[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

The Grand Plan: 1 AD Onwards (Turn 115+)!

It's been while since we've had one of these long, detailed posts, so hope you guys enjoy this. And feel free to offer feedback on my ideas, Teddy, Dhalphir, and any of the lurkers (within reason, of course). Actually, I was hoping that lurkers might discuss this in the lurker thread, so that I could look back to it after the game and see if anyone had thought of something I'd missed, etc. I have a general idea of what lurkers have been talking about based on the comments that others have made about Pitboss 14 in other forums, so hopefully this is a welcome change.

First, let's discuss where we stand in the game and briefly comment on our opponents. In other words, view this as the Turn 115 / 1 AD "power rankings," based on the likelihood of a team winning the game.

• In first place are the clear leaders of the game -- SutOxy (Pacal II of Native America). They have been at the top (or near to it) in terms of expansion, research, and population virtually the entire game. With the Mausoleum of Maussolos in hand, they are well positioned to launch either a timely Golden Age soon or to save up their Golden Ages until after they aim for the Taj Mahal. Since they appear to have little to no threat from other civilizations, I suspect that they will make a run for Liberalism and take Nationalism as the free technology.
  
• There are several teams that I could pick for second place, but I'm going with Asterix (Willem of Ottomans). They have also kept up in expansion and technology, and appear to be safe from threats in the short-term. They are currently researching Civil Service and will (ideally) try to research Liberalism prerequisites to prevent SutOxy from getting a more expensive free technology. Asterix has claimed that he thinks India will attack him soon, though I doubt that will happen.
  
• In third place, I nominate our own team. DMOC/Teddy (Sury II of Byzantium). Our primary strength right now lies in expansion and production, and that we appear to have a solid ally to the south with the Blame Caledorn Team. We have lagged a bit behind on technology as compared to Asterix and SutOxy, but that's understandable due to not being Financial. What prevents us from being in the top two is the Roman threat to the south. We have been forced to invest hammers into axes and catapults while SutOxy and Asterix have built wealth or performed other pure-research tactics. Fortunately, we MAY have an "ace" in cataphracts. They will likely be essential for us to get into a top two position by the end of the game. (More on this later.)
  
• In fourth place comes Yuufo/Bisons (Victoria of India). The former runaway, they appear to have fallen dramatically. What's more, Yuufo has started finishing turns in just five minutes, indicating that he has checked out of this game. There is no indication that Care Bears are that far ahead of us in technology (except for Metal Casting which they got from The Oracle). They were at 12 cities on turn 84; on turn 115, they are at 13. I'm not sure what happened to them. One thing that's consistently been confusing me is their Police State civic. Everyone knows that Representation is a far superior civic in almost all circumstances; this has simply been baffling to me. India also has to worry about the Roman threat down south, and an inexplicably worried Asterix over to the east.
  
• In fifth place come Yossarian/Caledorn (Isabella of Inca). They are easily the best of the southern teams, and appear to be well-positioned to take over some land to their west, based on how weak their neighbors look. They also have to worry about Rome, but judging from the maps they've given us, it doesn't seem likely that Rome will attack them. They appear to be behind even us in tech, but they've kept up in city expansion and will eventually be a significant player in the future.
  
• In sixth place is Arkipeller (Huayna Capac of Netherlands). Formerly the team that everyone was worried about before the game began (except for me, since I couldn't figure out why everyone was afraid of Lord Parkin, and no one offered a rationale), they appear now to just be a middling civilization focusing on a "religion economy." They have not kept up in pace with expansion, since they have just eight cities now compared to our thirteen. Another weakness is that they are currently sandwiched by the two top score leaders in the game.
  
• In seventh place is DT (Darius I of England). They have also not kept up in expansion, but they appeared to at least be afloat with us in technology (if not better than us) before they had to build axes and catapults to counter the impending (?) Roman threat. They have already told me that their economy has hurt, but they at least have strong economic traits. The downside of being in their position, of course, is that they are by far Rome's likeliest target. They do have us and Blame Caledorn as allies.
  
• At this point, it doesn't really matter who goes where, but for eighth place, I'll put in Bowsling/Aivoturoso (Mansa Musa of Zulu). They've lagged behind in expansion and have barbarians rampaging to their north. They are likely fodder for Blame Caledorn or another northern team.
  
• In ninth place are the Cannibal Ponies, classical_hero and Halvgud (Napoleon of Sumeria). I pegged this team to be in last place in my initial pre-game power rankings, and it looks like my prediction isn't far off. I'm not sure how they could have been so slow in expanding -- I guess we'll find out after reading their lurker thread. I'm not sure how they're doing in terms of research, but they should at least be "decent" due to a lack of maintenance costs. I predict that SutOxy will eventually take over them.
  
• In tenth place, I'll put in the Roman team, Haram and Barteq (Ragnar of Rome). They're in a unique position. Since they've invested so many hammers in praetorians and are so behind in tech (they are still many turns away from getting even Currency!) and have no friends due to their mysteriously quiet diplomatic nature, they have no chance of winning this game. (The same could be said, though, of any of the bottom five teams.) I have no idea if or when they will declare war. What they do have is the potential to significantly impact our game, as they have done so already. What they have done thus far can be succinctly described as: letting Asterix and SutOxy run away as technology leaders.
  

As I alluded earlier, I think only the teams in the top five of my rankings have any chance of winning this game, with SutOxy having by far the best chance of anyone. So what do I think they'll do? Here are my predictions.

• They're in a strong position right now, but they will eventually need to translate that into winning cities from enemies. Thus, I predict that they will beeline to Liberalism and take Nationalism as the free technology. This will let them get a 12-turn golden age.
  
• After Liberalism/Nationalism, I suspect they will try to obtain some combination of rifleman, cannons, and/or cuirassers/cavalry, and attack one of their neighbors. In an ideal world for us, they'd attack Asterix, but since he's on par with them technologically, SutOxy may have more appealing targets in the south (Cannibal Ponies) or east (Orgynized).
  
• I also predict that they'll "manually" start a Golden Age at some point, so they'll get that 12-turns in addition to the Taj.
  
• Finally, I think they will start talking to us about a possible NAP extension or some form of cooperation. What's the evidence? In a full diplomatic game, the game will end by concession when the leader is so far ahead that he can successfully defend (or has defended) a dogpile. SutOxy knows this, and have told Yossarian about this. Yossarian then relayed information to me.
  

To be specific, here are the emails I've exchanged with Yossarian:

Blame Caledorn,

Yes, that's what I feared. Good thing our next settler is currently in production and not moving. Unfortunately, any of the three spots you propose will be difficult to defend versus Rome, which is why I was hoping to get the N-NW spot. The spot you propose that's on the coast is right next to Rome, and they can attack it from the first turn of a war if needed. The other spots are adjacent to a forest tile (IIRC), making it hard for us to attack them before they attack us. That, combined with the fact that Asterix and SutOxy are doing nothing but tech and tech, means that it is unlikely we will be able to use marble for world wonders. =(

Thus, we're probably going to send our next settler north so that we can claim some of the last remaining lands up there. Depending on what Rome does, we'll found the marble city eventually, but it may have to wait up to 20 turns. In the meantime, we do have a few filler cities left, so if my settling plan goes well (and Rome doesn't attack us) we should soon be at 20 cities, including the marble city. I also noticed that the three of us (India, us, you) have 13 cities, tied for the lead. That's good --- we need to keep each other strong to stop the eventual runaway SutOxy. If you'd like to discuss some possible deterrence actions, etc. against them, by all means, we're open to that. Even though we're close to them in score right now, they are miles ahead in tech and potential (with Mausoleum of Maussolos).

There's one more thing I'd like to discuss. We currently do not have a 10 XP unit for Heroic Epic, so we were hoping that we could "bend" our no-scouting clause to allow one of our chariots to go through your borders so that it can possibly find some barbarian prey in BowAivo/Ponies area. Would that be okay? We'd gladly allow your units to go through our borders if needed. And we will not share potentially private information with other teams.

Sincerely,
DMOC

Team EggHeads

And his response:

Hi DMOC,

Thanks for being so understanding with that city placement. I really do appreciate all our cooperation so far. Feel free to send your chariot through our lands at your convenience, and let us know if we can help out with directions or anything like that.

Very interesting proposal regarding Suttree. I agree they are clearly the strongest team, even stronger than their score suggests. Suttree sent an email recently asking how they can avoid dogpiles, and talking about long-term cooperation with us and with your team. We don't really have strong feelings about this team one way or the other, so let us know what you think is the best way to deal with them and we'll follow your lead!

Yossarian

What can we do to stop this? It will be hard for us since we can't easily control what's going on in the other side of the map. Well, first, we have to make sure we don't sign a long NAP with them unless they give us absurd amounts of concessions. Second, we need to make sure we can keep Yos/Cal as allies, since they appear to understand the situation as well as we do. And third (and most importantly), we need to make sure we're among the top civs in this game by the time SutOxy become a runaway.

I unfortunately do not think we will be able to get Asterix to join us against SutOxy, since he appears to be inexplicably worried about India for some reason. I sent him this message three days ago:

Asterix,

As an absolute backup plan, if something like this happens again, we will request a reload (especially if the deal was extremely important). In the future, we'll make sure to offer deals immediately whenever possible. =)

Just a couple of other points ... if you wouldn't mind, we'd appreciate some of your thoughts on our thoughts :

(1) I'm not sure why you think we're in a long-term ally with India. I specifically said that we were worried about Rome, so we've adopted a policy of "be nice/friends" with our neighbors, so that they wouldn't come looking our way. But you claimed (I don't want to use "confronted" since that sounds like a strong word) that we are in a long-term ally with India. If you define long-term as having a short NAP and open borders, then technically we're allied with almost everyone in the game. Our NAP isn't super-long, but Yuufo and us agreed on keeping the length confidential to other teams.

(2) Do you still think that India will still pick us off one-by-one? We followed our policy of expanding towards them and focusing on our economy (whenever possible), and that has resulted in us arguably having just as good a position in the game as India, and we have higher power than they do. If we had focused on hardcore military versus India early, I'm sure that we'd all be in a worse position right now.

Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads

He has not responded, despite having written prompt replies to all of our previous emails.

-------------------------------
GENERAL GOALS & CITIES
-------------------------------

So anyway, here are the general goals I think we should try to accomplish at the start of the ADs.

• We should maintain our position as having the most amount of cities of any civilization.
  
• We should attempt to grow our core cities (especially the capital) to size 10+, so that we can get sufficient production and research without needing to resort to the whip so much. We'll need to get a good worker plan set up so we have the right distribution of farms, cottages, and mines.
  
• We should finish settling our filler cities and produce the last worker(s) needed for us. The filler cities will serve to help protect our core cities, possibly chop for a wonder (some still have forests), and can serve as whip/draft fodder eventually.
  
• We should aim for an early Guilds research. I'm not sure if we'll beat SutOxy, but we should definitely be among the firs team to unlock knights. In this game, cataphracts are a good enough unique unit that they can possibly catapult us to a leading position.
  
• After Cataphracts, fill in on any economy techs and then aim for cannons/rifleman/cavalry, but this is far in the future. (Is there any point in building cuirassiers if playing Byzantium?)
  

With that said, let's discuss some domestic-related stuff. I have three screenshots below, each indicating areas where we can found cities in the future. Ideally, if Rome doesn't attack, I would like us to have 20 cities by turn 150. Right now, Cornell is set to produce a settler who will turn into our fourteenth city. Realistically, I think we'll stop short of 20 cities, as some of the filler cities are pretty crap, but that's to be expected -- that's why they're filler cities! Note: apologies for being in anarchy, but I didn't want to wait another turn before producing a report, so we'll have to live with unrealistic production times for now.

My city numbering schemes are obviously not final. Do we want to prioritize other spots? Let me know.

Area 1:

I suggest our fourteenth city go to claim the jungled area up north. Here's the rationale:

• It helps solidify our border with India, and ensures that UT Austin will be able to control those important grasslands.
  
• It consists almost entirely of grasslands and coasts, so it'll be useful for a research center eventually.
  
• It can share with UWashington the dyes, so we'll always be working that tile. UWashington will probably need to focus on production.
  

It won't net us "a lot" (then again, most of our future cities won't at this point) but I view it as a useful spot.

I also have a suggestion for a 17th city, on that 1-tile island. Don't worry -- Washington gets all of its coast, and we'll just be using it to work the stuff up north. It'll be mainly for intercontinental trade routes, though I'm not sure if we gain the most out of this. Something to consider, anyway --- it's definitely low-priority.

Area 2:

City 15/16 (I'm not sure if we'll be able to safely put this as our 15th city, it really depends on what Rome does) will get the marble, obviously. Ideally, I'd put it N-NW on the marble, but Blame Caledorn want to settle the fish, and I figure that we might as well let them do it. We were unlikely to use the marble any time soon, regardless, though we might consider building the Temple of Artemis in different spots for fail gold.

City 18 might be good, and I'd consider settling it NE of it to get more forests. I suggest we keep the forests intact -- we may want a quick wonder, so this city might be a candidate for that.

City 19 is a pure filler city, this is among our lowest priorities.

Area 3:

City 15/16 (we may found this sooner if we want) will secure some of that nice grassland over there, while also keeping some forests in case we want to chop. I suggest we start out by farming as many tiles as possible (we will need Civil Service for some of this) and then cottaging later if there's enough food.

City 20 is another pure filler. Do we want this?

That's enough for cities. I won't get into too much detail about what our current cities should be producing; I've touched on that in this post, though after thinking it over, I want us investing less in military and more on wealth/settlers/growth. If Rome does attack us with everyone, we'll still not have enough to completely stop them at once even if we do put every city on military now, so I don't see the point in mindlessly producing catapult after catapult when we could be using that time to catch up to the tech leaders.

Also, we want to have our capital be much larger than it is. Can we make it size 16 soon?

------------
WORKERS
------------

What should our workers be doing? Right now, we have fourteen workers, and I've set MIT to make our fifteenth worker. I think that should be enough for the rest of the game, but if needed, we can always make a sixteenth. Workers are named A through N to help us keep track of them. Also, I know that there are a lot of signs that say "farm" on them, even though we can't do these until Civil Service. It's important to plan improvements ahead --- we don't want to be mowing down towns for farms later!

Here are the three major worker groups we have.

Worker Group 1:

We've got some nice improvement over at Wisconsin. The axe you see is heading over there for proection/military police, so we are free to just build wealth or whip a market into Wisconsion at our leisure. I put our workers on a mine (for the purposes of production) and the other worker that just finished the cottage by Wisconsion should probably chop some of the forests before Orgy can. Orgynized and us have a deal and we agreed to let them found a city by the indicated sign, but we certainly did not say that we wouldn't settle our city first and culturally control the most important tiles. Too bad for them --- we simply expanded faster and can make use of the chops before they can!

As I've also indicated, perhaps another farm by the rive would be good. Eventually, with Civil Service, the other grasslands by the wheat could be farmed, since Berkeley has to share both of its food resources and we're going to have to juggle them a bit.

Worker Group 2:

Lots of stuff going on here. Two workers just finished a road by Stanford that will be useful to transport stuff from Stanford to Illinois, and both of Stanford's remaining grasslands will be cottaged. Stanford's also got several riverside tundra tiles. I've never really thought about the best way to utilize those tiles. I was planning on just ignoring them for now, until we get Biology and can farm them. Is it worth putting a cottage over them?

By our (hopefully) 15/16th city area, we should consider farming the tiles we can to facilitie growth. I also think that Georgia should in general get mines and farms over production, since it's right on the border and we want to have the production necessary to either culturally overwhelm Orgynized or to produce troops there if needed.

Note: Stanford's Hindu Missionary will head over to Georgia Tech once it's done, so the workers to the south (after the road is finished) can go on the hill to chop again, possibly a Hindu Monastery, just to make sure the sheep is under our control.

Worker Group 3:

Workers have just finished chopping or will chop spices, so when Calendar comes in, we should be able to get spices immediately. Remember --- our stone/spices trade with Asterix will end on Turn 123, I believe (he hasn't told me whether he wants to add an extra turn due to our delay in getting the trade set up).

Near Washington, I think its grasslands should be either farmed or workshopped, not cottaged. It needs to focus on production.

By UTAustin, we're going to want cottages, but I think we should at least reserve some farms just so that our (projected) 14th city doesn't have to rely on the fish or cows or can use them without adversely affecting Washington and UTAustin. Ignore the cottage sign east of the cows -- I'm thinking we may actually want to save that spot for a farm too.

Any idea what to do with the plains tiles there? I just ignore plains until Scientific Method / Biology, since they just aren't good enough as they are. We could lay down workshops for future use …

Finally, what should we do about the remaining grasslands at Berkeley? It probably won't be working them so it's not high priority (it's working 2 scientists right now).

---------------------------------
RESEARCH / GREAT PEOPLE
---------------------------------

Here's the relevant part of the tech tree one turn before we got Monarchy. (And here is the complete tech tree.)

Now what do we do about Research? I think we can all agree that the only way we can win this game is if we can utilize Cataphracts effectively. That requires us researching Guilds, but we obviously can't skip everything else along the tech path. Here is my recommended technology research path, with rationales for each one.

1. Calendar -- I suggest we get this next since we'll want to hook up our spices (and lone dye) pretty soon. Getting spices not only will give us +1 happiness, but will probably be worth an extra +1 if we can find a trade partner.
   
2. Iron Working -- We need to know now if we have iron, since that's required for cataphracts. I'd be surprised if there wasn't any source in our lands, but let's just know now so we don't have to worry about it (or so we can worry about it sooner rather than later). We'll also need this for the dyes city.
   
3. Metal Casting -- I was debating between this and Code of Laws as our next tech, but ultimately decided that forges are too good to pass up. We can use them for +2 happiness and to make our whipping/wealth more effective.
   
4. Code of Laws -- Will be useful for the 2-3 courthouses we'll probably end up building. Courthoses are something that's not really necessary for us, and I'm not sure how much we'll be using Caste System. That civic is great if we want to generate tons of GP, though, so we should consider a Golden Age + Capital producing tons of Scientsits if desired.
   
5. Aesthetics / Literature / Drama -- I think we should get these comparatively cheap techs out of the way now, because (1) with hopefully marble in our control, we can fail-build some of the possibly less-popular wonders (or national wonders), (2) we will want National Epic in our capital, and (3) Drama unlocks hippodromes, which give +1 happiness based on horses, rather than dyes.
   
6. Feudalism -- Useful as a prerequsite to Civil Service and to Guilds. I'm not sure if we'll need Vassalage, but it's an option.
   
7. Civil Service - Might as well get Bureaucracy now and will help us with our farm situation. I'm putting this after Feudalism so we can get a tech bonus. (Will there be a bonus if we get Feudalism before Civil Service?)
   
8. Archery / Horseback Riding -- Filler techs, and we'll save these for just before Machinery/Guilds so we can get the economy techs first, and so we have time to build stables.
   
9. Machinery -- The other prerequisite to Guilds. Make sure we're building stables at this point!
   
10. Guilds -- Finally.
    

How does this plan work? I've never done a guilds beeline before (is this even a "beeline" if we include Aesthetics/Lit/Drama, even though those are cheap techs?) so I'm not sure if this will be effective. After Guilds, we can backfill with Alphabet (to see what techs they have) and Engineering (for even faster transportation).

And with regards to Great People, I think we should get the next one out of Berkeley (an engineer or a scientist) and then we can get all the rest from Carnegie Mellon. What do you think of launching a Golden Age and then using that Golden Age to switch to Caste System and then generating tons of Great Scientists from our capital? My thought is that even though SutOxy will probably do this before us and win Liberalism, we'll want to get the techs down the Liberalism/Nationalism path anyway for the post-Cataphract era, and can use these bulbs to do so. In other words, we'll manually research up to Guilds, and rely on scientists/bulbs to catch up on Liberalism while we dedicate most of our empire to war. Obviously, we'll need National Epic there first, but I do think that launching at most one Golden Age before Guilds could give us just the "tip" we need to make a future war go well.

So, to decide:

1. What to do with the next Great Person? (~15 turns)
2. Do we start one Golden Age before Guilds?
3. Will we use Caste System? Will we use Bureaucracy mostly, and switch to Vasslage to prepare for war?

------------------
CATAPHRACTS
------------------

Last but not least, assuming we can make it to Cataphracts (pray Rome doesn't put all their prats at us ), what do we do with them? I'm assuming we can get there before our target(s) can, so we should be at tech parity if not better. The three possible targets are

1. Rome - Easiest to declare war without diplomatic consequences, but will stretch our empire far and they don't have much worth getting.
   
2. India -- Will get us valuable cities and cottages, but they might be prepared for it, since our NAP with them lasts until turn 140.
   
3. Netherlands/Orgynized - Would also be helpful to us, but their cities or nearby land isn't as good/developed. We might also want to consider keeping Orgynized as a buffer against SutOxy.
   

As you can see, it's not completely clear to me who we should attack with Cataphracts just yet. I suspect the picture will be clear by around turn 130, and we can make serious preparations then if needed. I'm actually hoping that we can attack India, but I think the likeliest target will be Rome.



Okay, that wraps up this post. I know it was a bit long but it's important to have a good understanding of what we're going to be doing in the future, rather than play the mid-game mechanically and watch the teams that do plan (SutOxy!) win easily.

DMOC
Proudly representing Team EggHeads.

PS: After looking at all we've done, I can honestly say that this is probably the best I've utilized the Creative trait … ever. All of our early cities needed border pops to get their food resources, and being creative has helped us win these crucial culture battles against Orgynized and Care Bears, most importantly netting us stone, but also sheep and other grasslands.