SGOTM 17 - The Shawshank Redemption

[Dhoomstriker]

I played around with teleportation and it doesn't look like we'll be able to get over the Peaks to the south-west... we just get sent to GP Farm's Cultural Borders. I didn't actually try what would happen if Monte's Culture expanded beyond his big fat cross in Kumbi Saleh or in a Rice + Copper City, as waiting that long isn't really practical (unless there is one AI trapped in the centre or something that we can try to reach later).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I updated the PPP with a three red lines after having run through a test run for 2 turns' time. Even if we DO NOT meet any AIs in 2 turns' time, I'll probably stop play temporarily at that point in time in order to run testing for future turns before playing them out.

Now... I need to grab some supper... I should be able to play in roughly 1 hour.

 

[Mitchum]

Good luck.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Turn 85, 500 AD
We set research to Alphabet at a 0% Science Rate

We load Archer 3 and Chariot 1 into their respective Galleys

Archer 5 moves into our Cultural Borders while still spawn-busting the nearby Coast squares

Prague starts building a Horse Archer

Rice switches its P Cottage to a Coast square
Rice starts building a Horse Archer

GP Farm starts building a Horse Archer

NE fires the 2 Scientists and works the newly-Farmed G Farm square and a Lake square

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Worker 1 COULD help to finish off the wet G Banana Farm 1 turn sooner next turn... that might be a good use of him, before sending him and a buddy westward. I'll probably do that unless there is any objection, as we really want to get Ivory City growing.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

T86, 520 AD
Mansa has founded another City

I cannot see where that City is located. It's not by Rice + Copper in the south-west. It's not visibly immediately west of Horse City, but it could be just out of view there. Could he have founded a City overseas? Unlikely.

We completed The Pyramids. They were a given, unless I were to have done something stupid, so it's nice to have that Wonder in the bag, since we've pretty much been counting on it for the last few pages of discussion about Representation and Police State and when to use those Civics.


Aachen hires a Scientist, as per the plan, at Size 6.

Prague will make a total of 12 Hammers in its Horse Archer by the end of this turn, 1 less than the test game, which is just enough to keep the Horse Archer a 2-pop-whip under Police State.

NE City works another Lake.

Mansa's "raiding party" has entered his Cultural Borders near Djenne, while his Worker completes the Road on our border.

Spoiler :

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We still control 54% of the shared squares with Mansa 1NW, 1N, and 1NE of Prague... it's a tenuous hold, but it's a hold none-the-less.

I confirm that we do, indeed, have Weight = 1 on Mansa for EPP spending.

I decide to complete Ivory City's wet G Farm, growing the City in 4 turns instead of in 8 turns. Obviously, we will continue to work the two Ivory squares that have Forests on them.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

T87, 540 AD
Our Cultural Borders expand and we meet Suryvarman, who is Hindu (he founded Hinduism). He gets 2 EPPs on us for having met him in between turns.

He is
+1 Years of Peace
-3 Heathen Religion
Annoyed

He treats us as his Worst Enemy and thus will not Open Borders with us

He does not know Alphabet

He is running Hereditary Rule (sigh), Slavery, and Organized Religion

He has 6 Cities already, sigh

He has 40 Gold and 2 GPT available for trade

No Resource trades appear yet


There is another, red-coloured, AI visible to the south.


Unfortunately, kcd_swede seems to have lined the water with Ocean squares, so we cannot disembark to the south.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I think that I will have to do "world recreation" in the World Builder to check if we can tell if there is a connection to the landmass to the south or not, as I can't tell from fog-gazing alone. It doesn't really matter, though, as we can't send any Galleys southward now anyway.

Obviously, Island City will build Horse Archers instead of more Galleys.

Spoiler :

Well, I guess that we'll need to use our Great Artist Bomb idea after all. At least we have that backup in our pocket.


Mansa has decided to build a Road on the square 1NE of Prague, heh heh, even though the square is now up to being 55% ours.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We can see a Silver on the other side of the Peaks by GP Farm. Does that mean anything?

Spoiler :

Why do the dumb AIs have to avoid settling on their northern Coast, where they could help us to bridge the Cultural Border gap?!?! On the plus side, there won't be many or any Barb Galleys to face down there, depending upon how much of the AIs' Coastline is Ocean squares.


I think that it goes without saying that I'll unload the units from our Galleys back onto our mainland.


Decisions to make:
A] Do we settle on the P Riv for a southern Dual Banana City in hopes of there not being a solid line of Ocean squares? It's probably worth taking that chance, since it's at least the "least likely" location for someone to settle... then again, that would make it the "least fair" location to put a non-Ocean bridge, but who said that kcd_swede is required to play fairly?

If we plan to gift this City to Mansa (he has 4 Cities now, thus gifting that City probably won't be required anymore), we shouldn't settle on the P Riv square, but otherwise, I'm strongly leaning toward trying it, because "why not?" seems to be the thing to say at this point of being stonewalled with the Ocean squares. At least all other teams will have to face the same challenge.


B] Do we proceed with our Police State plan? We can have a Great Person in 4 turns' time.

I think that one compelling reasons forces us to go ahead with war plans, and that's to take down Timbuktu in order to head west toward that Barb City. Since we need a lot of Horse Archers to take on Timbuktu, to me that means that Police State is a given... essentially, we need to know what's going on with the rest of this map ASAP and the best way to do that is to get a Galley for the western Barb City and the best way to do that is to take down Timbuktu.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

While I'm killing time waiting for a response, I'll give you some EPP values... I never did figure out how to use them:
Sabotage Building:
Timbuktu 345
Djenne 187
Kumbi Saleh 208

(Can see Research = 615 and we have 328... that's never going to happen.)

 

[Jastrow]

Why do the dumb AIs have to avoid settling on their northern Coast, where they could help us to bridge the Cultural Border gap?!?! On the plus side, there won't be many or any Barb Galleys to face down there, depending upon how much of the AIs' Coastline is Ocean squares.

Actually, I am pretty sure that would not help... To meet them, we only need an AI unit to walk by (apparently already happened for Sury), and I dont think Galleys can go into ocean tiles of an allies culture (I know that is true in onw of the versions, but I could be confusing BTS and vanilla on which is which.)

 

[Jastrow]

A- I think the line of ocean is solid... Just a guess, but that is what my gut says. An artist bomb will get us over from one of our existing cities. Indeed, if 100 culture is enough... Can we think of a faster way to get that in, say, Silver-bridge (or fish) than with an artist? i.e. temple whip, etc?

Having said that, I dont have a strong preference for or against Dual-banana.

B-Obviously, I interpret this as even more reasons to delay the war completly, speand time in representation first, and COL. Pop border access to the south, and take out MM later with better weapons.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Indeed, if 100 culture is enough... Can we think of a faster way to get that in, say, Silver-bridge (or fish) than with an artist?

Great idea! I suppose that we only need 90 Culture now... 2 Artist Specialists under Caste System could also get us a Cultural Bridge pretty quickly without actually needing to generate a Great Artist (or, if we do generate one, it could be used in a second Golden Age or something).

The gating factor is getting some Food Resources online, such as the Fish Resource at Fish City or the Pig at Silver Bridge City. At least with Fish City we can grow the City with the Fish + Fur and later hire 2 Artist Specialists for a total of 7 Culture per turn.

Let's say that it takes us 10 turns before we get Alphabet, just to throw a number out there. That leaves 80 / 7 = 12 additional turns to pop our Cultural Borders.


We can always get Feudalism in trade, especially if Mansa techs it after his empire has been beaten down, after which we will just need Metal Casting -> Machinery -> Guilds for Knights.


In the meantime, Horse Archers will still be our best unit to use against Skirmishers, while War Elephants and Cats can be standing ready in roughly 22 turns' time when we can disembark on the southern shores.


City Capture Gold can fuel our further research up to Guilds.



Since we'll want to run Caste System for a while (for Artist Specialists), we can also run Representation during that time period, as it is not like we'll be able to whip when we're running Caste System instead of Slavery. If we haven't got Construction and/or Metal Casting by that point in time, we can use that short burst of Representation to get one of those techs.

A lucky Great Engineer could Lightbulb Machinery, or else we might be able to Lightbulb it with a Great Scientist after getting techs like Calendar and Aesthetics in trade.


Then it would just be manual research on Guilds using City Capture Gold sometime after getting Feudalism in trade (we'd be okay with giving away Machinery to an isolated Mansa who is down to 1 or 2 Cities) in exchange for Machinery, plus another tech if he required it.


12 turns of a Golden Age means we'd want to get MoM... which will be possible if we capture Mansa's Cities as we could then Chop it in Djenne using our Marble.


So, we'd start our southern war with the remnants of our Horse Archer army + War Elephants + Cats + the odd Axeman to counter Spearmen until we can disconnect Copper/Iron sources. Later, we'd be adding Knights to the mix. If nothing else, we'd then be able to own the land area of what will likely be two quadrants (roughly half?) of the world, given what we see of the shoreline. That'll put us in a strong position, especially combined with Rathauses, to power through the tech tree to Education and onward.


Meanwhile, having captured Timbuktu, we'll be able to send a Spy on a Galley westward and see what's going on with that Barb City and beyond (our Spies are invincible in Barb Culture, just like in neutral territory).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Even without any of MoM, a Granary, or a Lighthouse, just by getting Fish City up to Size 4, it can sustain 2.5 Artist Specialists (7 Food some turns, 9 Food other turns, to feed the 8 Food eaten by 4 citizens), so that's actually 1 + 7.5 = 8.5 Culture per turn

70 / 8.5 = 9 turns...

Or, 7 turns in a non-MoM Golden Age giving us 8.5 * 7 = 59.5 Culture... not quite there, so might just choose to stay in Caste System past the end of the Golden Age and take a 1-turn-hit of Anarchy later to switch back to Slavery, should we miss out on building The MoM.


While we're in Representation, we can switch to building Rathauses/Barracks or something like that, as we take a break from pumping out Military Units.

 

[Mitchum]

1. I still think taking down Mansa is the best play. We need to be fighting a two-pronged war if we want a chance to win quickly. If we don't fight a two-pronged war due to timing or for logistical reasons, we really need to know what is up in the northwest.

2. I'm confused. Are you going to revolt to PS this turn, suffer anarchy and save the GP? Or wait for the GP, revolt to Castes and try to pop borders? Or skip PS, save the GP, wait for IW, improve food tiles, and then revolt to Castes? I can't figure out what your plan is...

3. I think we should settle Dual Banana in the strongest, long-term position without worring about some 1-pop culture bridge that is unlikely to be there. Since Mansa has his 4th city, we should plan on keeping it.

4. Take the Sabotage Production value, divide it by the Influence Civics value (which is different for each city) and multiply by 100 to find out how many hammers Mansa has invested into the current build in each city.

5. We'll never get enough espionage points on Mansa to be worth anything. Should we just focus them on Surry now?

I think you should continue to play through the war buildup until tech trading is available or we're ready to DoW.

 

[Mitchum]

FYI, I'm pretty sure an Artist gives +4 per turn. Any Culture guru would know this...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

PPP
Revolt to Police State, suffering Anarchy now and saving the Great Person (once we get it) for later (we can't exactly revolt to Caste System until after we can trade for Code of Laws, which probably can't happen until we either meet the red AI if that AI has Alphabet or else by using Horse Archers and City Capture Gold to be able to fund the last push of self-teching on Alphabet)

Settle Dual Banana City on the G Riv Jungle square, to share more Cottage space with Prague

Once we hit 100 Gold, spend 1 turn at 100% Research on Alphabet (the last thing that we want is to collect a huge sum of Gold and then have Sury demand it--he loves to make demands), then back to 0% Research until we gain more Gold

Keep EPPs on Mansa. We'd rather dump a large portion at a time on Sury rather than a bit at a time, as that way we'll actually get a jump on Sury, meaning that we should wait until after we've built a few Rathauses, and we'll actually have a much greater chance of seeing his Research or gaining other benefits of "being ahead" in terms of relative EPP values

Whip several Horse Archers. I was previously toying with the idea of not whipping aggressively in GP Farm so that we could generate a Great Artist there, but given that 2 Artists + 1 Monument = 9 Culture per turn, that's 10 turns of running Caste System, so I will be free to whip GP Farm's population points into Horse Archers. Realise that the faster we can round up an army, the faster we can get to Alphabet for Iron Working and thus the faster that we'll be able to improve our Pig Resources, meaning the faster that our overall City growth rate will increase... the population points that we invest now into Military Units will pay back doubly, both in terms of war gains and in terms of being able to improve our Pig Resources, meaning that our empire-wide population will grow back considerably quicker and even larger overall than before

Our Workers will basically be twiddling their thumbs until Iron Working comes in... I will still have them doing useful actions, but nothing will be nearly as useful as getting +4 Food per square after Iron Working. 3 of them can head west to help get Dual Banana set up and to be ready to Pasture two Pig Resources in the west, while 1 will stay near to the Pig Resource at Rice Peninsula and 2 will stay near the Pig and other Resources by Horse City

City builds will mostly consist of Horse Archers, with 2 Spears thrown in for good measure

One of our Galleys can shuttle the occasional unit from Island City while the other one can remain on standby near Silver Bridge. I'll probably send the Archer on our eastern Galley to Island City

Our Chariot can go scout Mansa's lands, checking out Timbuktu and then looking for Mansa's newest City, assuming that a Horse Archer doesn't get there first, in which case the Chariot can just keep an eye on Djenne

On the plus side, we won't be incurring Unit Supply costs for a while

 

[Dhoomstriker]

FYI, I'm pretty sure an Artist gives +4 per turn. Any Culture guru would know this...

It has been a while since I played a good Cultural Victory game. In my head I was thinking that an Artist = +3 Culture and Sistine's Chapel = +3 Culture per Specialist, both of which are wrong (the numbers are +4 and +2, respectively ).

 

[Mitchum]

PPP looks good!

Rather than building 2 spears, should we build 1 axe and 1 spear? If Mansa comes at us with a spear of his own or a sword, an axe defending would be best.