Tasks
Elizabeth #1:
- Keep our Galley alive (probably upgrading it to a Galleon to avoid it dying and to make more use out of it)
- Earn the 120-XP Great General, of which all 20 XP will go to that boat
- Gift the boat to Elizabeth, probably after we fight her in a war
I believe that we've already all agreed not to pursue the other Elizabeth tasks.
Isabella #1:
- Get a Great Prophet (easily doable, but at a cost of working less Moai-improved squares or, when we're at max Happiness, working less PH Mines
- Get a Great Scientist (doable if we do not want Mansa to research Physics for us)
- Get a Great Artist (probably easy enough to do if we put The Taj Mahal and The National Epic in Utrecht)
- Has a cost of us not using those Great People for other uses, such as a 2-Great-Person Golden Age
- Has a cost of us not being able to let Mansa tech Physics for us (I don't see an easy alternative of reliably getting another Great Scientist)
- Has a cost of us hiring Specialists instead of putting citizens to other uses, such as whipping them or working the Mines
Isabella #2:
- Must get her to +3 Relations
- A City on the Desert
- A City with an Odeon, a Grocer, a Wall, and a Castle
- We have to build the Castle before researching Economics (which we plan to tech) and the wall before researching Rifling (which we do not plan to tech)
- If we attack Isabella, we can make this task happen
- She lacks Macemen, Longbowmen, and Pikemen, so she's going to be a relatively soft target
- She is getting Ivory from Mansa, but if we cut off that trade, warring against he could go smoothly
- Isabella has 9 Cities, so if we Liberate 8 of her Cities after whipping them down, one of which is the Desert City where we whip the required Buildings for her, we'll get +12 with her after taking a -3 with her for declaring war on her
- She is not likely to run Hinduism as a State Religion, so we can spread Hinduism to several of her Cities before Liberating the Cities to her so that we have a solid voting buddy who will be in Buddhism (or in Judaism if we Liberate the Jewish Holy City but greedily hold onto the Buddhist Holy City)
- We could optionally try to get Liberalism into her hands before the war as, unlike most other AIs in this game, she actually won't trade techs to other players easily. The idea would be to force her into Free Religion as part of a Peace Treaty after getting her down to a single City. However, she might switch back to her Favourite Civic of Theocracy, though, so it may not be worth the effort to try to get her into Free Religion and we can simply be happy with her being Buddhist/Jewish (but probably Buddhist as that has been her State Religion and is likely better-spread in her existing Cities)
- If we get her to vote for us and we control the spread of Hinduism manually, we might only need her as our voting buddy
Isabella #3:
- Requires us to tech Radio. We already need its pre-requisite tech of Electricity for Industrialism. It would be possible to get this tech in trade, as long as the AI who researches it (Mansa?) doesn't immediately start to build one of the three World Wonders that it unlocks
- Requires us to have a place to Chop out an 800-Hammer Wonder which does not get any production bonuses or to get a Great Engineer
Catherine #2:
- Unlock Gunpowder for Musketmen and which is needed for Combustion
- Unlock Physics for Airships and which is needed for Electricity, which is needed for Industrialism
- Unlock Combustion and Industrialism for Tanks
- Earn the 5th Great General, aka the 150-XP one, after the 4th Great General (or self-tech Fascism near the end of the game for the free Great General)
Catherine #3:
- I don't think that it makes sense to tech so far in the game AND find somewhere to build the Apollo Program and only then build Spaceship Parts
I don't see a way for us to possibly complete Catherine #3 before Catherine #2, and CP's recent comment seemed to be in alignment with this statement, so that leaves us deciding what to do about Isabella, teching the remaining techs for Catherine #2, and planning our AP Victory.
Elizabeth #1
Certainly, more warring will be required to achieve Elizabeth #1.
We definitely need to capture The Apostolic Palace from Elizabeth at some point.
We're also going to have to capture most of Elizabeth's Cities either for the purposes of Liberating them back to her as a voting buddy or so as to reduce the number of AI votes of AIs who vote against us.
But, going against Elizabeth now is not going to be nearly as efficient as going after her with Cuirassiers, which are also a detour, but one that can be paid for on this map with the efficiency of warring.
We're going to either want to heavily spread Hinduism domestically (which takes away from Military-Unit production at a key time) before attacking her or we're going to need to have a well-planned war, to avoid her ending a war partway through using an AP Resolution, which would make it pretty tough to earn her as a voting buddy (2 war declarations for 1 set of City Liberations) and would leave our forces hanging... do they wait around for 10 turns or will they have to come back to deal with her later?
Military Tradition for Cuirassiers
We could plan to skip Cuirassiers, but they're really just +1 tech that we don't need, as we need Gunpowder for Catherine #2 and we need Constitution for Corporation, which is needed for Industrialism for Catherine #2. Cuirassiers make warring so much more effective due to their abilities to ignore Walls + Castles, their strong base strength of 12, their 15% ability to withdraw from combat, and their speedy movement which can allow for efficient capturing of multiple nearby Cities before an AI has a chance to spam too many defenders. Also, with their extra movement they can pick off AI units which march close to our stack, such as AI Catapults who are on their way to cause Collateral Damage to our stack.
Catherine #2
We will have to keep teching heavily for Catherine #2.
We're also going to either need a Galleon chain or some warring against her.
The toughest part will be unlocking Industrialism and Combustion for Tanks.
Once we have the ability to build Tanks, it'll just be a matter of time before we can get our military parade to Catherine.
So, teching still comes first... if our war saves us 5 turns in transporting Military Units to her but we have to delay our teching by 20 turns to make it happen, we didn't really benefit from the war... we'll just have to plan well when the time comes to make the decision of fighting her or building a Galleon chain for her.
Facsism
We're then either going to need an additional 150 XP for a Great General for her or we're going to have to add a detour to Fascism on the tech tree to get the free Great General.
Warring is beneficial in many ways, including for setting up our AP Victory voting buddy or voting buddies, so I believe that we should plan to earn the XP through war.
Fascism unlocks Police State, if we don't mind spending 1 or 2 turns of Anarchy switching into it, but it only provides a +25% production boost to Military Units. Compare that with a +33% production boost when whipping from The Kremlin, while whipping is going to be how we'll produce most, if not all, of our Tanks.
If we're low on population points, it may be worthwhile to detour to Fascism near the end of the game, but unfortunately, it's a tech that won't come until near the end, so we'd only really use it for our 12 Tanks, which is probably not going to pay off in terms of the number of game turns but may pay off in terms of not whipping our Hindu Cities so hard (which would reduce the number of AP Votes that we will have).
Communism
Again, while it's a detour of 1 tech, it's one that will pay off.
We will need Stone for The Kremlin, which probably means settling 2 Cities near to Mao (one for Marble and one for Stone), although the Stone City is also close to Louis, thanks to Louis' REXing onto Mao's continent.
The Kremlin itself is a great Wonder, with a 33% boost to whipping Hammers.
State Property improves Watermills and Workshops.
State Property removes the need to build Courthouses, of which we currently have 0, removes the need to build the Forbidden Palace, and reduces Maintenance Costs even below what you'd pay if you were to build the Courthouses. We're not Organized, so being able to skip Courthouses will be a good boost to our Civ
State Property also gives us +10% Hammers in all Cities, which is a nice boost for whipping.
Trading Partners
Mansa is a trading partner, but with him running Taoism as his State Religion, we could easily anger many other AIs in the game for Trading with their Worst Enemy. So, if we keep him as a trading partner (which I believe is something that we must do), we might not easily be able to get the votes of other AIs who may give us -4 for continuing to trade with Mansa
Willem is about to be eliminated and he too readily traded away the techs that we fed to him, so it's good that he's going to die. But, that fact means that he also won't be a tech-trading partner anymore
Elizabeth is a potential tech-trading partner, with her being Financial and her having The Great Library, Hinduism for Hammer-producing Buildings, and the University of Sankore. The question then becomes how do we get her techs... perhaps we let her research some techs and then we take them later via a Peace Treaty? Or, do we fight her now and Liberate some of her Cities so that she can keep teching? Or, do we just say that her usefulness as a trading partner has come to an end and we go for her throat now?
Do we want to enable any of the other AIs? Such as AI would need to be Friendly toward us for the effort to be worth it, and I don't see such a situation easily being set up with any of the AIs whom we have met, except for possibly with France or Japan via Liberation after a war, and possibly with Catherine. But, the war should come before the tech-gifting, and by the time that the war is over, there might not be enough turns in the game for such an AI to help us.
Catherine may be an option if execute 2 wars with her, Liberating Cities each time and thereby relocating her capital. After that, we could enable her technologically and have her as a voting buddy. Or, we might just decide to build Galleon chains for her and keep her backward
Isabella Tasks
Which one is better?
Isabella #1:
Pros:
- It shouldn't be too hard to get our Great Prophet
- If we get our Marble City, it shouldn't be too hard to also get a Great Artist in Utrecht using The Taj Mahal, The National Epic, a Theatre, and an Odeon
Cons:
- Producing a Great Prophet in our Moai City means producing several less Military Units at a time in the game when those Military Units could be very helpful, both due to hiring Specialists and due to diverting Hammers into 1 or 2 more Temples
- We don't have a reliable way to generate a Great Scientist
- If we try and fail to generate a Great Scientist when we try for one at not-100% odds, we'd need a 900-GPP Great Person, which puts further strains on what we can do with our limited population points (less whipping, less working of Mines, etc)
- If we go for the free Great Scientist from Physics, it removes the chance of us having Mansa learn Physics on our behalf. If we give Astronomy + Scientific Method to Mansa, he's likely to research Physics on our behalf, which he will gladly do so that he can earn the free Great Scientist, and which saves us turns not having to research that tech ourselves; so, going after Physics ourselves means not getting such a tech in trade from Mansa
Isabella #2:
Pros:
- This task fits in well with attacking Isabella (we can't capture and gift a Shaka City to her without first fighting her anyway, as she wouldn't accept such a City, and we won't attack Mansa just to get her a Desert City... I don't recall seeing other Deserts on the map)
- Isabella could make for a reliable voting buddy, as she is likely to be Buddhist and thus we can give her several Hindu votes without worrying about her switching to Hinduism
- She has a lot of Cities, most of which appear to be coastal, making for a chance to gain a large City Liberation bonus with her
- Only Mansa (currently) would be angered by us going to war with her, and Mansa isn't a reliable voting buddy as we won't be attacking him
- She hasn't been warring, so if we prepare a large enough army before attacking her, we can cut through her Cities quite quickly without much resistance
Cons:
- A different task may be easier to implement than a full-scale war on Isabella
Isabella #3:
Pros:
- Only +1 tech needed to unlock it, although it's an expensive one (Radio)
- Mansa may research the tech for us if we enable him sufficiently
Cons:
- We'd need a large amount of Unchopped trees somewhere in a reasonably-large-sized City, which might not be feasible (unless we want to give up on The Taj Mahal and save pretty much all of Utrecht's trees... recall how 12 Utrecht trees was only getting us around 440 Hammers, which still puts us far short of the needed 800 Hammers)
- Or, we'd somehow need to generate a Great Engineer (I don't see any feasible way to make that reliably happen)
- If Mansa does research the tech, he'll have to decide not to build 1 out of a possible 3 Wonders on the turn that he learns the tech, which is a bit of a luck-based thing, especially since he won't be in a war and has several nice Cities, so he could easily start on such a Wonder
So, I am currently leaning toward Isabella #2, where we plan to make Isabella our primary voting buddy.
With sufficient Galleons, War Elephants, and Cats, we can strike at her Dyes City (I think that she is trading Dyes for Ivory--or else, whatever other City contains the Resource that she is using to trade with Mansa) as well as her Hammer-heavy Cities, to hopefully also cut off her access to Copper.
From there, it will just be time spent warring, bringing her down to 1 City, manually-spreading Hinduism in some of the captured Cities, probably whipping the captured Cities down to replace our lost Military Units, then Liberating the Cities to her (maybe the Hindu ones won't be reduced to Size 1 or else the Hindu Cities will be Cities with a lot of Food so that they can regrow)... with an option of immediately recapturing and again Liberating her Cities to her if we feel that we need the extra Diplo to secure her as a voting buddy.
If we wanted to keep most of Isabella's Cities, we'd capture them a total of 3 times, earning a net +15 Diplo Attitude with her (-3 + 12 -3 + 12 - 3 = 15) and still getting to keep her Cities. That said, we'd probably be better off simply whipping her Cities down when we own them the first time and letting her keep her Cities in the end so that it will be easier to make her our voting buddy without her slipping into Hinduism herself (she'd minimally need to have the Buddhist Holy City aka her capital or perhaps the Jewish Holy City).
Razing Amsterdam
Ignoring the niceness of being able to whip 9 population points after waiting for about 10 turns of City Revolt, it is extremely detrimental for us to keep this City.
Recapturing the City could remove the Forge and Lighthouse, but let's say that we would be able to keep them with some luck.
9 population points with a Forge means 9 * 37 H, which is roughly 9 Missionaries.
So, if we don't raze the City, what could happen?
in the case of the AP I found it gave contact between all members (anyone with AP religion in a city).
There are a few implications of this. For example, if you spread the AP religion to a backwards civ that no one has met yet, then they will get contact for tech trading which may make them more difficult to kill later
Your AP missionaries will be spreading contact along with their religion
Well, for one, Catherine could get Hinduism auto-spread to her as soon as we learn Astronomy, which would be bad as then she'd no longer be an isolated backward AI and would immediately begin meeting any AI with Hinduism in one of their Cities and she could very quickly enter the tech-trading game, further speeding up the global tech pace of backward AIs (i.e. AIs learning techs that we know, which won't help us, but would hurt us if we went to war with said AIs).
The same could be true of other AIs whom we are not yet ready to meet the rest of the world due to Diplo reasons (i.e. meeting an AI who then becomes their Worst Enemy, making the Diplo situation trickier).
Essentially, razing Amsterdam puts us fully in control of where Hinduism spreads, while keeping Amsterdam leaves us out of control of where Hinduism spreads.
Thanks for the great article! Finally saved my mystery "why doesn't the diplo victory vote come up?" waiting for hundreds of turns. Of course, I had too many votes (>75%)
We also need a voting buddy, but the voting buddy plus our votes must make up 75% of the world's Hindu votes.
Let's assume the case where no player has a Hindu State Religion. In that case, it's simply a total count of population.
Currently, Mansa has 25 votes that won't go to us. Hopefully, he won't spread Hinduism further, but let's say that he does spread the Religion a bit and perhaps grows his Cities and he gets a total of 45 votes, which is not that unrealistic.
Each AI in the game (8 of them, with Willem dead) and say minus 1 voting buddy (it would be ideal to have 2 voting buddies, but maybe less practical than 1 voting buddy) where each non-voting-buddy has a Size 5 City with Hinduism in it gives us 7 * 5 = 35 more votes not going to us
We'd also have to kill Shaka with Cuirassiers or Tanks, otherwise he'd have (currently) another 29 population points, so, an extra 29 - 3 = 26 votes not going to us
45 + 35 + 26 = 106 votes not going to us
So, somehow, between ourselves and our AI voting buddy, we'd need 3 * 106 = 318 population points!
Now, that's in the case where we're in control of Hinduism by razing Amsterdam.
If we do not raze Amsterdam, then let's say that Hinduism auto-spreads to an additional 5 AI Cities at an average Size of 6. That's an extra 30 votes not going to us, meaning that we'd need an extra 3 * 30 = 90 population points just to make up for this cost! How can 9 free Missionaries ever make up for this cost? It can't.
And, that's assuming a best-case scenario.
What's more realistic is that Hinduism spreads to a Size-9 City of Mao's and he further spreads Hinduism himself to several of his Cities. We'd have to invest Hammers in Spies and Commerce in Espionage to switch him out of Hinduism and would need a large number of population points to overcome his additional votes.
I don't see how getting 9 Missionaries' worth of Hammers makes up for such a cost.
Conclusion: We must raze Amsterdam if we want a hope at winning an AP Victory.
On the plus side, then we won't have to worry about spreading other Religions to the AIs anytime soon and we can mostly ignore Missionaries for a long time, allowing us to focus on building Military Units when they'll be the most use... over time, auto-spreading of the other 6 Religions will do our job for us.
An AP Victory won't be trivial... or is it? With good planning and razing of the Hindu Holy City, it could be
The more that I think about it, the more challenging that it will be to set up an AP Victory. We can do it and we should do it, as building The UN would be its own challenge and any other Victory type is far off for us given our late start with warring.
But, it means that investing in a Settler for Toku on a junky island is worth the cost... 1 Settler means him having 1 vote that won't go to us, which means us needing 3 population points to counter his vote. Spreading Hinduism to one of his Size-5 Cities means us needing an additional ( 5 - 1 ) * 3 = 12 population points. Even if we pick a Size-2 City, that City can grow to Size 5 by the time that the game is over.
A Settler can be 3-pop-whipped. Which is better... 3 population points whipped or having to obtain and maintain 12 population points at the end of the game?
Also, how are we going to whip a ton of Tanks and still win if we need a large # of population points just to win?
We also can't just park several Settlers + Hindu Missionaries around the map, as there's a limit to how many Hindu Missionaries that we can have or can be building at a time (a total of 3, which is not a lot).
But, what we CAN do is be creative... we will settle a Marble City near Mao. We will settle a Stone City near Louis. We'd already planned to do so. When it's coming time for us to win, we whip those Cities down to 1 population point each. Then, we gift those Cities to those respective AIs. At a time between founding these Cities and the end of the game, when it's convenient for us, we can spread Hinduism to these 2 Cities.
Due to having razed the Hindu Holy City, those AIs will never get Hinduism on their own, so they will only have 1 vote each.
Similarly, we can settle an island City near Japan to which we will spread Hinduism. Near the end of the game, we can whip it down to Size 1 and gift it to him.
That's 3 AIs taken care of.
Shaka, Elizabeth, and Mansa already have Hinduism.
Assuming that we cannot easily gift a City to Catherine (what with her likely being on her own continent), we will either fight her to make her a voting buddy or we can simply have a Hindu Missionary (rather than a Hindu gift City) near to her empire near the end of the game.
Or, we relocate her capital to our core area and then it will be simple to gift her a Size-1 Hindu City later.
As for Mansa, assuming that we do not go to war with him, we can limit the domestic spread of Hinduism by:
1. Giving him Astronomy + Scientific Method (which leads directly toward Physics, making Isabella #1 appear less attractive) so that he cannot build any additional Hindu Monasteries
2. Giving him Education + Liberalism and hoping that he'll go into Free Religion (or switching him during one of our Golden Ages by slipping into Free Religion ourselves temporarily) so that he'll be out of Organized Religion and thus won't be able to use the Organized Religion Civic's ability to build Missionaries
3. Using Spies to Sabotage any Jewish Monasteries that he has already built so that he'll be completely unable to build further Jewish Missionaries
With the Hindu Holy City razed, we'll be fine if he uses Astronomy to settle the world's islands... let him improve his tech pace, as it will only help us, and we won't want to settle those Cities anyway. We won't be in danger of those Cities gaining Hinduism at an awkward time (a Size-8-Fish-Island-City getting Hinduism near the end of the game could really mess us up).
Elizabeth either becomes our voting buddy or gets reduced to a Size-1 Desert Island City to the south of her empire that we initially only put Confucianism in so that she'll run Confucianism as her State Religion after we capture her Hindu Cities... either way, we'll make her Hindu votes count for us.
Isabella or perhaps Catherine then becomes our primary voting buddy, although it would be good to have 2 voting buddies.
Shaka dies near the end of the game, with us possibly razing his Hindu Cities if keeping them would put us over the 75% threshold, but otherwise us keeping the Cities to earn more votes. Expect all of Shaka's Cities to be Size 1 upon capture, though, as he's a whipping-crazy little fiend who will whip his Cities to the bone if your stack of Military Units gives him time to do so.
So, there we have it... a plan... that isn't quite a complete plan, but is close to a plan, as we still need to decide who to fight next.
Which AI Next?
Elizabeth:
Pros:
The bulk of our army is close to her
We don't have a large navy yet, so until we get one, she'll be the easiest target to hit
Our reinforcements can arrive at her shores quite quickly while we build up our military forces
Capturing the AP early would be of great help to us, as leaving it for the end could make getting the right AP Resident voting cycle come up a real challenge
We'd have more Cities that could build Hindu Temples for +2 H and +2 Flasks if we also capture The University of Sankore from Elizabeth
We have a war ally to help fight her navy (Shaka)
We'd build up Mutual Military Struggle points with Shaka and he might stay in the war longer due to having an ally, while he will be less inclined to declare war on us after the Elizabeth war due to liking us more for fighting by his side
Cons:
She could vote for the war against her to stop (and we wouldn't be allowed to Defy it if we want to win by AP Victory... but, there's also a small chance that Shaka would Defy such a resolution)
She has Macemen
She might get Engineering for Pikemen or Feudalism for Longbowmen soon
Isabella:
Pros:
She's not in a war yet, so she won't have a lot of Military Units yet
She has a lot of Cities, and the ones that we see have Buddhism in them, so she could make for an excellent voting buddy
Cons:
She could have built some War Elephants or might at the start of a war
She could learn Feudalism for Longbowmen at any time
We don't yet have much of a navy, and ideally, we'd have 8 full Galleons of units before attacking her, so that we could strike at 2 Cities (12 of our units each) at the start of the war
The bulk of our units are in the west and our boats are in the east
Attacking her later would also work for making her a good voting buddy
Catherine:
Pros:
She's likely technologically backward
Hitting her sooner would allow us to save some turns near the end of the game
Cons:
She's at the opposite end of the map, according to Willem's clue
We don't yet have much of a navy
We don't know for sure that she lacks Feudalism and finding out (meeting her) could speed up her tech pace
While it would be nice to take care of her soon, we don't have enough captured AI Cities to form a core set of Cities from which to form an army
So, my current line of thinking is that
we should target Elizabeth next. We can get Spies to her metal units and our forces are positioned close to her, so then it becomes a logistics problem of getting our Military Units onto boats and into position.
The next AP resolution could be troublesome, but we could work around it... we could launch the war just after the next AP resolution... and if the next one is to stop the war against her, we could bribe Shaka to Cease Fire with Elizabeth to avoid Elizabeth being invincible for 10 turns.
Again, we should never accept a request to "Stop Trading with a Worst Enemy," as then we will lose the ability to talk to that target AI. For example, if Elizabeth asks us to stop trading with Shaka, we must tell her "No," so that we'll keep open the option of being able to bribe Shaka into a Cease Fire with Elizabeth.
