[PC] Of Spock and Communism: Civ IV Succession Game

I'm all for picking a fight with Alexander, as he had the temerity to found cities on our continent of all things, plus your logic seems fairly sound. One issue is that I think Khan is going to become even less pleased with us if we manage to culturally dominate the two cities he stupidly founded directly in our midst. Speaking of which, how are those going?

Overall, crazy turn, but glad to see there's enough chaos external to us that they won't have an easy time focusing on and attacking us.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

The two Mongolian cities are resisting fairly well to our cultural expansion, which doesn't surprise me much considering the fact that they are he most advanced civ and can probably afford to build cultural buildings a plenty. I sent the great artist to build a great work in the city to the northeast of it (can't remember the name of the city). I've never really studied Kahn's habits in game though, so I'm just saying this based on the standings. In any case, if we're going to try and retain good relations with them, maybe we should lay off the cultural pressure just enough to not have the negative diplomatic consequences of the border struggle growing bigger. What's more, having the Kahn present on our continent means that, should we ever be attacked, he can help us defend our continent at the drop of a dime since he already has troops stationed on it.

Overall, if you look at the pic in my last post, you can tally up our diplomatic relationship with them at +13, minus one for our adoption of mercantilism. Declaring war on Alexander would probably net us another -2 at most, unless the act of declaring war on their friend would cause us to lose the +1 for "years of peace" and the +2 for "mutual military struggle". Even then, and subtracting another point or two for the expanding border struggle, the worst case scenario would have us at around +5, which should keep them from taking retributive action. Even better, if we can convince them to stop trading with the Greeks, we can retain our good relations with them and maybe even eventually get them to join in on the slaughter.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Alright, let's see. Coming out of the anarchy our economy immediately spirals into a massive deficit, leaving our coffers empty within two turns. In response I start building long-overdue courthouses where I can, and banks in those few places courthouses are already present. A Great Prophet pops up and I fetch us the Mahabodhi which is worth a cool 15 gold a turn. Khan didn't seem inclined to give us something for nothing.

Still hurting for cash but we can run 40 science/10 culture for a while without bleeding too much.

http://www.saxypunch.com/miscimg/ML2....Civ4SavedGame

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Thank goodness, we finally got a damn priest. Couldn't have happened at a better time. Totally forgot about the impending switch to Mercantilism, which can be a bit of a crapshoot, due to its high upkeep. If we have or do swap a lot of our free people over to Merchants it might work out positive, and then use artists or other such things as need be.

Most amazing jew boots

I was skeptical, but Merc has been working out welll. Huge picture chain follows.

Starting off, we're running 50% sci / 10% culture, and I fiddle with that to see how much of a difference its making in the areas where we have culture conflicts. Near the Khan, each of those cities is gaining about +1 cul. a turn, while down near Eretria, they're pretty much hosed anyways, as they only have a few % greek left. Deciding I'd rather gets lots o' tech, I shift us back over to 60% sci.



Pang's forethought on the Courthouses starts paying off almost immediately, and throughout my turn there are Courthouses being finished like they're going out of style. I help out the trend, and build them pretty much anywhere that we've got a bad income to cost ratio or just super high waste - which is pretty much everywhere without a Courthouse.



Its not long I have to wait before I start being rather glad I swapped science, and this is only the beginning of good things. Tech number 1, Constitution.



Still pulling out the micro, I've been systematically going around to our cities seeing whether they're being retarded, and stick Merchants in several places where they for some reason have chosen a common laborer, or in a few cases a scientist that's basically useless. In my travels I'd like to note that Rhodes is complete and utter ass.



Man that city sucks. I think they're going to plateau right after they hit 10, and then do little else.

Continuing on with the trend of why I hate Alexander, not long afterward, the douche cancels a treaty for open borders, which has the wonderful benefit of trapping one of our boats in Khan's territory. Figuring there's nothing better to do, I dump all of the Knights out of the boat and start having them explore the continent. Meanwhile, a combination of micro, courthouses, and banks has gotten our costs to the point where we can run 70% sci. Fantastic.



Very shortly thereafter, the second tech of this 10 year set rolls in. Bam! Edumacation. All our people can now learn them some books.



While I'm blissfully noting, and building, all the wonderful things this has opened for us, like glorious Universities, and Oxford, I am scared out of my wits by a combat report telling us we have lost Frankfurt! The hell?!? Apparently we have allied with Fredrick? and he is getting his sack crushed by Montezuma. Oh well.



Before I convert our capital over to learnin, I have used it for several turns to pump out Buddhist monks, which have spread the teachings of his Holiness across our empire. This has resoundingly wonderful effects, as we get compound money from happiness, from the Wonder, and from random "Yay, Emperor!" days. If the capital ever gets bored we ought to pursue this some more, as our Buddhism spread is pretty poor.



And to spice it up one further notch in tech, we get yet another discovery, this time Economics. We're really screaming through these things. Partially this is due to our capital putting out 100 sci a turn.



Finally, on a culture wrapup, we're making progress. We've reduced the Greek city in our borders, Eretria, down to 0% Greek. I can feel another Greek city swap coming in Rychord's turn. The Khan's city in our midst is starting to slide. Its currently at 70%. Plus, the city we apparently built our Great Person artist at is about to culture-splode, so hopefully that will push things even further.







The knights I let off on the other continent have almost completed their work, and some of the explorer boats will need to pick them up. Overall, pleasant set of turns, as we moved from middle of the pack to within 10 points of being in first place. If we keep blasting through the tech tree like this, and work our advancement well, we could very easily move into first and be on our way to a win. 1976 though. Not much time left.



Right, save files too: AD-1976.Civ4SavedGame Rychord, your turn.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'll see what I can do with this thing tomorrow, I happened to work 5 hours today (even though I was supposed to have the day off) and went downtown to see part of the Stevie Wonder concert.

Hope we can take the lead during my turns!

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well, My turns went by in a dull flash of uneventfulness. I continued with my plan of supplying a grenadier for every city, and it has almost been brought to completion. Our lead over the Kahn will probably be greater than 100 points by the time Pang ends his turn, we have about five hundred gold coins stacked up, and we are about to get the Assembly Line tech. Hence, we might do well to keep the gold piled up until the Assembly Line is done so we can change some of those classical age troops to infantry and have our military be up to date for the first time since what seems like the dawn of time.

Here you go Pang: GFF Civ4 Save file AD1986

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Guess it depends how you look at it. Going back over mine, they actually were incredibly uneventful turns. Built buildings, got some tech, explored. I was just super jazzed that we were finally doing well. I think we fell behind right after Warriors and have only now caught up from there.

Also, you folks mind taking a detour after Assembly Line and getting Music? As Notre Dame is just sitting in Thebes being useless without it. Forgot about it during mine, and if nothing else, I'll do it when it comes back around to me.

FELIPE NO

It should only take one turn anyway, so I guess it wouldn't hurt. I have to be honest that I played my turns much faster than usual, as I made an impromptu road trip to Ottawa yesterday and I didn't want to hold up the game. There really wasn't much that happened though, besides the discovery of two or three techs.

Heck, I didn't even get a single visit from another world leader!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

http://www.saxypunch.com/miscimg/ML2....Civ4SavedGame

Finished up Assembly Line, started on Electricity. Poked around in search of trades, but no dice. I leave the troop-upgrading to someone better schooled in the arts of war than I. A Great Artist popped up, I used it to squeeze... what was it, the Mongolian city on our north border.

That's about it!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Needs moar tech.








Plus, when we got Liberalism, it was apparently a tech that lots of computers skimped on, so we immediately got offers for trades from all over. Divine Right plus a good bit of money seemed reasonable from Fred, who's been a decent bud, so I went with that.




Also, we had 1500 gp, so we're running 80% research now with positive money flow.

Largely spent my turns on upgrading towns (a huge swath of factory production), researching stuff, and getting troops moving so we can pour into the lands of Alexander and crush his pitiful remains. Gotta do it quick since we're running out of time, and Khan's got the same idea. Need to head off Khan before he builds up enough base to outdo us on points, although I think unless we do something dumb, we'll win just on points if nothing else.

I also spent a big chunk of our money upgrading all of our Grenadiers to Infantry, as they were the only troop where the cost wasn't Obscene. (1100 gp for a Spearman to Infantry, 400 gp for a Musketeer to Infantry...wtf)


Finally, we continue to press on the culture, and are slowly winning the day, although the fact that we haven't grabbed Alexander's last town by now just boggles my mind. Its been at 0% for half a century it seems.



We've got Infantry producing, I'm trying to move boats back and make new ones, and working towards Steel right now so we can either branch for Tanks, or just head towards Space Flight. Unfortunately, I think AC is a lost cause at this point, since the game will be over too quickly, and we should probably just crush fools as fast as we can to win.

Also, we have a ton of civics if the next person wants to change. I'm kind of liking having all these extra specialists, and having Bureacracy might actually make them even more effective without dropping our happiness too much.

Also, save file: ML200804573%20AD-2006.Civ4SavedGame and Rychord, its your turn.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well, it looks like things are looking up even more than I could have imagined!

I'll try to take my turns tomorrow, but it might have to wait until tuesday, as I'll be off and certainly more disposed towards playing them then.

One thing though, looking at your first post in the thread, Araes, seems to indicate that we have the time victory turned off, but did you guys decide otherwise in the subsequent pre-game posts? I'm asking because you've mentioned and I was just curious since it might affect the way I will play out my turns.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Actually, you're totally right. I had forgotten that I had turned off timeout victories, so no hard limit on years. Use that information as you will. Right now we're at 27% for a Domination, and nobody has any Space Race progress.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

And so it was that the last decade had brought such great discoveries in the various fields of science that it was inevitable the people's view of their government would be shaken.

I stood at the front lines of the revolutionary body for the two years that it lasted.



As we took the parliament, the last of the Greek sympathizers on our continent saw the movement of our people and felt it best to cast off their old overlords and join our great cause.




Though the revolution mostly happened in the political arena, a certain number of military battles took place, and it is in that context that some of our most deadly weapons to date came to see the light of day. [I also discovered the railroad, but deleted the pic by accident]



A man of great wisdom appeared in our capital, and our people celebrated him by building a great temple, that his memory may serve future generations in having the courage to live their lives to the best of their ability.



A messenger arrived from a tour of our island cities and brought news that though our troops defending them were equipped with some of the most modern weapons, their numbers were few and it would be necessary to send more soldiers to defend them in case a war broke out.



After helping our people to stabilize their new government, I left to pursue a simpler life. The last thing I noticed before handing over power to the newly elected leader was that our nation's economy had never been so well organized.




(The space race should get underway at anytime now, as pretty much every other civ has access to biology, artillery and industrialism, which means the Kahn is probably more advanced than that and should be on the verge of starting the Apollo Project [if he isn't already on it]. Though they will certainly take quite a while to get all the components together for an actual victory, and even though we don't have to worry about the game ending from the time limit in half a century, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the space race itself will impose a time limit on us as far as our endgame plans go.)


Here's the save Pang, hope your turns go smoothly!

GFF Civ 4 Savegame: 2016

I was speaking idiomatically.

Seems like we ought to have a discussion then about what we're aiming for. I agree that we're close to the start of the Space Race. Unfortunately, we're not particularly competitive in that arena yet.

So first up, combat or space?

I'm in favor of combat. But i'm always in favor of combat. However, reason.

To win the space race, we have to make it all the way to Fusion so that we can get an SS Engine, plus get a crap ton of other techs. By my estimation, it will take us around 100 turns to get to Fusion from looking at my last game file. Even with how inefficient the computer is, by that point I expect them to be done, as that's a hell of an uphill climb.

On the other hand, we can have Tanks in 10 turns, and we meet all the prereqs, although I'm not sure on our Oil situation. I know we have one off the coast.

If we then go for Flight (Airports), with a detour for Off Shore Oil Rigs if needed, we can start paradropping units into all of the foreign continent cities with a single beachhead.

Further, assaults on some of the larger nations will force them to start moving into a combat mode rather than working on Space components.

The first beachhead I would propose be Alexander, as he's been a douche, and he's right next to Khan. Two birds and all that. His death will also get us that much closer to a Domination win, and silly Khan will let us walk right through his stuff. Heck, we can probably store a huge mass of troops in Khan's own territory to prep for the assault. Plus, with a beachhead on Khan's land, if we go for him, its less likely that he'll try to land troops on our own continent.

Up till we hit Tanks, we could spawn a steady stream of Infantry, since I figure we can put out ~2-3 of them per turn, along with whatever our most current seige weapon is (cannons?)

Also, is it possible to push research to 90% now?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Why don't you ask Khan to help you pwn Alexander as well

FELIPE NO

Though I'm not one to back down from a fight, caution should be the name of the game we play right now and there's one major reason why: Montezuma.

This fucker is just sitting there and waiting for us to end our defensive pact with to Kahn so he can pounce on us. And, if we attack Alexander, I'm almost 100% positive that is how it will go down. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't go to war, just that I'm starting to wonder if he shouldn't be the one we tango with.

Everyone in the world is pretty extreme now so far as diplomacy goes. The English and Germans Are friendly with each other but displeased with everyone else (besides us) and the Mongols, Aztecs and Greeks are all friends.

Hence, if we were to attack the Aztecs, we could convince the Anglo-german alliance to join in (plus they're on the same continent, so they'll participate quite a bit) and dealing with Alexander (who'll surely join in against us) on the side would be a lot easier than doing so with Montezuma, should we start with Alexander.

As far as research goes, I would be of the mind that after combustion, industrialism (Navy Seals ahoy!) should be our next target, on our way to Fiber Optics and the Internet. According to my calculations, we should be able to get the fiber optics tech in 30 turns with research at 90%, which we are now able to do with only a very small loss of funds per turn (between 5 and 10). Getting the internet will gift us with all those techs that we don't yet have and need for the Space Race victory, should it ever come down to that, and it will most likely give us access to most missing military units at the same time.

Also, combustion, which we are one turn off from learning, will allow us to build a mighty armada to ferry our Navy Seals and tanks across the small channel that separates us from Montezuma. This means we can get to it much faster and control our flow of troops into foreign lands much easier than if we attack Alexander. The Kahn will idly sit by during all this, which is what he will do anyway unless we attack him directly.

Originally Posted by Zergrinch

Why don't you ask Khan to help you pwn Alexander as well

We tried that, but he seems to be too prominent a member of the Man-Boy Love Association to ever attack its founder.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

My only issue with shooting for the Internet is that it is 2000 (1000 w/ our Copper) to make. I think the best town we have right now is like 25? resources / turn, which is still going to put it 40 turns past Fiber Optics (maybe 30 w/ specialists or bad estimate), and you can't rush Projects. I'm cool w/ having a city working on it, I just want to optimize our parallel efforts, and if our best city's doing it, then that city's not upgrading or making troops.

A Navy Seal / Tank / Artillery mix is probably the best we can hope for at this point, since Modern Armor and Mech Infantry are a ways out. I would like Airports though, as the ability to paradrop is a huge bonus on late-game fights, and Flight is so close.

On the choice of combats, we may be hosed either way. Alexander is so low on happiness, that him jumping us is about as likely as Montezuma doing it. Neither has a defensive pact with Khan, and both have Open Borders with him. This based on my diplomacy last I saw it. Not sure what our massive shift in Civics has done.

Khan will probably fight with us on both options, since he's like +20 the last time I checked. We also have Open Borders with both him, and with Fred/Liz, so no issue there for landing troops. Montezuma might be a reasonable choice, since if Alexander opens war, Khan will be right there to screw him. However, Alexander's also wimpier, and I worry about Khan getting his cities, whereas Montezuma might actually be a fight.

Also, hooray that Eretria finally saw the light! and double hooray for 90% research!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

You have a defensive pact with the Khan. Can you provoke Alexander or Montezuma to declare war on you first? :P

There's nowhere I can't reach.

When Pang has a chance to take his turns, he could try making all kinds of crazy tribute demands from one or the other. That should be worth a -1 or 2. Could always go piss on their lawn too. Honestly, I thought stealing two of Alexander's cities might be enough to up the "Border Tensions" negative to WAR levels.

How ya doing, buddy?

Actually, just demanding something from them over and over again will make their hate for us shoot up by -10. However, I'm not sure if that would even be enough to get them to attack us, as they'll probably cower before the might of our forces united with those of the Kahn. It might not hurt to try anyway, since we're not planning on peacefully winning this thing.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

You probably have to have war plans beforehand, because you won't be winning any popularity contests. And I think you don't have diplomacy victory deactivated. Once the UN is built, your good friend Khan is most likely to vote for himself than for you

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well, in fact it is deactivated, so we won't have to worry about that very much. In fact the only victory conditions that are open are: Domination, Conquest and Space Race.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Actually, it doesn't seem like we're all that unpopular. We've got three of the five AI's in our camp right now, which isn't a bad ratio with how this game can go. Khan is super friendly, and Liz and Fred are both semi-friendly. (I believe "cautious" on both, although I covered up Liz) We've had trade relations with most of the people at some point except for Montezuma I think, which has helped.

Also, I had no idea that tribute could go that far. I figured if you just did it over and over there was some relatively low cap on anger. You may be right though. They'd be looking at a fight with the two largest world powers at once. Montezuma might be the most likely to try for it, since he's on a different continent, although I don't know if they use logic like that.

FELIPE NO

Our military is not quite what it could be and our funding (while considerable) isn't up to outfitting us for a war with a major player just yet. For the time being I begin moving our limited array of semi-modern units toward Oxford in a planned amphibious assault. It's not the best-located city by any means but it should be laughably easy to seize.

While the prevailing attitudes seem to be drifting toward war I hedge our bets and pick up the last few techs we'll need to escape our Earthly cradle: Industrialism, Artillery, and of course Rocketry. Happily Industrialism reveals Aluminum within our borders and the workers immediately rush to link it up.

Seeing Frederick as hardly any kind of significant threat, I make a couple of somewhat-lopsided tech trades with him. As has been pointed out, Internet is kind of in the far future for us if ever so I thought it wise to begin nabbing forgotten techs here and there.

We can begin Apollo within 2 turns, and — provided we avoid getting into any wars we can't win — we should have this thing in the bag. Probably advisable to continue beefing defences where possible while Apollo is under construction just to discourage any... opportunism from our neighbours.

http://www.saxypunch.com/miscimg/ML2....Civ4SavedGame

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?