Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[RefSteel]

What building is that?

Scotland Yard, I believe.  (+100% EP in the city.)  It's buildable by a Great Spy, which can be generated early by the Great Wall.

And lest I fall even further behind...

To illustrate the city of Moura Incantada, I'll turn to Iardacil of deviantart.com:

...they buried their treasures in the most solitary places, sacrificing at the same time, with many incantations, a young and spotless virgin, whose spirit hovers round the spot, and occasionally appears, in various shapes, to the lonely and startled wayfarer.  These spirits are always maleficent, and hence the terror attached to places supposed to be haunted by a "Moura encantada."  - Unknown author, "Scenes and Sketches in Portugal" in The Southern and Western Literary Messenger and Review, Volume 12 (1846), edited by B.B. Minor

So this is interesting:  If you know anything about the Portuguese spirit known as the Moura Encantada, you probably know that not only are they not always maleficent, but they are practically always benevolent:  Beautiful female spirits under an enchantment who will instruct the traveler on how to break their spell, and in exchange for being disenchanted, reveal long-hidden caches of gold, or even welcome the traveler to a lifetime of happiness in their otherworld.  This may be another case of malevolent spirits being recast as kindly ones in modern times, but I have a suspicion that the source I quoted above - an American literary journal - was sufficiently disconnected from the Portuguese folktales themselves as to not know what it's talking about.  Here's a very brief example from the early twentieth century, translated by Google and cleaned up a (very) little by me:

The happy one who sees it must tell her: "Mourinha, give me of your wealth and I will give you of my poverty."  The moura then tells how to break her spell... - Francisco Manuel Alves, Abbot of Baçal, Memórias Arqueológico-Históricas do Distrito de Bragança, Arqueologia, Etnografia e Arte, volume 9

So what is the Moura Encantada's real nature?  Easy:  It's imaginary!  And as always, finding the "original" folktale is all but impossible.

[haphazard1]

Tadmekka...wow, that is a sad little junk city. Just pitiful. Even if it could somehow take control of the rice (no chance really due to first ring for your city), it would still be a sad little junk city. Desert tiles, mountains, a bit of coast, couple forest tiles.... Ouch.

Another interesting write up from RefSteel. Nice find on the picture, fits very well with the concept.

[shallow_thought]

On Maoi, what about Caleuche. It's going to be a whipping post anyway until we get infrastructure in, and we can put overflows into it. And we're going to be on sea tiles anyway as that'll be the only way to get food there.

Edit: Finally, we should really build some Monasteries in our science cities. 1) the ability to build missionaries all game is handy and 2) the extra science to Sci Meth is also handy.

Agree with Caleuche; not sure why I discarded it from my original short-list. Probably got it muddled up with Cuman. Will try to get efficient whips lined up.

As for monasteries, yep, I'm happy to build a couple. YM and Brocken are the candidates. They're a little marginal, but I think that they fit our build queues.

Wow, that's a lot of workers. An expert would probably draw up a micro-plan to avoid wasted turns (we need a slight shift from south to north); I've had a look around and will try to avoid too many wasted turns, but wont be able to avoid them all.

I'm still uncertain on tech. Choices are:
- Con, Mach for immediate military focus (bridges, windmills and watermills are OK - i can see us putting up windmills at some of these food-poor cities quite early).
- Aeth, Lit for HE and possible GLib; trying to go military without HE (when you have marble as well!) is fighting with one hand behind your back
- Poly, Mono for OR; plan for a GA and delay any switch to Bureau?

Having thought about civics, I'm going to start working some scientists. BaS will get us a great one in 12 turns if I allow it to stagnate. YM I will allow to grow one more size (at least) but am going to start working one straight away, so that an option would be to get a second out quickly in a GA triggered by the first. This will give the next player some flexibility about golden ages / academies.

I'll revisit the question of whether to switch to Bureau immediately when we've got the techs and I can see the cost. I suspect that it's worth it in itself, but delaying 9t to avoid a turn of anarchy? I'd probably go with the latter.

Based on Zalson's earlier comments and the fact that I can't see us picking up any cities from the AI this turnset, a couple more settlers for Lime Dot (farms would allow it to work mines BaS currently cant) and the river between Inky and Caleuche will hopefully join the queue.

Bit vague, but I'll try to play tonight / tomorrow evening.

EDIT: sorry, it's going to be Saturday before I can play. Misread my wife's work rota.

[Brian Shanahan]

Aesthetics is at least as important for military as pretty much anything else. I'd go for that next even if we've no intentions of chasing the Librarian. At the moment I think our choices are onto Engineering for the Trebs and road bonii or go directly to Liberalism.

Bean a Sidhe shouldn't work specialists at all really. It's our primary military pump, and ideally should restrict it's queue to units, workers & settlers and wonders we want to get. Yaqob Marley is a decent choice for GPs due to the lack of decent tiles along with Christmas Past.

Don't worry too much on the timescale for the game.

[Dhalphir]

Every time you feel crazy, just imagine Sullla's calm, slightly disappointed voice analysing your play publicly on YouTube and think whether you really want to do it . 

Some of us don't have to imagine that! 

[shallow_thought]

That felt like a mediocre turnset; possibly not a firm enough plan going in, possibly just that point in the game, very definitely fed up with Boudicca, very definitely some .


Policy for this turnset was focus on consolidation and getting ready for a GA / civics switch. Where it was possible and I'd otherwise have been building wealth, I build doubled wonders instead. This means that we may actually be in a position to get MoM in Bean a Sidhe and Colossus in Flying Dutchman, but I'd be happy with failgold. The former is obviously great but I wouldn't want to bet on getting it, the latter might actually be OK for us - several marginal coastal cities would look a lot better, and I doubt we'll want to rush Astronomy. If not, failgold. We've also got 1t of definite failgold in the MoM in Christmas Past.

For the GA, BaS is, as Brian said, a strange place to run specialists, but it was already at 21/100 GS points, so I did it anyway. After that, never again. I'm also running one scientist in YM to keep those points trickling in.

This does mean that I've very definitely shaped some elements of the next turnset, but I think we're at that point in the game. Also, apologies for hogging the weekends to play; I will try to avoid quite as much of this in future.

 Explanation : my whole schedule is driven by my wife's work rota which seems to be made up with the help of an RNG and tends to change completely at short notice. I have playing time on evenings she's working later, _or_ if she has no later evenings that week and we thus get plenty of shared time. If she's only in early a couple of evenings and I want to play or report on one of those it can get a little tense (it takes me three-four hours total to play 10t and write up a report currently - I'm just that slow, and you might think I'd make fewer errors at that speed ... oh well). This week, unfortunately, she was late on Tue and Wed, when Zalson was playing and reporting, and early on Thu/Fri.
 If nothing else, this is a highly useful exercise in experimenting on the impact of a public Civ playing commitment.
 

So: switched FD to Colossus (it gets the silver mine to work to help this), YM to Hindu monastery; renamed Cuman to Ancient Mariner and Chinook to Ioi - neither are strictly dead themselves, but they ended up in the lands of ghosts, so seemed appropriate.

T141: Ioi comes out of resistance, starts contributing to empire. It's not efficient to march workers up there until the borders pop and they can do work en-route, so it'll have to keep working cottage and unimproved rice for a few turns (ugh).

I note that HRE has longbows now.

T142: We lose the farm at Ioi to a border pop from Tadmeka! I can't see any buildings, but Mansa is in caste. Is the AI bright enough to run an artist here? Switch Ioi build to library, ready to start competing harder.
Whip at Inky as that builds granary at half food box.

I think it was this turn that BaS finished a worker and I started MoM - my notes are unclear.

T143: Civil Service is in! I look at the tech options, and note that Boudicca's power is spiking. Construction it is - at 0% science for a turn or two though.
This triggers me to start moving our army's centre of gravity back to the south.
I also put 1t into an axe at each of YM, XP, CP so that they are easily whippable if necessary (I'd rather wait until they become macemen if possible).
Ioi gets its farm back, but I decide to stick with the library first anyway.

T144: Brocken Spectre finishes Courthouse, I start a Jewish monastery. Reset the axe builds. Realise that I'm not working the scientists at BaS after all (Some side effect of my MoM switch? Misclicks as I maximised food / production and stole tiles back from XP?). Ugh; re-hire them.
 
T145: Monty wants us to stop trading with Mansa; he's earlier asked us to declare on Qin. He's a dissapointed man.
I decide to do some trading with our key partners to try to build trust. None of these are great trades in themselves (wouldn't do it in MP), but we have a lot of idle resources.
 Mansa: we get sugar for sheep
 HRE: we get 6gpt for furs
 Izzy: we get corn for furs
Boudicca would trade 6gpt for silver, but as I can see a stack incoming, I don't think so...



I move our reserve stack (2 axe, 1 spear) to the forested hill in order to deny them that route. Would probably not have done this against a human, but the AI will be sending that stack against a city...

T146: I hate that woman. At least she's predictable.



Pasture is pillaged by chariot. Catapults change things - I think we need to attack out, and I reckon I have enough troops, once I get through the C2 axe. Start with the reserve stack.



C1 axe v C2 axe at 32% - loss, but get in 2 hits
C1 axe v Cat at 68% - win, but take 5! hits
C1 axe v Cat at 68% - FLAWLESS LOSS 
Oops. Well, we have enough to troops to cope with one of those.
C1 axe v Cat at 68% - win, take 3 hits
C1 axe v Cat at 68% - FLAWLESS LOSS

Note to self; leave combat to Brian .

Against a human I would not have made that last attack. I would have to check, but I think his overall stack (wounded axe, cat two chariots) might beat the defence (wounded axe, spear, chariot) next turn. However, we all know what the AI does when it has a catapult...

T147: Boudicca bombards. Her axe promotes to C3, mine in city to shock (to help heal). We have our medic 3 in the city now, along with other reinforcements. I decide to heal and gather more troops.

Con is in, start Machinery (0% science again but overall ETA is 6t).

T148: More bombardment. I realise that the annoying killer cat is now bombard 2 which gives +10% against melee, making it 50% against a C1 axe.
I keep healing. Mali has longbows.

There is a worker steal from Izzy available near XP if I can get three workers over there to road the desert...

T148: Our unpromoted scouting Magrat over in Chinese lands is attacked by a C1 chariot . We win at 32%! Would probably rather have had the win earlier though. I move the chariot into a Chinese city to heal, and promote to C1. I think we get slightly faster healing in a city, and have a vague hope that the AI won't attack us there. We're too far away from safety to risk much else (I note that everyone but Mansa and Monty has OB with Boudicca and they wont stop trading).

OK, so now I'm feeling lucky.

C2 axe v wounded C3 axe at 53.7% (Shock axe ends up against cat, I don't want to use him for that): loss, but lots of damage.
C1 axe v B2 cat at 50%: win!
Spear v wounded axe 98% win (spear to avoid chariots defending)
2 Spears v 2 chariots - wins.

Cover last spear with two chariots, just in case (only a 2 mover can hit us)

I draw some of our excess troops back towards BaS to act as a reserve.

T150: Izzy builds the AP, we're up for the vote. Kill Monty quickly, spread Hindu and cheese win by diplo anyone? I vote for us; maybe Boudicca has Hindu in a city and we can force peace or ramp up her unhappiness. Maybe time to spam some Hindu temples? Note that YM can now build missionaries.

I pull back from the worker steal, wasting a couple of worker turns. I couldn't get a non-axe unit over to cover and there is a road on the target tile, so a chariot counter-attack could have been nasty. Should have done a more detailed plan 3 turns ago and realised it wasn't on .

Worse than that, I realise that I forgot something last turn, while distracted by the war : Caleuche reached 58/120 hammers in a forge. 3-pop whip overflowing  into Moai was planned. Now it's 61/120. Unprintable words time. It's not critical (it's not like it was a settler build), but that's really annoying. I do think that, once past a certain level of base intelligence and knowledge, focus and not missing stuff like this is one of the two key skills in Civ (the other being macro strategy - seeing opportunities). It's certainly one I need to hone...

Boudicca won't talk to us, but I do like her line here:



Thought's and plans:
- I've left science at 70%, giving us machinery in 2t. That should make us safe for a little while.
- My plan was to get Great Person from BaS, go golden, get GS from YM and put Academy somewhere. I think we can get Poly and Mono before the GA starts, so can do Bureau / OR first turn of GA (we kind of don't need HR at the moment, but could aim to get it by end of GA).
- We're slow building MoM in BaS for failgold, but actually might get it. I have left the last forest at one chop in case we get close (OR would help here). Mechanics: what happens if we're in a GA when we build it? Do we get the extension to the current GA?
- I've run irrigation over to Moura's rice, and mapped out an irrigation path to Ioi. Other than that, workers are making obvious improvements where possible, but I may well have been sub-optimal with our (extensive) plains. Thinking is that a non-riverside plains farm is one step up from nothing, but it's still a step up. Riverside, I 've dropped a few plains cottages, and the odd farm required for irrigation, but I'm trying to leave some for watermills at "production" focused cities. I was thinking that we may want to re-work the tiles around CP, with farms on corners and mills on rivers. I'm not sure how people feel about mills this early though.
- Bwca has a bunch of two-food tiles; my plan was to just keep letting it work them, mostly as cottages, with no extra food (no grassland farms). That would suggest a windmill on the hill. Again, it's early, but keeps the city growing (sloooowly).
- I keep forgetting to adjust EP. I even wrote it down on the plan and didn't do it. Done now, but too late to get Charley's graphs this turnset.
- Brocken is building a filler settler, largely because I wanted to chop some forests to give it more tiles, and didn't want the chops to go into anything less important. Going forward, pumping settlers at Caleuche and overflowing into Moai might make sense.

We lost 4 axes, against 1 axe, 3 catapults and 3 chariots. The last of those was pure luck (thanks, Magrat!). We came out ahead, but not by that much. Would be interested in feedback on initial decision to hit the stack - I didn't want to let three cats get to work on XP while I built up troops, and didn't want to take collateral damage in the city at any point.

We remain strong; we're top or second in every demo that counts except power, where I think we're safe enough. I haven't got graphs on Charley, so it's possible he's got a big manufacturing base but I don't think so given the score. That would mean that we're basically tied with Mansa for GNP and manufacturing while being ahead in food and land, and clearly up on everyone else.

There ought to be graphs and demos here, but Imgur's captcha stuff is not playing nice with my NoScript. I'll try to upload them later.

Also, wow this post sounds miserable when I review it! Don't worry, I'm having fun and am learning, we're winning, it's all OK .

[haphazard1]

my wife's work rota which seems to be made up with the help of an RNG and tends to change completely at short notice.

I have worked a couple jobs like that.

So Boudica is back again, and with cats this time. Certainly makes the situation more serious. Attacking the stack was probably necessary, as letting her hammer the city and do collateral damage before cleaning up with her other units would likely have led to heavy losses and maybe losing the city. You are definitely going to need stronger units to get good match ups, so the tech progress is well timed. Also you are going to need greater numbers of defenders, to avoid fights being too even and risking loss of a city. A military building spree in the near future sounds like a good idea.

The AP is now in play, interesting. If you can get enough votes to block unwanted resolutions then it can be neutral or even useful, but if the AI is in a position to use it against you the AP can be incredibly annoying. Can we get a summary or screenshot of the current membership and vote numbers?

Cultural pressure from Tadmekka -- yes, the AI is smart enough to use forced artists from Caste to push borders, especially if it is trying to grab a key resource tile. And as sad as that little junk city is, why not run forced artists there? Not like it is giving up much tile yield.

Monty and demands -- the crazy Aztec is quite high-maintenance, almost as bad as Cathy in that respect. Just keep an eye on your overall diplo, as you can quickly pile up a lot of negatives with him. With the AP active, his votes could swing resolutions against you, if he has them (not sure on the current religious breakdown).

Overall I think you are doing well, but you do have recurring trouble with Boudica and some potential troubles with Mansa, the AP, and maybe Charlemagne down the road. Plenty of work ahead!

[Brian Shanahan]

I have the save and will look at it later. (It's almost dinner). Re the AP, as it's Hindi the religious buildings are now better so we should rotate temples and monasteries in our build queues.

Regarding Boudica, that's the biggest reason why tying up your military pump in GP generation and too much infrastructure is a bad idea, if your power doesn't keep rising the AI will look to snack on you.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok, I've looked at the game, and the one thing that pops out is that we need units. Therefore I'm taking the executive decision and putting Bean a Sidhe back to maximal production and churning out swords and axes. Xmas and Christmas can build catapults. It should really have stayed on maximal production all along, even when building the Mausoleum.

If we need a GP do it in Yaqob, it's at the stage now where there's no really useful tiles to work, therefore it is more profitable to get GP points out of there.

My big idea, go for Boudica; raze both Durnovaria and Gergovia (unless we see a compelling reason to keep either) and gobble up as much of her eastern territories as possible. I know it's not what I've been arguing, but she wants to bring the fight to us, and I honestly don't think she's as capable of standing up an army as we are. I'll whip a good bit this set, make an army and see if I can start the push.

Also, why no Aesthetics? That's my next tech no matter what.

Edit: Where's the settler in Brocken going to?

[shallow_thought]

Ok, I've looked at the game, and the one thing that pops out is that we need units. Therefore I'm taking the executive decision and putting Bean a Sidhe back to maximal production and churning out swords and axes. Xmas and Christmas can build catapults. It should really have stayed on maximal production all along, even when building the Mausoleum.

If we need a GP do it in Yaqob, it's at the stage now where there's no really useful tiles to work, therefore it is more profitable to get GP points out of there.

My big idea, go for Boudica; raze both Durnovaria and Gergovia (unless we see a compelling reason to keep either) and gobble up as much of her eastern territories as possible. I know it's not what I've been arguing, but she wants to bring the fight to us, and I honestly don't think she's as capable of standing up an army as we are. I'll whip a good bit this set, make an army and see if I can start the push.

Also, why no Aesthetics? That's my next tech no matter what.

Edit: Where's the settler in Brocken going to?

Priotising aggression on Boudicca will get no complaints from me. With machinery in 2t, I'd wait and pump maces rather than obsolescent axes/swords. The reason for no Aethestics is that I felt you'd like the ability to build cats, and soon maces. Aethsetics (hard to spell on a Saturday night) gets us _nothing_ itself - we need the tech beyond (Lit) to get HE. If I'd gone that way, we'd still not have cats, or bridges...

As for the settler, there is no absolute location planned. We've got a few filler spots marked, but I had half-an-eye on a raze and replace at Khazak (replant to get the cows). Planting it elsewhere in (former) Celtic territory would also be fine by me .