SGOTM 23 - Xteam

Dhoomstriker · Aug 7, 2016

Jersey Joe said:
XO Cognac is going to be limited to size 6. If we are delaying whipping a settler should I turn on "Avoid Growth"?

No, it's better to grow into Unhappiness. Avoid Growth has extremely limited uses, usually related to filling up a Granary. The only other cases where I've seen it used effectively is when multiple sources of Unhappiness might appear by growing (a lot of Motherland Unhappiness, for example, giving you 2 Unhappy citizens by growing and you're already at your Happiness limit) or when about to start a Golden Age and generate Great People by hiring Specialists and you want to have as full of a Food box as possible so that you can work Specialists at a negative Food rate to get more Great People Points per turn at a time when you have more bonus Great People Points per turn (i.e. when in a Golden Age in BtS or when running Pacifism). In general, we won't be using Avoid Growth very much at all, particularly when in a whipping cycle where the goal is to keep earning Food to be whipped away.

Jersey Joe said:
Orleans cannot build a HA on T95 without whipping (it has 43 hammers on T95).

Well, with a Great General coming up and Yakutsk probably being easier to take using Horse Archers than Chariots, let's aim to 2-pop-whip a Horse Archer... if we will make more than 20 overflow Hammers after completing the Lighthouse, we can dump them into a Chariot first.

Jersey Joe said:
Just to confirm, we are whipping a Galley in Lyons turn 93 to rendezvous with the galley currently in Egypt.

Yes. If we didn't have an immediate use for the Galley, we could delay it, but since we have a valid use for it, let's just complete it. Also, we could consider sending a Worker along with the new Chariot. The Worker could board the Galley when the Galley is 2 S of Lyons and the Galley has movement points available to it:
T93 Road the GH Copper, T94 partial Mine the GH Road at 1 E of Lyons, T95 move into Lyons > move 1 SW G > move 1 SE onto the Galley that arrived there on T94, with these Worker moves happening before the Galley moves on T95.

Jersey Joe · Aug 7, 2016

write-up
T92, 575BC (continued)
Our settler in Egypt locates Memphis.

Between Turns: Darius begs us for Meditation. We give it to him.
Our Settler meets Saladin.
Saladin is annoyed with us because we traded with Darius? We did not know Saladin when we traded.
Saladin knows Math but will not trade.

T93, 550BC
only partially done.

All our troops at 2 NE of St. Petersburg are sleeping late and have all their movement.
Also, the galleys are waiting for a favorable wind before sailing this turn.

Our Chariot in Egypt found 2 hills of Gold.

Here are the logs:
Session Turn Log from 575 BC to 550 BC:

Spoiler :

Autolog:

Spoiler :

The Save:

Dhoomstriker · Aug 7, 2016

Overall, things look really good! Great job!

I had started to set up a teleportation test saved game (it was tough going, since I had to raise a lot of other AIs' Cities via the World Builder), but it looks like it will no longer be necessary.

3 Chariots versus 1 Axeman before Stalin could whip gives us great odds. 3 Chariots versus 1 Axeman and 1 Archer is not going to work.

So, it looks like we've found the turn on which we'll declare war on Stalin (this turn).

What I did find interesting when I was playing with setting up a test game was that when I gifted Size 4 and Size 2 Cities to Hatty (I figured that I might as well play around with tech stealing to see if I could find any pitfalls in our plan), Hatty wasn't whipping out Military Units. Of course, she is running Caste System, so she can't whip.

It does give me the idea of gifting/selling Code of Laws to Churchill (after we first steal Code of Laws) to see if Churchill having access to Caste System might encourage him to run that Civic.

Stalin has also annoyingly guarded his northern Worker with a Swordsman on Hills Forest terrain, so we can forget about scooping up that Worker.

At least St. Pete's is only guarded by 2 Archers again, although it's annoying that Stalin got 2 more Military Units out of that City just by owning it for the last few turns--this fact presses home how important it is to cut down Stalin's total number of Cities. On the real-world map, his empire spans all along the coast of northern Asia, so there's a good chance that we can plan to build a lot of our Railroad along that northern coast, then dip in from the coast wherever needed to get to "the Orient region."

At least we should be able to meet our original goal of taking down 3 Russian Cities during this first war.

Some quick teleportation testing for our Galleys shows that they'll end up to the west of St. Petersburg's Culture, meaning that it would make sense to wait on moving our boats until after we have declared war, giving our empty Galley a head start on going to pick up 2 new Horse Archers and leaving full movement points for our other Galleys that can head toward Vlad. Our empty Galley (Galley 5) can plan to pick up Units at NE + E of Hamburg, 1 NE of the G Sheep, as Units can either board the Galley on the turn that it arrives or on the following turn before the Galley itself moves, allowing us to pick up both Horse Archers before setting sail for Yakutsk.

As for the St. Pete's attack, we'd obviously first ask Stalin to:
Stop Trading with Frederick + 50 Gold <-> Currency

Then, after capturing St. Pete's, we immediately gift it to Churchill.

Our mounted Units who aren't needed in the attack can EDIT: just stay in place so that our Combat I + Anti-Melee Horse Archer can heal there.
~~move to the location of the surviving Units who weren't the actual Unit used to capture the City at 1 NE of St. Pete's, so that we aren't threatening Vlad.~~

On T94, our mounted Units could then move to the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad, along with Units from our Galleys being dropped off there. I'd drop off our Axemen on the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad.

Our Galleys 1 and 4 could probably drop off their 3 Chariots next to Yakutsk and then set themselves up in a chain between Hamburg and Vlad.

The 2 reinforcement Horse Archers can be used at Yakutsk as the primary attackers, with the three Chariots and Warrior 1 being used as clean-up troops.

Another unfortunate item is Vlad being at Size 3, so we'd end up gifting a Size-2 City to Churchill. Since we want to keep Churchill alive while razing Nottingham soon and since we don't want Stalin using one of his 2 Settlers in Moscow to resettle the City along with a large stack of defenders, I'd suggest that we stick with the plan of gifting Vlad to Churchill, which we can also do after the City gets captured, which would also prevent Stalin from counter-attacking us there.

Our wounded Units could move into Vlad and heal there, while we could send enough Units by Galleys to take down Yakutsk.

Once our army has recovered, we can try marching it along the northern coast along the Road that Stalin conveniently completed for us at 1 SE of Vlad on the TunH For where there's currently a Swordsman and a Worker of his, and try to capture the next City along the coast before getting a Cease Fire.

Based on the Cultural Borders that we see, Units that move out of Vlad 2 SE along that Road should be adjacent to that next City.

The nice part about this approach is that both of our Axemen can be used to help capture Vlad (or at least defend our stack), then can be used to guard our stack as our stack moves 2 SE of Vlad, and the Axemen could even be potentially used to attack the next coastal City past Vlad, since the Axemen will be just outside of that City thanks to the Road that Stalin just completed for us at 1 SE of Vlad.

Ouch, Darius is the Worst Enemy of 3 AIs. Kublai is now Annoyed toward us. We should probably expect a war declaration from Kublai in the future, especially if we were to refuse any additional Demands/Requests from Kublai.

We're now getting hit by the very situation that we were avoiding for much of the game--the complicated web of diplomacy that gets woven by knowing most of the AIs on the map.

When an AI asks us to do something, we can press the F4 key and navigate to the GLANCE screen to see the current web of diplomacy, but be careful in doing so--pressing the Escape key not only closes the F4 screen but also acts as saying "No" to the AI's request that gets hidden behind the F4 screen. The safe way to exit the F4 screen is to click on the Exit button at the bottom right of the screen, since the dialogue in which the AI asks us to decide does not also have an Exit button at the bottom right the dialogue's screen.

Even if we see Worst Enemy statuses, it's hard to know what to do without a plan in place. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but for now, I'd probably keep giving in to Demands/Requests from AIs whom we won't be attacking (we'll be attacking Churchill soon, so tell him No for a tech), and probably keep holding onto Horseback Riding ourselves. Keep holding on to our Strategic Resources but be willing to give into a Demand/Request for a Happiness/Healthiness Resource.

That's probably as simple of a Diplo Policy that I can suggest which should work for many cases.

By knowing more AI,s we're also more at risk of AIs being bribed into war against us.

Mehmed and Saladin won't trade Mathematics because they feel that they don't like us enough. Even if they did like us, both of them have a iTechTradeKnownPercent value of 40, while Hatty has a value of 30. Hatty knows both of those AIs and they know each other, so they all know the same number of players who know Mathematics, and they all know about the same number of players who know Mathematics, so until more AIs start learning Mathematics, we're not likely to get it in trade from those AIs.

No one (whom we know of) has Saladin as their Worst Enemy, although Darius has Mehmed as his Worst Enemy.

Joao knows Metal Casting. I'm not sure how we can take advantage of this fact--if we were to get enough of an army to take down Oporto, we could theoretically gift out north-west-of-Paris gift City to Joao before we gift it to Hatty, recapture that gift City from Joao when we capture Oporto, then still be able to gift the gift City to Hatty later.

On the plus side, most AIs don't know many of the Religious techs, so Longbowmen haven't appeared on the map... yet.

Hatty, Saladin, and Mehmed are all strong competitors for The Hanging Gardens, with Hatty having Stone, Saladin getting Stone in trade from Hatty, and Mehmed likely to build Aqueducts since they are his Unique Building.

Hatty is the only AI (whom we have met) who knows Calendar, so there's currently less competition for the Mausoleum of Maussollos.

Jersey Joe said:
Saladin is annoyed with us because we traded with Darius? We did not know Saladin when we traded.

That's right. As long as Saladin knows Darius, Saladin finds out about all of the techs that Darius gets in trade from anyone and if Darius is Saladin's Worst Enemy, Saladin will hate the player who gave Darius excess trading value (generally techs or Gold) even if Saladin had yet to meet the player who gifted things to Darius. Diplo sure is tricky, huh?

Churchill's Galley will likely prove to be annoying when we declare war on him, possibly costing us a Galley or two to deal with it. It's not going to be easy to predict where it will be, so we'll just have to deal with it at the time.

Theoretically, we could bribe an AI to join us in a war, say, against Stalin. I'm not sure that doing so will be to our advantage, though, as then both sides are likely to build troops and probably won't have enough time to fight each other. So, I probably wouldn't bribe a war ally in against Stalin, at least not for this war. Maybe for the next war, though, during which war we will probably stay at war with Stalin for longer than we will stay at war with Stalin in the first war.

As for Hatty, those Gold Resources look to be annoyingly just out of reach of all visible Food Resources. Can we settle somewhere closer to Hatty to make use of Flood Plains while trying to block her from expanding?

I'd probably have our Settler 6 move 1 SE Des Stone > 1 SE PH Sugar > 1 SW PH Riv Sugar > 1 SW P?H Jungle

Next turn, our Chariot could probably move 1 SE Des Road (1 W of the Stone) > 1 SE Des (1 S of the Stone) > 1 S or 1 SW

Basically, our Settler checks how far south the Flood Plains go while our Chariot 9 looks for a location to settle near the Stone Resource and the Flood Plains--even if we have to settle right up against Hatty's Culture, we can do so, as the goal is to delay her from expanding. If the City that we settle turns out to be junk due to Hatty's Culture being too strong for us to counter (note that the 8 squares which surround our City Centre probably won't be too hard for us to take Cultural control over due to having Stonehenge), we can consider gifting the City to another AI (Joao? Churchill?) later, while in the short term, we try to get additional Settlers for the seafood at the north of Africa and for the Gold Resources (we might also later gift a City with 2 Gold Resources to a friendly AI if such a City doesn't have Food to partner with the Gold Resources, being gifted after improving both Gold Resources, or even settling on one Gold Resource and improving the other before gifting the City, so that we can get one of the Gold Resources in trade).

Basically, the first Settler is used to "stake out" some territory so that we can follow up with additional Settlers soon thereafter.

An XO-Cognac-built Settler can be whipped on T95 and exist on T96, just before we go into Anarchy.

The Settler arrives at 1 E of Macau on T96. On T97, it can board a Galley that is waiting at 2 S of Lyons then chain to the next Galley at 4 S of Lyons, with that second Galley moving 2 SW and unloading the Settler on T98 1 S of Joao's Fish which is near Hatty's Incense, on the "Real game" sign, giving us the option of moving 1 E (1 NW of the Incense) to settle a Fish + Incense City or to get to the Gold Resources and settle a City there.

In order to Galley-chain the Settler, we shouldn't Galley-chain the Chariot and Worker anymore, as we won't have time to do both. Instead, the Chariot in Lyons could use our Road to Athens to reveal Athens. It will be nice to reveal Athens so that we will be able to ask Frederick to attack Athens.

Our Worker 2 could just plan to partially Farm the G Riv at 1 NW of Lyons until our Settler from XO Cognac arrives, and then Worker 2 could board the Galley alongside of the Settler, getting chained to north-west Africa alongside of our Settler from XO Cognac.

The T93 build items in our Cities look fine.

For T94, we could do:
Paris builds another Chariot
Paris steals back the Wheat
XO Cognac builds a Settler
London 2-pop-whips its Missionary
Argent dumps Hammers into a Lighthouse
Cologne builds a Chariot? an Axeman?
Macau works the G Riv Cottage

After getting Stalin to stop trading with Frederick and declaring war on Stalin, I suppose that we'll use the two full-health Horse Archers as the initial attackers against St. Petersburg, then probably follow-up with Chariots.

It's arguable that we should heal our third Horse Archer, so it can probably stay in place and heal with the help of our Medic Chariot, and if Stalin's Swordman attacks us, all the better, as we have an Anti-Melee Promotion and we'll be favoured to win that battle. So, forget my above suggestion of moving all of our mounted Units who didn't attack to 1 NE of St. Petersburg.

Of course, if our first two attacking Horse Archers don't do well at St. Pete's and our Chariots have bad odds, we'd end up using our third Horse Archer against St. Pete's, and then without the need to heal that Horse Archer, we could move all of our remaining unmoved mounted Units to 1 NE of St. Petersburg.

We might as well sell surplus Fish to Kublai and Frederick for 1 Gold per Turn each, as they aren't anyone's Worst Enemies.

Should we send the Horse Archer in Paris toward Athens, along with the next 3 Chariots that we'll build out of Paris and XO Cognac (2 out of Paris and 1 out of XO Cognac)? Frederick has a stack of 3 Axemen and 3 Spearmen who are headed for Athens, so if Frederick weakens the defenders, it would be good for us to have Units ready to capture the City.

Our surviving troops could later travel by Galley back to Oporto to take on Joao's core Cities.

We should try to get Open Borders with Saladin, since he may spread Islam to us, with him being the owner of the Islamic Holy City, and with him not being anyone's Worst Enemy. We just met him, so gifting him any tech (say, Agriculture) should counter the Traded with our Worst Enemies penalty. We aren't his Worst Enemy and he Opens Borders at Cautious, so we should be able to gift him Agriculture and immediately Open Borders with him.

We could also sell Deer to Saladin for 1 Gold per Turn, since he isn't anyone's Worst Enemy and since we have plenty of surplus Health Resources.

Cactus Pete · Aug 8, 2016

Thought I'd been reading the thread thoroughly, but I didn't realize we had declared war on Greece. Why did we do that? (Not upset about it, just curious.) Makes sense to send units behind Fred's expeditionary force and to anticipate taking Portuguese cities soon (be nice to have cats, though, especially for Lisbon).

What turn are we going to gift Macau to Hats and start stealing techs?

Joe, you are much better prepared (more into the details) than I to play at the moment, but I can give you some relief when you really want it. Do you have a goal or a turn number in mind to go to?

Dhoomstriker · Aug 8, 2016

Cactus Pete said:
Thought I'd been reading the thread thoroughly

Thanks for keeping up! :goodjob:

Cactus Pete said:
I didn't realize we had declared war on Greece. Why did we do that?

By joining the war of Frederick's side, we were more likely to keep the two of them at war, since neither one has Alphabet and Frederick would have felt that he was even more on the winning side with our Power added to his and thus Frederick would likely enviously want to get some benefit from Alex before we were to get said benefit (capturing Workers, Pillaging land, capturing Cities, etc). In that way, we were likely to see Frederick send his stacks of Melee troops toward Alex. Also, Frederick wouldn't be able to declare war on us (as far as I understand AI behaviour) by remaining at war with Alex, so we haven't needed to defend the Cities that we captured from Germany.

More importantly, an enemy of your enemy is your frienemy. Joining the war on Frederick's side meant that Frederick was immediately willing to Open Borders with us--we'd recently Closed Borders with him by having declared war on him, so while he was willing to give us a fast Cease Fire, we would have had to wait for him to randomly forget that we'd Closed Borders with him before he'd be willing to Open Borders with us--except for this method of short-circuiting Open Borders, where an AI will always given Open Borders to its war ally.

We've been making good use of Germany's Roads to get our troops into position at Russia.

Cactus Pete said:
What turn are we going to gift Macau to Hats and start stealing techs?

If all goes well, Turn 97.

That fact leaves Turn 95 as the last turn when we can whip Units and get them appearing within a short period of time, as Turn 96 will be spent in Anarchy when we switch into Christianity in order to earn an additional 15% discount on tech thefts by having our State Religion (Christianity) in the gift City.

We'll spread Christianity in our gift City on Turn 97, then gift that City, then commence the world's biggest heist ever performed within one's own casino walls.

We can't be in Anarchy on the turn of stealing techs, as then we'd miss out on the 20% Trade Route discount for stealing techs that happens when the AI's City has a Trade Route with your City. I suppose that it's possible that another AI's City could be used for Hatty's Trade Route, which would be unfortunate, but with our valuable overseas Trade Routes in England, the odds of our City being picked for the Trade Route go up, and with Hatty knowing Currency, there are two chances for her City to get one of our Trade Routes in it.

Using the St. Petersburg test game, our Galleys annoyingly get teleported to 3 W of St. Petersburg, meaning that we'll have to sail northward for a movement point in order to drop off our Chariots by Yakutsk.

We have a Chariot that will get completed in Cologne on T94, which can only make it as far as arriving inside of Hamburg on T94.

If we want to bring it, along with HA 8 and HA 10, on Galleys such that all 3 Units can unload next to Yakutsk on T95, there is a way to do it:
T93
After declaring war, our Galleys 1, 4, and 5 should teleport to 3 W of St. Petersburg

Galley 5 should sail into Hamburg (arriving there on T94) where the Chariot will load into Galley 5, and then Galley 5 can sail 1 NE, allowing Galley 5 to sail NE + NE on T95 and drop off the Chariot on the GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk

Galleys 1 and 3 can move 1 N, unload the Chariots on the GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk, then sail 1 SW

On T94, Galley 1 can sail 1 SW to 1 NE of Hamburg, pick up the two Horse Archers, and sail 1 NE

Meanwhile, on T94, Galley 3 can sail into Hamburg, to await the Chariot that will get built in Orleans on T95 and which will arrive in Hamburg on T96 with 0 movement points available to it.

What is our Scout going to do? Maybe go reveal the hidden squares owned by the dark-green AI (likely Mehmed) to the south of Russia?

Also, since the Galley that we'll build in Lyons will arrive a bit sooner than we need it (we need to arrive at 2 S of Lyons at the end of T96 so that it will have its movement points on that square on T97), we can use it to shuttle some troops over to Greece.

For example:
T93
HA 9 (in Paris) moves to Lyons... it will march to Athens

T94
Chariot built in Paris moves to Lyons... it will march to Athens
Chariot built in XO Cognac moves into Paris
The new Galley Skips its turn in Lyons

T95
Chariot built in Lyons will march to Athens
The Chariot from XO Cognac arrives in Lyons
The newly-built Chariot in Paris arrives in Lyons
Both of those chariots load into the Lyons' Galley
The Galley (with 2 Chariots aboard) sails 1 SE > 1 E (1 NW of the PH Riv Gems Mine)

T96
The two Chariots unload 1 SE onto the PH Riv Gems Mine
The Galley sails 1 W < 1 SW (to 2 S of Lyons)

T97
The Settler boards the Galley at 2 S of Lyons
Worker 2 boards the Galley at 2 S of Lyons
The Galley (with the Settler and Worker 2 aboard) sails 2 S to meet up with Galley 6
Galley 6 sails 2 SW toward the Gold Resources and can unload in northern Africa next turn

Dhoomstriker · Aug 8, 2016

I think that I covered the important parts.

Suggested Mini PPP
Turn 93

EDIT: Research Polytheism (at a 0% Science Rate)

Trade:
1 Gold per Turn from Frederick <-> Fish

Trade:
Stop Trading With Frederick and 50 Gold from Stalin <-> Currency

Trade:
1 Gold per Turn from Kublai <-> Fish

Trade:
1 Gold per Turn from Saladin <-> Deer

Gift Agriculture to Saladin
Hopefully, Open Borders with Saladin

Scout (1 SW of Yaroslavl') can move 1 S P Wheat > 1 SW P For

Double-check that Stalin and Frederick no longer have Open Borders with each other

Spoiler :

Talk with Stalin to declare war on him

Spoiler :

Attack St. Petersburg
Probably lead with HA 5 (Combat I) and HA 7 (No Promotion)
If the Non-Medic Chariots get good odds, we can attack with them, otherwise go in with HA 4 (wounded) then go in with the Chariots

After capturing St. Petersburg, make note of which Buildings survived, talk with Churchill, and gift St. Petersburg to Churchill

In case we lost terribly in the fighting, don't forget that we have as many as 2 Axemen and 3 Chariots that can amphibiously assault St. Petersburg, if it really comes to that.

1. a) If we didn't need to use HA 4 in the fight, HA 4, the Medic Chariot, and any other Unit that didn't fight can stay at 2 NE of St. Pete's.

1. b) If we did need to use HA 4 in the fight, the Units that didn't fight can move to 1 NE of St. Pete's, so that we'll be able to attack Vlad in 2 turns' time without risking a Chariot dying to Stalin's Swordsman.

Galley 3 (at 2 S of Yakutsk with 2 Axemen aboard) sails 1 NE (to 1 SE of Yakutsk) > 1 E (to 1 NW + 1 N of St. Petersburg)

Our Galleys 1, 4, and 5 should have gotten teleported to 3 W of St. Petersburg (3 S of Yakutsk)

Galley 1 (with 2 Chariots aboard) moves 1 NW > drops off the Chariots on the GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk > moves 1 S (to 2 NE of Hamburg)

2. a) If we got lucky at the St. Petersburg fight (say, we only needed to use 2 Horse Archers and we lost 2 Units or less):
Galley 4 (with 1 Chariot aboard) moves 1 NE > 1 N (1 SE of Yakutsk) > drops off the Chariot on the GH For at 1 E of Yakutsk

2. b) If we were not that lucky in the St. Petersburg fight:
Galley 4 (with 1 Chariot aboard) moves 1 NE > 1N (1 SE of Yakutsk) but does not drop off the Chariot, so that we can drop off the Chariot next turn to help with the Vlad fight

Galley 5 moves SW > W (to 1 NE of Hamburg)

Warrior 1 (1 SW + 1 W of Yakutsk) moves 1 NE GH For (1 W of Yakutsk) to act as bait and to block the GH For from being worked

HA 8 (in Cologne) moves into Hamburg

HA 10 stays in Hamburg

Settler 6 (at Hatty) moves 1 SE Des Stone > 1 SE PH Sugar > 1 SW PH Riv Sugar > 1 SW P?H Jungle

HA 9 (in Paris) moves into Lyons

Galley 2 stays at 1 SE of London

Axe 3 stays on London's Fur

Turn 94
Diplo Policy
Switch to Christianity? No
Give an AI a tech? No to Churchill, no to Frederick (in case we attack him within 10 turns), no for Horseback Riding, yes otherwise
Give an AI a Strategic Resource? No
Give an AI a Happiness or a Healthiness Resource? Yes
Two-sided tech trades (AI will give something in return for something else) and requests for Open Borders should be politely refused with no consequences

Paris completes Chariot -> Chariot
XO Cognac completes Chariot -> Settler
Cologne completes Chariot -> Chariot

EDIT: Science Rate 100% (on Polytheism)

Paris steals Wheat from Macau
Paris works: Wheat, Deer, Fur, and Copper

London 2-pop-whips the Christian Missionary
London works: Fish and Horse

Argent switches to building a Lighthouse

Hamburg 1-pop-whips the Axeman

Ruby Bay works: Fish and Gems

Macau works: G Riv Cottage (NE + N of Macau--will get completed by Worker 1 this turn)

Worker 2 moves 1 W GH Sheep > 1 W GH > 1 SW GH > partial Mine > STOP
Worker 3 Chop the TunH For at 1 NE of Argent
Worker 4 (at 1 N of Ruby Bay) Move 1 S into Ruby Bay
Worker 5 (at 1 SE + 1 E of Ruby Bay) Move 1 W G Riv For (1 SE of Ruby Bay)
Worker 6 (at 1 S of Ruby Bay) Move 1 SW G For (1 N of York)
Worker 7 Move 1 S GH For (1 SE + 1 S of Argent)

Chariot in XO Cognac moves to Paris
Chariot in Paris moves to Lyons
HA 9 (in Lyons) heads toward Athens

Galley 1 sails to 1 NE of Hamburg
HA 8 gets on Galley 1
HA 10 gets on Galley 1

Chariot in Cologne moves into Hamburg
Galley 5 moves 1 SW into Hamburg
That Chariot loads into Galley 5
Galley 5 moves 1 NE out of Hamburg

Galley 1 (with HA 8 and HA 10 aboard) sails 1 NE to 2 NE of Hamburg

Chariot 9 (at Hatty) can move 1 SE Des Road then southward off of the Road to explore the nearby hidden squares

We can figure out what to do with Settler 6 (at Hatty) next turnset

Scout (to the south of Russia) tries to avoid Russian Units while exploring the dark green Culture

Galley 6 (to the south-west of Greece) sails 2 NW to the out-of-date "Galleys meet here" sign

The new Galley in Lyons Skips its turn (so that it can shuttle 2 Chariots to Greece next turn)

EDIT: We could probably even have our Galley 3 stay close enough to Yakutsk to stop the Fish from being worked there, since we don't really want the City to grow due to wanting to raze it, and the City growing means it more readily being whipped.

Maybe we should also delay 1 turn in moving our Units adjacent to Yakutsk, to offer less of a threat to the City. So, we could unload our Chariots at 1 SW + 1 S of Yakutsk, since we won't be attacking until after our two Horse Archers arrive.

EDIT to the EDIT: Even better, maybe we should just try to block as many squares as possible from being worked at Yakutsk.

Galley 4 can just plan to block Yakutsk's Fish from being worked by being adjacent to the Fish square and if we don't need Galley 4's Chariot for Vlad, we can drop off Chariot 4 on the GH For at 1 E of Yakutsk.

Jersey Joe · Aug 8, 2016

Dhoomstriker said:
I think that I covered the important parts. Suggested Mini PPP
<snip>
EDIT: We could probably even have our Galley 3 stay close enough to Yakutsk to stop the Fish from being worked there, since we don't really want the City to grow due to wanting to raze it, and the City growing means it more readily being whipped.

Maybe we should also delay 1 turn in moving our Units adjacent to Yakutsk, to offer less of a threat to the City. So, we could unload our Chariots at 1 SW + 1 S of Yakutsk, since we won't be attacking until after our two Horse Archers arrive.

What about Galley 3 blockades Vlad's Fish and Galley 1 blockades Yakutsk (after dropping off chariots)? I Agree with the suggested Mini PPP

Cactus Pete said:
Joe, you are much better prepared (more into the details) than I to play at the moment, but I can give you some relief when you really want it. Do you have a goal or a turn number in mind to go to?

Pete, whenever you want to jump in just say so. :yup:

If it helps, I have a partial PPP to T101 for a few cities. i.e. The 2 workers at Argent are chopping forests to be completed on T97 after we Steal Math to build a granary that turn, and then 1-pop whip a Lighthouse on T98. 3 workers are pre-chopping forests at Ruby Bay so we can complete the Hanging Gardens on T101.
The only reason I have anything that far out is I found it easier to add it to the end of my current PPP (and not post it) than to have to go look back several pages to find what Dhoom had posted.

Dhoomstriker · Aug 8, 2016

Jersey Joe said:
I Agree with the suggested Mini PPP

Does that mean that you intend to play soon?

Jersey Joe said:
What about Galley 3 blockades Vlad's Fish and Galley 1 blockades Yakutsk (after dropping off chariots)?

With so many troops to move around, we're going to want to keep our boats on the move. When we aren't shuttling troops to Yakutsk, we'll be trying to chain troops that survived the fight at Yakutsk to the front lines or chain new troops from Hamburg to the front lines.

How about we simply dedicate a single Galley to Blockading?

On Turn 94, after dropping off the 2 Axemen at 1 SW of Vlad, Galley 3 can Blockade at 2 SW of Vlad for a turn. On Turn 95, it wakes up and moves 1 W to 1 NW + 1 N of St. Pete's (1 SE + 1 E of Yakutsk) and can Blockade for a turn (as far as I know, Blockading only works when you have 1 movement point still available).

That way, we will only spend 2 movement points in total and we will do the Blockading on the turn before attacking. If we Blockade two turns before attacking, it's all too easy for Stalin to feel forced into building an Archer (recall the Macau incident that I perpetrated, of being forced into building an Archer when wanting to build a Spearman? :mischief:

) and whip the Archer on the next turn. But, if he's building, say, an Axeman two turns before attacking and then we Blockade one turn before attacking, he will be unable to whip the Axeman and he'll only have time to put 1 turn of Hammers into the Archer and thus will be unable to whip it (unless he has a City at Size 4 and can cold-whip the Archer, which is what blocking the Fish from being worked by being adjacent to the Fish should prevent from happening).

Jersey Joe said:
then 1-pop whip a Lighthouse on T98

I'm not certain that we'll get our Settler faster by whipping the Lighthouse. If we're going to work Fish, Deer, and Deer for 4 base Hammers per turn, it shouldn't take us too long to earn 30 base Hammers (we already have 4 base Hammers that will overflow from the Granary and we'll get 4 base Hammers next turn overflowing from the Work Boat)--we should be able to earn enough Hammers to manually complete the Lighthouse before hitting Size 4 and wanting to work a Whale.

We can take another look when it's Turn 98, but I suspect that we'll be close enough to completing the Lighthouse that we'll get to Size 6 faster by manually completing it.

EDIT: Monotheism
It has been bugging me that we don't have a way to trade for Monotheism, as it is a non-monopoly tech. But, it looks as though Darius knows it, since he doesn't know Priesthood but he can research Monarchy.

So, how about on T94 we go to 100% Science on Polytheism, on T95 we go to 100% Science of Priesthood (which gets a tiny boost to research by knowing Polytheism), then on T97 we go to 100% Science on Civil Service.

On T95, Darius will hopefully show Monotheism as being tradeable, so that we can get it in trade without having to use up Spies on Polytheism and Monotheism.

That way, we'll unlock the tech path to Theology.

By unlocking Theology, we can attempt to steal Theology, meaning that if Hatty goes for Civil Service, we'll still have a tech path choice (Paper) while we wait for her to learn Civil Service so that we can steal it from her. Otherwise, if she goes for Civil Service and we don't have Theology, we're just going to end up duplicating her research.

With any luck, City Conquest Gold will help to keep our Science Rate high and a couple of Courthouses will help us from bleeding out Gold too quickly.

Great People
I'm not sure what the best approach will be, but it would be nice to get a Great Scientist for Education. It might also be nice to get a Golden Age, although I'm not sure that our Cities will be mature enough to make use of it. Still, even with just St. Petersburg, I think that we will find a way to make use of a Golden Age, since we really need to get to Education soon so that we can get Oxford University built.

If we do get Christianity spread into St. Petersburg, it could be argued that instead of switching into Hereditary Rule, we could consider switching into Caste System + Pacifism.

6 Scientists * 6 GPP per turn means 36 GPP per turn, meaning 6 turns to get our 200-GPP Great Person.

If we then use that Great Person in a Golden Age (even without MoM to boost its length), while we might not be able to generate a lot of Great People during that time, we could at least slip into Hereditary Rule and Bureaucracy, and slip out of Caste System back into Slavery at the end of the Golden Age, hopefully using the Golden Age to pump out another Great Person.

Again just using St. Petersburg, 6 Scientists * 9 GPP = 54 GPP per turn, meaning 6 turns during a Golden Age to get our 300-GPP Great Person to Lightbulb Education.

That'll mean at least 12 turns where we aren't running Slavery, but I think that we'll be able to manage without Slavery for a while.

It does mean putting a relatively-high priority on getting Missionaries out of London, though, so after we whip a Missionary there, perhaps we should overflow the Hammers into another Missionary. Without Organized Religion, London becomes our bottleneck for creating Missionaries, and it won't be a 100% chance to spread Christianity in St. Petersburg as St. Petersburg already has Judaism in it, so we may need a couple of Christian Missionaries to ensure a successful spreading.

We might end up sending a couple of later-built Units from our mainland to Nottingham to make up for the lack of Axemen being built in England.

Note that in order for us to only have 1 turn of Anarchy when switching into Caste System + Pacifism, we can only own 12 Cities at that time (once we hit 13 Cities, it will cost us 2 turns of Anarchy to switch 2 Civics at once). So, we're going to have to manage the timing well, based on when we recapture Cities from Churchill.

Jersey Joe · Aug 8, 2016

Report:
T93, 550BC (continued)
Our scout, wants to see where he will teleport to, so he does not move.
We Trade Fish to Frederick for 1 gold/turn.
We Trade Deer to Saldin for 1 gold/turn.
We Gift Saldin Agriculture. (gets him to Cautious)
We get Open Borders with Saldin.
We Trade Currency to Stalin for 60 gold and ask that he Stop trading with Frederick. He agrees.
It looks like Frederick only has open Borders with us and Khan.

We politely inform Stalin his head would look good on the end of a pole. :hammer:

As predicted, our scout is teleported to 2 SW P of Yaroslavl The scout moves 1 SW P For and finds himself inside the Ottoman Empire.

Horse Archer attacks St. Petersburg killing an Archer and earns a promotion.
In a hard fought battle, our Horse Archer attacks St. Petersburg killing an Archer and Capturing St. Petersburg. and earns a promotion.

Thinking that Chuchill might not want a Russian City we rename it St. Pete (really because it is a shorter name to type)
Pillaging St. Pete nets 186 gold. St. Pete has a Granary and lighthouse (and French troops have hurriedly constructed monument celebrating
their victory.) Asked what to build we start on a Jewish Monastery (maybe Chuchill will finish it for us.)

A Great General appears in York and promptly travels to London were he books passage on a Galley leaving for Orleans.

The troops like the monument they built so much they remove it from St. Pete before we gift the city to Churchill.

Fish are no longer in Vlad's borders.

Between Turns: Our Scout is killed by an Axeman from Rostov.
The Swordsman does not attack our mobile troops.

T94, 525BC
Taoism spreads to our lands (Lyons).
Churchill converts to Judaism.

Horse Archer 7 promotes to Combat 1. (2 turns to heal after promotion)

Horse Archer 5 is awaiting choice of promotions.

Should the Horse Archer and Chariot out of Paris take Combat 1 promotions?

Last Spy arrives in Macau, giving us 9 spies.

Vladivostok is defended by a Swordsman and an Archer.

The Great General's trip is being delayed by Storms and he will have to share the voyage with a missionary.

Here are the logs:
Session Turn Log from 550 BC to 525 BC:

Spoiler :

Autolog:

Spoiler :

The Save.

Cactus Pete · Aug 8, 2016

Jersey Joe said:
Pete, whenever you want to jump in just say so. If it helps, I have a partial PPP to T101 for a few cities. i.e. The 2 workers at Argent are chopping forests to be completed on T97 after we Steal Math to build a granary that turn, and then 1-pop whip a Lighthouse on T98. 3 workers are pre-chopping forests at Ruby Bay so we can complete the Hanging Gardens on T101.
The only reason I have anything that far out is I found it easier to add it to the end of my current PPP (and not post it) than to have to go look back several pages to find what Dhoom had posted Appreciate that problem..

We really do need to make progress. How do you feel about going through the espionage bit with Hats? That will be all new to me. If you don't want to continue that far, just make another suggestion.

Dhoomstriker · Aug 8, 2016

Nicely played!

I didn't realise that Churchill already knows so many of the AIs, but at least switching his Religion should help to keep him from being well-loved.

By default, mounted Units taking Combat Promotions seems wise to me.

I won't have time to comment on the save for about half of a day, so feel free to propose a PPP in the meantime.

I think that we've discussed most of the tricky bits, with a key point to remember in terms of planning being that we can't Whip anything on T96, so anything that we want Whipped in the very short term should be whipped on or before T95.

Dhoomstriker · Aug 9, 2016

Caution: The real game is not paused.

Promotions

Spoiler :

So, long story short, let's take Shock with HA 5.

HA 7 might as well heal inside of St. Pete's, where he will be relatively invincible, although there is the possibility that on a future turn, with Stalin and Churchill both running Judaism as their State Religions, that they may Open Borders with each other. Until that event happens, St. Pete's is completely off-limits to Stalin's Units, haha.

Meanwhile, I'd suggest that we send everyone else nearby at Vlad:
HA 4, Chariot 5, and Chariot 6 can move 1 NE TunH For Road (1 S of the Whale) to try to block Stalin's Worker from running away

HA 5 Promotes to Shock
HA 5 moves 2 N to the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer)
Chariot 1 moves 1 NW to the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer)

Galley 3 sails 1 E (to 2 SW of Vlad) > Unloads two Axemen on the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer) > Do we Blockade?

Blockading

Spoiler :

What I suggest is that we do not Blockade on T94 and we monitor the situation again next turn for Yakutsk and if the build item has somewhere between 27 and 31 Hammers in it, we do not Blockade on T95, since it will mean that the peacefully-time-selected build item is still being built. If, however, Yakutsk has far less Hammers in a build item (likely 1 to 5 Hammers), then we Blockade on T95.

Yakutsk and Vlad
Do we have agreement that we are going to capture Vlad and immediately gift it to Churchill and that we are going to raze Yakutsk? Basically, if anyone disagrees, please speak up, otherwise that'll be the plan.

Building The Hanging Gardens should speed up the ability for Argent to 3-pop-whip a Settler to replace Yakutsk, and then it can plan to later 3-pop-whip another Settler to replace Vlad.

Egypt
Settler 6 moves 1 NW Flood Plains > 1 SW Des? (doing so will reveal the square that is 3 S of the western Stone and 1 SW of the eastern Stone)

Chariot 9 moves 1 SE Des Road > 1 S Des > 1 SW Des? (since going S or SE will duplicate exploration performed by our Settler)

Athens
I see that the Units inside of Lyons have not yet advanced on Athens. Is there hesitation with the plan? We don't yet have enough boats or Units to go for Oporto, but with a stack of German Units marching on Athens, I figure that 5 mounted Units should be sufficient to clean up the wounded Units in Athens.

We should have the first 3 mounted Units march by land using our Road. Then, the two Chariots that can come out of Paris next turn aka on T95 (one already moved into Paris this turn that was built in XO Cognac and the other will be built in Paris next turn) can move into Lyons, Load into the waiting Galley 7, and then Galley 7 can sail SE > E.

On T96, Galley 7 sails W < SW (to 2 S of Lyons), just as our Settler arrives at 1 E of Macau (2 W of Lyons).

On T97, Galley 7 will have all of its movement points remaining to it when our Settler moves SE G (1 SW of Lyons) > SE onto Galley 7.

Stalin and Techs
If we were to put 1 turn of Espionage on Stalin at a 100% Espionage Rate, we would earn enough EPs to see where his Units are in and around any of his Cities that we have revealed.

Spoiler :

Thus, I'd suggest:
T94
Espionage Weight 0 on Hatty
Espionage Weight 1 on Stalin (1 turn of EPs on Stalin)
Espionage Rate 100%
Tech Polytheism

T95
Espionage Weight 1 on Hatty (back to spending EPs on Hatty, at least until we start losing visibility of Stalin's Cities)
Espionage Weight 0 on Stalin
Science Rate 100%
Tech Polytheism

If we can get Monotheism in trade from Darius, we can steal Monarchy and Theology. If he won't trade it, our backup plan would be to steal Monotheism from Hatty.

We'd only need Priesthood when we were ready to build Islamic Temples, and we don't yet have any Cities with Islam in them, so we could simply get Priesthood later.

Galleys, Blocking (different from Blockading), and Galley-Chaining
Galley 5 (1 NE of Hamburg) can take Chariot 12 (inside of Cologne) by moving into Hamburg, having the Chariot load into Galley 5, and then moving to 1 NE of Hamburg, so that Galley 5 could wait for the new Axeman from Hamburg, then sail 2 NE with Chariot 12 and the Hamburg Axeman aboard, being able to unload Chariot 12 on T95 on the GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk.

Meanwhile, Galley 4 comes back to pick up both Horse Archers, which can both unload on T95 on the GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk.

We've already discussed this point, but it didn't get implemented yet. I list the actions in this order so that it's harder to get the wrong Units on the wrong boat.

As for "blocking Yakutsk's Fish," we do not need to be on top of it.

Spoiler :

So, Galley 1 can move to 2 S of Yakutsk, be used to Galley-chain the Hamburg-built Axeman, and then unload that Axeman either inside of St. Pete's or at 1 SW of Vlad (too late for the attack on Vlad, though) on T96.

Frederick and Stalin
On T90 or T91, it seems that he settled a 3rd City, which should help with reducing the large stacks of Units that he might otherwise keep in his Cities if he only had 2 Cities.

At some point, we'll want to take down at least Munich and hopefully also Berlin, but they are currently low-priority targets, as they are going to act as a deterrent from Stalin sending stacks our way.

Munich has built a Monument, which appeared on our T92, so on our T93, Munich should have 1 Culture and on T102, Munich's Cultural Borders should have expanded.

I'm not yet sure how to handle Frederick's stack of Units that will be near Athens--hopefully, Alex will take care of them, but if not, we might not be able to go after Frederick too soon.

I'm not exactly sure whether to take a Cease Fire or a Peace Treaty with Stalin. If we take a Peace Treaty, neither side will be able to declare war for 10 turns, so we could safely declare war on Churchill, recapture the Cities, and then do whatever we want with the Russian Cities without needing to defend them from a surprise declaration of war by Stalin.

Stalin can be bribed into war by anyone toward whom he is Pleased, which currently includes Kublai, Mehmed, and Alex. Fortunately, Alex doesn't have any techs to offer.

However, that list could also include Churchill after another 8 turns, since Stalin will like another AI by up to +3 for sharing their State Religion, and the Religion positive Diplo bonus goes up every 8 turns.

Thus, if we are going to take a Cease Fire with Stalin, before we declare war on Churchill, we should plan to ensure that any techs which Churchill has are also techs that Stalin has, so that Churchill wouldn't be able to bribe Stalin to declare war on us.

If we are going to consolidate our Russian holdings for at least 10 turns after the war before declaring war on Stalin again, then we could plan to take a Peace Treaty with Stalin.

Let's make the decision when we get there.

Great General
Good call on waiting to ship over our Great General until we have our Missionary to sail with him.

What should we do with him, though? I suppose send him to Hamburg and then Galley-chain him to the front lines, although by the time that he arrives on the front lines, we might be about ready to end our war with Stalin. I don't see a better option, though, as he'll be too late to help out at Athens.

Dhoomstriker · Aug 9, 2016

City Builds
It's probably a good time for Paris to stop whipping Military Units and start growing, only whipping when it makes sense (maybe to whip a Worker so that we can keep working improved squares as we grow, maybe to whip a Courthouse, maybe to whip a Settler if we really can't find any other City in which to build a Settler, etc).

Sure, it's currently own only City with a Barracks in it, but we also want it to soon be growing into working a lot of Cottages.

If we want another Horse Archer out of Orleans before our Anarchy, we should build it this turn and 2-pop-whip it on T95.

Lyons can dump Hammers into another Chariot. If we have to gift Lyons in order to gift Macau, we might delay stealing techs for 1 turn to whip out Lyons' Chariot. Let's hope that Hatty will continue to avoid REXing.

London could put a priority on making Missionaries, so that we can leave open the option of St. Pete's generating 2 Great People with the help of Caste System and Pacifism. So, forget about completing the Axeman in London for a little while.

Alternatively, London could create our next Great Person. If we dump the Hammers from our Missionary into a Library, then we should be able to 1-pop-whip our Library after 4 turns. We then hire 2 Scientists, giving us 8 GPP per turn.

Since London already has Christianity, we could STAY IN SLAVERY, switching into Hereditary Rule + Pacifism, giving us 16 GPP per turn.

We'll have 40 GPP by 5 turns from now, which would mean another 10 turns to get our Great Person after having whipped our Library (160 GPP / 16 per turn = 10 turns), so we'd have our Golden Age in about 17 turns from now (1 turn to complete the Library and 2 turns of Anarchy).

Contrast that with St. Pete's taking at least 7 turns of City Revolt (during which time our 2 turns of Anarchy could occur) + 1 turn to accumulate some Food in the City + 6 turns of hiring Specialists if and only if Christianity spreads successfully there, putting us barely ahead of the London approach.

I have to say that I like the London-Library approach a bit better as it's a guarantee and we can stay in Slavery at a time when Caste System would only help 1 City and hurt everywhere else from not being able to whip.

The other point is that St. Pete's can focus on growing (and rebuilding a Granary and a Lighthouse, if they get razed when we recapture the City) while London is busy generating a Great Person, so that St. Pete's would be able to hire even more Specialists when we launch our Golden Age.

For me, the ability to stay in Slavery and the ability to slip into Hereditary Rule without incurring another turn of Anarchy are enough to make me suggest that we go for the Great Person being built out of London--no Courthouse in London for the short-term, but at least we'll have a Library to increase the Flasks earned from its strong Trade Routes.

As usual, if we leave the Axeman as the second item in the build queue this turn, when the Missionary gets completed at the end of this turn, the Axeman will move to the top of the build queue and then the Hammer decay routine will run, so no Hammers will decay from the Axeman for 1 extra turn if we leave the Axeman as the second item in the build queue at the end of T94. I.e. We simply put the Library in the build queue on T95 instead of on T94.

Dhoomstriker · Aug 9, 2016

Questions (for fun):
1. Where did the troops move the Monument that they had built?

2. How much does it cost Zhuge Liang to ride the ferry to Macau? Will he still feel like gambling at the casino after hearing the Missionary preach during the ferry ride over? Since Zhuge has to wait so long after booking the first ferry ride, should he start booking tickets now for his trip all the way to St. Pete's? :lol:

As for Promoting the Paris-built Units...

Spoiler :

Suggested PPP
Turn 94

None of these 3 AIs are currently anyone's Worst Enemy:
Get 1 Gold per Turn from Joao <-> Sheep

Get 1 Gold per Turn from Kublai <-> Fish

Get 1 Gold per Turn from Churchill <-> Fish

Espionage Weight 0 on Hatty
Espionage Weight 1 on Stalin (1 turn of EPs on Stalin)
Espionage Rate 100%
Continue to Research Polytheism

Orleans builds Horse Archer (so that we can complete it before our Anarchy)

No Blockading this turn

HA 4, Chariot 5, and Chariot 6 can move 1 NE TunH For Road (1 S of the Whale) to try to block Stalin's Worker from running away

Chariot 1 moves 1 NW to the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer)

HA 5 Promotes to Shock
HA 5 moves 2 N to the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer)

HA 7 Heals inside of St. Pete's

Galley 3 sails 1 E (to 2 SW of Vlad) > Unloads two Axemen on the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer) > when Galley 3 is empty, it sails 1 W (1 SE + 1 E of Yakutsk)

Galley 5 (1 NE of Hamburg) moves 1 SW into Hamburg

Galley 4 sails S > SW (to 1 NE of Hamburg)
HA 8 loads onto Galley 4
HA 10 loads onto Galley 4

Chariot 12 moves from Cologne into Hamburg
Chariot 12 loads into Galley 5

Galley 5 (with Chariot 12 aboard) sails 1 NE out of Hamburg (1 N of the G sheep)

Warrior 1 stays on the GH For at 1 W of Yakutsk

Chariots 8, 2, and 3 stay on the GH For at 1 SW + 1 W of Yakutsk

Galley 1 sails 1 S (to 2 S of Yakutsk) and Skips its turn

Spoiler :

Great General loads onto Galley 2

Galley 2 stays at 1 SE of London (to await the Missionary)

Settler 6 (in Egypt) moves 1 NW Flood Plains > 1 SW Des? (doing so will reveal the square that is 3 S of the western Stone and 1 SW of the eastern Stone)

Chariot 9 (in Egypt) moves 1 SE Des Road > 1 S Des > 1 SW Des? (since going S or SE will duplicate exploration performed by our Settler)

Galley 6 (near Athens) sails 2 NW (to the "Galleys meet here" sign)

Galley 7 stays in Lyons

HA 9 rides along the Road to the east toward Athens

Turn 95
Diplo Policy
Switch to Christianity? No (if someone asks on T96 we can say Yes, but it is still No on T95)
Give an AI a tech? No to Churchill, no to Frederick (in case we attack him within 10 turns), no for Horseback Riding, yes otherwise
Give an AI a Strategic Resource? No
Give an AI a Happiness or a Healthiness Resource? Yes
Two-sided tech trades (AI will give something in return for something else) and requests for Open Borders should be politely refused with no consequences
Stop Trading with another AI? No

Paris completes Chariot -> Chariot
Lyons completes Chariot -> Chariot (in case we have to gift Lyons, we'd probably delay tech-stealing for 1 turn and whip this Chariot)
Hamburg completes Axeman -> Axeman

XO Cognac 3-pop-whips the Settler
XO Cognac works: Fish, Cow, and Horse

Orleans 2-pop-whips the Horse Archer
Orleans works: Fish and Cow

London builds Library

Macau 1-pop-whips the Chariot
Macau works: Cottage

Espionage Weight 1 on Hatty (back to spending EPs on Hatty, at least until we start losing visibility of Stalin's Cities)
Espionage Weight 0 on Stalin
Science Rate 100%
Continue to Research Polytheism

On the Ctrl + e screen, select Stalin and then in the Cities list select Yakutsk. If we see a Support City Revolt value of about 585 and we see a Sabotage Production value greater than 140, we shouldn't need to Blockade. If the Sabotage Production value is much smaller, we'll want to Blockade this turn:
Galley 3 sails 1 W (1 SE of Yakutsk) > Blockade

Otherwise, Galley 3 can sail 2 W (1 S of Yakutsk) where it can more easily pick up unused troops next turn

Worker 1 Move 1 NW Paris > NW G Riv For (2 E of the Horse)
Worker 2 Move 1 W into Lyons > 1 NW G Riv > partial Farm > STOP
Worker 3 Chop the TunH For at 1 NE of Argent
Worker 4 (in Ruby Bay) Move 1 SW G For (1 S of the Fish)
Worker 5 Chop the G Riv For at 1 SE of Ruby Bay
Worker 6 Chop the G For at 1 N of York
Worker 7 Chop the GH For (1 SE + 1 S of Argent)

Chariots 8, 2, and 3 consider killing a baited and wounded Archer if we have good odds; if no Archer took the Warrior 1 bait, move all of them 1 E GH For (1 SW of Yakutsk)

If Warrior 1 is still alive, Skip his turn at 1 W of Yakutsk

New Axeman in Hamburg loads 1 NE onto Galley 5

Galley 4 (1 NE of Hamburg with two HAs aboard) sails 2 NE
HA 8 Unloads 1 NW onto GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk
HA 10 Unloads 1 NW onto GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk

Galley 5 (1 NE of Hamburg with Chariot and Axeman aboard) sails 2 NE
Chariot 12 Unloads 1 NW onto GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk

New Axeman loads into Galley 1
Galley 1 (with New Axeman aboard) sails E > NE (1 NW + 1 N of St Pete's)

London Missionary should exist and can board Galley 2

Galley 2 (with Missionary + Zhuge) sails to Orleans
Both of them Unload in Orleans
Zhuge should be able to move toward Hamburg

For the Vladivostok fight, we should be able to lead with HA 4, if doing so has us fighting against the Archer

If the Swordsman comes up as a defender against an Axeman, then we can fight with an Axeman; otherwise, if the Archer still comes up as the defender, hopefully HA 5 will be able to go up against the Archer

If we do fight against the Swordsman without needing ot use HA 5, then we might not use HA 5 if Chariots get good enough odds when fighting, with a priority of using a Chariot at 1 SW of Vlad, as such a Chariot would be further-away from Stalin's City that is 2 SE + 1 E of Vlad

Keep (do not raze) Vlad
Gift Vlad to Churchill

Chariot 9 can explore more of the hidden squares at Egypt, so that we'll have something to talk about for our Settler, say, Chariot 9 moves 1 SW? > 1 SE?

Leave Settler 6 at Egypt unmoved

HA 9 advances toward Athens

The two Chariots that should be in Lyons advance along the roads toward Athens

The two Chariots that should be in Paris move into Lyons
Those two Chariots from Paris with 0 movement points inside of Lyons board the Galley in Lyons
The Galley in Lyons (with two Chariots abord--Units should get a Z icon when loaded) sails SE > E (to 1 NW of the PH Riv Gems)

Galley 6 sails 1 W (to 1 E of Spice Island) and Skips its turn

Jersey Joe · Aug 9, 2016

I was anticipating Paris to 2-pop whip a Courthouse on T98. Other than that Paris was going to slow build a military unit (Chariot?) starting T95.
For XO Cognac, if we delay whipping out the Settler to T96 Xo Cognac gets an extra turn of food for growth.
Lyons is moving along on it galley building. How many galleys do we need in the Mediterranean (unless we can create a Suez canal)?

When thinking of GPP's do not ignore Argent with the potential to generate 12-14 excess food at size 6.

Glad to see you mention needing another worker in France (I was going to argue that Worker 2 should delay his sea voyage).

Here ia a suggested mini PPP for completing T94 and starting T95. The military movement has been left out. I agree with what you have posted.

Spoiler :

Jersey Joe · Aug 9, 2016

Dhoomstriker said:
Questions (for fun):
1. Where did the troops move the Monument that they had built?

2. How much does it cost Zhuge Liang to ride the ferry to Macau? Will he still feel like gambling at the casino after hearing the Missionary preach during the ferry ride over? Since Zhuge has to wait so long after booking the first ferry ride, should he start booking tickets now for his trip all the way to St. Pete's?

Napoleon was so impress that the troops managed a victory in Russia, that he is having the monument shipped back to Paris to be used in the construction of the Arc de Triomphe :woohoo:

Zhuge Liang is a whale and is being comped his trip to Macau. If Zhuge has to listen to the Missionary preach should not the question be: Will the Missionary survive the trip?" :splat:

Also, it was reported that Zhuge said instead of spending the night on a Galley by the London docks. He would rather spend the night in London buying doxies.

Dhoomstriker said:
Suggested PPP

Spoiler :

Turn 94

None of these 3 AIs are currently anyone's Worst Enemy:
Get 1 Gold per Turn from Joao <-> Sheep

Get 1 Gold per Turn from Kublai <-> Fish

Get 1 Gold per Turn from Churchill <-> Fish

Espionage Weight 0 on Hatty
Espionage Weight 1 on Stalin (1 turn of EPs on Stalin)
Espionage Rate 100%
Continue to Research Polytheism

Orleans builds Horse Archer (so that we can complete it before our Anarchy)

No Blockading this turn

HA 4, Chariot 5, and Chariot 6 can move 1 NE TunH For Road (1 S of the Whale) to try to block Stalin's Worker from running away

Chariot 1 moves 1 NW to the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer)

HA 5 Promotes to Shock
HA 5 moves 2 N to the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer)

HA 7 Heals inside of St. Pete's

Galley 3 sails 1 E (to 2 SW of Vlad) > Unloads two Axemen on the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad (2 S of the Deer) > when Galley 3 is empty, it sails 1 W (1 SE + 1 E of Yakutsk)

Galley 5 (1 NE of Hamburg) moves 1 SW into Hamburg

Galley 4 sails S > SW (to 1 NE of Hamburg)
HA 8 loads onto Galley 4
HA 10 loads onto Galley 4

Chariot 12 moves from Cologne into Hamburg
Chariot 12 loads into Galley 5

Galley 5 (with Chariot 12 aboard) sails 1 NE out of Hamburg (1 N of the G sheep)

Warrior 1 stays on the GH For at 1 W of Yakutsk

Chariots 8, 2, and 3 stay on the GH For at 1 SW + 1 W of Yakutsk

Galley 1 sails 1 S (to 2 S of Yakutsk) and Skips its turn

Spoiler :

the Fish and the Coast square are both blocked here and Galley 1 can be used to chain the Axeman next turn

Great General loads onto Galley 2

Galley 2 stays at 1 SE of London (to await the Missionary)

Settler 6 (in Egypt) moves 1 NW Flood Plains > 1 SW Des? (doing so will reveal the square that is 3 S of the western Stone and 1 SW of the eastern Stone)

Chariot 9 (in Egypt) moves 1 SE Des Road > 1 S Des > 1 SW Des? (since going S or SE will duplicate exploration performed by our Settler)

Galley 6 (near Athens) sails 2 NW (to the "Galleys meet here" sign)

Galley 7 stays in Lyons

HA 9 rides along the Road to the east toward Athens

Turn 95
Diplo Policy
Switch to Christianity? No (if someone asks on T96 we can say Yes, but it is still No on T95)
Give an AI a tech? No to Churchill, no to Frederick (in case we attack him within 10 turns), no for Horseback Riding, yes otherwise
Give an AI a Strategic Resource? No
Give an AI a Happiness or a Healthiness Resource? Yes
Two-sided tech trades (AI will give something in return for something else) and requests for Open Borders should be politely refused with no consequences
Stop Trading with another AI? No

Paris completes Chariot -> Archer (for use with Hereditary Rule)
Lyons completes Chariot -> Chariot (in case we have to gift Lyons, we'd probably delay tech-stealing for 1 turn and whip this Chariot)
Hamburg completes Axeman -> Axeman

XO Cognac 3-pop-whips the Settler
XO Cognac works: Fish, Cow, and Horse

Orleans 2-pop-whips the Horse Archer
Orleans works: Fish and Cow

London builds Library

Macau 1-pop-whips the Chariot
Macau works: Cottage

Espionage Weight 1 on Hatty (back to spending EPs on Hatty, at least until we start losing visibility of Stalin's Cities)
Espionage Weight 0 on Stalin
Science Rate 100%
Continue to Research Polytheism

On the Ctrl + e screen, select Stalin and then in the Cities list select Yakutsk. If we see a Support City Revolt value of about 585 and we see a Sabotage Production value greater than 140, we shouldn't need to Blockade. If the Sabotage Production value is much smaller, we'll want to Blockade this turn:
Galley 3 sails 1 W (1 SE of Yakutsk) > Blockade

Otherwise, Galley 3 can sail 2 W (1 S of Yakutsk) where it can more easily pick up unused troops next turn

Worker 1 Move 1 NW Paris > NW G Riv For (2 E of the Horse)
Worker 2 Move 1 W into Lyons > 1 NW G Riv > partial Farm > STOP
Worker 3 Chop the TunH For at 1 NE of Argent
Worker 4 (in Ruby Bay) Move 1 SW G For (1 S of the Fish)
Worker 5 Chop the G Riv For at 1 SE of Ruby Bay
Worker 6 Chop the G For at 1 N of York
Worker 7 Chop the GH For (1 SE + 1 S of Argent)

Chariots 8, 2, and 3 consider killing a baited and wounded Archer if we have good odds; if no Archer took the Warrior 1 bait, move all of them 1 E GH For (1 SW of Yakutsk)

If Warrior 1 is still alive, Skip his turn at 1 W of Yakutsk

New Axeman in Hamburg loads 1 NE onto Galley 5

Galley 4 (1 NE of Hamburg with two HAs aboard) sails 2 NE
HA 8 Unloads 1 NW onto GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk
HA 10 Unloads 1 NW onto GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk

Galley 5 (1 NE of Hamburg with Chariot and Axeman aboard) sails 2 NE
Chariot 12 Unloads 1 NW onto GH For at 1 SW of Yakutsk

New Axeman loads into Galley 1
Galley 1 (with New Axeman aboard) sails E > NE (1 NW + 1 N of St Pete's)

London Missionary should exist and can board Galley 2

Galley 2 (with Missionary + Zhuge) sails to Orleans
Both of them Unload in Orleans
Zhuge should be able to move toward Hamburg

For the Vladivostok fight, we should be able to lead with HA 4, if doing so has us fighting against the Archer

If the Swordsman comes up as a defender against an Axeman, then we can fight with an Axeman; otherwise, if the Archer still comes up as the defender, hopefully HA 5 will be able to go up against the Archer

If we do fight against the Swordsman without needing ot use HA 5, then we might not use HA 5 if Chariots get good enough odds when fighting, with a priority of using a Chariot at 1 SW of Vlad, as such a Chariot would be further-away from Stalin's City that is 2 SE + 1 E of Vlad

Keep (do not raze) Vlad
Gift Vlad to Churchill

Chariot 9 can explore more of the hidden squares at Egypt, so that we'll have something to talk about for our Settler, say, Chariot 9 moves 1 SW? > 1 SE?

Leave Settler 6 at Egypt unmoved

HA 9 advances toward Athens

The two Chariots that should be in Lyons advance along the roads toward Athens

The two Chariots that should be in Paris move into Lyons
Those two Chariots from Paris with 0 movement points inside of Lyons board the Galley in Lyons
The Galley in Lyons (with two Chariots aboard--Units should get a Z icon when loaded) sails SE > E (to 1 NW of the PH Riv Gems)

Galley 6 sails 1 W (to 1 E of Spice Island) and Skips its turn

I mostly agree with your suggested PPP. We cross posted and I have a few minor difference on builds in T95. Since the differences only affect T95 and later I am going to play, but will not move/ whip anything that we have a disagreement on.
Worker 1 has time to build other things before he builds a road NW of Paris.
Does Worker 2 need to travel to Egypt with the settler?
Can the settler be delayed 1 turn?

General build Question: Should I look for opportunities to build Archers? In other cities?

Dhoomstriker · Aug 9, 2016

Jersey Joe said:
I was anticipating Paris to 2-pop whip a Courthouse on T98. Other than that Paris was going to slow build a military unit (Chariot?) starting T95.

A Courthouse sounds fine (even though that's the City in which it will have the lowest impact) since there aren't many Cities that will be able to complete a Courthouse and they are cheap for us. We could certainly do a Chariot instead of an Archer, since an Archer is only 5 Hammers cheaper.

At some point we may want to find an AI who will accept all of our metal Resources temporarily so that we can build a few more Warriors for Hereditary Rule Happiness, during a time when we don't want to build Axemen, Spearmen, and Swordsmen. That would mean that after we raze Nottingham, we should Pillage the Road on the Iron, and we probably shouldn't build a Road on Argent's Iron, even though Unit movements in the area might be more awkward with a Road going north-east out of Argent.

For example, once Churchill is One-City-Challenged to just have Vlad, we could gift him Copper and Iron for a period of time and build Warriors.

In the meantime, we may want to plan to leave a couple of later-built Chariots around our core area to help with Happiness issues (not the Chariots being sent to Athens), such as sending Macau's Chariot to Paris, especially since Chariots are mobile and can move from City to City.

Realistically, with only Unhappiness and our own impatience (by whipping too much in Paris) limits us from growing Paris into a mega-Cottage City. Unhappiness can be solved very shortly with Hereditary Rule. Our own impatience may limit us if we don't stop whipping Paris at some point.

Jersey Joe said:
For XO Cognac, if we delay whipping out the Settler to T96 Xo Cognac gets an extra turn of food for growth.

Timing trumps efficiency. We can't produce anything on T96, so that approach would delay the Settler by 2 turns. 2 turns sooner of getting another Happiness Resource could provide at least 2 Food per turn in a couple of our Cities--isn't getting that Happiness Resource online sooner worth the investment?

Jersey Joe said:
Lyons is moving along on it galley building. How many galleys do we need in the Mediterranean (unless we can create a Suez canal)?

How many Galleys does it take to ensure that we can capture a City from Joao? Probably 4 Galleys. Boats can probably sail around the south coast of Africa. They can also deliver troops quickly to the east of Athens, based on geography of the real world plus fog-gazing, with us in the worst case needing to build a City or a Fort on that strip of 2 GH squares that leads to Athens.

Jersey Joe said:
When thinking of GPP's do not ignore Argent with the potential to generate 12-14 excess food at size 6.

That's a good point. For now, we should decide how to get us a Great Person so that we can launch our first Golden Age, during which time Cities such as Argent can certainly hire some Specialists. I don't think that Argent can get set up quickly enough to generate our 200-GPP Great Person, but it can certainly earn GPP toward later-completed Great People.

If we can't get many Great Scientists in time for Lightbulbing, there is an argument for getting 3000-EP Great Spies for use in an Espionage Cultural Victory. The Apostolic Palace will be cheaper in terms of Commerce but it's also far less predictable and will require a lot of Hammers to make work.

Jersey Joe said:
Glad to see you mention needing another worker in France (I was going to argue that Worker 2 should delay his sea voyage).

Do you want Happiness from Gold or not? We'll need a Worker to connect a Gold Resource, unless we plan to settle on top of one of them. And, if we settle on top of one, it will likely be because there isn't any Food by the Gold Resources, meaning that we'd want to improve the second Gold Resource and then either keep the City by stagnating at Size 1 while working the Gold Resource or else we'd want to gift it away once both Gold Resources are connected so that we could immediately get one of the Gold Resources in trade.

As nice as it is to have Hereditary Rule, it's not particularly efficient--it's much better to have access to Happiness Resources so that all of our Cities can benefit.

Jersey Joe said:
Orleans build: completes Chariot

If we do that, we won't be able to get a Horse Archer able to move until Turn 98. If we start on a Horse Archer now, we have a Horse Archer able to move on Turn 96. At this stage of our warring, I'd rather have +1 Horse Archer than +1 Chariot. Switching into Christianity on Turn 96 affects a lot of our build items, so make the choice, but I'd rather get the Horse Archer while it will still have time to contribute to a fight in the Stalin war.

Jersey Joe said:
Here is a suggested mini PPP

You can work with whatever format works best for you, but since you'd already done pretty much all of the City-related stuff for T94, I left out those details to avoid confusion and just mentioned the suggested changes for Cities (which ended up only being switching Orleans to a Horse Archer).

Jersey Joe said:
XO Cognac build: Switch Settler to Spy (3-pop whip settler T96 before anarchy)

Nice try, but no production occurs during Anarchy, not even a build item that was already whipped to completion. If you don't believe me that it works that way, try it out in a test game. It's a simple test: open up a test game, whip a build item, then switch Civics (say, from Slavery to Tribalism). End the turn. Notice that your build item was not completed.

So, if we don't want to delay our Settler by 2 turns, we'll have to whip it on T95.

Jersey Joe said:
Orleans build: Horse Archer (2-pop whip T96 before anarchy)

Again, I'm sorry to be the one to burst your sneaky idea, but the programmers guarded against your tactic, and whipping before revolting would be equivalent to whipping on T97 after Anarchy.

Jersey Joe said:
London build: Complete Axeman ? can change before T96

We've got to make a call between another Missionary or a Library. No to the Axeman. This point is critical, because our game's ending date will be delayed the longer that we put off that Golden Age. If we go with the Missionary approach, we'll need to build at least 3 Missionaries in total and we'll have to plan for a phase without Slavery (by being in Caste System for St. Pete's to run Specialists).

Although getting the Missionaries is a valid approach, I think that our planning will be a lot simpler if we just make a Library in London, 1-pop-whip it (so that we can hire Specialists sooner), and hire Specialists without the need for Caste System, so that we can spend 1 turn of Anarchy switching into 2 Civics (Pacifism + Hereditary Rule) instead of 2 turns of Anarchy switching into 3 Civics (Caste System + Pacifism + Hereditary Rule) or the alternative of skipping Hereditary Rule for the short term, and so that we can stay in Slavery.

Do you really want to plan our empire around not being able to run Slavery for a while?

Jersey Joe said:
Worker 1 moves 1E G and builds Road (build winery at 3 E of Paris on T97?)

I thought that we agreed that we wanted a Road to the second gift City to give our Spies a chance to get 10% more Stationary Bonus and/or a chance to steal a second round of techs 1 turn sooner?

The Road at 1 NW of Paris has to exist on Turn 98, otherwise we'll delay our Spies.

Jersey Joe said:
Missionary exists and boards a Galley with Great General. Galley sails into Orleans.
Missionary and General are unloaded in Orleans and can move next turn.

If the Great General boards on T94, it can unload with full movement points on T95. We don't need to make him wait until T95 to board that Galley.

Jersey Joe said:
Does Worker 2 need to travel to Egypt with the settler?

Yes, if we want empire-wide additional Happiness sooner.

Jersey Joe said:
Can the settler be delayed 1 turn?

Nope. Either we get it whipped on T95 or it gets delayed by 2 turns.

Jersey Joe said:
Also, it was reported that Zhuge said instead of spending the night on a Galley by the London docks. He would rather spend the night in London buying doxies.

I'd rather see him dachshund his way to his cabin on the Galley with all due haste.

Jersey Joe said:
General build Question: Should I look for opportunities to build Archers? In other cities?

Nah, Chariots are probably just fine.

Jersey Joe said:
Worker 1 has time to build other things before he builds a road NW of Paris.

Just to clarify how it works:
T97 Spies attempt to steal techs. If they both steal the tech and survive, they will appear in Paris with 0 movement points.
T98 Spies in Paris move 1 NW G Riv For ROAD > G Riv (1 NE of the Horse)
T99 Spies move 1 W G (3 N of XO Cognac)
T100 Spies start accumulating their Stationary Bonus
T101 - 104 Spies keep waiting in place to accumulate their Stationary Bonus
T105 Spies have a 50% Stationary Bonus

Without the Road, then the Spies won't get their 50% Stationary Bonus until T106. It may not matter at all. Or, Hatty may go for Civil Service and thus we'll be able to steal it one turn sooner.

If we wait until after Bureaucracy to do all of Paris' further whipping, we'll get 50% more Hammers from whipping, meaning building more or using less population points, however you want to think about it.

Jersey Joe · Aug 9, 2016

T94, 525BC (continued)
Make trades with Joao, Kublai, Churchill.
Start spying on Stalin.
Our exploring settler discovers Elephants

Between Turns. London's water was poisoned.
A Russian Axeman Moves next to St. Pete. Might be time for our Horse Archer to join the rest of the troops.

T95, 500BC
Paris starts Archer.
Hamburg starts an Axeman, What about a workboat to net fish Hamburg and Cologne could share?
XO Cognac 3-Pop Whips a Settler.
Orleans 2-pop whips a Horse Archer
London Starts a Library
Argent switches build to a Granary
Macau 1-pop whips a Chariot

We find that Yakutsk has a Support City Revolt value of 565 and Sabotage Productions is 26.

Galley 3 sets up a Blockade.

Zhuge get bad directions while in Orleans and ends up in Cologne not Macau.

At Vlad. Axeman moves to attack Swordman but he kills an Archer instead.
Then our more experienced Axeman finishes off the Swordman and capyures Vlad plus a worker.
Not liking long Russian names we rename the City Vlad. We start work on a Granary. We then Gift the city to Churchill.

Axeman 5 is due 2 Promotions next turn.

Hatty has a Chariot and Settler 1 SW of Memphis. Our settler has yet to move.

It looks like we could capture Yekaterinburg next turn
Proposed attack plan Horse Archer 4 and Chariots 5 % 6 move 1 SE tundra forest (1 W of Yekaterinburg)
Chariot 7 moves 1 SE G; 1 E G (2 W of Yekaterinburg)

Galley 1 has an Axeman aboard, I would like to move it 2 E (1 NW of St. Pete) an dpick up the Horseman.
Galley 3 did not move yet to Blockade Yakutsk.

The Logs:
Session Turn Log from 525 BC to 500 BC:

Spoiler :

Autolog:

Spoiler :

The Save. hhttp://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Xteam_SG023_BC0500_01.CivBeyondSwordSavettp://

Jersey Joe · Aug 9, 2016

Dhoomstriker said:
I thought that we agreed that we wanted a Road to the second gift City to give our Spies a chance to get 10% more Stationary Bonus and/or a chance to steal a second round of techs 1 turn sooner?

The Road at 1 NW of Paris has to exist on Turn 98, otherwise we'll delay our Spies.

Just to clarify how it works:
T97 Spies attempt to steal techs. If they both steal the tech and survive, they will appear in Paris with 0 movement points.
T98 Spies in Paris move 1 NW G Riv For ROAD > G Riv (1 NE of the Horse)
T99 Spies move 1 W G (3 N of XO Cognac)
T100 Spies start accumulating their Stationary Bonus
T101 - 104 Spies keep waiting in place to accumulate their Stationary Bonus
T105 Spies have a 50% Stationary Bonus

Without the Road, then the Spies won't get their 50% Stationary Bonus until T106. It may not matter at all. Or, Hatty may go for Civil Service and thus we'll be able to steal it one turn sooner.

If we wait until after Bureaucracy to do all of Paris' further whipping, we'll get 50% more Hammers from whipping, meaning building more or using less population points, however you want to think about it.

Worker 1 is building the road so this is a mote point, but:
T97 A Spy steals Construction. We can build bridges.
T98 Spies in Paris can move 1 SW G Riv ROAD > 1 NW G Riv For (1 SE of the Horse)
T99 Spies move 1NW Horses > 1NW G (3 N of XO Cognac)
T100 same as above.

The real question: Is XO Cognac (or some other city) going to build another settler before turn 103?

Edit: Paris could 3-pop whip a settler on T100 (without stealing the cow)

Dhoomstriker · Aug 9, 2016

Nice work so far! The luck o' the Irish has been with you for the last couple of battles.

Jersey Joe said:
Zhuge get bad directions while in Orleans and ends up in Cologne not Macau.

Funny stuff.

I agree with the Espionage assessment that Yakutsk has started to build a new build item, so Galley 3 should Blockade this turn.

I also like your idea of sending Galley 1 sailing 2 E (to 1 NW of St. Pete's) to pick up HA 7, since Stalin having Open Borders with Churchill means that we're no longer invincible from being attacked, and while we might win against a Combat II Axeman, we might lose if a second Unit attacks us, and even if we did win, we'd have a wounded Horse Archer, which isn't all that useful for capturing Moscow compared to a mostly-full-health Archer.

Road

Jersey Joe said:
A Spy steals Construction. We can build bridges.

That's a very good point. It will be nice to get over the mentality that some Roads are not as useful as other Roads. At least the Road that we will be building will save us some time later when we are ready to make Oxford. And, we'll have a backup option in place if we don't manage to get Construction.

Techs
Shall we decide upon an order of priority for our tech thefts?

I'd currently suggest:
1. Code of Laws (needed for Civil Service and Philosophy)
2. Philosophy (needed to get a Great Person for our Golden Age)
3. Monarchy (yes, it's a non-monopoly tech, and thus it would be tradeable, but we could use the Happiness already, and we have nothing to trade for it except for Gold, and Gold is too valuable to splurge on techs, since Gold will allow us to stay at a 100% Science Rate on our tech beeline)
4. Mathematics (it's needed for Civil Service, but several AIs have it, so if we can't steal it, we'll probably be able to trade for it from some AI out there after several more turns--Stalin will learn it in 7 turns, although not getting it now would mess up our Workers' Chopping and would delay when we could start researching Civil Service)
5. Construction (because if I don't put it here, Cactus Pete will complain about not getting his Catapults)
6. Theology (to unlock Paper if Hatty goes for Civil Service; if she goes for Civil Service and we don't get Theology, I'm not yet sure what we would tech--maybe we'd just accumulate more EPs against both Hatty and Joao)
7. Calendar (I doubt that we'll get this many successful Spies, although it would be useful to have so that we could plop a Settler on Spice Island)
8. Aesthetics (possibly available for trade from Joao if another AI learns it)
9. Literature

Obviously, when a Spy fails, we repeat the attempt to steal the same tech, with the techs higher on the list being the ones to ensure that we get first. The order of the techs is up for debate, but once we decide upon the order, let's make sure that we get those techs in that order.

When exactly to use the 40% (or lower) Stationary Bonus Spies is debateable, but given the above tech order, I'd suggest using them on Monarchy and Mathematics, since those techs will be the cheaper ones of the techs that we're likely to be able to successfully steal.

Settlers

Jersey Joe said:
The real question: Is XO Cognac (or some other city) going to build another settler before turn 103?

It might have to be Paris if XO Cognac won't be able to do it, but let's see how our tech-stealing goes before we decide.

If we don't steal a lot of techs and a lot of our Spies die, we will probably have to wait to rebuild more Spies anyway. It's one of those hard-to-predict items right now since it will be so random-number dependent.

We could also use the York Settler, if needed, although I haven't calculated when it will get completed (probably not in time for T103).

The nice part about Hatty owning Macau is that she should accept Cities within 9.5 squares of there on the same landmass, so the fact that she owns Macau is what would enable us to gift her a City to the north-west of Paris.

If we decide not to take back both Cities at the time of the second City-gift (say, we would rather wait to position an army to capture her Apostolic Palace before declaring war so that she doesn't spam troops and make our lives harder), we'd scuttle the north-west City by Pillaging its Fish after having first grown the City to Size 2 and having whipped it, to keep her from whipping Units in the north-west gift City.

Note that these two gift Cities could be one way to win an Espionage Cultural Victory, since you want Cities that are close to your capital, to minimize travel time for repeated Spread Culture Missions from Spies. An AP Victory is likely going to be the best way to go if we continue to have success in our warring, but we're fighting with a bare-bones army and are relying purely on tactics to capture Cities; one wrong move and we could see our army getting crushed.

Stalin
He has a Great Scientist in Rostov, so that City may end up being a good one to capture, if he builds an Academy there, although that capture will probably have to happen in the second war.

Moscow looks tempting with just 2 Units currently defending it, but 2 Spearmen and 1 Chariot are visible within range of Moscow and Moscow in on a Hills square.

Still, our Axe 5 is probably best taking a Woodsman II Promotion, so that we can consider striking unexpectedly quickly at one of Stalin's Cities that he leaves weakly defended by both our mounted Units and an Axeman.

The question becomes: is it better to try to capture Yekaterinburg with some likely Unit losses and at least needing time to heal or shall we conserve our forces, consolodate our troops, and try to go for Moscow instead?

If we want to go for Moscow, for our Units at 1 SE of Vlad, I'd probably send them into Vlad this turn, to keep them from threatening Yekaterinburg (the City to the south-east of Vlad). I'd also send Chariot 7 (at 1 SW of Vlad) into Vlad.

HA 5 will heal in 1 turn if he and Chariot 1 (our Medic) stay on the square at 1 SW of Vlad.

If we do decide to go for Yekaterinburg anyway, at least by waiting, we'd have 2 full-health Horse Archers with which to lead the attack, which would make a significant difference in our odds of success. We could even plan to have Horse Archer 7 help out, but I still think that saving up to take down Moscow will be the coup-de-gras that will rip apart Stalin's empire.

Maybe we can bring in a war ally to help draw Stalin's forces away, to help make Moscow remain a promising target.

We'd need Saladin at Pleased, but we've already maxed out our Fair and Forthright Trading with him being at Cautious, so he won't be able to be bribed into a war with Stalin.

Darius would need to be Friendly, which isn't going to happen.

Hatty would only need to be Pleased, but I'd rather not drag a technologically-advanced AI into a war, and she's too far away to help, so she'd just end up stocking more troops inside of her Cities and maybe would do something silly, such as reduce her Science Rate and increase her Espionage Rate.

Kublai really hates us, so he won't be of help, as we can't get him from Annoyed up to the required Pleased.

Joao likes us enough, but he likes Stalin too much, so he won't declare on his friend Stalin. Plus, he's too far away to be of help and is stuck behind our Closed Borders.

Mehmed is actually the most promising one of the bunch. Mehmed will declare war at Cautious on someone toward whom he is Cautious or lower, so we probably only need to get him up from -1 to 0 or +1 toward us with a small tech gift. He only has 2 Cities, so I don't fear him spamming a lot of troops, but maybe we could get Stalin to funnel his Units toward Mehmed. Note that Stalin could also bribe Mehmed on us if we don't do it, so there's a risk that if we don't bring Mehmed into the war, Stalin might bring Mehmed into the war on his side, with Mehmed still getting techs out of it and the only difference being that we'd be the ones being ganged up on.

So, I'd suggest gifting Mysticism to Mehmed and then see how much he wants to go to war with Stalin. If we can get him to do it for Currency, great. If he wants more (say, both Currency and Horseback Riding), let's not giving him Horseback Riding, but we could wait a turn and then see if he'd do it for Currency + Meditation + possibly also Polytheism.

We may counter-intuitively end up hiding our Units inside of Vlad for a couple of turns to see if Stalin sends his troops away from the region around Moscow, then see if we can sneak in enough fast-moving Units in order to capture Moscow, which would be a far better prize than Yekaterinburg.

An unfortunate event has occurred, though--Churchill and Stalin have Opened Borders with each other.

So, St. Pete's is no longer a safe haven.

Our ideal striking point for being able to hit Moscow or Yekaterinburg within 2 turns thus becomes the Grassland at 2 S of Vlad, as mounted Units or a Woodsman II Axeman could attack either City within 2 turns from that square.

Note that any mounted Units that Unloaded inside of St. Pete's could reach that target square at 2 S of Vlad within the span of 1 turn, but we'd have to ensure that our Galleys did not end their turns inside of St. Pete's, as AIs are smart enough to walk their troops in to auto-destroy a Galley waiting in a neutral AI's port. It's very frustrating to see a message such as: "Alex's Warrior has destroyed your Galley."

However, we probably don't want to lure Stalin's Units our way by having Units adjacent to his Cultural Borders.

When we feel that we're ready to send out our troops, perhaps 2 or 3 turns from now, depending upon what Stalin does with his troops, we can gather our troops at 2 S of Vlad and then choose a target City (hopefully Moscow) that we figure that we could capture from there, taking Yekaterinburg as the booby-prize before Cease Firing if Moscow looks impregnable.

I hope that Yekaterinburg has a Food Resource at 1 SE + 1 S of the City, otherwise it will be a total junkpile. Why the City wasn't settled 1 S of where it is located probably has to do with Ocean-based Oil, or some silly algorithm about a specified distance from the capital at which to settle a City when all of the land is terrible, since settling 1 S would give the same Food Resource at 1 SE + 1 S of where the City ended up getting settled.

London
The Poison Water Mission will only cost London 3 Food, and I don't see a way to get extra Health this turn or next turn, so it's unfortunate, but it's probably one of the most harmless Espionage Missions that Churchill could have performed on us.

His Spy may have returned to Nottingham, though, so that may not be the last of Churchill's Spy activities.

Paris
I don't mind either way as to whether Paris builds an Archer or a Chariot. If we were to work a G For square for 2 turns, which we could do since we'll have 1 turn of Anarchy when Unhappiness wears off, we'd barely get our Archer with 25 / 25 Hammers. But, instead, we could get in 2 Cottage turns and get our Chariot 1 turn later, so, if we want the Cottage turns (which seems to make more sense), we'd get either Unit at the same time as each other, so we might as well just get the Chariot.

Other Cities
Realistically, our build item choices on T96 don't matter, since Hammers won't get invested into any build item, not even overflow Hammers, but we might as well make choices on behalf of T97 now, then be willing to change our minds on T97 after the tech-theft operation, if necessary.

Presumably, XO Cognac will slow-build a Spy after its Settler.

Work Boat for Hamburg

Jersey Joe said:
Hamburg starts an Axeman, What about a workboat to net fish Hamburg and Cologne could share?

We won't need a Work Boat for another 6 + 2 - 1 turns (6 turns for our Culture to expand, 2 turns of Anarchy, and 1 turn for the Work Boat to move into position), but since we won't be growing during that Anarchy, we'd delay it by a bit by getting it out of Hamburg as a build item other than the current build item.

But, what if we did the following:
Orleans completes Horse Archer -> completes Chariot -> builds Work Boat
21 overflow Hammers + 8 Hammers - 6 Hammers gives 23 overflow Hammers + 8 Hammers gives us our Work Boat

We'd then have plenty of time for the Work Boat to get into position, while Hamburg, which is closer to the front lines, can keep building Military Units.

It's arguable that an Axeman being built in Hamburg won't be able to contribute to an attack on Moscow (without delaying the use of the Great General by 1 additional turn, and each turn is precious with the clock ticking down on St. Pete's City Revolt counter), so perhaps we should build a Chariot in Hamburg now, then get an Axemen later during a Cease Fire to defend our Russian holdings for when we declare war again after the Cease Fire.

I don't see any other Cities that need decisions made for them.

Hatty
AI Settler Parties tend to first move straight horizontally or vertically and only then diagonally. That's not how I would do it (I'd move diagonally first), but maybe that's one of the ways in which the AIs are intentionally nerfed so as to give us more of a chance.

Regardless of why the AIs do that, this behaviour indicates that the DesH at 1 NE of the Fish and 3 SW of Memphis is her target settling location.

Hatty cannot settle next turn, due to the rule about not settling within 2 squares of another City.

Thus, I'd suggest that we let her move for 1 more turn, with us settling next turn (on T96), so that we can troll her for a turn, making her Settler Party think that they'll settle in the area and thereby waste her Settler Party's efforts.

So, I'd suggest that our Settler move 1 S P Ivory (to reveal the water to the south) > 1 NW DesH (1 NE of the Fish)

From there, we'd be able to settle on any of:
The DesH
1 W P Riv
1 S P Ivory
1 SE P Ivory
1 N Des (if we want Stone and 1 Flood Plains square in our big fat cross, with us needing a Work Boat from another City to net the Fish, but with us providing a better Culture Block)

On T96, our Chariot 9 could move 1 NW P > 1 NW P (1 NW P > 1 W P won't reveal a square that could be in the big fat cross of a City and delays our Chariot's exploration on future turns because 1 NW of there is Coast)

Then, on T96, we decide where to settle.

Galley 1
Axeman 6 is not going to be of use in attacking Moscow but it could be of use in attacking Yekaterinburg due to the Road at 1 SE of Vlad.

EDIT: Ignore this part, I wrote it before seeing your good idea of Galley 1 picking up HA 7 and I forgot to delete this text.
So, we could probably have Galley 1 sail to meet up with Galley 3, have Axeman 6 transfer to Galley 3, then Galley 3 (with Axeman 6 aboard) sails 1 S to 1 NW of St. Pete's (2 S of the Deer), then HA 7 moves onto Galley 3 at 1 NW of St. Pete's, and then Galley 3 Blockades from 1 NW of St. Pete's.

On T96, we'd wake up Galley 3 from the Blockade and could drop off both Units on the GH For at 1 SW of Vlad.

Since we won't have Construction before Zhuge has to move, he's still going to be unable to get to 1 NE of Hamburg until T97, by which point in time one of Galley 4 or Galley 5 could have gone to reach him.

With his help, actually, Axeman 6 could take 4 XP (as could 4 other Units), giving Axeman 6 Woodsman II and other Units some useful Promotions (probably Tactics for the 30% Retreat ability on one of our Horse Archers), allowing us a real shot at stealing Moscow.

With Moscow in our hands, Stalin's low-Culture empire would be relatively easy to take over after a Cease Fire.

By the way, the "New Big Game" sign aught to be moved 1 W, at 1 N of the Horse, due to the rule about not being able to settle within 2 squares of another City.

Worker 2 can put in 1 more turn of partial Farming (T96) but will have to stop on T96, so that it can board Galley 7 along with the XO Cognac Settler (who will have moved to 1 E of Macau) on T97.

We have Open Borders with Hatty, so we shouldn't have to worry about our XO Cognac Settler getting teleported.

Mehmed and Darius
As for getting Monotheism from Darius, please wait until after we've bribed Mehmed into war against Stalin before making that trade, since multiple AIs will dislike us for trading with Darius, including Mehmed, so we'd want to bribe Mehmed first and only then anger Mehmed by trading with Darius. Hopefully, Darius will accept Alphabet in trade for Monotheism. I don't think that I'd trade Horseback Riding to Darius and we'd then just save the Theology tech-theft for a future time, perhaps trading Code of Laws or something to Darius later for Monotheism. I don't suggest that we try to steal Monotheism, since we have so many other techs that we'd like to steal.

I think that you have enough info to be able to play until T96. Please speak up if you need help with writing a PPP, but otherwise, I'll assume that we've got every item sufficiently discussed for you to be able to toss together your plan.

SGOTM 23 - Xteam

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