Lizzy's rise to greatness

[Ben Kenobi]

I vote no on the trade. If it were anything other than Janisseries, sure.

We need the units badly. I agree with Oerdin. Linking up all our cities should be the top priority. Roads + good road infrastructure favors the defender.

[mzprox]

just to see clearly: if we get the gem we will end up with more units even if we give away 3 of them due to the +2 happyness it gives (most of our cites have forges). I will try to haggle a bit and make it down to 2 janissaries instead of 3.
happyness will limit drafting and we need to draft as many units during the 8 turns of golden age as possible. in some cities we will draft 2 units, that's 6 unhappy faces, but we will recover this by the time we enter nationalism again. (please don1t say that we shouldn't do the heavy drafting: first it's a good deal trading 30-40 food into 160 hammer, second our rivals and allies are doing the same: Egypt is full f pop 4-6 cities now, but raised a huge army-if we don1t do the same and do the sacrifice we will nt have any chance in the coming wars.)
The other option for getting gem is to pay 5-10g/turn to Maya, but we wouldn't want to make them richer also if there will be a war between us we may get into trouble losing our luxury resources.
Right now we don't need to worry about maya, they will not attack us, unless they are liars and stupid as well. We will leave a big enough defnsive force in the border and the road will be finished by 170. (our nap last till t180 with them)

[Dinner]

Two I'd agree to because the benefits outweight the risks. I am worried that the Maya could attack though. True, they don't have seige weapons right now but neither do we we so it would be hard to retake the 2-3 cities they'd take before we could stop them. Next, as you mentioned, the gems would become useless to us if the Maya do attack because we'd lose our connection to the other civ. That means we'd be slaving and gaining unhappiness only to give the units away and quickly lose our luxury good so we'd have difficulty slaving replacement units.

Sure, give them two AFTER we have sufficient defensive forces on the border so we know we can deter the Maya stack other wise we'd be potentially compromising our own defenses.

[mzprox]

ok i will try to make it to two janissary. About Maya don't forget they are at war with cfc, they wouldn't risk a two side war, I believe. I've heard zulu offered cities to maya if maya helps them against cfc, but cfc was fast and told me they will finish off zulu before maya could intervene. Nevertheless we will keep big enogh force at our west side from the drafted janissaries.

[mzprox]

Inca has gifted us a settler. I did not ask for it nor they said anything about it. I would buy workers, but I wouldn't pay 100 g for a settler right now, when we need money. Nevertheless it's more than nothing for our money. It troubles me that inca is not answering to my mails... I sent them quite a few.
anyway I will wait with this settler a bit and see if we get an opportunity to settle somewhere in inca land if egypt razes cities. Otherwise we should build a city north of Apolyton as that's the only good enough city place we have left. (we are also building a settler in Istanbul, which will found a city next to the fur-with these two settlers we will have 19 cities)

[Dinner]

The good news is our population is slowly going up. The bad news is we still have the second lowest population. We currently have 19 cities, 1 settler, and are building one settler but our number of workers remains entirely insufficient as we don't have enough to both improve the tiles we need and build roads to connect our empire.

[mzprox]

We have 17 cities right now. we will have 3 new workers in the next 4 turns. I know it still could be more but hopefully we wil lget some from inca too.

In a few (1-2) turns we will get gunpowder then it has to be decided whether we research or steal nationalism.

[mzprox]

Maya is in their 2nd golden age (remember it last 1,5 times as they got the mausoleum wonder). Their economy is boosted to very high levels. Looking at the map I can't believe cfc is really that close with their armies to the mayan border. I think maya will go for rifling quite fast and then it could become a threat for us.
That's why I'm also thinking that we should draft less janissary and wait with the big drafts until we get riflemen too. There are many things to balance here:
-our possible war with RB around t170
-the sooner we draft the better (cities recover sooner so we vcan draft more)
-staying in bureau instead of nationalism is better
-rifles cost 110 hammer while janissary only 80
-we should start first golden age asap as we are losing money if we are not in free market

what is sure: we can't wait with drafting until we get rifles so we need to enter nationalism sooner. But we also should enter nationalism when we get rifles so we can draft them too.
Possiblée ways to do it:
-we stay in nationalism after golden age, losing much power from our oxford city
-We revolt to nationalsim when needed losing a turn for anarchy
-we prepare for the second and probably last golden age by then.

All method has it's drawbacks, I will try to optimize, but lot depends on what happens around us. to see if we can steal nationalism, to see whether maya really rushes to rifling or they just need the money for upgrades etc( that would be the best for us).

[OzzyKP]

I'd say we stay in bureaucracy through our golden age up till our last turn and then switch to nationalism and stay. That way we get maximum use out of the golden age & bureaucracy, plus I'd rather not be drafting/slaving our cities during a golden age when we should be reaping in all the benefits from it. We can start drafting once the golden age is over.

[mzprox]

Yes, that's one of the options. would be nice to do something like this: enter GA next turn and in the following 8 turn we collect money and get research overflow from smaller techs. We steal nationalism when we can and we still finish constitution before GA ends. that way we could adopt representation which would help in drafting too.
...or we just forget about constitution as it's not on the path to rifles..

[Dinner]

We have 17 cities right now. we will have 3 new workers in the next 4 turns. I know it still could be more but hopefully we wil lget some from inca too.

In a few (1-2) turns we will get gunpowder then it has to be decided whether we research or steal nationalism.

I'd rather steal than do the hard work of research as it would allow us to research something else. The problem is RB are already eying us as their next victim and our pillaging of roads seems to have pissed them off (but it needs to happen) so what do we really have to lose from espionage? They're already going to attack us the second the NAP is over.

[mzprox]

This is the incan playground. While the war is between Egypt(+Natives) and Inca we too want to get our share if possible.

NW there is wanzleben city. we need that for ourselves. Unfortunately we don't have an army to take it if they fortify it with longbowmen so an attack against it shouldbe commenced with inca permission. hopefully we will get that, we just need to watch carefully and predict when should we move.

you can see the main army south of Worms. it's unstoppable. It doesn't have too many knigths so hopefully it won1t be too fast in advancing.

our target city for spy operation is Weil der stadt. We have a missionary, 3 spies on their way and our great spy for this mission.
The way I planned was this: Rb takes the city, they will not suspect anything. In the same turn we convert the city, we use the great spy against them and we steal.
there is many things to consider: if we convert the city before they take it they might raze it. if we don1t convert it and they spot our missionary they might close their borders with us. If we convert it but not steal in the same turn they might close the border and we lose the open border bonus from the stealings. On the other hand RB will take the city much sooner than we could get the maximum stationary spy bonus. (we ill get 20%, max 30% instead of 50)
so anyone who understands spying mechanism could come up with a good plan I'd like to hear it.

[Dinner]

Here's hoping it works though if they're paying attention they'll spot the missionary. My hat is off to you either way though because you certainly put in extra effort to try to get this thing carried out.

[mzprox]

nationalism during the golden age or after?

During golden age:
-golden age starts in 4-5 turns (bigger cities-better use of golden age)
-drafting starts in 4-5 turns (starting sooner means first unhappyness goes away sooner, more time to assemble army)
-no bureaucracy during golden age
-Bureaucracy after golden age: in the not so far future having bureaucracy gives about 80 research, 35 gold, 9 production/turn (assumed 60-40% slider)

after golden age:
-Golden age starts next turn (a bit sooner we get into free market)
-We start drafting later(9 turns from now), but we will not draft the population in golden age, also we don't need to hurry with the drafting once we got one soldier from each city.
-Bureaucracy during golden age
-Nationalism after golden age: it will save us about 30g/turn in maintenance, barracks will give +2 happyness, we can draft riflemen as soon as they are available.


So this is the comparsion. Things like "do we need representation or we should go for rifling asap" are not counted in yet. Also i can't predict when we would get into a second golden age if we will have it at all. Staying in pacifism or in org religion is also questionable.

All in all I think the second path would work better for us. In the long run our science rate would be lower, but we would get better unit production capabilities and that is what we really lack. While janissary are nice, riflemen will dominate the battlefield for long.

[Dinner]

I'd like to maximize the golden age as much as possible though we do have that unbeatable stack 10-20 turns away from our border and RB has made unfriendly noises about the pillaging of tiles. I'd be willing to risk them not attacking until after they finish the Inca though. Ideally, we'd go into pacificism during the golden age so that our cities grow faster but switch to nationalism at the end so we can convert that extra pop into units.

Pacificism and serfdom so we can get our population growing and build those tiles faster.