The last challenge -- Team game -- Deity trial

[dingding]

My BTS is screwed by BUG mod, I can't check the save until reinstallation this wk.

Situation looks good. I think J/T will probably reDoW in 20-30 turns as their SoD are trapped, but it dosen't matter any more.

Moreover, we may need to adopt Judaism to get the 40% bonus and the Confucian missionary in the queue of Beaver city should be changed to Judaism missionary.

Agree.

So all the spies should mature 5 turns before gifting the city (will produce only culture there). I'd propose to collect "more" EP and burn it 2-3 turns.

Second.

Since I can't check the save, can anyone tell me how much EP it will cost to change Toku's Civic? It strikes to me that if we plan to spend a huge EP on him, we'd better change his civic to SP or FM. We can have much cheaper steals with trade road.

 

[bestsss]

Toku is not in mercantilism for long, long time now.

 

[dingding]

I forgot they were both in Env

I notice the next GP will be born in 2 turn and it's certainly NOT a GS. I suggest to launch a GP with the two GP we've got to boost EP.

With GP, we can accumulate about 35000EP+ in 10 turns.

However I try to calculate the EP cost we'll need but we don't seem to need that much. About EP, I'm not very familar. The result I get sounds ridiculous so I think I got wrong somewhere. Pls correct it if you find errors.

 

[bestsss]

The calcs are off a bit.

Spy ratio is the TOTAL spy points generated since the start of the game. Toku EP = EP us + EP vs Churchill (~35k) + EP vs Ragnar (that's joke less than 100EP)

We had less than 1k EP vs Ragnar.
Distance factor should be less when the palace is moved.

 

[shyuhe]

Agree, we should move the palace to beaver city. We should also swap to nationalism once we finish rush buying the espionage buildings, as +25% will yield more EP than free speech. Do we not have the Confucian shrine? I totally thought we did... In either event, we should swap to whatever religion we have the shrine for.

It may be useful to revolt J/T into something other than FS too - both to cut down on their culture and to slow their economy.

I wouldn't plant the city until we have 20-30k EP ready to go with 20-30 spies. It's cheaper to steal when our total EP spending over the game is greater, so might as well stockpile to get it all at once. In the meantime, our cities can either build infra, wealth, or spies.

 

[dingding]

To bestsss:

IIRC J/T have 10000+ EP towards us. I thought it was also 10000+ towards W/C.

So I estimate they have totally 50000EP in the game. That doesn't make much difference, we can still steal these techs for about 8000EP with so much reduction if the calcul is correct.

That means we have more EP to do sth else. I suggest to revolt Toku into CS/Pacifism or SP/Pacifism. CS can cause unhappiness problem and SP can reduce his pop. Pacifism to slow his economy.

IIRC Toku has 12 cities for the time being and 13 if we gift one to him. He'll need 2 turns to change back 2 civics, that's painful indeed.

Edit: True Toku may have the Cristo something. It seems useless to change their civics but it's on the other hand it's costless.

To shyuhe:

IIRC we gained about 600g before FS and 800g after FS. There could be 80-100 commerce of difference between FS and no-FS, that's no less than 20% of our whole economy. With Nationhood will only improve the lever (EP/Commerce) by 12.5%-15% (200%=>225% at max, 175%=>200% normally). In this circumstance, FS will still be superior to Nationhood.

I need to check the save to give a full answer to this.

Edit: It may be good, however, to change into Nationhood and revolt Toku into it to cut his commerce.

 

[bestsss]

Planting city is ok, we need 5 turns for the spies to stay there anyways.
I will just build culture there (helps a little). Just not give it away before we ready to open the Trojan horsie.
Unless mistaken I think they have the jesus dude now, so revolting will not be a big deal (although AIs are a little weird and not change immediately).
edit: checked, the jesus dude is in the gift city that shyuhe gave Toku.
@Duckweed, why slavery?
It's not very useful right now.
---
So, the planned war includes tanks, cav/gunships, bombers and jet fighters. (hopefully we get Aluminium (edit2, )
Industrialism, Radio, Flight, Rocketry, Satellites, Advanced Flight

I think by the end of the set I should be steal all the stuff and we can start amassing the horde.

 

[shyuhe]

@bestsss - that sounds good. If they get laser, I'd add that to the list but it can come after the core techs.

 

[Duckweed]

Agree on moving capital.

Switching to Nat during the period of 100% EP slider is better than FS, after gifting the city we should switch back since we want more culture bonus at that time.

I'm not very sure about slavery switch as I put a ? beside, but some of cities can use it for some important infras as granary and hammer multipliers. Instead of hurrying with cash, we want it to support full EP production now.

All original culture in gifting city and on surrounding 8 tiles will be removed by the time it is gifted. Therefore don't settle it before we are ready to steal.

We also need carriers for jet fighters and therefore battleships for escort are necessary as well. Paratroopers are pretty efficient at taking cities.

dingding's suggestion about switching Toku's civic is also good, but it should yield to tech stealing as it is pretty cheap.

 

[bestsss]

I will play tonight (~12 hours from now), is sober; if not tomorrow morning.
Duckweed, I will ask some gold from Churchill to prevent him from having weird ideas too.

The rest is getting all the EP w/ a golden age, more building EP buildings, incl. security bureaus (esp. around the border).

Swith to US/Nationalism.
I don't think we really need slavery right away. W/ golden age I'd prefer more workable tiles.

Also any preferences to the great person born in the draft city during the golden age?

 

[dingding]

About GP, we can spam 3 GP in the next 30 turns (t269) but by then we’ll probably have DoWed J/T so a GA is not very useful. So I suggest spamming GM. It brings about 2100-2300g, we can use it to accelerate units.

 

[bestsss]

playing now: btw, i will switch to Hinduism not Judaism, we have the holy city as well but it's better spread and there are more temples.

 

[Duckweed]

Hmm, I start to wonder whether you have played into the war.

 

[bestsss]

That was a brutal set:
so many technologies (in a single turn) or the old joke:
->the 3 B about: teching in civ
* Beeline, Bulb, Backfill
->and the 4th:
* bEspionage.

We can build mobile artillery, jets, gunships, bombers and tanks (we have aluminum too). We have everything including the laser. Also 13k EP left.

The only downside, we lost the happiness from industrialism+plastics (-4).
I will write the report a bit later.
Here is the save (I didn't finish the turn since it might be the time to mass military production), built some banks too to help the rush buy option.

I think, the game is over. During the golden age we have double the production of the closest rival (Joao obviously)

The save below.

 

[bestsss]

Had to quit playing very early (important stuff like house cleaning and watching movie took precedence, also installed the newly acquired laptop w/ a gaming videocard), and continued in the night...
anyways:

Traded w/ Chruchill and switched to slavery/US/nationalism (good civics, except US, for some reason I don't like US)
Ask 90 gold from Willem to keep them not thinking about our land and sent a spy for counter espionage in Toku's land.
Whipped relatively aggressively and delayed the golden age...

Here is a screenshot where it started, though. Our production rocks (hard).

Spoiler :

This is how the technology progressed. Joao is quick but he doesn't even suspect the crash in a couple of turns...

Spoiler :

In between we got a good even, finally

Spoiler :

...switched to hunduism, cash the failed wonder attempts (there should be more cash incoming on the next turn, iirc)

Spoiler :

...and unleashed the secret ones... glad there was no counter espionage from Toku, I'd have been cursing and stuff but here we go:

Spoiler :

also, we return to 80's when the laser was cool and all the spaceships shot w/.. when some phasers arrived and all the jazz but the laser was the inception. There it is:

Spoiler :

So this is where we stand:

Spoiler :

----
Notes: I didn't finish the turn since we should be switching civics and start the mass production to finish the game.
We should take a silk trade and fashion designer should cherish the fine clothes from Joao for 30gold. (alternatively marble+copper)
I renegotiated the trades to avoid requests to cancel 'em.
Switched Toku's civics, dirt cheap although some spies ended hung on non-bonsai trees.

Feel free to ask gold or map from Churchill to extend the peace, if need be.
Great merchant should be 2k3 (or 2k5 cant recall) gold, if sent on a mission in Oporto.
--
perhaps I am forgetting something, aside a recommendation which heaped movies can be freely skipped, but i will skip this part (for the moment)

 

[shyuhe]

Joao's third city is 99 turns from legendary right now. I don't think he's turned on his culture slider yet given their tech rate so I'd estimate we have ~50 turns to crush him. So turn off tech and rush buy an jet fighters (w/airports), bombers, tanks, gunships, and some mobile sam? J/T will probably get modern armor or at least mech infantry before we can declare so it'll be ugly.

Civics, I'd say US/nationalism (leave one or two cities building spy*)/caste/SP/theo. How many units do we need before declaring, given that Toku's border stack is about 50 units? I'm guessing 150-200 land units. With 30 cities, that equates to about 20-30 turns of build-up.

Does anybody else find it amusing that we can steal mass media for 1300 EP?

 

[bestsss]

Well, the point is the AI is ridiculously dumb
The programmers didn't put a lot of efforts in neither tech selection (who's frigign coding 3k lines function?! not serious people and not in OO language, and especially not in so naive way - yes it might have modding but that's all about it), nor in strategy optimization, just threw bonuses.
The point is that Joao is not following the 'culture' strategy, he just have more wonders and corporations than brain, so it's unlikely he'd touch the slider anywhere soon.

For instance who spends so ridiculous amount of EP (they have over 60k EP generated since the start) w/o any single idea what to do, just assign b/c it's cool. W/ such amount they can keep all out cities in constant revolt (or Willem's/Churchill's for that matter)


We have too much production to worry and we can tech nukes in a pinch too (duckweed doesn't like it but we can prolly get over way too many nukes to keep all their lands glowing). I'd tech refrigeration (it's 3 turns) and then turn off the slider for good.

There should be more money coming in the next turn (national wonders are 'bugged' and don't produce gold on the very next turn depending the city order that 'finished' the wonder), so we are set.
I think we should go: US/FR (or Nat, have to calc here, FR better for rush buy, NAT we can draft the globe again)/CS/SP/Theo
And switch to PS/Emancipation when declaration; Emancipation earlier if the anger grows way too high. Cristo is on the border so we can have 'improved' spiritual trait too on the 1st turn of declaration.

Btw, both traits have served us very well, so did the UU. So, I am very glad w/ the 'peaceful' leader we opted for.

We can strike from Willem's land if Joao gets annoyingly close to the culture or just we can amass 2 100x SoD and kick their arses quicker form both sides. Lovely!

Tech wise, we are all good w/ passive 1k EP/turn, just dont forget to run one spy into counter espionage (next turn again I believe), it's a very cheap deal and always succeeds and keeps their pesky agent calm, stupid AI insists on getting the full discount even from counter-espionage, ******** as it gets.


I am not sure I will get another set

 

[Duckweed]

I am not sure I will get another set

I'll save Joao & W/C for you.

 

[bestsss]

Both?
So you plan 30 turns for preparation?

 

[Duckweed]

Since we have laser and Toku's SOD is in the range of 2 movement units. I think mobile artilleries are better to deal with that stack. My current war plan is like:

30 Jet fighters in carriers
5~10 battleships for escort and bombardment.
24 bombers.
30~50 MAs, we can upgrade all the cannons.
20 paratroopers.
50~100 tanks/gunships/ veteran cavs( they are good for fast cleaning after MAs)/MAs/MIs

We should be able to take 3 nearby cities and kill most of the units in the Trojan city in the 1st turn of the war.

I think FS is better than Nat while in 100% cash slider. PS is better than US while building units, and we definitely need Theology for level 3 units. So civic change might be PS + FS + Theo next turn. We need some micros for the next 5 turns to let city produce different units so that 5 turns later we can switch to US to rush-buy those units with 1 turn investment.

I agree on 100% cash slider from now on. We are not playing a GOTM, so milking with citizens is no need.

Some micro attentions: Draft city is putting all citizens on specialist, I don't mind of scarifying 3 citizens for more GPPs during the last 3 turns of GA, but the Ivory city can take the fish tile to aid the growth from now on. Let Monty's former capital produce MAs since it's the only city capable of producing level 4 unit.