Lizzy's rise to greatness

[Ben Kenobi]

Good! Glad to see that negotiations were successful! Well done mzProx!

[mzprox]

Istanbul was the city where we had to do unfortunate sacrifices. We got the third GP there and now we will get the 4th. and to get it asap I slaved a forge and temple just recently, because at some point we should have 5 specialists running. As I have said before in 3 turns we will know the realites of getting liberalism (which looks like a very very small chance now, but I think we should keep the option open).

I can support putting the hammers onto those wonders, though probably no one has started building those yet. Building worker is good.. i wanted more workers, but there was always something which looked to be a better option .

yesterday India has asked us to give them a loan of 100 gold in 1-2 turns and we would get it back after they had researched Nationalism. They had offered they would pay some interest if we wanted but I was mentioning them a different idea:
For the loan we would receive one of their silk resource. they will get one of our incense, but only after we connected it and we make no promise when we will do that. This was just my idea, we can try to ask them money etc.
Also it's up to the team whether we give the loan at all.

i believe we must: We can not risk RB getting an other golden age8cfc ned it to get nationalism/Taj), this money (if they pay back in time) would not slow us down, and I can trust the player behind cfc to know they will keep their word no matter what.

[Calanthian]

PS Do we still need to build spy points against civfr?

[Calanthian]

I made my first small adjustments:



I changed 3 hammer to wealth production to 12 hammer in wonder (which we are not going to finish, and will get a lot more hammers to wealth for on account of +150% wonder production).

I see what you are doing with the GP. But still this city is massively underdeveloped. Enormous potential, with lot's of unimproved tiles. The upcoming 9 turns will not change so much (for GP) but afterward it will be developed a lot further.
In general I have a feeling that you have a lot of clever tactical tricks (and I know the master when I see him), but strategically / macro some of those tricks are hurting us in the long run. Some more workers 80 turns ago, would have ensured this city to be maxed out. Now this city has 6 pop, while it can easily support 12.




Same hammer to wealth via wonder trick here (from +12 to +21). After Apolyton has grown next turn, it should switch to worker production..

The same general observation. This is our capital and we are in turn 127 and we still aren't using all those tiles and even haven't developed 7+ tiles.

12 cities, 7 workers: this IS the problem.


PS. If I should miss something why you need instant gps (in stead of quite a lot more gold in a couple of turns) then change it back..

[mzprox]

I'll try to elaborate the medium/long term plans I had in mind and also the current situation, why is it so important to keep an eye on RB:

Once we had a good shot to get Liberalism first and take Nationalism and Taj(golden age) first. However RB grew too strong and now it seems they can not be stopped to have the first pick. Our goal now working with other nations is to at least have the rest of the good stuffs. We know almost everything about RB's potential, He is kept in the dark and tries to keep their options open as long as possible. (they have 3 technologies almost finished, it seems they start to finish them now at 100% science (they had 1000 gold in reserve). once they have finished those techs they will have about 1500 rp overflow. They did the same with buildings in their cap. preparing to mass slave the TAj Mahal.) Actually we are the reason they are doing this. They don't know what we are researching and they want everything if possible. However they probably underestimate cfc (they have a GS to bulb philo and they can start researching Nationalism now. they also have marble unlike RB) So, if RB goes into the edu-lib route they will probably lose the Taj.
If RB chooses nationalism first then we will have to do our best to get liberalism before they do. This plan really depends on whether we get a GS in 8 turns in Ankara. RB also have a Gs they will probably use for bulbing btw. That's why we will do lots of calculations with cfc and aztec to see if we can stop them at all having everything.


One thing for sure: if we see we have no chance for liberalism our next goal should be to get economics after education.
This of course requires several prerequisite technologies. The one directly after Edu is machinery and that will open up macemen. then Feudalism/guilds/banking/economics
I think the best tactic is to use the free great merchant to enter a golden age, revolt freely to free market and get constitution while the GA last so we can revolt to representation as well without anarchy. Rb will probably want this tech too, so we need to keep our research up and be sure we won't lose this race no matter what.
I think cheap universities and the fast completition of Oxford will help a lot in this.

[mzprox]

I have short term plans for most of the cities.. I will tell some of those and then we can discuss which to keep and which to modify.
We have a settlers ready, I have rush-slaved it to try to settle the land before Maya takes it all. I still think we should settle east of izmir, not sure where exatly.. maybe 1NE of that cow. (according to the agreement we have accepted we can not settle directly next to the river.)
We need to increase our culture in the area. My plan was to slave 2 missionaries in Konya and send them to izmir and into the new city. (we can get the two missionaries with one slaving event if we sacrifice two population and get big overflow from he first one)

[mzprox]

Perhaps we have to find a mode in which we play the upcoming turns with the both of us, so that we make a smooth transition.

I agree.

About high pop we can try that route for now so letting the cities grow more and less slaving. Yet we should not give up slaving entirely as sometimes the benefit is high.
In one particular case as we are getting closer to education we need to select 8 of our cities and plan how to finish the universites asap. Even if it would hurt some of these cites the benefit of Oxford is much higher..

Hercules, i have reuploaded the picture. It's coming from the aztec and i forward it to CFC.

[Hercules]

I couldn't see the image.

Btw How can you be so certain about RB build queue and such. Is CFC using espionage?

[Calanthian]

Perhaps we have to find a mode in which we play the upcoming turns with the both of us, so that we make a smooth transition.

We clearly have a different playing style. Thanks for the elaboration though.
I tend to run a high pop, multi-city economy with loads of settlers and workers (built only by cities at POP cap).

[mzprox]

One more thing: in Ankara we are expecting a great person. Even though in the end it will be about only 60% chance that it's a great scientist this was a big part of the plan for getting liberalism. Right now it seems we can't get liberalism even if we bulb half of Education, but still I'd like if we kept this option open as long as possible, even if it means sacrifices there (halting grwo and later even losing food to get the GP asap)
A great scientist gives 1500 +3 * population beakers when we use it to bulb so the plan was this:
we research as far into Education as a single great scientist can bulb it. After that we are collecting the money. When we get the GS we use it to bulb and use the money to get liberalism at 100% science. In a few turns we will know the realities of this plan. if we can't win liberalism we should discuss what to do with the great person and we can even slow its production.

[mzprox]

I've just received a picture of RB's capital. They are in golden age now and preparing to build the Taj Mahal (puttings things into their queue almost finished so they can gather a big overflow when needed.

They still have much less buildings than us though. (we have temple, monastery, forge, library, academy, hammam, marketplace, granary, courthouse in our capital plus a wonder)

[mzprox]

It's just a different strategy: first build many buildings while i keep the cities small, so they grow much faster. Then I let them grow and get the benefits of those buildings.
An example: i planned to start collecting money. in Aurora we were getting about 50/turn after slaving a marketplace for 4 population (and get a very big overflow into the palace) the money dropped to about 40 and in 4-5 turns we were back to 50+ and now it could increase thanks to the marketplace bonus. After we moved the palace that will be even more money and by slaving the mp we get the palace sooner too. In some cases the return not so fast and big as in the previous example, but slavery is a very powerful tool.

Half of our cities are coastal and the rest of our cities (with the exceptioon of one) will be coastal. However coast is not that great in this game, very few sea food resource. We have lakes too btw. We get about 10 extra commerce from the colossus now, but it will increase.
The building of new cities were halted after a big expansion around t100. we got new pop1 cities costing 9+ gpt in maintenance. I agree it's time to expand further. I think we can say that our borders are set by now. we can discuss how to backfill our land.

in any case I will leave most of the microing/economy stuff up to you. I think you will be supported in building more workers (though i'd prefer to have them via slaving ).

[Calanthian]

I have taken a long look around:

* we have the colossus and virtually no coastal cities
* our cities are too small: we are far from the POP cap
* we have too little workers
* we need more cities, more courthouses
* so: I think the economy is under developed. I think you have been slaving too hard.

[Robert]

I've read the latest 6 pages, nice diplomatic war with the Mayans, great victory.

I'm sorry for losing touch with this game over the past months.
I'm also sorry, mzprox, for ignoring your PM about the diplo mail. I still have it in my 'to answer' list, but I never answered. That sucks.

I see that you now have different means of diplomacy, not using the mail address anymore.

I'll try to keep up with the game more again.

[Hercules]

I agree with this broad strategy. Glad we got Sankore. I'll look in to evaluate tech options, though in favour of playing to our traits.

I found HRE a friendly civ and we should make of our good relationship.