources, like cows or gems. I prefer cows.
If we plan on using spies you should plan to build one spy a turn. Keeping AIs without strategic resource is a high maintenance job.

Our empire looks very strong. The game from here on should be a breeze. Well played.

Let's hope so.

We are close approaching the limit where free speech is better then bureaucracy. At the start of the golden age we should change out of bureaucracy. We could consider nationhood.

We currently have 22 towns and 16 villages. 6 more when Yasoda expands its BFC and 2 villages -5 turns to towns. I did not checked the turn for villages to become towns elsewhere.
Vienna has 87cpt, 50% bureau is 43. We're almost ready to run FS, yes.

About FR we can consider it too. More for happiness in new conquered cities.
We can probably start the GAge with Repr+Caste+Pacif. After 5 turns change pacif to FR, then we can have another revolt and go back to slavery. Or see what can be better.

Don't work mine and workshop in Timbuktu when it is building wealth.

Whealth comes from hammers. But if we fir ethe eng and work the plains hamlet and hire 2 mercs we have a better output.

Gao can work a cottage for Timbu instead. It's an investment.

Nationhood? no, it brings nothing but a low maintenance. We do not need to draft units.

 

[Folket]

Yes, we get wealth from hammers but at bad multipliers. 25% instead of 100-110% from commerce. Take two towns from Gao.

As for final civics I'm fine with both. Workshops for hammers and merchants for science should work well. But slavery for whipping out factories faster when we can build them is pretty good as well.

 

[Shaandore]

The peace was made last turn. I think I'm not ready to write a PPP yet, we need to discuss research and some other things.

some options:
1. SciMeth (could be bulbed right now)->Communism for great production& extra food+money. And a great person. (=workshop everything, change to Caste, and benefit) we could even build Kremlin for more efficient whips.
2. Mil trad for immediate Cuirassier support. Get our wars faster
3. Repl parts->Rifling. Get a stronger unit that holds until the enemy starts amassing grenadiers.
4. Econ->Corp. IMO this is weak, would be only for Wall street. But 2 techs for wall street is too damn expensive.

I prefer option (1).

I'll rade cows to Qin, Gems to Toku. (I'm afraid both tardes will go away as soon as we declare on Qin.)

BTW Churchill already has Military science, so we might be looking at an ugly war if Qin trades for it. We could make Churchill friendly by gifting him a city, Eg. a barb city we conquer. Then we could trade for Military science.

I think that we should target Beijing in the Qin war. If things get ugly, that would be a good place to stop and reinforce with rifles or grenadiers.

We also have the question of which cities we want to keep.

 

[Folket]

Keep Beijing and Nanjing, raze the rest.

Scimeth to communism sounds good to me.

You do not need to be afraid the trades will go away. They will go away.

We will not be able to get Churchill to friendly by gifting him a city. We would need to liberate 3 cities. And I do not see where we would place cities so they would be liberated to Churchill instead of Tokugawa.

Churchill will not trade military science to Qin. He is far from friendly and has monopoly. He might trade it away if Japan gets it as well but that is very far away.

 

[Shaandore]

Some good news then, there won't be any knights vs grenaiders.

 

[Folket]

Nothing is preventing China from just researching military science.

 

[Shaandore]

Well they shouldn't do that. It's an impolite thing to do

 

[BLubmuz]

The peace was made last turn. I think I'm not ready to write a PPP yet, we need to discuss research and some other things.
I did not expected such a mistake, i feel better now.
a) some options:
1. SciMeth (could be bulbed right now)->Communism for great production& extra food+money. And a great person. (=workshop everything, change to Caste, and benefit) we could even build Kremlin for more efficient whips.
2. Mil trad for immediate Cuirassier support. Get our wars faster
3. Repl parts->Rifling. Get a stronger unit that holds until the enemy starts amassing grenadiers.
4. Econ->Corp. IMO this is weak, would be only for Wall street. But 2 techs for wall street is too damn expensive.

I prefer option (1).

I'll rade cows to Qin, Gems to Toku. (I'm afraid both tardes will go away as soon as we declare on Qin.)
Weren't we agreed to declare this turn? Then you can see if Toku remains connected, but i'm afraid you're right. He won't.
b) BTW Churchill already has Military science, so we might be looking at an ugly war if Qin trades for it. We could make Churchill friendly by gifting him a city, Eg. a barb city we conquer. Then we could trade for Military science.

c) I think that we should target Beijing in the Qin war. If things get ugly, that would be a good place to stop and reinforce with rifles or grenadiers.

d) We also have the question of which cities we want to keep.

a) About research:
1) it would be a waste to give away 2 fresh WW and our GLib. But the idea has some merit. Let me think more.
2) MT is useless with Toku who has LBs as the best unit. You must also consider that his E cities are surrounded by hills, so any unit can move 1. It comes too late to be of some help for Qin, maybe for Peter. After that we can disband the most of our army and wait for paras.
3) This is needed in any case and it's strong.
4) we need both, but yes, we can wait.

b) Chur has MS, but in monopoly. I doubt he will trade it to Qin. In case, grenadiers are not much of a trouble.
c) Target Beijing? sure, we must start Guang, 2 turns to arrive. I posted yesterday: we must move CCW from Nagara.
3 turns to arrive to Beijing (2N from the map border to avoid the river)
3 turns for Shangai - avoid Hangzhou, Qin does not have OB with Toku
2-3 turns for Nanjing, depends if you can split the stack
3 turns for Xian
This makes 14 turns only for movement, then you must add 1-2 turns for each city, so we maybe want to use 2 stacks.
We let Qin with Hangzhou and Chengdu, then see what we can have for peace and move to finish off Sury.

d) IMO all those cities can be kept. We can raze Chengdu in the final war and keep Hangzhou. As 'd prefer to keep also the 2 Khmer present cities. We're below 25% now and considering former Khmer cities and all China but Chengdu we can arrive around 40-45%. Khoisan and the 3 Russian riverside cites can add some 5-6%. We can stay around 55% and be safe. In Japan we can raze Nagoya, keep Tokyo, raze Nara, Izumo and Kagoshima, keep Osaka and Kyoto and see for Satsuma later.

Please lower the advisor for land dom limit to 50%, so we can count tiles.

Under this aspect, FS can be of trouble.

 

[BLubmuz]

Keep Beijing and Nanjing, raze the rest.

Churchill will not trade military science to Qin. He is far from friendly and has monopoly. He might trade it away if Japan gets it as well but that is very far away.

I agree. Qin is pleased with him, but Chur is cautios with Qin.

Now, about what to raze:
Guang has a unique resource, wheat it has 4 water tiles and 2 overlap with Beijing, it counts only 15 tiles for dom
Beijing - keep BTW, i see just now that there's the SoL there: great prize, along with Notre Dame!
Shangai we can raze it in the end, yes
Nanjing - keep
Xian has some overlap with Raja and it will expand after the BFC on water or over Nanjing. It has good production, why raze it?

 

[Shaandore]

Next there is the question of bulbing into SciMeth. We need to stall until Ulm gets its GP so we don't lose the Parthenon bonus. I suggest that we do a bulb, and time SciMeth so it completes the same turn as Ulm's great person. This way we can start the GA as planned, and put some accumulated money into Communism.

Workers will obviously build some workshops (replacing most farms). We will want Caste as endgame civic with all the workshops.

I'll post a PPP tonight, and hopefully finish my TS tomorrow.

 

[Folket]

Delaying Scimet is not a problem since we do not have enough money to go 100% until we have communism.

 

[BLubmuz]

Next there is the question of bulbing into SciMeth. We need to stall until Ulm gets its GP so we don't lose the Parthenon bonus. I suggest that we do a bulb, and time SciMeth so it completes the same turn as Ulm's great person. This way we can start the GA as planned, and put some accumulated money into Communism.

Workers will obviously build some workshops (replacing most farms). We will want Caste as endgame civic with all the workshops.

I'll post a PPP tonight, and hopefully finish my TS tomorrow.

I'm still thinking if Communism is a good move. Let's try to see pro and cons:
pros
- free GSpy
- improved WSs (+1f) well paired with Caste if we run it
- Kremlin, useful if we run slavery
cons
- full detour in research, it's a dead end tech
- SM will obsolete 3 WW we own: we need it, but we can delay it
more notes on SP:
- annuls distance from Palace, but with -75% from rathaus it's nerfed
- +10% prod is on the base hammers (like +10% research from FR is on base commerce) it's still a bonus, but i prefer to continue with Mercantilism for better research under Repr.

No, i don't think it's worth such a detour. We can generate enough different GPeople to start a 3rd GAge if we run Caste and pacifism during our next GAge.

RP and rifling, then Econ. (obsoletes 2 castles) -> Corporations obsoletes the GLH: we have 9 cities generating 18 TR from it =20 on total 25 (increasing) cities, so it's better than the GLH.
All the above 4 techs are needed to arrive to Paras, so sooner of later we need to research them.
the order can be:
- RP->Rifling
- Econ because 3 AIs have it and we benefit of a good discount. But we can skip it if we hope to have it for peace with China.
- Astro to build a few observatories in our main commerce cities
- Corporations or SP
- SP to see Coal and to build some levee (6 possible ATM)
- Railroads or/and AL to build some factories
- SM->Physics
- Combustion->flight to start build some airport
- finally Fascism

We are agreed that research is the bottleneck. Let's avoid any detour and try to put the research on the techs which give us the major benefits and the less counters.

And remember that paras are expensive.

 

[Folket]

These are valid points. I would say that with assembly line SP is far better then caste.

But I do not see that we need rifling. China is soon to be dead. Everyone else is far behind. I would rather see a beeline to assembly line.

 

[Folket]

btw, do not make any peace deal with China. I do not see that any delay is worth the tech.

 

[Shaandore]

I mostly agree with Folket. I'll try and give a more thoroguh analysis about the benefits of SP tonight. The extra food, producion and maintenance saivng for ~30 cities is well worth a 1 tech detour IMO. And we get a free GSpy in the Process.

 

[BLubmuz]

These are valid points. I would say that with assembly line SP is far better then caste.
Sorry, i don't see the relation. Probably you mean with factories?
But I do not see that we need rifling. China is soon to be dead. Everyone else is far behind. I would rather see a beeline to assembly line.

Rifling is needed for paras, but can be delayed if we don't feel we need it.

btw, do not make any peace deal with China. I do not see that any delay is worth the tech.

Not sure about this. During the forced peace we can finish Sury, then the time to heal and move troops back to his borders and go straight against Toku. If we can have a tech or 2 it's all time saved. But we need to see how things evolve.

I mostly agree with Folket. I'll try and give a more thoroguh analysis about the benefits of SP tonight. The extra food, producion and maintenance saivng for ~30 cities is well worth a 1 tech detour IMO. And we get a free GSpy in the Process.

The maintenance saving is valid ONLY for distance from Palace, which is slightly over an half of our total maintenance, which we pay for 25%. We sacrifice 2 sci from GLib, +50% from Parthenon and the benefits of ToA for that much sooner than we actually need. The tech costs a few less than SteamPower.

You must put good arguments to convince me.