UNGY-02 We like our people

[silverbullet]

Nice game. I am still a bit amazed by the slow AI tech speed (or is it our fast tech speed?).
No one has civil service at 700AD? We might even end up self researching guilds.

Getting Justinian Friendly seems the best bet here. We can maintain a tech lead even while self researching metal casting, but then we might get stuck without machinery, feudalism, guilds.

Meeting the last civ might help here, but I think that they may be KK's worst enemies, so I would be careful not to trade with them before verifying that. If he has enough on his hands for so long and it's not us and not Toku, it might be them.

Suppose we do bribe Justinian to friendly, do we want to bribe him to war with Izzy? I think not yet. I would prefer for him to research some more techs for us and time the war with Izzy to be 10~15 turns before we declare.

On this map it seems that after a quick war with Justinian we can easily march to either Izzy or KK, both of which will remain far behind us.

As for peace with Izzy - we might consider bribing ragnar to peace. It will give him a chance to get some techs and become a potential trade partner, and Izzy would have time to rebuild her army for a holy war with Justinian. We don't want him to have it too easy with her after all.

 

[Rusten]

I am still a bit amazed by the slow AI tech speed

Me too, but that's what happens when 3 out of 5 AIs we know are warmongerers and the other 2 focus on religious techs, quite a mix. *sigh*
West = war all game and the east = Toku, so.....

We're definitely in for an easier ride than normal, to the point where we might even want to restart and hope for a tougher game, but I guess ungy might want to see how the war goes, I think it'll be a cakewalk though.

 

[Olodune]

Got it.

Bad luck with Buddhist Toku

I'll check out the save and comment more later, but it will be ~20 hours before I can play.

...I think it'll be a cakewalk though.

Maybe -- still a little early to tell.

 

[silverbullet]

Bad luck with Buddhist Toku

Might not be bad luck after all. We can bribe him now to stop trading with KK, and for the right price he will even decalre war on him.

 

[Rusten]

Might not be bad luck after all. We can bribe him now to stop trading with KK, and for the right price he will even decalre war on him.

Yea, getting Toku to pleased was pretty big in that regard. I wrote as I played for the most part, so it's not as bad as I implied the moment he converted. Bribing those two to war should definitely be considered, it was also an added reason for gifting him compass--I forgot to mention it at the end of my report.

If we get those two against each other we won't have to face a possible Buddhist dogpile if/when we attack Justinian either.

Thanks for bringing it up.

 

[ungy]

We're definitely in for an easier ride than normal, to the point where we might even want to restart and hope for a tougher game, but I guess ungy might want to see how the war goes, I think it'll be a cakewalk though.

I'd be inclined to keep playing--although I do agree we have an unusually good situation here. We could get some complications--the AP perhaps.
If we do take out one of our neighbors, I'm fine to call it a win and start another game--I'm not much for mopping up but it feels like we're a ways from that.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Hi Guys - can you tell me what version of BUG you played with (check the BUG option screen, its on the bottom right). Black text is better than CTD isn't it?

I can't check because (I thought) I had wiped my install clean, but IIRC, version 2.021 was the last one I had used.

 

[pigswill]

We've got ourselves established without whipping. The next major challenge is going to be winning a proper (i.e. gunpowder) war without drafting or whipping.

 

[Olodune]

Reason why i stopped 1 turn before Gunpowder was that we have to decide now. If we finish Gunpowder and then trade for MC machinery won't be open and we'll waste a turn. We have to do it now and then trade for machinery the next turn.

Be aware that we need to research construction as well though (before Engineering and Chemistry). As pigswill expected nobody wants to trade it. I've seen the same thing happening too, but wasn't fully sure earlier.

- Athens will produce the next GS in 1 or 2 turns. Sparta will have no problem getting the next one. Thebes is currently on starvation instead of working food-neutral tiles. The moment it has grassland farms ready make a switch.

- I've started the NE in Athens (1 turn).

- The GS Athens is getting now will lightbulb Liberalism. The one Sparta is getting will lightbulb PP and the next one (probably Athens) will lightbulb 1/2 of chemistry, but we might end up 1 short. It's extra effective if we can 2x lightbulb Chemistry. Maybe we can squeeze one more in with some starvation in Thebes, we'll see. If we have to self-research Engineering we might have time though.

- KK still has enough on his hands, but his stack is still located nearby Turfan (at least it was 2 turns ago).

- Izzy is ready for peacetalks, but are we?

- Farm from Corinth towards the rice to the north--it lacks fresh water.

Rusten's summary is very solid as usual.

Metal Casting in only a 3t tech ... since it may be a little difficult to get J to Friendly maybe we should just research it? (alternatively, we could try giving him a gift ... I don't think we're maxed out on "fair trade")

Toku is willing to DoW Kublai, but Civil Service+Philo is not enough ... how much is this worth to us (Gunpowder+Philo? Education?)

 

[silverbullet]

I don't know how much we need to gift to Justinian to get him friendly. Compass alone may not be enough. We might actually need 2 techs or something like philosophy, so I suggest teching metal casting ourselves and use our tech trades to trade machinery and feudalism.

I think we can also get ragnar friendly by gifting,since he is far behind, so we can get construction from him and also his world map is useful.

I checked the save and if you try bribing Ragnar for peace with Izzi but he says we should talk to her.
I think we should bribe her for peace since we don't want her to vassalize him. She will surely declare on him or justinian soon, and since she is alone with no trade partners we can afford a little bribe.
I tried talking to Izzy and she wants bribe for peace, so we will need 2 bribes here - 1 for us and 1 for Ragnar.

 

[Olodune]

I checked the save and if you try bribing Ragnar for peace with Izzi but he says we should talk to her.
I think we should bribe her for peace since we don't want her to vassalize him. She will surely declare on him or justinian soon, and since she is alone with no trade partners we can afford a little bribe.
I tried talking to Izzy and she wants bribe for peace, so we will need 2 bribes here - 1 for us and 1 for Ragnar.

I think I agree here, but if Isabella takes Ragnar as a Vassal is that really such a problem for us? I'd rather she be strong for fighting Justinian anyways.

 

[silverbullet]

I think I agree here, but if Isabella takes Ragnar as a Vassal is that really such a problem for us? I'd rather she be strong for fighting Justinian anyways.

I think it is good to let Ragnar rest a bit and become a potential trading partner.

Toku is willing to DoW Kublai, but Civil Service+Philo is not enough ... how much is this worth to us (Gunpowder+Philo? Education?)

We cannot trade gunpowder to Toku - he needs guilds or education. He doesn't have feudalism even.
We can try metal casting+feudalism+civil service+philo, after we manage to do some trades.
I don't want to give up the education monopoly for now as this is our safety net for steel slingshot.
I think it would be worh it, but if the AP is built we might need to reconsider. I hate giving away 4 techs for a 3 turn war.

 

[mystyfly]

Sorry guys, but my civvin' time is a bit short atm so I didn't look at the save (I probabely shouldn't play that many SGs at once...)

Toku is willing to DoW Kublai, but Civil Service+Philo is not enough ... how much is this worth to us (Gunpowder+Philo? Education?)

I think we should keep him away from gunpowder and give him philo + something (guilds, edu, ...). I think toku is less powerful than KK and KK doesn't need more modern units. BTW notice how many shiny wonders toku built for us? There must be some kind of jackpot somewhere in japan...

Not sure about Rag vs Izzy. Izzy should be stronger I think, to weaken Just. If we attack KK and toku, we can't have Just build units non-stop who tear our veteran, but probabely less numerous (non-whipped/drafted) units into peaces. So I think we should look for a way to strenghten Izzy without pissing rag off too much.

 

[silverbullet]

Not sure about Rag vs Izzy. Izzy should be stronger I think, to weaken Just. If we attack KK and toku, we can't have Just build units non-stop who tear our veteran, but probabely less numerous (non-whipped/drafted) units into peaces. So I think we should look for a way to strenghten Izzy without pissing rag off too much.

What do you think will result in a stronger Izzy? 20 turns of peace or 20 turns of war with Ragnar? I don't know. I can see advantage to both side.
If Ragnar and us are at war with Izzy, the price to ask Justinian to join is lower than the case that she is not at war with anyone.

I think we will declare on Justinian is about 40~50 turns (after chemistry-lib steel we will need around 20 turns to build and upgrade units with chemistry workshops).
This means that we want the Izzy-Justinian war to happen in about 30 turns, so that most of his mounted units are in Izzy's territory. If we are lucky we could capitulate him while he is still strong and then focus on the KK-Toku pair.
I am not sure if it is best to give Izzy some time off the war now or not, since I am not really sure which one will make her stronger.

Regardless of that with enough cannons and grenadiers we will win Justinian. There are plenty of mountains and forests in his territory and with a few CG2 grenadiers he cannot recapture cities without major losses.

 

[Olodune]

I played only 5 turns as we may have trouble heading our way.

I started by getting peace with Isabella (for Aesth), however the price of getting peace between her and Ragnar is too high, so that war is ongoing

Maneuvering, to get J to Friendly seems a little difficult -- so I decided to research MC ourselves:

Meanwhile our next GSci, does his thing:

Liberalism is now 1t away, so after researching Machinery for 1t, I pull the trigger on this deal:

We are also in need of health, so:

So far so good, right?

Well here is the trouble spot:

Kublai has just moved his offensive stack into Old Sarai -- and I'm nearly certain that he will attack us (he's been WHEOOH for a while now). The trouble is our army is tiny, outdated, and we have no production rushing -- also since we just picked up MC our productive capacity is very low.

I think we should switch the slider to 100% gold to upgrade our Phalanx's to Maces, and start a fighting withdrawal (to minimize collateral damage).

Of course Kublai may just be playing with our heads

Your thoughts are welcome ...

 

[ungy]

I'm not wild about a fighting withdrawal.
I would go the opposite tack. I'd pull the sentry chariot back so that it isn't lost if he DOW's us. We can get 2 more char and another phalanx to the fort by stripping our cities and using the char under production.
That's really a pretty pathetic SOD for this time--yes we'll lose a few units if we're attacked but if we get 10 units on the fort we'll blunt the collat a bit and we do have a +75-100% defense so we'll win a few battles with damaged units. He'll only have maybe 4 or 5 non-cat units--so what do we lose maybe 3 of our 10? He'll be damaged to and will have lost his cats for now. The AI is pretty weak at assembling another SOD so if that's all he's got we're OK.
We have a huge tech lead on KK so if he doesn't get us quick he won't even with our weak prod.

 

[Olodune]

@ungy

I think you are correct ... I was a little afraid of x-bows, but there is only one (for now). The stack seemed scarier when I was playing ...

Edit: There are another 4-5 units that he would probably bring to the fight (including a pair in our territory -- we'll need to watch where they get bounced to).

I would have been happy to play the turns in one sitting, but thought this was probably a good point for some more discussion. I can play from here, or Pigswill can take it if he'd like.

 

[silverbullet]

Use the most broken exploit of the game - beg for 40 gold.
He will accept - peace treaty for 10 turns.

From there we can do several things.
If we gift metal casting to Toku, we unlock machinery trade with him, and that might just be enough to bribe him to war with KK.

Ragnar will be friendly if we gift him some techs (I suggest we try Aesthetics first since Izzy has it, if not enough, and then we can gift Monarchy, and if needed compass).
After he is friendly we can trade horseback riding and construction, but we might skip horseback riding for now as it is cheap and we don't want WFYABTA. We can build 3 catapults and park them behind the fortress, to eliminate the incoming SOD.

 

[Olodune]

Use the most broken exploit of the game - beg for 40 gold.
He will accept - peace treaty for 10 turns.

We can do that, but do we really want that kind of Karma? Actually ungy's analysis is solid -- I think we can take the combat with minimal losses. Fighting now might allow us to bring Toku into the war much more cheaply.

 

[silverbullet]

I don't see what the karma issue is all about. We are the good people that never draft or whip, we deserve something in return.
Personally I don't mind buying 10 turns of peace for the price of receiving a gift of 40 gold, but I can see why some of you might see it as cheating.

In any case, I don't mind paying extra for the toku-KK war if that means we don't have
to deal with war now.
We are only 20 or so turns away from great workshops, I would rather build more workers now than build units. We should make sure all cities get lots of farms and workshops - that is 5 and 6 turns per tile. Our current 8 workers are not enough.

My suggestion:
1) Use the exploit
2) If 1 is unacceptable, gift MC to toku now, so you can bribe him next turn.
3) Get Ragnar up to speed on techs - gift him to friendly and trade construction.
4) Don't trade education to anyone (at least not until we have bulbed chemistry - once the liberalism-->steel is done we can trade both education and liberalism).

In any case, lets wait until we get some input from the rest of the team.