UNGY5 Let's keep it simple!

Dirk, sorry I didn't make it clear in my previous post.
I can play the next round if Rusten and Vra are not available. There is no need for you to play 3 rounds in a row.
 
I can take it/am available tomorrow (not sober now) if Vra fails to respond by then.
 
Wasn't able to get to it yesterday. Still no word from Vra though, so I'll play tonight.
 
Do we want to go for this deal? It's 1 or 2 turns into my set.
Spoiler :

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I think we should agree on a strategy now because there will be committal moves ahead. If we take it we have some interesting options.

We can:

- get a 2nd GS anyway and burn 2 on education
- only get 1 GS and get a GM second instead
- stop GPP after the GS and start whipping HAs

or a combination (get the 2nd GS and a GM while getting HAs (no whip).

There's also the possibility of using one of the GPs on a golden age instead of lightbulbing liberalism. We have a fair bit of hills and rivers, so it should prove useful as well.

Where do you want to take this game?
 
I would take this deal. The only thing it prevetns is bulbing liberalism, but double bulbing education is pretty close in terms of GPP to beaker ratio, so it's no big loss and it's a very good deal.

As to where we are going to take the game, I am not quite sure.
I wouldn't go for an early golden age. I think we can do without it for now and might need it for the late game. It will be hard to keep up with AIs with education and oxford. After 1000AD we will lose our tech momentum.


Why not let the RNG decide? Let's switch to GM generation instead of GS.
If we get a GS, let's continue towards education and liberalism (with a second GS).
If we get a GM, we can go for an earlier war - research HBR and start whipping HAs. We will be able to trade something for guilds soon. In that case we will not spend any beakers on education. We will need to research techs that we can trade for guilds and engineering.
 
At one point the plan was to go for lib>economics in which case 2GS for education could get us the economics GM. Trading for machinery means we use 2GS for education rather than 1 apiece for education and liberalism, no biggie.
Maybe just stick with that plan and slowbuild HAs, leave whipping until we get guilds and can whip out cataphracts (or garrison longbows).
 
(Lurker's comment)

Wouldn't it be just right for you guys to run the so called hammer economy, as Unconquered Sun briefly described
here and here ?
I mean later of course, for now bulb economy is working fine :)
I'd prioritize Communism and the State Property here.
Just my 2 cents.
Have fun with this one.

(back into lurking mode)
 
^I actually suggested something like that when i joined the game. I still think it's a good idea when we're out of bulbs. The idea is of course we can get 100% multiplier on hammers, nothing on science and a bit on gold so this economy is much more attractive here than in other circumstances.

Actually a grassland workshop still doesn't make it compared to a grassland town.
Under emancipation/free speech a grass workshop = 2F3H => 2F6C with 100% multiplier. A cottage = 2F1H7C with US, 2F7C without.

But with the ability to switch quickly between production/research/gold workshops are much more flexible than cottages here of course. Watermills might be even better, have to look up what they produce exactly after electricity. I'm amazed USun chose this economy without the restrictions we're playing with here, have to read the article/load the saves.
 
Actually a grassland workshop still doesn't make it compared to a grassland town.
Under emancipation/free speech a grass workshop = 2F3H => 2F6C with 100% multiplier. A cottage = 2F1H7C with US, 2F7C without.

Actually, workshop is 2F4H under caste system, and 2F4,4H under Caste + State Property. (After chemistry of course, but before that bulbing takes care of research)

But with the ability to switch quickly between production/research/gold workshops are much more flexible than cottages here of course.

That's right, but it's not the whole story.
If you capture cities from AI, well developed and with lots of towns and infrastructure, cottages might be better. No reason to bulldoze them eh?
On the other hand, if you create new cities from scratch, workshops are worth considering, as they don't need time to mature.
Furthermore, you can do a sort of "binary" research with them. What I mean is that first, you build infrastructure giving +%:hammers:, and only then you turn research on. Thus research is conveyed only when all of +%:hammers: modifiers are in place.
One more nice thing is that you can skip a lot of infrastructure going this way. No need for universities, banks, etc etc.

I'm amazed USun chose this economy without the restrictions we're playing with here, have to read the article/load the saves.

Well, that report of his was a real eye-opener for me. He used that strategy in BOTM 10 (Deity level game, playing as Charlemagne), because the map was shaped in a way that allowed player to expand peacfully to a lot of cities, and because almost none of those cities could be irigated (which left Food Economy out of the question).
CE approach would probably be too slow there.

Ok, seriously, back to lurking mode now. I have no intention of highjacking this thread :p
 
Who needs emancipation with Justinian? We have the greatest slider abuse building to combat unhappiness.
If we get assembly line with a reasonable time, we can workshop everything. As USun said, a grassland workshop is 8.4 hammers with caste+state property+forge/factory/coal plant. That is pretty close to a full mature town and it doesn't need to mature at all. With enough workers it is instant.

With enough cities we can compete to space with this economy (Ironworks will be our "oxford"), but domination is much more suited for such an empire.

I think the key here is to get a large enough empire and get assembly line and communism in a reasonable time (a friendly vassal can help a lot). Once that happens I don't think anyone can stop us on immortal.
 
In my experience you often need to go emancipation somewhere along the line. If this isn't needed for Justin so much the better. And indeed Caste + slider at 10-15% is better than emancipation +0%.
 
Why not let the RNG decide? Let's switch to GM generation instead of GS.
If we get a GS, let's continue towards education and liberalism (with a second GS).
If we get a GM, we can go for an earlier war - research HBR and start whipping HAs. We will be able to trade something for guilds soon. In that case we will not spend any beakers on education. We will need to research techs that we can trade for guilds and engineering.
This sounds good to me.

Almost everyone are good targets, so a war right away will be fine. Even Charlemagne will work (can get those 2 closest cities on turn 1 and wait for his stack). Once paper is in we can trade for maps and plan from there.

A hammer economy was in the works all along seeing as we allowed :hammers: buildings. When you have as many happiness resources as we do (+vassals) emancipation usually isn't necessary. Seeing as we have the hippodrome it definitely won't be needed -- caste wins by far.

Betruger: No need to fade into darkness -- feel free to contribute. :)

edit: Looking at the game the GP is already at 142 points, so it's very likely that it will be a GS. The lib -> economics path is safe as well and it gives us a lot of trade fodder.

*playing on*
 
In the short term GS production is likely to be helpful to bulb through chemistry and scimeth (and maybe PP if we can't pick it up). SP will be a major civic because it allows us to convert farms into workshops and the 10% hammer bonus helps as well.
 
pigswill - your suggestion is quite valid, but I think in this case we can earn more by having an early war. After we capture the pyramids (and maybe GL and parthenon) we can be more efficient in science and GPP.
If we get an early great merchant this would be a big boost to our war effort, if we get a great scientist, we can continue towards education and liberalism and work towards a later war.
Besides, earlier war is fun and different from what we usually do, so I want to try it :)
 
We can lightbulb through chemistry/sci. method after the war as well. In any case, the RNG has spoken with interesting results -- we got a GM at ~30% odds! New decisions to be made. I only played 5 turns, but I can do a quick summary starting from my first turn.

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Assigned culture specialists to bring Antioch to 100 culture. There are no great tiles available anyway.

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I go ahead with all my worker actions (*g* if I knew I would be up next I wouldn't spend so much time writing it :rolleyes:).

Make the trade we discussed with Charlemagne.

We pop a GM on turn 129 (350 AD) while Izzy gets the GL in Madrid. Do I smell a connection here. :mischief::D

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I'll upload the save so you can look at what you need to have input, but the main question is whether to finish paper or not. We're almost done, but it's not going to be of much use (assuming we skip the UoS now). Also, only 2 civilizations have the option of teching guilds, and even if they do go for it they aren't going to trade it unless they're friendly, so I'm thinking we just go for it ourselves instead? The 2 civs in question are Charlemagne and Ramesses. We'll be able to get Ramesses to friendly I believe (OR), but that's not going to be the case with Charlemagne. Do we want to gamble on Ramesses researching it?

Izzy is currently getting CS so it would be neat if we could get to her before pikemen.

Charlemagne has 7 gpt available now. I think we should give him dye for it.
 

Attachments

Rusten,
I haven't looked at the save yet, but I do have a question

Izzy is currently getting CS so it would be neat if we could get to her before pikemen.

Wouldn't we need both engineering and guilds to be successful at this war? We will need to bomard city defences to have a chance against theocratic longbows with 60% culture defences on a hill.
Besides, doesn't she have elephants?

Self researching guilds is interesting, because a friendly Ramesses will trade it for engineering probably (we will have to give more of course, maybe paper).

I will look at the save later tonight for more details.
 
Elephants won't receive defensive bonuses, so we just need to outnumber her if we do it this way.

It depends on how many of her cities are on hills. However, we have been putting EP towards her all game long so we can use the incite revolt option when attacking Madrid. She's probably going to move her stack in there or close to the city and when she does we can smash it with 2-3 catapults and take the city with almost no losses. It's amazing what suicide catapults can do. They're no good at bombarding cultural defence, but when it comes to collateral damage they're really great.

The revolt option was heavily nerfed in 3.17, but this is a very ideal situation. Madrid is such an amazing city and the other ones seem to be easy to capture.

Barcelona and Santiago are not on hills, and it doesn't look like the city east of Harappan is either, but we will need to scout.

Another thing I noticed: It seems Ramesses has engineering already (not listed in "can research") and we have the option of trading drama and ~90 gold to Charlemagne for construction. If we also adopt OR we can perhaps trade for engineering the next turn (making most of the above academic). We will want to get out of caste now anyway and start whipping.
 
Ok, I looked at the save.
This is what I think:

1) We should not finish paper for now. We can always finish it later if we think it provides a trade oppurtunity. The AIs have little cash now and anyway they would pay nothing for our tiny world map.

2) WK is close to finishing machinery (judging by what he will give for it). We can get either literature and 25 gold or just 140 gold. I think we should try one of those. There is no point holding machinery away.
I don't think WFYABTA will be an issue with friendly Ramesses (and potentially friendly Isabella after capitulation and forced religion change) so I would go for the literature deal.

3) The potential engineering deal with Ramesses looks very good. I would go for the construction trade with Charlemagne.

4) Asoka will sign open borders with us. We might want it so we can send our GM there. His capital is probably the farthest so the most profitable.

5) We need to self research or trade for HBR. After that start self researching guilds. Perhaps we will be able to trade for it half-way.

6) It might be good to whip some courthouses - not only for the maintenance costs, but also for the spy specialists. With a few turns at 100% espionage and some specialists we will be able to revolt a 2nd city.
Also, getting GSpy GPP points is not bad at all. It coudl help us compete in tech in the mid game if we get one (and with control of a holy city we will get 40% discount on espionage missions against Ramesses!!!)
 
We don't need literature for anything now though so the extra 115 gold means faster guilds. On the other hand Ramesses lacks literature so it can be used for engineering (think he'll want more than CS+drama). Tough decision (but not very important). I'm slightly in favour of literature too. I'm thinking we can ask WK for 60 gold and then trade for literature+25 gold getting the cake and eating it too. ;)

We can also try giving Ramesses drama+CS+literature and gold for both engineering and HBR. Can't tell if he'll accept yet, but we'll see. If we do that we can try asking for some of the gold back (nobody's asked anything from him yet right?).

I agree with skipping paper. It's worth noticing that Ramesses has neither CS nor theology which means we can't use it to trade for engineering anyway.
 
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