[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and Q Eat 'Em for Breakfast!

[Cornflakes]

My point was elephants against maces are 8 str v 8 str ... Maces against maces are 8 str v 8 str (+50% for each side cancels out). Jowy might as well build elephants because they're 60 hammers as opposed to maces which cost 70. Maces won't help much because they won't target AT's pikes (which are the weakness of the elephant). On defense inside a city they'll be a bit better, but if he's defending inside a city he should probably go for Longbows or Crossbows.

[NobleHelium]

You mean you didn't read the part of Cornflakes's post that mentioned elephants.

[Qgqqqqq]

Do eles get a bonus against melee?

[Cornflakes]

Do eles get a bonus against melee?

Not naturally, but since they get +2XP from Stables they are eligible for 2 promos (shock), whereas Maces generally only get one (and can't get Formation until the 3rd).

[Cornflakes]

Ok, on to something productive. Would it be worth delaying Taj a turn or two for saving gold? Mercantilism is worthwhile because war with 2metra will drop half our trade routes, and maybe even cut off trade to Jowy (I'm assuming AT will cancel OB as soon as he can ... I "forced" him to sign it as part of a tech trade a few turns ago). Depending on the outcome of the Commodore and 2metra war we'll have to evaluate which is a better target in 15 turns.

[Cornflakes]

In all my years of playing Civ 4 I have never ever used drafting ... ever. This is part of the reason ok, the main reason, I've been skeptical about swapping to Nationhood. "Old dogs don't learn new tricks." Vassalage/Theocracy would allow us to get 3 promo maces/muskets and 2 promo galleys (4-move) from Porcupine. Alternating Mace/Galley/Mace/Caravel we have enough production at Porcupine to put out an endless string of 1-turn units. With the fast galleys and Amphibious maces we have ourselves an elite and highly mobile strike force that can dash in to the weakest point and ferry a ton of units over quickly. Couple this with some planning ahead and targeted EP spending ... incite city revolt to remove city defenses.

I think our civics exiting this GA should be: HR/Vassalage/Slavery/Mercantilism/Theocracy. Yes we loose the +25% for building production, but units are the main thing. Slavery over Caste still at this point because of the half dozen new cities coming in Azzaland and the Banks/Jails that I want in the core. Banks/Jails probably just at Grand Slam, Postos, Mars, and Volcano since those are our 4 commerce giants. But none of those cities have the hammer capacity to put infrastructure up in anything like a timely fashion. Markets maybe?

[Qgqqqqq]

Whats our tech rate?
I dont think vassalage is worth it - one of the awesome things about nationhood is no upkeep, which likely saves on its own.
Also, I don't think its worthwhile for just one case.

Caste>slavery IMO, we just need to try and end the GA with those slaved. I don't think we'll reach jails.
It may be worth waiting a turn on Nationalism, in which case take the cities off wealth!

[Cornflakes]

I will research Nationalism as planned, getting it in 2 turns. We need the option to build Taj (and probably should just do so immediately to be certain).

Nationalism saves ~20 gpt for civics IIRC. Vassalage and Bureaucracy are the same cost, but Vassalage reduces unit costs (or so it claims ... I really have no idea how the mechanic works in practice).

Judging its usefulness based upon the number of cases (one) is not correct unless you take into account the usefulness of that one case. Amphibious will increase our odds of attack from about 15% to about 50% (assuming incite revolt in both cases) ... meaning we can expect to take the city with 1/3 the amount of losses. Say we want to make a dash for a "backlines" city of Commodore that has 4 units inside. With Amphibious we could hope to take it with 4 galleys of 2 units each. Without Amphibious we'd need 12 galleys!

When fighting humans at tech equality it's even more important to be creative on the attack, and promotions for Nav 1 and Amphibious open up more options. Against AI (or a human with inferior tech) you draft a massive army and walk the SoD through. Against Azza we have about 20 maces and 7 axes facing his 3 maces and 7 praets, and I'm still worried he'll decimate our army with collateral and wipe us out. Yet we've managed to take 2 (plus a 3rd this turn) of his cities because we DIDN't just march our stack at him ... we got creative and marched around him, while cutting the road in between with our spy.

[Cornflakes]

Caste>slavery IMO, we just need to try and end the GA with those slaved. I don't think we'll reach jails.
It may be worth waiting a turn on Nationalism, in which case take the cities off wealth!

Problem with slaving banks first is that we'd need to get banking with 2 turns remaining in the GA, one to put at least a hammer into the bank, and the second to whip before swapping out. At out current tech rate I don't think we can get Guilds > Banking even at 100% burn. I'll check when I log in tomorrow.

Swap off wealth to ... what? In cities that make just a few hpt's it's not worth dribbling a few hammers here and there into a unit that might never be completed, or a market that'll have to be slaved anyway. At the big hammer cities, Blimp doesn't want to start Parthenon until we get Marble, which won't happen until we decide to build Taj. I think go for Taj ASAP and hope some rivals trade us gold for Nationalism in hopes of landing Taj themselves.

[Qgqqqqq]

Swap off wealth to:
Capital off already
Doughnut either a market or a worker - it has 13hpt so thats not insignificant.
Porcupine galley or finish the mace
Volcano - dump overflow into lighthouse, 1hpt after that
Potos is off (and btw should pick up a cottage from the cap next turn)
Mars dribble into courthouse (and with mine finishing this turn (?) and a engineer its no small dribble)
Pork chop dribbles into courthouse (saving a turn on whipping) Edit: IMPORTANT: get an ikhanda here before we start drafting (i.e. ASAP)
Blimp wants a lighthouse ASAP (and can get it in 2 turns)
Sheep wants a courthouse, then spies to watch the war/sit in metra land
Paradigm wants to drop the mine for a farm (and only needs to do so for a turn), and build a courthouse
Google wants to work the corn and not the plains forest (? I presume it was building culture and popped this turn)
Jobs should switch which hammer tile it drops for the lake next turn BTW (watch out for the barb)
This has let me see two themes - we need a LOT more workers, and we need courthouses.
Also, our core isn't THAT hammer starved. Our worst is Potos, but it can make a base 5hpt (7.5hpt adjusted), and is about to recieve a bunch of workshops.
The rest can switch the mines/engineers/cow round to get a decent hpt.
Also, do we want banks everywhere? They're very expensive...
Wait till end of GA to leave OR btw.
My conclusion is that we're not in a massive rush - I'd be happy to abandon the wealth builds if it costs us a turn - TT is gunning for lib, and the rest are only now starting techs.

We save 4gpt for nationhood over vassalage - pennys but worth considering.
With Nationhood we will be making an extra 80hpt from Pork chop drafting, as well as what we make from other cities.
Commodore isn't going to let that past him, and we're only 5xp from another GG (though you may have factored that in...in which case, why bother? We're aiming for knights by the end of the GA, and those will get 3 promos without vassalage).
Other then that city we don't want units for a good while, so I think NH>Vassalage, and I still am not sure on Theocracy>OR.