Turn discussion 171-200

[nabaxo]

What turn are we on? Status update!

 

[Sommerswerd]

So super busy at work lately, haven't had time really to play the game . Everything is queued out the wazoo though, so there shouldn't be any problem. Only thing is I need to turn off Engineers in Vandal so city doesn't starve, but we still beat Q to getting Broadway. Kremlin is next, Either in Vandal or in Sangrine.

We can pretty much stop teching to build culture, espy, gold etc. Gold to spread Corps should be our focus.

Also Q has a culture problem on Gosh as CDZ is murdering them with Constructaco. Should we offer them Sushi Co? It would be great income for us if they spread it all around. It would also boost their growth though... do we want that?

Anyway, I have been taking screens just not posting them. I will try to do it tonight, but there is a Hurricane coming and I need to prepare. The storm might put me out of contact so if I disappear somebody please take over.

 

[2metraninja]

I took our turn seeing there are 3 hours to the turn switch. Not much to do as Sommerswerd said, the Engineers in Vandal are exactly to the point where not to starve. The next (already in which we are) turn must be reallocated though to avoid starvation.

Also, our Great Spy is in one city on Anjennida - is where he is supposed to be settled?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Also, our Great Spy is in one city on Anjennida - is where he is supposed to be settled?

I don't know whether it is better to put him in a third Scotland Yard, or to Settle him where we already have Scotland Yard. I must think on this a little and look to see which is better. I think we now already have 2 Scotland Yard cities, both also already with Settled spies in them.

I think this new Spy must probably go build a 3rd Scotland Yard in the city where we build the Kremlin.

 

[damnrunner]

Hey just chipping in again on what to do with the Spys. We already dominate everyone on esp and will be building up huge esp surpluses against all teams while at peace for the foreseeable future. I really think saving a GSpy now for a later Golden age would make far more sense.

If we do end up back at war additional esp could be helpful, but we already are far superior to the other teams in this regard. But it looks like this game will be finished peacefully and I cant stress how useful a golden age can be in rushing final spaceship parts.

 

[2metraninja]

Good point about the GA, Damnrunner. I love Golden Ages

And not too confident about the non-existence of a military threat. The only thing that makes me a bit more calm about this is the pacifist sentiments of our remaining opponents. The 3 combined can well sweat us if declare war. Even if not by pure military means, only stopping sharing techs with us will kill us at some point if we did not manage to kill them till then

 

[Sommerswerd]

We already dominate everyone on esp and will be building up huge esp surpluses against all teams while at peace for the foreseeable future.

Yes we do dominate in espy, but we want to keep it that way. All the other teams are steadily increasing their espionage efforts against us. We have to respond by continuing to increase our espionage, or they WILL catch up.

We are ahead in espy, but not that far ahead where they cant catch up with us. We have lost city investigation ability on several of Q and Sirius cities, and we need to get that back as quickly as possible. We will do that by INCREASING espy, not decreasing it or keeping it the same.

We have to see what is going on in our opponent's cities. That is how we beat Merlot, and that is how we won the war against Sirius. Because we had visibility of the whole map, and we had SO MUCh espy on Sirius that we could steal Artillery AND Assembly Line and still maintain city visibility, General 2metra was able to break them.

Our path to victory is to always know what the rivals civs are building in EVERY city. It should be obvious to everyone that only got Pentagon before CDZ and will only be getting Broadway before Q, because we knew that they were building the wonders, and we knew what city they were building it in. Only our espy lead makes this possible.

So that brings up two things that I didn't want to mention while Caledorn was still on the team (I have been in constant talks with him about taking over Q so I knew he would probably change teams). The way we will win the space race is not by using a GA to rush out Spaceship parts. The way we will win is by sabotaging our rivals spaceships just before they launch them, allowing us to be the first to launch. To do this we will need MASSIVE espionage, and we cant afford to waste Great Spies on GAs. We can use other accidental Specialists like Great Scientists for Golden Ages.

On the other hand, if we want to pursue a Cultural Win with our many religions, we will need to hoard as many Wonders as we can. Espy is invaluable for this as we know when the Rivals are Going for the Wonders, so we can beat them to it.

CDZ Q and Sirius are all maxing their espy on us. CDZ has closed the gap from 600 pts to about 200. Sirius has almost 1300 espy on us. And Caledorn has told me outright that he intends to enough espy on us to stop us from being able to see Q cities. We CAN NOT allow this. We must remain super-dominant in espy at all costs, because it will ensure our victory long term

I really think saving a GSpy now for a later Golden age would make far more sense.

Using our Great Spy for a Golden Age just does not make sense. Great Scientists, or Merchants, sure Great Artists or Engineers, maybe, but a Great Spy? No

This is an Espionage Team. This has been our trademark from Ancient days. Would a team going for Cultural Victory use Artists for a GA? Hells no. And an Espionage team should not waste their trademark Great Person for GAs either.

If we do end up back at war additional esp could be helpful, but we already are far superior to the other teams in this regard. But it looks like this game will be finished peacefully and I cant stress how useful a golden age can be in rushing final spaceship parts.

Not if, when. Q is already talking about attacking CDZ, and if you think somebody wont at least try to nuke us when we start building spaceships, you have another thing coming. We have a 50 turn NAP with Sirius that has about 45 turns left. When that is over, we should be ready for another War. But again, we need espionage for the PEACFUL victory even more than we need it for war. The fact that we are at peace is a reason to do MORE espy, not less.

And not too confident about the non-existence of a military threat. The only thing that makes me a bit more calm about this is the pacifist sentiments of our remaining opponents. The 3 combined can well sweat us if declare war. Even if not by pure military means, only stopping sharing techs with us will kill us at some point if we did not manage to kill them till then

Agreed. We would be fools to just act as if there will not be any more wars. We need to stay ready, keep up our espy, and keep pumping out a steady stream of spies.

 

[2metraninja]

Because we had visibility of the whole map, and we had SO MUCh espy on Sirius that we could steal Artillery AND Assembly Line and still maintain city visibility, General 2metra was able to break them.

True.

We would be fools to just act as if there will not be any more wars. We need to stay ready, keep up our espy, and keep pumping out a steady stream of spies.

Agree. In this regard, we must maybe build a Scotland Yard in our third most commerce producing city, as when it comes to this, the espionage will be generated trough running the slider - just like we did in the war with Sirius, and then as far as I understand espionage, SY will be more productive than settled GSpy.

In this regard, are we building Security Agencies, Jails and the third espionage building now when we have Communism? Those 3 combined will give us pure 12 espionage points in each city and then to add to this a 100% increase of the espionage if I recall correct.

About the civics - yes, we need to change them. I would very much like Universal suffrage - this will allow us to buy things with Kremlin quick to build our espionage and economic buildings. We can use all of our gold when we are not forced to tech to maintain tech parity. Now we must put the foundation of the infrastructure which will make us invincible in the future.

I noticed with pleasure we are number 1 at GNP - something I desired for all the game long.

 

[nabaxo]

I think I'll just voice my opinion about a third Scotland Yard as well. And how the heck can we be first in GNP? Is it because of our sheer number of cities?

 

[2metraninja]

Yes, culture too I guess.

 

[damnrunner]

I had not realized the other teams had focused there esp on us to such a degree. Assumed they were also splitting theirs 3 ways. Thanks for pointing that out Sommers.

On the suggestion to switch to Universal Suffrage.... I am also tempted by Representation. Since we have Statue of Liberty this civic is especially powerful for us. But I also love buying infrastructure with Kremlin. How close might we be to getting the Cristo Redeemer wonder? That would allow us to operate mostly in Representation and then switch to US to buy pre-built infrastructure. A very powerful combo.

Are there other civics we should consider switching to?

 

[Sommerswerd]

How close might we be to getting the Cristo Redeemer wonder? That would allow us to operate mostly in Representation and then switch to US to buy pre-built infrastructure. A very powerful combo.

I think Christ-the-Redeemer comes with Mass Media, so we still need Radio first IIRC. As far as getting it, the nice thing about being an espy monster is that we have a good chance that we will know when another team tries to go for it, and be in a position to either beat them to it or sabotage them, and then beat them to it.

Are there other civics we should consider switching to?

We need to get out of Theocracy. I am thinking we go back to Org Rel so that we can get the production bonus. We also need to spread our 4 religions to Myrine so that we can Max out Priests for our Holy Shrine(s). We should also spread our religions all around before switching to Free Religion anyway. Spreading the religions to all cities will make our Cathedrals easier to get wherever we want.

We also need to switch to Emancipation and Free Speech. I am sad to lose the Nationalism espy bonus but CDZ is killing us with the culture from Constructacon so we need Free Speech.

 

[damnrunner]

It seems folks are pretty into the idea of a culture win. I think this will be hard to pull off, but my poor understanding of how much culture one can gain from corps might make me more pessimistic.

Could I ask how high our culture is in our capitol and what level of Culture Per Turn the city currently has. Also with the settings in this game what is the final Culture level we need to get in our culture cities in order to win? Info on the 2nd and 3rd highest culture cities would also be useful. I suspect other cities actually have better potential to generate more culture, but this info will be a helpful baseline to determine how much catch-up our 2nd and 3rd cities will need to do.

 

[nabaxo]

Been a few days, update?

 

[Sommerswerd]

I've been organizing screenies. I should be posting tonight.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Too often lately I feel some invisible presence. When I look at this thread, I see written that 2 members are reading it, but only my name is shown there. This means that someone who is made himself invisible is reading here. Is it a possible spy or is it the spirit of some of the legendary forefathers of the team who are not visiting us in the visible world anymore, but secretly keeps and eye on us and is guarding and guiding us - TMIT, Mariogreymist, etc...

If only...

Can we make space before people start slinging nukes, or otherwise get them banned? It's ludicrously difficult to win space against competent nuke play.

Another thing to note is that with space race you can insta-move the palace if it's threatened. I strongly suggest that's done the turn the ship is launched, to wherever is the absolute safest.

Actually if nukes aren't formally banned than we can just curb stomp the world if we get there with any sort of lead; tac sub -----> double nuke everyone's major cities/stacks. There will be no mercy or recovery from that, other teams would just fold or futilely attempt to survive without any production base or standing army. Not pretty, but safer than risking that outcome ourselves if we're thinking very late game tech .

Space tech path depends on whether there's much to be had from a play at the internet. If there is then ASAP computers is beneficial, if not then it really depends.

(btw, I'm not one of those 2 mystery lurkers, just happened back here...)