13-11-2002 05:37									#1
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Well here is our forum for our team. I made this thread so we can disscuss the tatics and strategy we will use in the PTW democracy game.

	13-11-2002 18:36									#2
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I think we can safely assume a few things.....

- War will come, and it will be fast, bloody and hard.
- We are not going to be able to trust any team. Maybe the RP team will be more trustworthy than most but don't count on it.
- I think its fair to say that we are going to be on a continent with a few other civs (from experience)
- Early expansion is going to be vital, more important than infrastructure in the early game IMO.
- It is unlikely that we will be able to trade with any of our neightbours (be they Human) for vital resources.

Given all of these I think we stand a good chance if we can defend ourselves. With a good bit of lukc we will be close to some AI civs which we can conquer more easily, because in order to win we ARE going to have to take the offensive whenever we can afford to.

Since the early game is going to be the most important, in that what we do in the first 50 odd turns is going to be the base for our whole game, I suggest that we start a new game, just single player and everyone plays their own style for 100 turns say and then we compare. See where we went wrong and see what works. In this we can formulate a strategy and give everyone a bit of experience with Our civ, the difficulty level etc.

(Of course we need a decision on the civ first!)

D

	13-11-2002 22:00									#3
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Our diplomatic strategy will have to be very subtle if we don't want the other teams to gang up on us at the beginning.

Sun Tzu said the general who underestimates his oppenent is led to make mistakes he'll otherwise not make. Based on this, even if we are strong, we must look weaker than the opponent in the early game.

However, if we look too weak, the others will declare war to us without thinking, and this might end in a wide alliance against us (everyone will want to get bits from our dying empire before the others). That would be our doom. We must be perfectly clear to the other Civs that, albeit builders, we could be a real annoyance if they decide to attack us.

Also, we should make the cost to war against us more important than the hoped profits. For other teams, peace with us must mean :
- complete safety of a border. Never betray another Civ, except if they are the last one standing
- good deals, and cheap luxuries. So that acquiring luxuries isn't a reason to go to war
- gifts when it's fit. Gold per turn can really help acquiring peace, if other teams become dependent of our money. Of course, getting something (tech mostly) from this GPT will be more intelligent

Furthermore, we should always use third-parties wars to make our bargaining position stronger. Say the TTA are extremely agressive in a bargaining (assuming tey want to extort all our gold before attacking), we must make them aware that a war against us will last more than 3 turns, and that Trip's team will profit from the occasion to attack the big TTA threat. If needed, ask Trip's team to join the brawl.

Don't hesitate to give luxuries to two rival Civs warring against each other (later in the game) : the less they suffer from War weariness, the more they'll fight among each other without building infrastructure, the more upwards we'll go.

Ah, and of course, never trade strategic resources to rivals, unless the Roleplayers figure themselves as honorable.

	13-11-2002 23:01									#4
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The early years of the game will definately be the most critical, and much of that depends on who our neighbors end up being. As redstar said, with some luck we may be near an AI opponent we can take advantage of, but we can't count on that. Furthermore, if there is an AI opponent, odds are that one of our more war-like neighbors will also try to make some gains off of them. In that instance, we must be ready to capatilize on the situation, but not too much.

As Spiffor says, we must be strong without looking strong. If we take too much from the AI, we will have shown our hand. I think the secret will be in discreet gains from short wars, clever diplomacy, and all the while a constant strenghthening of infrastructure.

Defenses will definately be key, as we must make it more worthwhile to deal with us than to fight us. By being reasonable and trustworthy (and well defended) trade partners, we lessen the chance that someone will attack us outright over a resource. I also have a feeling that we may become a tech dealer as well, as others may be too caught up in war to devote the proper resources to development.

I also think that redstar's suggestion about playing a sample 100 turns is a good thought. I haven't played with the Carth yet at all, so I need to learn their strenghts and weaknesses.

	13-11-2002 23:10									#5
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On the subjet of government, I think we've had some good ideas set down already.

President: In charge of taking turns, authority to make split-second decisions in the abscence of appropriate parties.

Minister of Defense: Control of military units, war planning.

Minister of Labor: Control of all worker functions, movement. Development of lands, road network, etc.

Minister of the Interior: Controls city production. Selects locations for new cities.

Budget Minister: Slider control, fiscal policy. Also controls research selections.

Miscellaneous positions---

Ambassador: I like the idea that Spiffor proposed of each person being an assigned diplomat to a specific other civilization. I think this will allow the ambassador to develop a good rapport as well as a good sense of their specific team.

Press Secretary: In charge of crafting press releases for public consumption. These will be read by the other teams, of course, so they must not give away any strategic info. However, that is not to say that they cannot contain disinformation...

So, there are my thoughts on the subject. I believe we unanimously decided that Jack will be the first President. I have expressed interest in being the first Minster of the Interior, and I believe redstar mention an interest in being Minister of Defense (correct me if I'm wrong.). I would also not mind taking up the responsibility of being Press Secretary.

	13-11-2002 23:40									#6
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quote: Originally posted by ZargonX Ambassador: I like the idea that Spiffor proposed of each person being an assigned diplomat to a specific other civilization. I think this will allow the ambassador to develop a good rapport as well as a good sense of their specific team.

I seem to recall it was my idea

hehe no matter

Some good ideas here lads, looks like our membership might increase a bit as well, which is a good thing. Means that theres more chance of us being able to make decisions on the fly that most people agree with. Lets hope we don't have to do that too often though.

	14-11-2002 00:08									#7
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quote: Originally posted by redstar1 I seem to recall it was my idea

Oops, sorry redstar! That's what I get for not double-checking my sources...

	14-11-2002 04:23									#8
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I said I might be interested in being minister of defense, because I feared everybody wanted to be chief diplomat If anyone else is interested with the post, I'd gladly oblige. I could be interested being budget minister, and use all my experience as former Minister of the Economy in the SP DemoGame.

	14-11-2002 10:33									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

you guys got a lot of good ideas. We also have to make sure our city placement is good. If we place our cities the right way we can get the most out of the land and have more cities close to the capital and thus less corruption. I also think trying to get alliance to help ouselfs will be a good idea. Really though I dont like the idea of just giving gold to people for free, they will think they can push around and get gold or whatever else they want by just demanding it.

	14-11-2002 11:30									#10
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No, I don't think we should give in to demands under any circumstances, really. While the AI might make a demand, once you give in to it, they'll back off. However, i wouldn't trust a human player as far as I could throw them. With the exception of the RP team, I don't think any of the teams can be expected to be outwardly trustworthy. What's better, just going to war with someone, or making them give you some gold beforehand, and then invading them? We may not be warmongers, but that doesn't mean we will be pushovers.

	14-11-2002 12:02									#11
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ZargonX : absolutely
When I was talking about giving them money, I didn't mean giving in to demands (the AI is relatively trustworthy when you give in, not the humans). What I meant was "giving" (rather, offering good deals for them) money to make the relative cost of a war against us even higher.

If we want peace to establish our builder's policies, we must let the others know that peace with us is far more profitable than war. Taht's also why I feel much more generous with Gpt than lump sum. Never give lump sum to a human.

	14-11-2002 15:47									#12
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I can offer to be Labor minister (gotta love those little workers) or Defense minister if Spiffor prefers something else. Though I must say that being defense minister in this team must be something as up-hill as being infrastructure minister in a warmonger team

One more thought. Not only we need to properly defend our cities, but also our settler convoys, our workers and our tile improvements. We will see a great deal of people trying to pillage our roads and so, we are likely to have more than the other guys.

	14-11-2002 23:32									#13
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Ok, so if I have everything straight so far, this is how the applicants for each post stand-

President: Jack
Minister of Defense: Spiffor, aliatar
Interior Minister: ZargonX
Minister of Labor: aliatar
Budget Minister: Spiffor

Press Sec: ZargonX

redstar, I didn't see what posts you were intersted in anywhere. Did you have a preference?

	14-11-2002 23:34									#14
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Also, on the subject of strategic affairs, I think we should start to flesh out our early game strategy. Granted, much of it will be influenced by our starting position, but we can set some over-arching goals for oursevles in the meantime.

For example, do we want to bee-line for a certain tech? Do we want to try and have a set number of cities by a certain point? Or do we want to work on securing our borders for later expansion? Let's discuss, shall we?

	15-11-2002 02:56									#15
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I don't really have a preference to be honest. Foreign Sec would be nice but pointless at this stage! hehe

As for strategy, my opinion is that we should be working towards Monarchy but expanding into new territory as fast as we can afford to. We are going to need a reasonable sized core empire if we are to compete. I would say 6 cities would be a good aim. Including at least one port and trying to encompass a variety of terrains eg desert for saltpeter etc.

	15-11-2002 13:22									#16
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I second expanding as fast as possible. We must build settlers as often as possible in the early game, even if it means they are poorly defended (say, a city can only produce a warrior and a settler every 20 turns, then the settler is only defended by this one warrior).
I support mining 2 tiles near our capital, so that we'd be able to churn out good units to protect our settlers, and more warriors to explore our surroundings.
Once it has been done, our worker(s) should primarily build roads between our cities, and connect goods if possible. I'm against wasting workers to build colonies, except if the situation is extremely urgent.
I support buying workers from AI civs whenever possible. The AI sells its workers for 27 gold (at least in regular Civ3), and they can work in cities as efficiently as native Legolians.

Should we play Carthage, Bronze working should be the first tech to be researched. As we might meet other teams rather than AIs, we risk not to be able to trade for it, so we must have a fairly high research rate (maybe even 100%).
Once we have Bronze working, beeing towards monarchy is a good idea. Masonry and Alphabet are good techs, and we should be able to trade them for Ceremonial burial and warrior code, that the opponent is likely to deem less "sensible" than Bronze working.

Monarchy is a good regime IMO, because it can be discovered fairly quickly, and will allow us to be at war (which will happen without a doubt)

We should build cities relatively close to each other. Since we lack religious trait if we play Carthage, building temples will be much, much more difficult than in religious (we'd have to whip much more people to rush it). So, we must try to avoid too big holes in our borders.

I only endorse going to early war against a relatively weak AI. We should avoid declaring war to any other team, even if it's dying and the loot is attractive : my idea of diplomacy is centered around our "peacemongering" reputation.

	15-11-2002 14:20									#17
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I agree with what Spiffor says....

I also think that we are going to have to treat Player civs and AI civs entirely differently. AI civs are to an extend less predictable than human ones (if the Civ3 DG is anything to go by). We can expect human civs to progress with a degree of planning and because it is a game and in everyones interest of fun we can expect a deterioration in diplomacy (albeit deliberate) before a war. We are going to know its coming. This isn't necessarily true of the AI civs and so I think we should be looking to expand early, hopefully at the expense of the AI.

Dealing with 4 other human civs is going to be bad enough without worrying about the wildcard AI becoming too powerful.

	15-11-2002 16:34									#18
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Unfortunately in PTW the AI asks for much more in exchange for its workers

Another thing we might want to think about is that we could need a mobile defense force to go and protect isolated workers or settlers with limited escort. We depend on getting the wheel hopefully from the AI. We also need some counterattack troops to finish up mobile units that come to attack us.

	15-11-2002 16:42									#19
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Then we take them

Early on I don't think the AI will have much of a military to pose a threat so if we have a couple of fast units and steal workers we should be ok....

	16-11-2002 04:33									#20
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I am a fan of early mass exploration with whatever cheap unit I have available, and I find that if I run into an AI civ fairly quickly, snagging their free-roaming worker is a great way to cripple them for the first section of the game. Free labor for us, no labor for them.

I think a good base of at least 4 cities, optimily 6, is definately what we should be shooting four. As has been said, a good trade network needs to be established right off the bat, and temples should be a key priority to firm up our borders.

When I play single player, I usually follow this pattern for a new city: defensive unit, worker, temple, barracks. This works well for me, but what do the rest of you do?

	16-11-2002 05:33									#21
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Because of the Industrious trait, I tend to have rather less workers in the early game than other players... I build settlers agressively, because I wouldn't mind an 8 cities sized empire...

	17-11-2002 06:44									#22
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I really don't think that we should steal workers form other teams because once a warmongering team gits knights they might want thier workers back!