[Spoiler] Kaiser has a plan

[Kaiser]

https://sciencefiction.com/2017/06/13/ba...lly-didnt/

If you have a plan and do not play this game, welcome to support me developing/finding mine

[Kaiser]

Game overview:

5 player game
Map: Cornflakes Pangea balanced randomly generated map
Size: Small
City states: 10
Disaster level: 2
Map settings standard

Players:
Ichabod - Brazil (as stated I am spoiled here, but I think most people would have guessed this as Brazil looks to be a stronger pick and it is his home country)
Archduke - Canada
Suboptimal - Eleanore (England)
Woden - Phoenicia
Kaiser - Egypt

Civ List:
Two each from this list
Norway (4)
Phoenicia (4)
Eleanore (France or England) (4)
Sweden (4)
Kongo (4)
Spain (4)
Georgia (4)
Canada (4)
Brazil (3)
Egypt (3)

Bans:
- Venetian Arsenal (no more overflow tricks but 2x ship production is broken on everything other than Pangea and it doesn't make sense to unban them for just that)
- Maori (mess up map generation, expect for a land-only map, and doesn't make sense to unban them for that)
- Religious Settlements Pantheon
- Nan Madol (should be +1 culture so this is just another 2x problem like Scythia and VA)
- No pillaging CS except for farms and fishing boats. (pillage-farming. no science but can get insane gold).
- No pillage farming of city states (if you pillage, you must conquer). Don't care if we stick with just health pillaging, just don't want the pillage, let them heal, pillage again gameplay.

[Kaiser]

I realized last game that I was more playing to not be an easy target than to win myself. Ultimately this ended up with me being the prime target for my opponents due to a backwards military and a huge lack of improvements in my territory.

I also again picked a second city site which was a little further away, even though no Pink dot this time as it was my backline.
I tend to optimize to much on the long term persepctive but these games are typically won with a concession around t100 - t200 so the endgame is never reached.

The goal for this game is to optimize my development on the short term, I wil also try to post regularly again to hopefully attract some lurkers to support me.
Also my wife will sanity check me again, i should have listend to her more last game

[Quagma Blast]

Your random civilizations are:

SPAIN
or
EGYPT

Reply in this thread, or PM me, confirming which of these civs you would like to play; or declare that you will reroll and get a different set of two from which you must pick.

[Kaiser]

After a quick Test game, my tendency is to pick Egypt other Spain as the bonuses come online earlier and it is less dependent on being on a continental divide to get early game bonuses.

I will make a comparison later and will continue my test game but if the map is ready and the game can be started, then I pick Egypt.

[MJW (ya that one)]

civs+nan madol don't matter after setup and we are going with woden's pillage-farming rule; so you can shorten your list:

Bans:
- Venetian Arsenal
- Religious Settlements Pantheon
- No pillaging or raiding City States unless you intend to capture.

I don't like his rule because you can just fail to capture on purpose. I just made this post to vent.
Also missing from this list is city-gifting but that's kind of implicit. If you somehow get into a winning position you can do it to troll though.

[Kaiser]

Pick analysis:



Mediteranean Bride:
I tested this and the additional 4 also work for traderoutes to city states. 4 is the equivalent of 1 :cogs:. Early in the game the preference is still an internal trade route as 1 and 1 is in my opinion superior to 7 . However later when we are hitting the housing cap, the added flexibility and the increase in yields for foreign trade routes makes this ability more attractive.

An established trade route with a neigboring CIV also gives us 1 level of diplomatic visibilitly which might help us with on the military side if we can achieve a higher diplomatic visibility over potential enemies to get the +3 strength bonus per level of difference. However I am not sure if we keep the diplomatic visibility when declaring or if we instantly loose this level of acces due to the trade route being canceled. Does anybody know?

The 2nd part of of this ability increases our attractiveness for other players to trade with us. This will be a nice bonus when city states send trade routes (I could not test it but I assume we will get the 2 ) but only relevant for other CIVs early when their own cities only bring 1 and 1 and they want to increase their level of visibility.
I actually think the latter might be one of the main reasons (the secondary reasons being our districts making the trade route attractive) any other CIV would want to send a trade route despite us gaining a small bonus from it.

All in all a situational ability we might make us of but should not focus our game on. The 4 might come in handy when fulfilling a trade route quest for a city state though.

Iteru:
15 % increased production to districts and wonders is a good ability. However it is not a very high value and conditional on being next to a river, tiles we need to have and could likely make other use of. In the end this is good enough that I suggest making use of this but trying to avoid overemphasizing, this is especially true as this might lead to a wonder trap. As Egype though, we have to build the Pyramids, right?

The 2nd part of this ability is quite good, as it negates the damage from river floods so we can place our cities, improvements and districts without worrying about the flooding. In fact we can hope that the floods are improving the value of the tiles.

Maryannu Chariot Archer:
This is a really good unit due to its high mobility of 4 when starting in open terrain and its ranged strength of 35 (nearly the value of a Swordmen). It is also boosted by the early Agoge card (as it is a ranged unit) and not countered by Spearmen (I doubt that the other players in this game will fall for this trap) but by certain ranks of melee and light cavalry units.
However its downsides are it cannot conquer cities and its production price tag of 120 :cog: which twice the value of an Archer. I believe it is a trap to try to rush somebody with these as they should be able to field a large force to at least delay you and thusly remove both of you from the competion.
That being said, I am quite sure that we will build these as they are a very relevant unit that can support roughly up until knight show up. Their power would allow to postpone Crossbows but we likely want Lumbermills as early as possible when we have enough forests available as they are a +2 over mines.

Sphinx:
The Sphinx is an early improvement becoming available with craftsmanship, this in itself is already a slight anti synergy as the craftsmanship inspiration requires 3 improvements to be build meaning you either build a 2nd worker or research Craftsmanship without the inspiration.
It improves the yield of a wide variety of tiles by 1 and 1 which is good on tiles where you cannot place any other good improvements such as deserts. However Sphinx can never be adjacent to each other so spamming them into the desert is not possible. In my opinion its true value lies in placing it early on a floodplains (and hoping that there will be flood improving the base yield of the tile) as it allows you to gain 1 and 2 plus the base yields of the tile (so either 2 or 1 and 1 )
This allows to forego a monument in the city at the price of working a supbar tile early in the game. This looks somehow like a trap, and I already fell into it in PBEM 17 when working the cliffs of dover over better tiles in my second city. However we can keep this in mind especially when we are lucky in getting a good flood on the tiles near our cities as it becomes a really good improvement then.

It also increases the appeal of neighboring tiles by 2, somehow in my test game it was sometimes just 1, making the pick of the Earth Godess pantheon an interesting alternative. However improving the Appeal to breathtaking is no easy feat and we need to carefully consider if we belive we would be able to do so or prefer a different pantheon.

Interesting pantheons:
- Earth Godess as stated above
- Otherwise Fertility rites would solve the slight anti synergy for building a Sphinx and is a good general Pantheon
- River Goddess would work well with Iteru but might be trap in buidling to many Holy sites

Summary:
All in all Egypt has boni which are available/relevant in different stages of the game:
- All game long
   - Iteru allows for settling and improving flodded areas as well as having a 15% edge in crucial district production when there are good spots on a river (Easy for commercial hubs, government plaza and aquaeducts, likely for theater district and industrial zones, probably difficult for campus and holy sites)
- Early Game: (~ until turn 75)
   - the MAC as a unit allows to as a minimum thread a slow rush (due to its production cost) but is even better as a defensive unit for Hit & Run tactics as well as for barb clearing
   - the Sphinx allows for early game culture generation, one of the hardest yields to get and one of the most important to quickly get to the next level of governments. Potentially it can also free up some to be saved by not building a monument
- Mid Game: (~ until turn 150)
   - MAC become more and more irrelevant
   - trade route boni become more relevant as internal trade routes can be reduced for higher income with international trade routes

- Late game: (150+)
   - Iteru and International trade routes are still relevant but I do not believe that these will make a significant difference

[Kaiser]

El Escorial:
I believe I never really used Inquisitors as you need to sacrifice an Apostle (expensive and you likely want to sacrifice 2 Apostles before to improve your religion) to be able to buy them with Faith. This bonus gives them 4 instead of 3 charges and eliminates other religions by 100% instead of 75% in own cities. The Inquisitior has the same faith buy pricing than the Missionary but can initiate theological coombat and has a strenght of 70 + 35 (own territory) compared to the strenght of 100 for the Missionary.

The better part of this bonus is the second half, a straight +4 strength vs. players following a different religion. I did not finalize my testing but I believe this is only valid when Spain has a religion of their own and the other player has also a religion. (Just pantheons are not sufficient, this needs to be verified however) This combines nicely with the Defender of the Faith belief for a total of +9 strength when the attacking player has a different religion.

Treasure Fleet:
This will be a big one because there are so many different things packed into this bonus.

1st:
Armadas (Strenght +20, 3 units combined) and Fleets (Strength +10, 2 units combined) can be created at Mercantilism instead of Mobilization or Nationalism. Here is an overview where these are positioned.


With the right setup this ability gives a +20 strength swing for naval combat roughly two eras before others become this ability. This is a huge game ending bonus and a potential play for Spain would be to at least keep tech parity until the end of the Renaissance era, prebuilding a multiple of 3 state of the art naval units to then merge them into Armadas (or fleets for a smaller +10 strength bonus but higher numbers) in order to attack/raze a couple cities. We have seen again in PBEM 17 that a superior naval attack was what finally forced the concession out of Archduke, while the rest was hopelessly far away.

A Frigate Armada would be stronger than a battleship, a Caravel Armada would be stronger than an Ironclad, heck even a Galley Armada would be only 5 strength weaker than a Caravel. There are still movement and sometimes range advantages to the modern units but it shows quite well that this allows for a huge advantage in naval combat.

2nd:
This is a similar ability than Egypts but with a quite different flavor as you need to trade with cities on a different continent. My research tells me that it is +6 or international and +1 and +1 for internal
If Spain starts on a continental divide this might be a very good early game bonus to speed up your second or third city with an internal trade route a minimum of 2 and 2  without regarding any other districts in the target city. With a Government plaza and Magnus with his trade route bonus this can be a very important factor in speeding your cities up. However it still is only a 1 and 1 advantage over your competitors going for the same setup.
More income is always good and a +6 swing equals to 1,5 , I personally believe this might come in handy later in the game when building up funds for upgrades of units and to cover increased supply cost.
While being on a continental divide on Pangea is not a given situation, typically there is at least one so creating trade routes to another CIV on a different continent should be possible.

3rd:
This one is very situational, Missions can only be built after researching the Exploration Civic. I will talk about their benefits a bit later but +2 loyality is a small bonus regarding the fact that cultural pressure is mostly relevant for the early settling stages. This might end up being useful when forward settling somebody else (again on a different continent) or when conquering a far away city to reduce the risk of loosing the city to this badly implemented mechanic.

Conquistador:
A Musketman replacement costing 10 more than its replacement which can achieve +10 strength bonus over its counterpart when pouring even more resources into it by buying at least a Missionary or Inquisitor for 100  each . Alternatively Spain can go for Warrior Monks which double up as nice combat units when promoted and could help earlier but come at the even steeper price of 200

Similar to the Armadas, this is an ability which could help forcing concessions in the Renaissance era as the strength swing is quite significant. However the resource investment is as well, as typically you want the quickly build your military, for example by faith buying and producing simultaneously, and you have to invest  into non-combat units (or Warrior-Monks) increasing the necessary investment.
That being said, especially when going with Warrior Monks, Spain could actually produce them earlier for defense and then just rush the Conquistadors when they become available to start a devastating attack. This works well with El Escorial's strength bonus when it is possible to execute the different religions.
The conquistador could help in keeping the conquered cities when Spain manages to get Defender of the Faith, besides this I believe only Church Property would benefit significantly from the instant conversion Conquistadors can execute by conquering a city.

Mission:
As discussed above Missions come into play with Exploration so shortly before Mercantilism. Their value is again very dependant on being placed on a different continent than the capital but if this can be executed they are a great source of yielding other boni on top of the base yield. If starting on a continental divide the +2 becomes relevant as well, as it is likely that established cities have a finished campus already.
The Mission is a key tool for Spain to achieve the income necessary to create a major naval or land based push, it comes into play just shortly before Conquistadors and Armadas become available which might be enough or to late.

Interesting pantheons:
- anything generally helpful

Interesting beliefs:
- Defender of the Faith or Crusade
- Church property or Pilgrimage
- Warrior Monks

Summary:
All in all Spain has boni which are available/relevant in different stages of the game:
Many boni depend on being on an intercontinental divide/settling on a different continent which is possible but unlikely on Pangea (at least from the early game)
Also Spain really wants a religion but has no means of quickly accessing one. One of the best counterplays against Spain is founding all religions before them which would be difficult on a small 5 player game as there are 4 available religions. The other counterplay would be not founding religions at all which is also unlikely as the boni by religion are significant.

- All game long
  - El Escorials +4 strength when fighting a player with a different religion
  - Treasure Fleets trading bonus for intercontinental trade routes

- Early Game: (~ until turn 75)
  - it is unlikely that El Escorials strength bonus will play a big role here as religion founding takes still place and Spain will have to invest itself into a religion first before investing in an attack. It might become handy on the defensive though
  - Internal intercontinental trade routes could give an advantage when there is a nearyb continental divide to settle the 2nd and/or 3rd city on a different continent.

- Mid Game: (~ until turn 150)
  - here lies the real strenght of Spain with Conquistadors and Armadas/Fleets becoming availbe to start conquering/forcing concessions. For this to be execute Spain needs to stay on research parity and have a religion as well as a significant income to support troop/religious unit building. The Mission comes into play here and is part of the increase in income
  - intercontinental trade routes to other players become realistic boosting Spains income

- Late game: (150+)
  - mostly the trade routes and the strenght bonus for religion are still relevant, Missions still contribute nicely for faith and science

[Kaiser]

Questions to clarify (Lurker help welcome):

- Does the diplomatic visibilty from a trade route drop when declaring war (Egypt and Spain)
- Does Spain only get the +4 strength bonus when:
   - Spain has a religion and the other player has a religion
   - Spain has a religion and the other player has a pantheon
- Does anybody have investigated the average number of continental divides on Pangea (Small) and can derive the likelyhood of starting on or near one?

[Kaiser]

My current view is that Egypt offers more and easier to execute starting boni than Spain. This is because I think the likelihood of finding floodplains for at least the 2nd city is higher than the likelihood of being able to settle it on a different continent. Egypt also has an easier time founding a religion than Spain, even though the religion itself is of a higher importance to Spain.
Spain also seems to be all over the place with the need for founding a religion, creating many trade routes to benefit from treasure fleet and the high and  cost for exectuing their Mid Game attack

Right now I envision these two rough game plans for the two CIVs:
Egypt:
- leverage Sphinx into an early culture lead (or alternatively save the production cost for the monument)
- try to use Iterus production bonus to place campus and commercial hubs
- use MAC to defend and clear barbs, optionally threaten a player or city state
- optionally found a religion (with Holy sites powered by Iteru as well)
- try to establish a lead

==> the Iteru bonus is not that high but still significant, much will depend on finding good spots for the districts that means optimally a +4 spot (like TBS) on a river in the capital . It should be possible to find decent spots, the worst case scenarios would be starting without freshwater or in a lake region without rivers as this would negate all the early game strength of Egypt

Spain:
- builder up vanilla style hoping to have an early continental divide to use for trade routes
- build holy sites / stonehenge to found a religion (optionally with Warrior Monks)
- build commercial hubs / harbours to get trade routes while having a continental divide available
- keep tech parity until Musketmen become available
- execute a land based attack around ~T110 or a Naval based attack around ~T130

==> Spains only early game bonus comes from internal intercontinental trade routes which is highly in question if these will be available. Their game plan has a better form of forcing a concession when keep tech and production parity but they have basically no boni to support this requirement.


As a resulte, between these two I would pick Egypt trying to get ahead of the curve, Spain has the better come back potential but needs to stay equal or relevant to execute it and has no support doing so.
Egypt is also one of the two 3 vote nations so not regarded by all players to be among the 10 worst CIVs.