Lizzy's rise to greatness

[Dinner]

Militarially WPC might not be a challenge but I'm worried about a two front war and how it might make us a target for everyone else. As others have said we're in the #1 spot and everyone will be gunning for us so if it looks like we're over stretched or greedy then that just gives them an excuse to gang up on us. Then we'd become the next RB.

[Hercules]

I would advise a tad caution. This is still what, T185. I agree with the broad strategy though. focus on Maya first as WPC are easier

[mzprox]

right now cfc is no 1 on the score chart because they got several wonders. once aztec steals all those techs they will probably get second place, so no worry about being at the top.
I think the way to go is to keep building up a huge modern army and use it to knock out our rivals with the help of cfc. then use our economic advantage to beat cfc.
I think we could start the war against wpc wih 15-20 rifles. our east will be secured by naps. then the resto of our army,about 60-70 rifles (possibly upgraded to infantries) will start the war against maya.
Knocking out maya btw will also help stopping aztec to win religious victory at any time. I advised cfc to leave one egyptian ice island city alive for a while because that prevents religious victory too (each civ should have at least one buddhist city).
I think once we secured some land for ourselves from wpc and maya we will not need to go in other offensive wars. after that we probably need only to defend ourselves.

[mzprox]

We need the Kreml and the free great spy. for a while i did not think we could lose it, but now there is a good chance that we will. To maximize our chances i negotiated a loan with cfc. Details haven't been set yet, but they only give us money if we trade away the free great spy. They offer quite good money for it: about 3k gold. (if aztec gets the gspy then obviously no trade, we just have to pay back the loan).
i really think that aztec got chemistry and loan from cfc, maya got liberalism to go for communism and get the spy for themselves. I think aztec will get communism in 4 or 5 turn (5 if we are lucky). we can get it in 4 if we get about 1500 gold from cfc. If we get the gspy we get 3k gold from cfc. if we don't get it then it will be aztec's and they can steal very cheaply from maya.
So considering all these I think we should go on the safest path and accepting that we give away the gspy a bit cheaper than it's worth rather than risking not getting anything, but letting aztec have the gspy. (without the loan we could get the gspy 2-3 turns later).

is everyone ok with requesting loan from cfc?

[Dinner]

I don't see the point of taking out a loan when we probably wouldn't get it anyway and would have to trade away the great spy.

[mzprox]

If we take the loan we have about 75% chance to get the gspy which we sell for 3k gold.
If we don't take the loan we won't get the gspy, we can't sell it for 3k gold, aztec will have an extra spy etc.. much worse for us.
The only thing is that ican not be 100% sure aztec is going for the gspy, but their techpath suggests this.

[Hercules]

What are the consequences of cfc or Aztec having the gspy. tech steal? from us?

[mzprox]

not from us as we have treaties with both of them, but they can steal from maya. Aztec can get more from a great spy than cfc. More importantly if aztec gets the gspy we get nothing while if it goes to cfc they give us 3k gold.
Making some estimations now i think that we can get the gspy one turn earlier than aztec if we are fully funded. Getting the Kremlin is much harder. Aztec has a city where they can chop seven forests, we can't really compete with that. Recently i have spent much time to test out different ways to get the Kremlin as soon as possible. I found a way to get it in 5 turns, but the price of doing this is very high and success still not guranteed. (the price getting it so fast is this: we slave away half of Apolyton, we rebuild our farms into workshops around it and we even cut the forest under the deer). I hope we won't need to do all these as i hope Aztec will choose a different path, but if the quiestion is: do all these sacrifices worth it? then absolutely yes. The Kremlin is an extremely powerful wonder. Not only we should have it, but we shouldn't let it fall to aztec's hand. If they are making the same level of efforts as we do then they can build it just in 3 turns.. so they will have it 100%. if they are a bit slower they will build it in 4 turns then it would be 50-50% which one of us gets it.

[Dinner]

How about we let them have it then just take it away from them?

[mzprox]

The city in question is quite far away from us. We would need to kill aztec which is currently not possible. First we have a Nap, second we are not strong enough to defeat them if Maya helps them or even if we could it would be way too expensive. If cfc helped us then probably they would capture the city as it's closer to them.

[OzzyKP]

Did we go through with the first deal to sell the first spy to Aztec?

[mzprox]

yes.

[mzprox]

Please note, that despite the war the turns are going quite fast. In some cases we don't have too much time to discuss and vote. If you have question, opinion try to post it early and check the forum regularly. After 24-36 hours if if we have only support I usually go with the proposed way, like when we traded the great spy. We also took the loan because no one said we shouldn't and if we don't take it we couldn't keep up reseach. We get 1300 gold from cfc and once we got the gspy we will gift it to them and they pay 1700 more. (Now I'm almost certain the gspy will be ours, unfortunately I'm not so sure about the Kremlin.)
We also got money from HRE. I asked gold from them too, but they only answered after we made deal with cfc. I still thought taking 500g now and paying 550 back at t200 is a good deal. Makes our full research even safer and we can get biology and other techs faster this way.

[OzzyKP]

That works for me. I say go for Kremlin too. But perhaps don't slave down the city until you see whether Aztecs have the tech or not. Maybe they decide to go a different route, who knows.

I'll put up some screen shots tonight.

[mzprox]

Yes of course, i will wait with the slave until the last moment. We will have a spy there scouting what they are doing.