[Spoilers] Ichabod's spoiler thread

[Banzailizard]

Maybe the best thing would be to do some calculations? See when he short vs long term strategy's are equal to get an idea of how much snowballing the southern site gives?

[Banzailizard]

Its been about a week, what is the news?

[Ichabod]

I'm back, with a question for the lurkers.

I have a city state showing me an undefended builder. Can I take it? The rules say that pillage farming is not allowed, but it doesn't say anything about stealing builders.

It's a really nice situation, since I don't have envoys in the CS and the quest isn't immediately helpful, so I don't mind losing it.

I promise to give an update of the situation tomorrow.

[MJW (ya that one)]

There was a single post were Woden complained about killing traders but that doesn't cut it. It might piss of Woden if you take it because builder is about equal to trader. Because your a friendly person I suggest posting in the lurker thread; if you were a bad boy I would farm builders until called out on it.

[Banzailizard]

I think it violates the spirit of the rule if not the letter. On the other hand, if you intend to conquer the city state soon anyways and stay at war with it the whole time, that seems less objectionable. You could always ask in the main thread.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I thought about it and builders=traders so this isn't allowed if you consider woden's trader post. His rule is about not farming city-states. My rule is to prevent you from pulling stuff from ether like double-working tiles and Emsworth agreements. The key is that repairing doesn't cost builder charges so the stuff is coming from nowhere.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, the rule seems to want to be 'don't war dec a city state unless you aim to capture the city in the next few turns'. It could do with being less vague though.

[Ichabod]

I owe you guys an update, so I’ll be giving several today. This is the last turn of the Ancient Era, next turn it’s time to make a dedication, so it’s a good time to report and try to get this thread back into its trails.

I’m sorry about the long time without updates. I had some bad spells due to quarantine restrictions and I had to sort out some other life priorities first. It has been a very stressful period, even though I’m in a very privileged position in my country’s society. Guess I’m far from a stoic person.

Anyway, back to the game and interesting things.

The big news is that, this turn, the last turn we could afford to, I finally reached the 25 points necessary to get a GA in the next age. It was definitely a bumpy road, as I think I had 1 point 20 turns into the game. The final breakdown of the points were:

+1 point for discovery of Lake Retba, a Natural Wonder.
+1 point for meeting Carthage (Woden)
+3 from settling a city near Lake Retba.
+3 from a high adjacency Holy Site.
+1 from discovery of PP.
+2 from adopting Oligarchy.
+1 from Pantheon.
+2 from suzerainty of La Venta.
+3 from the first naval unit of the game.
+10 from barb camps!
For a total of 27 points.

As you can see, I didn’t get those easy +4 or +5 moments for being the first to discover a new continent or things like that. For a moment, I thought I would be just shy of the 25 points, because I mistakenly thought that the Military Tradition civic gave an envoy. I thought I needed that for a second suzerainty, which would award the last 2 points. Then, I found an almost dead barb camp near a CS with an exploring warrior, which lucked me into the needed +2 points. In the end, though, it wasn’t needed, as my galley was the first one in the world, and that gives +3, instead of +2 from your first one.

Analyzing my points, you can also kind of see my strategy. I was badmouthing religion for most of the early game discussion and suddenly, I’m building Holy Sites. Well, there was an update in the game in this meantime, which changed some things. The most important was that Wok Ethic went from +1% production from each follower (max +15%), which is pretty bad, to giving production equal to your Holy Site adjacency.

Well, Brazil has very easy adjacency bonuses and there’s a pantheon that gives +1 faith for rainforest adjacency. Also, the card that doubles HS adjacency comes very early in the civic tree. 

Everything clicked when I found a city spot that would give a +10 HS with the rainforest pantheon (before the +100% adjacency card). That is just too big of a bonus to pass, in my opinion. It’s an immediate bonus to religion, with a great payoff window and useful for the whole game.

Anyway, I’m going for a religion, with my sights on Work Ethic. No one has a HS yet and choosing Work Ethic with a Stonehenge prophet is pretty bad, since you have no HS’s to get a bonus from. I have 2 HS’s, with +5 (Capital) and +10 adjacency. +15 hammers is a pretty good bonus for this early in the game, right? Well, make it +30 hammers with the adjacency card (which will be online pretty much at the same time as my religion). And my 4th city is currently building a +7 HS, which will be +14 with the card. That’s 44 hammers, which is more than all my cities combined, from a single belief. I don’t think there’s anything my opponents can do to have a similar bonus.

But that’s not all. We also get the faith for the monumentality dedication (which allows us to buy settlers and builders with faith). And, we get to choose a second belief (more about that in a second). The rest of the path writes itself: build 2 temples and quickly go into Monarchy for a 6-card government (I will get there looong before any opponent gets to Merchant Republic, which I guess people will go for), build good districts with my powerful hammer output… 

So, what about the second belief? There are some interesting ones in the Founder beliefs (those are all new):

*World church: +1 culture for every 4 followers.
*Cross cultural dialogue: +1 science for every 4 followers.
*Tithe: +3 gold for each city following the religion.

Culture and science are better than gold, and the new beliefs count the followers in your own civilization. But followers are slow to come by, because I don’t see very tall cities in MP. I think the gold bonus is more straightforward and easier to come by, so I’m leaning in that direction. But I’d appreciate any inputs.

There’s also the + strength beliefs. Right now, I would pick the economy ones over them, and try to get them from an enhancement later. Considering my direct neighbor Woden doesn’t seem interested in getting a religion, I think Conquest can end up being better than DotF, since I believe I’ll have his cities converted sooner or later. So, I’m in no rush to get DotF and, if I end up losing it, I’m not that worried. Regarding the religious buildings, I have no idea. +2 science seems best, but +2 food +1 housing or +1 amenity seems fine as well.

Funnily enough, one of the science CS’s near our Civ has a suzerainty bonus that gives +20 science for population in cities converted to your religion by a religious unit. That will actually be useful for us to get some free science boosts. I’m up to +2 envoys and I don’t think anyone will challenge me for this suzerain bonus.

That’s basically my strategy going forward, investing in this broken belief that is Work Ethic. At least for this map and considering my Civ, it will have amazing payoffs. It’s just perfect: very low investment (just the HS, no need for shrines and temples like Choral Music) and highly synergistic with the best use of faith, that is monumentality (not competing for faith, like Jesuit Education). I’m really excited to get this going (right now, I have 18/60 in the Great Prophet, getting +4 per turn and with a HS project due in 4 turns). This is not a 50 turns from now strategy, I’ll be getting the mentioned +30 production in 5-10 turns, with +44 soon after that. And it’s pretty easy to get high adjacency HS’s with Brazil. I just need 2 rainforests for a +8 production HS.

Don’t worry, I’ll post screenshots soon enough.

[Ichabod]

   

My first, second and 4th city. The 4th city is pretty new. I pondered about going a bit further north, where there's a lot of resources. But the chosen spot has a great HS (+7) and Campus (+5) spots and fairly decent non-improved tiles. The city further north can come once I get the free builder from the Ancestral Hall. I felt I needed a city closer to home, since I'm currently in a low military phase. Priority is get the city to size 4 for the extra district and finish the HS as soon as possible.

As you can see, I'm building the GP in the second city. I don't want it in the Capital, because I don't want to lose population by building settlers in the Capital (and I don't want to run Magnus there, because that means losing Pingala). Considering my strategy, the Ancestral Hall will use the free builder way more than the 50% settler bonus, as I'll be buying settlers with faith.

My only governor now is Pingala, with the culture promotion. The next promotion will go for Pingala as well, the science one.

   

My 3rd city, which has the +10 HS. I just started the wall to make Woden less likely to want to attack me (he can see the graph). I changed it to an archer before ending the turn. The archer will be useful for defense and for a potential gambit. There's easy +4 campus and +4 TS here.

   
   

Woden and La Venta. Woden went a different route. He stayed in 2 cities until he built the Ancestral Hall. It makes a bit more sense for him, since Carthage get bonuses for the GP (trade routes), but in my SP games, I usually feel that waiting for AH to get settlers is too slow. He has 2 governors, so I'm guessing science Pingala and settler promotion Magnus (?). His terrain is very production focused, while mine is more food focused. He has 2 Cothons and the GP already. He recently started getting horses, no iron yet.

I think I'll surge ahead of Woden economic wise once I get Work Ethic. I can't see a way for him to bridge that gap. I would be pretty vulnerable if he decided to attack with horses (I'm perhaps a bit far from swords or horsemen). But he recently spent 220 gold in TR's, so I guess he is not looking for a fight. I'm selling him spices for 2 gpt, as an extra deterrent.

But the huge geopolitical gamble I made was suzeraining La Venta (which I needed for the GA points). The CS has a pretty decent army, right in Woden's doortstep. And I have enough gold to levy LV military. Depending on what happens next, the movement of the CS army, I may end up levying them and attacking Woden's 3rd city of Rohan. The next turns will be interesting in that regard. Woden city has 10 base strength, he's still a bit far from Horseman, he has very low gold and I doubt he's building a boat that would increase the strength. If LV brings the archer a bit forward, I may try to do a quick strike against Woden. If I capture Rohan, he loses his current access to horses, which will make everything even harder for him (I could also employ Victor to hold the captured city).

But I don't need to do that. It would be just an opportunist attack. I have a lot of land to expand into. Belem was a big reach and I don't think Woden is aware of it. Once I have my religion online, that city will be so productive that capturing it will be basically impossible.

[Ichabod]

I'm still looking at building the ToA. I think housing and food in the Capital will be great, I want it to grow high, to get value from Pingala. My chosen placement would also give +4 amenities. It won't come in time for the Build a Wonder inspiration, because I don't want to delay that (which would delay the HS adjacency card).

I vaguely tried to get District discounts, so my techs are all over the place. I have a whole bunch of 1-turn away techs.