Lizzy's rise to greatness

[mzprox]

Where are the HRE in all this?

Are they with RB or India or alone?.

Good question, they were not often mentioned in our chats. I will try to contact them and secure our peace at least. The have a very big land for themselves, many cities and they are spamslaving courthouses (the are Org, so it's cheap to them)

[Robert]

I see that mzprox comes with long-term strategy planning and ideas that are not ideas by themselves, but fit in a bigger picture.
I see that others oppose some of his ideas, which is good I think, because opposition strengthens everything.
But what I miss in these opposing ideas is how it fits in a bigger picture.

Sometimes a single decision may, if you discuss it isolated, seem to be better in one way, while it's better in another way if you're after a bigger strategy.

So far mzprox is the only one delivering a long-term strategy, so I will continue to support him.
And I'm urging others to come with alternatives and improvements on the long-term ideas. I cannot support single ideas that may just be good for one or ten turns.

I'm not involved enoughin this game to contribute myself, but I can read up on ideas and weight arguments against eachother.
I know from mzprox that he's one of the best players I know. He has defeated me several times. (and yes, one time b/c luck was on his hands )

So please understand that I'd rather side with someone who has a track record of being good at civ4, and who delivers a big picture and solid arguments.

[mzprox]

Thx Robert. I wouldn't call divine intervention luck though

SS from current turn:



Our palace has been moved, we have archery now and we produce a few archers to defend our eastern border better. The inca has agreed to extend our nap (not spcified point yet). There are Egyptian soldiers near our border.. a bit disturbing, but RB won't break a NAP just to start a questionable war. i'm more concerned if they find that barb city and destroy it before we could take it. If they go closer i'll warn them that we won't take that action lightly. That city belongs to us, we just wait to let it grop pop2 first.
From this turn we buy our stone from the Inca instead of HRE. By next turn we will have our 10th worker ready. I have done calculatiosabout where and how to build the universities fast. Our capital already can make 180+ research /turn by itself. In ten turns it shall be 300+.

[Dinner]

Things are slowly improving. 10 workers is a big improvement as is having a few archers. Sure, they're outdated now as others have long bows and macemen but they're a big step up for us WRT defense.

[mzprox]

Just a picture of our new capital
(no one has LB-s or maceman yet, but they are coming soon, for us as well.)

[mzprox]

few things about what's going on:

we signed nap with Maya till t180
no answer from inca and HRe yet
Maya and Inca hs entered into goldenage (Maya has the Mausoleum and more great persons so their goldenage could last 24 turns even.)

It seems the Taj will be India's after all, which is a great victory over RB, a golden age is just too valuable to them. With that they could had taken the Great Merchant from economics, train more great person, go into more golden ages, switch to nationhood, draft armies etc.
They still have the best chance getting the GM: they hve the best GNP, they will get big money for the failed Taj and a bit ahead in tech (actually more ahead, but not in the requirements).
India also wants the GM, they are also bigger than us, can boost their research with scientist specialist thanks to their representation civic (pyramids) and are about to enter golden age. They can also expect some money if they are in need.
We will also try our luck getting it first.. I have made long calculations to get the max research potential out of our civ. we are much smaller than the others and we will be even smaller when we build the universities-but those, along with the Oxford will be our advantage. right now our max research output is about 470, from next turn we shut down our research and collecting money, and when we resume researching i predict our science rate being above 600. and if it needed we ill have a "secret weapon", a great person being born in 8 turns...depending what we get it can boost our progress. While the universities are being built we will collect 1000+ gold, still not enough to support us all along, but we might get loans if needed.
As I've said I did my best to get the GM as fast as possible, yet I can't say at this point how much chance we have.. maybe 0. We are making some sacrifices to be on this route.. if there wasn't a race i would had optimized the building of univs differently, but to at least keep the chance open we will build the 8 Universities and the Oxford just in 5 turns (that means that in he cap in 5 turns we will build a uni, the oxford and we will also finish the temple we started, that's 600+ hammer).

[Hercules]

Well that's good new about Taj for CFC and us and good news about the NAP with Maya. And I hope our NAP with Inca holds.

I hope your calculations are right. 8 Unis and Oxford is a tall order.

What do you think the Maya will try to achieve during their golden age and for that matter the Inca.

[mzprox]

Pictures about our empire. The second pic is about Egypt's invasion army. We need to watch carefully what they intend with it.

An other problem with Egypt we have is that their warchariot is approaching the barb city in the north. it's only defended by 2 warriors, their chariot can take it easily, but since it wasn't pop 2 yet it would be destroyed (still free xp an gold for them).
I hoped they would turn towards our city and didn't spot it, but now we need to act diplomatically. I might threaten them with closing our borders and such. Also I will try to tell them a tale that those people belong to our nation, so attacking them is violation of our NAP (while it isn't and we wouldn't actually declare war).
I have learnt from the Aztec that our Iron resource is right below Edrine, so at least we have an iron resource which can not be sabotaged . But right now it would give us only one extra hammer, so this tech is not priority.
Our next tech is Feudalism, but we take a 5 turn break from researching, then we will have it in 2 turns. Then machinery 1-2 more turn and we will have everything for maceman/longbowman/crossbowman

[Dinner]

I would really like to see us settle out all of our lands as we need the population and the income. Yes, it will take a while for those cities to become income self sufficient but the sooner we start the sooner that happens.

[mzprox]

We will have a new city soon where the warchariot stands now and we will keep building them. I think after we got economics (and the free market civic) it will be much easier on our economic to expand. Then we shall fill all those spots left, and after hat we might consider building a few ice-island city. ( a cit which has nothing but a sea resource and coast is still viable. Also building a city on the silver resource would result +2 happyness in all our cities.
About goldenages: Maya had free revolts, converted o buddhish, Bureaucracy etc, and getting an economic boost. Inca is collecting money.. they might want to use that fo upgrades with the help of RB.
I did not wrote before: CFC in fact got the Taj in this turn, so their golden age has started. They had cut down 4 forest and slaved their city from pop11 to pop4 to get it sooner.

I wrote his letter to RB:

We would like to discuss a few things.
First, our NAP is closing to it's end. Since we see many of your units visiting our land novadays We would like to discuss the first extension of this treaty from t150 to t170.

Second, Your warchariot has surely noticed that there is a rebel village in the northern tundra. Our forces are in position to take it by force if necessary, but we still hope peacefull negotiations will result in this splinter colony joining back to our empire(( or we just wait until it grows to pop2.. )). We would like to ask you to not interfere there in any way. In fact we would like you to avoid moving toward that city any closer. We would like to get your word for it that you will not attack there. Otherwise we will be foced to take it ourselves, acting sooner as we intended and it will have bad impacts on our diplomatic relations. We hope it will not come to that.

----

Depending on the answer I might be more specific, but I think if they don't accept our proposal we could close our borders with them (which would cause more loss to us than to them, but since they don't consider us their main rival and also it would trap their chariot, I think it would hold them back.

[Calanthian]

Guys, I am back around from a holiday which I hadn't the chance to let you know of, considering the Apolyton down time.

Gonna log in later tonight, and see if I can challenge some things
But as before, I remain confident as Mz is in control ..

[Hercules]

I had a look. I have never seen so many Universties's slaved and also monastries for the gold and research.Wow

[mzprox]

WB Cal, you dissappeared quite suddenly .

As a bit of heads up: the 8 universities needed for Oxford will be ready by next turn. Then I made a strict plan how to finish the Oxford in 3 turns in the capital. I would had liked it to be done in 4 turns, but if we are to have chance getting the great merchant we need to resume researching asap, and then it's better to have the Oxford already.
I'd really like to get that free merchant.. if for no other reason then to not let the other teams have it. So I maximized everything for this goal.
In 3-4 turns I will be making extremely precise calculations: that is I will calculate our exact research potential for the turn we would get Economics (about ten turns ahead). That means that I will calculate the beaker output from each city individually, taking into account when they would grow, which tiles they would use etc..and then ad them together. it will take hours (I played with the capital several hours too to optimize it). When I have the result I will try to get similar estimation about RB and cfc's research potential and see how much chance we have. If it's necessary and would change things we should enter into golden age for the last 7 turns (it should be done that way so that we could revolt to free market freely(without anarchy) in the last turn of the golden age).
To get this great person for the golden age in time I have a plan set in Istanbul, that means even starvation for a few turns.. for the greater good.

Good news is that after the universities the short term plan for every city is to grow and in the meanwhile build up forces so at least there won't be disagreement in that . At least part of the overflow from universities will be put into archers and workers.

The diplo situation is getting complicated. it seems RB is building up for war. They had revolted to nationhood, they have the globe theatre already.. so now it become very important to find our allies and even our possible targets.
These are the kind of decisions I definately don't want to do alone.

See my last letter to RB a few post above. They have just answered, promising that they will not attack the barb village and that they want longer nap, till t185.
we know that Rb has nap with cfc till t175, with aztec t170, it is unlikely they would attack the inca as they are pretty much friends.
So it is very likely that their target is the Aztec after all.
The aztec also wants us to join a war against the inca (they have a border dispute which might turn into war), but we have nap with inca till t150 which they would extend. (originally I wanted a 3 sided nap between us, inca and aztec which they refused, but inca would still sign a nap with us)
As I wrote before our best friends in this world are India and the Aztec. I kinda proposed to them that we would coordinate our nap agreements in the future so none of us would get isolated by shorter NAPs.

So the things to decide:
-SHould we accept the nap with RB till t185? or stick it to t170 with the intend to help the Aztec if they get attacked. (since it was my proposal that we coordinate our NAPs, it would be against my word if we accepted the t185 so I'm strongly against it)
-Should we really offer this help to the aztec, and how much help could we offer (troops)
-Should we consider a war against the inca after our NAP runs out with them?

One thing for sure, it wouldn 't be good for us if RB just took Aztec's land and we just watch and do nothing. If this war started at 170 and in t175 india would join from the other side then it would look much better. But even then there are two big empires, the Maya and HRE who would stay out from this conflict and would get realtively stronger.

[Dinner]

-We should coordinate our NAPs with the other two and if RB attack the Aztecs (which it looks like they will) then we should use that as an opportunity to invade the Inca. RB has both macemen and long bows so if we are to materially fight against them we will need either crossbowmen or our UU.

-I like the idea of using the overflow to build archers and workers as we badly need both. Our goal should be 1.5 workers for every city.

-We should formalize our three way alliance with the other two and see if we can get anyone else to join us.

-Once the universities are completed we will badly need to let our cities grow again but we will also need to plant out more cities. I know those are contradictory aims but we're getting very late in the game to have not yet settled all of our area. It may not be the best area but we must make the best of it.

[Dinner]

I looked over the map and the slaving has indeed taken its toll. Hopefully our population can bounce back quickly though, on a positive note, it does look like we'll be getting a lot of universities next turn plus we've been able to spread out religion to all but two cities. Speaking of cities... Not counting the barbarian city or the one we will plant next turn we have seven additional spots already marked out and I see room for 1-2 more out west. It's currently something like 500 AD so we're going to have to hurry if we ever want to build those cities and have them ever amount to anything in this game. Everyone else seems to have built out all of their land and now are trying to get the needed stuff in all those cities. Yes, we have some nicely built up cities (albeit with tiny populations) but we really are behind the ball wrt settling all of our land and we still haven't even connected our western three cities to our road network.