T1-4: Temple of Doom

[angeleyes]

0 1280 AD
My strategy in these turns will simply be: make peace and research PP as fast as possible to be able to trade it away and close the (giant) techgap a bit. The wars with Ramses and Shaka are of course totally useless and only weakening us. The only good thing about it is our military instructor.

Is there something wrong with 2.08 (or the mod)? We have not one tech others don't have and still they are saying in choir: We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced!

Peace with Ramesses II. improve a deal with Nappie.

2 Cancel the horse deal with Mao. Shaka now is willing to talk but he asks quit a lot for peace.

Accept. Peace with Shaka. Revolt to bureaucracy (all city's now are building infra, HE-city is building an aquaduct), and serfdom. Nap is pleased and gives us 90 gold.

IB

Ramesses II becomes a vassal of Shaka! and Shaka and Mao are now in war with eachother.

3 Mao gives us 100 gold.

4 open borders with Vicky.

5-7 building, working, teching

8 Can't believe what my foreign advisor is telling me about the willingness of the AI to trade techs with us:

???

dye to Mao for 13 g/t

9 Next blow: Victoria becomes a vassal of Huayna Capac...

10 Victoria, last on the scorelist, adopts representation, meaning she has already constitution ..

11-13 building, working, teching

14 Back to vassalage, a few city's are already making military. HC wants to trade techs with us.

15 1370 AD Printing Press in 2 turns but Huayna just got it last turn, so we have only Nappie to trade it with

Don't believe we can win this game, what strikes me most is how bad we settled the surroundings of our capital which we could do for free.

Shaka master of Ramesses II
Huayna Capac master of Victoria

lost case ?

 

[Blake]

0 1280 AD
Is there something wrong with 2.08 (or the mod)? We have not one tech others don't have and still they are saying in choir: We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced!

Spoiler :

WFYABTA is caused by one thing and one thing alone - the number of techs you have received in trade. It doesn't matter how much or little they cost, it doesn't matter if multiple techs are traded in a single deal, the only thing which matters is the number of techs.

I had to laugh cynically when I saw trades for fishing and meditation and I thought to myself "You guys have NO clue how WFYABTA works and are going to get SO screwed by it later". Most people don't how it works.

In shotr you have to ration out your tech trades, trade only for expensive techs, don't bother with tacking on cheap techs - avoid those "freebies" like the plague, they'll cost you thousands of beakers in the long run. You have something like 10 tech trades until industrial, you do get more trades made available as the game progresses and the WFYABTA threshold does vary greatly by personality, Mansa Musa being most infamous for not caring about it.

Now, WFYABTA can be overridden by friendly relationships, techs traded with friendlies still count against WFYABTA but you can at least trade with the friendly. So basically WFYABTA can be managed by tech trade rationing and relationship building. But once you have it, you can't get rid of it, just avoid frivolous trades (ie trading for Divine Right is one less trade you can make...).

 

[frankcor]

LOL, Blake! Now you tell us!

Thanks for sharing the knowledge. Learning is one of my favorite outcomes of SG play.

 

[mutax2003]

I will be keeping an eye on this SG, and will be interested if you can get any sort of victory from this game. I think Aztec would be in better shape if you had gone for early bronze working, and then take out a neighbor with fast axe-rush.

 

[Jet]

Got it.

1. Who do you think we should attack? HC's good cities are closer but Mao has Iron.
2. Site D is back up for settlement. It's a good site despite the overlap with the city to its west and it's "free", but it would have to fight Chinese culture. Would you like to see a settler built for it?
3. I don't think we can win either and I have the feeling our collective enthusiasm has waned. Do you want to keep playing?
4. Would you want to try again with different settings?

 

[angeleyes]

I'm getting a bit bored with civ and a bad going sg doesn't help against that feeling. I will not let the team down, but playing without believe in a victory isn't fun for me. For now i won't try another sg.

@ Blake: thanks for explaining, i did have some assumptions but now i'm sure. Btw does begging function the same way?

 

[frankcor]

I vote we go for Mao's iron. He's got his hands full with Shaka/Mehmed. Then we should get peace as soon as we get the Iron, then go after Huayana with Canon.

 

[Jet]

Will play tonight, opinions still solicited...

 

[Bede]

Take apart Mao and let's play on. The game just got interesting!!

 

[Jet]

0: 1370:

Leave everything except moving a pop point from lake to farm in TOD.

My plan is to build units, minimal buildings, but probably not attack yet.

1: 1376:

Peace breaks out between Mao and Ramses/Shaka.
TOD -- Mace -> Longbow
Hammer T -- Mace -> Treb

2: 1382:

Printing Press in.
HC will trade, but has PP. He's the only one that has it.
Napoleon will trade Guilds + Music, Mao 770, Shaka 860.
Guilds and Music would be good. But if Napoleon got PP, he's behind the others, so would probably trade PP for, eg, Education. (He's on good terms with Mao, anyway.)
Mao does have war on HC white-lined but won't do it for PP.

First I do PP to Shaka for 860. Annoyed -> Cautious, but the 860 doesn't open up anything additional from Mao or Napoleon.
Then PP to Mao for 770 + map. That reveals the Egyptian cities he has captured. I hate to give PP to him, but I believe Napoleon would just trade it away anyway.
PP for Guilds + Music is still the best we can do with Napoleon. In fact now the bastard wants 500. Ooh, bad outcome. I do it.

Guilds in hand, I see that everyone has Gunpowder and Banking. I could do Education in 16 or Gunpowder in 10 (at 100&#37. Napoleon is generally willing to trade, so I start Education.

We're at -16 GPT at 100% and +2 at 90%. I'm concerned about holding on to our pile of 1146 gold. I suspect someone will demand it in tribute. So I go on a spree of upgrading our (one) Axeman, and, of our eight Archers, the five with decent promotions. Usually I'm not a huge fan of upgrading but in this situation I don't feel there's much else we can do with our gold.

Hammer T -- Treb (forest) -> Treb

3-4 1388-1394:

TOD -- Longbow -> Grocer. For cathedrals we need one more Conf temple and two more Hindu temples.
Hammer T -- Treb -> Conf temple (1).
Little T -- Mace -> Hindu temple (4).
Chartres -- swap tiles to high-production/low-growth and put Hindu temple (9) in front of Forge (13).

5: 1400:

Hammer T -- Conf Temple -> Treb.
Texcoco -- Granary -> Forge. I'm not entirely delighted with the Forge being built in Chartres, because Chartres is low food and low production, but Texcoco in contrast has rice and hills. It also has - ahem - a settled great artist that's giving us about one percent of the value we could have gotten from using it in the middle of hostile territory.
TOD -- can now build a Conf Academy but we don't need more priests just yet so I continue the Grocer.

6-7: 1406 - 1412:

Mencius is born in TOD and adds his voice to the diabolical incantations.
Saxon -- treb -> Settler.

8: 1418:

Little T -- Hindu Temple -> Treb.
Hammer T -- Treb -> Treb.

9: 1424:

Ramses demands cancellation with China, denied.

10: 1430:

Victoria cancels OB. I'm heartbroken.

11: 1436:

Hammer T -- Treb -> Treb.

12: 1442:

Chantres borders expand. I notice it's nonetheless right next to French culture. Hmm, didn't we temporarily reclaim that tile to its southeast? Oh well.

13: 1448:

TOD -- Grocer -> Conf Academy.
Hammer T -- Treb -> Longbow.
Saxon -- Settler -> Cat (for defense). Settler sent to site D.
new Tenochtitlan -- Walls -> Theatre.
Chartres -- Temple -> resume Forge. Switch it back to a reasonable growth configuration (in hindsight, it didn't need to hurry to build the Hindu temple, because TOD won't get to the Mandir for a while.)

14: 1454:

Victoria un-vassalizes from HC.
I notice Riflemen in Incan cities.

Site D (Tlaxcala) is settled, and I can die happy. Starts Theatre.
Little T -- Treb -> Longbow.

15: 1460:

I haven't declared war yet.

There are decent, not great, stacks outside Gaul (attack) and in Saxon (defense) and new Tenochtitlan (defense).
The attack stack lacks Longbows so is not in great position to keep Gaul... but it could. There is the spying Longbow outside Gaul.
Just to review, I settled site D because it's "free", and in general it's basically mandatory for us to spam "free" cities around TOD.
That makes Gaul less worthy to keep. We could raze Gaul and Carib and rebuild in a spot that gets Ivory/Cow/Iron.
Alternatively, I think it would a path of less resistance to capture both Gaul and Carib. They're not great cities but perhaps right now we can't afford to be too picky, perhaps we just need to capture the population and grab the Iron.
Interestingly, there are only five Irons on the whole map.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of simply capturing Gaul and Carib. But I think either way (capture, or raze and resettle) would be reasonable.

Attacking HC with his Riflemen doesn't seem like an option.

I can't tell whether Mao has Riflemen or Grenadiers; our spying Longbowman only shows a skeleton Medieval garrison in Gaul.

Micromanagement notes -
- naturally the garrisons in our south are a bit depleted, but I think we need the units up north. You should give it your second opinion.
- in addition to some improvements I've been building a network of extra roads. My purpose in case it's not clear is to help us move units around flexibly as we start fighting.
- the governors have started assigning engineers in places where IMO we don't need them. So watch out for that.
- Saxon has a large food surplus. If we can spare the hammers we might want to have it build more settlers so that we can spam two more cities West and Southwest of TOD (see earlier dotmap for location suggestions).
- I built the cottages near Texcoco, IIRC, but maybe they should be replaced with farms and workshops.
- Since a religion has spread to Tlaxcala (site D), it should probably cancel the Theatre or at least put a Granary first.
- The farm I'm building between Hammer-T, Tlaxcala, and TOD - its purpose is to irrigate the south of Tlaxcala but I have to admit it's probably a waste. Hopefully we'll get back the culture from the river tiles and Tlaxcala can get all the food it needs from the tiles to its north.
- TOD needs to stay high-food so that it can run maximum priests. It has seven forests, so the middle plains forest could be safely farmed to irrigate the rice. It's getting more hammers from settled prophets, so the hills could be windmilled over. We should farm over its cottage (eventually its town too, but that can wait), so that the governor is not tempted to assign population to it.

 

[frankcor]

Good work, Jet. I think you did a great job on those trades.

Temple of Doom must run one Priest or one settled Great Prophet for each city we own, except for Temple of Doom and any city whose culture touches Temple of Doom's, including at a corner.

We have eight cities and we have 8 Prophets/Priests assigned in Temple of Doom. But I also see that Huamanga and Andaluaylas to the West of TOD have cultural borders that adjoin TOD's borders. And on the East side, I see Lyons and 2 other French cities that might be argued are also touching TOD's borders although they may be considered buffered by Texcoco and Chartes, our two cities to the east of TOD. We can't run any more priests in TOD (there are no + signs left). Should we be running more priests or are we in danger of breaking the Variant?

I've got the save and I'm playing now -- going to crack some Mao heads.

 

[Jet]

Thanks.

I hope this clarifies it -

Cities we own: eight
-- one: TOD
-- four: cities whose culture touches TOD's: Texcoco, Chartres, Tlaxcala, Tlatelolco
-- three: cities whose culture does not touch TOD's: Teotihuacan, Saxon, Tenochtitlan
Number of priests and/or prophets we must run now: three

Shapes of culture boundaries (numbers for normal speed):

Spoiler :

 

[frankcor]

Thanks for the clarification! I think I almost got it now.

I don't know why I struggle with this so much. I see we don't count TOD itself. But I'm not seeing where it says we need a priest for every city whose border does not touch TOD's border.

Ahh, I see it now. I'm having trouble parsing the sentence:

Is it?:
No. of Priests = (Total_No._of_Cities - TOD) + No._of_Cities_touching_TOD

Or is it?:
No. of Priests = Total_No._of_Cities - (TOD + No._of_Cities_touching_TOD)

where TOD = 1. I hope that's clear.

I've started playing. Do we want to raze Gaul or not? This would mean us needing 4 priests now, I think. It is stealing 2 floodplains from Tlaxcala's fat-cross and would work better one tile north of its current position.

I ask because it there once was a sign "Raze with extreme predjudice" over the city. Did we change our minds? Or am I losing mine?

 

[Jet]

Yeah, I meant exactly the latter, and I meant for only our own cities to be counted in the formula.

Your call on Gaul... I discussed my own opinion on it in my last report. I don't think anyone else has given an opinion except generally to suggest attacking Mao for his Iron.

 

[frankcor]

Thanks! I thought you meant the former. That's why I couldn't get the math to work for me

I read your reasoning about keeping Gaul and Carib and you make good arguments either way. I guess it comes down to "we can't be picky" is my strongest indicator. We're falling behind and I think we need more cities for more research as well as more resources to keep them healthy and happy. I kept Gaul and I'm playing on.

 

[frankcor]

I'm not 100% in love with my vote to declare on Mao. Get a load of this:

I have this image of us doing the Turtle for the next 4 centuries while Mao pillages us into the Stone Age. Oh well. We can't win unless we start making a move now.

Inherited turn (1460 AD): I dialed up Mao, and he greets us with news:

I wanted to tell him where he could put it, but instead I told him: "Sheesh, I know this is gonna sound really dumb, but we think your head would look good on a pole." The die is cast.

I moved our stack across the border towards Gaul. Meanwhile, I started a pillaging team (Maceman/Longbowman) out of Tenochtitlan heading southeast toward Gaul's ivory camp.

IBT: Machiavelli wrote a book:

Well that's at least one category for which we are not in last place.

Mao didn't show up. I figured it will take about 3 more turns for him to move his forces from the Egyptian front to face us.

Turn 1 (1466 AD): We start pillaging and moving adjacent to Gaul.

IBT: Still no Chinese troop movements spotted.

Turn 2 (1472 AD): Tlatelolco trained a Maceman, started another(3). Saxon trained a Catapult, started a Maceman(6). Both units got sent to Gaul.

At Gaul, we were blessed with enough catapults and trebuchets to knock the defenses of the city from 80 to 0% and we still had two Trebuchets with movement points leftover. The first got a City Raider II promotion and went in against a CGIII/Drill promoted Longbowman at 17% odds. He knocked the Longbowman to less than 50% strength before dying. The final Trebuchet took a CRII promotion in against a CGI Cho-ko-nu and killed his target. We lost a Maceman despite having 93% odds but the city fell easily after that:

At this point, I posted with Jet to discuss keeping Gaul or not. I decided to keep the city. We got it pretty cheap and even if we now take a beating from here on out, we come out ahead. But I hoped that we wouldn't get the beating until after Carib if it can fall as easy as Gaul. Gaul started work on a Sacrifical Altar(135). The spying Longbowman so wisely placed by Jet moved into the city as a garrison. Our remaining units moved onto the road to Carib and it's awaiting Iron Mine. Soon, we would be building Knights and not Mao would not.

IBT: A Chinese stack appeared outside of Gaul:

Turn 3 (1478 AD): Little-T trained a Longbowman, started another(5) - Jet has pointed out that our garrisons in the south are weak. I agree and will spend some resource on correcting that situation. This new unit, however, was given orders to report to the Chinese front.

The image of Turtles flashed through my mind again and I turtled up in Gaul but directed a small Recon-in-Force team to go pillage the Iron at Carib.

IBT: A Chinese Trebuchet killed a Maceman in Gaul. If he had pressed, I figured Mao would retake Gaul this turn. But he didn't press. He waited.

Turn 4 (1484 AD): Our scientists reported:

After weighing Gunpowder vs Banking, I chose Gunpowder

As our RIF moved toward Carib, we found:

What we had here was an Age-Assymetry. We were fighting Renaisance units with Medieval weapons. I hate it when that happens. I made a strategic withdrawal. Jet said there were 5 irons in the world? Well, China owns 4 of them and they don't even need a mine at the site outside of Carib.

I sacrificed a Catapult outside of Gaul and didn't even scratch the Musketman. I sent a Trebuchet next and he did a little better. That stung the Musketman and roughed up the rest of the stack. We dug in a little deeper anticipating the worst.

IBT: A second Chinese Trebuchet killed a second of our Macemen. And then he waited probably for that stack of Knights and Musketmen.

Turn 5 (1490 AD): Tlatelolco trained a Maceman, started another(2). I sacrificed another Trebucet against that Musketman, then killed the Musketman with a CombatII Maceman.

IBT: We lost 2 more Macemen and a Longbowman to three more Chinese Trebuchets. The Knights and Musketmen arrived.

Turn 6 (1496 AD): Chartres constructed a Forge, started a Barracks(5).

IBT: We lost a Longbowman and a Horse Archer to to more Chinese Trebuchets.

Turn 7 (1502 AD): Temple of Doom constructed a Confucian Academy, begins a Longbowman(2). Tlatelolco trained a Maceman, started another(3). Saxon trained a Maceman, started another(5). Tenochtitlan constructed a Theatre, started a Barracks(5).

IBT: We lost a 4 Trebuchets, a Catapult and a Maceman at Gaul.

Turn 8 (1508 AD): Little-T trained a Longbowman, started another(4).

We are down to a Horse Archer, Maceman, Longbowman, 2 Trebuchets and 3 Spearmen in Gaul, with 2 more Macemen just outside the city. Mao has more units than you can shake a stick at.

Surprisingly, Mao would speak with us. He accepted 60 Gold and the City of Gaul in exchange for peace. I took t the deal. We have gunpowder due in 5 turns. We'll survive to fight again. Meanwhile, I sold rice to China for 8 gold/turn and bid him "G'day."

Turn 9 (1514 AD): Temple of Doom trained a Longbowman, started another(3).

Turn 10 (1520 AD): Tlatelolco trained a Maceman, started another(2).

That's it. The remnants of our former army are in Tlatlelco. We've got lots of Macemen in the queue. Some CRII Riflemen are always good to have, I figure.

I'm not sure where I went wrong here. It was a waste of time attacking Mao. We're sunk without Iron. But we'll need Iron to get it.

Here's The Save: Temple_of_Doom_AD-1520.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Bede]

The only way to counter the Age Asymmetry that frank refers to is to crank up the production of troops. And more catapults, lots more. Trebs are not real useful to us right now as we need the 25% greater hitting power of cats with collateral damage promotions to counter the troops Mao, or anyone else, has available to send.

At least I am not in the hot corner this time. Thanks, frank, for the respite, but that was probably the one thing you did wrong.

Got it for tomorrow. <Goes looking for his purloined copy of the Charis play book titled "How to defeat a technologically and numerically superior opponent with a single spear">

 

[frankcor]

You're absolutely right about Catapults vs Trebuchets. The Trebuchets we have are good city raiders, but not so good against Musketmen in the open field. I wasted too many of them trying to beat up Mao's threat.

Good luck! Nationhood would sure be handy right about now

 

[Bede]

I was a bit hasty with the "Got It". Suffering post Thanksgiving, pre Xmas crash and burnout so I won't get this posted until Friday night late at the earliest. And if it doesn't show up Friday by midnight it will be late Saturday night.

So maybe I can swap. If anyone gots it before tomorrow at 6:00 PM I'll swap and play Saturday/Sunday otherwise I will play starting tomorrow but may not post until Saturday evening.

 

[angeleyes]

I'll play today, so you can go after me.