Strategy Discussion

[Bowsling]

Although it's less destructive, and doesn't require that we declare war on them.
It forces them to declare war, and give us an excellent excuse to sink it, or they go home without contacting mavs.
If we are to block or sink their ship, we have to ensure the support of Sirius, as Merlot sailing right by them destroys the entire purpose of the aggression.

 

[galdarian]

Do they have a second boat out? As we mentioned in the last email to Amazons, we are considering sinking the boat. This should signal to our ETTT partners that they should be thinking the same thing. It's pointless being aggressive unless we all take the same stance.

 

[Bowsling]

I have no idea, but if we are going to start a fight denying them something, we better make sure they cannot get what they're after by going the other way.

 

[cav scout]

When should we change our civics to Slavery and Organized Religion? I think soon would be good.

 

[Earthling]

I'm in favor of a civic change after our third city, whichever way we work it out.

As for the boats - I absolutely love the "workboat trade" with AMAZON, that's a great idea whoever had it and major props. I usually forget about gifting units I guess.

If our culture closes off MERLOT that works, but I'd be open to firing the torpedoes too, especially if the rest of our allies like the same plan.

 

[galdarian]

As for the boats - I absolutely love the "workboat trade" with AMAZON, that's a great idea whoever had it and major props. I usually forget about gifting units I guess.

Thanks
We probably all would have come to the same conclusion. What is fortunate about it all is that Team Amazon sailed two boats as we did. The fact that they are directly opposite us and priming themselves as an Alliance partner is just icing on the cake

 

[cav scout]

Time to switch civics now while we are in transit with our settler.

 

[Earthling]

That's probably a good idea, I'm onboard for both slavery, and OR. If there's a reason we don't want both though anyone can speak up.

 

[RegentMan]

Both sound fine to me.

 

[cav scout]

When I discovered the Mav's switch to Police State (which gives them a 25% bonus for unit production) it gave me pause. The Mavs cleary know they are on the outs now. But instead of just "tossing the board" and quiting they have decided to go down fighting. And by going down fighting I mean literally. They know they can't compete techwise but they can certainly make our lives miserable on the mainland. I expect to see triremes raiding up and down our coast and a few mini-stacks sneaking over to raze and pillage.

So any mainland cities we build in the short term are potential sitting ducks. We can only garrison them with single warriors at best right now. If we start building too far up the peninsula (or anywhere on the Mavs peninsula) we are just asking to get razed.

This is why I think the following build order is best:

4. Asymptote (see my turn discussion post)
5. Singularity (on our island)
6. Horizon (on our island)
7. Quantum
8. Cosmos

This build order secures us the strategic peninsula while minimizing our short term exposure to attack. We can hold off on cities higher up the peninsula until we are prepared to effectively garrison them. And since the peninsula is wider at the top and we won't be pressed on by CDZ (they will stick to their side).

See the attached tile usage dotmap for Resonance, Quantum(yellow) and Cosmos(red). I added an extra city (Quantum) to grab the bananas and become a production powerhouse(copper and 7 grasshill mines!). Resonance will grow nicely as a hybrid commerce/production city while Cosmos will be a commerce city loaded with cottages but also a few grasshill mines.

Once we have these 8 cities our initial REX will be complete and we can consolidate a bit. Right now we should be solely focused on settlers, workers, garrison units and two triremes for circumnavigation (that can also stop a Mav naval raid in a pinch).

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

That's not a bad plan. I'm a bit skeptical about Asymptote, since it won't pay off as much in the short term, but will give us strategical advantage and faster circumnavigation. I can get on board with this as long as we immediately build Singularity ASAP afterwards, and get working on horizon quickly too. We might also want another city in the north to grab incense and get a canal in the middle-but that's in the far-distant future.

 

[galdarian]

I think that it's trying to squeeze to much into the main land
Cosmos would be better NW of the copper which gives 5 grass / hills + copper hill and either cottages or mills next to the river.

Keep in mind we haven't even seen what resources that we want to claim on the Mav side of the petal. I expect to see either ivory or horses and sugar.

 

[cav scout]

I'm a bit skeptical about Asymptote, since it won't pay off as much in the short term.

I actually think Asymptote will pay off nicely in the short term. The city can work the oasis, clams, whale and a plains hill mine up to pop 4- that's like 11 6 with a 4 surplus. After pop 4 we whip stuff with the overflow going into Moai. Great Success

 

[Earthling]

Yeah Asymptote really isn't too bad with the oasis being there, not quite as good as a second clam (and we won't be able to win the culture war fast enough for 2x clam and oasis) but it's not bad.

As for the overall plan - I think we're overestimating the Maverick threat, to things past their own "petal" especially. I could see it being a concern to settle a city - eg. Axiom - actually on the Maverick petal.

But it's a really, really long haul by sea for them to get anywhere else. And remember, with culture from Continuum/Quatron, we can see their ships soon after they round the point. So we'd have something like 6-7 turns headsup anytime they sent ships around that way, before they got to Resonance/Cosmos area.

Once we get Caravels, we could also be practically invincible to sea attack from them. They can't move off the coastline, so we park a couple of Caravels on the coast, massive Strength advantage, and they are done. They're not going to be able to afford 5 triremes and a land army in galleys, it's just not feasible - and that's assuming they focus all on us and not even Sirius. By the time we get Astro I wouldn't consider it out of the picture to blockade their island - triremes are all right against galleys/other triremes, but after that the odds just fall off so sharply.

So in short - my thoughts would be that the Maverick threat isn't that bad - assuming we ARE careful about anything around their petal, I agree.

I am ok with Asymptote though, various reasons make it all right, (AMAZON workboats and available workers is a good reason to start) and it's fundamentally not too different from Cosmos in the short term. So I could see us doing:

Asymptote
Singularity (obviously Singularity needs to be settled by now, fifth city is absolute latest, it's just too valuable to put off)
Cosmos (copper, maybe we're calling this something else now. I am ok with the current "Quantum" site or NW of the copper, either way. If we're settling this later we obviously adjust to developments that happen, if we were settling now or next I'd go with the Quantum spot)
Horizon - this city will take a while longer to really become profitable, before we can afford chops/plantations with worker time, it's just not worth settling quite yet.

And then more mainland/towards India, I could certainly put it off for about that long.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

I'm not concerned about the Mavericks being a threat. They will be very difficult to takeover with police state and crossbows. We wouldn't want to slip behind Amazon and CDZ if Merlot rolls over and dies. hopefully we can get control of the peninsula off them, but it will be unpleasant, and their home island could be disastrous to invade if we're not careful.

We should also defend Asymptote so CDZ doesn't get tempted.

 

[RegentMan]

But we don't want to defend it too much. That might only result in distrust and an arms build up of sorts. Just a token defender or two methinks- very obviously protection but doesn't sound any alarms.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

We have two decisions to make here:
1) We must decide on a settling plan. There are three areas we have to settle- the Mav peninsula, the CDZ peninsula and the two spots left on our island. We are currently planning on prioritizing the CDZ petal due to the land race we find ourselves in. Building there, however, will result in lower quality cities (though we may be able to wrest control of Cosmos from CDZ). The Mav petal has some good locations (floodplains) and strategic resources (horses and ivory). Singularity is the best location, but delaying on frontier sites could mean losing them.

2) We need a tech plan post-optics (where we will spend a few turns before getting machinery), and also what to advise our allies to do. Amazon is going for construction, CDZ and Sirius want feudalism, but Sirius has said they are okay with paper. Galdarian's suggested aesthetics-music for the GA and culture bomb on the CDZ petal. Other options are HBR, since we will likely have horses eventually, and nothing else I can think of ATM.

My thoughts:
I think we should only build one more city on the CDZ side, then go for the other petal, where I am 80% sure we'll find horses. If it turns out that is not the case, I think we should build Singularity after. We just can't afford to put so much settling into a race, hopefully after putting up another city, we can come to some sort of agreement with CDZ. After optics, I am tempted by Galdarian's plan (culture bombing is one of my favourite things in civ to do), but that requires full commitment to the plan, and will annoy our allies, particularly CDZ (we'll delay a few turns to give them optics to take the +1 naval bonus, then to take the GA could put a target on our backs). So, I think the safest, but possibly less exciting, route is HBR. We should have Sirius on paper and CDZ on feudalism if we can, though that doesn't matter too much I think.

 

[galdarian]

As I've said elsewhere, we should take the slider back up to at least 80% and knock off most, if not all, of HBR before we even get machinery. It's still a few turns away as per the last email from CDZ. Once we knock off Optics, that opens up Astro for another team to do.

As TyBoy noted elsewhere we should be concentrating on good quality city spots. With this in mind, at Max I would be placing one more city on the shared CDZ petal, northish of Cosmos. By then Fuedalism should be in an settling the Mav petal won't be so risky if we're taking 2-3 Longbows / city. I anticipate that our first war with Mavs will come somewhere around turn 120, which also means we should try an arrange peace with Merlot in the next 10 - 20 turns.

We need to time a culture bomb carefully so as not to disrupt a war effort by removing a strategic resource.

 

[Earthling]

Yeah, I agree with at most 2 more cities by CDZ. The one we're in the middle of settling right now is important, of course, to keep tit-for-tat land claims and a strong position. One more is ok, in a solid spot with resources wherever there is room, and that should probably do us for a while, not worth to go crazy over pressure on CDZ or settling in the jungle with no productive tiles but like one incense.

We would certainly like to scout the Indian petal more, and then I'm thinking we get Singularity, possibly 4th city on our home island or pick up the good coastal spots before moving in further on the Indian side.

I would like our first war with Mavs to come whenever we can get Galleons, ideally. We'll have circumnavigation bonus then, and that allows for virtually invincible blockading - they just can't kill str4 ships with str2, and we'd be able to prevent any real attacks coming our way, so long as we have decent land forces on the petal too. Of course we just have to be aware they may try to force war sooner, but if we are able to prepare when both we and Sirius have galleons, we'll do them in rather fast, or at least bottle them up on their home island.

So I think your timeframe is about right there too then. We definitely want to get out of MERLOT's hair, let MERLOT do whatever they are doing but that's a problem for our other allies, we want to make solid gains against India in the mid-term future.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Just a quick thought- you said our "first" war with Mavericks- I think there will only be one. Mavericks will have -50% war weariness, they won't be willing to go to peace just because we've accomplished our immediate objectives. They'll be happy to let us suffer WW while our army is too weak to finish them off. If we have the strength to force them into a peace agreement, we might as well finish them off.