I'm also for FR as we won't be friendly with Shaka any time soon. It's a little sad to miss out on theocracy, but we should really do something about our relations.
I'd go for rifling or military science next. It's normal speed making military build-ups more difficult so it's probably better to start working on units as soon as possible (we'll also need less siege if we bombard the coastal cities with frigates). You're very right about the whip, we'll need to apply it with extreme caution given the lack of food.
I'm for FR as well. Theo is just not worth the extra chance of getting backstabbed. I counted 20 towns+villages within 10 turns of town=40c extra with FS. Bureau is probably slightly better at this point as we get 44c and 7h in the capital for the cost of 9g (and not all the towns are there yet).
I'd actually detour after steel and pick up aesthetics, lit+drama. I don't think it's worth trading for those at this point and I think we should get theatres up and HE going.
Shaka has the SOZ and it'll be a bit of a slog so I think we'll get some pretty good WW.
Then I'd tech out to rifling. By then I think our chances are good to get nat in trade (or research it) and I'd draft. While we don't have a good globe spot, we can still draft a pretty good army. We can build a bunch of cannon and ships now, and we should have tech superiority which means few losses.
As for the Shaka war, we should get a HE unit soon. I think we can steadily kill his units over here while we build our forces. We shouldn't kill too many galleys yet--much better to kill his units on our territory.
The other option is peace( once we get a HE unit) but I think I lean towards keeping this going.
I would find it disappointing if we went for a standard nationalism, draft rifles and win type game. I'm also not sure whether this would be an optimal strategy either in our circumstances. We have mainly cottages and very few specialists (or food to support them). Raising the culture slider to counter 'hell,no' and WW means a loss of beakers/cash with no bunch of specialists to compensate.
Why not stick with the previous plan of going steel, scimeth, communism, build kremlin while trading/researching towards democracy. We've reached a stage where we can think beyond surviving invasion by Shaka so there's no huge weight of impending doom to colour our decisions (note the mixed metaphor!).
Ooohhh - my - God! So sorry guys, I wrongfully suspected you of dishonest chipotle-supported gameplay. I guess I spend too much time digging through code with variables like iNonsense and iParanoia during hours I should have been sleeping, so that I started seeing things/ghosts... The announcement of Doping-Lance planning a comeback to win another Tour de France must have subconsciously primed my overtired brain with "defraud" and "scepticism" causing it to smell a "Chipotlegate" ala a certain player's "Barbgate". Thanks Rusten, for PMing me to straighten everything out.
Again, I'm terribly sorry, I shouldn't have been so doubtful in the first place, you are all true masters of CIV. So I can only hope the CIV-world won't consider me a villain for too long. Good luck and a lot of fun with this entertaining and challenging game variant.
BTW, why didn't you try to pop Astronomy from a hut on the NW barb island? You can use Caravel travelling Spies to pop huts guarded by barbs, but maybe you consider this cheating, since the AI would never do this.
For those interested in what made me turn into a lousy infidel, here's what happened:
Spoiler:
Chipotle is a nice tool to investigate game mechanics and AI decisions, since it lets you see all their cities and advisor screens plus it gives you information about their current strategies and area battle plans (even when WHEOOHRN doesn't work). So in order to find out when Shaka chose to attack you, I went back through the saves and checked for a switch of his AreaAI from AREAAI_NEUTRAL to AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING or AREAAI_ASSAULT. The 660AD save shows Shaka's island with AREAAI_ASSAULT which indicates that he has decided to attack you during Silverbullet's turn set. I've furhter modded my dll to tell me about the AI's current war plans and their respective StateCounters, hence I knew he chose a TotalWar vs. you on turn 140. The strange thing about this direct switch from NO_WARPLAN/AREAAI_NEUTRAL to WARPLAN_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT associated with the skipping of the whole revocable preparation phase (WARPLAN_PREPARING_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING) is, that this requires the AI to follow the Dagger strategy at the moment it decides to change war plans. However, Dagger should not be a valid strategy for Shaka, as it is disabled by a iParanoia==0. An AI is supposed to get paranoid when it is surrounded by close neighbors, who it doesn't regard as friends (<=CAUTIOUS). But you (Pacal) are the only neighbor Shaka knows of and he has been PLEASED with you for hundrets of years. This is where the evil self-closeness bug kicks in which erroneously returns the closeness of Player B to himself when Player A asks for how close he feels Player B is. So during the Paranoia check which is executed each turn after an AI has made a first contact, Shaka experiences extreme paranoia due to the very (self-) close unfriendly "neighbors" Napoleon, Wang Kon, Charly, Joao and Toku although they are on the other side of the globe and Shaka doesn't even know that they exist...
Since this is absolutely stupid, I have also included the BetterAI fix for this bug in my dll, but to my very surprise I found Shaka with strategy Dagger in the 25AD, 325AD and 860AD save whereas I found him with no Dagger but strategy Peace in the 660AD save (ironically, as this was the first TotalWar-save). WTH? Switching back to the original 3.17 dll showed him with Dagger in 660AD too. WTF2? Digging in the deepest of code abysses I understood that the strategy hash of an AI is calculated from scratch if the current game turn is not equal to m_iStrategyHashCacheTurn. Thus my fixed dll calculated a new strategy for the 660AD save whereas it did not for the other saves that showed the saved strategy hash calculated with the bugged dll used by you. But this only meant, that m_iStrategyHashCacheTurn for AI-Shaka had been updated during the human player's game turn before the game was saved. WTF3? This was the moment I got paranoid--"My god, they are using chipotle!!!" I double checked, but couldn't find anything in the code, which might set the CacheTurn to the next game turn during the AI's move before the human jumps in as the active player again. I tripple checked by trying out every possible combination of switching between the default and my modded dll with chipotle on and off saving and reloading games after having or not having asked for Shaka's strategy to update the CacheTurn... "They must indeed be using cheat-potle!!! WHY?????" WTF4?.
After a night of sleep and the PMs from Rusten I did one thing: I opened the trade screen with Shaka. And "bing--Shaka has calculated a new strategy hash" popped onto the screen, a message I had modded into my dll to appear whenever an AI updates its CacheTurn... So all of you except Silverbullet had been visiting Shaka before you saved your games...
Please forgive me!
~~~~~
Some notes about Shaka as a threat in this game:
In addition to being naturally dangerous due to his low MaxWarRand (50), Shaka is even more certain to declare in a scenario like it is present in this game. He is confined to a compact empire on a rather small island with a central capital. And he has the Ikhanda plus he likes to spam units (BuildUnitProb=40). All of this will significantly increase the cash he has to spend on units in relation to his rather low total costs (due to the very low maintenance). This has a dramatic effect on the likelihood of him deciding to go to war, as it is the Percentage of the spending on units (not the absolute values) that is factored in when he is rolling the dice. In the 325AD save his UnitSpendingPercentage = 12/45 = 26%, which increases the probability for a TotalWar by a factor of 7!
The invalid but bug-induced Dagger strategy effectivly reduces his NoWarProbs for CAUTIOUS and PLEASED from 40/90 to 30/80 (or +100% probability for war when pleased). With the fixed dll Shaka enters the usual preparation phase, but during my tests to find out whether Shaka might call his plans off again due to not enough offensive units, I noticed something new: The AI does not perform this check if the target (you) has no city on the capital's landmass and always switches from WARPLAN_PREPARING_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING to WARPLAN_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT after 10 turns (normal speed).
BTW, why didn't you try to pop Astronomy from a hut on the NW barb island? You can use Caravel travelling Spies to pop huts guarded by barbs, but maybe you consider this cheating, since the AI would never do this.
actually I didn't know you could do that--also didn't know anything about chipotle (I'm lucky if I can get my comp to work) but that's fascinating about the AI.
@DanF: no worries, just make sure not to be too isolated with the code or iParanoia increases (like Shaka ). Also in any case I tend to agree with your more general conclusion about the human race
Now a serious question:
Spoiler:
I noticed something new: The AI does not perform this check if the target (you) has no city on the capital's landmass and always switches from WARPLAN_PREPARING_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING to WARPLAN_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT after 10 turns (normal speed).
Can you elaborate a bit more about the difference between the 2 cases (you have a city on the AI's capital landmass and you don't have a city there)
Is my understanding correct that on an Island the AI will always declare 10 turns after deciding to go to war?
@pigswill:
I didn't look at the save yet, but I agree that immediate drafting is not fun here. Also, Shaka knows other civs by now probably so he might be less likely do decalre in the future even at pleased, and he will probably pick a worst enemy, so let's assume we have time.
We settle the island, go for kremlin, and later probably trade for democracy and rush buy modern army to conquer the world, like decmoracies do.
I would find it disappointing if we went for a standard nationalism, draft rifles and win type game. I'm also not sure whether this would be an optimal strategy either in our circumstances. We have mainly cottages and very few specialists (or food to support them). Raising the culture slider to counter 'hell,no' and WW means a loss of beakers/cash with no bunch of specialists to compensate.
Why not stick with the previous plan of going steel, scimeth, communism, build kremlin while trading/researching towards democracy. We've reached a stage where we can think beyond surviving invasion by Shaka so there's no huge weight of impending doom to colour our decisions (note the mixed metaphor!).
I'm OK to try this--and I do think it would be more interesting. I just wanted to state what I thought was the best chance of victory. This path is a whole mess of techs and most likely we won't have as much of a tech advantage at wartime. If we go this path we may want to skip Shaka and start with Charlie--he'll be a lot easier.
Also, Dan, looks like you have really given this some toughts I can't say I understood exactly what you're saying but I haven't tried too hard, spent most of the day calculating integrals and am pretty tired...
I'll post specific comments most likely tomorrow, or at least well before playing. I'd also like to avoid "dull" draftles war. I'm not sure we really need the slider as we're quite fine with imo, OFC helped by those ball courts.
Ooohhh - my - God! So sorry guys, I wrongfully suspected you of dishonest chipotle-supported gameplay. I guess I spend too much time digging through code with variables like iNonsense and iParanoia during hours I should have been sleeping, so that I started seeing things/ghosts... The announcement of Doping-Lance planning a comeback to win another Tour de France must have subconsciously primed my overtired brain with "defraud" and "scepticism" causing it to smell a "Chipotlegate" ala a certain player's "Barbgate". Thanks Rusten, for PMing me to straighten everything out.
Again, I'm terribly sorry, I shouldn't have been so doubtful in the first place, you are all true masters of CIV. So I can only hope the CIV-world won't consider me a villain for too long. Good luck and a lot of fun with this entertaining and challenging game variant.
BTW, why didn't you try to pop Astronomy from a hut on the NW barb island? You can use Caravel travelling Spies to pop huts guarded by barbs, but maybe you consider this cheating, since the AI would never do this.
For those interested in what made me turn into a lousy infidel, here's what happened:
Spoiler:
Chipotle is a nice tool to investigate game mechanics and AI decisions, since it lets you see all their cities and advisor screens plus it gives you information about their current strategies and area battle plans (even when WHEOOHRN doesn't work). So in order to find out when Shaka chose to attack you, I went back through the saves and checked for a switch of his AreaAI from AREAAI_NEUTRAL to AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING or AREAAI_ASSAULT. The 660AD save shows Shaka's island with AREAAI_ASSAULT which indicates that he has decided to attack you during Silverbullet's turn set. I've furhter modded my dll to tell me about the AI's current war plans and their respective StateCounters, hence I knew he chose a TotalWar vs. you on turn 140. The strange thing about this direct switch from NO_WARPLAN/AREAAI_NEUTRAL to WARPLAN_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT associated with the skipping of the whole revocable preparation phase (WARPLAN_PREPARING_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING) is, that this requires the AI to follow the Dagger strategy at the moment it decides to change war plans. However, Dagger should not be a valid strategy for Shaka, as it is disabled by a iParanoia==0. An AI is supposed to get paranoid when it is surrounded by close neighbors, who it doesn't regard as friends (<=CAUTIOUS). But you (Pacal) are the only neighbor Shaka knows of and he has been PLEASED with you for hundrets of years. This is where the evil self-closeness bug kicks in which erroneously returns the closeness of Player B to himself when Player A asks for how close he feels Player B is. So during the Paranoia check which is executed each turn after an AI has made a first contact, Shaka experiences extreme paranoia due to the very (self-) close unfriendly "neighbors" Napoleon, Wang Kon, Charly, Joao and Toku although they are on the other side of the globe and Shaka doesn't even know that they exist...
Since this is absolutely stupid, I have also included the BetterAI fix for this bug in my dll, but to my very surprise I found Shaka with strategy Dagger in the 25AD, 325AD and 860AD save whereas I found him with no Dagger but strategy Peace in the 660AD save (ironically, as this was the first TotalWar-save). WTH? Switching back to the original 3.17 dll showed him with Dagger in 660AD too. WTF2? Digging in the deepest of code abysses I understood that the strategy hash of an AI is calculated from scratch if the current game turn is not equal to m_iStrategyHashCacheTurn. Thus my fixed dll calculated a new strategy for the 660AD save whereas it did not for the other saves that showed the saved strategy hash calculated with the bugged dll used by you. But this only meant, that m_iStrategyHashCacheTurn for AI-Shaka had been updated during the human player's game turn before the game was saved. WTF3? This was the moment I got paranoid--"My god, they are using chipotle!!!" I double checked, but couldn't find anything in the code, which might set the CacheTurn to the next game turn during the AI's move before the human jumps in as the active player again. I tripple checked by trying out every possible combination of switching between the default and my modded dll with chipotle on and off saving and reloading games after having or not having asked for Shaka's strategy to update the CacheTurn... "They must indeed be using cheat-potle!!! WHY?????" WTF4?.
After a night of sleep and the PMs from Rusten I did one thing: I opened the trade screen with Shaka. And "bing--Shaka has calculated a new strategy hash" popped onto the screen, a message I had modded into my dll to appear whenever an AI updates its CacheTurn... So all of you except Silverbullet had been visiting Shaka before you saved your games...
Please forgive me!
~~~~~
Some notes about Shaka as a threat in this game:
In addition to being naturally dangerous due to his low MaxWarRand (50), Shaka is even more certain to declare in a scenario like it is present in this game. He is confined to a compact empire on a rather small island with a central capital. And he has the Ikhanda plus he likes to spam units (BuildUnitProb=40). All of this will significantly increase the cash he has to spend on units in relation to his rather low total costs (due to the very low maintenance). This has a dramatic effect on the likelihood of him deciding to go to war, as it is the Percentage of the spending on units (not the absolute values) that is factored in when he is rolling the dice. In the 325AD save his UnitSpendingPercentage = 12/45 = 26%, which increases the probability for a TotalWar by a factor of 7!
The invalid but bug-induced Dagger strategy effectivly reduces his NoWarProbs for CAUTIOUS and PLEASED from 40/90 to 30/80 (or +100% probability for war when pleased). With the fixed dll Shaka enters the usual preparation phase, but during my tests to find out whether Shaka might call his plans off again due to not enough offensive units, I noticed something new: The AI does not perform this check if the target (you) has no city on the capital's landmass and always switches from WARPLAN_PREPARING_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT_MASSING to WARPLAN_TOTAL/AREAAI_ASSAULT after 10 turns (normal speed).
It's ok, but next time please PM before going public with anything. That way you avoid things like this. There's nothing more frustrating than being accused of things you haven't done (and don't have the sufficient knowledge/tools to disprove).
After this somewhat esoteric diversion (Chipotle? Sounds like an Aztec hot dog) let's get back to the game.
One option we could consider is going for milsci , build some cannons then spend a couple of turns at 100% cash upgrading maces and the such to grenadiers for a quick invasion force.
Micromanagement point. Stop galleon in Mutal, wait for steel then build a drydocks to knock out an experienced fleet in half the time.
Nicely guessed. I looked it up earlier (I had no idea about this code either) and apparently it's another word for jalapeño which originates from Mexico. It's called 'chilpoctli' in Nahuatl (Aztec language) and 'chipotl' in Spanish.
well as I stated earlier at the moment bureau is better than FS.
However, it's close enough that it's probably worth taking both together.
As for continuing the war--well at the moment there is no choice.
I guess we can get a HE unit from the barb city but it'd be a lot quicker to get one from Shaka--I'd try and make that happen with his next set he lands.
Let's not build anymore cats.
I'm OK to do the communism route. I've almost never done that and the other is getting boring.
What do you think about mass workshopping our inland city to make it a production city? If we build ironworks there we will have better chance to build kremlin even if WK gets to communism around the same time (and it's a tech the AIs love).
We don't have to destory all the towns now, but we should be ready to workshop spam it as soon as communism is there.
The city north of the capital could be a moai/HE city.
I'd also repeat my plug for aesthetics-lit.
not worth trading for now but I think it makes sense to get the HE city up and running asap--it's very few beakers at this stage of the game.
We can trade philosophy for theology and a bit of cash at this point. We don't need it atthe moment (FR is better) but when rush-buying an army theocracy is the best religious civic to run (lvl 3 with barax while still running buro/FS).
We don't actually have a lvl4 unit yet, that's a couple of attacks away. Agree on withdrawing frigates for the moment. Maybe by the time we've finished steel we might have one.
I agree about the literature detour. Not sure drama is needed yet.
What do you think about my placement suggestion for HE, moai in Lakahama, and Ironworks in Mayapan?
I don't agree about Moai at all. I find that to be the most overrated wonder in the game. We don't even have stone meaning it's going to cost 250 hammers and the city doesn't exactly work a lot of coastal tiles so it's going to take forever to have it pay off. I usually skip this wonder completely (if I have stone I'll consider it).
I wouldn't workshop over any matured cottages. We're going to be in US (rep. useless with this variant) meaning our towns get 1 hammer so they're too good to give up imo. Having the IW in Mayapan sounds ok though -- we'll get some more hammers from windmilling those hills too.
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Thanks Rusten, for PMing me to straighten everything out. 
So I can only hope the CIV-world won't consider me a villain for too long. Good luck and a lot of fun with this entertaining and challenging game variant.
/45
I can't say I understood exactly what you're saying but I haven't tried too hard, spent most of the day calculating integrals and am pretty tired...
slider as we're quite fine with 
I looked it up earlier (I had no idea about this code either) and apparently it's another word for jalapeño which originates from Mexico. It's called 'chilpoctli' in Nahuatl (Aztec language) and 'chipotl' in Spanish.
