Stairway to Heaven #2: Pacal II of the Maya

Come on guys don't be so negative, I'll get'em! ;)

Go get'em!
Sorry for stopping at criticism: it's much easier to look back on what happened than it is to anticipate on what should happen, how and why.


Fippy's right that you should whip & chop at the same time.

What restricts your production (beyond workers, forests, happies & worked tiles):
- You can only whip every 2 turns;
- investing more than 2X :hammers: in an item that costs X :hammers: loses the excedent.

Combining whips and chops can (ideally) get you 1 item per turn, saving forests and/or happies.

Chopping first and then whipping when you're short on forests will make your happiness stack higher to get the same number of items. (Same number of whips, only they come later.)
Whip anger fades each turn. In the same way that happiness is a resource (very similar to :commerce: or :hammers:), fading anger is a resource.
When you don't have fading anger, virtually, you're losing production. That only applies to a city that would benefit from whipping, obviously (Granary, moderate size, surplus food).
So, having fading anger as early as possible is profitable.

Before you whip, watch your food bin and make sure you will regrow as soon as possible. Whipping 2 pop to regrow a pop in 3 turns is baaad. It loses too much yield from tiles (including food). Regrowing fast minimizes the lost tile yields.

Cheers!
 
Thanks a lot for all the feedback guys. This is great for questioning my choices and line of thought.

Apparently my skipping Pottery thing wasn't a great idea to you dudes :D, and I consider your arguements pretty sound (especially about Granaries + whipping). However :)lol:) in the light of your (constructive) criticism I still feel my choices weren't that bad because I'm not sure all your arguments necessarily apply here.

The thing is: I have no food. All I have here are 2x 6:food: tiles and an irrigated FP for 3 cities. It's not poor, but it's not a lot either. This is certainly not your big whipping center... BUT I do agree that with or without heavy whipping, Granaries (especially considering what they cost for EXP leaders) would have helped and if I had to do it again I'd make the Pottery detour.

I choose to see the glass half-full and at least take advantage of the mistakes I arguably made.

A lot of Workers? A loss in production but a big gain in reactivity! I'll chop out HAs and improve riverside tiles to cottages in close to no time. When I capture enemy cities (which I very well intend to do :D) they'll also be operational much sooner. I like Workers :lol:

Skipped Pottery? An unwaranted production-gambit but a better attack date! Growing cottages on the few unforested tiles I had would not have compensated for the Pottery-skipping in terms of research time (with the riverside plains Gold). Isn't reaching the soonest attack date a big factor of successful rushes?

:spank: I know this is not optimal play and your comments are already making me a better player :)goodjob:). But looking back on this game up to now I feel happy about my choices because I chose a strategy, stuck to it and executed it. Maybe not the best strategy but not abysmal either! ;)

Anyway, the update is coming soon... :)
 
I still say that skipping Pottery was more than a minor mistake. When one has an expansive leader like Pacal II, Pottery should be a priority since Granaries are half price. Also, cottages help to research Horseback Riding and other necessary technologies faster.

Finally, having low food cities (though I wouldn't call a city having a 6F plot low food unless that are few food neutral plots) is a perfectly good reason to research Pottery early to build Granaries. Even low food cities grow faster with Granaries (they aren't just useful for whipping).

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Spoiler :
Interesting. Possible 2nd city on the Plains Hill 2N1E of Pigs?

I then moved my Settler 1SE:



OMG Jungle! :run:

I'm not taking the risk of running into that, I'll go back 1N and settle next turn.

Spoiler :

I played a bit and did the same starting move. I think knowing that it is a pang map and we can see the shoreline, I would argue for moving 1SW from the corn and re-evaluate from there.

While corn/pigs/gold looks awesome, I think the most difficult part of deity pang maps is to actually get land. In this situation I believe that moving more south doesnt bear any risks since we will have at least: riverside corn, grassland hill and plenty of river grasslands and a connection to the rivers, which can save us roads if we want to expand south or east quickly.

This will garantee us at least 3 good cities. Our capital, nw of pigs and somewhere near the gold/flood. From the position we are in at T1 we should be able to get these cities uncontended.

Ofc further in the game it will prove a far superior choice since it will grab the horses, which from what I read is pretty hard with any other opening.
But even without the horse, I believe it is the best move.

gl with your game :goodjob:
 
The thing is: I have no food. All I have here are 2x 6:food: tiles and an irrigated FP for 3 cities. It's not poor, but it's not a lot either. This is certainly not your big whipping center...

Not sure whether you caught up with that or not. The reason you have no food is :
- part the map, few resources indeed, especially S, SW ;
- part the fact that you chose to share tiles rather than to grab tiles.

e.g.:
A city further west, while not stellar, would grab several floodplains (food positive, 4F while farmed).

Without sharing the 2 specials, Mutal would be high food ;)
Tile sharing can be strong but it isn't "pure gain".


How did the unit building go? Could you find a convenient invasion route?
 
Played 31 turns: from 1080 BC to 275 BC (turn 104)

Sorry for going awol on the game this last week, didn't find the time to write up (although I played this a while ago).

Following my plan (that skipped Pottery... won't do it again :lol:) I chopped an HA army really fast, picked a target (Cathy) after some exploration and waged a "short war". I've just signed a Peace Treaty and am not sure what to do.

Here's how the action went:

Spoiler :
1080 BC to 725 BC (turns 73 to 86):​

I start exploring Cathy's and Sury's land with my first horses to get a lay of the city grid and where the metal is.

My scouts retrieve the following info:
(i) Sury has only 1 source of metal. Unfortunately he's sitting on it...
Spoiler :

(ii) Sury has a decent military force and is on his way to Construction...
(iii) Cathy has loads of metal (at least 2 Copper and 2 Iron), some of them are way out of reach:
Spoiler :

(iv) Cathy has a lot of hilled cities...
(v) Cathy is very weak militarily (no SoD, nor anything resembling a decent defense). She has 1 source of Elephants however, but she's a bit backwards. Her most defended city:
Spoiler :
I decide to go for Cathy because she's the only non-Buddhist (nota bene: I haven't converted yet), the most in my face culturally and the weakest militarily. Good arguments I think.

Some good international news: Montezuma who was WHEOOHRN declared on Genghis in around 925 BC.

By 875 BC, all ma' forests are gone :)



I start improving Cottages around Mutal and whip some more HAs (with Granaries), but it's hard with just 3 cities...

I then realize that no one is Pleased with me. I figure that since I don't really care about diplo with Cathy it's about time I switch to Buddhism (even though I'll need to do some spreading...):



And guess what happens next turn???

Spoiler :

Obviously I'm the target and I don't want her to build up her military soooooo I declare the crap out of her on the same turn :D (750 BC)

Her first city falls with 1 casualty on my side:




725 BC to 275 BC (turns 86 to 104):​

I reach Currency in 675 BC and start tech'ing Code of Laws.

The war is not going fast and I'm not feeling very at ease with no metal so I bribe this deal to keep Cathy occupied to the East:




I also do a bit of brokering:
Spoiler :








And later:


Leading to a double civic change: HR + OR.

Militarily, a bit of semi-fork maneuvering gets Cathy to move her Spearmen in the open (which still don't give good odds against C2 HAs, but it's a lot better than in cities nonetheless) and leave a city very badly defended:






That leaves her city up North vulnerable, I get it a couple of turns later.

I reach Code of Laws in 450 BC.

I've made a mistake and left Cathy's 1st fallen city too lightly defended ; and unfortunately she gathered a small yet suffisiant force to threaten my lonely Archer:



Not that I value this city, but I really don't want her getting war success on me and start getting cocky. Anyway I judge that my HA attack is really getting out of breath and that it might be time to take a break (maybe a mistake, what do you think?).

So I try to get the most from her for a PT. Aaaaand it's not much :(:



Then again she didn't have a lot to offer anyway...

A (-)15 turn war and 3 cities captured: hmm yeah not great but it's somethin'... At least I've relieved my core cities from some culture pressure. I've got 6 now, plus the soon-to-be 2 coastal spots (that I need to get fast) that will be 8.

I have also narrowed my front with Cathy to the South [but I've gained border tension (or soon to be) with Genghis :run:]

Everyone makes peace a few turns later, it's depressing...

I weakly give in to this outrageous demand...



But get some back just after (you douche!):



I also get this final tech deal:





That leads us to a little summary of our situation in next post! (image limit)
 
So here's our situation:
Spoiler :
Land:​

Commerce is (finally) starting to look a bit better :)



I'm finally off to settle the Fish/Clam spot to the North:



And capture this Barb city (had it spawn busted before but had to move during the war with Cathy):



Culture:​



Units:​



Diplo:​





And a FRICKIN' love fest:





Religion (diplo is trolling me badly on this one, I've got to spread Buddhism [it's the AP religion none the least]):​



Wonders:​



Cities:​














I started building Catapults in all my new crappy cities because I didn't really know whether to pursue my quest against the evil Russian or not. However I'd like to build a couple of Forges...

Going Aesthetics ; not a very exciting choice but it's never bad to go there (only Giggles knows it) and because NE/HE could be nice to set up not too late.

I see 2 possibilities:
(i) Stop warring, build up my economy, dodge bullets and go for Lib > MT (+ I'll soon have Stone so Oxford is probably a good option). I already have a decent amount of horses built so should prepare a mass upgrade.
(ii) Don't stop warring, build lots of Cats, a couple of metal units and get back on Cathy's ass now
In any case I also need to get some bribing going on because all this love is not getting well with me. Catch a key tech and maybe manipulate some diplo via espionage to change religion or something...

Mesdames et Messieurs, what do you think?
 
Not sure whether you caught up with that or not. The reason you have no food is :
- part the map, few resources indeed, especially S, SW ;
- part the fact that you chose to share tiles rather than to grab tiles.

e.g.:
A city further west, while not stellar, would grab several floodplains (food positive, 4F while farmed).

Without sharing the 2 specials, Mutal would be high food ;)
Tile sharing can be strong but it isn't "pure gain".
Yes of course I'm aware of that and I could arguably have made that choice.

However the land and CRE neighbours actually didn't leave me with that much flexibility in those choices IMHO. Ah well we'll see! I now know my situation is winnable at least, it's a start :)
 
I would finish off Catherine. Many of your new cities are under heavy cultural pressure from her remaining cities. Building a few Catapults to make that easier seems reasonable.

Also, do proceed with spreading the TAP religion. May even build a few TAP religion buildings for the 2 Hpt bonus, though that is of marginal value.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
I agree with Sun Tzu Wu: you should complete the task and kill Cathy.

However, now that she's weak enough and you already have some troops, maybe you shouldn't consider it a total war.
I'd try to war and develop the economy at the same time.

AP buildings were mentioned and... I don't think they're marginal. I think they're excellent. I tend to overbuild infrastructure, though. So maybe Sun Tzu is right.


Tip: you shouldn't have asked for a tribute.
Your main objective was to avoid a city capture. If you simply cease-fire, then there is no forced peace for 10 turns. Now you have to pay for your units for 10 turns and let Cathy rebuild.
If you have an auto-save or a recent save, I'd suggest to reload to before you made peace and go that route ;) As a matter of fact, you only need 1 or 2 turns of peace, time to reposition some units.

There are more catastrophic ways to dismiss/forget the Cease-fire option. Twice, recently, I have defied an AP resolution to keep waging a war. Instead, I should have ceased-fire, let the vote pass and DoW again. Troops may be set back a little but the gain is immense.
 
Tip: you shouldn't have asked for a tribute.
Your main objective was to avoid a city capture. If you simply cease-fire, then there is no forced peace for 10 turns. Now you have to pay for your units for 10 turns and let Cathy rebuild.
If you have an auto-save or a recent save, I'd suggest to reload to before you made peace and go that route ;) As a matter of fact, you only need 1 or 2 turns of peace, time to reposition some units.

There are more catastrophic ways to dismiss/forget the Cease-fire option. Twice, recently, I have defied an AP resolution to keep waging a war. Instead, I should have ceased-fire, let the vote pass and DoW again. Troops may be set back a little but the gain is immense.
I don't have the auto-save anymore and I don't know if I would have reloaded but... that's a brilliant tip :goodjob:
 
I agree with BornInCantaloup. Almost always use a cease fire to avoid losing a city or SoD. Often units will teleport to more defensable positions and a second DoW could even be submitted the same turn (or in 1-2 turns to allow some time for healing units).

In my opinion TAP temples are a great deal for spiritual leaders, but not so good for non-spiritual leaders. Non-spiritual leaders can build cheaper TAP Monasteries, but they will lose the bonus when Scientific Method is acquired. I have used TAP buildings to help build Forges in higher food cities; the TAP building bonus was often more than what a Forge would provide in organic hammer boost (+25% H).

Unfortunately, a TAP peace resolution is an enforced 10t peace treaty. One must defy the resolution to continue the war. Maybe you mean a cease fire the turn before such a resolution is brought up. It is too late after the TAP Resident calls a vote on the resolution.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Unfortunately, a TAP peace resolution is an enforced 10t peace treaty. One must defy the resolution to continue the war. Maybe you mean a cease fire the turn before such a resolution is brought up. It is too late after the TAP Resident calls a vote on the resolution.

Oh, right, indeed! I just was wrong, thanks! :goodjob:
You know... if I'm still defying the AP... then I'm not that enlightened :lol:
 
Ok so I'll get back in position to attack as soon as the PT is over.

I guess I'll rush build Cats where I can.

Is it acceptable to capture the Barb city up North + settle the Fish/Clam/Iron/Stone spot in the time being?
 
Of course, get your cities ;)
I actually don't know why I asked... With me over-thinking always leads to self second-guessing, even when considering the obvious. This often leads me to stop courses of action in their midst to change plans, only to change them back again 10 turns later :mad:

Am I hopelessly my worst enemy?? :hammer2:
EDIT: apparently YES (see next post)
 
Top Bottom