UNGY6 The health nuts

[ungy]

OK--good going.

Giving it a quick look I have the following thoughts:

I don't think we're likely to want to take a religion. I'd be inclined to gift Joao aesthetics when we trade it around--that should get him to pleased and then we don't have to worry about defense much--Iz isn't much of a threat if we don't take religion and are on other continent.

I wouldn't have build the last settler--seems pretty unlikely we'll be able to hold that spot and we have critical need for workers, WB. Really we'll be OK if we can develop the land we've staked out and when we whack Joao it's game over.

So I'd put a turn or two into alpha to get the trade, then trade also for IW and gift to Joao. Then run to lit. I'm not clear as to where to put the Glib so please chime in.

Settle as worker/WB become available or if necessary.

I'll look to play tomorrow night.

 

[Liquidated]

Lurker ramblings

A pleased joao is indeed proof against war but he's such a pita for espionage (like as bad as wang). If you are planning on having broad borders with him, a liq would suggest you station a defensive spy in almost every town. Spies are so easy to forget.


Cheers!
-Liq

 

[SnowlyWhite]

workers - guesstimate is ~7. Moscow can't be improved, same for most of St. Petersburg, 6, 7 are pretty watery. Ok, we have jungle, but imho ~7 is fine. Dubious 8 is in 4th ring of lisbon, so cultural wise it should be fine(also, would prevent J settling something case we decide to take lisbon). I don't know how we'll take the barb city given the amount of archers J has there(that's why I've left only 2 chariots - either we'll get to kick the last archer who' injured, or, 99%, J will take the city), but otherwise, the spot is good imho...
WB - not yet, as, if we're to reach lit. in a timely fashion, hopefully we won't be forced to settle 6 or 7 soon.

I really have no clue about Glib - novgorod or imho moscow(has so few worthy tiles it could as well get it).

 

[ungy]

sorry guys got jammed --most likely I should get it tomorrow.
Feel free to chime in

 

[ungy]

err again got jammed but will play tomorrow for sure
no comments?

 

[Rusten]

Was going to but I was afraid I'd comment after you'd already played. I will look at the save and comment by tomorrow evening.

 

[Rusten]

Agree with your trading plan (aesthetics for alphabet -> aesthetics for IW -> gift to Joao).

We need workers -- switch Novgorod overflow from library to worker and then whip it (size 2 -> 1).

I'd put the GL in Moscow. We're going to get an academy there I assume so we'll get more out of the scientists. It has the Pyramids as well so it will produce a fair bit of GPP. I'd get Moai Statues there as well, but improving the new cities comes first (work boats).

 

[SnowlyWhite]

it's 3rd whip in novgorod if I remember right in under 10 turns. St. petersburg with expansive can make a worker every 4 turns I think.

atm we have 2 workers.

 

[ungy]

OK here goes:

I change Moscow to a WB and Novgorod to worker. I also change St. Pt. to a WB.
I just can't see that we're going to settle site #8 (and it's not much of a loss anyway).

I settle site #6 and work the unimproved fish. This saves us 1GPT as we get a 3$ trade route and save maitenance on the settler and also get a chariot in our borders.

100 Aesthetics in. partial research alpha to get the trade.

75 having researched 10% of alpha we get a trade:

and we make another:

as expected we have iron in Moscow:

I reconsider the gift of aesthetics and decide I'd better trade for poly. Our research really sucks and that'll get us the glib sooner and should be worth most of the gift.
We can always gift lit later.
Hmm we get absolutely nothing for that trade. Just out of curiosity I reloaded to see what we'd have gotten for the gift--only +1. I'd have thought more.

As we're hurting to get to lit I build research in St. Pt. after the WB.

I bring some units back to cut down on maintenance--Joao doesn't seem to want to attack the barb city.

Unfortunately we get a request from Joao:

Despite really wanting good relations with him I pass. We can't stay in tao and that's a 2 turn loss--I think we're slipping too far behind for that.

75 AD HG built. We can trade for math if only we had something to trade.

125 we have lit in and we rush the Glib. Liz has had lit for around 5 turns so there was a tiny bit of risk.

We make a trade to pick up some happy from Joao--I know we don't need it immediately but as he's expansive he's not in health trouble yet and that might help with relations.

I'm a little stuck for what to research so I'm going to stop it here.
We badly need currency--but 2 AI already have it so I'm thinking we might want to try compass as we should be able to get currency in trade.

Plan to whip lib in Novgorod next turn and monument in Yekat. When we have a spare clam it can be sold.
I'm also thinking it's time to found city 7 now that we have lit in.
I was sending the WB for the clams--my thought is we can build another shortly to scout.

 

[ungy]

I can either play a few more turns or pass it off if someone is ready to roll.

But if I'm going to keep going I need some tech advice.

I'm thinking we settle a GP pretty much whatever it is?

 

[SnowlyWhite]

if he's slogging why don't we grab the rest of the land? That settler has 2 turns to completion I think.

my vote as tech: compass. Though both izzy and J are expansive and giving them harbours too ain't fun, but... Or hbr; and spank away our annoying neighbour(who won't get to pleased anytime soon).

that request really screwed us up. I'd cancel that resource deal with J asap - let's give him an opportunity to demand tribute(and since he's Joao, he'll come demanding in precisely 20 turns from tao conversion given our puny military).

I'd acad. Moscow instead of settling; we need every tiny beaker we can get(giving away the hammer is meh, but our research is even more meh then our prod.).

and keep an eye on izzy - last thing we need is border tension penalities with her too(though I wouldn't like to see our econ. if we close borders with izzy too). I'd settle 7 now.

 

[ungy]

if he's slogging why don't we grab the rest of the land? That settler has 2 turns to completion I think.

err where does it go?--I guess site 8 after barb city razed? Alternative is down by the south clam. Keep in mind we'll be around 5gpt at 0% once we settle city 7.

my vote as tech: compass. Though both izzy and J are expansive and giving them harbours too ain't fun, but... Or hbr; and spank away our annoying neighbour(who won't get to pleased anytime soon).

that request really screwed us up. I'd cancel that resource deal with J asap - let's give him an opportunity to demand tribute(and since he's Joao, he'll come demanding in precisely 20 turns from tao conversion given our puny military).

I'd acad. Moscow instead of settling; we need every tiny beaker we can get(giving away the hammer is meh, but our research is even more meh then our prod.).

Yes I'm thinking compass as well. I just don't think given the state of our research we can research somthing we won't be trading. Most likely we'll get currency and math or if we get lucky we can get 3 trades.

Academy is better I think as well when I think it over. At 0% it's a .75beaker for 1h trade--not so great but if we can up our rate it's much better.

Now what about if we pop an engineer? We could rush the parthenon and push back borders (maybe even flip Coimbra?) and boost GP production 25% (initially anyway) ? Another alternative would be to switch and research meditation and rush the Shwedegon Paya also pushing back culture (or dropping it in the capital and adding to GPP). This seems like a game that FR will be useful to avoid requests.
I guess if we want to go that route we could trade for med but I hate to do that.
Or we could just settle.
I'd lean to rushing the parth with an engineer.

 

[Rusten]

I still like taking Lisbon with horse archers. Joao has a monster GNP of 189 thanks to that city and the GLH so getting rifling (and drafting) before he does is not certain. As I mentioned earlier we are into the ADs, but there is no new counter to horse archers--they do "ok" vs everything until pikemen. If we eliminate Joao as a major threat we can get friendly with Izzy/Liz and tech fast.

I'd settle the GE in Moscow if we get one and make sure we get a scientist next. The Parthenon doesn't do that much with philosophical. It would be a pretty good wonder to build with marble, but not worth a GE I think.

 

[Dirk1302]

Joao can research engineering right now and knowing your average ai he'll do so. GLH and small empire make him fast on this map. Joao is often a bit backward early game (and very strong late game) since he expands a lot, but not here. There's no safety in rifles too since as Rusten says he'll be researching fast until ~corporation. Maybe we can just steamroll him with ha's/swords/axes/cats? Idea is build ha's to defend mostly against the counter and a solid cat stack for taking Lisbon. No counter against a good classical stack. HA's are just good enough to defend against crossbows and maybe even maces. Axes'll hold the pikes at bay.

We'll fall back further in research but taking over Joao early with GLH is probably a game winning move even if we lose lib subsequently.

 

[ungy]

I like the idea of taking out Joao early but my concerns with the HA plan are:

we desperately need currency. Now we could research HBR then try to trade it and lit for currency (or most of it).

Joao has few cities--I think we can expect a lot of units. He'll basically collapse once we take Lisbon so to me that means it's an ideal situation for a stack of cats. Like Dirk says, ideally have some HA for defense but even if not the AI tends not to build many Xbow and not attack with LB. So I would lean towards a later attack.

Why is there no counter to HA--Lisbon is 60% culture, that makes an unpromoted LB a 12.6. We'd need to bring a pretty good stack unless we somehow get it all together before fued (which seems unlikely). Our cities are quite underdeveloped, so it'll take a while to get an army together.

 

[ungy]

We'll fall back further in research but taking over Joao early with GLH is probably a game winning move even if we lose lib subsequently.

agree with this. The GLH on this type of map is just huge.

 

[Rusten]

Ok, let's go for catapults instead. It's less risky than a hit and run. We will fall behind, but that won't matter that much if we claim Lisbon in the end.

 

[Dirk1302]

We need to hit before Knights, the first units which could heavily damage our stack. Well once we take Lisbon he'll never get there.

 

[ungy]

So...
are you guys OK with the reseach plan of compass for trade bait hoping to get math+currency? Seems like we need currency before we get our buildup going anyway.

 

[Dirk1302]

I'm not sure about the compass plan. That tech is almost useless to us. It is likely that we can trade it for currency but not totally sure.

Some alternatives:
I think if we research Col we'll have a good trade chance too but not as sure as with compass.

Col's use would be limited too because we can' go caste if we plan a rush. Also CS is not big atm. Drama is also a possibility, also fairly useless but better trade chance than Col.

Notice that no one has researched HBR. If we're first to that we could do literature + HBR for currency (after research 1-2 turns into it). And we'll need HBR for sure.

This is a fairly typical situation, you can only guess what the ai is likely to do here. Compass is safest i think, probably delivers currency + math. We'll still need to do HBR + construction but that's doable with currency.

If we'd go HBR i'd convert all production to research now to speed it up.Just checked, we'll get it in 6 turns then. Bit of a gambit but very good if it comes off. Even if it doesn't we at least have HBR and can start on stables etc... I'd probably try this. If we think this is too risky i agree with compass.