Holy Warriors - Civilization 5 (BNW) Succession Game

[timmy827]

Played. Sorry, I screwed up Steam screenshots. In the morning I’ll see about converting TGA and/or using the Steam feature (which is not saving them to the folder right now argh). (Oh, you have to quit and then you find them)
Druidism founded. may post a shot tomorrow.

The Monaco plan didn’t work out so hot. Caravan only gave 40 influence, bit less that I thought, so the gold only got 5 turns of alliance. still helps but maybe should have kept that caravan inside. Caesar also complained about us getting chummy with Monaco

Our happiness is going to crunch again soon - we lose Monaco’s dyes next turn and 2 growths soon after. Set capital to Circus while Philosophy finishes. I probably made a mistake at Divinity by buying the wheat and farming that, not wanting to waste worker turns moving to the ivory. Didn’t realize how quick we’d burn through the other happy. Good news is Philo is still 231 beakers (unchanged since start of set) so no AI has it, should be safe for oracle barring something really unlucky like Caeser liberty finisher->engineer for it.

Workers:
Sorry, another dumb mistake here.

I was canceling worker moves and trying to advance/road, and stupidly moved off this mine (1E of Faith’s truffles) before it was done. (Although I’m an idiot, Civ4’s binary no improvement/yes improvement graphics may have prevented this). Probably go back and finish that mine (yellow) after the road on the iron (blue) (which connects Piety). I sent the other food caravan to Piety since it was closer to our worker cluster. The wheat is also part roaded. I moved workers away from Devotion because its tile picker didn’t go river.

Scout: Is in a precarious place, found Mombasa (martime) but that was end of a peninsula. Besides the two barbs visible, there is a hand axe to the northeast. Recommend retreating on the southern shore.

Oh, and the camp has a 4 health barb and two city states want it cleared, but per Ichabod’s compromise we can’t attack with the scout. Ragusa wants us to find portugal but I have no idea where.

Diplo/deals:
Hiwatha heroically came up wiht 7gpt for our extra truffles. I have sold off lone iron and horses for 2gpt each; you can indeed do that. We still have one horse to move, Morocco has gold but doesn’t want to pay us anything. Can’t try Friend Maria, guess you can’t for some turns after. Still couldn’t at end of the set. Shame as she still has 300 gold sitting around.

NC setup - Cap has lib, Devotion soon and Divinity just started. Maybe save gold to buy Piety’s library, it can build a worker after granary? EDIT: That's for the future, assume we are still on Oracle plan which will consume the capital's build for the next set.

World events:
Last unmet civ went classical
Catherine builds Petra
Ragusa asks us to find Portugal. Good luck to next player!

[Ichabod]

Good turns, Timmy. It takes a lot of self control to not attack that 4HP barb.

I think buying an Embassy from Portugal would complete the Ragusa quest. Probably not worth it for now, since I think we are allied for quite some time still, but it's possible if needed.

I also have troubles with screenshots. I can't make Steam screenshots work and Civ 5 use that TGA format, for whatever reason. So I've been taking screens with the print screen key in my PC, which for some reason is kind of bugged in Civ 5, you need to take an extra screenshot for the previous one to appear... It's a mess, really.

T-Hawk is up.

[T-hawk]

I see it, probably can't get to it tonight but will Thursday.

Agreed on not attacking the camp barb, nice will of steel there.

Yeah there's a timeout on friend attempts, probably 30 turns like everything else. Actually I find that you almost can't ever get a friendship by asking; if the AI passes whatever threshold to be willing, it will usually ask you first. I usually take all offered friendships, better to have some polarized relationships than all lukewarm.

I can manage a tight happy cap, don't worry about that, will micromanage food and avoid-growth perfectly as usual. Will think about gold and Piety's library. I assume capital is the one to build Oracle? And we're set on the policy plan of finish Tradition then enter Piety.

Screenshots, my method is Alt-Printscreen to snapshot to the clipboard, then tab over to a paint program to paste and crop and save all right there. So no worries about Steam's clunky mechanisms.

[timmy827]

Couple things after sleep: Thanks for screenshot advice, will use next set, but got a couple others out.
EDIT after xpost with Thawk.
First proving you can do this, not that makes much sense


Rome put a new city here


Other suggestions:
Maybe the wheat worker cancels and heads west to ivory, use the gang intended to road west from Piety to finish that farm as happiness is more important. There is a partial road on wheat as well from having to save 2 turns to buy it.

I may have left production focus checked, not used to Civ5 governors; believe I was manually changing the weedy assignments but Thawk should reexamine. There's a lot of tile swapping; since Oracle looks pretty safe I don't think it is needed to slow the cap's growth for mines on it, and cap can finish the circus before starting Oracle. (Yes, Oracle there, capital has highest hammers by far and has finished its library).

Next research? (Philo 3t away) I see two options, Theology for faith wonders and Civil Service for food. Think I lean towards Theo. Drama&Poetry needed for each, and the other things on the CS path do little for us, so we could just do D&P next set and make the decision later.

[Ichabod]

Capital also has Marble, so wonders are faster there.

Damn Rome boxing us in (and what a bad placement for neapolis). They'll suffer our revenge soon enough.

I agree with Theology next. Borobodur is awesome for us. +5 faith and three free missionaries, which will convert cities for even more faith!

And we can use Hagia Sophia for the GP needed for Religion Enhancement, so we can buy some units now, if needed.

Damn, if we get the 3 Theology Wonders, we will be set! With our high hammer Capital + Marble and Aristocracy, we may be able to do it, even. Considering we are already hurting for happy, there's not much sense in going for CS and more food. Theology might be the place to go next.

Edit: you can see that I was finding out what each Theology wonder does while writing this post.

[T-hawk]

I don't know the new BNW wonders at all, but sure those and Theology sound like the right plan.

Hagia Sophia should wait a prophet or two if possible, so that it gives a higher-faith one for free. It does bump the cost counter for subsequent ones.

Production focus is the usual mode for Civ 5. I leave that checked so that each new growth auto-picks a hammer tile for production on the same turn, then manually reassign that to whatever tile is actually wanted. And even if you miss reassigning for a bit, high production tiles aren't the worst option.

[yuris125]

What's the third Theology wonder?
Borobudur would indeed be awesome, 3 free missionaries is very strong

[Ichabod]

What's the third Theology wonder?
Borobudur would indeed be awesome, 3 free missionaries is very strong

Great Mosque of Djenne - All missionaries born in this city can spread religion 3 times. Free mosque in the city and +3 faith per turn.

Hagia Sophia also gives +3 faith per turn and a free temple.

About Great Prophets, are we really going to use GPros after enhancing our religion? As I understand, we lose all our accumulared faith when a GPro is born, right? So, wouldn't it make sense just to start buying the units we need, rather than generating more GPros and losing all the accumulated faith? The best use of a GPro that I can see after enhancing the religion is to build the religion improvement and I'm not sure that would pay off the cost of generating the GPro.

So, if we indeed want more GPros, I agree with T-Hawk about waiting on the Hagia Sophia. Otherwise, I don't think we need to worry about that.

By the way, should we buy some units once we have enough faith for it? A pair of Pictish warriors wouldn't hurt.

[yuris125]

I don't think we want to use great prophets after enhancing the religion, so early Hagia Sophia would be beneficial. AI likes that wonder though, keep that in mind
Considering we're not allowed to upgrade units, I would avoid buying them until we actually need them

[T-hawk]

I'm not familiar with the religion improvement, what is that and what does it do?

More Prophets are used for spreading, in particular that the prophet knocks out all other religions before spreading his own. The massively leveraged use of a Prophet is to hit an enemy's holy city as soon as its religion is founded. This is an enormous setback to even get out a missionary after that; the victim has to wait for the internal holy city pressure to swing the city back, wich takes dozens of turns. Meanwhile your faith's pressure converts all their cities. Read this, starting about halfway down at the 1 AD screenshot. http://dos486.com/civ4/civ5gkocc/

I very much think at least one prophet doing that will more than pay back his cost via Pilgrimage, so take at least one at 300 faith before Hagia.

The other thing you need a Prophet for is undoing an AI's prophet spreads to you, which do the same thing (though less well leveraged) and take forever to recoup by pressure or inquisitor unless reversed by your own prophet. This will happen later though.