UNGY-03 The Gods of the Aztec

[Rusten]

Had a good look at the save now--ideas ->

I disagree about postponing sailing after all. The tech costs much less than the actual beaker value because most people know it by now. I said earlier it wasn't an urgent priority but I think otherwise after looking at the save. We really should get lighthouses in our seafood cities--food is key.

I'm in favour of getting currency before construction. Construction is one of those techs the AI never wants to trade. I only get it when everybody has it usually and that's going to take quite some time. Currency is such an immediate boost that the sooner we get it the better. We can beg for gold and sell resources for gpt. Furthermore we'll get an extra trade route in our cities and the option to produce wealth temporarily. I rate our chance of obtaining construction via trade early as very low. We will also need HBR for WEs so currency will be great trade bait for both construction and HBR.

Micro;
- settle the GS as our slider will be very low (even more so when we're attacking).
- set Teotihuacan to part-build the SoZ or S. Paya (we have the resource) for gold after the library. We're not going to complete it.

We're going to have to assume Boudica is after Hammurabi--our power rating isn't that bad and we can't afford more units atm.

Agree with most of your (Atropos) micro suggestions. I'll assign a specialist in Tlatelolco until we get some more 3 or 4 tiles up.

 

[mystyfly]

Are you going to play rusten? Your thoughts all sound reasonable, I think we should tech sailing for the lighthouses, esp in tenochtitlan.

Let's hope boudica is after hamm. Even if we survive without losing a city. I don't want a distraction, QSH is military target #1.

I'm already back btw

 

[ungy]

I disagree about postponing sailing after all. The tech costs much less than the actual beaker value because most people know it by now. I said earlier it wasn't an urgent priority but I think otherwise after looking at the save. We really should get lighthouses in our seafood cities--food is key.

you've convinced me--I was stuck in trade route land.

I'm in favour of getting currency before construction.
Micro;
- settle the GS as our slider will be very low (even more so when we're attacking).
- set Teotihuacan to part-build the SoZ or S. Paya (we have the resource) for gold after the library. We're not going to complete it.

We're going to have to assume Boudica is after Hammurabi--our power rating isn't that bad and we can't afford more units atm.

all good ideas.
As for Boudica, if she comes for us we'll really have a challenge on our hands

 

[Rusten]

Great. It seems we have agreement so I'll play tonight.

 

[Rusten]

Took over at turn 100 Played 15 turns. Thought we were still on that number but after playing I noticed silverbullet played 10.
Oh well, at any rate 1AD is a nice place to stop.

Turn 102 / 325 BC
Pyramids built in a distant land (Khmer capital).

Turn 103 / 300 BC
Sell our corn to Zara for 5 gpt. While it's our only one we don't have any health problems as of yet--can just cancel if we need it.

Turn 105 / 250 BC
Whip into the SoZ--easy 70 gold. I picked the SoZ over the S. Paya as it's usually built sooner.



Popped our GS and settle it. I postponed our monastery--whipped a granary instead and will 2-pop whip the lighthouse the next turn.

Turn 106 / 225 BC
SB demands Aesthetics--declined obviously.

Turn 109 / 150 BC
Taosim founded in Nanjing. Furthermore the turn after QSH revolts to pacifism and bureaucracy--his research is way up there. He also got a random event IIRC (+3 with Zara).

Turn 110 / 125 BC
Sell our newly aquired crab to the Khmer for 6 gpt.

Turn 111 / 100 BC
*sigh of relief*
Boudica declares on Hammurabi. Expected, but it still felt good to get confirmation.

QSH completes the SoZ......
He also constructed the GLH at the end of the set.

Turn 112 / 75 BC
Boudica asks me to declare on Hammurabi--I decline. Do we have to decline requests like this in the future or are we allowed to accept? It's a little different from asking for techs/resources--after all the one who asks doesn't gain anything so I say we're allowed to accept. The aztec gods want blood after all.

Also, some douche poisons our water supply in Tenochtitlan.
We get gold for the part-built SoZ (208).

Turn 114 / 25 BC
Espionage revealed SB was 1 turn away from calendar. Furthermore he was the only AI lacking aesthetics and meditation (IIRC) so I put 1 turn into it and make a trade.



Turn 115 / 1AD
We're currently 2 turns away from currency. When I started on it only Zara had the tech, but one after another they started trading it around due to the extremely good relations all around. At least this means it was/is cheaper to finish, but we won't be able to trade anything for it. I thought about changing research to construction half-way through, but in the end trading for it later would add to WFYABTA and even if we can't trade it around obtaining currency ASAP is good. Our economy will get another lift with 10-15 added commerce of trade routes and there's no guarantee construction wouldn't end up the same way.

We have a lot of gold now so we should start getting units imo. We can begin getting jaguars and axes while teching for catapults and WEs--it shouldn't take long with a 100% slider. Tenochtitlan should keep running 2 scientists, but the other cities can start whipping units.

Begged for gold from Suryavarman, WK and QSH.

Mine the grassland river hill after the plantations in Tlatelolco--that's a great tile to work, especially considering that the city has a lot of food already. We might want to change our EP spending--I noticed at the end of the set that it's all on SB.



GNP looking much better and it will rise again in 2 turns (currency).

 

[silverbullet]

Good turns Rusten.
I believe that we should be allowed to help a friend in war if the enemy is annoyed with us.
If Hammurabi asks us to war/cancel deals with boudica though, we must immediately declare war on him, since he is an annoyed civ making a demand.
We could declare on him anyway, I believe he has no OB with anyone so he cannot get to us.

Are we going to skip CoL before our next war?

 

[Rusten]

Are we going to skip CoL before our next war?

I think so. For starters QSH already grabbed Taoism and furthermore our cities don't have that much food so whipping won't be as powerful as usual--we don't need/want the sacrificial altar yet.

 

[Rusten]

2 things I forgot to mention.

- I accidentally gifted copper to SB and rice to Boudica by misclicks when wanting to press "what would make this deal work?". This needs to be cancelled after 10 turns as it goes against the variant. I had a slippery mouse (played on my laptop). It doesn't make a big difference though--if anything it is hurting us as I could've gotten some gold for it, but rules are rules.

- WK joined in on the war vs Hammurabi.

 

[silverbullet]

Who's next? Mystifly? Atropos? Ungy?

 

[Rusten]

mystyfly can go first if he can get to it before or on the 14th as ungy's still OOP.

 

[mystyfly]

Got it then. I'll play tomorrow I guess but I'll have a proper look at the save before. Comments appreciated, as usual.

 

[Atropos]

Wow, the past couple of turnsets really turned our economy around. When I left, we were struggling to maintain 20%. Now we break even at 50% and have plenty in the bank to maintain a higher rate for some time.

The one flaw I see is scouting. We have spare units, no barbs to worry about, and open borders with our neighbors. Recon will be very helpful for the war.

 

[Rusten]

Agree with scouting. I was considering doing it in my set, but in the end I decided to play it safe and station our units on the border to Boudica in case she decided to attack us. We're free to send them wherever we want now though.

 

[mystyfly]

Playing now. Standard military buildup set I guess. Teching Currency > Construction. Cancel resource deals. Run 2 scis in Teno.

 

[mystyfly]

(1)
Tlatelolco's borders pop. Really nice. We're winning that wheat tile back - 1% per turn

(2)
Currency > Masonry
Teotihuacan's borders pop too (I seem to be easily pleased today )

(3)
Masonry > Construction

(4)
We get a random event. I pick the GA. It'll play off in 43 turns. Earlier if we adopt representation


(5)
SB demands Ivory and is turned down of course (sorry, I oversaw that it was hooked up last turn), and...


... stays cautious. So no DOW (yet).

(6)
MoM BIDL.

IBT
Hamm bothers us


(8)
Construction > HBR

(9)
Our scouting WB hits hammurabi's borders and turns around again.

(10)
GL BIDL

---

Basically boring set, except the . You'll find quite some in all our cities. It paid off though - Unit Upkeep raised from 3gpt to 17gpt

I sold Hamm ivory - partly to help him stay alive (though I don't know whether he has HBR yet - only few civs have it). Cancel it sometime (hamm is boudicas, wangs and sury's worst enemy) when there's another resource or gold available where we can safely trade for it - else pillage that road. We have plety of idle units.

We're technologically so backwards, I'm already looking foreward to getting at least some techs from a peace treaty...

Queue-swapping would be a good idea, that sadly came just after playing. Oh well. We have enought jags and spears me think. I'm mostly building (or rather whipping) cats atm.

I don't understand why every single worker is up north, while teno is running out of useful tiles. So is Minoan. I sent 3 workers down there, 2 are still up (IIRC).

View attachment UNGY-03 AD-0250.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Atropos]

Looking good, we have a nice army (but really need more catapults, good call).

This could be a turning point and calls for discussion.

1. How many cats/phants do we need before declaring?
2. Whom are we going to attack? All three of our neighbors have their points: Qin would give us a holy city, Boudica's troops are engaged elsewhere, SB has nice land close enough to have low maintenance. All our scouting seems to have been done under the assumption that SB was the target, yet we have a huge stack of units doing nothing when they could be telling us whether Qin's capital is on a hill and where his resources are. SB is the most obvious target but not the only one, especially since his extra promotions probably compensate for the fact that Qin's border cities are on hills. As for Boudica, we have absolutely no idea whether she has good land, hill cities, etc, nor of where her troops are.

Who is up?

 

[mystyfly]

Ungy will be back tomorrow and play next I think then you (though I'm not sure).

I only started cats on my turrn 8, when construction came in (makes sense, right? ).

I was assuming we were going for QSH, which was at least brought up once. Now I'm not sure... we have 400-500 eps on SB and could trigger some revolts... OTOH QSH is right in our backyard... We could attack SB and wait for QSH to adopt tao or conf(it it was he who founded it - I believe it was him), then clean our backyard. Both are protective... Lots of QSH cities are on hills... (BTW nice catch, we really need to scout our possible victims). We'll know after the next set probabely.

As to how many units; we clearly need to build cats and phants, I doubt we'll be done building them in one more set.

RE EPs: Rusten said to adjust EPspending, and so I did, I put everything on QSH to see his demos. He is close to SB, about 0.7 compared to us IIRC.

 

[Rusten]

Can't look at the save so I'm afraid to post any comments atm but I can post a roster.

Ungy - UP
Rusten - taking a breather
mystyfly - just played
Silverbullet - on deck
Melior
Olodune
Atropos - taking a break

PS: WK is at war with Hammurabi--not Boudica. I made a typo earlier.

 

[ungy]

OK-I'm back and sounds like things are moving along pretty well.
I'll post up a plan either later tonight or tomorrow

 

[Atropos]

What do you mean, "if" Qin founded Tao/Conf? We can see his holy cities.

I wasn't criticizing you for lack of cats, but applauding you for having them already started.

Now that lots of civs have Currency we might want to hook up the last phant and sell it for as much gold per turn as we can get.