Holy Warriors - Civilization 5 (BNW) Succession Game

[T-hawk]

Pretty sure buying clears the camp including quest credit. (I'm totally OK with reloading if we predicate the purchase on that assumption if it proves wrong.) Yes, cities can always shoot 2 squares even over hills. We could probably clear the camp that way, although it will take several turns if the camp happens to spawn a badly timed unit while the warrior is hurt.

We need roads which will tie up some worker labor. And there are chops to do at the capital. And all the growth will speed up with the Traditiion finisher. And eventually we will want to pre-road up to conquest targets. BUILD MORE WORKERS.

I'm leaning back to the original east location for red dot. The sea spot only makes sense if we intend to continuously use that trade route throughout the whole game. I don't think we will. Foreign routes become better uses of TR slots once you're up the shallow part of the food growth curve. I think I do want the earlier resource access plus the extra bit of faith.

[timmy827]

We need roads which will tie up some worker labor. And there are chops to do at the capital. And all the growth will speed up with the Traditiion finisher. And eventually we will want to pre-road up to conquest targets. BUILD MORE WORKERS.

If we do nothing with Monaco, the tradition finisher is about 32 turns away. Formula In short, next policy cost should be (25 + 9 *(5^2) ) * ( 1.3) = 325 culture, and we will be at 12/turn, plus 6 more turns for the current policy. "Eventually" for roading to military targets is even further away.
I could get behind starting 2 more workers after the current settler + watermill builds finish in 6 turns; would still prefer not to spend the gold on workers.

Looking at those policy speeds, If we think the Piety 2 policies are key, perhaps we want to consider the Oracle (not this turnset ofc). I'm not hip on usual wonder completion dates, or what AIs are wonder hogs, but as far as I can tell from the log none have been built since the (really early, right?) Russian Great Library of turn 40. Looking at tech costs, I believe as of T60 one AI has Currency and one has Iron Working but none have Philo yet. (the cost in F6 drops some for each AI with the tech)

Who is the green civ closest to Solomon's mines with the one ivory tile? I thought it was Iro originally but apparently not.

This probably doesn't need saying, but I'd be very careful with the scout, almost always try to end in a forest or hill. (right now his position is OK adjoining a civ, that's fairly safe from barbs). I'd rather spend some turns moving only one square and meet the city states slower than risk getting killed and basically never finding the city states.

[Ichabod]

Turns played.

Save:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2124...0.Civ5Save

Report to come tomorrow (it's very late here). Timmy is up. If you play it, I left some workers unmoved, because they finished what they were building and it was not obvious about what to do next. Cities are micro'ed to the best of my ability/judgement for the unhappy period we are going through. When we are happy again, should probably change the tiles.

Report:

*Exploration: I met 3 City States, Jerusalem (religious), Almaty (Militaristic) and Singapore (Mercantile). I didn't protect any of them, since they are far away and I was afraid of that resulting in a war declaration (note: Iroquois are defending two of these CSs and 4 leaders asked me to declare on the Iroquois - not sure if such interaction could lead to we being declared on due to a CS protection, but better to be safe than sorry).

The exploration with the scout went a little non-optimal, since I got a bit deceived by the terrain. I met Jerusalem and went North, but after meeting Almaty, I realized there was not that much more land north, so I backtracked to South and met Singapore.




*Diplomacy: I sold some embassies for 1gpt around. I accepted a Declaration of Friendship from Morroco, the Civ near the Solomon mines. My thoughts were, we are probably attacking Rome first, so it's nice to have an ally nearby, to secure a front. Morroco also had quite a bit of money (but no GPT - most AIs had negative GPT during my turnset), so I sold 4 horses and an embassy for 215 lump sum gold (which I think was about what we could get, correct me if I'm wrong).

I negated quite a bit of requests to declare on Iroquois and I denied a DoF with Portugal, since they didn't have a lot of gold, nor were they friendly. I don't know what a DoF means exactly, so, again, I didn't want to risk it.

*Wonders and other events: Statue of Zeus was built by Swden on turn 61. Stonehenge was built by Morroco on turn 64. A pantheon was founded by the Portuguese, +1 culture from Pastures.

*Tech path: It went Bronze Working (Iron, we have 2 sources, for 4 total) -> Sailing (for TR).




*Turn 66 we got the Monarchy SP and I settled Divine (perhaps it should have been Divinity). I realized we could settle it coastal to the Inland Sea, by moving 1SE, but decided to follow the plan decided by the team and get the site with more faith in the long run. I bought a worker to speed the city up and two tiles, the barb camp and the deer (worker went to improve the deer). Not sure if that was a good use of gold, but I wanted the city to develop faster.

Buying the Camp did clear it and completed the CS quest, boosting us to Ally status (we also killed 2 barb brutes with our warrior + city attack). Unfortunately, Ragusa didn't have their dyes improved, so we became unhappy when settling the 4th city, Piety. I went with the original red dot, since it had more resources on the first ring and I think we prefer flexibility with our TRs, rather than have one of them always tied to Faith -> Piety.

Both new cities started on granaries. Perhaps Piety should have gone Library, like Timmy mentioned above, sorry about that.




I started two workers in Faith and Devotion, after the builds we had before. When we finish them, we'll have 6 for 4 cities, which is nice for now, I guess. I think I could have micro'ed Faith to finish the worker last turn, but it just flew through my mind (sorry).

*Some pictures:

Rome:




Russia:




Sweden:




Morroco (what we know):




Demographics:

[timmy827]

Turns played.

Save:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2124...0.Civ5Save

Report to come tomorrow (it's very late here). Timmy is up. If you play it, I left some workers unmoved, because they finished what they were building and it was not obvious about what to do next. Cities are micro'ed to the best of my ability/judgement for the unhappy period we are going through. When we are happy again, should probably change the tiles.

See it, play Monday or Tuesday night depending on discussion. Not too many tiles to switch I think, but its only a few turns - 4 until the first lux sale ends, or possibly earlier if Ragusa finishes their dyes.

Rough plans:
Sailing -> Philo
Cap goes to caravan next, then library
Devotion to library after worker, I think.
keep one worker at two old cities, 2 each for roading/connecting resources at new cities.

Prophet will pop soon. Beliefs are <thread title> and pilgramage right? I'm not sure pilgramage will help much - we won't be able to spend any faith on foreign spread I don't think, maybe we get some from the Theology wonders. But agree its still probably the best founder belief.
EDIT: Doesn't matter for gameplay, but what religion name do we want?

Two big decisions I see
1. Do we to try Oracle instead of NC first? I won't get to Philo, but this affects how much I prioritize libraries during my set. If we want NC ASAP, I think I may swap Red (Piety) to library now and eventually buy its granary. Think Orange-Divine is the stronger and won't need the rushbuy to finish both library and granary close to when Red finishes just its library.

2. What to do with trade routes? with above builds I will have two available mid-set (the original one to devotion expires in 5 turns). The standard play would be two food caravans to the two new cities. The other option I've been plugging would be one to Monaco to their quest, coupled with a 250 gold gift for alliance. Now for those numbers.

Food caravan is 3 FPT for 30 turns. I think it becomes 3.5 when we hit classicial era in about 15 turns, so say ~97 total.
The Monaco idea would raise our influence to 75 (50 quest, 20 gold, 5 already from pledge), so 15 turns alliance
Their culture (+6 at allied would advance the tradition finisher some 6 or 7 turns.
I'm guessing our civwide food surplus then might around 27 - it's 19 now (except for unhappiness), will have more granaries and food+ tiles improved at the new cities. That gets "free " food of 27 * .15 = 4.05/turn from the policy. I'm struggling a bit with quantifying the aqueducts but believe they basically profit you 50% of your food surplus; store up to 40% of the next growth and with the steep thresholds in civ5 that's about 50% of the current growth if not more. So I'm not weedy, the overall benefit of the tradition finisher earlier is (# turns) * (food surplus with Trad - food surplus without Trad). In this case something like (6 turns) * ((1.5 * 27 *1.15) - 27) = 117 food. 90 food in a baby city might be competitive with 117 food spread across multiple cities, since the small cities grow so much faster. The 90 food from the food caravan starts sooner, but also ends later, in fact I think both distributions of food in the 30-turn caravan window are roughly centered/symmetrical. Feel free to throw stones at any/all of the numbers or assumptions in the calculation

I'm not trying to quantify having earlier Piety from the monaco culture. Obviously allying them takes the 250 gold upfront, we'd get back about 150 of that over the 30 turns of the trade deal, and also get their furs for 15 turns probably.

One final question: Once warrior healed, is it worth risk moving him towards the camp Monaco wants cleared? He isn't strong enough to do it but might be able to steal the credit with Rome doing the work. We could improve the east side tiles of Divine first as the west would be the only side vulnerable to barbs.

[Ichabod]

Report is up, will comment more later.

[Ichabod]

Some comments for the next player:

*Notice the barb camp that Singapore (perhaps Jerusalem) wants destroyed. That's a good direction to move the scout, I think, because there's seems to be quite a lot of land in that direction. Exploring around Morroco might be good too.

*Getting the Aristocracy SP earlier from Monaco's culture might help when building the NC. Not sure if it makes a difference (perhaps we could still get Aistocracy anyway before we can start NC), but worth taking into account when deciding TR for food vs TR for Monaco.

*I don't think we can afford to send the warrior to the Monaco camp, we'd have risks of barb attacks and I think it'd take too long, overall, with little chance of success. But our religion is not so far away right now, so perhaps we can afford a Pictish warrior soon, to send there, if there's still a quest for it.

*I don't think we need Oracle. We are generating a decent amount of faith right now, at least to guarantee some units pretty soon, so I don't think we need to rush the piety policies. But, perhaps it's just a very good opportunity build, considering your arguments, Timmy. Personally, i'd go for the safer NC play, but I'm okay with trying for the Oracle too.

I'm okay with whatever religion. There isn't any one that fits the Celts, I think. Can we name the religion however we want? In this case, someone with better knowledge of the Celts culture can suggest something.

[T-hawk]

Yes, Pilgrimage. Someone can run numbers if we like, but my instinct says at least one missionary will pay back its cost, particularly to a civ that misses getting its own religion.

Druidism would be the Celtic religion historically, though it wasn't exactly about holy crusading.

I always like Oracle, being one policy ahead throughout the game always feels worth the cost. NC can wait a bit I think.

TR to Monaco sounds decent, including that fulfilling their quest allows them to ask for more I think.

Aqueducts keep 40% of the prior sized food box I think. Certain that Civ 4 always worked that way at least.

I wouldn't chase Monaco's camp quest, pretty unlikely to work out timed right to steal credit. It might still be there for our first real unit.

[timmy827]

OK, good points. I'll wait another day for Yuris to have a chance to look/comment/suggest.

Right now leaning towards the Oracle. Think it's pretty safe, will watch the tech costs carefully but no one has it now.
And towards the Monaco caravan idea.
T-hawk is right, Aqueducts store 40% of the previous growth. So maybe not quite as much benefit there, but Icha made a good point that Aristocracy earlier would help with either/both NC and Oracle.

Outvoted on keeping the warrior close to home though, so will do.

Do we chop the iron forest at Divine? I think the +1 hammer and gold from iron selling is worth losing 1 faith, although it is only two iron. May not get to it my set as the ivory is more important.

This thread was the most recent/comprehensive I could find on AI diplomacy. I'm tempted to try DoFriends with Maria again, as she now has a big pile of gold (315). AIs can disklike you if you DFreindship with their "Enemies", but no one has denounced anyone yet and it's not a huge malus anyways. I think the possibility of another bulk sale is worth the risk as many have noted AI's not having GPT. Ichabod, think that 45 per strat resource is the value, so the deal you swung with Morocco was right on

I'm mostly Irish Catholic descent, and that sounds about right for religion name. Let's hope the last unmet civ isn't England
Not convinced that buying a missionary makes sense, or a unit right away (maybe as a barb hunter? one isn't anywhere near enough for anything else) - maybe straight to enhancement prophet. But those decisions won't be made in my turnset so no rush there.

[yuris125]

Sorry if that soulds lazy, but I agree with T-hawk

[timmy827]

Sorry if that soulds lazy, but I agree with T-hawk

I pulled that move earlier in the thread, no problem
should have something up in about 12 hours.