Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[Zalson]

turn 137. Qin asked us to declare war on Montezuma. Thoughts? there doesn't appear to be a lot of diplomatic fall out

[taotao]

turn 137. Qin asked us to declare war on Montezuma. Thoughts? there doesn't appear to be a lot of diplomatic fall out

Doesn't matter much either way as they're both miles away. I'd probably decline just because there's a risk of not getting peace with Monty without sending real troops and there's a potential that you want to do a resource trade with him at some point. Plus I guess there's also a tiny possibility of Monty persuading somebody to join his war with you guys.

[Zalson]

Declining

[Zalson]

Here's the save. I'll have a report up tomorrow morning my time.

Here's the summary:

Founded Blue Dot
Took Cuman
+7 workers

3T to Civil Service

FIN

[haphazard1]

That's a lot of workers! How many do you have now?

[Brian Shanahan]

I don't think that there actually are fish in the fog, sadly, but the horses make it an OK filler.

I gave the "fish in the fog?" moniker to that spot because it was showing up blue circle on our first settler, and with no food visible I thought that there was a good chance fish would be in the fog. Generally speaking, blue circles do tend to have at least one food source.

Edit: I was looking at the save a few minutes ago, and was also thinking that Mansa would be a juicy morsel to (at least partly) swallow. The good city of Gao and his capital Timbuktu (with the Kashi Whatevernashi Hindu shrine) both close to the border on good land. An alpha strike on him that'll take a few cities fairly quickly followed by peacing out could be the quickest route to a winning position in this game. From what I can see of Celtia, she's got the same land as us, but less, Spain is in the same kind of land as Mansa but without his advantages, Charley is strung out in a line and we know not enough of Qin nor Monty to say how good they are.

[Zalson]

I don't think that there actually are fish in the fog, sadly, but the horses make it an OK filler.

I gave the "fish in the fog?" moniker to that spot because it was showing up blue circle on our first settler, and with no food visible I thought that there was a good chance fish would be in the fog. Generally speaking, blue circles do tend to have at least one food source.

I think the food it's supposed to get is the dry rice. But we should make sure that city has some kind of fish name.

haphazard1, we now have, I think 22 workers for 11 cities. Or we're approaching 22. We got 3 at the beginning of my turnset, got one from Chinook, and I think I maybe started/maybe completed 4-5 more.

At least I accomplished my goals! Report upcoming.

[shallow_thought]

Got the save. Good position - getting Chinook is really nice.I want to wait for the full report before really getting in to planning, but I've been staring at Mansa's land and thinking.

I was looking at the save a few minutes ago, and was also thinking that Mansa would be a juicy morsel to (at least partly) swallow. The good city of Gao and his capital Timbuktu (with the Kashi Whatevernashi Hindu shrine) both close to the border on good land. An alpha strike on him that'll take a few cities fairly quickly followed by peacing out could be the quickest route to a winning position in this game. From what I can see of Celtia, she's got the same land as us, but less, Spain is in the same kind of land as Mansa but without his advantages, Charley is strung out in a line and we know not enough of Qin nor Monty to say how good they are.

Good reasons to attack Mansa:
- nice land
- level with us in power
- ahead of us in GNP
- good cities on our border
- only source of iron is on our border (copper and ivory are out of reach, sadly)
- maybe no horses, so no 2-movers? I'm not seeing any (resource or troops)
- could well be off teching up the top of the tree...

Issues:
- Chicken Pizza (also great wall, but I'm less bothered)
- Timbuktu is surrounded by rivers on the three sides that we can get; we'd have to walk past it and turn to attack (at 1 move pt)
- He has construction (I see bridges), so wellies are likely soon

I don't think we can take a CP / walls / skirmisher combo swords, or even swords  + cats; we need maces and cats minimum. It's 3t for CS (which uses up our gold), then (at current break even)
- 5t for construction
- 12t for machinery
We might have enough gold left to reduce that, and our rate should improve, but we're currently building wealth at a couple of places - so we're still looking at 10-20t before we can build maces.

However, any army we build to tackle Mansa could just as well be sent against Boudicca; we can decide that once we have a more advanced army.

So I suggest that we push CS->Con->Machinery and see where we stand.

Two other things I really want feedback on:

a) If / where to build Moai (given lack of stone). I'd kind of though FD would do as a site, but we've whipped a lot infra there already and I'd assumed we were going to build it with ship overflow . Moura Encantada might be better, with the rice to fuel the whipping.
b) Mechanically, are we better off building marble-fueled MoM for failgold in YM than wealth, so long as that doesn't delay CS?

[Brian Shanahan]

On Maoi, what about Caleuche. It's going to be a whipping post anyway until we get infrastructure in, and we can put overflows into it. And we're going to be on sea tiles anyway as that'll be the only way to get food there.

Incidentally, the next build in Moura has to be the Lighthouse, it cannot grow at all quickly without it. And the Library is useless without citizens on commerce tiles.

Mausoleum in Bean a Sidhe (more hammers), we don't need more workers and if needed Xmas and Christmas both have enough hammers to build some more defensive units. We need Aesthetics badly here to be honest. Playing an eventual world conquest and we've gone a long time without the Heroic Epic.

Regarding attacking Mansa, I'm not advocating one soon, just that we hit him first and hit him hard. A) He's neither going to have the units nor be inclined to use the civics to build a proper army to stop us and B) let Boudica steam away in her corner, building up an army and falling further behind in techs.

Edit: Finally, we should really build some Monasteries in our science cities. 1) the ability to build missionaries all game is handy and 2) the extra science to Sci Meth is also handy.

[Zalson]

T130
Start the long train of soldiers to the north for Chinook.

Holy crap there are a lot of soldiers in Chinook. It’s almost as if we were at war!



Starting city list


3x whipped FD because it was working a whole bunch of coastal tiles. Kind of did it on autopilot.

T131
YM finishes a worker (1/6) and overflows into wealth while growing to size 10. Then it’ll start a setter at 10. (maybe a courthouse would be worth it? Saves 2 gpt?

Bean a Sidhe (worker 2/6) starts a courthouse and does the same thing (tries to grow in 1). it falls just short.

Spain takes the barbarian city of Alemanni.

T132
4t settler at YM for blue dot.

T133
Someone gets Sinian. So Montezuma’s getting a wonder!

2x whip the granary in Cuman. We need more workers! Caleuche (well, not yet) and FD start on those. So does XP. We were actually building a market in XP before a library!

T134
2x whip the worker at XP. Overflow into a courthouse.

Cuman overflows into a forge. We’ll need one soon, there.

T135
Worker 3/6 comes out. So does the settler for Blue Dot.

YM starts a courthouse, due in 3 turns.



Charlemagne has Feudalism, Mansa gets the Hindu Shrine, and Isabella … adopts Theocracy. She founded Christianity too, by the way.



Inky is founded.

Chinook is minimally defended (2 archers)


Stupid peace treaty.


T136
Mansa gets Chicken Pizza.

What building is that?



T137
Qin asks us to declare war on Montezuma. It doesn’t really cost us anything?



Still, I decline the invitation. Start a worker at YM. Bean a Sidhe grows next turn, so wealth to preserve overflow (then a worker)

My invasion force for Chinook is, perhaps, a bit too excessive (3 axes surrounding it, plus 3 chariots). So I’ll just take it.

First, a suicide chariot at 25% percent (17/8) withdraws!
CR1 axe at 61% wins!
Cao Cao shrugs and takes it 99.6% odds. Then I realize that was dumb because he can't get any more XP.


LOL NO



T138
2 great generals get borned. Wow! We’ll see the result next turn.

T138

Yay for spy specialists. Change it to a mine and start a worker. Realize that I should have had libraries up every where and make the changes for the whips to start next turn.



This is where great generals come from.



T139
Whipped all the libraries. EVERYWHERE. (okay just in Xmas Present, Caleuche, Cuman)

T140
YM on wealth while it grows to 11. It has about 15 overflow. It can start a settler at 11.

FD drops the silver to grow to 6 in 1t. XP is also regrowing so it can’t really help.



Good job Mansa. What a good city.



NOTE: if we get the chance BURN THIS CITY. We can just replace it on the desrt to at least reclaim a desert tile.



This is the “we need to attack Mansa” graph. He’s got 8(9?) cities to our 12 (Charlemagne has 10) and Boudica is roaring into contention. So we probably should kill her with maces and catapults.