The Devil is Six

[nocho]

Took a look at the save. The clearest thing to do is the proposed trade and libbing economics next turn. Will likely send GM to Amsterdam because of ToA. Besides that, what follows is a range of open questions.

* Civics. With merc, FM and FR available next turn, a civics change seems to be in order. A double change still seems to be only 1 turn. Question is, merc or FM? I have no clear preference here. Same thing in the religious department, OR (as we're hindu anyway) or FR? Pacifism is probably too costly with our number of outdated units.

* What do we upgrade? Horse units to knights? Or axes and swords to maces? The latter costs 660+750=1410. Doable and would give 18 maces to play with (after constructing some more maces naturally). Is it worth it to upgrade warriors? Nifty stuff like archers to Xbows maybe?

* Who is target? Izzy has juicy workers in sight, stole our northern barb city and has 2 cities (Madrid and Cordoba) within reach of 1 turn after DoW (beside that northern city). WvO might have hands full with Napoleon, which could be an advantage. Besides The Hague has a very juicy shrine. Then again, Sal also has a juicy shrine.

* What to tech next? I presume we can trade for engineering and possibly literature after aesthetics. I'd like to get literature for both epics. But apart from that? Are we looking for cuirs/cavs, or maybe cannons instead?

Other things (some as reminder to self ):
* We can temporarily trade away our horses to Nappy for ivory to build some WEs.
* Should finish spears before trading for engineering.
* Should disconnect iron at some point to finish numidians.
* We could use some grocers and/or even aquaducts in some key cities as our health cap is rather low.
* Generally agree with Cam about merchants in St Pete, will try to build NE here too though, so in my set we might be working mines instead.
* Look at resource deals. We have a spare gem, deals with WvO might be upgraded slighlty.
* HE in New Jersey, or maybe Bossanova?

Some input, especially about the first four "open" points, will be much appreciated.

 

[shyuhe]

We're gearing for war so I'd go merc. Willem has engineering so we'll need lots of siege. I think Izzy is a softer target.

 

[nocho]

Went ahead and played, I had hoped for some more comments though. I guess people are busy lately, the possibility of declining interest is obviously unheard of. At least I won't let this die out (yet).

Make the trade:

And lib economics.

Justinian captures London and caps Churchill. Only good thing is that that brings back peace and thus a possible trade route with Justinian, for a much needed health resource.

And then we make a civics change. Mercantilism for the extra specs and I end up choosing theocracy as we're mainly building units anyway. With rax all units will now come with 2 promos out of the gate.

Finish required spears and go on a trading spree for engineering, drama and considerable cash.

Spoiler :

Our GM from economics reaches Amsterdam (ToA) and cashes in.

And we continue building units, while teching printing press. It looked like a useful enough choice that opens up some paths and if anything will be a good trading chip.

With literature in (teched that in 1 turn after lib btw, some AIs were in WFYABTA so thought it better to quickly self-research it), started on both epics. NE in St Petersburg and HE in Bossanova. Though Bossanova is slow to grow it seems to have highest hammer potential. Right now it's configured to starve slightly to get that HE done asap. After it's done, work some farms again please. Queued Moai in our only sea side town (Surfer Rosa), but no hammers invested yet. At least we have stone.

Techwise we're doing not too badly.

Here the resource screen. Kinda didn't think of trading for elephants until too late. We could give horses temporarily, when we're done with the knights. We have a spare sugar to trade btw.

And the statistics screen. Finished the spears and cats, final mace will come around soon. First trebs are being produced. We have about 1800 gold for upgrades. That's basically the cash from the GM, the other cash I got in the trade deals went to researching PP at 100%.

The whole world is at peace again btw. As said, Church capped to Just and Nappy accepted peace with Willem after losing a city (you can see that in the screenshot where we cash the GM). Sal is still red-fisted. Given the location of his stack and religious differences I guess Willem is still the target. Keep an eye though.

Roster:
nocho - Just played
Ororo - Just played before that
Sengir - Up
shyuhe - On deck
Cam_H
r_rolo1

 

[shyuhe]

Are we going to wait to tech rifles and invade with those + trebs? Or cannons + assorted units?

 

[Cam_H]

Great work nocho (sorry that I've not commented sooner).

I agree that the next likely move will be Saladin DoWing Willem.

We could hop into that war alongside Saladin hoping that we can get Willem to cap' to us before he does to Saladin. It'd be great to get The Hague given Judaism's 29% world spread, and it, along with Nijmegen and Middelburg, The Hague is on flatland. (My second preferred choice).

An alternative is that we wait for Saladin's DoW, and hope that he's so distracted with Willem that we can back-stab Isabella without her bribing Saladin in against us. If Saladin quickly cap's Willem, we could be in trouble as all three turn on us. I'm frankly not that excited about attacking Isabella given the diplomatic landscape, but won't object if the group concensus is to attack Spain.

Yet another alternative would be to hit Saladin while he's off beating up Willem and try to take Mecca off him, given that I assume the only reason his tech' rate is so decent is the Hindu Shrine income.

If the roster wanted, I'm quite fine to bide our time and be 'Switzerland' until we get to Steel and Rifling, massive cash upgrades, and then go for the world sweep. (My preferred choice)

I agree that if we can get that Ivory trade fairly painlessly, we should do it. Unfortunately we'll probably be ready to build Cuirrassiers soon if we were going for Ivory <> Horses.

In the meantime, I'm OK to start on the upgrades - I'd say Chariots and Numidian Cavalry > Knights first.

 

[Sengir]

Got it, will try to post a plan tonight and play tomorrow.

 

[Sengir]

Units available for building:
1 mace (in progress)
1 numidian cavalry
5 knights (2 in progress)
6 pikes
6 cb's (1 in progress)
6 trebs
6 lb's
6 WE's


Not sure whether to go for cannons or rifles. I think cannons will be better, but with only 18, I'm not sure how much we can capture. Anyway, I think we should tech Gunpowder first, to get muskets available for building, along the units mentioned above and to delay the choice. I'll probably stop when it's in.

Trade with Nappy for Ivory to get WE's available.

Cities:
New York can use a aquaduct/grocer for the health.
St. Pete will be busy building NE, Surfer Rosa with Moai
Bossanova might need a Stable for the xp on horses. Other than that, keep spamming units.

I'll position our troops near the Dutch border, to be able to snatch some cities if Sally declares on Willem. (Or should I position them near Sally to beat him up? The Dutch cities are near our border, so can be taken a lot quicker)



Questions:
What units do we want to upgrade now?
Do we want to burn all our cash on upgrades?
Do we want to dogpile Willem/Sally in case there's a war?

 

[Cam_H]

(Away from my Civ computer, and I guess Sengir's putting his questions to the rest of the roster, however ...)

iirc ... Bossanova doesn't have Hinduism. On the basis of nocho's screenshots, we've not built a Hindu Monastery. I doubt it's worth a Monastery build just to get out a Hindu Missionary so it can spread Hinduism in Bossanova just to leverage Theocracy there, however if we wanted a Monastery in a science centre for the boost, then building that Missionary for Bossanova could be good.

I'm generally of the view that if we attack anyone, it should probably be the Dutch, and probably our leading unit should be Knights, which is why I favour upgrades there. If we opt to play peacefully until Rifling-Steel-Mil' Tdn (?) then upgrading melee and archers is fine by me.

I would be inclined to use our cash on upgrades, as sitting on a ton of gold may tempt the AI to demand unreasonable chunks of it from us, which may put us in an awkward spot diplomatically.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm fine with either cannons/rifles/curaissiers, but we should decide on a unit and not upgrade anything until it's available. The upgrade formula is such that it's more efficient to upgrade everything in one go because there's a base minimum upgrade cost per upgrade otherwise.

 

[nocho]

Maybe amass our troops in St Petersburg and only upgrade if and when we choose to dogpile, especially if like shyuhe says double-upgrading is more expensive. That would mean sitting on our cash for a good while, so don't go depleting it completely. And I think I might like cannons.

 

[Sengir]

Short set, mostly spend building units.

Turn 0:
Turn down slider to something maintainable (50% -17g), switch New York to a Grocer for the health and the extra cash.

Set tech to GP

Start moving the army to St Pete, just in case.

Turn 1:
More moving

Turn 2:
New Jersey: Treb > WE
Trade with Horses <> Ivory with Nappy

Turn 3:
New York: Grocer > Mace

Turn 4:
Come on Pilgrim: CB > CB

Turn 5:
New Jersey: WE > WE
Bossanova: WE > WE

Turn 6:
New York: WE > Mace
Bossanova: WE > WE

Turn 7:
New Jersey: WE > WE

Turn 8:
GP in, set tech to Chemistry
Bossanova: WE > Pike
Doolittle: Treb > Treb
We get a GS in St Pete.

Units available for building:
1 mace (in progress)
1 Num Cav (no horses atm)
1 WE (in progress)
1 Settler
5 knights (no horses atm)
5 CB's (1 in progress)
4 tribes (1 in progress)
6 pikes (1 in progress)
6 LB's
6 Muskets

Sally hasn't declared yet, in fact, he lost his fist WvO moved a bit of his stack towards Middelburg, and we've moved our stack to StPete, meaning there are a lot of units in that area

The Ivory <> Horses deal with Nappy should be ended asap. In 2 turns we will have the last needed WE, and the deal will be cancelable in either 2 or 3 turns, giving us the opportunity to build knights again.

Come on Pilgrim and New York can probably use a bank for the gold income.

The GS is unmoved in StPete.


Save is attached

 

[nocho]

Thanks for the set, Sengir. Will look at it later.

shyuhe is up with Cam_H on deck.

 

[shyuhe]

Ah, got it. Sounds like I just have to build more units while teching to steel? I'm assuming we will use the GS for a bulb? Or do people think a golden age will be better?

 

[Sengir]

The GS bulbs Chemistry IIRC, I'd be in favor of that, to speed up getting cannons and thus having a bigger window of opportunity.

Other than that it's building units and the occasional commerce multiplier.

 

[shyuhe]

I'll do some math to compare a chem bulb with a golden age. I'm pretty sure the bulb is better right now but I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Cam_H]

I'm going to be away from my Civ4 computer from the 6th to the 14th of this month.

I'm 'on deck' but will have to ask for a , as by the time the next turnset is played I doubt that I'll have the opportunity to compile a PPP and allow adequate time for consultation with the roster before (then) playing and reporting.

Best of luck!

 

[nocho]

Thanks for the notice, Cam. However, I guess it's not unfair to conclude that the general interest and time availability (including mine, admittedly) in this SG has waned to a point where we might better declare perma-hibernation anyway. Too bad, but that's life.

 

[shyuhe]

Oops, I forgot that I was up in this SG... does someone else want to grab it? I wont' have time to play until the end of this week.

 

[Sengir]

Hmm, I can, but I've just played. Maybe Cam can play a short set before departing?

 

[Cam_H]

Sengir,

Thanks for the offer, but I've also got a turnset with another SG and quite a few 'real life' commitments before I leave.

I'm very happy to get back into this game on my return however (rather than let it "hibernate"), but last weekend was really my last chance to work through a turnset for a while. To be honest, I'm also not 100% sure on our policy/strategy now that the world's back to universal peace - namely who to attack and when to attack.