Japper and Cornflakes' team thread

[Cornflakes]

The penalties were not made public to avoid unnecessary spoilers. Thinking about it again I do think that it would be good the tell Woden/CMF specifically that the archers that they noticed were purchased a couple turns ago will be deleted, but leave it at that.

[Cornflakes]

Some thoughts after having a chance to look around in-game ... no particular order, just recording thoughts as the occur to me. I'll put some more coherent thoughts on our next build orders and research targets in another posts, this post is mostly just trying to digest the current position.

• We currently have a very wide empire, spanning basically the entire width of "our" territory with only 4 cities ... and only 4 military units combined between our nations. I am concerned that our western neighbor will pile on when they see us assaulted in the east. We will need to have at least some military in the west to not get caught with our pants down.
  
• Fogged tiles so close to your capital? One fogged tile is only 3 tiles from the city center
  
• I need something better than warrior/archers to defend Aranyaka. I have played against Nubian archers in one of the duels and they are scary! Ideally I'd go for horsemen since you have a sword UU. However we only have access 1 horse combined between our nations and will probably not get a 2nd source in a timely manner. Your UU does sound like the saving grace in this situation. I'll mull over how we might best accelerate getting those online at the front.
  
• For the future, I think you should concentrate on going for an excellent 2nd city site as opposed to trying to claim contested area. I'll point out a spot in the screenshot below[next post], but you have a site just south of your capital with forest spice hill (3/3 yield!), a plains forest hill, and grass forest hill in 1st ring, allowing it to grow to size 3 without needing any worker labor at all! Then it has horses and double stone hills 2nd ring. That is the type of city you want as your 2nd city. The location you chose looks like an important strategic location as a canal city in what looks to be borderland, but is very slow to get off the ground. It badly needs cash to buy the citrus and a builder to mine the hills, and even then will grow slowly and be a somewhat mediocre location. In the short term will not contribute anything useful to the empire except 0.7 for 15 turns at least. I don't want to be too critical since the decision can't be change, but I do want to stress the importance for future games. That single decision of going for the border city first instead of the close site with excellent 1st ring tiles will probably have enough effect on the snowball over the long term to be the difference between having a shot at a competitive position and falling behind into also-ran status.
  
• I'm considering whether we treat Aranyaka as a sunk cost that will take more resources to defend than we can make up elsewhere by just abandoning it. For example getting that city site south of your capital online ASAP might balance out the cost of defending Aranyaka. Aranyaka will not contribute anything to the empire other than walls for itself, units to defend itself, an encampment to defend itself, etc. On the other hand, it does have a fairly good defensive position and invalidates any decent additional city locations by Woden/CMF to the east. If it falls then we will have the opposite position of trying to attacking into their fortified cities on their side of the isthmus in the future.
  
• Although this is a team game, it will be difficult for teammates to support each other in military action due to logistics of distance and more importantly 1 UPT. In that regard it might be best to funnel as many resources as possible into advancing just 1 empire down the tech tree as quickly as possible, and then attack out and capture cities at a technological advantage. Use one nation to leech completely off of the other. For example all gold could be funneled to you to purchase library/monument/builder/etc. You could build another settler now while I go all military, use my empire completely as a crumple-zone initially while you get a tech edge and then sweep back east and overtake them. This has an obvious disadvantage in that your empire has the classical UU not mine, and therefore we want to get your UU into the combat. This is more of a theoretical musing.
  
• I checked the continents lens. It appears that I am on the same continent as England and therefore we will at least not have England getting a free melee unit if/when they capture Aranyaka.
  

[Japper007]

Heh fun fact about that spot to my west, I wanted to go there but Mike insisted I go north first  My second settler will definately go there! 

On the defense in that area, I intend to keep the Warrior fortified in the canal city to heal at least.

I can send you two Irons when I improve them so you can at least churn out swords

[Cornflakes]

In this post I'll discuss my initial thoughts on build orders and tech targets for both civs. I'll lay out my thoughts and reasoning (coming into this as an outsider with fresh eyes) and I definitely want to hear your feedback since you've obviously had much more time to think about these

Since you are next in the turn order I took the liberty of logging in to your civ as well after playing my turn this morning to get a better picture of what you have researched already and build times for things at your capital. I noticed that you are still in God King even though you already have a pantheon. Also just to be clear, the sanction about needing to wait 10 turns to swap out of Chiefdom only applies to Khmer. You can make the swap as soon as you reach PP. What are your thoughts on the government that you will choose?

In general, I don't want to go too heavily on warriors. I do want to upgrade one Sword to boost city defense strength, but otherwise we want our upgrade gold to be spent on your UU. I do think that your plan of getting 2 warriors out of your capital after the campus is good. That will allow them to start moving east ASAP. Your units can be upgraded in my territory and vice versa. After the two warriors I really think you need to get out a settler for the city site south of your capital. I put a sign on the city location with !!!. I'm at a loss for what to build out of my capital. Actually, looking at this again it might be best for ME to build the settler while you build a couple more warriors for upgrade. I can build another archer after my current warrior, then slot in Colonization when PP completes. Your warriors will start trickling in, and if I build any more I fear we would just run into traffic jams and also run out of gold for upgrades.

Speaking of gold, we have a decent combined gold production, in fact this is one of our strengths for this point in the game. We need to think about how the gold can best be invested. Obviously unit upgrades will be one expense.

On tech path, I don't think you should go for The Wheel after Iron Working. You don't have much incentive to research the bottom of the tree. Let me take the bottom since I want Aqueducts, and will want Military Engineering for my UU. I think Apprenticeship looks like a good target for you. With your city out west you'll have some mines in play, plus the iron at your capital and the southern city. Oh, wait Apprenticeship requires Horseback Riding which you don't have the eureka for yet hmmm ... I'll reconsider. In the mean time, screenshot:

     

The city location is indicated in GREEN. My warrior I'm planning to move YELLOW up to Aranyaka. It is 1 combat from a promotion. The city state has a warrior which has made at least 1 attack on the barb camp. I may try sniping the camp on the way for some much needed gold, or may just bypass it. A Nubian archer is visible in the northeast. My guess is that he'll sit on the grass hill tile and start chipping away at Aranyaka for the XP, and maybe even gradually start wearing down the city HP since the city is only at 10 strength. Unfortunately the city is not on a hill and therefore I won't be able to return fire  

For my own tech path, I want towards Crossbows. The hardest Eureka along the way will be the water mill. It may be advantageous for our team if I just forego that eureka and hard-research it. Here's what I propose for my tech path ...

1) Finish Masonry ... only 3-4 turns left, and I'm going to try to get walls up in Aranyaka. I doubt they'll give me enough time but I'll try
2) Horseback Riding ... it's in the line to Machinery, and will give you the eureka.
3) Iron Working ... I slot in HBR first to give you the eureka, and also because I won't have the eureka from you completing IW yet
4) Construction ... It's a long tech but is in the line of Machinery. I don't have the eureka for The Wheel yet, otherwise I head to Engineering before Construction. The research time on Construction should give me the time to acquire the eureka for TheWheel
5) The Wheel > Engineering > Machinery

Your tech path I propose:
1) Research Iron Working to just over 50% so that it will complete when you build an iron mine.
2) Start Horseback Riding. I think I'll be able to complete HBR myself in time to get you the Eureka. If not then swap off to something for a turn or two.
3) Apprenticeship for the boot to mines

For production I propose the following:

• Your 2nd city finishing builder is obvious
  
• My 2nd city finish the archer and then building walls are obvious
  
• Your Capital: We want to get out a couple warriors for upgrade (110 for Ngao Mbeba). Our gold situation is pretty good making nearly 25 gpt combined with 100 in the bank currently. We'll want 1 sword (90) on my end to boost city defense. Probably 3 on your end will be sufficient for mid-term defense purposes. We won't be in a position to talk offensive for about 40 turns total of 500 upgrade gold, 400 more than our current reserves which will take about 16 turns to build up ... approximately in sync with the time it will take to research the tech. And we can upgrade a couple earlier as the tech comes in. Warrior > Warrior > Warrior will take your capital about 8 turns. Then you can get another settler out of your capital (hopefully time policy swap to get into Colonization)
  
• I'm considering Archer > Settler in my capital (with Colonization policy). 
  

I propose sending my settler to the spot south of your capital. I could either keep the city myself or trade it to you as we see fit. Your settler possibly send west between your current two cities, maybe southwest. I don't want to send my settler east in the short term as that would only give Woden another city to target with 3-move archers. Ultimately I expect Aranyaka to fall and my capital to be our line of defense for a long time.

[Japper007]

-I'm in God King because I haven't discovered a new civic for a free swap yet after the Pantheon.
-I'm thinking Oligarchy at PP, it'll boost my UU once it's on the field as well as the experience boost. I'd advice you to do so as well, now is not the time for Wonders (Aristocracy) or Great People/buildering (Classical Republic)

-The reason I thought of a IW, Wheel tech path is that I get the boost for Wheel (mine a resource) anyway when I get a mine on the Iron to finish Iron Working, at that point it'll be only 3 turns to knock it out for me, giving you the boost to speed you along while you give me the HBR boost (side note: if you get Heavy Chariots fast could that be a good equalizer? They chew up regular archers easely enough?) Remember I get substantial science income as I finished a +2 Campus this turn and am working two Irons and have two Science CS envoys.

Anyway on to the turn, 44:



As said I finished a Campus, getting me to 12.5 science. Started on the first Warrior (3 turns)

As a little bonus, that also gave me an envoy in Nan Madol:



Now I'm thinking one of us should take them out eventually for a free city, but for now I'm happy to let Cthulhu give us some free culture

[Cornflakes]

I forgot that your science is that high! I'm still not sure is The Wheel is worth the couple of turns at this point though, unless you run out of other stuff in the mean time (and you very well might with your tech rate). The problem with heavy chariots is the nasty rough terrain to my east. Nubian archers with their 3 moves can enter a jungle tile and shoot a tile beyond on the same turn. This effectively gives them the ability to first-strike. I suppose an option might be to purchase a heavy chariot at Aranyaka, and just fortify it inside? This would boost the city defense strength up to 28. But at the cost of 260 gold I think. And my timeline on getting sword upgrade vs. the ability to purchase HC is about the same.

How does culture victory work in a team game? Does each player need to achieve the normal conditions? Does one player need to achieve it? Is tourism pooled between both players on the team?

Can Kongo's free apostles participate in religious combat without a religion? Which religion do Kongo's apostles belong to? I did a test game to answer this. If a Kongo city does not yet have a religion then the city does not get an apostle upon completing a Theater, nor does it get for the Theater if the city is later converted to a religion. Therefore we want to make sure that your cities are converted before you complete your Theater districts.

Here's a thought, could we use Kongo's apostles to aid in a religious victory attempt? Use your apostles in combination with missionaries which I purchase? Since we can't use Jesuit Education, the faith that I generate will be stored up and could be used to blitz out a bunch of missionaries all at once. If we are weak and not a threat to another type of victory, other teams might be more inclined to give us DoF. If we get 2 teams to DoF we can escort the religious units in the 3rd team with kamikaze military units, who's only objective is to survive long enough to get their escorted missionary/apostle to it's target. We'd only need about 15 turns left on both of the DoF to have enough time to do the conversions.

At the last moment we could evangelize our religion with Monastic Isolationism so that our pressure doesn't drop from theological combat. Alternatively we could use Missionary Zeal to ignore terrain movement during the blitz. However I did confirm in the test game that Missionary Zeal does not extend to Kongo's apostles, only to the founder's religious units (test game was me playing hotseat as Kongo & Khmer).

At this point I don't know if any victory condition other than Religion is viable for our team. Russia is about 5 turns from recruiting the first GWriter, will have a head start on the next plus a very good head start on the first GArtist (increasing as they likely complete a Lavra at each city they build). In this case we're playing for the short game rather than the long game, taking advantage of every immediate boost and sacrificing things with long-term return. In this case we'd want to pack your cities in as tight as possible to make the most of the *free* apostles from the districts. We could aim to beeline Mbanzas, and target the timeline for as soon as you can get maybe half of the Mbanzas completed, leaving the 2nd half as a reserve to send where needed as they complete. And my civ could devote it's entire focus to faith generation, ignoring science and culture completely. I should be able to maintain at least tech parity over the short time horizon to put up a defense. I can settle cities along the border of the tundra, or even deep in the tundra, running the +100% holy site adjacency card to boost faith generation. Anything with a time horizion further than about 50 turns can be ignored. I'll do some more musing along the lines of a religious victory attempt.

[Cornflakes]

Some further thoughts on a religious victory attempt:

• As mentioned above, all long-term vs. short-term trade-offs should be taken in favor of the short term. Once we send off the religious units there won't be much more that our empire can produce to aid the victory attempt. Harvest bonus resources earlier, don't build building in districts, maybe don't even build most types of districts. Maybe offer some teams very favorable gold loans as the date draws near. Something like 300 gold for 20 gpt (100% interest) if we need the gold to upgrade units that will escort our religious units.
  
• Declarations of Friendship are very important as such we want to be STRONG, not weak. We want to have high strength so that other teams don't want us to knock over their sandcastle (thinking they will be in a much better position 30 turns later and can come eat us at a tech advantage). If necessary we can flex our muscles along a border and offer a declaration of friendship ... maybe even demand tribute  to mask the intention. If all else fails, we declare war, move in, and offer peace for the 10 turns enforced peace just before we move the religious units to the border. If that fails ... well, we use our units in kamikaze fashion to deliver their missionaries to their targets.
  
• With the short time horizon, our production going into units rather than districts won't matter. Sure we'll fall behind, but the other teams are expecting us to fall behind anyway, and we really don't care what happens to our empire as long as the world drinks our Kool-Aid. Anything not absolutely necessary for the religious victory should be avoided. Kongo at least needs to make sure they can build Theater + Mbanza at every single one of their cities. Production can go into units and settlers (for more Theaters and Mbanzas), and later builders with which to chop the Mbanzas to completion ASAP after Kongo has the civic.
  
• There are some wonders that would be useful, but we don't want to build them too early lest we tip our hat. I haven't yet reviewed the wonders to make a list of the possible ones (keeping in mind that China will likely get the ancient/classical ones)
  
• Your UU will be very helpful in escorting religious units, since with Turtle it remains a solid defender against Crossbow fire. Maybe this war with Woden/CMF will get you a few double-promoted as well.
  
• We need to be thinking on the absolute quickest timeline possible. You ignore everything outside of a direct Guilds beeline. I don't even know if it's worth building the two Commercial Hubs + Markets for the boost. I focus on getting a couple more holy sites built in the tundra. 
  
• Obviously we need to get our from under the immediate threat of invasion by Woden/CMF. But looking towards a religious victory and everything being heavily weighted towards the short term it's not a big deal if the border city falls. We won't care much about having to attack across the isthmus since we won't have to. If they see our power start to rise I'm sure they would be surprised and thrilled accept peace, and with power spiking further I'm sure they would take the DoF to consolidate their war gains, looking to come back later and finish us off.
  

[Japper007]

I don't know exactly how the Culture victory works with teams but I think the Tourism gets pooled and put up against the pooled game-culture from the other teams. The Victory screen adds the tourism and culture output from two teammembers together to come up with its place in the culture rankings, but it also does Science and tech isn't pooled at all.

In our test game Mike and I closed out the game by me rushbuying a frigate every other turn (yes my gold output was that high, hit 800 at the end and that was under crushing war weariness) and taking the last AI capital by brute force. The investment into culture would be more of a long game plan as it'll get me sculptures (a more reliable trigger for Nkisi) I fully expect to lose out on most of the early GWAM's to Russia. My main strategy as the Kongo is exploiting their intense gold economy though, and you can wrap that into any victory. The culture was more a neat idea, and someone needs to get us our culture output to give the other the late-game boosts (some of the Late game boosts are pretty excruciating to get, far better to just have a huge culture output to blow right through them), so why don't I eat the Theatres as I get an innate bonus to them?

[Cornflakes]

98% chance Aranyaka will fall. The only way it possibly could survive is if Woden/CMF don't have a warrior to make the capture, or if they only have 1 and we somehow manage to kill it when it gets next to the city. Woden's archer took out what I'm pretty sure is a net of 30 HP from the city with only a single shot from a damage archer And without the ability to strike back at his archer there's nothing to do but sit back and watch it chip away over the next few turns.

That gold production does sound huge, but I'm not sure we can even be in a competitive position when we get to that point in the game? Especially with the setback currently experienced in the east. I'm afraid by the time we get to the point of buying a frigate every other turn, our opponents will have destroyers and subs to laugh in our face. How many turns into the game were you, and how far into the tech/civics tree were you when you reached that point?

I think we should seriously consider pursuing all-out gamble on religious victory. I think Kongo on a team presents a unique opportunity with their free Apostles, not previously recognized and will catch the other teams off guard. I'll leave the decision up to you though, since this is your game. Ultimately none of our decisions over the next 20 turns will be any different as we will be mostly just trying to stem the bleeding in the east.

[Cornflakes]

Browsing through the Wonder Wiki, here's what I saw relating to religious victory:

• Hagia Sophia, Missionaries & Apostles can spread religion 1 extra time. Medieval, Tech: Education, 710 (by the way, it gives +2 GProphet points but a requirement is that the founder must have founded a religion somebody on the wonder design team didn't get the memo that you can only recruit one GProphet )
  
• Jebel Barkal, +4 faith to all cities within 6 tiles could be massive for faith generation. This is a classical wonder going to China
  
• Mahabodhi Temple, grants 2 Apostles, this is a classical wonder going to China
  

Not a huge list there. Hagia Sophia might make sense. Mahabodhi Temple would be nice, but I doubt it will even be available as an option by the time I've recovered enough to be able to think about it. Hagia Sophia might be expensive, but if we're going all-out gamble on religious victory then it might make sense to build it in a city that has already built HS/Shrine/Temple and doesn't have anything beneficial left to build except units.