instead of a temple in London, I think Courthouse would be better. I could build it with 1 chop and no whipping.
I like that idea phenomenally better.
We are going to need to run 0% research 100% espionage on Joao soon (also maybe Hatty).
That's true, but other than Joao (iNoTechTradeThreshold = 15), Churchill (iNoTechTradeThreshold = 15), and Frederick (iNoTechTradeThreshold = 10 but who likely won't ever research a tech that we would need), the AIs know that we took these techs in trade, because our strategy went from City-spamming-and-Liberating-to-get-Friendly-AI-trading-partners to tech-theft:
Mysticism
Meditation
Monotheism
Seeing as how we already have the three post-Mathematics techs, we have Aesthetics, and we will soon steal Metal Casting, about the only techs that I think that a non-Hatty AI might research for us would be Compass or Machinery, and maybe Drama from Joao if Hatty doesn't research it herself first. So, due to our conservative early exploration, we can certainly afford to take Priesthood in trade now, and Gold being sent Hatty's way will not be wasted, as it will get invested on Civil Service.
The way to think about tech-trading is that it is almost always a net advantage.
Assume that at a 100% Science Rate, we can make 100 Flasks per turn, and even with building Research everywhere, we can make 170 Flasks per turn. As long as we have sufficient Gold to continually maintain our 100% Science Rate, any tech trade, be it for another tech or for Gold, will put us ahead, since we can research more Flasks in a single turn than our maximum.
We're talking about a very small amount here, but every bit counts, with generally only WFYABTA getting in the way, but we don't have to worry about WFYABTA anymore thanks to all of our tech stealing and to our conservative meeting of Alex (which ended up being a waste) and Hatty after our first couple of rounds of tech-trading.
Given that London will not be working the Horses (see above) until T104, York can 1-pop whip a Horse Archer on T103 and still 2-pop whip the settler on T105.
I do like the sounds of a Horse Archer better. If our Workers are busy building Roads after Chopping out The Hanging Gardens, the Horse Archer should arrive in time to help out with the Nottingham attack.
Also, if the worker who was going to mine the gems delays that project and builds a road (completed on T104) 1S of Ruby Bay it would cut 1 Turn off the travel time to Nottingham.
I don't think that we'll need to divert the Gems' Worker. We just need 4 turns of Roads at 1 NE and 2 NE of York on flatland, meaning 4 Worker turns from the other 2 Workers on T102 and T103. If the Horse Archer gets whipped on T103, then it won't need to move until T104, so we'd actually have an excess of Worker turns without needing the Gems Miner.
But, I'd suggest 2-pop-whipping the Horse Archer on T102 when we get the extra population point from The Hanging Gardens, so that we can overflow the excess Hammers into the Settler, meaning more turns of growing and whipping and less turns of stagnating while building a Settler.
AIs build Cities in spots that we wouldn't choose, with a preference for high amounts of Food, and only when Food is completely lacking in the area do they settle somewhere solely for a Resource, such as for Horse or Oil.
I am for gifting Moscow before declaring war on Churchill.
One thing that I haven't tested is whether, upon recapturing St. Pete's, we'll suffer another round of City Revolt. That situation needs testing. If we would suffer such a round of City Revolt, we might have to capture the City when it has 1 turn of City Revolt remaining, so that we get 1 turn of City Revolt instead of a brand new City Revolt counter.
It might also just make sense to try to hold Moscow for long enough to throw a stack at Rostov and then Cease Fire with Stalin.
Anyway, testing around City Revolt recapturing is needed.
Basically, if we recapture St. Pete's on the turn when the City Revolt counter has disappeared, will a new City Revolt counter appear? What about if we recapture St. Pete's on the turn when the City Revolt counter is 1? We'd basically open a test game, declare war on an AI, World-Build some Tanks/Cuirassiers next to an AI capital, capture it, gift it away to another AI, wait some turns, save the game, then try out both scenarios of declaring war on the AI to whom we gifted the City and recapturing the City.
I am for making peace with Frederick for now.
We're not at war with Frederick. What I was suggesting is that in the trading window, we "beg" 10 Gold from Frederick--i.e. we put 10 Gold on his side of the trading window, nothing on our side of the trading window, and ask him for it.
Regardless of what his response his, he will hate us by -1 for Making an Arrogant Demand.
If he says Yes, we'll get a 10-turn-enforced Peace Treaty with Frederick.
No matter how much a BtS AI hates you, they won't Close Borders with you, so we'll get to keep the Open Borders that we earned with Frederick by sharing a war with him against Alex.
Gifting Moscow would mean that Stalin wouldn't treat it as a City of his (with his Culture in it) that is owned by a player with whom he is at war. But, he would feel that way about St. Pete's, and he would have Open Borders to walk right through Moscow by having Open Borders with Churchill, so he might still come at St. Pete's even with a gifted Moscow. If Stalin will still send his army that way (toward St. Pete's, which he likely would do), gifting away Moscow might at best buy us a turn or two, at the cost of a population point and the cost of potentially losing Buildings when capturing the City a second time. It's not as clearly worth it as was gifting away ALL of the Cities that we'd captured from Russia.
Frederick may or may not choose to declare war on us. Sometimes, AIs who hate you and who see a poorly-defended City will declare a war of opportunity. I'd hate to lose Athens that way. Hopefully, our higher Power will scare Frederick into giving into our Demand for 10 Gold, even though our military power is mostly far away from his empire.
I can certainly step in on Monday, but would ask that you and Dhoom minimize the detailed discussions of events after taking Moscow and England. I can only read and retain so much.
Alternatively, I can try to summarize the turnset-relevant points for you before you play.
It's good to keep some medium-term and long-term discussions going, although they can be distracting to the Active Player.
Also, let's forget about Joao for now.
We have two AIs who want to take the north-west City, but we only want to let 1 of those AIs keep that City for a reasonable amount of time (Joao). Yet, if an AI who is running Christianity as their State Religion and/or is running Caste System keeps that City for more than 1 turn, we'll lose most of our Culture Espionage discount in the City.
Also, we want Bureaucracy as soon as we can get it, but we're not quite ready to build Forges yet, so there isn't much of a rush to get Metal Casting, with the only reason that I can really think of being to gift it to Hatty so that she doesn't duplicate research on it.
Besides, Joao has Iron and Horses while Hatty still has Archers, War Chariots, and Catapults, all of which are vulnerable to Horse Archers and War Elephants.
It's also really tight to go to war with both AIs in a short period of time to get ourselves Civil Service.
Plus, I'd like to gift York to Joao at the same time as we are ready to declare war on him, and we won't be ready to gift York for a little while yet. That way, we'd keep Joao alive and minimally, could have his Palace Research potentially working for us (say, on Compass) or maximally could use him as a backup option to Churchill for an Apostolic Palace Victory Voting Buddy.
So, let's leave Joao for later and target Hatty next.
If possible, we'd capture The Great Library City but not The Pyramids City, so that she remains in Representation. We'd whip a couple of Islamic Missionaries out of The Great Library City, whip it down to Size 1, and then consider Liberating it back to her, if we are able to capture and Liberate 3 or more Cities in total, depending upon what she does with her Settlers and how quickly her two newly-settled Cities grow. As long as we can repeatedly capture and Liberate 3 Cities, we can invest some time and resources into getting her up to Friendly status, while letting her remain in Representation.
Or, optionally, we can decide that we don't really need her as a tech-trading partner and we'll just keep her Cities for ourselves.
If we can't capture any of her core area Cities, we could at least ensure that we have enough troops to hold our Ivory City, then capture the 2 Cities near Paris so that we'd keep her tech pace reasonably high and could plan for another round of tech-theft in the future, probably after she's picked up a tech such as Feudalism.
I suppose that we'd wait for 1 turn after she learns Civil Service (or later, while our troops get into position) so that she'd be in peaceful times when picking her post-Civil-Service tech and would have less of a chance to pick Feudalism in the short term. If she were to pick Paper, we'd gift Paper to her and then wait at least 1 more turn before declaring war to let her pick again.
We'd only gift her the gift City on the turn when we're ready to declare war. Once an AI has owned a City, they can be gifted that City at any point in the future, even if she ends up with 4 Cities and no City of hers is close to the 2nd Big Game City.
I'm a bit torn between getting her up to Friendly status and keeping her enalbed as a tech-trading partner versus trying to own her Cities ourselves and make them work directly for us, but at a higher Maintenance Cost.
It's still probably going to be easiest to Chop out the Forbidden Palace in Rostov or a City in that area, since it doesn't look like there are Forests in Egypt.
Leaving Joao alone for a while gives him time to build us Forges, Courthouses, a possible Spice Island City, maybe even The Colossus (which we should probably plan to build ourselves if he doesn't when we later steal Metal Casting from him), and it also gives him time under Caste System to build us an Academy or two.
We then still have tricky decisions to make--maybe a Settler and then a War Elephant out of XO Cognac instead of a Courthouse, and possibly 2-pop-whipping a War Elephant out of Paris before Bureaucracy to help with fighting Egypt so that we CAN gift her a City just before declaring war on her in order to steal Civil Service from her.
Orleans can build a Monstery but probably doesn't have to 2-pop-whip it immediately; we can plan to 2-pop-whip it for a lot of overflow Hammers to be able to quickly create a Christian Missionary without whipping it.
We might also have to give up on getting Islam spread around ourselves and just plan to spread Christianity to Cities such as St. Petersburg, XO Cognac, New Nottingham, and the Scandinavian Cities with multiple Food sources; it all depends upon how quickly we can actually get Islam. Christianity for GPP via Pacifism isn't a terrible idea, because we already have it in some of our Cities that will produce GPP from Wonders (London and Athens).
If we can throw enough force at Hatty in order to capture a couple of her Cities or to at least send in a couple of Horse Archers to Pillage all of her Stone Resources, we should be able to peacefully trade for Marble from Mehmed when the trade of Hatty's Stone for Mehmed's Marble gets broken by Pillaging or capturing all of Hatty's Stone Resources, meaning that we wouldn't have to go for Mehmed after Stalin and could instead keep our forces in Russia for an opportunistic time to redeclare war on Stalin to mostly finish Stalin off.
Note that we see an Egyptian Archer in Russia at 1 SW of Moscow--it's probably on its way to Macau. We'd just have to be wary that it may sneak up on us, depending upon whether she gets Open Borders with Frederick (they currently haven't met each other).
As for short-term EP spending, perhaps first spend a turn of EPs on Joao, so that we can see what he is researching, then spend a turn on Hatty to see what's in her Cities.
We'd need at least 83 EPs to see what Joao is researching, and we'd need 220 - 135 = 85 EPs to see what Hatty is doing in her Cities.
We only make 144 EPs per turn, so that's not enough to split 1 turn worth of EPs across of both AIs, but we also don't necessarily have to see what Hatty is doing in her Cities right away, so we could do 1 turn of Espionage with a Weighting of 7 on Joao and 3 on Hatty, to put about 100 EPs on Joao (which should let us keep seeing what he's researching for a few turns) and the rest on Hatty, then go back to Weight 0 on Joao and Weight 1 on Hatty with a 0% EP rate.
Even when going to a 0% Science Rate, I'd suggest that we keep researching Paper and just trade for Priesthood from Hatty for 10 Gold.
The Combat Promos on our mounted Units near Athens will be of use against Hatty.
If Frederick accepts our 10 Gold Demand, we could send 1 of the Chariots on Galley 7 (it could stay on Galley 7 when our Worker unloads so that we'd heal while aboard of the Galley) and then have the least-wounded Chariot and the Horse Archer plan to meet up with Galley 6, so they could heal while on Galley 6 and Galley 6 could sail to drop them off in Egypt to explore for Hatty's capital and then get in position near Ivory Coast to strike at Memphis, or to at least be ready to Pillage her Stone Resources.
I'm fine with still sending the Spies to Joao's core Cities, so that those Spies will for certain have a 50% Stationary Bonus when we're ready to strike at Joao (unless the Spies auto-die by being in AI territory--but the odds of them auto-dying are relatively low thanks to our heavy EP spending this game).
By keeping an eye on Joao's current tech selection, we could gift him any tech that we already know which he chooses to research, to see if we can get him to pick Machinery, Drama, or Compass (techs that we don't know and thus could steal from him).
Is that 4 turns time from when the last chariots arrive in London?
Sorry, that comment of mine was quite confusing. Let's try it again:
T99 Chariot 17 gets on Galley 2
T100 Chariot 17 moves from the water into London, so it arrives in London with 0 movement points
T100 Chariots 16 and 15 board Galley 2
T101 Chariots 16 and 15 unload inside of London with their full movement points, so all 3 Chariots can march toward Nottingham... they could move 1 NW G Riv Road > 1 NW G Riv For (after the Forest gets Chopped) > 1 N G Riv
T102 If Worker 5 and Worker 6 (we should rename him because he's called Worker 3) build a Road on the G Riv where the three Chariots are standing, then:
T102 Chariots move 1 N GH Gems Road Mine > 1 NE G For
T103 Chariots can attack Nottingham
Assuming that Axeman 7 takes a similar route, he could move:
T100 1 N G Riv Horse Road Pasture > 1 N G Riv For
T101 1 N G Riv
(T102 Workers 5 and 6 build a Road on that G Riv where the three Chariots and Axeman 7 are standing, aka 2 NE of York)
T102 move 1 N GH Gems Road Mine > 1 NE G For
T103 Axeman 7 can attack Nottingham
Assuming that we were to 2-pop-whip a Horse Archer on T102 when we have the extra population point from The Hanging Gardens, it could move out of York on T103:
(T103 Workers 5 and 6 build a Road on the G that is 1 NE of York)
T103 That Horse Archer moves 1 NE G Road > 1 NE G Riv Road > 1 N GH Gems Road Mine > 1 NE G For (arrives at 1 SW of Nottingham)
T104 That Horse Archer can attack
Since a Horse Archer is probably a good Unit to lead with, we could just delay the arrival of the other 4 Units by having them wait on the G Riv on T102 (to be Roaded on T102) at 1 SE of Ruby Bay, then move to the G For at 1 SW of Nottingham on T103 alongside of the Horse Archer.
The overflow Hammers from the Horse Archer would help with us being able to 2-pop-whip the York Settler, and we'd have a Road leading due north-east out of York for the Settler to take.
As for our Woodsman II Axeman (Axeman 3):
T101 Axeman 3 could arrive at 2 S of Nottingham
T102 Axeman 3 moves through a Forest to the TunH Sheep Road Pasture at 1 E of Nottingham
In between turns, Churchill's Axeman won't be able to make it back to Nottingham and at best could attack our Axeman while we're on a Hills square
T103 Axeman 3 could potentially help out with the attack on Nottingham or else could guard whichever Unit of ours captured Nottingham from being counter-attacked by the Axeman
T104 If Churchill's Axeman is still alive, one of our Chariots can probably finish it off
The only downside is that Churchill may disband his Worker, but I think that that risk is worth taking relative to his Axeman defending Nottingham and thus his Axeman coming up as the City Defender against our Horse Archer instead of his Archer coming up as the City Defender.
Any Hammers that we'd accumulate later after completing the Horse Archer and overflowing into a Settler, i.e. while regrowing York to Size 4 again so that we could 2-pop-whip the Settler, could get dumped into a Military Unit to be whipped.
EDIT: I did some testing... it seems that recapturing St. Pete's will give us 7 turns of City Revolt if the City is Size 9 (as in my initial test) or Size 10 (which I tested next after checking the City Size in the real game). Those 7 turns of City Revolt will occur regardless of whether we capture the City when it has 1 turn of Churchill's City Revolt remaining or when the Cultural Borders have expanded to the initial radius around a City and the City Revolt of Churchill's has just ended (but before he's had a chance to whip anything there and before he's had a chance for the City to shrink on him).
So, we can wait until we capture Moscow to decide whether to gift Moscow to Churchill or not, but we have to add in the cost of a second round of City Revolt when we recapture the City, since 0 of the Culture is ours, so we get the full City Revolt penalty when we recapture a City of Stalin's that we gifted to Churchill.
On the plus side, we went with London making our Great Person instead of St. Pete's, otherwise I'd be kicking myself really hard right now for not having thought that there would be a second round of City Revolt time. The gifting-of-Stalin's-Cities tactic worked, but it came with a slightly higher cost than was originally expected.
In the test game on T102 (I'd ended the turn a lot), Joao was peacefully building Moai Statues and The Parthenon in his 2 Cities. With any luck, he'll build us a Wonder in the real game, or at least generate us a Great Scientist that he would hopefully use on an Academy.
Also, when we sell/gift a tech to an AI, that AI gives us invisible credit, which you can sometimes get a hint about by the AI suddenly being willing to offer you more of their hidden treasury. This hidden credit seems to help with being able to beg more out of an AI.
Frederick will only give us 10 of his Gold, so I do not suggest selling him a tech, but we could try first gifting him a tech and then begging 10 Gold from him. I'm not sure if it would make a difference, but we could certainly try it.
Out of the techs that we can gift to Frederick, Aesthetics looks to be a good choice, as then he might devote some of his Hammers to building Wonders instead of Military Units. If he completes a Wonder, even better, but if not, at least putting some Hammers into one would mean less Military Units being built.
I'm less enthusiastic about gifting Math to Frederick, as then he might be more willing to Chop his Forests, and although Alphabet won't give him the ability to trade with most AIs, since most AIs already know Alphabet, it would give him the ability to build Spies which could be just as annoying as Churchill's Spy has been in England. I also don't want to gift him up the Religious line of techs, so Aesthetics seems like a decent choice, with it even unlocking Drama for him to potentially research for us.
NobleZarkon are you our official team captain?
