T2 External Consul: Manifest Destiny, Phase II

[Bertie]

In THIS POLL we agreed we wanted to annex the pyramids to help Fanatannia grow and become more prosperous and productive. The External Consulate has not yet set a target date for The Great Pyramids War but will soon.

Comes the question, after the Portuguese, what? It is the Manifest Destiny of the Fanatannian people that we will strive to control the majority of this pangaea in our quest for a 130,000 point cultural victory. We will need as much land as possible so we can build 100+ cities, each with a temple, library, etc. Thus we need to conquer most of our rival civs.

The logical next targets after the Portuguese are first the French, then the Spanish. Next, the Chinese (unless the Persians are still strong; in which case we might want to rethink things after we take Spain). The alternative would be to take China before we take France or Spain, but China provides a valuable buffer for us against the Persians and the rest of the civs on the far half of the pangaea.

Although we have plenty of time to decide which civs should be our fourth and fifth targets, the External Consulate leans towards nominating France and Spain for that honor. (It’s never too early to plan.) Thoughts?

 

[zyxy]

Good idea to start discussing this! And btw, you're doing a great job as consul ad-interim

Questions (apologies, I can't open the save at work):
1. How much land do we need/want? It might be good to discuss whether we want just enough land to build 150 cities ICS style, or whether we want to eliminate all opponents save 1 worhtless city (just to name the 2 extremes).
2. Which rivals have valuable resources? I would advocate a policy that gets us at least 4 luxuries domestically (for size 7 cities).

After we take out the Netherlands, I think the game is won barring formalities. I would not fear any of our opponents from that point on. If they want to attack us, all the better: our people will rejoice while we destroy our untrustworthy rivals

I can't see the map right now, but I believe that China blocks land access to France and Spain. That means naval operations, and long supply lines.

For these reasons I would favor taking out India, after that China, and then hit the most dangerous of the remaining civs, probably Persia. Taking out Persia will also grant access to the right half of the continent, should we need it.

 

[mad-bax]

I think that Portugal is a nice soft target with a nice prize for victory. Capturing the Pyramids would be very strong for the game, and it it something we should be able to do without compromising our infrastructure builds.

Spain gets its UU from Navigation I think. France requires gunpowder and the Chinese Chivalry. For this reason I would ignore Spain for the time being. We could sign an ROP with them to get from Portugal to France.

I would favour taking on the Chinese (do they have horses and iron?) and France pretty much simultaneously. It's a big ask though, and we won't be able to afford MA's in Republic. 20 turns or war with a single opponent is too long.

All of this means that we will be leaving Persia, Byzantines and Maya alone for a while. We cannot enter into an MA against the Persians now. It's too late. So doing would mean that they could interfere with our real wars. Now I would favour and Embassy with Persia and a declaration of war against the Byzantines and Maya followed immediately with an MA versus them with Persia. This will absolutely kill tech progression.

If we do this, then we may be able to use currency to buy the MA, and Republic and Monarchy to get Persias free tech.

That line of logic leads to reasoning that we should keep the war vs Holland as short as possible until we can get Republic for peace. Then Buy a Persian Embassy. Then declare war on the Byzantines and Maya. Then sign an MA with Persia using Currency. Hopefully we can trade for Monarchy in the meantime or otherwise buy it using currency. We should then be able to get Persias free tech - which hopefully won't be engineering.

My 2 cents.

 

[Bertie]

Thanks for the kind words, zyxy.

We probably need to ask our Cultural and Domestic Consuls how many cities etc they think they'll need. I'm assuming we'll want to go up to the domination limit, but we might not need quite that amound of land. Their input will help us decide what wars we in fact need to fight.

I'm also assuming that we'll want to severely weaken any civs that we leave around.

I've been thinking that our long term strategy would be to control all of the pangaea up to and including the point where the Persian city Gordium currently stands. But since we now have the Japanese city (assuming it doesn't flip!), maybe we ought to also consider annexing some of that land . . .

 

[DaveShack]

I'd say get some input now from the Culture Consul on which civs we need to trim back to make sure they don't get to 65K culture, and keep that information up to date. Once at the domination limit we might still need to capture and gift some cities to cut their former owners off from the culture production.

 

[Nobody]

i think we should just take our chunk of land, i can't explain without a map, but that area that hold us, dutch, india and few different citys right up the top. then we should wall off the mountains that have gems and live within our borders. we don't need to kill everyone

 

[Chieftess]

I think we should take out the Dutch first, just so we can have some ports on the other side of the pangaea.

BTW, we seriously need some culture. Besides our capital, we have 0 culture in our cities.

 

[Nobody]

BTW, we seriously need some culture. Besides our capital, we have 0 culture in our cities.

we could just go cultural in the capital and win that way

 

[RegentMan]

we could just go cultural in the capital and win that way

Too late for that.

 

[MOTH]

I'd say get some input now from the Culture Consul on which civs we need to trim back to make sure they don't get to 65K culture, and keep that information up to date. Once at the domination limit we might still need to capture and gift some cities to cut their former owners off from the culture production.

France is the current culture leader and have 7 cities. They are followed closely by the Maya who also have 7 cities. 3 civs have 8 cities and the Dutch have 13 cities. Assuming that we can engineer dogpiles against any civ that starts running away we should be able to maintain all civs at moderate culture levels while we expand. It looks like the expansion phase is just about over as there have only been a handful of cities built in the last 20 turns.

 

[MOTH]

I think we should take out the Dutch first, just so we can have some ports on the other side of the pangaea.

BTW, we seriously need some culture. Besides our capital, we have 0 culture in our cities.

The plan of action called for rapid military expansion and then ICS back to the core rushing libraries and temples in all cities. Other than that culture should only be built if we need it for some other reason. We have been maintaining happiness so far with luxuries, MP, and some slider, so temples have not been needed. Libraries are not yet available, so they can't be built yet for research.

As for flip risk, there is little hope of being able to keep up, let alone catch up, to the Dutch who have until recently had twice as many cities as we have. Once we have captured several cities and can build libraries we might want to take a short infrastructure break in some core cities.

 

[Ashburnham]

Personally, I think that we have to take an "infrastructure break" once we conclude the coming Dutch war. We're not only losing the culture war, we're lacking any culture. Regardless of what victory we eventually achieve (and the culture victory is looking less and less likely), we need to improve the quality of our nation. I stronly urge us all to focus on domestic matters once the Dutch war is over.

 

[Kentharu]

i saw the map and since the Dutch are right in front of us and hold a lot of land so they should be attacked first, only attack key cities like the one that holds iron and also split their territory in half, i'm not sure if people have said this before but it would keep them at their knees once we take those 7 cities

 

[Furiey]

For anyone that needs to know where the Portugese actually are, here's a map:

The northernmost Dutch and Indian Cities are in the bottom of the map, hopefully after the coming Dutch war our borders will come up to these.

Portugal makes up a nice, defensible peninsular, to the south of which are the French and Spanish. Taking France and Spain would allow us to move in on China from both sides (having picked off the last Dutch and Indian cities somewhere along the way) giving us the route to Persia and being able to claim the bottom half of the continent up to the bottleneck.

 

[Chieftess]

Hmm, does anyone think we should send an expedition (2 settlers, and a few workers) into those marshes to settle a few cities? The AI doesn't know how to deal with marshlands, and there may be some oil there later in the game. As for Portugal, it's too far off right now to really even care about grabbing it just for the Pyramids. The Pyramids are something you'd get early in the game when you're still expanding. The expansion phase is over, so it really shouldn't be a top priority. Clearing out the Dutch *AND* India is a top priority (not stopping short!!!!). Why? This is emperor level. We need to be 2-3 times larger than the AI to keep up. Yes, we got lucky with our curragh (being in the middle ages around 450BC is pretty good), but we can't hold off on that much longer. We really need to take out parts of France and China too - perhaps stop right there (the east coast of Portugal, and straight down could be our border).

 

[GenMarshall]

After the Portugiese expidition, we should consider going to war again with the Indians to take there remaining cities on the outskirts of the Dutch. Once the cities have been captured, we can then declare peace with them and watch the Indians become a city state. From here on out, we should target smaller civs and knock them out of play.

In my opinion, the Indian's remaining city should not be touch for the porpose of trade, same goes for the Dutch if we make them a city state. In looking through the explored part of the map. It looks if though that both the French and Spanish cities are creating a quilt-patchwork of cities. For them I would declare war and take eather the French or Spanish cities (Depending on whom we sign a MAs with first so that they can mop up the rest).

Before we can get to the Portugiese territory, we need to take out the French or the Spanish. If we declare war against the French, we should make a MA with the Spanish, if we declare war against the Spanish, we should make a MA with the French.

Another alternative route to the Portugiese is to build seaworthy naval transports and shuttle them to the Portugiese. But if we capture and eliminate the Portugiese and wish to take the Spanish-French cities, we must consider that eather the French or the Spanish (Depending on whom we declare war against first) would have a field day to capture the captured Portugiese cities. I firmly beleve that we should eliminate the Spanish and the French before trecking into the Portugiese cities.

 

[mad-bax]

The point about taking the pyramids is to get new cities to size 12 ASAP. If by some freak we lose them (and how careless would that be?) then so long as we have kept them for 50 turns or so the job would have been done. This little jaunt is just to give us a pass-time whilst we build a few markets and libraries.

People are getting twitchy about culture too. Calm down chaps and chapettes. The Cultural push will start around 500-700AD.

On topic: Portugal is just a little diversion. We will finish the Indians at the same time. Then we need our last big push to get rid of China, Spain, France, Persia and the Buzantines. That will leave the MAya, JApanese and Hittites.

More importantly... lets get a few settler factories going. We need 250 cities in about 50 turns. Tricky.

 

[Furiey]

After recent experience, this chapesse is definitely not getting twitchy about culture, although my whip is getting very twitchy - there are far too many opportunities for industrial accidents to speed development up before we get to republic and have to spend money instead.

 

[mad-bax]

Completely agree. Whipping is actually more efficient than cash rushing isn't it? I think SGOTM6 has managed to demonstrate that.

Of course the ethics of whipping may be quite a bone of contention in the DG