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

[Nakor]

Hey Thoth, playing with Civics in the right way isn't the best part of my game. Can you enlighten me a bit more on how you think State Property would be in our best interest. We are already making tons of gold/science.
Besides that, I don't see the point of going Caste/Rep again. How would that benefit us?

I agree with GES, that going for the Mass Media line in this game (wonders need to be build) is better then going for Biology first. Also, our city's are close to their happy-cap and way over their healt cap. Therefore growing them bigger NOW is not that good. With the happy wonders to help and Env. for more healt (combined with Hosp/PT's) we can grow our city's bigger safely. And going for Domination will be helped a lot with 3G's soon to get our production even better.

Tatan is up!

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I haven't heard from Tatan on here in a few days. He has been pretty busy I think.

I can try to answer for Thoth, although I am sure he can say it better than I can:

If we are going for space, Universal Suffrage brings extra production, but generally the limiting factor on a Space Race is research. Universal Suffrage bring no extra research. With Statue of Liberty, Representation will add a bare minimum of 18-20 cities times 3 beakers plus modifiers (so actually 5-10 bpt). And then since we are not having happiness problems (as seen by the fact that we consistently ate the Apostolic unhappiness w/o much problem), we could eat the Emancipation penalty (which might not even happen yet as no one else has Democracy I don't think), run Caste System, and run a bunch of Scientists to get even more out of Representation.

Then you would switch out of Free Market, which won't bring as much extra commerce/research as Rep/Caste, to State Property, which will offset some of the commerce loss with the distance maintenance reduction, and add production by making watermills/workshops better and adding +10% hammers to all cities.

By the same token, by getting out of FR, we could spread Judaism and get the shrine bonus in our new cities, which will further offset the trade route commerce loss. And also it will beef up our infrastructure production rate, and we plan to build observatories, factories, and laboratories anyway.

I think the rub for me is that I don't think we can get out of FR if we go to Caste. As soon as someone else adopts Emancipation, we will need to the Free Religion happiness. That said, maybe we would only need that happiness in our largest cities, and Representation adds extra happy to our 5 largest cities. But another thing to remember is that as long as we are running Emancipation and other civs aren't running it, we should be causing them severe happiness problems, which is benefiting us in ways that are obviously not easily quantifiable. I also hate to leave USuff while we have Kremlin, because we can cheaply cash rush a lot of military if we are going for Dom or infra in poor production places.

I think both Thoth's set of civics and our set of civics can work for us. I can go either way. Optimally, Thoth may be right. In a GA, we could switch to them, and have time to switch back out if it doesn't benefit us. But we shouldn't do a GA until all of our Portuguese cities come out of revolt and expand culturally so they are working max tiles.

As for the Biology line, if we were playing without the Wonder restriction, we made a huge mistake by not grabbing Biology and Medicine ages ago, because we had plenty of happiness to build further, but were being heavily limited by unhealthiness.

[Nakor]

I agree, GES, without the wonder restriction going for Biology sooner is way better.

Thanks for explaining the civics question for me. It's a bit more clear, but if Thoth is around to do some more explaining, feel free!

[Tatan]

Got it, I guess.

Substantive thoughts: POSTPONED. I'll try and post some preliminary planning stuff at least 1-2 hours before I play, which I should be able to do some time tomorrow. If I don't think I can, I'll post something about it.

[Tatan]

So: tech plan is to go up Bio line. Kremlin is to be built by T284. Real question is: are we going for domination, or space? If we are going domination, we should probably adopt State Property [for production], and keep US+Emancipation the way they already are. If we're going for Space, adopting Representation+Free Speech+Caste System seems like it is the way to go. So... which is it? I am really divided on this, because it seems like both will take a long time, and both are pretty much in the bag already. Space seems like it would take less time, so that's what I would do.

I'm assuming that if I do pull a civics swap, I can burn a Great Prophet for it?

Will try to play in a bit.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I think Space might take more turns, but the turns will take way less time to play.

If you decide to go space, do the civics swap to Rep/Caste and burn that one GProphet (not the one in Novgorod).

[Nakor]

Is Diplo no option?
For fun, domination is more interesting, but we can also go for a fast Space.
Or... we can call this one in the bag and start a new game...

[Tatan]

I considered diplo, but I don't think we could get anyone to vote for us [they have to be at friendly, right?]. I would be willing to call this one, if you guys wanted to, but I'm also perfectly happy to play on; game should only take 40 or so more turns to complete. The turns themselves would take hardly any time at all if it weren't for all the workers that need instructions.

Turn 270
I have a look around. I sign a Defensive Pact with Saladin, to discourage any rogue war declarations. I notice that our GE we have stored up in Moscow can found Mining Inc; building the Head Quarters counts as a world wonder according to the Civlopedia, and Mining Inc will be useful anyway, so I plan to build it as soon as an AI gets near Railroads [most still need Steel, but for Zara that is only 3 turns]. I change research from Industrialism to Biology. Pop a GA with a Prophet, swap to Representation/Caste System

Turn 272
Start IW in Stalingrad. Research visibility gained on Sal; we can now tell perfectly exactly how much is needed to sandbag wonders.

I set research on Medicine, thinking it was a pre-req for Refrigeration for some reason .

Turn 277
We get a Great Merchant in Moscow. I'm not sure what to do with him; we could pop another GA for building space ship parts using him and the Great Spy, or we could use him for a corporation. I moved him to St. Pete [because if we do build a corp, it should be here with Wall Street] and put him to sleep.

Turn 278
Superconductors is in, Research Institutes qeued up across the nation. I set research to Industrialism for Three Gorges Dam.

Turn 280
Santarem finishes Broadway, which I totally did not realize we were building there. We discover Industrialism, research set to Plastics. We have two two sources of Alumin[i]um.

Nothing much has happened in these turns yet, so I decide to play another 5.

Turn 282
Kremlin finishes at the end of turn!



How fitting. Next wonder by Turn 307.

Turn 284
We have more than enough wonders to last until the end of the game, so I start building Christo Redentor [St. Pete], West Point [Stalingrad], and the Eiffel Tower. Hey, may as well get 'em in before we have to start building spaceship parts! I understand if you guys want to veto this, however, so I stopped here. Sorry about the total lack of pics, but nothing really happened except for selecting builds and managing workers [New Deal Style Railroads!].

Zara is going to finish Railroads next turn, so I think we should found Mining Inc in St. Pete now. The production will really help with the Space parts, not to mention that money is always nice.

Plastics is due next turn, I suggest Stalingrad start on Three Gorges immediately [such an expensive wonder, sheesh].

Fun demographics:



Alright, Gold Ergo Sum is UP!

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Nice.

I'll play in a few hours.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Everything looks good. Never used Russia in BTS before. Those Research Labs are going to be stupid good under Representation. Good call Thoth. I had no idea they gave two free Scientists. 13gpt for Hit Musical to Ramesses. Found Mining Inc in St. Pete. Put it on a Corp. Exec. instead of Cristo.

T285: Plastics in. 3 Gorges due in 14 turns in Stalingrad. That will drop once Mining is founded there. That will be our next Wonder. We'll get Cristo and Eiffel down to one turn and then sit on them until the AI gets that tech or we need them. Onto Genetics for +3 health.

T286: We somehow ended up with a fort on a gold resource. Not sure how that happened.



Put 3 workers on it to fix it. Found Mining Inc. in Stalingrad. 3 Gorges down to 10 turns. That is nuts.

Made this trade for Mining Inc. resources (and one with Saladin later):



T288: Zara declares on Caesar again.

T289: Put us on Artillery heading for Rocketry.

T290: Turn on gold for one turn to be able to afford Execs. Caste system is killing our happiness.

T291: Founding more Mining Inc. Will spread abroad for cash I guess.

T292: Building happiness buildings everywhere.

T293: More Apostolic craziness:



T294: Start Apollo. Caesar wants us to war with Zara. Yeah right. Alright, so now we are +11 unhappy due to Emancipation and "World Considers you a Villain." Caste System has to go. Trigger a Golden Age to switch civics.

T295: This game is almost over. I figure might as well go Wonder crazy. No real need to stockpile at this point. We still have our Islam Shrine, Hollywood, Rock n' Roll, the UN, Space Elevator, and Internet if we need them. Might as well finish Eiffel, Cristo, Apollo, and 3 Gorges. We could use them all for various reasons.

T296: Satellites finishes. Eiffel finishes. 3 Gorges finishes.





T297: Rock n' Roll is THREE turns in Stalingard. Why not?

T298: Ecology in. Set us towards Fusion to get the big stuff out of the way. Four turns for Fiber Optics and four turns for Fusion.

T299: Fission in. GArtist born in Moscow.

T300: Rock n' Roll in. Apollo in. We have two more turns of GAge. We need to research Composites, Laser (avoiding Computers to avoid obsoleting some Wonders), Fiber Optics, Fusion.



The demographics are absolutely absurd right now for GNP and Manufacturing:



NEXT WONDER: Turn 325. We have Cristo and Hollywood on the way.