I will be playing shortly. Feel free to chime in with any comments; I'll be refreshing the thread a lot as I play.
Turnset Report
Turn 111, 100 BC
Paris will get the next Great Person and XO Cognac will get the Great Person after that
Orleans will complete its Christian Missionary and then build its Settler
Where possible, I'll dump Hammers into Moai Statues in a chosen City whenever Argent isn't building Moai Statues, so as to earn some Failure Gold to help power our way through Education + Gunpowder.
Russian Theatre:
We perform more Pillaging and then begin to group our Units together in a stack
We send more Chariots through Germany toward Russia; Chariots seem to be our weapon of choice this SGOTM.
We keep Cottaging at Paris, including a non-River Grassland square that XO Cognac can help to improve. Once Lyons grows some more, it should be able to help with working Cottages, too.
Argent's Iron gets improved and with it, we can still grow in 1 turn while getting another Catapult in 2 turns, so we delay the Lighthouse yet again in favour of building another Catapult.
Hamburg builds Moai Statues for Failure Gold
Athens will build a couple of Galleys to help with transporting troops out of Russia
We send one Chariot via our Galley chain that will join up with a Catapult, leaving another Chariot that is 1 square further eastward of the first Chariot able to arrive in Rostov using Germany's Roads next turn.
2 more Catapults unload in St. Pete's to join the front lines.
Our York-built Settler heads toward north-east England; I could still use a name to give to that City
Joao's Culture has finally extended over top of Spice Island; I suppose that if we were to place a Worker on that island and gift him that Worker, it would know what to do, but we're not exactly rich in Worker actions, so I don't see how we could spare a Worker. We'll just have to go Spiceless for now.
Our Galley 6 picks up the Chariot in Egypt; all hands on deck really means everyone in this game, what with Hatty not being a target until after Mehmed has fallen, and us being locked into a Peace Treaty with Hatty for the next 8 turns.
For good measure, we ask Mehmed and Kublai to attack Moscow again, in case they had forgotten since we loaded the game.
We'll probably be able to trade for World Maps soon--I think that I'll wait until we were going to trade a tech anyway (say, if an AI gets a lump sum of Failure Gold from failing to complete a Wonder), as I can't think of anything that this short-term knowledge would provide to us that we cannot wait to see.
T112, 50 BC
Hatty keeps building Settlers; all the more Cities for us to capture, I suppose, although I don't like how her tech rate keeps sliding down; now, it is at 50%.
Fortunately, settled Great Scientists are working to provide her with raw Flasks, but with her in Universal Suffrage, it's a real waste for her to keep holding onto The Pyramids. There's not much that we can do about that situation right now, though, with our forces tied up deep in Russian territory.
Stalin had a choice between heading toward a better-guarded St. Pete's and or heading toward weakly-guarded Rostov and he has made the choice to go after Rostov, meaning that our Catapult from there is in danger, unless we back it off or go after his stack. With most of our forces assembled nearby, we could keep chasing him stack he moves onto flatland terrain near Rostov, but I think that we'll just throw our stack at his stack now and see what happens.
Meanwhile, Fredercik has generated a Great Scientist (good job!)
Also, The Temple of Artemis got completed by Darius
Hatty asked to trade World Maps with us, but those trades are generally the worst ones that the human player can make, so we'll have to add declining such a trade to our Diplo Policy
For the cost of 4 Catapults, Stalin's stack has been eliminated. Now, it will just be a matter of bringing in new Catapults, healing up, and taking down Moscow as soon as we possibly can
Aberdeen gets founded and starts working the pre-improved Sheep Resource while we await the arrival of our Work Boat
Saladin has traded Calendar to Darius for Monarchy
Kublai has learned Polytheism
Mao has also learned Polytheism
The era of no-Longbowmen may soon be ending
Mao has connected-up a second Banana Resource that he won't trade to us; seeing as how he will trade Happiness and Healthiness Resources at Cautious and seeing as how he isn't anyone's Worst Enemy, it's time to gift him a tech. Rather than giving him Aesthetics and opening up tech-trading opportunities, let's give him Code of Laws, letting him maybe run Caste System while not having useful tradebait for use with Mr. Loves To Trade Darius.
We get 30 Gold from Mao <-> Code of Laws and +4 Fair and Forthright Trading... but, we have no Resources to offer him for his Silk or his Banana. For now, we can make this trade:
Silk from Mao <-> Wine
When we connect-up our second source of Wine, we can get +1 Happiness, without worrying about Mao trading away his Silk Resource to another AI in the meantime
Maybe if we ever bother to build a Road on a Cow we might be able to trade him Cow for his Banana, although China is known for having Cows on a typical Civ 4 World Map
We ask Mehmed and Kublai to get off of their heels and attack Moscow
Macau has finally (re)grown to Size 2
Hatty keeps building Islamic Missionaries, but so far has only built enough of them to spread to her own Cities
Churchill is running Buddhism as his State Religion, thanks to Yar's Buddhism
We have another Great General; I'm thinking that its best usage will be to turn 5 Galleys into 3-movement-point Galleys, as it's really the speed of our Galleys that will dictate how quickly our army will be able to move
To avoid the possibility of Mao getting Monarchy from Saladin for Code of Laws, it's time to trade Code of Laws to Saladin, also hopefully putting Saladin in Caste System and trading with Saladin at a time when he isn't anyone's Worst Enemy:
Traded 30 Gold from Saladin <-> Code of Laws
T113, 50 BC
Stalin's Horse Archer took revenge on our Chariot, making us pay for having ripped apart his stack while we steadily advance more Catapults to the front lines
St. Pete's is in City Revolt, which is unfortunate, but at least it will only last for 4 turns; still, that's a big blow to our GPP generation, and it's good that our plans are not relying on getting those GPP
It's time to Promote some Units. We could take Amphibious on 2 HAs and 1 Chariot, but that's not really enough Units; it's probably better to land troops and either Bombard or suicide with siege Units for a turn rather than trying to amphibiously assault with mounted Units at this late stage of the game, so Combat Promotions will be the default Promotions of choice
With Saladin not being anyone's Worst Enemy, we make this trade:
Spices from Saladin <-> Fur
(So much for needing to settle Spice Girls Island)
A Woodsman II Axeman snipes Yekaterinburg when Stalin leaves it defended by only a Spearman and a Galley; perhaps we sank his Units on that Galley, I don't really know, but the City comes complete with a Lighthouse and an Academy. Another Spearman threatens the City, but our Axeman is amazingly at full health, so unless Stalin has some Chariots lurking around, we just scored ourselves an extra City
Meanwhile, Stalin is willing to talk, so now it's just a matter of taking down Moscow once our troops have healed sufficiently
Despite my best efforts, it seems that the AIs are still trading techs with each other:
Churchill learned Calendar while Darius learned Currency, so they likely traded techs with each other
Meanwhile, Mao still managed to get Monarchy from Saladin by trading Horseback Riding to Saladin
Stalin learned Priesthood
So, the happy war times are quickly ending and AIs may soon start learning Feudalism
It seems that Wine is a highly-prized commodity, so we may have the only 2 sources on the map.
Frederick has connected up his Gems Mine and will soon connect up his second Copper Mine
Right now, I'm thinking about using our Settler to resettle Vlad. We could let Churchill have Yekaterinburg--even though it has an Academy, with hardly any Flasks to multiply, an Academy doesn't do a whole lot for us (while it could multiply the Flasks of an AI's Palace quite nicely)
Or, we could simply eliminate Churchill; with him trading techs to our rivals and soon trading away Metal Casting, maybe he has outlived his usefulness. Who would we use as our Voting Buddy? Joao maybe, or even Frederick who Opens Borders when Annoyed at us, or maybe even Mehmed.
I'm not completely sold on eliminating Churchill, but his tech-trading is helping the AIs to speed up their tech pace in a way that won't help us get tech to trades but will hurt us in terms of our warring, so I'm at a point where I could see Churchill disappearing from the map being a good thing.
It looks as though Frederick will build an Academy in Berlin
We make this trade:
Incense from Hatty <-> Gems
Mehmed and Kublai, please attack Moscow (the only troop that we see from either of them in Russia is Mehmed's Scout at 1 NW of Orenburg on the Road, which is just begging to die to one of Stalin's two Orenburg defenders, sigh
Turn 114, 25 BC
Darius wants Iron for his Corn. Haha, no.
Mehmed's Scout survived at Orenburg; I suppose that he knows AI programming better than we do!
Yekaterinburg is now surrounded by 2 Russian Axemen and 1 Russian Spearman; I think that the jig is up and we should just gift the City to Churchill, which answers the internal debate of whether or not to eliminate Churchill
Mehmed has created a Great Scientist in Istanbul, making the City even more of a prize
No AI has learned a new tech but Kublai coughs up a lump sum of Gold too big for me to resist; he is the Worst Enemy of 3 AIs (Frederick, Darius, and Hatty), so I don't want to give him Code of Laws, but letting him have Medication when he already has Priesthood unlocked via Hinduism isn't that terrible, right? (I hope that I won't regret the decision later, but if we can self-tech Education sooner, we'll speed up our end game.)
Paris will have just enough Food to get its Great Person in 1 turn without shrinking the City, getting it before XO Cognac due to them completing their Great People on the same turn as each other but with Paris being the earlier-owned City, Paris will get the Great Person
Lyons starts working a helper Cottage for Paris, being able to grow at the same time as if it were to work the Farm. Yay, finally, after all of these turns, we're actually working helper Cottages
Hamburg hires 2 Merchant Specialists, but rather than spreading Christianity there, I think that Christianity will be better off spread in Argent during the time period where we aren't in Organized Religion, as it will take a few turns for a Missionary to arrive in Argent, while Argent is likely to be one of our Forge -> Library -> University Cities, so it could make far better use of our State Religion than could Hamburg where Hamburg would just get a few extra GPP that might never be used to generate a Great Person
Athens has completed a Galley and starts to build another one; I'm not sure how many we'll need, but 5 in total for use with our Great General will be a good start, allowing us to go Stalin -> Mehmed -> Hatty -> Frederick's southern Cities -> to the east of Istanbul with our fast-sailing army
With Yekaterinburg under threat, I rename it to Katty and gift it to Churchill, who is no one's Worst Enemy and who will live for even longer while getting an Academy in what will be his new capital, once we recapture Yar and raze Vlad.
Darius is now trading Silver for Mehmed's Sheep
Hatty has connected her Gold
Joao is 5 turns away from learning Feudalism, while Hatty is 13 turns away from learning Nationalism
Stalin is researching Metal Casting
We delay HA 12 for one turn to escort our Great General; we don't need Frederick declaring a war of opportunity in order to kill our Great General
Frederick has a Galley of his own at 2 S of Frankfurt (his Galley is located at 2 NE + 1 N of Athens). I wonder if he's headed to Pillage the netted Clam inside of Barb Culture; maybe we should do it first if his Galley moves there next turn
Mehmed has a stack of 4 Chariots and 2 Axes near the Barb City, in addition to the Spearman that he has there
Moscow's Cultural Defences are down to 25%; soon, we should just make an attack, perhaps 2 turns from now when the Rostov-built Catapult will have arrived and can help with suicide attacking
Our Woodmsan III Unit (we now have 2 of them--the other one captured Katty) moves to heal our troops who were wounded in taking down Stalin's stack; Zhuge will require another 4 turns to heal even with the help of this Woody III Unit
Our Egypt Worker finally starts Camping the Ivory
We micro Athens to get another Galley within the span of 2 turns
Gold Coast is now finally working both Gold and (Fishy) Coast
T115, 1 AD
Saladin tries to offer us Clam for Iron. No, thank you.
We complete another Cottage just in time for Paris and other Cities to be working a total of 9 Cottages around Paris. Paris also steals the Cow from Orleans, as we need Paris to grow
Mao smells fresh blood and also declares war on Stalin... it seems that Kublai bribed Mao to join in on the war
Mao learned Monotheism and Currency; I'm not sure if Monotheism came from self-teching, but Currency was likely the tech used to bribe Mao into the war
At some point, we may want to bribe some of the AIs off of Stalin; perhaps now would be a good time to bribe Mao off of him, so that Mao doesn't start spamming troops. Wow, that's expensive, with Mao wanting Philosophy and Aesthetics, but I believe that it is the right call to make, so that Mao doesn't spam troops, and thus we bribe Mao out of the war with Stalin
We're about to complete an Islamic Monastery in Ruby Bay, which will at least be worth 2 Hammers per turn, plus 3 Flasks when at a 100% Science Rate
We Chop 1 Forest at Aberdeen that is surrounded by 4 Forests, hoping that we'll get a Forest regrowth there, but if not, at least being able to quickly get up a Granary, as that City will grow very quickly with a Granary and will be able to whip some items to pay back the investment of that Forest
We Chop out a Courthouse in Rostov, to be completed this turn. While it will be nice to wait for Christianity before we put Chops into The Forbidden Palace, getting the Courthouse now will pay itself back due to the reduced Maintenance Costs
I ask Mehmed and Kublai to attack Moscow
Our Great General has arrived in Rostov; now all we need are our Galleys on the scene
Frederick's Galley has NOT moved to the Barb Clam, so we don't Pillage it and instead push our Galleys forward; we're still going to have to wait for the last one, though, which will be built in Athens next turn
Frederick's Galley has headed toward the Barb City
We Fortify our Great Scientist in Paris, awaiting the completion of MoM, which we won't build until we get Marble from Mehmed; hopefully, he'll become Pleased toward us soon, in order to make him willing to trade Marble to us
Except for Zhuge, all of our surviving wounded troops from fighting Stalin's stack will be healed next turn for an attack on Moscow
We can also declare war on Churchill and move in toward Vlad with any troops that aren't needed in the capture of Moscow, also dropping off an Axeman and a Catapult next to Vlad, since they'll arrive too late to be of use at Moscow
With all of the Resource trades, Paris has 2 Happiness to spare; I don't want to have our 2 Chariots leave Paris just yet, though, in case War Weariness mounts or we lose a Resource trade; it will be better to ensure that we can keep Paris working all of its squares
I hire an Artist Specialist in Rostov for 1 turn to get our Cultural Borders to expand 1 turn sooner, which will help with putting Cultural pressure on some of the nearby Forests that we would like to Chop out from under the AIs whose Culture currently controls those Forests
Joao is 4 turns away from Feudalism; theoretically, we could wait to gift him York until he has Feudalism so that we could steal it, but we don't want to steal it yet, as doing so would encourage the AIs to piggyback research off of that tech and might open up tech trading of Feudalism that much faster. Ideally, we'll only get Feudalism from Joao either via theft or in trade right before we declare war on him or when we already know Metal Casting, Machinery, Printing Press, and maybe even not until after we know Engineering, Chemistry, and Steel, as we only need Feudalism for Guilds when we're ready to go after Replaceable Parts
T116, 25 AD
Sure, on the turn where we want to declare war on Stalin, he builds another Unit in his City. At least it's a Catapult, with 0 Defensive Bonuses
Moscow's Cultural Borders are at 10%, so it feels like the right time to go in. The longer that we delay from here on in will just mean the longer that it will take for our troops to heal and march again
For the cost of 5 Catapults and 1 Axeman, Moscow is ours. Of course, now we have 0 Catapults, which is an issue for going after Mehmed, but at least we resolved the Stalin problem. It's time to declare war on Churchill
We beg 10 Gold from Frederick before declaring war on Churchill, to avoid any swanky hanky panky bribery and Frederick gives it to us! Yay!
Of course, we can't declare war on Frederick for another 10 turns, but doing so is not really in the cards with all of his pointy Melee Units being able to hurt our soft mounted Units
We ask Mehmed and Kublai to attack Orenburg
We declare war on Churchill
We recapture Yar, and although it goes down to Size 1, it keeps it Granary (finally, some good luck with Building captures)
Capturing Yar also allows our Worker to get into position to build a Road between Moscow and Yar
We only have 1 Catapult, so rather than sending it toward Vlad, we can unload it in St. Pete's and send it southward; we might not declare war on Mehmed with only 1 Catapult, but then again, we might, so it's better to be prepared, rather than diverting the Catapult to Vlad for a few turns of unloading, Bombarding once, and loading, just to remove, what, a 3% Defensive Bonus?
Since we're going to need more siege Units, we can set up a couple of Cities, such as Hamburg, to whip them next turn
It's also time to start pre-building Forges in some Cities, so we gift York to Joao and steal Metal Casting on the first try, yay! We will ask for York back next turn
For 2 EPs, we could steal 5 Gold from Joao's Treasury; not worth it, if you ask me, and I'd rather that our Spy just stay in place in case we later want to gift him the City again to steal a different tech
We arrogantly unload 2 Axemen and a Spearman where we want to resettle Vlad; Churchill is still running Caste System, so he can't whip a second City Defender
We reveal Jerusalem, a Barb City with 150% City Defences and three Barb Archers, two of them with City Defence II and one of them with City Defence I. The City is the Holy City for both Judaism and Christianity
Mehmed is Pleased toward us, so we Sabotage all of Hatty's Stone Resources; well, we tried to, anyway, but 2 of the Spies failed in their Missions, even with 93% odds. All that we probably accomplished was temporarily denying Hatty access to Stone. You win some and you lose some. We'll just have to take Mehmed's Marble by force. That's a concept that all of us can understand how to do in this game, right?
St. Pete's is out of City Revolt; we might as well hire 5 Specialists for 1 turn; they don't have to be Artist Specialists, but it wouldn't hurt to get more Culture in the City to push us closer to 100 Culture, both to put pressure on Munich's nearby Cultural Borders and to more quickly reduce Motherland Unhappiness, so the Specialists can remain as Artist Specialists; if we hadn't have gone into City Revolt, I probably would have stopped hiring Artist Specialists by now, but we did go into City Revolt (St. Pete's is such a riotous place!).
Since we have a few turns to kill while our troops heal up before their trek to the Ottoman Empire, it will probably make sense to throw mounted Units and Woody Axes at Stalin's last couple of Cities.
In 2 turns' time, we can get a fleet of 5 2-movement-point Galleys, but they'll be to the west of Istanbul and thus out of useful range for boarding, hence going after at least one more City of Stalin's, if we can manage it
We took down the 2 Axemen that Stalin had sent to retake the City of Katty using our Chariots, who patiently waited for the Axemen to move onto flatland, so Stalin is probably really hurting in terms of remaining troops right now.
If we don't completely kill off Stalin, it may make sense to remain at war with him until we're at war with Mehmed, so that we can ask for Open Borders from Stalin before taking a Peace Treaty, probably asking Stalin to stop the war with Kublai, if Stalin has enough Power remaining to do so. Who needs a Cease Fire now that we've gutten the Russian empire?
Mehmed has learned Drama (which could mean he'd use it to bribe an AI toward whom he becomes Friendly into war with us--fortunately, while Saladin is Friendly toward Mehmed, Mehmed is only Pleased toward Saladin)
Saladin has learned Currency
Darius is trading a Silver to Mehmed but Darius now wants Silver, so someone's Culture must have stolen one of Darius' Silver Resources, or the other AI with whom he might be at war Pillaged one, or a Barb Pillaged one. Either way, it's a bit funny
We have restored our Trade Network with Kublai. You want to give us 4 Gold per Turn for a Fish Resource? Done deal! (See, it pays to keep track of the F4 TECHS and F4 RESOURCES screens each turn--screenshot each one each turn and then visually look for differences by flipping between two different MS Paint windows.)
With Mao only being Frederick's Worst Enemy (who cares) and with an extra Wheat in hand thanks to Moscow's Culture disappearing at Rostov's Wheat, we take Mao's Banana before another AI does. Thank you!
T117, 50 AD
Catapult progress in Rostov was Sabotaged
Hatty asks us to cancel our deals with Kublai; according to our Diplo Policy, I turn her down. Hatty has gone from Cautious to Annoyed toward us. There's not much that we can do about it... well, we made Macau revolt again, heh heh
I was wrong; apparently, Saladin can trade Wine. It would be nice to get it from him, but I don't see a spare Resource
Stalin sends an Axeman toward Yar
Oh, gotta love you Churchill--you built us a Worker in Vlad
Oh, and our Horse Archer killed his Archer at about 40% odds, sweet. The City had no infrastructure, so it got razed. Churchill's new capital finally has an Academy in it!
We resettle Vlad 1 W of where it was placed and call it Transylvania, since I feel that we've sucked the life out of Stalin
Joao kindly gives back possession of York
Before we switch our Civics, I check with all of the AIs, but I don't find any AI who we might be able to switch into either Caste System or Pacifism, so we switch Civics to Slavery and Organized Religion
Hatty managed to get Open Borders with Frederick and has sent her Archer into Cologne
What do you know?! We managed to cancel the Stone from Hatty <-> Marble from Mehmed trade! So, what gives? Why doesn't Marble show up as a tradeable item from Mehmed? He's not trading his Marble to anyone else. All that I can assume is that he lost it in the war with Stalin, lost it to a Barb, or lost it to someone's Culture. So much for the plan that failed which actually succeeded only to fail in the end zone.
It seems that Darius stole Mehmed's second Marble Resource, so all that we've managed to do was to give Marble back to Mehmed instead of letting Hatty have it. Ah, well, maybe Mehmed will start to build a Marble-based Wonder instead of Military Units.
We can have the Great General board Galley 7 and once the Great General is aboard Galley 7, all of our Galleys can meet at 1 SW + 1 W of Istanbul to distribute 4 XP to 5 Galleys each, giving us 2 Promotions each for Flanking I + Navigation I, giving us 3-movement-point Galleys
So, we're going to stay in Christianity (Mehmed is already Pleased with us with us being Christian, and we really could use the extra Hammers from Christianity under Organized Religion), but the big challenge to figure out is where we're going to build our 6 Universities.
It should be easy enough to send mounted Units and Woodsmen Units toward Stalin, NOT capturing Katty from Churchill, and send our Catapult and other slow-moving Units that heal toward the south to be picked up by Galleys.
Our Galleys counter-intuitively sail away from the water to the south of Russia and back past Istanbul with our Great General aboard; I'd have done that myself but I wanted to make sure that no one objected to this use of a Great General. I'm not sure if you can simply assign the +1 Movement Point Promotion to a Galley where the Great General joins it, but we could test that possibility first, so that we could take Combat I with that Galley, while taking Flanking I + Navigation I with the other 4 Galleys. With their +1 movement point, our Galleys then sail back toward the water to the south of Russia to pick up troops, and we declare war on Mehmed with our Galleys outside of his Cultural Borders, probably taking the City to the east first in order to secure Marble sooner; Darius' Culture will take both Marbles and we'll have to trade Marble from Darius instead of from Mehmed. Also, that way, Mehmed's stack is unlikely to come at Istanbul like it might if we went for Istanbul first; this way, we might capture both of Mehmed's Cities without even having to engage his army that is near the Barb City.
Frederick completed Chichen Itza in Berlin, thanks to Hatty's Stone. Oh well, at least someone such as Mao didn't build it, who now has a nasty 8-City empire of his own.
I'm okay if someone picks it up from here, but whoever does needs to figure out which 6 Cities will get Forges, Libraries, and Universities, and Christianity in said Cities first if we don't have Christianity in them.
Otherwise, if no one wants to take on that task, I'll probably need to take a day off and then pick it up in 2 days' time.
Saved game from Central
If Stalin only has 2 cities maybe remove him from the map? Though I would guess Novograd would require catapults. Maybe pillage around Novograd?
