SG2- People Who Also Still Want to Get Better at Civ IV

[Tatan]

Nice turn set.

One quibble: maybe this is my warmongering personality shining through here, but I would have accepted Zara's demand and used our knights to rush Alex's city on our borders; after all, the bulk of Alex's army is probably on his eastern borders fighting off Zara. I can understand if you don't want to risk Caesar or Sal sneak-attacking us while our army is away, though.

Regarding civics: I say we go with Mercantilism. If I remember correctly our trade routes with the other civs really aren't THAT valuable, and Merc will go well with Representation. Not sure when to revolt, though. Depends on if we want to adopt Emancipation, or Free Speech/Nationalism.


And regarding another game, GES: I would love to, although I'm not sure if my current schedule could justify it . If things clear up by the end of this game, though, I would most certainly sign up.


EDIT: Hmm... we could go with the "eat it, too" option and simply use our existing army to pulverize Rome while not building new units... But that would admittedly leave our northern cities majorly under-defended.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

My thoughts on revolts:

Do Mercantilism and Free Religion in one revolt as soon as Liberalism comes in.

Then during the start of the GA to save anarchy, we should go to Emancipation/Free Speech (will add production to some weak production commerce cities). And then in the final turn of the GA, go to Free Market (who needs Merc if we aren't in Rep any more?) and Universal Sufferage.

It will be really amusing to go to Emancipation when every AI is 40-60 turns away.

As for warmongering, this is up to you guys. Personally, I am not a warmonger. I never win by Domination, I am a peaceful builder. And so I go to war once or twice per game to secure the tactical advantage I need to win, and then I stop. We currently have a huge tactical advantage and we don't NEED any more cities. Now, if the point is to win by Domination, then we probably want to continue warring, otherwise I would just cruise into space. I do fear going to war immediately. We need to get City Garrison GP units and at least 2 trebs in all of our border cities. If Joao hadn't been willing to talk, his stack would've certainly taken Coimbra back from us. I think we should secure our borders before pushing out further. But obviously you guys may feel differently. One thing we need to do is connect our border cities with "border" roads. It was going to take far too long to reinforce cities along our borders due to a lack of direct routes.

[Nakor]

I'll try to play later today.

GES, count me in for another game!

[Nakor]

Okay, time to play my turns.
I decide to go for Infra now if nothing troublesome happens.

T195: Whip Koisan (Library) and Coimbria (Theatre) and swap some tiles.

T196: Koisan starts on FP (does that count as a wonder?), seems like a great place to reduce maintenance. St. Pete back on Knight duty. Got our own horses, so I cancel the deal with Zara.

T197: Not much happening...

T198: Tile swapping game again to maximise growth/builds. Bank done in Moscow (missionary next) and Stalinggrad (Grocer for health).

T199: Nationalism is in, change to Constitution to take Demo with Lib. Start Moscow on TM (16t build).

T200: I notice this



Zara doesn't want Nationalism? That can only mean one thing...



Decide to use one GE to build TM.

T201: Finish TM, next wonder T226. Golden Age makes it possible to take science to 70%. Then there's this:



Does wonders for our economy as well! Time to build, build and build even more... still mostly infra, but I might slip in a few Knights / Siege.

Damn! We get another Great Prophet. Save him for a cheap GA later on.

T202: Building/researching

T203: We're getting bothered by a lot of Spies. Sign a Defy-resolution to return Combria. Next player should take out Joao.... damn...

T204: Constitution in, on to Printing Press. No one is close to Lib, so I'll take some time... want to finish it in this GA to get a free revolt, though...

T205: Alex looses a city. Starting to build maces for rifle upgrades.

T206: PP is in, so onto Lib to take Democracy and revolt.

T207: Lib is in!



Revolt but don't know if I did this right...



Moscos starts SoL, Nov starts Oxford.

T208: Gunpowder is in, onto Rep Parts.

August declares war.... on Alex... Should we jump in and take that border city? It's up to the next guy.

T209: Golden Age ends. We can still run 70% science at a good profit!

T210: End of my 15 turns. Build a lot of Infra and a nice army...

Oh crap... ANOTHER GREAT PROPHET!!!!

We've got 1000+ cash to upgrade some macemen to rifle's and start a new war. Maybe wait for Steel / Mil Trad? But we are so far ahead... here's the overview



And our demographics (can you imagine what they were IN the GA?).



I think the next 30 turns will bring our empire almost on the brink of victory (if we keep building those wonders!). I suggest we go for domination and vassalize everyone quickly.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Really good turns. Our GNP is completely absurd in comparison to the AIs.

As slow as the AIs are, we probably could've slinged Assembly Line with Liberalism. But taking Democracy was the right move.

I think you also revolted to the right stuff. We were going to want to be on those civics eventually anyway, and doing all four changes at once would've been multiple turns of anarchy. I think you made the right move. You could argue we might want to draft with Nationalism, but we can probably just straight up build an army if want. It is sub-optimal, but who cares? Once we get to Kremlin, we can probably also just buy an army.

Sucks about two more Great Prophets. I think we should hire max Scientists, Merchants, and Engineers in Moscow, that way we swamp the crappy Prophet points in Moscow. I wonder what the Prophets can bulb?

Our next Wonder is due turn 225. Forbidden Palace is a NW so it doesn't count. Statue of Liberty? After SoL, it gets hinky to get to our next Wonder. Kremlin? Maybe we should start Versailles somewhere too. DRC?

I am also getting sick of the Apostolic crap, so as long as we have visual on Joao's stack and can cover our border cities, we might as well wipe him out. But we cannot vassalize him. I turned off vassal states remember. I thought turning off vassal states was a pretty standard setting around RB games.

EDIT: I played around with the save.

Zara has a deer was can trade for. Zara also has 8gpt we can trade for. Saladin has incense we can trade for.

The two GProphets cannot bulb anything. We can save both for future GAs. Or they can settle in St. Pete (future Wall Street) for +2hpt/5gpt (after modifiers late game, more like 6hpt/15gpt).

We have two mines being built in cities that lack the food to work them. We need to stop the mine constructions at Rostov and Yaro and turn them into Windmills. Rostov needs the Windmill food so that we can cottage the last 3 plains tiles. There are no farms for extra biology food at Rostov. Replaceable Parts is about to make Windmills even better.

Nakor says we are getting dinged by spies a lot. Might want to build some Security Bureaus, and also run the espionage slider and get some counterespionage missions going. The whole world hates us, so we should get used to spies annoying us.

We currently cannot finish SoL in time for T225. Here is my plan. No other AI is close to Democracy, so we can straight build SoL. Since no AI is on Divine Right yet, here is what we do. At T220, we should put DRC on Versailles. Move our GE there. At T223 (to give us some leeway), we should GE rush Versailles there. The math says it provide enough hammers to finish. Then we delay SoL in Moscow until some AI gets Democracy, or T248 rolls around. After that, hopefully we will be close enough to Kremlin to avoid having to use our Islam shrine before T273. After Kremlin, the Radio/Mass Media wonders will be close behind.

[T-hawk]

THE STUPID CITES KEEP ASSIGNING WHIPPED GROWTH TO SPIES!

Tip: In cities where this happens, click all of the emphasize-food, hammers, and commerce buttons. That will usually make any new citizens into land laborers instead of specialists. Also, emphasize-hammers gives you engineer specialists, and emphasize-beakers will favor scientists over spies.

The only problem case is when the governor hires spy specialists over merchants. It does that because the spy's total output is higher (5 units vs 3), but there's no way to emphasize gold or de-emphasize espionage.

[Tatan]

Everything is going according to plan, it seems.

Got it, will play later today, and will post some thoughts about what we want to do sometime before that.

[Tatan]

Alright, everything looks good to me! [except the prophets, arg]

So, I guess tech-wise we should head up to Rifling/Military Tradition next to insure total security from the AIs. I think keeping most of the 1-movers on the defense in the south and east while a cavalry division rips through Portugal would work pretty well; thoughts?


Regarding victory conditions...

We have three realistic options right now: diplomatic, space race, or domination. Diplomatic would work pretty well if we could get Zara to vote for us, but it is so unwieldy that I would rather not mess with it. Space race is completely, 100% fail-proof... but also will take FOREVER and be [IMO] fairly boring. Domination would be cool and also pretty easy, but wiping through hordes of AI units towards the end mop-up phase can be a pain. So I would say... why don't we just keep our options open, and continue steam-rolling the AIs while teching normally? When the time comes, we can then choose whatever victory condition is fastest. Heck, we might even try to get the UN to work; we will be going to that part of the tree pretty soon anyway.

I'll hopefully be able to play in an hour or two.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Losing a city up there to Portugal wouldn't be devastating. We just have to make sure all of our southern cities are very well defended. Novogrod and St. Pete are 2 of 3 best cities in the empire and they are currently our two most southernly cities. They should be well reinforced before we make any moves on Caesar.

Tech wise-I think we need to head straight for Communism and then for Radio/Mass Media. Once SoL finishes, we have no more Wonders to build until we get to Kremlin.

Don't forget to run max Scientists, Engineers, and Merchants to drown out the Prophet points in Moscow.

Edit: The other option is to go Corp/Steam Power/Assembly Line (for Pentagon). Levees will be huge. This will also avoid Astronomy and Scientific Method canceling out our Wonders for as long as possible.

[Tatan]

Uh, remember when I said I would be able to play in 1 or 2 hours? Turns out I was severely underestimating the project I was working on . I will play tomorrow.