Want your input concerning Japan-game

[Chep]

Hey there,

I made it! Well, almost.

After uniting Asia under our leadership our culture outshone everyone else by 1600AD.

We are now in the year 1940 and Japan rules half the world.
Asia, North and Central America are ours and we have recently begun the conquest of Africa. Our marvelous tanks and fighter planes are destroying the Russian hordes of Infantry and Cossacks and even though the British have recently been working on something they call "rockets" our spies keep us informed of their progress.

Our path has been glorious but always far from secure and the stability of our Empire has constantly been questioned. We proved these critics wrong!

But our leadership is divided on a fundamental question:

Where do we go from here?

The two options put forward by our cleverest minds are:
a) Use our general supremacy to conquer the rest of the world and dominate it
b) Seek to answer all the fundamental questions of life and science by researching everything there is to know

Oh wise fanatics, what are your thoughts on this?

Some pictures of the glorious Japanese Empire:

A comparison of the civs that play a role in the world:

Spoiler :

And an overview over their diplomatic relations:

Spoiler :

(yeah basically a world war between England and us versus Russia, France and Germany, plus some minor civs on each side)

Our technology is state of the art:

Spoiler :

Our two paths each have their advantages and risks.

Conquering the world and assuming a dominating role over mankind is an obvious temptation.
However many great empires have crumbled from overextending themselves.

Spoiler :

But trying to solve all of the mysteries in this world in the next 80 years seems also quite ambitious as our wise men and women estimate that at our current rate it will take us about 140 years to do all that. Using our spies to learn some secrets from our enemies will shorten this a bit, but it might still not be enough.

So, what are your votes my dear fanatics?

(PS: Of course this is Paragon/Normal on the current SVN)

edit: if you feel any infos are missing in order for you to make a suggestion/recommendation, please ask for them and I will gladly provide it.

 

[Royal Tenenbaum]

You should improve your stability while you damage the most violent and uncooperative nations (kill their units, destroy their improvements, turn the world against them). I would not recommend taking cities right now unless you intend to liberate them.

Research refrigeration and build Supermarkets in your core to increase their population. Decrease your population elsewhere by making less farms and cottages and more workhouses.

Increase your core population by creating more farms and windmills.

Ganbatte, Chyapu-san. Tennouheika Banzai!

Addendum: On your question of whether to take over the world or discover all there is to know, I would research refrigeration for the extra food, and beyond that only research if you fall behind in military, or you have a pollution or unhappiness problem.

 

[Chep]

Thank you for your input. Half of that overexpansion malus comes from razing, so it should evaporate soonish. Turning my egalitarian towns into workshops doesnt seem that good of an idea as it would endanger my economic stability.

So, from what I gather you would go for the UHV over the domination? (as that is my main question) I counted, with my current research I need 139 turns (and I am currently in a Golden Age!) to get everything. fortunately England is researching very fast and I can steal their techs (Lubyanka be praised).

My core cities suffered from corporations spreading to them poisoning the population (giving me ~ 8-10 unhealthiness), I couldn't even build factories there. But yeah, supermarkets will be the next buildings they get, I just have to make sure I am the one to get the Internet.

edit: okay your addendum says "go for the domination victory"?

 

[Royal Tenenbaum]

You can't do the UHV without giving independence to most of your non-UHV cities.

 

[Chep]

uhm...why? Without them I couldn't research half as fast.

 

[Royal Tenenbaum]

Going off the information you gave, you could tech faster if you lowered your population.

 

[Chep]

Really? Where did I imply something like that? (I am serious, I want to fix the mistake)

Since there is no huge increase in tech cost for higher populations/more cities I don't see how giving away cities could help me tech faster.
Plus the specialsts there help me get techs from the British (thanks to the Lubyanka)


Well, I just loaded the save and decided to just play for a few turns, since so far nobody has given a recommendation on which of the 2 paths to choose, I will probably go back to the save provided later and am just experimenting now.

Fun thing:
I am at war with Russia+France+Germany+Netherlands (all defensive-pacted). Since I regularly defeat Russian, German and Dutch armies they eventually sue for peace, when the Dutch are willing to capitulate and I accept this reactivates the global war since the French never wanted to sign a cease-fire with me and the Dutch declaring on them makes Russia and Germany declare war on me again

 

[Chep]

okay seems option a) was the easier one:

Spoiler :

and it only took another 10 years

I'd really appreciate it, if somebody tried to get a UHV-victory with the save from the initial post.
I probably won't do it, as the time the AI needs between my turns already exceeds 5min on my slow machine. When there are collapses/rebirths (so, every 2nd/3rd turn) this can even go up to almost 10 min -.-

 

[citis]

Do you want the next turn to continue? Just one more question: Why you train settler?

 

[Chep]

I am sorry, but I dont understand the (first) question.

If you want, you can take the save from 1940 and try to win a UHV by researching everything. England does a good job of researching stuff which is why I have several spies planted there and all my spy points go into them since I feel that researching everything on my own is impossible in the short timeframe.
I'd also recommend dissolving all the defensive pacts and making peace with Russia and possibly the others as well if you want to go for that.

Why do I train settlers? uhm, I am not sure, probably because I wanted to keep the domination-victory option on the table.
But for the UHV it seems advisable to switch all cities to wealth/research-production, except for the Ironworks-one that should build Apollo, Internet, etc

 

[citis]

I am sorry, but I dont understand the (first) question.

If you want, you can take the save from 1940 and try to win a UHV by researching everything. England does a good job of researching stuff which is why I have several spies planted there and all my spy points go into them since I feel that researching everything on my own is impossible in the short timeframe.
I'd also recommend dissolving all the defensive pacts and making peace with Russia and possibly the others as well if you want to go for that.

Why do I train settlers? uhm, I am not sure, probably because I wanted to keep the domination-victory option on the table.
But for the UHV it seems advisable to switch all cities to wealth/research-production, except for the Ironworks-one that should build Apollo, Internet, etc

Well, you said you had a problem with the current turn, so I can play one turn and give you the save to continue. I won't play the game, I will do Japan-paragon game on my own, some time.

 

[Chep]

I dont have a problem with the turn or the game for that matter.

The save is from the point where I noticed that winning via the UHV was probably more difficult that winning any other way. Or at least would take more turns

It is just that the lategame of DoC is basically impossible on my machine since the AI takes several minutes for its turns.

So, if I were to finish this game, it would take me several hours of just waiting for the AI to finish their turns, even if I did nothing during my own turns.

 

[citis]

When I face this problem I use either a second computer to surf the internet or read a book. Do you want to try it? Moreover, try to collapse some civs, less civs means less waiting.