Lizzy's rise to greatness

[mzprox]

13 turns later our capital will be pop 14/15 (depending how we develop it).
Let's say we have a choice then:

we could either get.
A, +24 food in the capital
or
B, 26(13 base) production and about 240 research point

which one would you choose?

Note the 24 food is about one pop at this level, but the difference in a pop14 an pop15 city's output is quite marginal since there aren't really good tiles to use at that level.

If you guessed the question is about to slave or not to slave.

i know if i ask this question the answer is always no.. as if you didn't see how powerful it is. In this scenario i'm proposing a slave in an already high pop capital city, which is normally a no-go, BUT: it really depends what is that we slave and how. If we slave down the population which works not so great tiles (and i'm not taking about unimproved tiles, but normal hill mines for example) and if the slaving results in a big immediate bonus it still worth it.

In recent example I rebuild our capital in a world builder game and played many different scenario: some involved slaving of a Bank, others don't. then I took the best from each group and compared them. it worked like this: all path must finish a bank, a grocery, a buddhist temple then start working on a wonder(without spec resouce). Research slider was on 50% (in our actual game that is our current stable rate). and research went into a big tech just to count research at the end.

The result was this:
Those without slavings had 20-26 more food (in some cases that meant 1 more pop), they had about 30-40 more research point.

Those with saving had more production (becaue they finished all those buildings sooner), but most importantly they had about 140 gold extra. 140 gold can be turned into at least double amount research points.

(the unhappiness from salving is no issue in the capital. since no other salving is planned anyway it won't reach happy cap before all the unhappyness from salvings gone)

So i hope it's clear that the 'slave' approach gives much better result in the short term. in 13 turns we get lots of extra money and some production.
what about long term: the 'no slave' city's output will be bigger in production, but only for a short time. it's hard to estimate how much extra production this means, it gets lower and lower as time goes on. But: the extra research and production we got from the slaving approach will too have some hard to estimate benefits: we can send missonaries sooner, we get certain technologies sooner etc.

I hope you appreciate the work i put into this and not just dissolve the question with " no slaving, because it sucks and bad and..whatever" but try to reason about it. i'm even up to a competition where we compare the results of different approaches. So the question is: should we choose A or B.

[mzprox]

If RB attacks the Inca then we should try to grab as much of the Inca lands as possible. That seems a given.

This was my thought as well, but it kinda goes agaist the way we play at apolyton. I mean: Inca would probably lose, but what if they want to put up a heroic fight till last man standing. backstabbing them.. and entering a war like we would help the biggest civ against them.. it's not honorable to say at least. If we refuse the nap it would send them a message about what we are planning.

So my opinion now: let's accept the nap with inca. This way at least we wil lbe sure they won't attack us ( that is still a likely scenario-I mean that they work with RB) and if RB attacks them we at least won't be seem as scavangers . (but maybe we can talk to them about cancelling this nap just to "save" 1-2 of their cities from egypt).

[Dinner]

If RB attacks the Inca then we should try to grab as much of the Inca lands as possible. That seems a given.

[mzprox]

ok, to answer a few questions:

At this point the chance for getting economics looks to be 100%. we could had only lose it if someone goes into heavy bulbing, (like we lost liberalism because RB burned 3 great persons in the process), but at this point we are 4 turns from getting it, there is no other civ which could get it faster.



Yes we are number one in research, and probably it stays that way for long . No other civ has a single university, not to speak about the Oxford, our capital turned into a very nice city.



Next turn we will be the first civ getting banking and banks are very powerfull buildings.. especially in this game where i found maintenance costs being higher than usual. I have a plan building a bank or two in our key cities, but it would require sacrifices (sacrifices which totally worth it, but i will talk about this in a future post).

We also have a great spy, we should decide whether we useit against the Maya (easier/cheaper to steal techs and they really have some nice techs but we might not want to annoy them) or RB/egypt (they are the bi bad guys right now, but not as a lucritive target as maya)


Diplomatic situation:

we have secured nap with everyone except HRE (u-civ, west neighbour) who just doesn't respond, but very unlikely they would plan anything against us.

Our NAP with RB last till t170, this is the timeframe we need our army ready. The good thing is that the free great merchant will help us greatly. Nationalism/drafting should be viewed as a great boost to our economy. Yes we will lose some population, but it will be optimized and we will grow back fast. look at it his way: we don't work on mines, but on cottages/coasts instead: it gives us more commerce and allows our cities to grow faster and then we turn some of the food to production. In case of drafting the rate is about 5 production for 1 food. (so working on a 4 prod plains hill mine to build a soldier is much worse than working on a 2F 4 commerce coastal tile and then draft..) this is a simplification of course and happyness could be a problem, but I'm preparing for it as much as i can. i hope that the final number of janssaries will be between 15-20. Then the cities will build as many catapults as we can.

I can't say yet what we will use this army for.. mostly as a deterrent. We don't want to be look like an easy target after that point. At the present we are gambling a bit by not having big army, if someone would break the nap and launch a surprise attack it would hurt us badly. Hopefully though no one would dare to do such a thing as this war would cost them a lot too. We can get gunpowder in 2 turns at any time and slave the most powerfull unit in the era. so any attack against us would be halted fast.

Rb has a big army right now. We (us, india and aztecs) try to figure out what their plan could be. all 3 of us has nap with rb till about t170.

India thinks Rb will attack inca, if that happens then it is possible that Rb will conquer whole inca land before t170. In that case we most likely need to attack RB along with our friends. we can't allow them to grow almost double in size.

with inca (german site, east neighbour) we have nap till t150. I wanted to extend it, but we had no answer for long time. now it seems we coul make a 3 side NAP (us, aztec and inca). But to decide what to do would be nice to know what are RB's plan.. if they will kill inca then we should consider taking their border city south of us for ourselves. We can't help them against RB because of our NAP (and because we have no army anyway..), but that city would be a much better border city s it's in a more defensable position.

The Maya (civfr, SW neighbour). We have nap till t180, we don't like each other too much, right now our cities are in cultural war. A big war between us in the future is likely.. They are too far to participate any war against RB... so if they want some action then we or aztec could be their prime target.


---

About workers: I said we will build more, but we also agreed to let our cites grow first an that we build settlers to fill the missing spots.. all these can not be done at the same time, so please be patient.. turns are not going very fast (one in every two days if there is no delay/reload etc).

[Dinner]

I thought we were going to build workers...

I thought this was agreed upon as well.

BTW our capital could easily build a new worker in just two turns if we delay the buddhist temple. I really think workers should be the priority there as we have previously agreed on that point.

[OzzyKP]

Sorry I have been so absent lately, lots and lots of stuff happening in my life in recent months. I just read through the last 3-4 pages of this thread and I'm in agreement with the decisions mz has been making. I agree however that more population and city development is important, but it looks like with the universities & oxford built there is no pressing building need that needs slavery right now, so everyone seems to be in agreement (mz included) that we can let the cities grow more right now.

Mz, you are still confident that we'll get the great merchant from economics? If we have a very good shot at getting it, then absolutely we need to pursue it. If it is a long shot, then maybe not. Can you show your data on why you reckon we are first in line for it?

Also, something needs to be said about building those 8 universities and oxford. Holy crap, what a great achievement to get all that done in such a short amount of time! Definite congratulations are in order for that maneuver! Our research is fantastic! Am I right, from a previous demographics screen, that we now have the top GNP in the game even at a time when others are in a golden age? Great work.

Can I get a better picture of the diplomatic situation? From looking over the last few pages this is what I gather:

- RB/Egypt is the big bad in the game and in danger of running away with it. They are working with the Inca (is that Spanish Apolyton?)
- Our neighbors are Maya (which site is Maya?) & Inca.
- Our best friends in the game are the Aztecs (which site?) and CFC/India. We seem to be neutral at worst with WPC.
- RB/Egypt is building up an army, but we are unsure of the target. I saw some suggest the Aztecs and other suggest Inca. But isn't Inca their partner?

Questions:

- Who borders RB/Egypt? Who could we get into an anti-RB alliance?
- Has any direct or indirect talk been had about thwarting RB?
- Aztec are one of our friends, right? If RB attacks them, is there anything we or anyone else can do? Are they on their own? Do they have other allies?
- Can someone produce a full list of all our treaty obligations and non-aggression pacts? I saw a few lists here or there about pacts to various turns, but what turn is it now?

[OzzyKP]

Serfdom is not bad, but there is an even better thing to do while we are in golden age: we switch to caste system and get use the +100% great person point generation during golden age. With pacifism ( an other +100%) and with our philo trait a single specialist will generate 12 gpp (normal is 3). We will have 2-3 cities (Edrine, Apolyton, ?) which will become a great person factory for this time (up to 6 specialists will generate up to 72 gpp).
These specialists will be merchants (and one spy). One great merchant could give us 1500+ gold which can support our research at 100% for about 8 turns. A Gmerchant worth is about the same as two great scientist's (thx to the Oxford). If we get lucky we get an other gspy which is even better. If we are unlucky we will get gscientist, that will be saved for the next golden age.

That sounds good to me.

[mzprox]

By capital I mean Aurora, it must grow, but having a bank asap is even more important. So no worker there. Aurora has 100+ commerce. at 50% sci/gold slider a bank gives 25 gold/turn. The former capital will finish a settler soon, and later it will produce workers.

[Calanthian]

I thought we were going to build workers...

[Dinner]

Wouldn't it be better to finish spreading our own religion first?

[mzprox]

I'd like to spread buddhism in our major cities so they can build buddhist monastery (+10% science, +2 hammer) and later a buddhist temple (+1 happy, +2 hammer).
but that missionary probably won't be finished for a while anyway as the Capital will build a grocery and bank as soon as they are available.

[Dinner]

Why are we building a Buddhist missionary in our capital? I assume that won't be the final thing we build because if we have time we could be building a maceman there in 4 turns or a long bowman in 3 turns which is how long it would take to build the Buddhist missionary. Oh, well, at least the capital grows next turn.

If we're going to build a missionary (I assume it is for the espionage thing you were talking about) why not spread our religion instead of buddhism? Wouldn't that work just as well?

[mzprox]

Serfdom is not bad, but there is an even better thing to do while we are in golden age: we switch to caste system and get use the +100% great person point generation during golden age. With pacifism ( an other +100%) and with our philo trait a single specialist will generate 12 gpp (normal is 3). We will have 2-3 cities (Edrine, Apolyton, ?) which will become a great person factory for this time (up to 6 specialists will generate up to 72 gpp).
These specialists will be merchants (and one spy). One great merchant could give us 1500+ gold which can support our research at 100% for about 8 turns. A Gmerchant worth is about the same as two great scientist's (thx to the Oxford). If we get lucky we get an other gspy which is even better. If we are unlucky we will get gscientist, that will be saved for the next golden age.

[Dinner]

We may want to go to serfdom too for the duration of the golden age but make sure to switch back to slavery before the golden age is done. Even for only a few turns it would be nice to improve tiles at +50% speed and we really do need the tile improvements.

[mzprox]

The main goal is to get the necessary technologies for drafting janissaries while we get the free merchant from economics because we will need a golden age to not lose turns from anarchy. At this moment i don't think anyone else could take economics first, so thats good, however he maintenance cost of our civ rises rapidly and that delays our schedule. And I'm planning to build 3-4 new cities quite soon, so that will increase maintenance even more. Courthouses are very expensive buildings, if we don't count those civs who are organized we have the most of them and will keep building them.

I originally wanted to go for pacifism for the duration of the golden age only, but maybe we should consider staying there. Pacifism could get quite expensive when we have a big army, but it has no upkeep, org religion costs 20+ gold already. and more great person point is nice. would be even better if we could get into representation art the end of the first golden age, but that would make further delay so it should be decided later.
For the next 5-6 turns we are on the way for economics.

and sure we can accept Nap with WPC