Term 2 External Consulate - Policy Discussion.

[DaveShack]

There is another factor in determining when to build embassies. If we build an embassy, it prevents that civ from building one, so they are deprived of the free look at our capitol. I have no idea if the programmers kept things fair and only give the AI's knoweledge that the embassy creation screen shot at that time or if they "cheat" and let the AI have that knowledge all the time. Just something to keep in mind.

 

[LeeT911]

@classical_hero: Thank you. I forgot about that one.

@Bertie: Congratulations on the appointment! I'm sure you'll do a good job.

@mad-bax: Good point about the relative cost. It may take more gold later on, but (theoretically) more gold will be available to us. I'm not sure about embassy pricing, but from experience, I believe it has to do with city size, distance between capitals, and whether you've explored the area or not.

@DaveShack: I'm certain the AI cheats and knows exactly what you are doing. It does not need embassies or spies to gather intelligence. If you have a front-line town with 40 infantry barricaded inside, and a interior city with a single outdated defender, the computer will bypass your defenses and strike at your weak spot. Always.

 

[blackheart]

blackheart: 50g now is not the same as 50g in a hundred turns. Absolute cost and relative cost are not the same thing. IMO the key is to time the embassy build to take best advantage of the benefits it gives. However, it is not for me to specify the turn on which it happens. I believe that honour falls to the Director of commerce, though I could be wrong.

Of course. But we can't tell what our financial situation will be in 100 turns. There is a certain level of risk for each option. Another thing to mention is that I've found embassies to stabilize relations with neutral nations and prevent them from deterioating if I were to not have built an embassy. We should lock in on who we shall attack, then build the embassy or 2-5 turns before to maximize intelligence on their capital.

@DS
The AI does cheat. It knows where everything is and if we ever leave a city unguarded (even deep in our territory), it will go for it.

 

[Bertie]

Bertie: You can develop a policy for keeping the tech rate slow among the opponent AI if you like for now. Other than that I'll get in touch probably Monday so we can start on all the other stuff.

@mad-bax: Will do, Chief!

@everyone: This is an interesting problem. We all know how to increase our science rate; but how do we deliberately hold the rest of the world back? I’ve got some ideas which I’ll develop over the next day or so, but I urge anyone with suggestions to post them.

@LeeT911: Thanks!

 

[DaveShack]

Slowing down the world -- here are my ideas. I have no idea if they will work.

• Don't trade our monopoly techs away, even to make a king's ransom in profit.
• Get the other tech leaders in wars with other AIs so they have fewer trading partners.
• Collect all the world's gold so that nobody can afford to buy tech.

 

[mad-bax]

I have ammended the External Consulates policy (post 1) to reflect the will of the people in recent polls.

China will no longer receive a gift to keep her attitude towards us polite. There will be a discussion on the principle of gifting in the near future which may lead to another (but different) poll in the near future.

What other aspects of the policy should be polled?

 

[zyxy]

@everyone: This is an interesting problem. We all know how to increase our science rate; but how do we deliberately hold the rest of the world back? I’ve got some ideas which I’ll develop over the next day or so, but I urge anyone with suggestions to post them.

Here are some ideas:

• Most important, like DS said: foment wars, and make the AI's break their word. I.e., never buy alliances for per turn payments only, always pay a bit upfront too.
• don't do any research ourselves
• if we find isolated civs, keep them that way
• eliminate or capture the Great Lib.
• For a bit later: when fighting wars, first targets (after dutch/india) should be scientific civs, top dogs, and civs with high culture (this may indicate libraries).
• (Not sure this works). In trade, pay lump sum, never pay gpt or lux. The AI applies the first to one-time purchases, the per turn payments to the running budget (slider). For lux, you never get a decent price anyway.
• eliminate civs. It increases research cost IIRC. Again, not sure that this works. There is a utility "techcalc" with a thread somewhere that explains this.

EDIT: the last thing is wrong, see comments by mad-bax and MOTH below.

Oh, and of course congrats on the job!

 

[blackheart]

@everyone: This is an interesting problem. We all know how to increase our science rate; but how do we deliberately hold the rest of the world back? I’ve got some ideas which I’ll develop over the next day or so, but I urge anyone with suggestions to post them.

We aren't going to keep the world back. This is emperor level, and there are undoubtedly AI nations already ahead of us.

 

[Stuck_as_a_Mac]

The AI is ahead of us and will be until the MidIndustrial age. Thats the way things always play out. We can't hold them back, but we can try to slow them down. Perhaps a Faux-Domino war would be a good idea. Try to get everyone on the other side of the pangea (face it.. its a pangea) to start warring. Oh, how I wish Civ had a covert espionage element to it where you could do thinks and make it look like an oposing civ... But still.. we can try to stir up some carp even if we have to get all the AI on the other side of the world to declare on us. Then ally. Then collapse et all.

SaaM

 

[Ginger_Ale]

When we declare war, we can get MAs with civs far away (or nearby, but it works with ones far away). This will have them focus on unit production, and rather than being able to attack the civ right away, like a neighbor would be able to, they will have to go all the way down the pangea to attack. After the war, they won't end up with any cities, but they'll have lots of units lying around, which hopefully will have them instigate a war with another AI, further slowing them down. We can't stop them quite yet, but we can slow them down.

 

[mad-bax]

In addition to comments by Daveshack, Ginger Ale and zyxy I would add:-

1. Try to get the AI all researching the same thing.
2. block sea routes between harbours.

We can't do all of these things IMO. The question is which ones a feasible, and which are not? We await Bertie with baited breath.

 

[Bertie]

A lot of great ideas have been expressed about how to slow down the tech pace & other civs’ growth! Thanks everyone.

It definitely looks like we’re on a pangea. We (and Indians & the Dutch) are on one end and the Mayans, Byzantines, and Hittites are on the other end. The Chinese and the Persians are on what looks like a fairly narrow isthmus between these two groups of civs. I’m not sure where the Portuguese and the Japanese are; in the same area as the group on the opposite end of the pangea from us? Our intrepid curragh, the Inquisitor, has spotted the blue boundary of another civ, so we’re about to establish relationships with someone else. This mystery civ appears to be north of China, so probably the pangea forms another peninsula north. If so this would be a fourth distinct geographic area. And we still have an additional civ to find.

For increased science a civ needs gold. This is generated by settling cities and using workers to improve the land, particularly building roads. Although commercial civs tend to have a research advantage later in the game, during the AA they don’t. AA powerhouses tend to be the agricultural and industrious civs. The Dutch are agricultural (and we’ve already established our plans for taking care of them) as are the Mayans. The Mayans are also industrious, as are the Persians (who are also scientific) and the Chinese.
At the moment the Nethlands is the runaway civ and we’re last. Here’s the current ranking (score and # of cities are in parenthesizes following each civ):


Netherlands: (272 / 9)
Byzantines: (229 / 6)
Persia: (221 / 6)
Maya: (212 / 4)
China: (206 / 6)
India: (205 / 5)
Japan: (178 / 5)
Portugual: (176 / 3)
Hittites: (176 / 4)
Fantannia: (156 / 5)

Slowing the growth of the Netherlands, Byzantines, Persia, Maya, and China should be our priority. We’ll be handling the Netherlands (and India) ourselves; we’ll need proxies to take care of Byzantine, Persia, Maya, and China.

We should select either Byzantines or Maya as a target civ for the landgroup at the other end of the panagea. Whichever we select, we’ll establish an embassy with the other civs on that landmass and form an alliance to dogpile our target. Unfortunately I’d expect we’ll probably have to give up mathematics to bribe these civs into an alliance. This does have the benefit, though, of possibly redirecting their research to the top branch of the research tree. BTW, until we form embassies we won’t actually know who knows who; but I think we can assume nearby civs know each other.

Establishing an embassy with China and allying with them against Persia is another goal. This might be more difficult to accomplish, though I’d hope acquiring philosophy and construction will give us some barter ammunition. We’ll need to decide whether we want to give up one or both of those monopoly techs, however. DaveShack suggested we don’t trade monolopy techs and I tend to agree. Alternatively, we could also drag China and Persia into the Byzantines/Mayan war. The disadvantage of this is that although they’d presumably generate troops to send away to fight, their lands wouldn’t likely be ravaged by war. Also, we don’t know if they know the civs on that end of the panagea.

There’s also that mystery civ to consider, plus the last unknown civ; but we can include them in our plans once we establish contact.

In addition to this, we should turn off or reduce to a minimum our science research. Our trading goal should be to suck as much money as possible out of our rivals' coffers without trading away monopoly techs. We’ll soon have what looks like a monopoly on wines (after our war with the Netherlands). India has at least two silks which will soon be ours, and towards China there are several sources of incense. We should prioritize settling near those. These luxuries will become excellent trade material. Again, these will generate trade without necessitating trading research, although we’ll need to build a harbor (probably in Camelot or Donsignia) to open luxury trade to distant lands.

Zyxy has some interesting ideas we’ll want to incorporate into our plan, including targeting the capture of the Great Library and later on (probably in the Middle Ages) targeting scientific/high cultural civs for war. That’s likely late Term 2 or Term 3 material, though, as is m-b’s idea to block sea routes between harbors.

To sum up, the general plan is to form strategic alliances and foster wars with our leading rivals. The goals of the wars will be to weaken their infrastructures and redirect their production from developing a healthy civ to producing cannon fodder. Civs at war don’t trade with each other, so slower trading will also ****** world research. We will take care of the Netherlands and the Indians ourselves; all other wars should be fought by proxies. We will slow our research, won’t trade our research, and will try to acquire as much gold in our trades as possible (difficult to do, of course, if we’re not trading research, so we’ll trade luxuries).

I’m sure there are obvious things I’ve overlooked and welcome discussion so we can refine the plan.

 

[mad-bax]

Thanks Bertie. It will take a while to digest all you have said, but on first reading I cannot fault it.

Because of recent developments in the game we need to make some more decisions.

1. Change policy to take cities in peace deal with India?
2. Push for MA with China vs Persia
3. Change of war goals for India (e.g. take more than two cities in order to get both their recently founded towns in the deal).

Comments from my team and the General Assembly are welcomed of course. I will start another discussion thread now. I urge all citizens to participate. The game could spin on the next few turns.

 

[MOTH]

Here are some ideas:
*snip* eliminate civs. It increases research cost IIRC. Again, not sure that this works. There is a utility "techcalc" with a thread somewhere that explains this. *snip*

I've always heard the opposite. Each civ eliminated drops the research cost (as the game assumes less trading). I can certainly be wrong on this point.

 

[mad-bax]

Actually... the number of civs in the game and how many are eliminated do not affect the base tech cost. The cost to be first to research it is fixed (depending on map size and difficulty level) The research cost only drops when other civs learn the tech first.

 

[Bertie]

It will take a while to digest all you have said . . .

Yeah, lately I’ve been reading a lot of the posts discussing the constitution so my brain may have gotten a little addled before I wrote that up . . .

The interesting thing is the AI is now trying to do to us what we’re fixin’ to do to them. We definitely want to get China allied with us against Persia. I think we want to start establishing embassies with other civs in order to figure out who knows who and to enable us to enter into MAs. We may want to consider trading/selling Philosophy and perhaps even Construction for gold and to bribe other civs into MAs. This flies in the face of our wanting to slow down the tech rate, of course, but if we get half the world embroiled in conflicts now, long term that does help slow the tech rate. Plus it gets them in the habit of fighting each other. Catching that monkey isn’t a quick process . . .

 

[LeeT911]

I posted some of this in another thread but I want to mention it here as well.

If China and Persia go to war, it has to be a drawn out war of attrition. Part of me is worried that with their Immortals triggering a golden age (despotic I know, but +1 shield in every bonus grass and plains is still something), they will steamroll through the Chinese and then we'll have two BIG problems: the Dutch and the Persians.

If anyone has a different opinion I'm still willing to hear it, but just so that we're thinking about it.

 

[mad-bax]

A despotic GA for the Persians is one of the things I want. It is possible that the persians will run over China and the alliance with the Dutch vs the Persians is inspired. This will acheive Cheiftesses aim of getting the Dutch army out of the way whilst we attack.

 

[MOTH]

I like the idea of a dog pile on the Persians. We should invite in China, and the Byzantines on either side of them. I sorta doubt that the Dutch have contact with Persia (see note), so a MA might not be possible. Can we determine if the Dutch know Persia without an Embassy? If they do have contact then get them to March across the world before we attack them.

Note: We haven't seen any explorers go past the Chinese and the map explorations show more water to the North-West of Beijing. I speculate that the Chinese control a choke point to our sub-continent. We also haven't seen any Dutch boats. If this is the case then its also likely that the Dutch have not met anyone beyond China.

 

[LeeT911]

We can't tell if the Dutch know Persia without the embassy. But even if they do know each other, we can't get the Dutch to sign an alliance with us unless we have an embassy anyway.

Good point about the choke, it's entirely possible. However, the Dutch have Map Making, so it's probably only a matter of time until a galley appears in the water (unless their only productive coastal city is Amsterdam and they're building a wonder there). On a side note, I don't think I've ever seen a C3C AI build a curragh. Does anyone know anything about that?