[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[Hashoosh]

Spiritual hasn't come into its own for you yet. It'll really start to shine once you get feudalism and theology, and philosophy + CoL + mercantilism.

It starts to shine very brightly...

Hell, a quick swap into caste gives you 3 turn border pops wherever you want them! 2 turns if you've grown to size 2! You start to see it pick up when you switch between pacificism and caste plus rep and mercantilism (when you get those two) for some serious special economy.

And then you can swap over to vassalage and theocracy to pump out double promo murderers.

Trust me, it's better than agg's city maintenance discount. Which makes me think, Hammurabi of Sumeria...

[WilliamLP]

Those are all great ideas. I've never used Spiritual very much other than getting the obvious anarchy turns saved for civics I'd switched to anyway. (But even that is a decent amount of savings in the later game.)

Brainstorming Spiritual tricks:

- Temporary bursts toward Great People that you could normally only do in a Golden Age. (Chicken and egg problem).

- Short term switches to Caste are available for nobody else. This enables: border pops without music, merchants (and great merchants are, well, great), making workshops viable before Chemistry. (Edit: oh and this is RBMod, they are good anyway!)

- Short switch to Serfdom? I don't know if there's a use for this in this game, but I could definitely see it to clear a lot of jungle or lay down workshops. I don't think you can ever get railroads down to 1 worker turn? Serfdom is buffed in RBMod - it gives +75% worker speed and also +1 hammers to water and windmills.

- Switch to Vassalage + Theocracy (maybe Police State if you have Pyramids) for unit pumping.

- Alternating the whole civ between modes: unit production or economy or great people. Perhaps running pure phases of these is stronger in total than doing them all at once, or that's the theory? In practice, it's the kind of problem that makes my head hurt because of all the tile and city micro needed to get it right.

- Environmentalism? It's changed in RMMod too: "Provides +1 gold per specialist, +1c to farms and pastures, +2c to forest preserves, and Low upkeep. Swapped with Free Speech. Now available at Liberalism.". Unfortunately you can't run it with Merc because they're in the same block. And normally the only reason you go Lib is to win the free tech. Otherwise I'd probably prefer Economics and Free Market (which is actually buffed to get +25% value on trade routes as well as +1).

- AP becomes really strong. (Unfortunately, behind in tech and without stone there's no way we could get it in this game, and the chances it's built in our religion are zero.)

[MindyMcCready]

Takes a painful amount of MM to extract all the wonderful benefits. Hope you're up to the challenge William!

[WilliamLP]

I have to wonder about dtay. Is he really a noob, or is this another Locke / Cervantes situation?

[Ceiliazul]

I have to wonder about dtay. Is he really a noob, or is this another Locke / Cervantes situation?

Sullla has replied in the lurker thread and speaker is dedlurking another player... I'm sure you're not the first person who's had that thought.

[WilliamLP]

I think Bacchus is going to lose this city unless he has a miracle defense hiding. Interestingly it just grew to size 2. But I think trying to keep it would be foolish. It would be culturally dominated (since he's creative) and a huge defensive liability. But... I have no apologies for razing it. With that city there he could threaten to hit Manon with 2-movers forever.

Again, I think I prefer 1NE for a city spot, over the hill. And this is a site where I don't think we want it to be on the coast. I can't even imagine having a gameplan where having a ship in the south seas is a good idea.

Ichabod is showing 1 turn for Construction which is an intimidating tech rate. I think he's getting it more defensively than offensively, he has a great contended island to worry about, and we don't have to be impossible to conquer - we just need to be harder than Cheetah!

[MindyMcCready]

YEAH! Payback time!

Looking good. I agree with razing and settling on the NE location for the reasons that you mentioned. Too much of a liability to try to keep it.

Not sure about how soon we should resettle it. My feeling is sooner while we have a military advantage in order to start getting some culture in there. Also, the majority of our cats should probably stay closer to the Ichabod border anyway.

The T113 power graph has Retep's power up to 176K now. Earlier he was at 160K so he's added a couple of HAs by now. Stack would probably look like 7HA + 6 axe + 3 spear + 1 archer + 5 chariots or there abouts.

Our long game against Ichabod isn't looking so great. :LOL: That's some serious research power he's got there! I do think that you're right about being relatively safe for now. Cheetah is so weak that there's some easy profit there for Ichabod and he'll probably act rationally after his last failed stretch. He seems to be signalling 'peace until there's no one else to conquor' right now.

You had mentioned Alphabet as a tech choice again. Won't we get the full benefit of OB when others offer it to us? I'm hoping Scooter, although we might need sailing. I'm still thinking economic buildings of course.

Also, post-Strange, could we get some type of scouting unit 1S-5W of Manon (desert hill)? Or maybe the plains hill SW of that? Anything that's there would be vulnerable so maybe an archer - might survive a HA with full fort + river crossing.

We're not completely out of it (yet); a shrine + extra trade route + OB from Scooter (hope) + economic buildings through our prodigious hammer output + some profitable city sites and we may yet have a chance at holding our little corner of the world.

[WilliamLP]

Not sure about how soon we should resettle it. My feeling is sooner while we have a military advantage in order to start getting some culture in there. Also, the majority of our cats should probably stay closer to the Ichabod border anyway.

I'm not sure either. We have a settler in 2 and it might even make sense to settle it right away - I'd say we're about 8 turns from currency, and shrine is coming soon. (Or a small chance of a merchant, which bulbs currency immediately and solves the problem that way!) The seafood site would be nice, but not as nice without fishing which has to wait awhile.

You had mentioned Alphabet as a tech choice again. Won't we get the full benefit of OB when others offer it to us? I'm hoping Scooter, although we might need sailing. I'm still thinking economic buildings of course.

Since we can trade resources with him, I guess only he needs sailing for open borders to work? I'm not clear on this, for trade routes. I think you're right about getting the benefit that way, but it's not clear that Scooter is prioritizing alphabet (maybe he's already trading with someone else who has it). Also he won't have twice our number of cities so it's not quite the full benefit post currency.

At this point I'm happy to accept the value of starting market builds more quickly, especially in Turandot for the shrine.

Also, post-Strange, could we get some type of scouting unit 1S-5W of Manon (desert hill)? Or maybe the plains hill SW of that? Anything that's there would be vulnerable so maybe an archer - might survive a HA with full fort + river crossing.

That makes sense. Maybe a spear on the desert hill is the least risky. It might look to retep like we're planning a forward base but what can you do.

We're not completely out of it (yet); a shrine + extra trade route + OB from Scooter (hope) + economic buildings through our prodigious hammer output + some profitable city sites and we may yet have a chance at holding our little corner of the world.

Yeah, the game will play on! We'll have some intrigue for a couple more eras at least. Once we're against drafted rifles, maybe not as much, but that's a problem for 2014.

I do think we'll have to get Feudalism soon in this game, earlier than we'd like to, since Ichabod's 2 or 3 promo Maces are going to be a problem.

[MindyMcCready]

Not sure about how soon we should resettle it. My feeling is sooner while we have a military advantage in order to start getting some culture in there. Also, the majority of our cats should probably stay closer to the Ichabod border anyway.

I'm not sure either. We have a settler in 2 and it might even make sense to settle it right away - I'd say we're about 8 turns from currency, and shrine is coming soon. (Or a small chance of a merchant, which bulbs currency immediately and solves the problem that way!) The seafood site would be nice, but not as nice without fishing which has to wait awhile.

You had mentioned Alphabet as a tech choice again. Won't we get the full benefit of OB when others offer it to us? I'm hoping Scooter, although we might need sailing. I'm still thinking economic buildings of course.

Since we can trade resources with him, I guess only he needs sailing for open borders to work? I'm not clear on this, for trade routes. I think you're right about getting the benefit that way, but it's not clear that Scooter is prioritizing alphabet (maybe he's already trading with someone else who has it). Also he won't have twice our number of cities so it's not quite the full benefit post currency.

At this point I'm happy to accept the value of starting market builds more quickly, especially in Turandot for the shrine.

Also, post-Strange, could we get some type of scouting unit 1S-5W of Manon (desert hill)? Or maybe the plains hill SW of that? Anything that's there would be vulnerable so maybe an archer - might survive a HA with full fort + river crossing.

That makes sense. Maybe a spear on the desert hill is the least risky. It might look to retep like we're planning a forward base but what can you do.

We're not completely out of it (yet); a shrine + extra trade route + OB from Scooter (hope) + economic buildings through our prodigious hammer output + some profitable city sites and we may yet have a chance at holding our little corner of the world.

Yeah, the game will play on! We'll have some intrigue for a couple more eras at least. Once we're against drafted rifles, maybe not as much, but that's a problem for 2014.

I do think we'll have to get Feudalism soon in this game, earlier than we'd like to, since Ichabod's 2 or 3 promo Maces are going to be a problem.

:LOL: We're strangely like-minded.

[WilliamLP]

The sad part is that "Stranger in a Strange Land" was probably my favourite book in high school. Sorry Michael Valentine Smith.

Bacchus emptied the city and react-whipped an axe that was in progress. It ended up being free experience for a chariot. Also that 14 gold isn't totally insignificant!

You might not like this play but I offered peace afterwards: this was just intended to be a quick surgical strike. I would be curious what would happen if we had advanced the whole stack on C of Conscience though. If he takes peace, I'm thinking we'll probably plant a city down there.




Both Ichabod and Bacchus are building military.

I hadn't appreciated it before, but Bacchus is Carthage, meaning he has Numidian Cavalry. They're a very interesting unit I've barely ever used, a strength 5 horse archer with a 50% bonus against Melee. Stacks of them with shock may do fairly well against spears, but they're worse against archers and other horse archers.

Ichabod is showing HBR, which means he might be really close to fielding elephants. We may need another round of spears real soon.