UNGY-03 The Gods of the Aztec

[Rusten]

well good thing we had an oversize roster

Agreed.

Rusten: do you like razing/rebuilding the barb city with our settler?
Seems like if we don't we could see a chinese city at the wine/fish.

Think it might be better to just take the city at this point. While the fish would be many thanks the problem of moving it 1W is losing a lot of time (and hammers for a settler). If it's situated 1W it will have the usual non-creative problem of having no good tiles in it's first ring. Due to that it will take a long time to get the monument up and then another 10 turns before we can start working food resources. If we have it where the barb city is now we will at least have irrigated rice--it should be enough to get started. It won't need a monument either, it can just go granary -> library -> 2 specialists. Capturing the barb city saves time and makes the city productive many, many turns earlier although it will be less productive than 1W as time passes by--but we're attacking early here so the immediate gain should be pushed for IMHO.

We can use the settler for crab+bronze right next to our capital instead. It will be productive from turn 1 (seafood in its first ring so pre-make a WB in Tenochtitlan) and have low maintenance.

Edit: I thought the city was 1N+1NW of what it is--so the above doesn't make perfect sense. I still think we should grab the city where it is though because of rice in its first ring.

 

[Rusten]

Changed my mind. Not having the cow with the rice is a little too much--I'm probably in favour of razing and settling for all the resources if we have a settler ready right away.

 

[Atropos]

Got it. I will play in 1.13 (we may need to revisit this given that everyone is dropping out ), continue with Aesthetics, try to build our economy, and keep the settler for a future raze and replace.

 

[mystyfly]

I'm glad we have some discussion again. I generally agree with what rusten and ungy said. I add that I moved those axes in the direction of the barb city for the cost of exposing our newer cities (that are further away from the capital) so you should probabely move 1-2 axes (or the woody warrior) there to protect them.

 

[Rusten]

Got it. I will play in 1.13 (we may need to revisit this given that everyone is dropping out ), continue with Aesthetics, try to build our economy, and keep the settler for a future raze and replace.

Sounds good. I also suggest putting research at 0% until we have our library in Tenochtitlan and to cancel the order of the worker 1N of our capital--we need to start roading towards SB instead of irrigating that riverside grassland.

 

[Atropos]

whip library ASAP (switch off research in the meantime)

I also suggest putting research at 0% until we have our library in Tenochtitlan

I'm an SG noob, not a CIV noob but thanks.

By the way, I use the BUG mod. I hope that doesn't create problems (wasn't mentioned in the OP ...)

 

[Atropos]

Turn 0: My very first SG turn, hope I don't smoke too much :weed: Do the suggested adjustments: gift clams to Boudica, revolt to Buddhism, switch off research, adjust micromanagement. Whew! Nervously, I press enter ...
Turn 1: Oracle built in a far away land. Tenochtitlan settler -> library. Axe beats archer. Worker at capital starts roading towards SB. Qin is boasting about his swordsmen. Settler starts moving towards putative city site to be ready when needed. Warrior moves to guard northern cities.
Turn 2: A barb archer eats Zara's scout, moving out of the barb city in the process. I'm torn between attacking (two axes versus two archers) and waiting. I calculate that we would have 60% odds of winning both. In the end I decide that it would be too risky.
Turn 3: Nada. The archer that ate the scout now has a CG promotion. Oh, well.
Turn 4: Sitting Bull offers Open Borders. I refuse. Nanjing gets a border pop, picking up our future cows in the process. I move the now healed third axe next to the barb city by itself, in the forlorn hope that they will send a couple of archers to suicide on it.
Turn 5: Babylon shows up. Hammurabi founded Hinduism and is the score leader.





He wants open borders, I refuse.





The capital finally whips its library. Note that at some point in the last couple of turns Teotihuacan finished its rax and started an axe, which I forgot to write down.
Turn 6: Tenochtitlan library -> axe. Qin founds Chengdu, claiming our fish. It was a mistake not to attack the barb city when I had the chance earlier. Mea culpa. I was worried that, if I attacked prematurely, I would lose my chance permanently along with most of our army (we only had four axes at that point for our entire empire).
Turn 7: Workers have finished roading to Sitting Bull, so I sign open borders to connect our cities. Settler retreats towards Rusten's originally proposed city site.
Turn 8: Zara pops up offering crabs for copper. I refuse (deal is unequal anyway). Can we accept trades like this or do our variant rules ban them as well? I hadn't immediately realized we had a second copper.




I switch the capital to a work boat to be able to get the crabs city up and running immediately. I consider gifting the second copper to Boudica (who seems to have metal anyway, as she asks us to fear her axeman), but decide to wait for the team's opinion and hope no one demands it.
Turn 9: Qin revolts to HR, Zara is now Buddhist. We apparently picked the right horse.
Turn 10: Teotihuacan axe -> axe.
Turn 11: Sojourner Truth (Great Prophet) born in a far away land. SB's borders expand to take our crabs. Wonderful. I decide to found the city anyway as we want to get culture there sooner rather than later and maintenance will be low. Crabs are first circle so we should be able to steal them back. Switch capital to axe again as we cannot get crabs immediately anyway.
Turn 12: Zara must have currency as he can now trade gold. New barb archer pops up in barb city.
Turn 13: Babylon builds hindu shrine.
Turn 14: Boudica is buddhist, hurrah. Qin sends a settler to grab the space between our cities. Considerably less hurrah. Boudica is also sending a settler in that general direction.
Turn 15: Teotihuacan axe - > library (need culture to win the border battle with Boudica). Qin is now buddhist too. Everyone is of the same religion except Hammurabi, which is not good for our rush, but at least our diplomacy is doing well. Tenochtitlan axe -> work boat. We should probably use the WB to scout as Sitting Bull is providing a work boat of his own for the crabs.

The world as we know it:



I'm not overly happy with this turnset. I feel that I missed an opportunity with that barb city to get a much better site, and, overall, although our economy is a little better, I don't feel we accomplished much on my watch. Any advice on how I could have done better would be appreciated.

 

[Rusten]

Hah! Don't worry about the level of play--we don't bite so just have fun.

The rules only ban one-sided trades, so feel free to accept any that we get something from (even if it's an unfair deal). The tech pace is really fast here and seeing as the world is Buddhist almost all around we should be able to trade a lot once we bag aesthetics (play this part slowly in order to maximise trades--we can get a lot of techs).

Now that Tenochtitlan has grown we should give the clams to the newly founded city in order to speed up the culture buildings (monument 3 turns faster). We should be able to win the crabs quickly once we get our second ring popped.

We need to whip the library in Tlatelolco the moment it's possible. Getting to 100 culture before Mound city is crucial.

QSH has unfortunately settled the fish+wine now and popped borders for the cows, so keeping the barbarian city should be the way to go.

Your turns seem fine to me at first glance--we're definitely going places research-wise. Now we just need to be patient enough to keep running those scientists non-stop.

 

[silverbullet]

I just downloaded the save and will take a closer look later today. I can play tonight or tomorrow night (Time Zone:GMT-5) depending on how much discussion is needed.

My thought: having 2 copper now is risky, we should gift/trade one of them.
When the GS is born, do we plan to settle it?
Once we have Aesthetics, are we going to part research alphabet and trade for it, and then trade around both Aesthetics and Alphabet?
Do we focus on tech now (code of laws, construction) or prepare for war?

 

[mystyfly]

I'll also post some comments after looking at the save. RE alpha trade, if some civ has currency you usually can trade abc for aest + 50g which could probabely be an option.

We can gift copper to boudica who seems to have iron.

 

[Rusten]

No, don't trade Aesthetics to a civ with Currency--we want to able to trade for that afterwards, it's better to part-research with someone backwards. I think we should aim for currency or CoL next. This is a pangea map so we might be able to trade for construction. Either way, we will need currency before going to war so there's no reason to delay it. Chances are we can pick up all the other remaining techs with it as it's the most expensive one.

 

[mystyfly]

Thing is I'm not sure we can pick up currency. If say 3 civs know currency, we'll have to part research currency after we start trading aestetics around. Until we have enought beakers invested, the AI can trade it around. I'd rather be able to trade around for everything we can in 2 turns (making sure we get alphabet and mathematics in the first turn, then probabely construction, calendar, IW, ... in the second round. This way we're safer and avoid AI-AI trades.

I'm not sure we want both currency and col before the war. Currency gives a nice boost with trade routes and we can avoid bankrupcy with building wealth so we want that. I'm not sure we want CoL as we can't whip anymore until we have temples and are running priests (and we're quite far away from that) so I'd rather have some more and save some hammers and beakers.

 

[silverbullet]

Typically it's pretty easy to get alphabet (with part research), mathematics, iron working and cheaper techs (sailing, polytheism, masonry).
Another issue - how cheap do you want to trade here? WFYABTA will hit fast on Pangaea, and with our diplomacy limits it's harder to get friendly allies.

Regarding code of laws - we will need temples and a priest, not to mention spreading religion to take advantage of whipping. On the other hand, CoL is usually a very good tech to trade around - we might be able to get horseback riding for it and start to mass whip elephants and catapults.

 

[Rusten]

Yeah, I was mostly considering trade value when mentioning CoL--not getting courthouses. Anyway, I suggest taking a pause after aesthetics+having part-researched alphabet in order to to look at trade options. It would be amazing if we could find someone having currency but not aesthetics+alphabet (via mathematics)--so let's keep looking for good trades.

CoL also opens up a philosophy lightbulb--we really want to make sure we're first to Taosim considering the variant and lack of commerce.

 

[Atropos]

I think that I am going to update to 1.17, if this SG permits, as I will otherwise have to drop out of another. Could I get a definite yes or no on this?

 

[silverbullet]

I am fine with a 3.17 upgrade, but note that it might affect the gameplay if we don't play on the same patch (specifically, the spy mission "support city revolt" cost has been increased).

 

[silverbullet]

OK, took a look at the save, and this is what I am thinking:
- We have 7 gold left. Aesthetics will be ready in 9~10 turns if we don't get extra gold. Zara currently has 20 gold and is pleased, so we could try asking for a gift, or wait a few turns hoping he would have more (currently 0 GPT).
- Once we get Aesthtetics we should be able to get iron working.
- The capital is currently building work boat, and we won't need it for quite some time, until we win the culture war with SB over the crabs. I suggest switching to worker as we only have 3 workers for 4 cities.
- We could also consider another worker from Teotiuacan before a library. That will give us 5 workers to farm the jungle rice, banana, sugar.
- We need to gift/trade the copper immediately
- With all our Axemen we should be able to take the barbarian city, but the problem is our power is very low. We could get dogpiled at any moment. Wouldn't it be wise to open borders with our neighbours to improve relations?
- As Rusten suggested, let Texoco borrow clams from the capitol for a few turns to whip monument ASAP.

 

[Atropos]

- The capital is currently building work boat, and we won't need it for quite some time, until we win the culture war with SB over the crabs. I suggest switching to worker as we only have 3 workers for 4 cities.

We shouldn't need the WB at all. SB is sending a workboat there himself, so we should find it ready for us when we want it. Since it only has one turn left (IIRC), however, I would advocate letting it finish so that we can circumnavigate the continent with it (since I also agree with your suggestion about open borders with everyone but the pariah Hammurabi).

 

[ungy]

I've already got the 3.17 installed, and I have no idea how to play in 3.13 so I'd say let's play in 3.17.

Atropos: good set!
Not attacking the barb city was a reasonable judgement call--I wouldn't worry about it. Attacking could've worked out worse--we could've left it weakened for QSH or someone else.

I think we should pause when aesthetics is in and plan our trades carefully.

I say we go for the barb city sooner rather than later.

I'm not a big fan of building units to boost the power rating to deter attacks--we've got religion on our side and I agree with OB to boost relations and also get some scouting.

 

[Rusten]

I'm not a big fan of building units to boost the power rating to deter attacks--we've got religion on our side and I agree with OB to boost relations and also get some scouting.

Agree. IIRC we have already started paying extra gold per turn for units so we need to grow our cities more first.