Team Game - Isolated Pacal (Deity)

[Pedro78]

Yeah production is the bottleneck right now. Imo Mayapan should have been whipped and CI sould've been whipped harder. No big deal though.

If Asoka had Rifles then I'd probably land 1S of Lahore and wait for a few turns until he puts his stack in the city. As he doesn't have anything dangerous I think it's probably a waste of time to do that. Can just snipe a few coastal cities & guard them with CG2 Muskets (have to build those first lol) while waiting for Rifling.

Oh and I see you were asking how to whip Ox above. I think 6-3 is the best. 3pop whipping is immensely superior to 2pop whipping as it only gives ~2/3 of the unhappiness.

 

[Fippy]

I would avoid all Gunpowder trades
Like magic no AI has it yet, what they dun have they cannot trade, and it's blocking all good military units for them.

 

[Pedro78]

Good point. I'll avoid the trade -- no need for early Rifling if no one has even Cuirs.

 

[Pedro78]

Been busy today, will play ~10T tomorrow

 

[dutchfire]

Perhaps this is also a good moment to discuss diplo strategy (mainly for me to learn): How do you usually judge demands by other AIs? E.g. when they ask for gold or tech.

 

[Pedro78]

Demands are the same in iso as in regular games -- it's about weighing the risk of getting DoW'd + the possible consequences of the -1 diplo hit against the amount of gold demanded or the value of the tech (not only beaker value, but also monopoly value, priority of the unlocked techs etc.). Overall it's very situational..

 

[Lain]

How is it going, are the Mayans still alive ? Pedro, busy week?

 

[Pedro78]

Yeah wasn't a civ-friendly week for me. Didn't play any turns yet, but did a bit of maths/testing in other games. Will play some turns either tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Looking at the save right now the main things that I'm concerned about are:

• Asoka's soldier count -- SoD doesn't look fearsome but he's #1 in military and 12-city-Giggles usually is all but a pushover
• We have very few units ready and there are no available hills to land the first attack (and even with a hill, WEs wouldn't help much). Which means that if we attack right after Steel with ~20 units he can still wipe us out with enough knights, even worse if he gets cuirs or Rifles in the meantime (he's only GP+Rifling to tech for Rifles)

IMO we should not forget that even though Asoka is a pushover, he has 12 cities and is close to Rifling. An attack without Rifles can go very wrong very quickly, so I'd say we wait for Rifling to attack.

What do you think? (also interested in Fippy's opinion on the matter as we tend to disagree on this kind of move)

 

[Fippy]

Mostly surprised, what made Rifles so popular

 

[Pedro78]

Well I'd have prefered to attack with cannons only, but here DoW won't come until ~T165 because of production bottleneck. If Asoka DoWs Willem/Gilga before that I'd still attack with cannons. But cannons alone against 12-city AI close to Rifles? Ofc we can try it, and if it succeeds it will put us in a better position than if just waiting for Rifles. We most likely won't lose the game even if our first stack gets wiped out. But doing this we take a risk of making the game really painful.

 

[Lain]

Agreed, I would continue with moderate production (enough for a quick backstab if/when Asoka finally declares), but otherwise wait for Rifling and then swoop in with full power.

 

[Fippy]

Sure let's go with 50 / 50, backstab yay full attack nope

 

[Pedro78]

To Steel. Pausing and gathering opinions.

T158.
- Renegotiate gems for 16gpt with Giggles

T159.
- Education for PP trade between Wang and Willem as expected
- Asoka completes Taj

T160.
- Asoka cancels stone for ivory+12gpt deal. He now wants stone+6gpt for ivory. That’s a bit much. I renegotiate most deals.

- SB demands Astro, I deny.
- Asoka libs SM
- Asoka’s stack is moving back across his land – wtf is he doing?


T163.
- Steel. 6 cannons ready, 4 trebs to be upgraded.
- Asoka stops plotting. His stack is back in his capital.


6 cannons are already out (pre-whipped trebs, minimized the upgrade cost). One more coming in two turns & 4 trebs ready for upgrading. No RP trade in sight as we kept the GP monopoly. Asoka going down the SM line. 8 Galleons ready, only need a few more attackers and we could land in 4-5 turns with 11 cannons & 13 other units. Go straight for Delhi. Wiping this stack out early in the war would be awesome. Not sure about the counterattack -- against cannons and C2 WEs he'll have really bad odds, but will he go for it?

If Rifling was closer, waiting for it would be a no-brainer, but here.. Waiting for opinions and I'll play on a bit.

Edit - I moved the explorer and I think I got my question answered:

Spoiler :

Ugghhh those cats.. 7 trebs + 11 cats (with barrage 1&2) most likely means total wipeout. Need to wait for Rifling. Why didn't this stupid-ass attack anyone?

Landing with Rifles should come in ~12 turns depending on how we trade around. Might finally be time to break the GP monopoly -- trading Chem for RP would speed up Rifling big time.

 

[Lain]

Situation looks really familiar, in the past I always attacked too early and got wiped out. Now in 99% of cases I wait for Rifles no matter what, seems good here aswell.

Hm, a trade for RP would certainly help now. GP for Philosophy with Wang Kon and then Chemistry for RP with him? If only him and us know it, he might not trade it around yet?

But if we attacked, we could land 1S of Lahore, take the city and have a first strike on his stack. Soo that could work aswell?

Gems for 6 gpt with Asoka seems good for now? Also, is there any chance he just went full culture mode? Free Speech, stopped plotting, moved stack into capital.

 

[gaash2]

Been following this .. not that I am at your guys level of play but generally I find more success with a later attack date/larger more advanced force. So tend to agree with Lain's suggestion to wait for Rifles.

 

[Pedro78]

Ok I'll play a few more turns tonight. The problem of landing 1S of Lahore is that he might still wipe us out if he throws all the cats at us. Not sure about the gems trade -- some cities will need the happiness within the next ten turns.

 

[Anysense]

Perhaps try to use another AI against Asoka? Land at Giggle's, DoW Asoka bribe Gilgamesh or Willem. Let him take the damage, then step in. Both can be bribed only at fiendly. Would +4 fair trade be enough to get Gilgamesh at friendly?
May be, forget about Asoka and attack WK/Pericles instead? Conquering their continent would be enough to get into winning position. That's a bit of a gamble without any scouting though.

 

[Pedro78]

Giggles is only at +4 and Willem is plotting already, so the bribe is not an option. If we were to bribe one of them, I'd prefer to declare first, then land a few turns later so that the AI we bribed fights Asoka's SoD instead of us.

I still like the idea of attacking Asoka. Maybe I should take another look.

 

[Pedro78]

Nah Wang is already completely swamped by Greek culture, his land isn't worth much compared to Asoka's. Pericles is far away. I really think Asoka is the right target.

Now, do we 5pop whip a bank in Uxmal? The main thing that bugs me about it is that it only has 4-5 food surplus so it'd take ages to regrow.

 

[Pedro78]

I was beggining to grow restless about this game, when finally...

Spoiler :

Saves almost 5 turns of research. Plus army is ready. Plus globe is almost ready. Yaay

Save attached. Didn't finish the turn, taking a break or I'm bound to do some stupid stuff. I'll write-up in the morning. Maybe someone else wants to play from there anyway?