Lizzy's rise to greatness

[Hercules]

How likely is it we can make peace?

it's possible but better if we capture those two Maya cities I think. We need to curtail Maya ability.

[mzprox]

I don't think maya would accept peace. They can't win for sure but they can have their revenge on us so we need to finish them off somehow.
Btw the game is very slow now. cfc is keeping the game paused for almost a week now (still the same turn when aztec declared war on them) and there are 3 phases now (the third phase is the maya's who spend 5 mins in game each turn yet they usually use up their 36h timer...

[Dinner]

MZ, but you just said it really wouldn't be possible to finish the Aztecs without unacceptably high loses. Herc, how likely is it we can take those two cities? Also, how many loses have we had so far? Would rushing to aircraft (and the time to build them and deploy them) really do use more good on the ground than just upgrading some units to infantry?

[mzprox]

We can't kill maya alone in the current state, we will probably need bombers and tanks for that, but we can still try to take some more cities.They haven't used too much strategy in the war so far, if they start to play right then we can't advance further, we could even lose and have to retake some cities from them. The upgrade from rifle to infantry is quite good in value, but not against cavalries because rifles have 25% vs mounted. I think saving the money to get flight assap would help us more. It's about ten turns to getflight, but we can start prebuild fighters as airships sooner. in 5-6 turn more we can get to bombers.
So far we had lost about 8 units and killed about 15.

[mzprox]

New turn

On the mayan front nothing really happened. i1ve sent the main army against the next target city which I think we should raze as it is not a very valuable city.
Aztec has razed a smaller indian city last turn,
I can't contact with 2metra recently so we can'§t talk about our common war against maya. Because of their war with aztec they don't send us the promised army so we face the main mayan army alone..
Right now we are behind about 200 points on the score charts. We have the most cities and we will build 3 more in 4-5 turns. Really: if there is 2-3 empty tile for a city I think it is a good investment. I think we shall stay in state property. corps are nice, but too expensive. So in state property a new city cost much less, we get a free specialist there thanks to the statue of Liberty. and eventually these new cities can be used to slave cheaper military units for us.
As i've said we have the most cities yet we are behind in points because our cities are small. Cfc has more than double of our production thanks to their big cities working on workshops and also their civics choice is better for production. Our civics are better for science, but science these days isn't worthy. Both cfc and cp are stealing most of their techs. I think we should leave representation as soon as possible and switch to universal suffrage. Also we will not need nationhood anymore though that's a nice civic, drafting is no longer worth it. To get these changes I increased our gp point production so we can enter into our third golden age. We can get the 3 great person needed in 9-10 turns, but unfortunatelly it is luck based. we will have about 35% chance that the 3 great persons we get will not be different kind.
The golden age is also needed to give us chance getting the Pentagon. I think cfc will too get into golden age in 3 turns and will steal assembly line about that time. If we can get into golden age in 9-10 turns then as last resort we can even buy the pentagon.. we can't let cfc or anyone else have it.
One more thing about small cities: I use it as a strategy. Big cities have the advantage as they require reatively less buildings and have truly big production and income. Also they are relatively cheaper to maintain. Small cities however grow much faster, can selectively use their best land, much less sensitive about health and happyness. We already have 14 factories and soon we will have 30+ with coal plants. I think for military unit production they can out perform or at least match cfc's big cities. Btw in the capital and apolyton we don't build factories because those cities are too big and can't have them without health issues.

[Hercules]

ok I had a look in. Some screens offered me a choice and I chose for example Edirne coal plant. of course my choices can be changed. Looks as if a major battle with Maya looming. But with our upgrades to assemblymen v cavalry it looks slightly more promising. Resistance after that is easier to beat I think.

[mzprox]

maya has skipped last turn so reload is in order. The game is extremely slow . both cp and cfc (but especially the latter) keeps the game paused sometimes for days. then we wait for maya who doesn't bother to log in in their 40h time window.. so now we need to reload and wait more.. I'm afraid the game could die if this pace continues.

[Hercules]

Well what's new since the reload.?

[mzprox]

since my last report there was one turn, I moved the army one turn closer to the next target city. I really worry about not getting the pentagon. cfc has city with 72 base production and they will enter golden age next turn. Our only chance is if we get into golden age ourself and rush-buy it. As I said before we need luck toget the right great persons, but it can work.
One thing: the cfc representative said that theythought we are gona help them against aztec. this comes from very old conversations when a mayan-aztec alliance looked like a serious threat, but lot has changed since then: maya lost interest in playing, uciv became a big factor and got very close to cfc etc. Right now for us helping cfc who are 300 point ahead of us is not a good strategy (actually i don't think they are really ahead of us, but still). Since there was no explicit treaty between us about an alliance (I was carefull not to make one) I don't want to act along an old sentiment that the two of us would fight on one side. Because of this cfc has expressed their dissapointment. Well that's their problem, I trully did not expect that aztec would start a war on cfc, and even more surprising that aztec has taken 3 cities from cfc already..
Anyway: since it is true that I asked cfc to join the war against maya and then it looked likely that the two of us would fight against maya&aztec I will accept that cfc will send much less troops against maya and still receive a fair share as we agreed. ( they are still expected to compensate us in gold if we will have bigger losses).
a reminder : we havenap with both aztec and cfc till t240, 21 more turns.

[Dinner]

We knew that slaving so much would result in very low production values (outside of slaving) and this does have downsides.

[Hercules]

Well if we have a NAP with both cfc and Aztecs then we need to weaken Maya and reduce Maya. I think also cfc need to send assistance to us as per their agreement. Of course we will compensate in due course.

So uciv have allied with Aztecs is that what you are saying or is uciv now a free agent?

[OzzyKP]

I think uciv is working with CFC. Which is why I think we need to ally with Aztec. But if course we can't slyly with either if them for 21 turns. Mz, did you agree to the tech stealing swap with them?

[mzprox]

Yes, I think uciv is close to cfc, but they are not helping cfc against the aztec, though i expected that..
About slaving: plan is to slave a factory and coal plant in most of the cities then let them grow back and reduce slaving while we are in golden age (but get the benefits of fctories during increased production) we will likely leave org religion in the favor of theocracy after the golden age.
Yes we have agreed with aztec about allowing to steal 2-2 technologies. after that I don't want any more of these.

[Hercules]

I notice CFC have entered the fray against Maya. That is a very large army the Maya have in Sancerre. Yes we do need flight. Good that we have captured a couple more Maya cities but it is getting more difficult.

We are researching combustion (5 turns) but are we 'stealing' Physics under an agreement.

[mzprox]

Even though our gnp and research capabilities are still the best aztec now has a tech lead. They have electricity, physics, rocetry and some not so important techs which we miss. Maya and uciv followed our path and allowed aztec and cfc to steal everything for cheap. (like a 9000 rp worth tech for only 2k spy points.) We too stole several techs, but the conditions were never that great what aztec got with maya or cfc with uciv.
as a matter of fact we are lucky to made this agreement at least with aztec, because uciv just got assembly line and are going for combustion. If aztec knew this they would had never agree to let us spy from them for assembly line and combustion-they could had taken those from uciv.
There are some key techs I still would like to have: radio, industrialism, flight (to get tanks, bombers, and eiffel tower), but after that we might just stop researching and focus on spying. Right now we have about 15k unspent spy points already. We will use that to steal electricity and physics, but I also want to increase our total accumulated spy points to matvh aztec's (who are still about 10k points ahead of us).
Last turn we have lost two spies in mayan territory. I worry about losing spies in aztec land. Right now we have four, but it's still 3 more turns when we can try the stealings.