UNGY-03 The Gods of the Aztec

[mystyfly]

I'm not sure about REXing vs rush. With copper we can build axes quite quickly. But I think the saver way is expansion while teching straight towards construction. We can avoid IW so we don't have to build jags (as cats + phants are much more preferable).

Rusten's plan for settling looks solid but to me not that realistic. That northern yellow dot would be great. But shouldn't we settle another northern city (west of yellow dot) for blocking before that fish city?
If we manage to get some land we're fine but yellow dot is also in danger of getting cut off from the main empire - depending on the AI's expansion pace. Probabely, if bull doesn't have enought land to settle to the east, he'll expand towards us. This will cause big problems.

Tech pace I say wheel > agri > AH > writing > maths > masonry > construction. Thing is we'll be way backwards as there will be no techtrading as we research techs the AI usually knows anyway. So a nice bulb (philo?) would help out there.

Roster
Ungy - just played
Rusten - UP NOW
Mystyfly - on deck
Silverbullet
Melior
Olodune
Pigswill
Atropos
(If this roster is wrong say so)

 

[pigswill]

Gonna drop out of this one. Bit civved out at the moment. Probably lurk from time to time.

 

[silverbullet]

Are we planning to upgrade to patch 3.17 or keep playing with 3.13 for this game?
There are some significant differences

 

[ungy]

Gonna drop out of this one. Bit civved out at the moment. Probably lurk from time to time.

NP--it's been good to have you with us.

 

[mystyfly]

I'd like to use 3.17. Seems that most common bugs have been fixed. No more barb uprisings and partisans

I looked thru the first 3 pages but didn't find it anywhere in the thread: is the save still compatible?

 

[Atropos]

I hate barb uprisings with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I would vote for 3.17 even if it means starting over. But I won't be available for some time (I get back from my parents on the 30th), so my vote shouldn't really count.

We WILL need IW before any aggression due to our variant rules, unless I misunderstood them. It would therefore be a good idea to research it before Construction, so that we can build enough jags to accompany our jumbos. After Construction it will be a race to get enough phants before they get longbows, so we can't dally.

Dotmap-wise, Rusten's looks good if we can get it. If not, we'll need to fall back on our rushing plans. But if we do get to a situation where we can found a decent number of cities, we might even be able to go the aesthetics route for a more peaceful path to world domination.

 

[mystyfly]

We WILL need IW before any aggression due to our variant rules, unless I misunderstood them. It would therefore be a good idea to research it before Construction, so that we can build enough jags to accompany our jumbos. After Construction it will be a race to get enough phants before they get longbows, so we can't dally.

6. all military stacks in foreign territory post-IW must consist of at least 1 unit of Jaguars (if the Jaguar dies it must retreat immediately).

This means we only have to have those jags in our stacks if we have IW. Not teching IW saves beakers and not having to build jags saves hammers.

Although it's against the theme...

 

[Rusten]

I'd like 3.17 (partisans were fixed in Bhruic's patch already though). Saves are still compatible I think (I already patched and opened a previous game), but it might get buggy later--dunno.

Settling the two yellow spots will indeed leave us quite open, but the problem is that any city between those two yellow ones won't have any food or good resources before IW/Calendar. The only other food resource is the unirrigated rice and it's GG'ed by the jungle. Having food is the most important thing early on (and even more so given our future UB).

An alternative would be to passively settle 1S of the irrigated wheat and follow up with another city 1S of the banana and the purple X later.

I don't understand why we'd want to avoid IW for an elephant war, Jaguars are amazing healers, we definitely want at least 3 of them regardless of the variant. Even beyond the Jaguar issue we will need IW for tile improvements.

Regarding techs; I think it's too early to tell beyond writing. I'm not sure I'm supporting mathematics instead of alphabet because we will sorely need IW here to get food as there's jungle everywhere. If we get maths first we risk not being able to trade for IW for centuries and stagnate completely.

 

[mystyfly]

I'd like 3.17 (partisans were fixed in Bhruic's patch already though). Saves are still compatible I think (I already patched and opened a previous game), but it might get buggy later--dunno.

Are you sure?? I played imm uni lately (pacal) with most recent bhuric patch and partisans still were buggy.
I haven't read anything about saves being broken but otoh I haven't heared anything about saves not being broken...

Regarding techs; I think it's too early to tell beyond writing. I'm not sure I'm supporting mathematics instead of alphabet because we will sorely need IW here to get food as there's jungle everywhere. If we get maths first we risk not being able to trade for IW for centuries and stagnate completely.

Its selfresearch vs trading. Thing is, even after writing we can't tell whether we'll get ABC soon enought to manage some trades. It is more risky but probabely more rewarding. Thing is, the AI often tries the HG and thus doesn't trade maths around that easily. Having to research maths and ABC will take quite some time.

 

[Rusten]

Are you sure?? I played imm uni lately (pacal) with most recent bhuric patch and partisans still were buggy.
I haven't read anything about saves being broken but otoh I haven't heared anything about saves not being broken...

You probably didn't download the fix, it's a separate download doing some other stuff too.

Its selfresearch vs trading. Thing is, even after writing we can't tell whether we'll get ABC soon enought to manage some trades. It is more risky but probabely more rewarding. Thing is, the AI often tries the HG and thus doesn't trade maths around that easily. Having to research maths and ABC will take quite some time.

As it's a pangea map I guess tech trading shouldn't be that hard so mathematics is an option. Personally I like getting CoL here. With CoL we'll have cheap temples if we get there first (founding conf), the UB and as we'll be running priests we're going to get a GP for a shrine sooner or later. Also, it will open up a philosophy lightbulb early on which means that we can keep up in techs via trading while warring. Even if we miss founding confucianism we'll get taoism. It will also allow some heavy tech trading pre-philosophy.

 

[ungy]

I'd be inclined to settle the ivory patch first. Boudaca will surely head for that if we don't.

Both the other spots can be settled in a less optimal place if the AI settles to claim one of the resources and still have a reasonable city. There is also more chance that sitting bull goes for the marble, and QSH goes for the gems (or just has something good the other way).

I think we're looking at an expansion war probably cat/jumbo at latest and I hate to concede:
1)those resources the AI will give lots for
2) all that production.

I may not be considering our variant--that does make the uber food cities even better.


I'm for version 3.17--I tried it with an older save and it worked fine (so far).

 

[Rusten]

Ok, so the plan is to settle the purple spot first (at least it will have riverside grassland tiles in its second ring) and follow up with the north-eastern yellow spot wherever possible depending on what SB has done?

I value food very high when there's no commerce around because we'll have to rely on specialists and it's also the best source of production available, but I'm fine with securing the ivory as well. We're going to need extra food for that priest specialist too, but I guess it'll be ok once we get IW for the rice and chain irrigation.

If we agree on this I might play soon.

 

[silverbullet]

I agree that food is more important, but UNGY makes a convincing argument that we might still be able to get decent food cities after settling elephanttown.

I am not sure how boudica will react if we steal this spot from her settler. I know the AI is more likely to decalre when blocked, but with all the land around I am not sure she will consider it "blocked".

I am fine with settling either the yellow or purple spot first.

Regarding 3.17, I am not sure about switching. It seems there is a tank bug now. The barrage promotion is available to tanks, but it does absolutely nothing (no collateral damage).
This by itself doesn't bother me much for this game, but I am concerned that there are more annoying bugs that will hurt our game.

 

[Rusten]

Then let's stick to 3.13. I downgraded my version already.

Regarding Boudica; I don't have the save in front of me right now, but I'm guessing she'll declare on Wang Kon soon. All the warmongerers tend to do that.

Seems the input is shortening down, I'll play this now and settle whichever spot feels right at the time.

Edit: Opened the save and Boudica is just cautious towards WK, so we should be a little careful.

 

[Rusten]

Whipped the worker in the making when available and started on a second warrior. The overflow was a good match as we grew to size 3 again at the same time as the warrior completed while working all the food tiles.

Exploring nearby SB shows that he's surrounded by water as well, that's not good as he will settle towards us.



Greet Suryavarman.

Turn 47 - Zara asks for OB and I agree for diplomacy points later on. Zara is easy to get to pleased with very few modifiers.

As we're in need of both spots to the north/NE I decided to make a 2nd worker before the settlers and rather chop/whip them out more or less at the same time. I could've settled 1 city early, but if so the 2nd would be very late. Furthermore, making a second worker means that we can improve the tiles right away and it enabled the corn 2 turns sooner.

Turn 51 - First settler is complete and starting on the second. It got 2-pop whipped 2 turns later.



Turn 56 - SB just settled Chaco Canyon so I grab the ivory spot first as there should be enough time.



Turn 57 - Settle Teotihuacan 1S of the copper.

Turn 58 - Decided to stop here as the short-term goal is completed--grabbing those city spots. We're 2 turns away from settling the banana spot with no rival settlers around (had that warrior scouting on top of the jungle hill until now.

Capital is currently getting another axeman while growing to size 4. I guess we'll want to settle the rice/cow/fish spot next and fogbust it, but there is an alternative--1E of the grassland horses. It won't have much food, but it does grab a lot of resources. Suggest you take a look at the save/map.

Zara has knowledge of the Alphabet already and SB is getting close, I guess we'll want to skip that tech.

Tech path was: wheel -> agriculture -> pottery -> AH -> writing (ongoing).

Remember to switch to the copper tile when mined. I usually select food and whip monuments, but as we have a forested plains hill and soon to be copper so I went for production.

Use our cover promoted warrior to fogbust somewhere. It should have good odds vs archers when fortified.

Edit: Wrong info about the scout, it didn't die until a little later. A rival civ's archer killed the barbarian unit. I had already assumed it was the end of it when writing it down.

 

[Rusten]

Seeing as the Alphabet is the main thing for civs in this game and the fact that we're nerfing our UB mathematics is looking better and better as our tech of choice after writing.

There's also the issue of where to settle the next city, do we want to compete for the wheat or settle 1N of the original spot?

Seems we had a lot of time to settle these spots after all. Boudica didn't have any settlers nearby, so it wasn't as close as you'd expect, we made it in good time.

 

[mystyfly]

Seems the input is shortening down, I'll play this now and settle whichever spot feels right at the time.

I'm sorry I don't have much time now. Exams on WED/THU and lots of end-of-year parties I'll step back a bit from discussing but I'll fit in my turns somewhere. I'll play when we've (you've..) had some discussion.

Then let's stick to 3.13. I downgraded my version already.

How do you do that, besides from reinstalling bts??

Roster
Ungy
Rusten - just played
mystyfly - UP NOW
Silverbullet - on deck
Melior
Olodune
Atropos

 

[ungy]

Rusten:
great set. A good pointer for the rest of us(or me anyway) in building the second worker as we had two urgent city sites.

1E of the grassland horse is a very interesting possibility. I think we should send both the newly built axe and the warrior to scout the area. If it is still available when we get the settler out, I'd be inclined to go for it. I don't think it's worth whipping the capital as we need 2 settlers so I'd say break once the settler is built to evaluate. If we're at risk of losing the gems to culture I'd also pass.

One problem we have is I think it's a virtual certainty that SB will settle the plains horse before we can backfill a city there. Long term that leads I think to war.

As for tech--I'm not wild about math. We're going to be very slow and I think we can go aesthetics and most likely get math and certainly IW in trade.
With some luck we can parlay it into HR with some partial research.
In any case we should research at 0% once writing is in.

Now I downloaded 3.17 and I'm pretty lame tech wise--I don't know how to stay in 3.13 if we want to go that route.

 

[mystyfly]

I'm sorry I was busy this weekend unexpectedly and can play only on WED. Sorry for the late notice. Swap anyone?

 

[silverbullet]

I'm sorry I was busy this weekend unexpectedly and can play only on WED. Sorry for the late notice. Swap anyone?

I can probably play tomorrow, but I would like to have more discussion before going on.
I will look at the save later today and point several options.