Zalson plays one turn at a time [COMPLETE]

[Zalson]

T203

Ragnar asks me to join a war against Shaka. No.

I lose a C1 caravel to a trireme. No.

No, It’s a galley.

AAARGH.



Used the GE for Sankore. Maybe not the best plan but, meh. This game is won already. It just doesn’t know it.



Catapults reduce the defenses in Beijing to 7%

I don’t think I can wait. Even if I lose some units, the reduction in war weariness from taking the Statue of Zeus should be worth it.



For the cost of a few rookie camel archers, Beijing is mine.

Let’s see what that does to war weariness?



From 13 in Najran to …

T204
to +8 in Najran.



That’s manageable. Only a 40% culture tax. :/ 30% if I don’t mind the anger in Najran (I don’t; I’ll get some units in there for the happiness).

However, adding 60 beakers a turn is pretty great (and it’s only going to go up from there).

Qin is pretty gassed. The only person with a lower power rating is Pacal of 2 cities. Here’s Pacal’s 3rd city.



That said, he’s got a castle at Shanghai. I need to relieve the cultural pressure on Beijing to allow me to found cities in better spots in China. So I’m going to take Chengdu, Shanghai and Guangzhou and see what happens from there. I’m probably not going to be able to take everything else in the meantime and — if I can get a 10 turn peace (maybe for a few cities) — then i can come back and finish him off relatively quickly.

That doesn’t seem like a bad idea actually. I proposed to him to see if he’d be amenable and …

he accepted. D’oh…

I wouldn’t normally do this but I’m going to reload to T204. I’ll replay tomorrow and will just go kill shanghai and extort the maximal amount of cities for peace.

The plan, then, will be a double-length golden age leading to astronomy. then I’ll try to boat Qin on the first turn of the war so I don’t have to deal with so much war weariness.

[Zalson]

T204
Start monasteries and temples everywhere I can.

Pivot my armed forces toward Shanghai. I’ll take Shanghai and then extort several other cities for peace. Probably 3 turns out.

Actually, now that I think about it… Shanghai has just about nothing on defense. So let’s just burn some older units and burn it down.


T205
Caravels are dispatched to inneffectively deal with Qin’s invading forces.


Inside Shanghai:


Well this is going to be painful.

Yep.




Goodbye….


And Qin graciously accepts this peace deal.


Chengu

Dry whipped the theatre because I figured that was better than starving.

Guangzhou


Beijing is going to be a watermill powerhouse. Same thing for Guangzhou and Chengdu. They’ll do a little bit of everything.

Start a few settlers here and there (3 to be exact). Going to need at least 4 in short order, probably more.

So let’s go golden. Naturally, I did not take before figures. But here are the finances in the golden age.



Pacal is not doing well.



T206
Jewish monasteries/temples complete everywhere. In several cases, I was able to double-whip into the temples. Beaker count:



And Pacal is on his Last Legs.

[Zalson]

T207
I’m at the point in the game where most of my cities have more than enough infrastructure and I’m not exactly sure what I should be building at this point. For instance, Damascus:



It creates 93.15 beakers at 0% science (adjusted by specialists) and $82.5 at 100% cash. In this case, I think I definitely want to build the bank and grocer. 15T of infrastructure will lead to +75% production: ~47.5 gold when I run 100% cash. That’s the equivalent of 2T of wealth. So, in this case, I should definitely build the bank and grocer. Right? I'll make up the wealth builds of 30T.

T207-1

Additionally, adding the spiral minaret means that there’s an extra 2gpt yield in every city that has that bank and grocer/market. So, i’ll only put it in the largest contributors.

However, and at a certain point, I realize that I’ll need to build the statue and also convert to representation. That’ll further increase the yield of my science buildings, so I need to focus there.

The spiral minaret is going in Muscat. I’ll basically chop it out (somewhat inefficiently because I don’t have the stone at Hangzhou).

EDIT: i’ll build it in Kufah. It’ll finish it 11T with no modifiers.



I think Beijing will get the Forbidden Palace. Maybe versailles goes in Alexandria or Elephantine? Not sure that the 800 hammers are worth it for about 40 gpt in maintenance? I am not planning on taking any cities on the other continents.

Here’s the 0% science benefit of the University of Sankore.



The other wonders that I think would be useful would be:

Statue of Liberty
Kremlin (because why not)
Anger Wat (up to 3 priests in every city with the madrassa and temple)

Honestly that’s about it. Statue and Kremlin might not even be worth it to pursue the win.

That reminds me. need to get some galleys out of my coastal cities.

T208
Oh my: Education goes from 16T to 13T. I have no idea why this has occurred. Also, my science production went from 119 to 130. Okay then!

Pacal is now down to 1 city. An iceball.



Poor guy.

I need 9 more cities, I think. 3 more cities on the east cost. 1 in the mideast. 5 in old China. 3 settlers are on the way to Egypt and I’m building one more at Medina. Kufah will start another settler next turn to maximize overflow into the Spiral Minaret.

[Tacitus]

Anger Wat (up to 3 priests in every city with the madrassa and temple)

  

On a more serious note, what is your plan for victory? Domination?

[T-hawk]

I’m at the point in the game where most of my cities have more than enough infrastructure and I’m not exactly sure what I should be building at this point.

Basically, units to keep conquering. This game is already won, you just have to get it to notice you've reached a win condition. Invading other continents is messy in terms of real time, but it's faster in game time than continuing on to a space or culture win. The other way that can go a bit faster in both terms is diplomacy, if you think you can get enough favor from the AIs.

[Zalson]

My post last night didn't take.

The only available victory condition is conquest, unfortunately. Otherwise, I'd be able to go for domination quite easily. For instance, not only do I have 3x the closest opponent's score, but I also have 23 million people compared to 12 million total for the other nations.

That still means that I make stupid mistakes like not having settlers ready to go after razing the majority of an opponents land:



Super annoying. I am going to burn this city just on principle.

Anyway, the real things I'll need to affect an overseas invasion will be galleons and rifles. that should about do it. So probably 40 turns left. I should keep than in mind when picking builds.

Anger wat is a helpful mac typo. Thanks, autocorrect!

But, this short term investment does mean that I should no longer build cottages. They won't have time to mature. Hammer economy it is. I've got more than enough cottages by far.

Actually, that makes me wonder if I should go education of printing press first. Oxford is definitely worth it at Najran, especially if I can get the stone from Hangzhou. So, I'll make sure I've got oxford first, but then an early printing press is worth at least another 100 beakers per turn, if not more.

Not much happening on turns 210 and 211, except that I didn't mean to play turn 211. Hit enter too early.

[Zalson]

Just an update: had to re-install steam because of slow connectivity issues. This necessitated a Civ install. No update tonight.

You shall all be in suspense.

[Zalson]

So: I’m finally back. More than a little frustrating to accidentally-on-purpose make another dumb computer mistake. But let’s update you all on what’s happening.

The situation in diplomacy:

Qin is protected until turn 21 (I think). However, i don’t think immediately trying to destroy him is the best idea. It will probably be better to get rifling ahead of killing him. I’ve got 4 techs to rifling but am, realistically, about 10 turns away. So one more golden age should do it. So that’s my immediate focus.

Once my continent is pacified, I’ll get astronomy and chemistry and go destroy the rest of the world.

The real issue now is that I could potentially run a golden age for the rest of the game. However, any war with Qin is going to bring back monstrous levels of war weariness. Hence my desire to wait for a quick kill.

I guess I can make the decision in 4 turns. The real issue is the amount of force I can apply to Qin in order to win. His units:



Mine:


Looking at that: let’s brute force it. I’ll be done fairly quickly.



Attack T1
Kill Kaifeng (8 camel archers: 2 longbows, 1 cho-ko-nu, 2 catapults)
Move major stack 1 SW toward Tianjin

Attack T2
Move major stack 1 SW (macemen and catapults/trebs)
Split out camel archers (16) toward Macau and Shandong (currently 4 longbows).

T3
Maneuver toward Tianjeng and Macau

T4
Take Tianjeng and Macau

T5
Move to Shandong

T6
Take Shandong

So, anyway, there’s that theatre.

To fill in down there, I’ll need 3 more settlers. I have one on the way and need two more.

So, I guess I did just talk myself into ending Qin sooner rather than later.

T212
I did end up founding several new cities in the recent turns.

Balkh


Aydab


Mosul


All 3 will be production cities



And this turn I’m contemplating this city up north. I was originally planning on having two cities in this area (one working the sheep and the copper) and one in the south working the gold.  I think I’ll found in the spot that I’m on and maybe defer on the gold city. Biology would be required to make the site viable. I think this game is going to be over before bio. So let’s plant the immediately viable city and get that up and running.



Education came in, so I’m getting universities up in my developed commerce cities. I'll have just enough for Oxford in Najran.

It’s nice to get back on the horse.

9 turns left with Qin.

[Zalson]

T213
2 turns before war on Qin.

3 settlers done next turn (2 are en route). Running a little light on missionaries for those new cities but I’m not too concerned. They won’t be able to founded until Qin is completely pacified I think.

One thing I am wondering about is my final civics set up. I am pretty sure I’m going to want caste system for the extra hammers on my numerous workshops — and that would mean I’d also want to get State Property. Mercantilism seems like a natural pairing with Caste System (obviously, I will want Representation almost no matter what) — but you can’t do that with State Property.

I mean, I can take advantage of spiritual and swap between different combinations so I might do that. But the value of slavery is still too valuable for my smaller cities. Or, at least, I think it is. Towns and universal suffrage/free speech might ALSO be valuable — and they’re not mutually exclusive with labor and economic civics. Although, I’d probably keep slavery and just go with State Property in that case.

Is there a good way to see the number of cities you have?

That’ll help me make the decision as to which civic combo I should go with.

The one move I’m going to make is trying to sail a couple of camel archers over to take out Shandong/Macau. The ferryman will be busy. Wish I hadn’t left that one galley lying around.

[Zalson]

T214
Last turn of enforced peace for Qin.


Goodbye Maya.







Next turn: War!

T215
Welcome, printing press. What? The news is that the chinese are going to attack?

We’ll pre-empt them.



Declare war.



Oops. Well, printing press should come in handy to distribute that -propaganda- casus belli of “We want Chinese land.”

There we go. Much better.

Inspired by such excellent -propaganda- information, our camel archers attack Kaifeng in a fit of glorious gallantry and poor tactics and …



win all 4 combats? Nice.



Well, that was a very lucky turn. Because I was attacking, kind of not really looking at the odds.

Anyway, here’s the field of battle after t1 of the war.



T216
Found an undefended city in a warzone? Sure!



Qin’s counter-attack is a single axeman that killed a wounded maceman that I left as bait to protect a great general pike.

That’s not good for him.

In terms of civics: slavery is more attractive for my smaller cities but that’s only a few of them. I’d definitely be better off with caste system, I think. However, I didn’t switch this turn because… I have no idea

T217
Contemplated this being the last turn today but… well … I’ve blitzed through them and that’s not the point of this exercise.

Golden age ends, which is really painful. Fortunately, this turn might spell the beginning of the end (for real) for Qin Shi Huang.

Stacks outside of each city. Hopefully I can do it this next turn?





T218
Gunpowder comes in (thanks, Sankore!) and start on .. replacable parts? That’s not really necessary. Representation, I think, would be more useful.



Moai Statues finally completes in Yamama. It took me far too long to realize that 2x whipping caravels was the most efficient way to build the statues.

Tianjin was size 11 when the war started. good on Qin for whipping so heavily… except that pikemen aren’t going to save you from CR3 macemen.

Before the end.



So it’s going to be one more turn before I have the units in place to take Shandong. It’ll take one lucky roll (horse archer into a max promoted longbow next turn).

But let’s get it started, huh?

Bombard down defenses at Tianjin a bit. We’ll go for the kill next turn.

T219
Here we actually go. First, let’s start in Shandong as that’s what’ll take the most luck:

4 camel archers against 2 CG2 protective longbows and a swordsman. The catch? 2 of the camel archers need to attack amphibiously.

-1 camel archer at 62% odds. Other one wins. Another one loses at 73% odds and the final one wins. So Shandong falls next turn.

At Tianjin: pour trebuchets and catapults into the breach rather ineffectively. Then, it’s just brute force. Great General Cao Cao takes the city.



Same principle, but without collateral, is applied at macau.



I switched into caste system this turn but I’m not exactly sure why. Oh yeah. here’s why:



T220
The end of the Chinese war. A great scientist is born in Mecca to commemorate the event. Qin converts to Judaism in an ineffective attempt to end the war.



And that’s it.

Qin is gone and next turn we trigger golden age 2. But for now: a break.