SGOTM 21 - Xteam

[Dhoomstriker]

Isabella ("Isabella is all into romantic gestures. My first suggestion to win her heart would be...")
a) Have the most brilliant minds of your time explain to her that your love is pure, true and eternal (bring one artist, scientist and prophet to her capital and gift them to her)
b) Build her a luxurious summer residence (Gift her a city built on desert and next to the coast or an oasis that has an Odeon, a Grocer and a Castle), you must be at +3 relations with her when you gift this city.
c) Invent a whole new style of music to express your love and let the whole world hear it (Construct Rock N Roll and gift all Singles away for free, or gift Singles to all players alive)

@BSPollux
In regards to Isabella #2, can you kindly clarify the order of wording with respect to the "and" and the "or"?

Is it between:
i. On a Desert square which is next to the Coast
vs
ii. Next to an Oasis

Or, is it between:
iii. On a Desert square which is next to the Coast
vs
iv. On a Desert square which is next to an Oasis

I'm thinking the latter (between iii. and iv.), but it doesn't hurt to ask.


Also, for Isabella #3, if an AI builds Rock N Roll and we capture the Wonder then gift away the Singles, would that approach count or would we have failed the task due to not having built the Wonder ourselves?

 

[Cactus Pete]

"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?" By capturing large cities. We also need population in our lib/univ cities to tech fast, so continued whipping of them should be done cautiously. Please explain (probably for the second or third time I suspect) how attacking Shaka while we're teching to curs doesn't fit with your plan above. It would give us population to whip from cities that are not high-tech.

Is there anything useful we can do with the spy points we've accumulated against W before we eliminate him?

Should we switch spy points to E now or to Shaka?

Who's playing next, leif?

 

[BSPollux]

Isabella #2

Requirement a: Desert
AND
Requirement b: Coast OR oasis

 

[Dhoomstriker]

By capturing large cities.

If we fight a War Elephant + Mace + Cat war versus Shaka, we won't be capturing large-sized Cities. We'll be capturing Size 1 Cities after Shaka whips them to the bone. Slowly and painfully. In a costly manner.

War Elephants do quite poorly against Combat II, speedy Impis, and War Elephants make up the bulk of our army.

Shaka's Cities aren't going to give us a lot of value but they will deplete our already-low Military forces.

His Cities offer no new Resources, so no additional sources of Happiness.

While our units are knee-deep trudging through the Jungles of Vietnam the Deserts and Tundra of Zululand, we won't be in position to take advantage of declaring war on Elizabeth after the next AP Resolution.

Delaying a war on Elizabeth then gives her time for one or both of Longbowmen + Castles, forcing us to get to Knights or Cuirassiers. If we try to hit her soon, we might not face such resistance or can at least hit at a time before she has many Castles or before she has Fortified her Archers-upgraded-to-Longbowmen.

I'm just not sure what capturing a bunch of Size 1 Cities is going to do for us. Later, we can quickly use 2-movement units to capture Shaka's Cities with advanced units in an efficient manner, before he can whip them down.

The strength of a 1-movement-point army is assaulting from the sea, where you don't give the AI several turns to build up defences as you do on land when marching toward a City. Did you find it incredibly frustrating to march on The Hague, how turn after turn, Willem made the defences stronger and stronger? The same will happen against Shaka. The difference against Elizabeth is that her Cities are positioned on the Coast, and an AI does not consider your units on a boat to be a threat to a City, so we'll only be threatening an AI City on the turn that we land and plus 1 more turn if we Bombard (we might not Bombard if she doesn't have Longbowmen yet or else might Bombard and attack on the same turn, so as to fight against 1 less City defender).

Shaka's Cities will have 6+ units in each due to the nature of the war (a land war with slow-moving units). Elizabeth's Cities may have 2 or 3 units plus whatever she can muster in the turn after we land. One of her Cities will have an army in it, but that's 1 of 6. Expect Shaka to whip and create an army in all of his Cities, and since he can move Impis and Horse Archers at a rate of 4 moves per turn to our 1 move per turn, it'll be the nastiest type of war and we might not even win it!

We also need population in our lib/univ cities to tech fast, so continued whipping of them should be done cautiously.

Look at the Power graphs of TSR and PD. They whipped hard. Do you think that they did the wrong thing?

Other than X-ops' Cottages and Surfin' Turf's Mines, I don't see a lot of squares that we'd be working that are all that inspirational. Those squares only get good after we get Oxford + the Heroic Epic, respectively.

+2 Food +2 Commerce per Coast does add 2 * 1.5 = 3 Flasks per turn, while the Food gets eaten by the citizen that produces those Flasks. Compare that to a non-Riverside Village in X-ops that will add 3 * 3.1 = 9.3 Flasks per turn after Oxford and 3 * 3.35 = 10.05 Flasks per turn after Oxford + an Observatory.

X-ops Cottages are inspirational. Other Cities' Coast squares are not.

If we fight a war 20 turns sooner, how many less total Hammers will we have to invest in order to make the same City captures?

How much sooner can we earn City Capture Gold so as to never have to lower the Science Slider again*?

* Except by choice to earn Espionage Points and even then we wouldn't be saving up Gold to do so.

How many XPs can our Military Units earn by winning easier fights so as to make future, more-challenging fights, also become easier?

How many times can we re-use our Military Units? 1 War Elephant built now might fight in 15 more battles in this game. 1 War Elephant slow-built after 20 turns, especially if we only slow-build our entire Military over time, might fight in 3 more battles in this game. Which method of investing our Hammers is more efficient?

60 Hammers / 15 battles = 4 Hammers per battle
vs
60 Hammers / 3 battles = 20 Hammers per battle

Is there anything useful we can do with the spy points we've accumulated against W before we eliminate him?

Steal his Treasury in New Amsterdam.

Now that we have his clues, who cares if we fail and he gives us -1 Diplo?

The Spy at The Hague can be sent over to Elizabeth to camp out her Copper/Iron.

I would suggest that we DO NOT take Feudalism in trade from Willem, even though it's on the table. Taking it ourselves could mean more AIs getting it sooner due to the tech being more readily tradeable amongst AIs.

60-Hammer War Elephants are efficient to build with a small empire, but 90-Hammer Knights are not, so getting Guilds from Mansa ASAP is not an effective approach if it means that we're forced to use stronger units as the AIs get Feudalism in trade. I.e. We would force ourselves to use Knights by putting the AIs in a position where they'd more easily get Longbowmen. We can always grab Feudalism from a different AI later.

Should we switch spy points to E now

Yes, good catch. We don't want them going randomly to 4 different AIs.

EDIT: We could also consider 1 turn at 100% Espionage right now. We'll need some EPs invested against Elizabeth to actually be able to Sabotage improvements and then we'll get a better picture of what she's teching and how soon she'll reach Longbowmen or Pikemen + Castles.


What we should be thinking about now is... how do we get our army onto Elizabeth's shores quickly and efficiently?

Is it good to delay Astronomy and whip a couple of more Galleys, then upgrade them to Galleons?

Is it better to build Cats or Galleys out of Utrecht? If we build Cats, how will our units get to Elizabeth? If we build Galleys, can we get enough Cats to the front lines in time? If we're going to dodge the AP Resolutions, then spreading Hinduism does not need to be the immediate priority.

Should we be whipping or slow-building the Hippos War Elephant?

Should we be whipping extra units into The Heroic Epic? Or, should we even stop dumping Hammers into it for now and just whip units into units, waiting to put further Hammers into The Heroic Epic after we've settled a City on top of the Marble?

We probably don't need a Temple in X-ops, at least not right away, but we can whip the Crossbowman there and nearly finish off Oxford. For X-ops, an Observatory makes sense, but probably nowhere else. We'd probably benefit from growing X-ops after those 2 whipping actions.

Everywhere else can whip, whip, whip as much as it can. Population points can regrow, but a window of opportunity to attack an AI when the AI is weak will disappear if not taken advantage of.


Where should our Confucian Missionaries go? We could potentially spread one in Hippos and build a Forge there, but we could instead simply whip 2 Military Units in the short term.

If we delay Astronomy slightly, we can whip a Galley out of Athens and a couple of Galleys out of Utrecht. After that, Confucianism could get spread in Utrecht and we could Chop/Whip a Granary so as to best make use of the Deers there.


We will want to delay a canal City until after we've Chopped the Utrecht Forests into The Taj Mahal and after that point, a canal City might not be needed, especially if we'll have Utrecht using the Deer to hire Specialists... sure, we might not go for Isabella #1, but why not leverage Marble + Forests to give us The National Epic there and generate some kind of a Great Person for a 2-Great-Person Golden Age?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Also, what about Settlers?

We have 1.

Ideally, we'll have 1 for the Marble, 1 for the Stone, and 1 for a gift City to Elizabeth before the war so that we can capture all of her 6 Cities and keep her alive for gifting her a Galley.


We'd probably also gift her a Warrior and we'd need a Confucian Missionary for that City... the Warrior would waste her upgrade Gold on a Mace instead of on another Longbowman and would keep her City alive if Shaka were to try to capture it.


It would be NICE to get a Settler for the Amsterdam location, but we can probably wait until The Hague comes out of revolt and 2-pop-whip a Settler out of there.

We can 2-pop-whip Settlers out of our Forge Cities if we put 25 final Hammers into the Settlers or we can 3-pop-whip them for overflow Hammers.

It might be worth it to make a Settler in City 4 via 2-pop-whipping at the cost of 1 Hammer in the Catapult. Or, perhaps we can use 3 Workers to quickly Chop the last Forest to the west of City 4 while still getting our Catapult.

It would be nice to send 2 Settlers and 1 Military Unit (perhaps our nearby Maceman?) toward Mao using one of our speedy Galleons... perhaps Galley 2, who can have the Great General join him when he's on the same square as the Queen Elizabeth Galley and then Galley 2 can take Flanking I + Navigation I + Navigation II for an additional 2 movement points, as well as can upgrade to a Galleon once we grab Liberalism for Astronomy (maybe after another 2 or 3 turns so as to get more Galleys first).

The Stone Settler would just hope that there are no Barbs there, but if there is one, the Maceman could fend it off and then use our Cultural Borders plus the Cultural Borders of the AIs to prevent further spawnings.

The Marble Settler would get to keep the Maceman, since there is a Barb City near to there.

I'd say that the Stone City could be settled to share Mao's Pig, while the Marble City should get settled on top of the Marble.

Workers and/or Missionaries can be sent in the second round, after we've peacefully secured the settling locations.


By settling on top of the Marble, we'll be able to quickly start Chopping into The Taj Mahal at Utrecht.

Ideally, we'd only complete The Taj Mahal once we've got MoM, so we may make a gamble to build that Wonder before The Taj Mahal, earning Failure Gold if we fail to complete MoM. Of course, we'll have to keep an eye out for Mansa going after Nationalism, and keep an eye out for him or anyone to generate a Great Engineer, but with Marble, The Taj Mahal should be safely ours.


What I start to wonder is when we should trade Astronomy to Mansa. The sooner that he gets it, the greater the chance that he'd tech the needed Scientific Method for us. Perhaps we can hold off for a bit on that trade and just plan to get Scientific Method ourselves.


The biggest challenge with the Isabella #2 task is going to be delaying Economics, so Mansa can't have Education for quite some time if we want to self-tech Economics. But, Mansa may pick Education, at which point we'll probably just let him have Education and thus he can have the Great Merchant from Economics, and we will accept the fact that we'll later get Economics in trade without having to tech it ourselves as compensation. Better that than him wasting Flasks on Education and still beating us to Economics.

 

[leif erikson]

Who's playing next, leif?

Probably not a good idea. We're getting close to the end and RL is eating me alive. Can't even really look at it in detail until Monday or Tuesday evening. Better if someone with more time can grab it.

Otherwise, I'll do my best.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

A long message about things that we could do

Spoiler :

So, I've done some more thinking: if we can capture York, even before the next AP Resolution, then we won't really care that much if Elizabeth proposes a resolution to stop the war against herself. If that happens, we write off the option of (easily) making her a voting buddy and can just feel content that we own the Apostolic Palace while we prepare to go after Isabella to make her our voting buddy.

We need to own the Apostolic Palace to potentially become the Resident, assuming that we aren't going to switch into Hinduism prior to an AP Resident election. So, let's just go and take it. If we manage to get other Cities from Elizabeth during the war, great. If not, we will at least be in position to wrest control of the AP Resident position in the next Resident election.

We can't afford the turns sitting around with our army, so we go in quickly and then we follow-up with additional troops... we don't have to drop everyone off in the first round, just enough troops to take and hold York (the Apostolic Palace City) while our boats fetch further reinforcements to hit other Cities of Elizabeth's. During that time she may throw some of her units at York, making it easier to capture some of her other Cities or at least lowered her total unit count for a future war should she enforce 10 turns of Peace with us and Shaka.

If she calls a stop to that war, we'll have built up enough forces that we can go after Isabella. On our way to taking out Isabella, we could even try to capture the Barb City that near to her and then Liberate it to her before the war starts, giving us +1.5 for Liberation Diplo credit and yet another City that we'll be able to recapture and re-Liberate to her for yet another +1.5 credit. If the Barb City has been captured by an AI by that time, then we'll simply not get that opportunity.


We can still send Judaism to Mao's capital, probably dropping the Missionary off in Guangzhou and letting the Missionary walk to Beijing by foot, saving the Caravel a tiny fraction of travel time.


Once we've eliminated Willem, his Triremes will disappear, clearing the way for Galley 2 to pick up our Great General and head westward to meet up with our Queen Elizabeth Galley.

One of those 2 boats can be used to shuttle 2 Settlers and a Maceman to Mao's area.

I'm not sure which way is better to use our +1-Visibility-promoted Queen Elizabeth boat. It could help with our stack of boats at Elizabeth to avoid fights with Elizabeth's boats, but it could also be in danger of getting involved in a battle if we're not paying attention.

It could help with spotting Barb units for our Settlers and it would be kept out of harm's way, while a Galley 2 (upgraded to a Galleon) probably wouldn't mind getting involved in defensive boat fights at Elizabeth, at least when it's empty of troops.

Thoughts here would be appreciated on which boat to use in the war against Elizabeth and which boat to send toward Mao with Settlers.


We'll want a decent amount of Cats to go with us toward Elizabeth, but we don't have many of those near Willem's core area, so we'll have to do some shuttling from the New Amsterdam area to get some Cats to the front lines.


We're also going to have to decide what to do about the Forests at New Amsterdam. We could Chop out Buddhist Missionaries if we want them, or we could Chop out a Granary and half of a Lighthouse, making the City able to quickly join in on the Whipping fun.


We should take a close look at the map to see which City of Isabella's might potentially be used for a Summer Palace, to ensure that said quest is realistically achievable. It would suck if we had to raze a City or two to make it happen, but we have to consider that we somehow need to whip a Grocer. The Odeon will be cheap, as will be the Walls and the Castle if we secure the Stone Resource, but that Grocer will be a pain in the butt... even with Confucianism, we're talking about 150 / 1.25 = 120 base Hammers, which is either a 4-pop-whipping action or less population points being whipped if we overflow some Hammers into it from other whipped build items.

We'll also have to be sure not to lose the City in a battle, as we don't want the Buildings to disappear, and we must gift the City, not lose it in battle.

We also don't want Isabella to build her own Grocer, as she'd need Feudalism + Guilds to do so. The last that I recall, she doesn't have Iron, so we might not have to fear Knights (unless she pops Iron or gets it in trade), but Longbowmen are yucky enough if they can be avoided.

Isabella's Unique Building is a Castle, so she'll be sure to build plenty of those when she gets Engineering, so hopefully, she won't get that tech.


If we don't want to anger Mansa, we could consider paying him to go to war against Elizabeth before we declare war on her. The cost would be high and we'd probably be basically giving him the means to attack her (Galleons), so there'd be a risk that he'd swoop in and take a City, and/or we'd be giving him Education and handing him the keys to Economics... but, if we go for Isabella #2, we might need to let him be the one to get Economics anyway, as he loves that tech and if we try to race him to get it, we won't be able to complete Isabella #2 anymore, as we'll be unable to build a Castle. Unless you have a ton of Culture in a City, a Castle will disappear when you capture that City, so we couldn't really count on capturing a Castle from Isabella, either.

Since Mansa will trade techs at Annoyed and will Open Borders at any Attitude, the main value of having him at Cautious is to be able to bribe him into wars, ask him to switch Civics, ask him to switch Religions, etc. It would be nice to have him at Cautious, but if he drops to Annoyed, we should still be fine*.

* Assuming that he doesn't decide to declare war on us, but I doubt that he'd pick us to go after and even if Mansa did go to war with us, we could then earn some of his Cities to Liberate back to him, to make him like us more again after the war, or we could focus on stealing The Pyramids out from under him and then just defend that City until he was willing to talk Peace Treaty terms.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Appreciate the long rationale for not warring with Shaka. Still think we should send units to see what his state is. E could be attacking and weakening him, or he could be sailing units north to attack her. BTW, why would we have to slog overland? The inland cities might be whipped down to 1 citizen, but we'd raze them anyway.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Still think we should send units to see what his state is.

I don't see a problem doing that, as we won't really have space for our Chariots on the first boatload anyway.

E could be attacking and weakening him, or he could be sailing units north to attack her.

I haven't seen the City counts change in a way that a City changed hands, at least for every turn that you uploaded. It's quite possible that Shaka is streaming units at Elizabeth, but it's also possible that Shaka attacked with a boatload of units at the start of the war (an AI pretty much has to cross Cultural Borders when plotting their own war, so that must have happened), and that after attacking, any of Shaka's Galleys got sunk by Elizabeth's ability to build Triremes.

BTW, why would we have to slog overland?

I assumed that you'd want to march via land since we have Military Units close to Shaka's Cities but not many boats there.

Sending boats is tough as once the boats get to the far south-west of our continent, they're far away from any further action. At least by going after Elizabeth, we can hit her south, then her west where we know that her capital is located, and finish off in the east, then be in position to quickly move on to Isabella.

The time between wars being kept to a minimum is important to maximize the use of our units.

The inland cities might be whipped down to 1 citizen, but we'd raze them anyway.

If we're going to raze Cities, what's the point of doing so now? Going to war for the sake of going to war isn't going to win this game quicker.


If no one objects, I'd like to do:

Mini PPP
Buy Mansa's World Map <-> 5 Gold
so that we can potentially see where Isabella's Cities are located, to see about deciding on the feasibility of Isabella #2

Also, I'd like to clean up the signs on the map

Probably adjust the build orders, too

 

[Cactus Pete]

Mini PPP fine by me.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I updated the signs and altered the build orders a bit... all moves which are reversible/changeable.

I also traded:
Mansa's World Map <-> 5 of our Gold

We now see all of Isabella's Cities. We also see one of Catherine's Cities, without having to meet her.

I was mistaken... Shaka does not have any Desert squares.

But, the Stone City by Mao COULD become a Summer Palace for Isabella, although we'd need a couple of Work Boats and a lot of time to make it happen.

I picked a possible City of Isabella's for a Summer Palace... it's also not an inspirational location.

So, should we plan to use one of these Cities or should we plan to self-tech Physics and stick with Isabella #1?

Spoiler :

Whoever ends up playing next should be sure to grab the latest saved game from the server, since we made an irreversible move (getting Mansa's World Map).


EDIT: In staring at the screenshots, maybe the Stone location is going to be best location for the Summer Palace... we should be able to Culturally steal the Pig, giving us 3 Food Resources for Whipping. We would still have to go to war with Isabella in order to give the City to her, and we'd want to Pillage the Resources right before gifting the City, and, of course, we'd want to complete The Kremlin before gifting the City's Stone away.

But, if we go for this approach, we might not build The National Epic, or at least not in Utrecht, and we could save some of those Forests for The Kremlin.

 

[BSPollux]

@BSPollux
Also, for Isabella #3, if an AI builds Rock N Roll and we capture the Wonder then gift away the Singles, would that approach count or would we have failed the task due to not having built the Wonder ourselves?

The rule says "construct". You have to build it yourself.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"If we're going to raze Cities, what's the point of doing so now? Going to war for the sake of going to war isn't going to win this game quicker." To gain GG points, to obtain gold, and to relieve cultural pressure from the good cities, which are worth going to war for.

"Thoughts here would be appreciated on which boat to use in the war against Elizabeth and which boat to send toward Mao with Settlers." Would go with QE if, and only if, we upgrade to galleon before sending her, but it's not clear to me when we will chose to learn Lib>Astro.

Dhoom, if leif isn't free, neilmeister is AWOL, and Hawk is dealing with RL, wouldn't you be up next before Folket?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

To gain GG points,

We'll get plenty of those if we plan our units' logistics well in hopping from ship to ship.

If we haven't earned enough by the end of the game, Tanks can earn us the last needed ones from Shaka.

to obtain gold

At the cost of losing War Elephants, right? City Capture Gold is helpful, but it usually only pays for the short term Maintenance Costs of owning a City. The true gain is the population points and the nice land, neither of which we're really going to get from Shaka.

to relieve cultural pressure from the good cities

Now that's a great point, but perhaps in the opposite way that you were thinking. With some Culture builds and our Creative Trait, we'll be overpowering Shaka's Culture. So, as time passes, our Cultural Borders will push out toward his Cities. If, later, we have our Cultural Borders adjacent to 2 or 3 of his Cities, at that point in time it'll be worth a war, even just to capture those couple of Cities and Cease Fire, as then we would give Shaka 0 turns to Whip those Cities down.

Would go with QE if, and only if, we upgrade to galleon before sending her, but it's not clear to me when we will chose to learn Lib>Astro.

We'll grab Astronomy before we start the war for sure, as it's far more efficient to shuttle units using Galleons. It just becomes a timing issue... how many more Galleys can we create before the war versus getting our Galleons sooner allowing us to start transporting our units sooner.

I'm thinking at least 1 turn of delay because it'll take us 2 turns for our 2 Galleys to meet up with each other, and there's no sense in upgrading Galley 2 before it gets a Great General attached to it, as the upgrade to a Galleon will be free after the Great General gets attached to the Galley.

I'm also not sure how much of a rush to put on our Settler-laiden Galleon versus using Galleons in the war, but I'd rather be cautious and send a Settler-laiden Galleon soon. I suppose that the timing of getting a second Settler produced will play a role here.

Probably we'll need a second Settler from Surfin' Turf, then the Settler that we'll build from City 4 a bit later can be used for a gift City for Elizabeth.

Ideally, though, we'd be sending 2 Galleons, containing:
2 Settlers and 1 Mace
2 Workers and 1 Confucian Missionary

The first Galleon load settles the Cities and the Mace guards the Marble City.

The second Galleon load spreads Confucianism to the Marble City and the Workers start Chopping.

They Chop out a Confucian Missionary and 2 Work Boats for the Summer Palace City.


But, is that the Isabella task that we want to go after? I like the idea of using her as a Voting Buddy, but we have to go to war with Isabella for the Summer Palace option to work.

There is always the possibility of trying for a MAYBE Great Prophet, MAYBE Great Engineer out of Piscatorium. If we earn the Great Engineer, then Isabella #3 becomes feasible, but if we earn the Great Prophet, then Isabella #1 is still a possibility, but only if we go for Physics ourselves.

Isabella #3's extra Research can be performed after we unlock Tanks, as long as Mansa doesn't beat us to building Rock N Roll by teching Radio himself and having a Great Engineer on hand... which is unlikely, as there will be so many other Wonders for him to build, but it's a possible weakness of putting all of our money on Isabella #3.

Isabella #2 relies on a war with Isabella.

Isabella #1 relies on us self-teching Physics.

For now, I'll plan as though we're going for the Summer Palace for Isabella #2, as we want that Stone Resource for The Kremlin anyway.


I'm still not 100% sure about settling on the Marble or beside it...
A] On the Marble:
No Culture-flipping of nearby Cities
Saves us 8 Worker turns to get the Marble connected
Gives us a pretty junky City whose only decent square to work will be the Cow that we steal from the Barb City
5 bit-fat-cross Forest Chops (we only really need 2 to 3)

B] 1W of the Marble:
Can Culture-flip Macau so that we can Liberate that City back to Mao later... perhaps it will be worth making him Confucian if we can Culture-flip his Cities and Liberate them back later
8 turns to get the Marble connected
Gives us a decent City with a Fish and a Grassland Marble
3 big-fat-cross Forest Chops

C] 2W of the Marble:
Super aggressive with plans to Culture-flip Macau and Xian; we may never Culture-flip Xian, but if we did, it would be an awesome City to get... it's not really a practical idea, though, unless we built yet another Settler and settled it to the north of Xian for Deer + Silver, then aggressively hit Xian with our Culture from 2 sides... even then, it's probably not likely that we'd Culture-flip Xian
8 Worker turns plus some time to expand our Cultural Borders to get the Marble connected... with building Culture and the Road-building being able to happen at the same time as each other, say, about 10 turns to get the Marble connected
Gives us Fish, Marble, and a nice Cow one we Culturally steal it
2 big-fat-cross Forest Chops

D] 1E of the Marble
Cannot Culture-flip a Chinese City, but could Culture-flip the Barb City; note that we could also try to capture the Barb City in the above scenarios, so we might get that Barb City anyway
8 Worker turns to get the Marble connected
Gives us Marble and the Cow stolen from the Barb City
5 big-fat-cross Forest Chops

E] 2E of the Marble
Cannot Culture-flip a Chinese City, but could Culture-flip the Barb City
10 to 11 Worker turns to get the Marble connected
Gives us Fish, Marble, and the stolen Cow
3 big-fat-cross Forest Chops

I'm currently favouring option B], since I think that option C] is just me dreaming grandiose and unrealistic dreams.

We could also create Confucian Missionaries for Mao and court him as a Confucian ally to whom we plan to PEACEFULLY Liberate some of his Cities after having Culture-flipped Macau by the Marble and Tianjin by the Stone. He probably won't give us Liberation credit for the Marble City, but he would for his own 2 Cities if we Whip them, Chop them, and Liberate them back to him soon after owning those Cities.

We could probably also get Liberation credit if we also quickly Whipped, Chopped, and Liberated the Barb City to him shortly after owning it, giving us +4 with him, as well as the Religious bonus from Confucianism, giving us a potential peaceful voting buddy.

Culture-flipping involves randomness, though, so we can't count on him as a voting buddy as our primary plan. We might be able to drag him into a war for Mutual Military Struggle points later, though.

Anyway, it's nice to have backup options in our plans and having Mao vote for us would be said backup plan.

The Jewish Missionary could then go explore Elizabeth's island and then get used in Louis' capital. Louis is going to love everyone who runs Hereditary Rule, so he's going to get angry at nearly anyone whom we declare war on, making it nearly impossible to have him as a peaceful voting buddy. Plus, he's Creative, so we can't Culture-flip his Cities.

Dhoom, if leif isn't free, neilmeister is AWOL, and Hawk is dealing with RL, wouldn't you be up next before Folket?

All right. I don't have a lot of time this weekend, but I'll squeeze some time in tomorrow to try to push out a plan. Hopefully, I'll be able to advance the game late Sunday evening and get us into a position where Leif can continue with playing a war.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Questions to answer:
1. Can we afford to send 2 Galleons for our Marble City so that we can get Confucianism spread to both Cities and can get in some Worker turns Chopping out Work Boats, so as to more easily satisfy Isabella #2, assuming that we later go to war with Isabella?

I think that it'll be worth doing, but it'll mean spending a couple of turns Whipping out more Galleys.

2. Should we try for a possible Great Engineer out of Piscatorium, which would make for a better quest solution than Isabella #1 if we got it? Essentially, our research after we unlock Tanks will be useless, so we could research Radio with that extra time and then rush-build Rock N Roll if we had a Great Engineer, thereby only needing 1 Great Person instead of 3 Great People and without adding time to our end date.

Now that I've realised that we'll have "research turns to spare" after unlocking Tanks, I like Isabella #1 the least, so I don't think that it will be a big deal that we'll remove the chances of completing Isabella #1 if we get a Great Engineer from Piscatorium.

3. Is it okay to whip a Settler out of Surfin' Turf and one out of City 4? I think that it's worth gifting Elizabeth a City on an island to the south of her, in addition to our Marble and Stone Cities. Testing in our test game has shown that such a gift City will count as Liberation credit (as far as Fake Elizabeth aka Isabella is concerned, and all AIs are coded the same way for Liberation credit), while Clam Island will not count for Liberation credit. In this way, we can pull a tactic very similar to what we've just done to Willem (well, similar to steps 1 through 4, anyway, as we'll be eliminating Willem and we only Liberated 1 City to him):
1. Capture all of her Cities except for the gift City
2. Cease Fire
3. Liberate all of her Cities to her
4. Declare war again and recapture all of her Cities
5. At a later date, Cease Fire again
6. Liberate all of her Cities to her again
7. Keep all of her Cities and have her as a voting buddy


If we manage to get a Great Engineer, and Elizabeth doesn't stop the war against her using the AP, then we won't necessarily even need a successful war against Isabella, although we should plan for such as war, as the odds of getting a Great Engineer out of Piscatorium will be quite low and Elizabeth may choose to stop the war against her, which just makes the ability to capture and Liberate her Cities a lot tougher, especially since we'd have an extra -3 for declaring war on Elizabeth an extra time.

 

[Cactus Pete]

" So, as time passes [About how many turns are we talking about here before cultural adjacency?], our Cultural Borders will push out toward his Cities. If, later, we have our Cultural Borders adjacent to 2 or 3 of his Cities, at that point in time it'll be worth a war, even just to capture those couple of Cities and Cease Fire, as then we would give Shaka 0 turns to Whip those Cities down. Like this idea, but still want to send units to make sure Shaka isn't a very easy target right now.

 

[Folket]

Ok, I can play.

I will try to make a plan.

What is the plan with the jewish missionary?

Is it only me against razing Amsterdam?

So plan
Declare war on William now and capture Amsterdam and New Amsterdam.

Whip Hindu missionaries from the Hague.

Lib astronomy and upgrade our two Galleys. Research nationalism next.

Drop settler in top of marble. (my prefered option, as it gives us more forests to chop and saves worker turns. We may later liberate the city after taj mahal anyhow.

Drywhip a missionary in Utrecht. One missionary for 1 population is a good trade, since we will loose 1 pop to starvation otherwise.

Whip Galleon from Athens to send to meet Catherine.

Workers will chop into the taj mahal and into confusian missionaries in new amsterdam.

Buy feudalism from France.

Set up galleon chain to Isabella and prepare our war.

 

[Folket]

I prefer Isabella as our voting buddy. Let us exterminate Elizabeth.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Ok, I can play. Ggod show.

I will try to make a plan.

What is the plan with the jewish missionary? Beijing, I think.

Is it only me against razing Amsterdam? Dhoom's case for razing seems strong. Suggest you rebut his specific arguments and post for feedback, if you want to capture it.

So plan
Declare war on William now and capture Amsterdam [?] and New Amsterdam.

Whip Hindu missionaries from the Hague.

Lib astronomy and upgrade our two Galleys. Research nationalism next. Let's get a cheap galley or two out before Libing Astro.

Drop settler in top of marble. (my prefered option, as it gives us more forests to chop and saves worker turns. We may later liberate the city after taj mahal anyhow. Seems a close call on city site.

Drywhip a missionary in Utrecht. One missionary for 1 population is a good trade, since we will loose 1 pop to starvation otherwise. Makes sense

Whip Galleon from Athens to send to meet Catherine.

Workers will chop into the taj mahal [You mean road and pre-chop?] and into confusian missionaries in new amsterdam. Do we need ships or missionaries more out of NAm?

Buy feudalism from France. Don't we want to wait on this to delay AIs getting it?

Set up galleon chain to Isabella and prepare our war.

Can we afford to use our limited ships to create a chain now?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If we capture and keep Amsterdam, the AP Victory will be lost and we'll have to post a slow Domination Victory.

I've started working on a more detailed plan, but it's not ready yet. I'd like to see a far more detailed plan for our Workers before anyone plays now that ALL of our Workers except for 1 of them are stacked in Cities. It's "semi-obvious" what to do when our Workers are already spread out throughout our empire, but our current Worker positioning requires great planning, including potentially sending 3 Workers to Chop City 4's last Forest so as to get our 3rd Settler our quickly.

I see no reason for us to build Longbowmen. Feudalism will be easy to get later. The only case that I could see for taking Feudalism now is if we are willing to give Astronomy to Mansa next turn in exchange for Guilds in hopes that Mansa techs Scientific Method -> Physics.

EDIT: The problem is that we CANNOT take Liberalism for Astronomy just yet. We do not have enough population points to whip Galleons. Logistics over the next few turns can determine whether we need to waste an extra 5 turns in the game warring if we plan the logistics poorly. Sure, later, once we have our Galleons and our Units hopping from AI City to AI City, things will go smoothly, but for now, logistical planning (movement planning) of our units is the second most important part of this turnset, with razing Amsterdam being the most important part of this turnset.

There will not even be the option to keep Amsterdam and gift it and have someone else raze it as we will have 100% Culture in Amsterdam once Willem dies, meaning that we will never, ever, ever again get a chance to raze the City. It's raze the City now or Domination or UN Victory.

EDIT: As a result, it makes no sense to be greedy and we should not take Feudalism now. What we SHOULD do is look at the tech scene and see if there are any techs which an AI could trade to Louis in order to get Feudalism and then perhaps proactively trade those techs to Louis so as to block an AI-AI trade for Feudalism.


Getting Elizabeth as a voting buddy will be a trivial thing to do if we are able to capture all of her Cities, with only needing the step of a City with Confucianism in it on the Desert island to the south-west of York (the island without the 3 Clams location).

With a bit of patience, Shaka or perhaps Elizabeth with a boat-carried Settler Party will resettle Amsterdam for us.


I think that the Galley planning needs to be properly detailed before playing, too. It's not a trivial logistical task to plan for Isabella #2, as we need to send 2 Galleons and also create enough Galleys that will be upgraded to Galleons in order to launch a war against Elizabeth quickly.

EDIT: Meanwhile, the timing of when we get Astronomy will be key in terms of our logistical planning.

For example, we have to put aside our greed and get a Galley out of Piscatorium this turn, instead of putting overflow Hammers into Moai. Then, probably build another Galley right after that, whip it, complete the second Galley.

We should only learn Liberalism on the turn when the last Galley that we plan to build has been completed, since Flasks are calculated before Hammers and thus a whipped Galley will become a partially-completed Galleon if we learn Liberalism before the Galley has been created, which would be bad.

Likely, we should spend 3 to 4 turns getting Galleys, but we just have to put together a solid logistical plan to be certain.