GL revisited

[nbarclay]

My "GL all the way" vote is contingent on winning Vox's diplomatic support (and hopefully some material support as well in the form of a worker or two) for the project.

[DeepO]

Well... if the GL wins, we need to discuss about the specifics. Nathan, you made a good point as to scaring Vox if they find out we won't be good tech traders. But some arrangement can be made, e.g. a promise that they will be able to get all techs, for half the beaker cost in gold (tech costs 300 beakers, they get it from us for 150). They shouldn't feel left out like that.

One problem is telling them when we start on it: I don't want to tell them we're planning, or building it until after we get a border treaty with them, and some kind of guarantee they're not going to bother us the next 40 turns. We need the peace treaty fast.

OTOH, if we want slaves from them to help us build the GL, it has to be fast too: 15 turns after starting, a slave won't do any good anymore, as we will already be at size 9. So we have to be reasonably fast to propose it to them too.

Fall-back: Pyramids, Lighthouse and Collosus are the most obvious backup wonders, all of which we should be able to get the tech for. HG is normally nice, but we don't need the happines, and it's obsolete quickly. Getting to monarchy is however a possibility: we can ask that Vox goes that way, as they're already busy on mysticism. But, I'd rather have them on MM instead...

If we go for it, we most likely need to bee-line to literature, if we want to be sure we've got the tech before our prebuild ends. Normally, the pyramids won't be built in a MP game before the GL, so there is no risk that we need to fall back to a palace prebuild (possibly losing the race). But if we would go for MM, maybe we don't have enough time to get literature in time.

I would continue research while we're building, just as a small precaution... I believe the chance of getting the GL is high, but in case we won't get it, we don't have to be left behind either.

Vox slaves compensation in case of bad luck: first of all, it is a risky loan, with high interests, but possible failure as well. Vox has to understand this. So, if we fail, we can have a compensation like 'for every slave you gave us, we give you 1 back'. Nothing too fancy, the rewards are high, but there is some risk to it that we don't have to take alone.

Other deals are surely possible, to not leave Vox out, one of the first could be that they research MM... we need contacts, so we need galleys. The faster these come, the better. If we only know Vox, the GL won't do any good, and with Vox and Lux, it won't be much better...

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by DeepO
Vox slaves compensation in case of bad luck: first of all, it is a risky loan, with high interests, but possible failure as well. Vox has to understand this. So, if we fail, we can have a compensation like 'for every slave you gave us, we give you 1 back'. Nothing too fancy, the rewards are high, but there is some risk to it that we don't have to take alone.

If they accepted such a deal, they know less about the game than we think. 1 worker in 1000BC is worth zounds more than 1 Worker in 10AD. It would be interesting to propose the deal as you say, just to see what their reaction is, but we'll probably end up losing face when they call us on it.

Concerning Workers and the GL: I see no middle ground here. Either we inform Vox of our plan and ask for the Workers (which they may or may not give), or we continue REXing. If they refuse to give us Workers, we must stop the project altogether. Building the GL without Vox's Worker-support is far too risky.


Dominae

[Arrian]

Why in the world would a civ that is low on food give up workers at this stage of the game?

Then again, this might be a great test to find out if they really are as dumb as the chat logs make them out to be (oh, we didn't know war chariots can't go through jungle, etc).

I still vote for the Colossus, since it offers a good return on a much smaller investment. We can REX *and* build the Colossus.

-Arrian

[Conqueror]

Originally posted by Arrian
Why in the world would a civ that is low on food give up workers at this stage of the game?

Then again, this might be a great test to find out if they really are as dumb as the chat logs make them out to be (oh, we didn't know war chariots can't go through jungle, etc).

Great comment, almost made me fall of the chair when laughing so much.

[DeepO]

Dominae: if Vox doesn't go for it, there is no reason to abandon the project: we can do this alone. The only reason to propose the slave for tech deal is that I suspect that Vox will go for it, delivering 2 or 3 slaves to us.

If I could pick which techs I got from it, I would probably do the same, if my food situation isn't overly bad, certainly after a border deal has been signed which basically gives my the right to build at a pace that I like. Vox might go for it, or might not... but I'm sure we can get them to do it.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Arrian
Why in the world would a civ that is low on food give up workers at this stage of the game?

Then again, this might be a great test to find out if they really are as dumb as the chat logs make them out to be (oh, we didn't know war chariots can't go through jungle, etc).

I still vote for the Colossus, since it offers a good return on a much smaller investment. We can REX *and* build the Colossus.

With borders already predrawn, the cost of giving up those workers goes down dramatically. Yes it sets them back, but it doesn't mean losing ground in terms of how many cities they'll end up with the way it would in SP. And being assured of being able to keep up with the rest of the world in tech through Education would be something extremely valuable to them given the kind of position they're in, assuming the terms are set appropriately.

Note that with the tech leaders trading techs, the gold price we charge Vox for techs would probably need to be well under half the research cost, since otherwise, they'd still fall behind any time other civs trade. But at more like 30% (with Republic and another ancient tech to be determined free), we'd get some extra profit above and beyond our free techs and Vox would get techs at bargain-basement prices in return for its up-front investment. There's room for an arrangement by which our building the Great Library is clearly beneficial to both civs; we just have to work to try to make the deal clearly in Vox's interest instead of trying to squeeze as much as we can out of them.

Nathan

[DeepO]

Originally posted by nbarclay
we just have to work to try to make the deal clearly in Vox's interest instead of trying to squeeze as much as we can out of them.

Well... I would state that as: "We just have to work to try to show to Vox the deal clearly in their advantage, while we squeeze as much as we can out of them".

Minor difference

You're right on the tech cost, I was thinking of 50% of what it would cost them, not 50% of the initial cost of the tech. But that will be aruond the same price.

DeepO

[Dominae]

DeepO, if we go for the GL alone, we're back to building a Wonder in favor of expansion. Forget that all our city-sites are reserved through a potential deal with Vox, we still lose out by having our cities up and running a lot later than we could. Arguments like: "Well, it's only something like 15 turns lost because Eye produces Workers so fast" are flawed, because any Worker we join to Hurricane is not improving the land around our future cities, creating quite the disparity in economic potential between the two scenarios (GL or no).

The only way the GL makes sense is if we get Workers from Vox. Unfortunately this option is also problematic.

Another point: what kind of return do we expect from the GL (how many techs, and which ones)? I guarantee our human (smart) opponents will get to Education as quickly as possible just to thwart our efforts. The way trading is going, the other teams will be well on their way to the Medieval age by the time we get the GL (if we do). There are other things in Civ3 than the tech race.


Dominae

[Harovan]

Give it up, Dominae. We're not talking reason here, we're just playing. If we win, great. If we lose, so what?

In 50 turns we could be done with our REX, and at least 50% of our cities could already have a decent infrastructure and we could have an awesome research pace. Instead of this we:

- throw away a ready built settler factory
- totally neglect our defense
- start to build a new granary in another city and repeat the just completed work of 2000 years around EotS in another city.
- pray and hope that neither our ally nor other civs will attack us. If they do, we again throw away all we did for the wonder and prepare for defense
- assume (and even hope, in the threads), that our opponents are weak players
- are content to meet the year 1000BC with at most 6 undeveloped cities, while all others already have kickass economies (we not, anymore).
- switch to Colossus, because Legoland build the GL 2 turns before we could complete it. If we survive that long

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Give it up, Dominae. We're not talking reason here, we're just playing. If we win, great. If we lose, so what?

Give what up? If you're referring to my comments about trying to find the best course of action, might I point out that you're doing the same thing:

In 50 turns we could be done with our REX, and at least 50% of our cities could already have a decent infrastructure and we could have an awesome research pace. Instead of this we:

- throw away a ready built settler factory
- totally neglect our defense
- start to build a new granary in another city and repeat the just completed work of 2000 years around EotS in another city.
- pray and hope that neither our ally nor other civs will attack us. If they do, we again throw away all we did for the wonder and prepare for defense
- assume (and even hope, in the threads), that our opponents are weak players
- are content to meet the year 1000BC with at most 6 undeveloped cities, while all others already have kickass economies (we not, anymore).
- switch to Colossus, because Legoland build the GL 2 turns before we could complete it. If we survive that long

[Harovan]

What did happen with your sarcasm detector? Get this thing going, man!

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
What did happen with your sarcasm detector? Get this thing going, man!

And to think that I'm considered the sarcastic one among people who know me!


Dominae

[zeit]

Hmm.. now i am beging to feel sorry i was so hasty in making my vote "GL all the way".
It seems i havn't considered all the consequneces, as well as the alternatives, but still, i think its a viable option, if Vox contributes at least 2 workers for the effort, and we manage to sustain a degree of infrasture development (which probably means we don't do it in a "all the way" style, maybe adding just 2 or so workers of our own).

I wouldn't care to much for a certain slowdown of our expansion, as long as Vox is pacified, but can we gurantee that? consider this as well: can we delay our economical development in that critical time when we first meet (or they meet us) the foreign teams, and all this for those 3 techs, is it really worth it?

I mean, we have devised a plan that could achieve this, but havn't really answered the question of what is our actual gain? and is this the better (or best) way of advancing ourselves?

[Harovan]

Even with 2 Voxian workers our expansion will be not slowed down, but completely stopped:

- EotS won't have any significant shield producing tiles. All it's able to produce is food.
- Hurricane will be busy to build the wonder.
- Cyclone has to be improved first, before it can produce new settlers. It needs a granary and tile improvements. It won't be as efficient as EotS, because it has corruption.
- Bolderberg is told to produce a barracks and units. It'll need pretty long to get this started. No settlers from here, too. And nobody has a guarantee, that we won't switch an almost done barracks again to temple, because somebody thinks it'd be cool to have the Lighthouse.

Where are the settlers?
Where are our defensive units we need?
Where are our galleys?
No hope for it.