VQ02 - Predetermined City Placement

bobrath · Feb 27, 2006

We could try culture... might be hard with some of the civs about to go runaway and none of our current cities in a great culture position.

Have to check on our research and see what we should have had by now if we wanted to be pumping the culture.

oldbustedjorn · Feb 27, 2006

It would be a challenge....

Even if we did, I would still raze vicky's one city and finish that tier so we can expand west. If I remember correctly, there were was some gold and silver that would hopefully be in our city radii that we could get online. This would help in numerous ways - happiness, commerce, and trading...

I'll play my turns to take out that city (hopefully), and replace it with one of ours (in the correct position). Unless we feel that we can steamroll vicky (highly unlikely), then we should probably get peace back sooner than later.

GreyFox · Feb 27, 2006

Well, having won a cultural victory (check my sig), I have only two words for it: Religion and Commerce.

If we are going for cultural, we must do the following:
- Open borders, trade like mad, get all possible religion to our civ
- spread all religion to at least 9 cities
- build all available temples (at least 9 of each religion)
- select 3 city with the highest possible commerce as the cultural city sites
- cottage spam the 3 cultural cities
- build all the monastery buildings at the 3 cultural cities
- pump up military like mad while waiting for 1600AD
- switch to 100% culture at 1600AD or so and hope no one attack us (that's why the pump out military like mad part prior to 1600AD)

--

If Vicky already had longbowmen, then our chance for rampage has passed. Longbowmen is the counter to praets. However, we still need to get rid of Anasazi for completion of tier ... er, is it 2 or 3? :crazyeye:

to get at least 9 cities for the cutural victory (if that is the path we want to take).

--

oldbustedjorn · Feb 27, 2006

Hmm, I'll try to take care of that one city first, but cottage spam will be difficult with the lack of food bonuses. There is no clear victory path here - mostly due to our variant... Playing tonight...

GreyFox · Feb 27, 2006

Never thought a simple variant like trhat would turn out to be severely limiting:
- we cannot do land grab to secure resources, secure land area, etc
- there is a 24 out of 25 chance we cannot keep captured cities, making the early war effort only to slow AI down while not adding any gain for us

oldbustedjorn · Feb 27, 2006

IT:

Hmmm, I look at our relations and realize that diplo is definitely out...

Everyone has Fuedalism, except freddie... Here is what I am thinking - lets get that one city from vicky, settle west, and then take the germans out and settle to the east. That will hopefully be enough base to either go on a conquest run; get domination by crushing saladin and freddie, or just launch... I'm still ok with cultural, but I'm not very experienced - I'll try to make a few moves in that direction...

Turn 1 (1110AD):

I declare on Vicky.
Mansa wants to trade Calender for Music - I want to do this, but when I click to renegotiate (to see if I can get something else), the option disappears. Oh well...

Antium: Confused Temple -> Court

Sigh, I believe freddie will be a problem with city spam...

TWo barbs pop west...
I approach vicky, still one longbow and a spear.

Turn 2 (1120AD):

Arpinum: Granary -> Court

WOW -> best odds after to cat bombards is 6%. I'm going to have to suicide both cats I'm afraid. I'll try to get culture defense down next turn but I don't want to wait too long in case they build another longbow.

Turn 3 (1130AD):

Pisae: Court -> Settler (its good to be prepared in case ghandi gets hungry for land)

There is now a horse archer in the city. I decide to suicide and go for it before they reinforce. Its definitely a gamble...

CRAP...First cat doesn't SCRATCH the longbow... but does withdraw.

2nd cat does some damage - its still gonna be bloody.

Battle of Anasazi:

Praet loses but damages longbow.
Praet loses but more damage done.
Axe loses but more damage done - should be manageable now.
Praet kills horse archer.
Praet kills spear.

And...

City Razed -> not too bad, only four units lost.

I'll consolidate the stack and heal while I see if I can get peace or if vicky puts up a fight.

I spot this...

Turn 4 (1140AD):

Antium: Court -> Spear (seeing alot of horses from vicky)
Cumae: Court -> Spear
Ravenna: Forge -> Court

Wow, I really have nothing that can go against the stack that vicky is bringing. I'll try to get some units to help keep the cities. Vicky still refuses to talk.

Turn 5 (1150AD):

Rome: Conf. Academy -> Horse Archer
Antium: Spear -> Praet

Vicky still won't talk.

We get a great artist -> I have no clue what to use him for, so I'll wait.

Vicky's SOD has turned around (whew!)

We do have a horse archer near cumae, but there isn't much I can do about it right now.

I also kill a few more barbs.

Turn 6 (1160AD):

Fuedalism in, start Drama in case we want culture (and we need to research calender soon)

Antium: Praet -> Conf. Monastary
Neapolis: Forge -> Aquaduct

Still can't kill that HA near Cumae, but he hasn't pillaged anything yet.

Oh, and did I mention? Vicky refuses to talk...

oldbustedjorn · Feb 27, 2006

Turn 7 (1170AD):

Rome: HA -> Longbow

Lose a praet to that HA, but take him down with another HA.

I start moving our SOD toward vicky again, but I'm not sure if I'll get to attack before she signs.

Turn 8 (1180AD):

Trade Wine to Washington for his fur -> should be an extra happy.

See, this is what I mean about ghandi. We better settle the west as soon as we can.

Cumae: Spear -> Market
Ravenna: Court -> Conf. Temple

Sistine Chapel built in far away land.
Take out a barb sword in west.
I change arpinum to obelisk when I realize it isn't cultured.
Take out a barb axe in north.

Oh, and did I mention? Vicky still won't speak to me (but I'm sooo nice)...

Turn 9 (1190AD):

Antium: Conf. Templ -> Longbow
Neapolis: Aqueduct -> Settler
Pisae: Settler -> Aqueduct

Darn. vicky needs to die ... BUT THEY HAVE XBOWS!!

I'll lose every unit if I have to, to keep that settler from settling!!

Turn 10 (1200AD):

Drama in, shoot for Machinary

Rome: Longbow -> Theatre
Antium: Longbow -> Theatre

WTH Mate?

I'll fix that eyesore...

Ah yea, vicky will sign, but she has a city where it shouldn't be. I'll raze and then sign, or give that decision to the next person. Settler on its way with longbow to establish city.

I suicide cat -> no damage
Praet1 attacks and almost kills xbow.
Praet2 attacks and ... deja vu

City autorazes.

20g and 5gpt she'll give us for peace. Up to the group and next person what to do. Settler can settle in like 4 turns.

Points:

- Running out of important things to build, and military is expensive upkeep and starting to show its age.
- We need tech now, or go on a rampage. Since we can't capture cities though, we'll have serious problems. I don't think we can win via military at all.
- Really confused as to what route to take.

oldbustedjorn · Feb 27, 2006

The Save:

View attachment 117971

Roster:

player 1: Maquis - UP
player 2: bobrath - On Deck...
player 3: Greyfox
player 4: eektor
player 5: oldbustedjorn - Done

GreyFox · Feb 27, 2006

taking anasazi ...

AI won't talk within 10 turns (I think) of your declaration of War. Should have gone pillaging though ...

How many different religions do we have in our cities? If there is 3 or more, then cultural win is possible ... else it might be difficult unless we can get someone to spread their religion to us SOON.

We should get someone to slow Washington down ... his GNP is obscenely high ....

bobrath · Feb 28, 2006

We have one religion... confused.

GreyFox · Feb 28, 2006

bobrath said:
We have one religion... confused.

Now, that is reasurring and encouraging for a cultural win! :sad:

OK. Its only 1200AD. we don't have to make a decision whether to go cultural or not until I estimate roughly 1400AD. So that is 200 more years for us to see if more religions would spread to us.

Meanwhile, build those confused temples. We need 9 for 3 monasteries.
Also get some cottages up and running. We need to select 3 cities with the highest possible commerce (of-course, counting food support).

This is also in line with a space victory (commerce=beakers + monastry=even more beakers) if we decide that is the way to go later.

-

Maquis · Feb 28, 2006

Ok, I got it... I may be playing very soon, as RL is going to be a bit crazy the next couple days.

oldbustedjorn · Feb 28, 2006

Should have gone pillaging though ...

I thought about it, and actually sent an axe down which was promptly killed by an attacking longbow. We had (at the time), no fast moving units, and it would have taken my whole turnset to get new units down there. I could have sent some of the stack, but early on there was a huge vicky stack that was beelining for our cities - not to mention, our stack was very wounded.

We have a small problem. Our praets are just about done with. We may be able to assault saladin and freddie, but that window is closing.

I tried to build more cottages than farms, but there aren't any "good" spots for cottages with all this plains around. This would be the one map that you would want to grab strategic resources - and we can't do that. This will be interesting.

Maquis · Feb 28, 2006

Ok, played my turns. Didn't take huge notes, but I'll do my best.

Spoiler :

Ok, a few of the highlights:

IT: I do some looking around, and I see how we are kind of struggling. I think that our wars have really hampered us research-wise. I really think we need to spend some time in bulding our economy and catching up on research. If we can get villages and towns going, we'll really be able to take off in the late game in research. This becomes my focus.

First off I want to get us caught up a little on research. I do some trading of our two techs we are up on, Drama and Music. Saladin gives us Theology + 400G, and Cyrus gives us Calandar and Machinery. Not only do we hav a few more techs now, we also got some gold in the coffers. We can bump up our research a bit. But I'm not done... I trade away our excess wines and wheat to Washington, Cyrus, Gandi (and maybe Fred?) for another 21 GPT. By the end of my turns I have research up to 80-90% with very little deficit.

Turn 1: I sue for peace with Vicky. Time to switch to builder mode.

Turn 4: Circi founded. We now have completed the tier! This opens us up to expand to the west. Note: We do not have room to expand to the north. Our only option to go is west for now. There are 3 cities we can found now, to the west of Arpinum, Pisea, and Ravenna. After that, we will have to go to war again before we can expand.

Turn 6: Setia founded, west of Pisea.

Turn 9:
Hinduism has spread: Arretium

Now, we have the possibility of a second religion. We may want to try to spread this to the rest of our cities.

I built some Theatres on some of our bordering towns, so hopefully we won't be losing the culture battle. Also, I did nothing with our Great Artist. I think a culture win would be very hard, if anything, for the time it would take. I am afraid someone else will get to space before then. I didn't really look too closely at which cities would be good for our 3 culture powers, but I don't think we've really built much for wonders anywhere (AI has beat us to everything)

Space may be a viable option for us, once we get research cranking, and some of our eastern cities get their production up. Obviously, diplomacy is out, and domination would be extremey difficult; conquest would be much easier.

I'd like to hear thoughts from the rest of the team, but my preference is:

1) Space
2) Conquest
3) Culture

I'm not including time, just because I think that it is not really a victory... more like a failure to do anything in time.

Sorry about no screenshots... Imageshack is not being nice to me this morning...

Oh yeah... the save:

oldbustedjorn · Feb 28, 2006

Excellent turns Maquis, way to be decisive.

During my turns, I saw a few of those trades, but I couldn't have gotten as much as you did. I'm also glad those settlers came in handy.

I like space first as well, but lets consider taking freddie out so we can expand east a bit. After that, we'll probably not be able to expand any more as we have ghandi and vicky (leading scorers at end of my turns) to the south.

Maquis · Feb 28, 2006

One thing I want to note. If we do want to try for anything else but culture, we need to use our Great Artist. If we set off the culture bomb in Arrietium, it will devistate Freddie's lands, and may even take out one of his cities (he has one that we are already up to the city tile in our culture) Remember, as of 1.52, if we get a city to revolt, we can raze it! :evil:

By taking out Freddie's land, it would make our advance that much easier. It may even open up the tile for our settler to plop down.

The only reason I did not do this was the culture win discussion. If we did decide on the culture win, that artist should be merged with one of the culture cities ASAP. It would be way better this early in the game than just the culture bomb.

oldbustedjorn · Feb 28, 2006

1300AD - and last I looked we don't have any cities over 1000 culture. Is it even possible?

bobrath · Feb 28, 2006

Great turn, with lots of progress.

Maquis said:
Note: We do not have room to expand to the north. Our only option to go is west for now. There are 3 cities we can found now, to the west of Arpinum, Pisea, and Ravenna. After that, we will have to go to war again before we can expand.

My understanding was that our next tier was only four cities: due north/east/south/west of capital. Our next tier would be adajcent to those... or are we going direct to the 3 on each side expansion?

If its important to spread our new religion... I can switch our state religion which will improve our relations but we'll lose some of the OR bonus until I can get the new religion spread.

I've got it, but I won't play until I get off work in 6 hours or so. Plenty of time to discuss.

oldbustedjorn · Feb 28, 2006

My understanding was that our next tier was only four cities: due north/east/south/west of capital. Our next tier would be adajcent to those... or are we going direct to the 3 on each side expansion?

Yea, thats going to really hurt us I think. We have the city west of pisae from Maquis' turns. That means, we either have to fight Ghandi, or take freddie. But either way, we have to take both if we want to build more than 1 more city.

If we could take one city from ghandi and one city from freddie, we'd have decent expansion room again - but I don't think thats wise. Freddie we can deal with, but can we withstand 10 turns of war against ghandi who probably has superior units?

bobrath · Feb 28, 2006

Just pulling this forward:

and we had agreed the second 4 was our logical next choice...

VQ02 - Predetermined City Placement

Emperor

Prince

Make it so ...

Prince

Make it so ...

Prince

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Make it so ...

Emperor

Make it so ...

King

Prince

King

Prince

King

Prince

Emperor

Prince

Emperor

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