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

[Kuro]

Sent save. I think Napoleon actually got the biggest boost here: From what I can tell he is 1st or 2nd (I did not do a full count, just a quick look) in cities and built like 4-5 wonders including the Mausoleum of Mausallos. Ragnar has the best traits but basically no civ, France has the scariest UU (Combat I Musketeers are frightening stack defenders with Knights). Brennus sucks but his biggest benefit is that Spiritual means he can swap stupid AI crap without penalty, which is fairly big. Our opposition is fairly balanced...but do any of them have a Washington Monument to Freedom? I don't think so. Victory is assured!

[Whosit]

I'll take a look at that a little later today. Got some errands to run. I see we had at least one great person (Great Spy) because we have a Scotland Yard..... Do you know how many were produced up to this point? Perhaps we should run one of our Jewish Missionaries to Boston so we can make a second temple and run a second Priest? Depends on how many turns we'll need. And how far Confucianism has even spread. I agree Lit for Great Library would be excellent. Washington may be a better spot, though, because it already has a Library in place (we only have two libraries in the entire empire... YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW HOW TO READ TO KNOW HOW TO BE FREE!).

Turning the farm at Atlanta into a cottage would be good, but what do we do about the odd food? Just turn on "avoid growth" when it gets too big? I always hate dealing with that stuff.

No Copper... but we have Iron and Horses, so we can at least field Knights at some point. (WE MUST SECURE COPPER TO BUILD THE STATUE OF FREEDOM LATER!)

Great Library: We need 6 forests to completely chop out the wonder in one go with marble. We have enough forests at Washington. I also need to remember we're going to be on Quick speed. We only have 9 Workers and no prep.

Y'know, we could save Literature for a little bit later because unless you want to start out slow-building it, we won't need it immediately. We'd even have time to put it in Seattle if we line up a Library whip with the completion of Lit. (We should also check to see if anyone else has the tech.) Washington forests could be for chopping out more workers. Several cities have extra/useless pop that can just get whipped into Workers, too. We currently have 8 cities, and 9 Workers, so we probably want 7-9 more Workers?

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. Maybe I'll come up with more after looking at the save directly. I hope no one is in a position to DoW on us, but I figure most will spend the first 10 turns cleaning up after their AI.

[Kuro]

The biggest reason I was thinking we would want to go Lit first is that someone else might have the same idea, plus a single opponent has the Literature and our land seems very low commerce: We're going to need something to boost us up.

[Whosit]

I have taken a look at the save and have extracted some information, and additionally have come up with a Great Library plan. We can get it in Seattle at End of Turn 80, I believe (in 5 turns). Some of this information may be useful, some not, but I think I discovered a few interesting things, besides the fact that AI love to settle on top of resources.

Number of Cities
France: 10
Khmer: 9
America: 8
Inca: 8
Persia: 8

Total Population
America: 65
France: 60
Inca: 59*known (missing one city)
Persia: 48*known (missing one city)
France: ???

No graphs right now.... but we do have overall demographics:


Please note that we are tied for 1st with Crop Yield and we are second in population. We should leverage this as much as we can (in the short term, probably means a lot of whips), but I think within 10 turns we can turn that high crop yield figure into more MFG and GNP.



I think we should immediately take a turn of anarchy to adopt Organized Religion. More on that later.



Inca have a relatively big tech lead, considering that there is not tech trading or tech brokering.

I also took a zoomed out shot and noted where all our Workers currently are:


We are going to want to use the 4 ones clustered around Phili for our G. Lib (2 north, 2 south east). I can point out the specific ones when we're ready to start playing turns.

Resources:
+7 health (all 3 grains!)
+3 happy

In fact, we are the only civilization that posses corn, wheat, and rice. We might actually have the only rice on the whole map. This isn't a big lead or anything, but it does give us a small edge. We actually have a handful of other resources that no one else has (like Banana and Dye). I made a comparison below.

Resources Inca has that we don't:
Copper (2), Stone (2), Crab (1), Silk (3)
Resources we have that Inca doesn't:
Marble (1), Banana (1), Clam (1), Rice (1), Dye (1), Gems (2)

Resources Khmer has that we don't:
Copper (1), Crab (1), Fish (1), Pig (1), Ivory (2), Wine (2)
Resources we have that Khmer doesn't:
Banana (1), Corn (1), Rice (1), Sheep (1), Dye (1), Gems (2), Gold (1)

Resources France has that we don't:
Copper (2), Crab (1), Fish (2), Ivory (3), Spices (3)
Resources we have that France doesn't:
Marble (1), Banana (1), Clam (1), Rice (1), Dye (1), Gems (2)

Resources Persia has that we don't:
Stone (1), Ivory (1), Wine (3)
Resources we have that Persia doesn't:
Marble (1), Banana (1), Clam (1), Corn (1), Rice (1), Dye (1), Gems (2), Gold (1)

Recommended: Offer Shake of France Gems for Ivory. France does not have Metal Casting yet. I'm not sure that France is the biggest threat, but they are the furthest away from us, so it may be to our benefit to make some deals for now. I'm not sure if Hashoosh will take the deal, but it seems good to me. We could always offer our one clam on top of it. We can probably get by without it (I also saw that AI city placement left a Fish orphaned north of the continent). Extra happy means more vertical growth and more whips. Being able to build War Elephants would be nice, too.

Wonders
France: MoM, The Great Wall, Chichen Itza, Stonehenge, Pyramids
Khmer: Statue of Zeus, Temple of Artemis, Parthenon, Great Lighthouse, Hindu Shrine, Jewish Shrine
Persia: Oracle
Inca: Hanging Gardens

Yeah, America got screwed on this one. Geez. We don't want to fight the Khmer unless we can make major gains in a matter of turns. And they have 2 shrines for two decently spread religions. And Great Lighthouse. Sigh.

12 turns for Priest in Boston (0/67). Yeah, that is a good plan. We'll want to spread Confucianism around more, though.

Religion:

One of our rivals has the Temple of Solomon. We should stop the spread of Judaism (and probably have their missionaries disbanded). Produce more Confucian missionaries. It is our state religion, after all. Why were our Founding Fathers spreading a foreign religion?? Also get Organized Religion.

Great Library (234 hammers):
We can get Lit in 1 turn.
We have Marble (+100%).
We can get Organized Religion (+25%)
1 Forest = 20 x 2.25 = 45 hammers

Seattle: Needs Library (60 hammers). Produces 12 hpt (15 hpt w/ OR). Can 3-pop whip after turn of production.
Switching to OR will cut build time from 5 to 4 turns (worth anarchy).
OR Pop worth 25 hammers, so thresholds are:
60-25 = 35
60-50 = 10
2-pop: 15/60 (5 overflow)
2-pop: 30/60 (20 overflow)
1-pop: 45/60 (10 overflow)

2-pop at 30 hammers invested (2 turns) yields maximum overflow (16 base hammers).
+11 hpt natural?
Revolt: T1
Build: T2, 4 Workers move to forests
Build: T3, 4 Workers begin chopping
Whip: T4
Start G. Lib: T5, 27* base overflow, +11 hammers, +4x20 (80) forest hammers
=265 hammers.

Believe 4 workers in middle/south areas can all hit their own forest on "T2" if moved immediately.
Therefore, immediate revolt to OR and teching Lit would be good.
Note we could probably tech MC > Lit. Would let other cities start Forges sooner, but safer to get Lit immediately.

Also, move Chariots and free troops to Seattle.



I think it's unlikely that Ruff will just throw these all at us immediately, but we're going to have a lot of workers down there, and we'll be building a Wonder, so it never hurts to play cautiously.

[Kuro]

Where's the Confucian Missionaries we might have? I forgot and can't check this very second. Unless we can get it there quickly though Seattle doesn't have Confucianism in it.

[Whosit]

Where's the Confucian Missionaries we might have? I forgot and can't check this very second. Unless we can get it there quickly though Seattle doesn't have Confucianism in it.

Yeah, I actually realized this right after I logged off and went to bed.... I don't think our wise AI made any Confucian Missionaries. We have Confucianism in only 3 cities, despite having founded it and having it as our state religion. We'll have to spread it... but the best idea might be to put the Great Library in Washington and chop it out there, which I think is equally doable. It might be smart since it will be a less vulnerable location? Although Seattle could have used the culture.

Also, I think the Great Library would produce a scientist before our priest produces a Great Prophet, but I don't know if that's a big deal. Not sure how long it would actually take the prophet to spawn. We might actually want to spread Judaism to Boston to get an extra temple, after all.

[Whosit]

So ignoring my big flub for Seattle, I'll try to give a recommendation on what our cities could be doing.

Washington: New Great Library candidate. If you agree, I'll try to come up with a detailed scheme. We may actually want to let it put turns into that monastery so we can whip it.
New York: Can produce a Worker in 3 turns. Hesitant to whip here because of the poor food conditions.
Atlanta: Put a turn into a Worker, then 2-pop whip it. We'll just lose a couple coast tiles until it regrows.
Chicago: I... don't even know. Maybe just build an Archer? I'd like to see its food box fill up, at least, but this is a shit hole. Throw down a Windmill on that hill and it'll stagnate at whatever.
Seattle: Put a turn into a Worker and whip it.
San Fran: Painful, but whip a Worker out of here. We'll just want to farm and windmill everything, I guess. It has a Barracks and a Granary, so it should just build troops.
Philadelphia: Put turn into a Worker. Whip.
Boston: See above.

So that's 6 of our cities doing some sort of Worker build, 5 of them whipping. We're going to want a couple more Workers after that, but this should at least give us a decent force to start improving things. Washington is priority number 1 to get those cottages online. Do we want an Academy here?

Boston is probably priority 2. Put up more cottages, put up mines, probably pave over a couple of those farms with cottages. I think that only Washington and Boston have the green to really support a cottage economy for us.

Not entirely sure what to do with Seattle. There are a few grasslands, but I feel like we just want civil service to spread farmland there so we can mine out the hills and make another production city out of it.

I THINK THAT IN ORDER TO SPREAD FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY TO OUR PEOPLE WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO MANUFACTURE FREEDOM (TROOPS) AND EXPORT THEM!

Also, I think there's an interesting artifact of the way this got set up. Maybe. Everything is reset: Food, production, GPP. Do you think it will be this way in the actual game and not just the test saves? This somewhat hurts people with larger cities, but benefits people who have produced a lot of Great People already, because the counter gets reset.

[Brian Shanahan]

MY CAPITALIST FREEDOM FRIEND! WHAT IS MORE AMERICAN THAN APPLE PIE?

Obesity as a result of apple pie?

Edit: Wait I actually got this one. It's thinking you're Irish because your grandfather's wife's cousin's old college roomate's sister's cousin in law's best friend once owned a red setter before he ran away after two days, right?

[Kuro]

I think that The Great Library in Washington is a great idea and we should at least try it. Your nice analysis of what our cities should do shows how the american people need an overheal of the education system to properly power our free and just future, by which I mean we have shit commerce.

With so many production cities, I definitely think a war game is possible. If Corps are unbanned then with all of our grains maybe we could get Cereal Mills or as usual just go for Sid's Sushi? We could use the food, anyway. I also definitely feel it is worth spreading Judaism in order to get our shrine (faster): 1 GPT to our enemies is worth strengthening the American economy. Washington for an Academy after with AMERICAN BEAUCRACY also seems good.

This will be a tough game, but America was built on blood, sweat and tears (of others), so we should be able to pull through, Vice President!

[Whosit]

Yessir, Mr. President sir!

We currently have 2 Jewish Missionaries, so both should be sent to Boston in the event that the first is tarred and feathered. I will prepare to start commissioning an analysis of the possibility of constructing the Great Library in the capital after I've had lunch. Once we've teched Metal Casting, we're going to want to get Forges pretty much everywhere (and it helps that it will boost the happiness from Gold and Gems, too). We might be able to turn our excess production cities to the manufacture of coinage or swishy flasks if we need to.

After securing key techs, I recommend we beeline Guilds as quickly as possible and show someone what American Lancers can do. Geographically, the Incan might be the best target because it won't expose any new flanks. Unfortunately, it looks like that will be an entirely ground war because they don't have much in the way of coastal cities. Our current biggest weak point appears to be the poor state of our military, and the small size of our empire combined with the generally poor land we have. Regarding corporations, Cereal Mills might be better because we don't have much in the way of seafood.

One more thought: This might actually be a game in which Emancipation could be useful. We'll be starting so many cottages late, it might actually help to get a boost on their growth rate.