Strategy objectives- Long term

[damnrunner]

Great People

Now that we have finished the G-Scientist to bulb edu, what is our plan for Great People going forward? Getting some G-Prophets would really be useful - but I just do not see that happening as long as we continue to run Aktua as a military city. And I do not see us switching production there for a while. So in the meantime - our what is our plan for generating Great people in Haz. These are options I see:

1. Maximize production of G-Scientists (run extra scientists) in Haz. This lowers the odds of getting a G-Artist.
2. Minimize production of G-Scientists in Haz (don't run extra scientists). This increases the odds of getting a G-Artist. By producing fewer G-Scientists now, we can build other Great people easier later on in the game.
3. Run other specialists in Haz (engineer, priest, merchant). This lowers the odds of getting a G-Artist and gives some chance of getting different great people.

I assume we would want to settle any G-Scientists we get in Haz.

Some potential gambits involving wonders.
A. Build the Temple of Artemis. Extra trade route gold is great as is the free priest. It is also a fairly cheap wonder. Downsides, good chance we will get beat to it. Opportunity cost of building other stuff.
B. Build Angkor Wat. This would let us run a lot of priests but the best place to build it is in Aktau which is already focused on units.


Generally, I lean towards option 1. Haz is able to work all of its cottages and we are at our health cap right now anyway. A grocer would help a bit with this, but we are mostly running at 100% science and the extra commerce bonus of a grocer would be fairly marginal. Working sea tiles would give more raw commerce - but I think getting Great scientists as fast as possible and minimizing the risk of getting a GA is a better option. Working mines is also great - but I think Haz is best focusing on science.

 

[Indiansmoke]

First priority is Oxford. Getting 6 unis and building it should be our focus now.

In actau we can run 2 prophets on occation, eventually we wil be able to get a great person from there and hopefully we will have build our chances for a prophet.

 

[damnrunner]

So shouldn't we be starting on a uni in Haz now rather than a lighthouse?

 

[Sommerswerd]

I would like to point out, that a prophet is of little value to us with so few cities and no prospect of building/capturing any more. We need to spread our religion around for the prophet to mean much. That means, we need more cities, ALOT more cities.

For unis, it is the same issue. It does not matter if we build unis in every city... by the time they are built, we will be so far behind city-wise, that even all that extra will not make us competitive.

Even If we slave the unis, that will put us even further behind and we will have to wait for the cities to grow large enough to take advantage of the bonus. So we have the same problem whether we build or slave the unis.

We need to break out of this bottleneck to be competitive not more tech. Faster tech will not break us out of the bottleneck. Only an alliance with SANCTA (real or phoney) or a huge army with an armada of catas will do it. Anything else is a distraction we can not afford.

Our priority then, should be getting more cities, either through alliance or through war... That is more important than prophets, universities, or Oxford IMHO.

Once the bottleneck-breaking alliance (either with Cavalieros, or with SANCTA) has secured bottleneck free territory (meaning we HAVE the cities)... Only then should we start building unis everywhere for Oxford.

Getting a uni in Haz soon does seem like a good idea though.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Sommer, Unis are for Oxford in capital! we will get to the war but in the meantime lets built up our economy as well.

@ Damrunner, lighthouse is only 2 turns and will give an extra food, we can start UNI after that.

 

[damnrunner]

I understand that a lighthouse will only give extra food - but it is only +1 on the clams we are currently working. As Haz is already at its health cap - the city won't be able to grow much more even if we switch from working mines to sea tiles. However, we aren't going to switch away from the mines as I think the focus is on production right now.

If the focus is not on production - then we should be running specialists rather than sea tiles. Either way the lighthouse is not a huge benefit. An additional ship or LB may be more useful.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I get it that we need 6 unis to get Oxford in the capital, I just don't think getting Oxford in capital should be a priority right now... What 6 cities do we have that will benefit from a Uni? What 6 cities can even build a Uni in a reasonable amount of time? Can we really spare Haz production for Oxford right now?

No matter what we decide to do about the alliance, we will have to attack SOMEONE...
1. Attack SANCTA (we need an army)
2. Attack Cavalieros for SANCTA (we need an army)
3. Phoney attack Cavalieros then betray/attack SANCTA, or defend against SANCTA attack (we need an army)

We will need at least 7 or 8 catas t do this. Unis will not help us. We should not be even considering going for Oxford until the army is built. Uni in Haz is OK, although, we could ge the army built alot faster if Haz was building military as well.

When at peace prepare for war, when at war prepare for peace... I know you have heard that before.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Sommer if we don't get Oxford in capital soon it will be taking 15 turns to research a tech and we will be of no value to anyone including ourselves.

Building Oxford does not mean stop making units!

We need library and uni in

Capital, Actau, Pav, Shymkent, Pavlodar and atyrau.

Taraz, Kyzylorda, Oskemen & Petropav can continue with units.

Actau will be fast to slave the unis and go back back to units after that, so it is not such a big delay in army production as you think. Yes we will have a bit less units in the short term but the tech benefit will be greater.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sommer if we don't get Oxford in capital soon... we will be of no value to anyone including ourselves.

I disagree, we don't need Oxford to send gold to Cavalieros to let them max out research. That is exactly what Saturn is doing for SANCTA and they are Catching up in tech. So we are still able to be of use in terms of alliance teching, without unis, libraries or Oxford.

I am not saying we should not get them, I am just saying build the army first...

If we had built the army first back when I was screaming that we would be at war with SANCTA BEFORE Construction, instead of saying "Oh we can build the army later when we get Rifling" we would have had enough soldiers to break the SANCTA bottleneck. Gosh 5 or 6 more units would have done it. We can not afford to make that mistake again. Oxford can wait.

Also, I think that maybe Haz should be cranking out units as well. We can build units there faster than anywhere else.

 

[mikotian]

I don't have the time to do the math right now, can someone figure out the number of BASE hammers the unis + oxford would take?

And if we devoted those hammers to units, what we can actually make?

 

[damnrunner]

I will do some rough math ignoring most of the multipliers.

Universities are 200 hammers (but we get double production) and Oxford is 400 hammers. With monotheism we also get a 25% building bonus for buildings.

With 6 Universities costing 100 hammers, that is a total of 1,000 hammers or 750 when we factor in monotheism. For 750 hammers we could build about 10 maces.

 

[Sommerswerd]

10 maces, or even better, 10 catapults would easily make the difference between winning and losing a war.

Not to mention the fact that many of the cities that are proposed for unis, would also have to build libraries first. How many additional (maces/catas) is that?

Last but not least, what about the most important factor of all... Time. How many turns will it take to field an army if we build all those libraries and Unis and Oxford first as opposed to after we build our Army?

If we build the army first, we can DoW, and attack while making our buildings, but we can't do it the other way around, ie., build libraries, unis & Oxford, DoW, and then build the army.

 

[mikotian]

there are pros and cons both ways.
For building an army:

Pros:
1) Attack earlier (how much earlier? Dunno...)
2) Slight surprise factor
3) Can mooch off the alliance's tech progress so maybe immediate econ development don't matter?

Cons:
1) Crappy economic development
2) Dangerous gambit... Makes us a less useful member of our current alliance, which invites betrayal IMHO
3) We would be building units that will be outclassed soon
4) given our noobish track record with war... Lost cause?

I don't really have a concrete opinion... But I'm happy to be persuaded by either faction.

 

[Indiansmoke]

You know what I think...build up economy (while continuing army build up in non uni cities) and wait for Cav's help so we attack together.

Sommer's proposal of slaving 10 maces army is a big gambit, we already lost a smaller one and that left us behind, lose this one and we are out completely. The most important is point 2 that mikotian made...we will be of no use to anyone if we cannot tech fast.

 

[donsig]

I can't make a reasonable decision on this because hardly any facts are presented. How many libraries would we have to build in order to build the needed universities? How long before we can even begin Oxford? As someone pointed out this will depend on the slowest city to build the university.

 

[Indiansmoke]

We only have one library in capital so 5 more libraries and 6 unis. Capital will be fast to build UNi and can start making troops after that, actau can slave fast, shymkent will be fast enough as it is a good city...the problem is the other 3 needed cities that will be slow, that is why I said no barracks and start libraries because it is the slowest cities we need to start from.

 

[Kaleb]

I'll try and work out some numbers and an ETA but I agree we should focus on getting Oxford. We have half price unis so we can get it quickest and our capital has a very good base commerce. The boost will be huge.

 

[damnrunner]

If the discussion is building up uni's and tech. Monasteries are also useful here.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sommer's proposal of slaving 10 maces army is a big gambit,

Just for clarification... Sommers NEVER made any such proposal.

I NEVER proposed we slave 10 maces. I said we should STOP slaving and try to grow our cities while we produce military. I also said I PREFER CATAPULTS to maces and I prefer Longbows or Crossbows to Maces, Crossbows especially, because they get 50%against melee, and do not fall victim to the 50% vs melee bonus that the SANCTA Axemen have. I only even mentioned Maces b/c Damnrunner used Maces in his explanation to Miko about what we were missing out on, going for Oxford first.

I did propose that we should build our army before we start going for Oxford. What is the point of Oxford right now? Oxford will not help us break the bottleneck.

For Oxford to be useful, our cities have to be producing enough to run at high rates. Otherwise, its just a pretty building. +100% bonus when we are running at 0% science = 0. We can only boost if our cities grow. We can only grow if we STOP SLAVING. Hazrate can not support our economy all by itself.

 

[damnrunner]

The Apostolic Palace
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=319452
The above link has info on the AP.

In short:
You need 75% of the vote and each civs vote is determined by the population of cities with the AP religion – nations with the AP religion as a state religion get x2 votes.

The concern about other teams spamming missionaries is not to likely. For example, we could build the AP after everyone already has Scientific Method and can no longer build monasteries. Then the only way to build missionaries would be to switch to the Confu religion and run monotheism. That would have a big cost to any team and would give us an advantage.

The real constraint it that no one team can contribute more than 75% of the votes to a religious victory win. Therefore it is impossible to win without at least two team voting together. However, building it still may be useful. While Sancta and Saturn obviously won’t vote for us, and Cav won’t as long as they have a good chance at winning the game, we may be able to pick up MS.

This would be a sensitive question to bring up with MS but we should consider it. They have no real chance of winning and playing the king maker role is one that could be relished depending on individual personality. Since Husch is apparently playing the game solo, he also may be interested in just ending the game.

Of course we could also throw the game and give the win to any of the teams. This could also be a used as a threat and devious negotiation tactic. For example we could demand that unless Cav and Sancta each give us X cities we give MS or Saturn the win. Then we demand that the only way to win is via space race. If done right the game would still be competitive (between Us, Cav, and Sancta) but we would greatly increase our odds of winning.

There are a number of interesting tactics along these lines which use the AP as a powerful blackmailing tool.

Thoughts / feasibility?

Either way it is probably best to build it after Scientific Method or only if we have assurances that MS will help throw the game.