Post-Vox-Era strategy session

[Blake]

We need some planning.

We have a lot of land to expand into, to populate. We should do this asap, it must be our primary focus. We have an unbreakable economy thanks to the floodplain core and we must capitalize on this by getting a huge production base.

The quickest way to produce settlers is by growing cities to size 6 and then whipping. Our existing cities are not great at this, we should look towards founding one or two such whip pumps, available sites willing. We can also use our existing cities to produce settlers in that way, but I'd be inclined to not whip EotS except when the caps gets problematic.

Note that happiness can be disregarded when whipping, IF we are whipping settlers which will bring in +1 happy from a bonus like furs or ivory.

I can't load the save and I don't have my CIV CD's with me so I can't go for the re-install process (what a pity!), so I'd like someone to use flying camera to take out 2-4 zoomed out screenshots of ALL our land, with:
Resource View On
Grid On
Interface Off

Just yell if you need explanation on how to do that...

We need to plan the "Foundation" cities, like the settler pumps and one or two cities designed for one thing : maximized hammers.

We then dotmap everything else.

A further consideration is staking our claim as far north as possible, before AC stakes their claim as far south as possible. We should try and take everything nearly up to the ruins of splitsville.

Final thing, AC diplomacy. I believe AC will have much the same plan as us, expand like crazy. I think we should try and formalize a non-militarization pact, where we keep our power graphs in line with each other - both teams will do this anyway and it'd be nice to keep that military level low, at least until astronomy looms and both teams have actual credible reason to train a large military other than taking out the other in a sneak attack. Regardless the diplomatic exchange would probably give useful insight into the plans of AC.

[DeepO]

Blake, I would love to see you starting on some dotmaps... it's much easier to jump in when you've got very little time. Plus, I've got the same problem: no active civ to open the save.

DeepO

[Randolph]

If you have BtS you can't open the save, right? I think I tried a while back.

[Blake]

Can someone PLEASE take these screenshots?

To turn on flying camera, open the CivilizationIV.ini file in My Games / Civilization 4.

AllowFlying = 1


To use flying camera in game, press ctrl-alt-f

Pressing alt-f enables satellite camera, this places the camera so it's looking straight down. The combination of Flying camera + satellite camera is very quirky, but by turning on FCam then SCam (or vice-verca) you get the view point looking straight down and you can then carefully zoom out using the mousewheel or something so it's looking straight down. If you move the mouse then the view might fly around oddly.

Optimal Procedure:
Place the camera where the center of the screenshot will be.
Ctrl-Alt-F followed by Alt-F, now zoom straight out and take the screenshot.

Ctrl-T turns on Grid.
Gtrl-R turns on resource view.
Alt-I turns off interface. (You need to wait a few seconds for it the text messages to clear)

[Godel]

The lot:



The north (rice to north used to be in the BFC of Splitsville):



The south-east:



The south-west:



Sorry about the screenshot boxes appearing - I don't really know how to take the shot without them there.

[Blake]

We found this city or cede the game to AC



We might want to found a stepping-stone city lower first, or we might want to dribble some units up to secure the area and have the first settler possible head that way.

[Godel]

Blake - I take it that securing this city site is a priority. We can poprush a settler from Wines in 3 turns. I have a spear/skirm combo heading north already.

We desparately need more workers too.

Does every new city start a granary if there are decent tiles in its immediate city radius?

[Randolph]

Have we had any border negotiations with AC? Would that city go right up to the AC border, or would it be possible for an even more aggressive land-grab (not that I'm advocating that, just asking). I'd love to hear more of your reasoning, Blake (I'm sure it's solid, I'd just be nice to be able to keep up).

[Blake]

I'd say it'd be better off to not negotiate borders with AC, and instead just grab what we can. This makes the assumption that they feel much the same way - that they feel their interests are best served in grabbing what they can, before we talk (in many ways it's the most fair and mutually acceptable way to allocate land...)

Remember that Splitsville was founded on the Gems, and AC probably considers Banana territory to be their territory, what's more there are quite possibly roads and improved plots which provide incentive for them to refound a city in that vicinity. So it is highly likely that city will be a border city, it may even clash with one of their city radius's, planned or perhaps even already founded.

Due to the single-city-front rule, we only want a single city on the front. It's more defensible that way. So the city I've outlined, is the best in terms of not stepping on AC's toes (unduly), while claiming as much as possible, and being defensible.

In such a land grab, one must be wary of being too aggressive. I believe that both GS and AC want to co-operate with each other, quite strongly. But if we founded a city too aggressively, AC might say "Hey! That's not on!", declare war, stamp on the city, then offer peace. It would be a rude move, but if we knew we were over-extending ourselves it's something we may decide to let them get away with.

So for a highly aggressive landgrab we really need to firmly stake our claim, that would mean having units in the vicinity which can actually intimidate the CKN's, those units of course would be Jumbos, but we don't yet have Jumbos, and we wont, not in time to matter.

That means we take a huge risk in trying to secure a city any further north, say the Gems. Even if AC don't choose to play hardball, it could sour our relationship.

[Donegeal]

Donegeal starts to scream from his cell (its the only way to be heard):

With all that nearly useless tundra and Ice in the south, there isn't much land available. Push North. I say 8,9 of where Blake said. That will give us that much more land, and put the city at the narowest point + be on a hill (Not to mention getting the extra rice and the only stone resource I see). If things go sour with AC, that city will be very difficult to stomp on (Longbows on the hill will get an automatic 50% strength bonus).

BTW- I KNEW Vox would have Iron in it's city radius! ...meh...

[Blake]

Will someone let that man out of his cell?

The problem here, is that there is a very real possibility that AC will just declare war and whack the city right away and say "You damn well know that is AC territory!". Things wont go sour after a while, they'll go sour the very moment such a city is placed.

The friendship between AC and GS is maintained primarily through the desire to get a leg-up over the other continent, it is beneficial for both teams to co-operate.

However that doesn't mean it's not beneficial to not-cooperate, either team can use non-cooperation for leverage.

In the current diplomatic tango, I regularly threaten to not cooperate if AC does not give GS a fair (to both teams) deal. AC would like to make offers which are slightly beneficial to GS, and highly beneficial to AC. I say "No deal at all! Unless it's equally beneficial to both!".

AC has a huge bargaining chip in that THEIR ARMY IS STRONGER. They can just declare war, kill some of our stuff and then say:
"Right! You crossed the line and you know it. Luckily we only wanted to get rid of your offending city and see no reason for either team to to bear a permanent grudge over this. Now, are you going to see reason and let the cooperation resume?"

Of course as a defense GS can say "No peace. You declared war on us! We are fighting this out to the bitter end!".

We could try being very aggressive in claiming land, AND diplomatically make that threat, that if AC tries to stop us, GS will never forgive them. If AC wants cooperation badly enough, they'll tow the line and let us get away with that.

The question is, how badly does AC want cooperation? And bear in mind, that I'm perfectly happy to threaten non-cooperation so it's hard to imagine that AC would be unwilling to make that same threat (very loudly, even). They find cooperation optimal but they aren't going to bend over backwards for it. They will be willing to assert themselves if required.

The OTHER question is, what would the outcome of a war be?
My hunch is either that AC would win (at least crippling GS beyond viability), or it would stalemate, probably putting stalemate as the most likely outcome. I don't really see how a GS victory could happen. I'm not at all certain if AC feels the same way, but with their CKN army they probably feel pretty damn confident, especially when it comes to mounting a defense.

As the game progresses, GS just gets stronger. For one, the spiritual trait gets more useful as the game goes on. Another factor, is that AC's wonders expire.
AC should probably recognize this too, and this helps reinforce my belief that AC would not be too hesitant to use their military on GS during this phase of the game, because their advantages will erode as the game progresses and they'll have increasingly less leverage over GS.