UNGY5 Let's keep it simple!

[silverbullet]

I just realized how good an espionage economy might be here.
Ramesses is the leading AI, and he is very unlikely to attack, so we can afford pissing him off.
He has a city that is VERY close to our capital and it has confucianism.

If we adopt confucianism for 5 turns, we will get:
20% discount for trade routes
40% discount for our state religion
50% discount for stationary spy

Tech stealing cost is 1.5 beaker cost, so that gives us
1.5*.8*.6*.5= 36% of beaker cost !!! (slighly more because of distance)
Of course, we will need to get 10 spies or so, and also require us to risk diplomacy for 5 turns, but once we start the war with Izzy, this can be a great way to keep up in tech.

Also, if we start accumulating that much EP we will get increasing discounts due to espionage point spending, so it will get cheaper and cheaper as we go.

After guilds, we can start an espionage burst. Once we have enough to revolt 2 spanish cities, we can shift to Ramesses. Once we have enough and he has some interesting techs to steal we will go to 5 turns of confucianism.

 

[vra379971]

Yii...sorry about that <.< I posted in the Civ4 GOTM forum and forgot here <.<

Hope all had a good holiday folks - will be back tomorrow!

 

[ungy]

I'm still on holiday (if you can call a trip with 5 year old twins that) but sounds like hustling to war vs. Iz is the right plan.
If we can get the walls down I agree cats rock for suicide (although for a hill capital I'd use more than 2 or 3). Madrid just seems awesome here with the GL bonus.
Sending the merchant to Asoka makes sense as well--how about the TOA--doesn't that get a bonus?
Nice going!

 

[Dirk1302]

I've probably missed something completely but why are we discussing a cat war against Izzy all of a sudden? Not that it's a bad plan in it self but we could have build up for something like that some 20-40 turns ago. I also don't see why paper, UOS are now so useless that paper doesn't need to be finished.So what happened?

 

[silverbullet]

Dirk -
What happened is that we got a GM instead of a GS, making war possible much earlier.

It's not a cat war - it's a cataphracts war that will start in 20 or so turns, assuming it takes us less than 10 turns to self research guilds and we can trade for engineering.
We need 2~4 suicide catapults only, as we'll use spies to take down defences.
I did some worldbuilder tests and C2 cataphracts have very decent odds against CG2 longbows on hills, so maybe we don't need catapults at all - it depends on how many defenders she has in Madrid.

The reason to rush this war is that Izzy is pretty far from engineering (doesn't have machinery). Without pikes there is no counter to cataphracts in the open and longbows can only barely stop them on a hilled city (and not at all on plains).

If she does get engineering by the time we attack, we will just have to go a bit slower and whip trebucets.

I don't think UoS is worth the hammers for 2 reasons:
1) I think we would get a significantly better commerece->beaker conversion by using espionage againsts Rameses than we would by pure research (see my calculation in an earlier posts)
2) We have a chance of quickly whipping stables and horse archers and mass upgrade them to cataphracts.

EDIT: I just noticed Izzy doesn't even have elephants or stables (no HBR). Depending on what we scout in her land, we might be able to declare earlier than 20 turns and make a quick grab of Madird and Barcelona.

 

[Dirk1302]

I still don't see the change, what are we going to upgrade with a GM? You build cats right out of the gate anyway. Ok you go guilds now and upgrade prebuilt harchers, you could always have done that , GM doesn't make that much of a difference. Surely we could always have gotten a GM, i still don't see the huge change in strat.

Maybe attacking soon is not that bad. On the other hand a bit of consensus earlier would have helped, instead of whining over too much workers we could have been prebuilding troops earlier. But i had no idea that we would be taking on Izz so soon. I personally think it's just a bad idea now, at least my idea when i was playing was just building up. If Izz was to be attacked you might reload from the 100 BC save because everything i did was just 100% against attacking IZZ at this time.

 

[pigswill]

Happy New Year!!

It appears that we've swopped from a lib>economics plan to early cataphact plan. I'd have to observe that basing a strategy switch on the RNG (GM or GS) is an unusual approach. It does mean that we've been 'wasting' turns on researching paper that has suddenly become irrelevant. If we go to war then our economy is likely to suffer in the short term and there's no guarantee that lib sling would still be available.

 

[Dirk1302]

Happy new year to you all. I finally understand, machinery + GM can lead to guilds + catas with prebuilt harchers. That could work, i wonder if we're in time to get a good force up before Izz has pikes and castles. We also have spy points on her. The plan is much better than i thought in other words and must definitely be considered.

 

[silverbullet]

Dirk,
I am sorry if it seems like we rushed into a change of plans without consensus.
Rusten's post number 205 outlined several possiblities and reading back it seems that only Rusten and I really agreed on the GM and earlier war path. I think we should have waited for more responses and discussion before going forward.
I didn't think it was such a big difference in strategy though, just a minor adjustment.

In any case we can still discuss what to do now. We can use the GM for deficit research instead of upgrades and still get liberalism->economic and a later war, or we can go ahead with a spy+cataphracts war, or maybe we can even try liberalism->chemistry.

Personally I still like the option of self research/trade for HBR and then guilds. I don't think we have way too many workers, BTW. Maybe 14 would have been enough, but we need most of them now, especially since it's time to bring chain irrigation to the north for some whipping power. A group of 5 can irrigate 1 tile per turn.

To clarify, there was no intention to make a one sided decision here. This is not why we play SG. In the future, let's try to be more clear with our plans and/or objections to plans and delay playing if needed until a concensus is reached.

EDIT:
Happy New Year to Everyone

 

[ungy]

Happy new year all!

I think both plans are certainly reasonable--w/o seeing the save I'd be inclined to try the early attack as it makes full use of the UU (something I don't think I've ever done).

It does seem like circumstances changed re the early attack--the GL in Madrid, we got to trade for machinery and the GM. So the gear shift seems OK to me.

But we definately shouldn't reload.

 

[Dirk1302]

@silverbullet, i understand the cnange of plan now, should have read post 225 better before posting. It actually seems ok to go that way would be great if we could get engineering somewhere along the way.

@ungy was not my plan to reload, i just thought that i could have played my turns better if we were planning on war earlier. But i understand that this is really a change of direction now.

 

[Rusten]

(Belated) Happy new year!

Things are looking really good. I played to guilds as it was a natural place to stop.
350 AD:
- Drama+95 gold to Charlemagne for construction.
- beg WK for 60 gold (remember: turn 129) and subsequently trade machinery for literature and 25 gold.

- revolt to OR/slavery and find Ramesses to be friendly towards us. He's now willing to trade HBR, but I wait a turn to see if he's willing to part with engineering. OR was a great match for our cities. The cities with religion present had something like 4/4/4/16/9 production meaning we gained several hammers (whipped some stables/barracks too).

IBT: Ramesses offers the same deal I looked at (HBR for drama and 90 gold). I go F4 and find engineering under won't trade meaning he must "have his reasons". As he's not going to part with engineering I accept the trade.



Not sure if there's any benefit to taking it now. There's this forum myth about accepting proposed deals not counting towards wfyabta but I don't buy it -- at least not until it's proven. It would be nice if someone looked this up to end the discussion once and for all (DanF/Dresden ).

He got 130 or similar gold after receiving ours so I decided to beg (with success) again. Take note that this was turn 130.

375 AD:
- We have a nice happiness cap and Ramesses has engineering so I cancel our stone trade and give him some luxuries instead (sugar for wheat and silk for 7 gpt). It is our only source of silk, but these money trades are easy to break. If we need more happiness after whipping we can just cancel it when we want without losing anything else.

450 AD:
- Our GM has reached Indian borders. I request open borders and trade Asoka dye for 4 gpt while we're at it. He doesn't have drama so no theatres. Once he gets drama I'd cancel the deal.

Good news; neither Seville, Murcia nor Toledo are on hills. We should have no trouble taking these cities. Madrid's looking HOT!



I thought about what to do with Harappan.

Spoiler :

It's not going to mature fast enough to support our army with mounted units so I set it to a barracks and skipped the forge. We talked about getting some siege and that requires less infrastructure and production. We can chop and whip some here.

500 AD:
- Our GM finds Delhi which turned out to be a great spot for our GM -- we got 1500 gold for it.



IBT: Charlemagne cancels ivory/copper deal.

I stop to hand it off 520 AD.
- Nicomedia can whip a cataphract next turn.
- a barb galley appeared during my set. I got a trireme out in time and the fight is about to happen.
- there are some good trade deals waiting to happen:

Spoiler :

- Once the AP is built we should be able to trade for theology so finishing paper is a good idea. While theocracy isn't crucial for our mounted units (get 5XP anyway) it would allow accuracy trebs (assuming we trade for it) which eats cultural defense for breakfeast. If we get to trade for theology soon spies won't be needed although it's still a possibility.

- we got guilds very quickly as we were able to trade for HBR so there are only 2 HAs to upgrade. However, we have a chunk of experienced swords/axes so we can upgrade them to maces if we don't want to burn the gold on research.

If we're really into upgrading HAs into cataphracts we can pillage or trade away our iron. It seems we might be able to do this early war and still win liberalism. The only AI with paper is Asoka and he's not that hot this game + lacking philosophy still. Whether we want to go for it is up to discussion.

 

[ungy]

OK-back from vacation--nicely done Rusten!

I'll take the next one and post up some thoughts tomorrow.

 

[silverbullet]

I wouldn't burn our gold on trying to win the liberalism race.
Our beaker conversion ratio of gold to beakers is 1:1.
If we spend our gold to accumulate espionage against Ramesses it would be closer to 1:3. Even with Liberalism free tech we wouldn't do as well, and with our massive army the diplomatic penalty of annoying him a bit is worth it.

Also, if he happens to research education we can still it on the same turn, and then switch to research. If he goes to lib, we will go economics, (and vice versa) so we will win at least 1 race.

The downsides I see to espionage are:
1) the need to build 10~15 spies, but I think the number of beakers we will earn is well worth the hammer investment.
2) We will need to shift to conf. for 5 turns to get the 40% discount. This leaves us at risk from Charlemagne, but with our UU I am not that afraid of him, and he won't become annoyed in 5 turns.
3) If Ramesses shifts to merc, the effectiveness will be reduced (no 20% discount for trade routes). It would still be better than pure science though.

After capturing the pyramids, spy specialists will work well to give us research and espionage so we can see what Ra messes is teching and slowly tech other things.

If we agree with the espionage economy plan, we need to keep Egypt intact so they can tech well to the modern age. Spain is obviously our first target, HRE or India could be the 2nd.

 

[pigswill]

My only reservation about espionage is that we're playing a hammer based economy and afaik you can't directly convert hammers to espionage points. There are of course get-rounds such as running 100% espionage slider and building gold/research but it would probably need a bit more analysis.

 

[silverbullet]

pigswill - I don't think our current economy has a proper name. I don't like to talk in generalities, but it is mostly a cottage economy powered by bureacracy with some GPP for extra beakers/cash.

Hammer economy is something that may be useful to run later, after chemistry and preferably after assembly line.
Until then, the "economy" really doesn't care how you get there - EP or science achieve the same goal - one of them will be more efficient than the other.

 

[ungy]

OK-here's my thoughts on this set:

Make the engineering trade, sell lit to Charlie. Once AP is built trade for theo.

I think we can get to Iz before she gets engineering--doesn't look like she'll be able to trade for it. So we should be able to use cats/trebs to take down the walls.

Basically MM whipping to get an army together.

Techwise I'm a bit up in the air.
Silverbullet: the EE has a lot of merit for us at this point--however, there is a real cost of converting to get the discount. All tech spending also does get a 20% prereq discount as well. Skipping lib is also something I normally wouldn't do so there's something to it.
Maybe finish paper then put all into EP's vs Ramesses?--need feedback here.
We can't get another GP very easily here since we really need constant slaving for MM, and the lib path is less appealing as: we've self researched guilds, traded for eng, have no use for edu or FR. Nat would have some use for drafting but not great--whipping cataphracts is pretty good.

Battle plan is march to Madrid first (won't be my set).

 

[silverbullet]

Ungy - what is the cost of converting? I don't suggest that we permanently convert. We need to accumulate a lot of EP vs. Ramesses and just covert for 5 turns and steal 4~5 techs in a row. We can generate 200 EP per turn, so we could get to something like 2000 EP in 10 turns, which should be more than enough to steal important techs.

Also, we could get theology this way without selling paper (although I wouldn't convert just for that).

Regarding battle plan - do you suggest to slow move the cataphracts with trebs together, or send them alone and take down defence with spies. We have enough EP to take down one city. I think we can take Madrid quickly and move the trebs to slowly catch up while the cataphracts heal.

 

[ungy]

Ungy - what is the cost of converting? I don't suggest that we permanently convert. We need to accumulate a lot of EP vs. Ramesses and just covert for 5 turns and steal 4~5 techs in a row. We can generate 200 EP per turn, so we could get to something like 2000 EP in 10 turns, which should be more than enough to steal important techs.

Also, we could get theology this way without selling paper (although I wouldn't convert just for that).

Regarding battle plan - do you suggest to slow move the cataphracts with trebs together, or send them alone and take down defence with spies. We have enough EP to take down one city. I think we can take Madrid quickly and move the trebs to slowly catch up while the cataphracts heal.

I guess I was thinking the risk of getting DOW'd on by Charlie was the real cost of converting.

We can try and rush Madrid--we can get there on turn 2 with the UU. Downside is we don't get to suicide cats and we need to build say 3 spies.
Maybe a 10% chance the walls don't come down with that. If we get the walls down our UU are roughly even up vs. LB and good favorites vs melee units. I'll build some spies then unless I hear otherwise. I think around 12 or so UU should do it--then build some trebs. the non-hill cities won't need suicide cats.

 

[Dirk1302]

I don't have that much experience with pure espionage economies. This has to be a good plan however since we're getting 100% on espionage points after communism, constitution.

So we should at least build in the possibility to switch in and out of it later, getting 100% increased value on our cottages. For the moment properly planning and conducting the war against IZZ has to be highest priority. Don't know igf that clashes with switching to espionage economy right now.