I Am America and So Can You! (Kuro/Whosit Spoiler Thread)

[Mardoc]

(On the plus side, it shows that I really was confused! )

Ah, you're a Euro, aren't you? Guess it's a bit much to ask you to know the details of our 22nd most populous state .

[Whosit]

DON'T FORGET TO WHIP ALL THOSE LAZY CITIES AT THE RIGHT TIMES! But looking good.

[Kuro]

Whipped so all the Workers will come out, Workers began chopping for Library



And Ruffnar finished The Colossus. That's about it. More exciting reports when we have like 16 Workers, I bet.

[Whosit]

Ho ho ho. I'm a little surprised the Colossus hadn't been built yet, but sometimes the AI doesn't favor it that much. I wonder how much Ruff is getting out of that wonder. Anyway, great. Next turn the Monastery gets whipped, and the turn after that we get our very own giant library. Huzzah.

[Whosit]

Kuro, we brought up Wonders previously, but are there any Wonders you definitely want to grab? I have some thoughts, though I don't think I'll have them all collected until later, but basically, I think we should decide in the next few turns if we want to try to nab a few Wonders, or just get a big army and go grab us some more territory. We will still have a lot of forests that could be chopped into any of that.

One idea I do want to propose, though, is going for Music before Civil Service, maybe even after Metal Casting. Why? Everything's reset, so that Great Artist becomes a Golden Age, which would let us freely swap civics after Civil Service. It would also be strong denial for the same reasons. On a similar line of thought, what if we just teched for Nationalism and ignored Paper and what comes after it? We'd be the first to Taj for sure. We could tech Gunpowder through Guilds, so we'd still be able to field Knights and Muskets (possibly drafted, though I don't know if that's good in our position). If not, I still think a play for the Music GA would be good.

But the point is: What's our focus? I don't think we have the resources to do half and half.

[Kuro]

Kuro, we brought up Wonders previously, but are there any Wonders you definitely want to grab? I have some thoughts, though I don't think I'll have them all collected until later, but basically, I think we should decide in the next few turns if we want to try to nab a few Wonders, or just get a big army and go grab us some more territory. We will still have a lot of forests that could be chopped into any of that.

One idea I do want to propose, though, is going for Music before Civil Service, maybe even after Metal Casting. Why? Everything's reset, so that Great Artist becomes a Golden Age, which would let us freely swap civics after Civil Service. It would also be strong denial for the same reasons. On a similar line of thought, what if we just teched for Nationalism and ignored Paper and what comes after it? We'd be the first to Taj for sure. We could tech Gunpowder through Guilds, so we'd still be able to field Knights and Muskets (possibly drafted, though I don't know if that's good in our position). If not, I still think a play for the Music GA would be good.

But the point is: What's our focus? I don't think we have the resources to do half and half.

I really like the idea of getting Taj. We have Marble, so it is cheap, and frankly I am very afraid if the Mausoleum owners get Taj. Teching up to Nationalism would also allow us to advance right to Curassairs and proveed to smash face. So how about teching up that line, getting Military Tradition for Curas/Cavalry, and then we try to conquer our foes then? Making a play for the Music GA seems quite good and is also a good idea to keep out of Mausoleum hands. I'm not really sure what other Wonders we have that might be good: It could actually be worthwhile to build Hagia Sophia if we plan to start invading before Steam Power, though, and would allow us to chop faster and thus likely complete Taj faster. Should we go for it? I need to check the other wonders we can go for.

[Whosit]

Here's the list of stuff I came up with earlier:

Wonders:
Hagia Sophia
Shwedagon Paya
Apostolic Palace
Sistine Chapel
Music Artist*
Notre Dame (stone)
Versailles
Spiral Minaret
University of Sankore
Taj Mahal**

We can't get them all, and we don't want to, but yeah, Music Artist and Taj are good ones to grab. If we want Music, we're going to have to get it before some of our other techs, like I said, otherwise it could easily be snatched from us. I like the idea of getting Hagia Sophia, and if you're green to go on that, I'll try to come up with a plan after I've had some sleep and some time to put things together. I don't think we should aim for any other wonders, though, if we're trying to get those and then go smash face.

On a parallel track, what to do with our great Scientists that are sure to pop from the Great Library? If my understanding of bulb orders is correct, we ought to be able to bulb Philosophy, which in our case is on the way to Nationalism, not Liberalism. I may have to crunch some numbers, but considering that we lack mature cottages and our cities are so badly improved, bulbs might be a better option than an Academy. I think a second scientist would bulb Optics, which we don't need. That could be an Academy, possibly. If we have Optics, I think it bulbs Paper. Of course, we're hoping to get a Prophet in there somewhere for the Shrine (it won't earn us much, but we need all we can, huh?). I'm not sure how many bulbs we can rely on, even though this is normally the point in the game where we get all the bulbs. Shrug. I'm kind of rambling.

Anyway, grab Nationalism for Taj, tech to Gunpowder probably through Guilds, and then snap up Military Tradition as quickly as we can to get some Cuirassiers and hurt someone. Cavs will come too late, I think. We are bottom of the scoreboard, but maybe we'll catch someone by surprise with this.

[Whosit]

I decided to try and be useful and look at some things in the game.

Did you move the Spy in Incan territory to get vision on their last city? If you didn't you should have.

Everyone came up with fun names for their civs. Maybe we should alter our civ name to AMERICA! perhaps? Our stuff would be AMERICAN!

Anyway, thoughts on Wonders:


The Hagia Sophia
335 Hammers, doubled by Marble

The Taj Mahal
469 hammers, doubled by Marble

Other multipliers:
Forge +25%
Organized Religion +25%

Forest = 20 base hammers
All multipliers (*150%) = 50 hammers.

Taj Mahal ~= 9 forests
Hagia Sophia ~= 7 forests

Seattle currently has 8 forests.
New York has 5 forests (250 potential hammers).

New York builds Hagia Sophia? Requires additional 85 hammers.
Can produce 13-15 hammers per turn (15 = 37).
Whip overflow might produce another 25-30 hammers.
Might be no choice but to 2-turn it. Like location to battle Incan culture, though.

Seattle will probably lose many forests by time we get Taj. We probably will have to half-build, half chop it somewhere, but we ought to have the lead if we just tech straight to Nationalism.

Other notes!

Let's put all our EP on the Inca for a few turns. We can get city visibility on most of their cities (we have visibility on their border city already). I think it'd be worth knowing.

We have research vision on everyone but the French. Assume they can see our research, too. Right now, I can only see that Ruff is 2 turns from Engineering, so that might mean everyone else just finished something?

After Metal Casting, we want Music if we want a shot at the Great Artist. We'll have run out of Research funds by then, though, so keep an eye on rival research to see if we're racing.

It looks like we lost the 1st ring border north of Colorado. Make sure our Worker doesn't chop that forest to our enemy.... We probably need Confucianism and some culture buildings in there stat, but that city is surely a goner if Ruff goes to war with us. Might want to use our Chariot to keep an eye on things there as long as we can.

Looks like Ruff gave Jute to Mapoleon, can't blame 'em, but this means the Inca will have Ivory access now.

Our position is kind of precarious, but I hope everyone else feels the same way....

[Kuro]

I'm a bit busy to look right now, but I very much like the idea of 2-turning the Hagia in New York. I think that, with everyone needing massive improvement retooling I imagine/from what we can see, that being able to do them in half the time would be great. The only other wonders that seem potentially worth it are some of the religious ones, like Sankore or maybe the Minaret or AP, where we use religious buildings to help cover for our poorly cottaged land and such. However, I am not sure it is really feasible, and we still need to actually spread our religion around, so I don't think they're very serious options right now, unless you have some micro plan to get them easy without disrupting everything else.

[Whosit]

Those would be nice Wonders to have, in theory, but that also means we'd be committed to investing hammers in Missionaries, Temples, and Monasteries, and not into things that are going to grab us more land. I think we just want to focus on things that are going to help us get to where we want to go.

I'll see about coming up with a Hagia Plan later today.