Disbanding is waste.
Paying 2gpt unit support for outdated slow units is even more waste.
We can get 59sh into Sabratha by the next turn, saving then 18gpt.
Then I think we could really afford to upgrade horses to knights, while still rushing an aqueduct. The knights will be enough to do war on Persia.
The slow units are ineffective, when we have knights. They probably don't see any battles.
And there are still a few elites looking for the few opportunities for slow units.

Do not disband them :hammer: them on Persia, we will lose some of them anyways. Disbanding is waste.

Of course. Arbela is only three squares from our front line, it's now the Persian capital, and it's on a hill. It would be far better to attack a dangerous objective like this with a large stack of dispensable units than with the valuable knights for which we've waited so long. And after that the survivors will probably be able to take Susa as well.

But I notice that WOA is online, so this may be just another addition to our impressive total of futile cross-posts.... :lol:

We can make already more than one knight per turn in our 4 strong cities combined.
At the same time we cannot afford many more units.
I don't think that we will need more than 10 knights for Persia and India together. Keeping all this outdated stuff is overkill. And it's better to get the shields by disbanding than just lose them.
We also want the chance to upgrade the knights to elite. So fighting should only be done by knights. I don't see how we could use many, going only against 2-defense units.

So fighting should only be done by knights. I don't see how we could use many, going only against 2-defense units.

This is an odd thing to hear from an experienced player. :confused: The random number generator can be very random indeed, especially when defenders fortified on hills are part of the picture. Also, offensives based on a small number of powerful units lose momentum quickly when the units have to heal--which is why knights don't speed things up nearly as much in practice as in theory, IMO. We want the knights we build now to serve us for the rest of the game, eventually as cavalry. So I'll say it again: why would we risk our knights in potentially difficult attacks against cities we can easily reach with units we can afford to lose?

I don't say we lose none, but we don't lose many. And BTW I don't see any town on hills in Persia or India.
And as I said we produce more than 1 per turn on average. This will go to about 2 per turn at some time.
We should lose as many as we build, because we cannot support more units.
I also think we will not upgrade many knights to cavalry. It will be easier by that time to build new ones, because the existing knights will be too far away.
And if the team members don't look to cut unit support cost we will anyways never reach MT.

That's rubbish, klarius. We're doing 87gpt atm without research and I have played quite a few games with much worse income. When you balance around zero income because of unit-upkeep, that's a different story. But we are not even close to that.

And disbanding units because they cost a few gold isn't a valid reason in my book, not until we actually have a problem with our income, there shouldn't be any disbandment. They serve better as cannon-fodder. Surviving units can be used for that in Sabratha later, when we dealt with Persia and India.

As soon as they are gone we can look over the situation and go for cavs at best possible pace. Knights will do well right now, especially when we deal with Vikings and Celts.

With 21 spt, our capital produces 63 in 3 turns, 7 short for a knight.
This knight in production now can't be helped anymore, it will take 4 turns.
Rushbuying a 30 shield object after 1 turn, then swiching back to knight will save 1 turn (worth 21 shields) for rushing 9 shields.

Theveste has 18 spt, 28*4 = 72, perfect, virtually nothing wasted.
Same for Utica.


Sabratha builds an aquaduct. I want to rush it, but i choose not to do so yet because i need to have a little cash in order to be able to take trade opportunities as they arise.
I will probably rush it a bit later though.

I count the units on the Persian Island and decide it is time to attack and whipe out those Persians.
I gather the forces and move past their borders. I spread the forces on the island in 3 groups of 7 units and cross their borders. Each group should be able to take a city within a few turns.

We have quite some units already at this island. I won't need many more knights there, so i will move most ships to our east coast.

IBT: sword killed by Immortal.

Turn1:
Knights take out 2 immortals and capture a settler.
New Rome night is loaded on ship.

Turn2:
Arbella is razed without losses. 2 more slaves.
Antioch is razed without losses. 5 more slaves.
Leet Numidian attacks Immortal defending a settler and wins. Golden age, great leader and 2 more slaves. This is the most rewarding fight i ever did :)
I call our victorious unit "WeWillOwnTeamSmackster" and move the leader to Sabratha.

The wonder closest to being usefull i can think of to build for our Leader would be Leo's Workshop. With very few elites around atm, i don't hessitate to just let the leader wait out a bit more. I think we should trade Engineering when the Ottomans no longer have a monopoly on it. The research Invention ourselves.

Elite Galley losses when it tries to destroy a Persian galley.

The persians don't want to talk with me yet while i have 8 units standing ready to raze the next city next turn. I am gonna try getting their separate island city in peace though, i don't want to sail to that Island if not needed.

With Golden Age Carthage produces 34 spt, no opportunity to make it 35 will need to rush 6 shields for MDI to make knights in 2.
Utica and Theveste make 30 and 31 spt, they can also be bought to make knights in 2.
New Rome makes knights in 2 without help.

I rush the aquaduct for 320 gold.

Turn3:
Utica starts making some galleys now (1 per turn) with 2 knights every turn, we will need more transports.
Sabratha -> Library

Madras razed, 3 more slaves.
Susa razed at the cost of one horsemen, 1 more slave.
Knight takes down Persian settler spear team, 2 more slaves.

I create a scientist in New Rome, it removes all food surplus (no loss) and 3 commerce. This allows the lux slider to go down to 10, saving 23gpt.

Some of the AI on the other island have all but feudalism. They will certainly go research it now, so they will have it anyway before we reach them. I trade it to the Greeks for Engineering,128 gold and 6 gpt.\
I start research on Invention, due in 6 with -48gpt deficit (554 in the bank) This will alow rushing the workshop. I know it is only a few beakers of 5 turns, so by increasing it last turn, it can be 5.

Turn4:
I destroy in Indian Settler Archer pair, 2 more slaves.
I raze the Indian city on our island, 1 more slave.
I capture a pair of workers on Indian territory, 2 more slaves.

Turn5:
The Persians finally want to talk with me. They have one city they can give me, being the one the island, but a small force is already on its way to take it. Their capital is on the north side of the island, beyond the Indians. I don't sign peace for now.
Carthage rushbuilds the 6 shields needed to get its knight in 2 turns.

Turn6:
Delhi Razed, no losses but lots of redlined units. (including some retreated horses)

Turn7:
Bactra, the Persian Island city is razed. The worker we get is fortified on the island to scout there for new settlers comming.
Bangalore razed at the cost of one horse.
Lahore razed.
Carthage rushbuilds the 6 shields needed to get its knight in 2 turns.
Courthouse is rushed in Sabratha. Next turns Leo's will provide the needed culture, so lib has no priority.

IBT:
I wanted to sign peace to regroup, but the Indians wouldnt talk to us. Now they offer us peace themselves. I ask them to add 56 gold and Alliance against Persia.

Turn8:
Invention. research at 0 for a second, should be taken up soon again though. Just want to recover the gold situation a little (its good to always have some in stock for emergencies)
Leo's is rushed in Sabratha.

Turn9:
Sabratha -> marketplace.
Carthage rushbuilds the 6 shields needed to get its knight in 2 turns.

Turn10:
Time to restart war on India is near, i did not yet move the stack, but i think this is the moment to move in.


-A dozen units are already loaded for an invasion on the other continent, have fun there ! :)
-Preferably take stockholm while having another city nearby captured that turn so that the unhappiness moves there. Then gift back that city and raze it 20 turns later.
-When you attack Scandinavia, be SURE to Stockholm in peace nagotiations, failing that is failing conquest.
-The galley with 2 units near german border (these are the units that killed Persia from their island) can be moved towards stockholm. They can occupy the 1 tile island after we abandoned stockholm.
-slaves are being spread around to keep an eye on the ground we cleared to see when it gets resettled.
-Please keep microing the rushbuilds to build knights in 2 in Carthage.
-When attacking India, i did not expect to have so many horses remaining, they could be taken of the island and be upgraded to attack the other island but there are no boats available for transport. (We don't have leo's for nothing do we?)

All together, i think we can actually conquer the world fairly quickly. We produce 2 knights per turn and have 12 ready to invade. We make more than enough gold to pay the upkeep. I would estimate conquest in between 30 and 50 turns if things don't go too horribly wrong. Certainly with this GA, are we really powerfull and should exploit this power to the max. Just go and conquer this world. Going for conquest with knights as final unit even crosses my mind.
I think we should now discuss what exactly to attack. Although i kinda played with Scandinavia in mind (see the location of the galleys), Greece might be a better option for they are strongest and we do now have the power to strike them down.
Science i also took no decision on yet, i wanted to get some gold in cash again after burning it all on high research for invention, but now or soon research might be resumed again. Also did i start a marketplace, but it could be changed to library depending on this decision.

Dont underestimate the amount of galleys needed. If we attack scandinavia, we probably have enough now, if we attack Greece, some more should be produced though.
Note, Greece can be reached both by sailing east and by sailing west. If greece is decided upon, just see where you want to start.

I did not yet rush build the 10 shields for 2 turn knights in Theveste because it costs 30 gold, just as much as upgrading a horse to a knight which is more efficient. Only if we can move them off of that island though.

Oh and keep a very close eye on happiness. It is pretty much balancing on the edge now, war weariness might cause revolts in multiple cities if unnoticed.

I haven't looked at the save yet, but that sounds tremendous. :king:

I have had a quick glance at the save, it looks great. Who needs more than 5 cities? I have to deprogramme myself a bit from COTM5 before I can play though, and aim to play tommorrow night.

Some questions first so I don't spoil the plan:

Has there been a massive barb uprising due to the middle ages yet?
Do we have a preferred route to the other continent? I see a few empty galleys in mid sea and wondered if this was part of a masterplan.

I presume we just finish off persia and india now and attack whoever I want overseas.

Are we still researching? Don't we think we can end this with knights?

Looks good :goodjob: .

For the unhappiness in extorted cities there is an easy solution. Just gift republic before declaring war on scandinavia. They will revolt immediately and cannot pop-rush. Greeks, Babs, Ottos and Germans are anyways out of despotism for some time and shouldn't give any problems with that.

Greeks, Babs and Ottomans will be no push-overs. All have feudalism and some big cities.
In addition Greeks will already have many hoplites.
Babs have the Great Wall and maybe get Sun Tsu.
If done with knights, we will need big stacks for Athens and Babylon.

The massive uprising happened 30AD.

We can end this with knights, no reason to sit and wait for cavs now. Even IF some other civ learn Chivalry before we get to them, they won't stand a chance, we have the numbers.

The best approach right now is to gang up all civs on Greece, I think and simultaneously take a couple of Viking towns so we get that horrible one-tile island for peace. Drop off a worker or something on the island so noone else settles there. We have no embassies with Ottomans and Babs though.

Move a heap of knights to help to take out Greece and newcomers can take out everything on the Viking/Celt island. There are a couple of other islands as well that should go in this wave, don't forget to drop off a couple of knights for settler-killing here and there. We can afford it.

Secondary plan, just mow the civs down as we meet them, it probably will take a bit longer though.

Should we even bother about reputation now? We won't nothing from other civs, but to remove them ASAP.

City count:

Greece - 12
Babylon - 7
Ottomans - 6
Germany - 5
Celts - 5
Vikings - 4
India - 2
Persia - 1

Drop off a worker or something on the island so noone else settles there.

Yes. And if we can find the shipping, we should also cover the four-tile island on which we razed Bactra with workers, and possibly apply the same treatment to other islands later. There isn't too much else for all our slaves to do now, and it would be terrible to lose time at the end tracking down island cities.

Offa, since you ask, I certainly think we should just push forward and eliminate the Persians and the Indians. The Persian galley next to the ruins of Arbela might complicate the process a bit, if it contains a settler.

I'd say WOA has us set up to approach the main continent and its associated islands in the right way, from the west. I think we should fight our way through our lesser rivals and take the Greeks out last. My reasoning is that the only way we could be badly slowed down at this point is by making a lot of unpleasant knight-versus-Hoplite attacks. But if the Greek campaign comes last, it won't matter how much it depletes our army, as long as we win. Also, though opinions seem to vary on whether we're going to reach cavalry units, the Greeks are the one opponent against whom they might be needed.

None of this is an argument against involving the Greeks in some wars against their neighbours, if that looks like a good idea. But I don't think they should be our principal target yet.

Remember, our golden age will end in 12 turns. After that, our knight production is slowed down to 3 or 4 turns again.

I see basically 2 options now:
To research or not to research.

If we do research, and our GA ends, we will have huge upkeep to pay and our research will be slowed down. At this moment, in our golden age it would take 9 turns to get Gunpowder without running a deficit. with 3 more needed techs that are more expensive, your looking at 36 turns if our golden age would never end.
However, our golden age will end. Our commerce will drop 50 or so, which is 75 science/gold with markets and libs.
we currently make 161 gpt at 0 science. provided we keep our number of units stable from now, it would be 85 after GA. MT costs ~1700 science and will take 20 turns. Total research time to MT will be 60-65 turns.


The other option would be to take a little gamble and decide we are going to do this with knights. This allows us to burn all our money on knights. we should rush build production in every city for a 2 turn production during golden age, get those horses off of that island one way or another and upgrade them to knights. In this scenarario, we have all the gold to spend that we want, so building galleys in theveste would be efficient as we produce 1 galley per turn who will transport 2 horses who are to be upgraded to knights (very cheap due to leo)

Comparing those 2, the gold in the second method will allow us to upgrade those 8 horses, giving us 8 extra knights and it will enhance knight production speed a bit but not a huge amount by doing more rush builds.

If we do go all the way like this, i would recommend building 5 galleys in theveste (5 turns). Then gett those horses and the knights from that island just after they finished Persia and India where you should try losing swords rather than horses.(5 more turns) and sail to greece (another 5) This would provide us 10 extra knights at greek northern border in 15 turns. These could take out the strongest cities around there to weaken the greeks.

Meanwhile, the knights already loaded can take out the scandinavian island. And whipe out the weakest civs including scandinavia.

Also, during that time we will be producing over 2 knights per turn to land on the western side of that continent. Making that 30 knights in 15 turns.
This makes for a marvelous total of 50 knights attacking that continent within 15 turns. This alone should be enough to whipe out all forms of civilisation there.
As long as the AI's get chivalry, but not gunpowder, all they can do is cause us some losses, they cannot put us to a halt. If they have gunpowder however, that would cause serious problems. So don't let them get there. :)

So that is what i vote to do now.

I don't think we can cause many wars anymore. All they say is "We would never accept that offer" or whatever they say including never (also if for a test if its really never you give them feudalism)

I don't think we can cause many wars anymore. All they say is "We would never accept that offer" or whatever they say including never (also if for a test if its really never you give them feudalism)
You have to be at war with a civ first to sign a MA with another. It may cost a little gold then, but normally not very expensive. The backwards civs would do it for an outdated tech, but they are probably not very useful.

You have to be at war with a civ first to sign a MA with another. It may cost a little gold then, but normally not very expensive. The backwards civs would do it for an outdated tech, but they are probably not very useful.

Ah see, i am not so diplomatic, i didn't know those things :)

Meanwhile, the knights already loaded can take out the scandinavian island. And whipe out the weakest civs including scandinavia.

Don't wipe Vikings off the island, they must have one city left there so we can get the island town. Or else we can kiss this game goodbye.

I would completely stop research and use the cash for rushing. We won't need cavs to finish this.

It looks like the team favours the knight - no research course. For that we are in the wrong government. We should consider to revolt to monarchy after the GA.
We will need really large stacks for cities like Athens. Also a lot of galleys. Our unit count will be well over the break even for republic.
At the same time we will lose many units, so war weariness will kick in.

Another anarchy would cost us 4-8 turns of production and income. I am not sure it is worth it, but in hindsight we probably would have been better off with monarchy.

We should also consider to build a 2nd army if is possible to capture 3 towns in 1 turn - that would be a tremendous help.

I don't like the idea of switching government, but anyway such an action is unthinkable during our Golden Age, so will be someone else's call.

I intend to stop science as I favour a knight's conquest. We have an income of just over 2 knights a turn (which will decrease after golden age). This is marginal but worth a go. Are we planning to try resource disconnection at all: this seems feasible to me? Or do we shun this practice as well?

Knights are great, especially when the opponents don't have them. So they will do the trick.

There's no need for Monarchy, we will take a few cities from someone, demand a couple for peace and kill them off right away. When they're gone warweariness doesn't matter. Rinse and repeat. I don't care about keeping deals at this stage.

And in the unusual case it would matter, it can be dealt with by luxtax or even clowns. At the end of the game it is no biggie, if production at home is slowed down slightly.

In a couple of turnsets, we will see how fast we can get our stuff over there and how quickly we can get rid of them AI's. Another thing, when you fight on a decent sized island, the AI always tries to settle empty spots. Please don't waste turns and units on that particular spear with settler, not if you are moving in a certain direction. Slackers can deal with such things.

And btw, I threw in the idea of dealing with Greece first. It's a good tactic in some games, to pulverize the civ farthest away from you and the surviving units will backtrack and we have the rest of the civs in a vice.

But we will lose units going for Greece first, if we don't involve them in some other wars first. And as you all know, science will be of lower priority for any civ, if they are attacked. So, I like the idea of declaring on Alex and booting everyone else of some power against him. They will all be quite busy killing each others units and it will make it easier for our knights.

But then, I bet you're all a bunch of softies, that think it wouldn't be fair to the AI? :lol:

Dastardly tactics, sometimes I love it :)

Are we planning to try resource disconnection at all: this seems feasible to me? Or do we shun this practice as well?

I don't shun any practises really, but will we gain anything by doing this? I think the game will be pretty much over by the time we will have to consider this.


This makes for a marvelous total of 50 knights attacking that continent within 15 turns. This alone should be enough to whipe out all forms of civilisation there.

WOA's calculations seem right to me and with that kind of force we only have to be rotten. Nothing else really :twitch:



Btw, Gozpel, your avatar is the best avatar i have seen yet.
(so i decided to get one myself as well, (al lot less cool though))

:eek:

Can you define that? Yours is classy, mine is pretty much me. :)

(I didn't have anything better to do, so I read through the whole thread and stumbled on your edit.)

There's no need for Monarchy, we will take a few cities from someone, demand a couple for peace and kill them off right away. Rinse and repeat.

If your reputation is completely down the drain by breaking peace treaties, the civs don't give cities anymore in peace treaties.

If your reputation is completely down the drain by breaking peace treaties, the civs don't give cities anymore in peace treaties.

They will, believe me! I've done that way too many times to remember, just keep the alliances going with the "right" civs and they won't think about what a bad guy you are.
And hurt the civ hard enough and long enough. Even pillaging makes them change their mind after a while. :)

Well, in any case if they wouldn't give us stuff, how many civs are there to threaten us?

I was a builder too klarius, so I understand how you feel. I really do. Now become a warmonger and throw all doubts away! :bounce:

Am I a spammer tonight or what?

Well, we have this announcement:

SGOTM4 - Spoiler 1 Middle Ages Plus map of starting continent

klarius and WOA are the candidates for this mission, without doubt.

Offa is a man of few words.
grs is a man of even less words.
gozpel have a lot of words, but no substance. Really.
klarius have words for the whole team
and so does WOA

One of you (klarius and WOA) should write the spoiler. Remember to read what mad-bax wants in it.

EDIT: klarius should be the man for the task, he actually handpicked this team. He gets my vote.

EDIT: klarius should be the man for the task, he actually handpicked this team. He gets my vote. Mine too..

Gozpel, i can't really say what makes your avatar so cool, but it has something special that makes it really cool.

Mine is just taken from the page wacken-open-air.de Its a metal festival.
--------------------------------------

In my experience, civilisations will also give you cities when your reputation is ruined. It does seem to get a bit harder but that might very well be immagination. I have done the ask city, raze civ trick up to a dozen times in a single game with succes.

Stay carefull however and be SURE the unhappiness doesn't flip to one of our permanent cities. Just make it flip to a size one vilage and gift that back or to another civ.

I started about pillaging earlier because i expected it to be a long and drawn out war. As it looks now, it will simply be a massacre and we better just raze cities rather than pillaging.

Monarchy swich is not worth it. With some luck, there will only be 20, maybe 30 turns after our GA, we should not give up 4-8 of those turns, certainly not since those early turns are much more important. The last 10 turns are completely insignificant (since the units produced in those turns will never reach an enemy anyway)

"Please don't waste turns and units on that particular spear with settler, not if you are moving in a certain direction. Slackers can deal with such things."
-Agreed. I'd like this to be over in 30 turns from now :D.

I also agree klarius should write the spoiler.
I think he did an excelent job handpicking this team.
Do you guys want to play future sgotm with this team as well ? (a bit premature maybe since it will take quite a while for the next one to start)

btw, the build in that city on persian island should be changed to barracks so we can upgrade those horses there, but i think that is obvious enough :)

Well, it looks that it wouldn't help much, if I voted for WOA to write the spoiler, so I will look to write something this evening.

WOA, there is already a barracks in this town and was already at the beginning of your turnset.
Seems you didn't notice and that's the reason why you didn't upgrade the horses. I wondered already why :confused: .

Monarchy is still worth a thought, if we feel lucky.
With only 5 cities it could also mean only 2 turns anarchy.

We currently have 57 units
The turning point was 75 units (iirc from my former calculations)

so we still have 18 more units to go. Also will we most likely disband swordsmen and archers and have yet more to go.

If we get say 15 units past our turning point, we will have 15 more more gold in monarchy than now. Maybe even less if you factor in the marginal difference in corruption between the 2.

3 turns of anarchy costs us 6 knights. 6 knights for 15 gold per turn. 15 gold will rush buy us 4 shields. that is 18 turns to get back the value of 1 knight. 6x18 = 108 turns to get back the production of 6 knights.

This conversion between shield and gold value (4) can be made because rush building is what we will be doing with the gold we have available the rest of the game. (unless we reach MT where we would upgrade)

And even if we would have another 108 turns, i would not swich. It might sound stupid, but also interest should be factored in. A knight now is more valuable than a knight 100 turns later.
(I think if you could make a good calculation on real interest value in civ, it would be quite high)

Another book to read, after I've been away from the thread for twelve hours. :D

I agree with the knights-only plan.

-grs
-Gozpel
-Wacken
-Offa. . . . . . . . . .Your turn !
-Klarius
-NorthernPike

This conversion between shield and gold value (4) can be made because rush building is what we will be doing with the gold we have available the rest of the game. (unless we reach MT where we would upgrade)

Well, we could also disconnect/reconnect the iron after the GA, build horses and then convert 1g to 1sh.
New Rome could be brought to 30spt after the GA with some forests. The other towns would probably still build knights.


I've written something for the spoiler. Please post your objections until tomorrow:

Team Offa PtW

Roster:

-grs
-Gozpel
-WackenOpenAir
-Offa
-Klarius
-NorthernPike

Victory condition

The team was already formed with the intention to go for 5CC conquest and we are on a good way to reach that goal.

I think 5CCC will probably stand no chance for the gold laurels against builders doing a good 20k.
But with everybody going for the variant we could reach green. :D

We have a lot of controverse discussions about the right strategy, but having 6 :king: players it turns out to work out fine anyways. :cool:

City placement

The first big discussion was a religious between gozpelism and klariusism for initial development.
The gozpelists won, our 5th town was founded in 1830BC already and our empire at 1750BC looked like this:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/1750bc.jpg

But there were some interesting developments in our first war with Rome so shortly before the change of ages it looked like that:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/350bc.jpg

New Rome has the Forbidden Palace due to a leader generated in one of our first elite victories in 750BC.
New Rome was settled in 550BC, a peace treaty gave enough cities, the FP was rushed and we got rid of the extra cities before the turn ended.
This image also explains our resource acquisition in the AA ;)

Science

We started with min on writing.
When this completed it was already clear that map making had high priority.
So pottery and MM at max next, followed by literature.
The rest of the tech development involves a lot off continent action so let's just state that we researched currency in 270BC and entered the MA.

Wonders

We started a prebuild early and Theveste built the Great Lighthouse in 800BC.
That's it for AA wonders.

War

Our only real war in AA was the one against Rome.
But we had already also some phony wars going on and were planning some off continent actions.

No objections to the write-up. Don't think you need to ask, if we elect you, but nice you did.

Nicely done. :goodjob: Thanks for taking care of that.

k gogo post :)

(and i cant wait to see the other spoilers..)

Great job, klarius :thumbsup:

The save: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/offa_SG004_AD0550_01.SAV


A few words:

450ad short rush MI in Theveste and switch back to knight.

Move towards Indian capital with a few troops. I want to upgrade the horsemen though so pull these back.
Wake up a couple of full galleys and move towards Scandinavia.

ibt declare v India and Vikings.Lose a swordsman to an Indian sword.

460ad Babylon demands chivalry but doesn't declare when I refuse.
Find Calcutta, and the Indian capital Bombay(hill). Kill one spear with a knight. Second knight relines and retreats. Archer kills the injured Indian sword who killed our sword.
Land on Scandinavia.

ibt An indian galley escaped Calcutta. Archer outside Bombay killed by swordsman: I'll soon have the unit support down. Barb kills a worker standing around on Indian island: why are these guys standing around? Viking galley attacks one of ours and we win.

470ad Greeks have theology.
Destroy Calcutta with an elite knight who redlines. kill indian sword who killed our archer.
Upgrade 2 horsemen to knight: 40gold each. This is pretty cheap. The medieval infantry short rushes are costing this much in Theveste.

Attack Bombay with a swordsman who redlines and kills a spear, then a knight who kills a spear and the Indians are gone!
Attack Bjoergvin: knight kills a spear, second knight kills spear, town razed.
Kill 3 viking units out in the open (with 4 knights, one of which retreated). Lose a knight attacking a spearman outside the viking capital.

Declare v Greeks. Embassy with Ottoman: 3 reg spear in Sogut, building a colosseum to go with the temple. No other improvements. Ally with Ottoman v Greece for 8gpt.

ibt. viking archer kills a knight. Persian archer kills a sword.

490ad Finally kill off Viking capital, defended by 3 vet spears. I raze it together with the Colossus. Their capital jumps to Oslo. I better not take that just yet ;) .

ibt Vikings settle another town.

500ad Vikings will talk. I accept Stockholm for peace: abandoned.
Lose a knight attacking Persian town.

510ad Sabratha marketplace built. Pop to 12 with indian workers and starts knights.

520ad Nasty war weariness hit. lux to 30% or everywhere will riot next turn.
Kill 3 spears in Oslo. Still more left.

530ad Persia destroyed. Capital defended by 3 spear and 1 archer. No losses for once.
Oslo destroyed: 2 more spear and a warrior and the Vikings are no more.

I have set up an iron colony on the Persian land which I disconnect allowing us to switch to horses: I think this is a good idea as we have loads of $$$. This colony isn't necessary of course as we can just reconnect New Rome's iron but I just wanted to check safely it didn't ruin anything.

War weariness gone so lux down to 10%.

embassy with Babylon as I notice they share a border with a Greek town. Babylon looks worryingly strong:barracks, granary temple, Hanging gardens, Great wall Sun Tse due in 10 and defended by 4 pikes. They have 1 iron and 2 horse. Ally v Greece for 16 gpt.

540ad declare v Celts and destroy first town, the recently founded Vercuronium. Lose one knight and kill 2 spear and a horse.

ibt Gallic warrior kills a knight.

550ad. quiet turn. A few tussles with Celts: those Gallic swordsmen are tough.

I have left iron connected as I didn't think upgrading was a popular choice although I can't see why not. (I then hit spacebar on the horseman on the road to the colony so we can't disconnect this turn: sorry if you want to try upgrades). It only costs 40g to upgrade a horseman.

The Greeks are at war with Babylon and Ottoman. Germany is still at peace. I probably should have given techs to incite these wars, but decided to give gpt instead. Our army is strong. Re cash, there are loads of barb camps (one just appeared in NE of Persian island needs dispersing) so there is loads of $$$ available. I guess cash may be harder after the Golden age but right now we have 1110 gold in the treasury despite lots of short rushing and upgrades.

There is a fair bit of unit shifting to do I'm afraid, especially from the Persian island. At least we have lots of galleys, albeit in the wrong places. Some of the gallys are on gotos so if you don't like this you better click on them first.

I killed off the remnants of India, Persia, and destroyed the weak Vikings, which was fun, but the other AI may be a lot tougher. Good luck, and happy calculating.

When did you destroy 3 civs in 7 turns last time, Offa? :lol:

Well done.

Now if we can create the "pincher" - Have a go at Greece with a lot of troops and newcomers going for the island and the other civs?

@Offa
Looks like some nice :hammer: action :thumbsup:

@all
spoiler is now posted, so you are free too look into the spoiler thread.

Great stuff, Offa. :rockon:

Klarius, if you have no moral objection, you could probably bring our moment of victory a few turns closer by setting up some ship chains. This is specifically permitted in GOTM play.

Palace-jumps and ship chains are my main troubles with GOTM. So foul.

But if we can win faster by doing that, I have no reservations.

I will use those exploits in GOTM/COTM too soon, if I want any further awards.

BTW, I got it and will play tonight.

Re ship chaining:
I have no moral problems with using it, but I think in our situation it doesn't help much and is not worth the tedious work.
We have no suitably located coastal city, so efficient chains will need many more galleys than normal transport.
OTOH the differential naval movement means that our shortest path to the next continent is only 2 turns.
Shuttles to the other islands will be necessary anyways (these would be really long chains directly).
But I will look into it some more.

I looked a bit in the save.
We are at 73 units and growing. If we continue on this path and maybe add a little disconnect/horse upgrade we will soon be well over 100 units. We will lose some units soon, but a lot of units will be on travel most of the time. So I think the numbers will still grow.
Then republic is a real waste.
I will look into it again at the end of the GA and probably acquire monarchy and revolt. This gives us then the freedom to build as many units as we want (maybe really many more than 100), without having to look too much into support cost.
MPs should allow us to put lux to 0% then (at least when the pop-rush unhappiness in New Rome and Utica is gone).

I'd say, first priority is to ship those knights off of the persian island and move them towards greece.

I still don't like monarchy swich.

Then republic is a real waste.

And by then it shouldn't matter much, as we are very close to conquest?

Get out of your calculation-hut now klarius and get on mowing down the other civs. That's what the great players do when they win early victories and that is what we should do now.

Forget the maths for a few turns and just have fun, whack them good etc. :)

To prolong the downfall of the other civs because of monetary concerns is nothing I think of and so, Monarchy is as good as it gets. Changing to Republic won't get us faster to a conquest win now, so just forget it.

Burn the money you have on more knights and galleys would be my advice. Money won't count towards fastest finish date and score.

So drop that ruchsack and play as a winner.

In a different game I would certainly take your comments more seriously and they might be the trick to win, if we are closed in and without other options.

But today, mate, just go out and kick a$$ and get us closer to that victory.

I don't want to see my turns, as I expect you all contribute enough to get to the victory before I'm up.

I think you all underestimate the units needed for the stronger targets.
Up to now we fought against defense 2 units and not many of them.
In a city like Athens I expect to see something like 5-6 hoplites. That's not a task for a handfull of knights. Athens is size 12 so the hoplites will have an effective defense of 4.8 (ok again calculator). Many of them will not fall on the first attack, but promote.
The others will have some pikes by now (admittedly not as many as Greece has hoplites). The bigger cities will also be tough to crack.
At the same time we have to have at least a few units everywhere to watch for new settlements.
In the moment we have already 73 units, but our force over where we need it is still much to weak.
And I'm also thinking of my experiences in SGOTM 3.
I predicted a much earlier conquest, but even well over 100 cavs couldn't move as fast as needed. Knights take even longer to approach cities.

Edit:
And BTW I am an experienced warmongerer. I had early conquests in GOTM34 and COTM04 for example.
But these were done by overwhelming forces of cavs against pikes and a few muskets.

Edit2:
Just pulled up the combat calculator. I forget the fortified bonus. So the effective defense of a hoplite in Athens is 5.55. And an attacking knight wins only 32% of the cases with both being veterans.
The same applies to Babylon, where Offa spotted 4 pikes already.
War weariness will hit hard, when losing a lot of units.

klarius - Just get over the paranoia and start to whack.

You'll see a warmongers game is about conquest.

I asked you in the beginning somewhere if you wanted to go for space (jokingly), you didn't even bother to answer that :lol:

So here we are now, with a bunch of knights.

I just tell you, do not hesitate!

@ Klarius: I also don't favour revolting to monarchy, at least as long as war weariness isn't overpowering. As we have decided to go with knights, we will have plenty of casualties which will avoid getting the unit support too high.
It will be a bit messy if you are used to cavalry v spear/pikes but should still work.

Ship shains are OK by me if you can work them. I don't use them mostly because the troops always seem to reboard the ship they were on in the first place. I have a load of galleys by Babylon as I had thought about attacking them. However, looking inside the capital put me off that plan for now. The babs will eventually need to be taken out in force, preferably attacking the capital first. I think lots of knights will be needed for that assault.

I agree that we need to get troops over from Persia quickly as there are a lot of chaps left there. However, that island is a rich source of barb camps so I would leave some chaps there. If you can be bothered, roading up that island and our own island will help barbarian farming. We have lots of slaves.

I haven't investigated it as I had lots of cash, but presumably we could start a slave trade later on to fund our war. :crazyeye: What fun.

We don't need to defend that whole island against barbs. 1 knight on it should be enough to defend the city and its surroundings. It won't be resettled on anyway.

Optimal would be to have no unit stationed there, but delay the transportation of newly produced knights until the next knight is close enough to being ready that it can intercept barbarians who would be spotted next turn (so transport it when next knight is ready in 2 or so)

Every casuality will give 2 WW points and at 30 points you hit WW level 1, which will give us 3 unhappiness points per city (60 points=level 2=6 unhappiness points). The WW points add up to the ones acquired by having units in hostile territory (1 per turn).
If we really lose so many that unit support is no problem WW will be a problem.
And war weariness points don't go away by making peace, they're just going down slowly during peace and add up again when you redeclare.
We will definitely have high WW in the end, because we will not be able to finish the stronger targets in one going.
I don't think we should wait until it really is a problem, but revolt early.
But because nobody likes it, I will not do it.

Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/offa_SG004_AD0650_01.SAV)


Turnlog:

I look into our forces.
It's a joke to expect any major war action against the strong nations during my turnset.
It will take quite some time to get the knights from Persindia to somewhere useful.
And I will not split our meager forces. So they will go over the home island to finally form a nice stack in Babylon.
Our reputation is shot. Good diplomacy will not be possible anymore.
We will have to pay high prices for MAs and RoPs we will need.
Look for fortified units and order a few worker actions.


IBT: Two gallics kill two knights.

Turn 1 560:
Disband a sword in Carthage.
Disconnect iron and order a horse in Utica.
Reconnect iron.
Short-rush in Theveste

Turn 2 570:
Lose a knight to a killer spear in Mohacs.
After four more attacks still a gallic left
Upgrade horseman from Utica
Order horesemen in Carthage,Utica and Theveste

IBT
Golden age is over. Utica riots. Scroll ahead to avoid more riots.
Another knight killed by a gallic

Turn 3 580
Raze Mohacs at the cost of another knight
Make peace with Celts. We would lose more knights, because everything in his land is badly wounded. He gives monarchy and his gold.
Give monarchy to Germany for RoP and MA against Greece.
Lux 20%. I would need specialists in every city otherwise.

Turn 4 590
By some forest I planted, New Rome is now at 30sh even without GA.
Make RoP with Babs to bring some knights over, costs a steep 18gpt, but I don't think we will pay the full duration.

Turn 5 600
Scout a little in Bab land, find a conveniently located Greek town

Turn 6 610
Raze Ellipi which is currently Greek

Turn 7 620
Move units, nothing

Turn 8 630
redeclare on celts
Raze Camuladunum
Raze whatever another Celt town

Turn 9 640
kill a few celts

Turn 10
sneak attack on Babylon, city razed losing 3 knights

I mainly had to do with transporting units.
But now we have a nice force in Bab land and the Great Wall is gone.
I only built horses after the GA and upgraded to knights. Iron is currently disconnected but can be connected even before hitting enter, the slaves are fortified.
Watch out for barbs on the Persindian Island. The one knight I had roaming there is not sufficent.

Great work getting our forces built up in Babylon. :goodjob: We should make fast progress from now until the end.

What is the team's feeling about RoP abuse? It's on the GOTM list of permitted exploits, and it might save us quite a few turns. Looking at it cynically, we've played well, but not necessarily well enough to beat teams which RoP-rape while abstaining from it ourselves.

Got it, of course.

I think ROP rape is fine. After all we are sneak attacking, razing cities and slaving already, so our saintly status is gone. As long as GOTM allows it it's OK by me.

Were we still paying Babylon gpt for an alliance v Greece when we attacked? If so our rep is definitely toast. Good news though that we have destroyed Babylon: it looked tough.

As I said after my turns I think we should leave several units in the Persian island. There are a lot of barbs and they are very lucrative to deal with.

War weariness shouldn't be too bad if we don't let individual wars drag on, even if we do lose a lot of troops. Once you kill off the AI the weariness disappears. It would of course be nice if someone declares against us.

I think this is looking very good. If we win quickly I think the 20k teams will struggle to beat our Jason score. I certainly don't expect to play again in this game so good luck.

Well, Babylon was already RoP abuse, though no real RoP rape. I didn't think anybody would mind after all these false peace treaties.
I had to use a RoP, because Babylon was booting out the troops immediately and I couldn't collect a nice stack.
I wanted to make sure that the city Babylon would fall on the first attack, because it had a barracks and it could get nasty if some promoted pikes would be left over.
So I used an overkill stack (RNG was friendly so it wasn't needed, but you never know).
Now that we have a foothold to easily retreat to and heal our troops, we can take larger risks.

Edit:
@Offa
I didn't deplete Persindia completely of troops. There is still the disconnecting horse, another knight currently on the iron colony. And even a leftover sword.
I just wanted to state to the next driver that one knight is not enough to deal with the barbs. Typically it takes 2-3 turns to deal with a camp and about every turn a new one shows up. And I think the slaves should continue to make roads so that the troops don't lose even more turns moving. I would even let the next horse-knight stay there.

Klarius: I don't mind about our reputation disappearing. The AI are usually happy to carry on allying with us even when we have a despicable rep.
Babylon is a great prize. Do you know if it had managed to build Sun Tze's before you razed it?

Babylon is a great prize. Do you know if it had managed to build Sun Tze's before you razed it?
No it did not.
But it seems there is also not much danger that Greece will build it.
They are building it in Argos a small tundra city. ;)

if you station on the right side of the camp (NW/SE) they will all attack the knight and next turn you can destroy it.

Also does destroying barb camps have 10000x less priority than destroying AI cities. So please don't keep to many units there, we need them to win real wars.

if you station on the right side of the camp (NW/SE) they will all attack the knight and next turn you can destroy it.

Also does destroying barb camps have 10000x less priority than destroying AI cities. So please don't keep to many units there, we need them to win real wars.

The problem with the camps is mainly reaching them and also that you have to heal some hitpoints sometimes.

The camps give also money.

We can build 3 horses per turn on average, while we can build less than 2 knights per turn.

If we continue to upgrade horses we will soon run out of money. Still the most efficient is then a mix of horses and knights. 5 camps = 125g = 3 horse upgrades.

if you station on the right side of the camp (NW/SE) they will all attack the knight and next turn you can destroy it.

Also does destroying barb camps have 10000x less priority than destroying AI cities. So please don't keep to many units there, we need them to win real wars.

Your enthusiasm for battle is good, but as Klarius says, more cash means more upgrades, and therefore more troops at the front. "They also serve who only stand and wait."

Seems you are doing a good job here, and your score is actually at the top!

I especially love the amount of discussion, although I didn't read much of it. :)

My apologies, gentlemen. I have to go out of town unexpectedly, and I won't be able to play until Monday.

I'd rather not be skipped on my last round, but a swap would be fine. So, Grs, if you'd like to play over the weekend, please go ahead.

Took it and will play over the weekend.

I especially love the amount of discussion, although I didn't read much of it. So have I :lol:

Well, grs did you play ?
Otherwise Northern Pike can just play in the normal rotation, which is fine also :)

@klarius: sorry, I overestimated my free weekend time. Please let us keep the old roster with Northern Pike up and me on deck.

OK, I've re-got it. :)

Great, you guys have been stalling the game just because of my RL-issues? :)

I'll be back by Thursday/Friday with full intention to grab the save by then!

Team: Well done so far, this is in the bag.

750 AD--many units still have movement (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm4/offa_SG004_AD0750_01.SAV)

650 (0): The Ottomans and the Greeks make peace.

Three barb attacks on our units fail.


660 (1): We take Ur from its garrison of two pikemen, for no loss. We hold the city briefly before abandoning it so as to land units from a galley there.

We auto-raze Lagash, held by one spearman, without loss.

We capture and abandon Ashur, a hill town held by a pikeman and a spearman, for the loss of two knights.

The next Celtic city beneath the fog is the capital. I'll wait for healing and reinforcements before attacking it.

We disperse two barb camps.

We lose a galley because it was left on a GoTo which didn't use up all its movement points--so I thought I could move it, but it ended its turn on an ocean tile.


670 (2): We take Nineveh from its garrison of a pikeman, a Bowman, and a spearman, for the loss of two knights. One of these attacks generates the Great Leader Hanno, who forms the Army of Hanno in Nineveh before we abandon the town.

We disperse two barb camps.


680 (3): We take/abandon Akkad from its garrison of a pikeman and two spearmen, without loss, our new army doing most of the work.

We move thirteen knights into position for the big attack on Entremont.

We take out a Greek settler/Hoplite team landed near the ruins of Ur, losing a knight in the process.

I give the Ottomans Invention for an RoP agreement and a renewed anti-Greek alliance.

We repel one barb attack.

We get a palace expansion.


690 (4): We take/abandon Entremont, held by six spearmen and an archer, for the loss of one knight.

We auto-raze the new Celtic city of Augustodurum, held by an archer, without loss.

We pick off a Celtic settler/spear team and one of their archers, losing a knight in the process.

We defeat the attack of a Babylonian Bowman.


700 (5): We raze Uruk (garrison of two spearmen, no losses), one of Babylon's island cities.

Our knights in the Celtic lands are going to need two turns to heal.

We get level 1 war weariness, related I assume to the Babylonian war. Lux rate up to 30%.

Two barb attacks on our knights fail.


710 (6): We RoP-rape the Ottomans with carefully pre-positioned forces, taking/abandoning or razing Izmit, Sogut, Aydin, Iznik, and Bursa (newly founded). We destroy five pikemen, six spearmen, two longbowmen, and a horseman, at a cost of one knight. Away from the cities we destroy two Ottoman spearmen, a settler, and a warrior, for no loss.

We disperse one barb camp.

We lose two depleted knights to enemy counterattacks--one Babylonian, one Ottoman.

We defeat one barb attack.


720 (7): We auto-raze the newly founded cities of Agedincum (Celtic, held by one spearman) and Edrine (Ottoman, held by one warrior) for no loss.

We disperse two barb camps.

We repulse the attack of a Celtic archer.


730 (8): We make peace with the Babylonians for Samarra, Theology, and 24 gold. We then immediately stab them, take Eridu (held by four spearmen; no losses), and Babylon is no more. This doesn't end our war weariness, unfortunately.

We take/abandon Celtic Lugdunum, held by a pikeman and two spearmen, without loss.

We disperse one barb camp.

We defeat the attack of a Celtic archer.


740 (9): We raze Antalya, held by two spearmen and a warrior, without loss, and eliminate the Ottomans.

We disperse one barb camp.


750 (10): We take/abandon Richborough, held by two pikemen, without loss, and eliminate the Celts.

We eliminate the Germans in a glorious one-turn RoP stab, taking or razing Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, Konigsberg, Leipzig, Hamburg, and Berlin. We destroy five pikemen, seven spearmen, a swordsman, and an archer, losing five knights.

Our war weariness disappears, and I'm able to cut the luxury rate to 20%.

We disperse one barb camp.

Many of our units, including all our galleys, still have their movement. I apologize for handing over a half-played turn, but it seems best to let the next player make his own decisions about how to concentrate against the Greeks.

The most important thing I can point out about the situation now is that the Greeks will give us an RoP agreement for peace, so we can make our final attack on them a carefully prepared RoP-rape.

We have three horsemen at the moment, and we can afford to upgrade them all--but barely, so I've left the choice to you.

The central front:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM4-Offa-750ADiii.JPG

We RoP-rape the Ottomans with carefully pre-positioned forces, taking/abandoning or razing Izmit, Sogut, Aydin, Iznik, and Bursa

We eliminate the Germans in a glorious one-turn RoP stab, taking or razing Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg, Heidelberg, Konigsberg, Leipzig, Hamburg, and Berlin.

"sniffles" So beautiful, just so...beautiful. :love:

And here I sat and thought I would get my turns back? Well, I might, it's a lot of healing and moving to be dealt with, but I know grs can pull this off.

I applaud you NP! :banana:

grs: Good luck!

:lol: :D :lol:

Btw: GOTM 28 results.

SirPleb 7433 520AD Domination Victory
randomguy123 5578 1180AD Conquest Victory

gozpel 3993 1828AD Cultural 20k Victory

We have a very good chance to beat the conquest date from the original game :)
And this with only 5 cities. Absolutely stunning!

I didn't give away any spoilers because of my little and first award in this game. So I think I played fair. Except that I pushed for the Lighthouse...was that too much?

Wow, awesome RoP rape. I did not use this for so long, I forgot how powerful this can be in the hands of a skilled player. I will try my best to come at least close to the standard you set. I just would give a kingdom for a settler on the Greek isle.

@Northern Pike
Really dastardly, impressive :goodjob:
Sorry about the automove in the galleys.
I wanted them all in the same area, if somebody wants to set up really long shipchains and forgot to cancel the movements.

@Gozpel
You forgot ADel with conquest in 950 (though worse score than randomguy). But still we could beat also that date.

And by that we will also have a chance for the gold laurels.
Note the Jason best date for conquest is 1200.
At least those 20k people who posted in the spoiler thread didn't show exceptional good performance IMO.
They will probably best the gozpel result :p , but not be much better than the Jason best date of 1760.

Re healing:
We could consider to give up another core city and keep one near the front to rush a barracks.
Production in the core will soon be not important anymore (exception, if there are long ship chains used), because the new troops will not reach the front.
Problem could be money for unit support.

Edit:
If it hasn't happened already, we should now go through our cities and sell unnecessary improvements.
Obviously libraries will not do much for us anymore :lol: .
Temples are also questionable, but have to be evaluated.

You forgot ADel with conquest in 950

Erhm, sorry about that. But we can beat that new date as well.

We could consider to give up another core city and keep one near the front to rush a barracks.

Come on, the game is almost over. So forget that.

Come on, the game is almost over. So forget that.
The rest of the game will mainly depend on how fast the knights are healing.
Greece will not be as easy as the others, which all had spears in the mix. All defenders will be hoplites.
And there is no use for the production of our core cities, if the game is almost over as you say.
Grs obviously had the same view of this, when he wanted to give a :king: dom for a settler.

Edit:
Just to mention it, because we anyways use about every allowed exploit :crazyeye: .
According to the new results of SirPleb, we should be able to perform a free palace jump into a captured city, if we get roughly 40 military units into it.
DaveMcW updated his free palace jump article:
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_palace_jump.shtml

Well, we can keep a Greek city by the coast and rush barracks and harbor.

I get what you mean now, I was a bit quick (or slow rather) in my estimations. I just think with the troops we have around it would be easy. But if it's not, then I would regret the idea of a new city.

I haven't opened the save yet so I don't know how much we have in the area + troops that needs to be shipped over from the next island.

All in all, a new town is a good idea, if conquered.

* - No, it will take troops as long just to move to a new location, just heal them and push on. Unmoved knights with movements left should move all left steps -1, and heal.

Noticed that smackster team posted a 850AD save, possibly not a winning save. We can beat that time.

Exceptional progress. :goodjob:

Switching the capital to a new town is entertaining but it seems hard to believe it is worthwhile so late on. It would probably take several turns to set up, and then we would need to build a barracks at leastr turn. However, we don't really need the new town to be the capital, as we could simply cash rush things there, and abandon a city at home. This wouldn't be too bad as presumably it is already difficult to get newly built units to Greece in time for the end of the game, so the lost production won't matter, although lost $$ will be a pity. I suppose if we capture a centrally located town with an intact barracks we could consider it but a culture flip would be very unpleasant.

Overall I think we just play without any more elaborate tricks as it seems unlikely that these would change things much. A ROP rape seems to be the way to go.

I suppose if we capture a centrally located town with an intact barracks we could consider it but a culture flip would be very unpleasant.

Well, that would be the reason for the capital jump :D .
Should be at least a consideration, if a leader emerges.

The other question is if we could extort a city already.
On the screenie I see Uskudar as Greek city. It doesn't seem to have Greek culture and not much overlap with the other Greek culture boundaries.
Flipping could be completely suppressed by a decent garrison (of healing units).

I havent looked at the save, but looking at that picture, i am totally stunned !
Only the greeks left ?

I think taking a barracks city for healing COULD be a good idea. Units we produce from now on probably never reach the enemy anyway, so the home cities are kinda of no further use.

Carefull planning and calculating shoud be done however before this decision is made. if knights have to move longer than it takes them to heal on the spot, it makes no sence.

This is indeed marvelous guys, really nothing less than marvelous. It would be even more so if we beat the 20k guys for gold.

I think every option to save a turn should be evaluated.
-ship chains
-selling improvements
-replacing a town
Lets just use every possibility to get the very best result possible.
There is no rush, if grs want to think a whole week about how to end it fastest, we have still finished very early this sgotm.

"I just would give a kingdom for a settler on the Greek isle."
-good thing we are a republic, wouldn't like to see you give our whole republic for 1 settler :D

Thanks very much for your various generous comments, gentlemen. :cool:

Since the question has come up in some of these posts, I'll point out that we do have a pretty good ship chain from our continent to Greece's, though I didn't mention it in my report. :goodjob: to whoever gave several of our galleys individual designations, too--this makes chaining much easier.

if knights have to move longer than it takes them to heal on the spot, it makes no sence.

I don't reject the idea of founding or taking a healing city near Greece out of hand, but I suspect WOA may be right here. A veteran knight which is redlined on turn 1, then moves to the healing city on turn 2, heals completely on T3, and moves back to its starting point on T4, doesn't become available for front-line service at full strength any more quickly than one which just spends turns 2-4 healing in one place. And of course moving units which have only lost one or two hit points to a city to heal is futile unless they start in enemy territory, a situation we should be able mostly to avoid.

We capture Uskudar in 770AD. It is Ottoman -> no unhappyness and almost no flip risk. Alex gives us RoP, 76gold and 20gpt for peace. Disband 3 workers into Uskudar to avoid the double cost for rushing the barracks and hurry it for 136 gold. Abandon Utica and most military on the former Persian/Indian isle. After doing that I notice, that we now have no harbor on the main isle. So Theveste gets one in some turns. I could not abandon Theveste because it holds the Great Lighthouse.

Game crashes...autosave won't work and I have to replay.

Preperations for the final strike are made.

820AD: Athens, Plebos Nexia, Delphi, Argos, Mycenae taken. An absolut fiasco. Greece still has 5 cities, 4 have only 1 redlined defender left. We lost our army, but gained a new one. All cities on the Greek isle, but Athens, including Uskudar are abandoned.

The Greeks lose 4 out of 5 attacking MDIs vs our wounded knights.

830AD: Knossos, Corinth and Sparta taken.

840AD: Thermopylae taken. Athens abandoned.

850AD: Pharsalos taken. The game does not end...I am shocked...then I spot a hoplite settler pair and we finally win.

Sorry, this was executed very badly, though I planned it very detailed and investigated most cities. But 4 vet/elite knights were not enough to take out 2 reg. hoplites...5 times. :(

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm4-offa-final1.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm4-offa-final2.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm4-offa-final3.jpg

Reference number: 1133
Game: SGOTM 4
Your team: offa
Your name: grs
Date submitted: 2004-10-12
Software Version: PtW 1.27f
Game date: 860 AD
Player race: Carthage
Firaxis score: 5277
Jason score: 9341
Time played: 41:20:38
Game status: Conquest Victory for Carthage
Submitted save: offa_SG004_AD0860_01.SAV
Renamed file: offa_SG004_AD0860_01.SAV

Great finish anyways, sometimes you can't believe the RNG.

860AD! What to say, but a wonderful job all of you. [dance]

It was a pleasure :)

Now we can read the other team-spoilers! I wanna see what those pesky smackster's are doing.

It sounds as though you did everything right, Grs. I'm particularly glad that you investigated most of Greece's cities before the Rop-rape. RNG results like that are just an act of God.

Anyway, congratulations to the whole team on a fantastic performance, both in play and in debate. ;) Shall we begin preliminary discussion of our first moves in SGOTM5? :king:

And Mad-bax, thanks as ever for your indispensable work as moderator. :goodjob:

Well done grs and everyone. :goodjob:

So we did get both [party] win the 5CCC and beat ADel's conquest date.
Maybe you remember that I initially contacted you with the intention to do one of the two.
But really, in hindsight, what did ADel take so long :confused: .

A little bit of number crunching.

We ended 34 turns before the Jason best date.
The 20k people would need a 1590 finish for the same result towards the gold.
I don't think any of the teams that posted in the spoiler have a chance for that, though that's generally not an impossible date with good leader luck.
The corresponding Diplomatic at 670 and Space race at 1070 are completely ridiculous for the 5CC monarch.

If everybody stays with the variant the green laurels will need a finish around or earlier than our finish date no matter what victory condition.

:banana: [party] :band: :clap: :drool: :rockon: :hatsoff: :hammer:

Now tonight i can go read all the other threads :)

Are you sure about that Jason date ?
Normally the highest score is around 12k Jason with 6K Firaxis or so. We only got 4000 Jason bonus now.
Also is it normal to have conquest dates around 400 AD in gotms, without beating the Jason date.

Anyway, i don't even care. We did it and we did it fast !

Do you guys wanna play next sgotm with the same team ?
I do.

@WOA
The Jason score works different.
It's not an addition to the Firaxis final score, but based on the score without the Firaxis winning bonus.
So the 4760 Firaxis bonus we got, plays no role in the Jason calculation.
Then there is also the normalisation to MaxScore which is 7483 for GOTM28.
This increases every score by the ratio 10000/7483.

So our score comes from 517 base multiplied by the above ratio. The rest is Jason bonus.

The reason why 20k will have a much lower Jason is that the Jason theory of milking expects that the base score will be several 1000 points higher at this later date.
So it gives a lower bonus to equalize the different victory conditions.
But in 5CC the teams cannot get such a high Firaxis base. They will be stuck around or even below 1000.

You can just play around with the Jason calculator:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/calculator/index.php

BTW, I have no principal objections to stay with the same people for the next SGOTM, but it's much too early.
I'm not even sure that I will play at all.

And maybe it's a bit unfair to keep such a strong team together :D .

Hey, the score sheet and graph where you download the saves does no longer show the complete timeline, but it DOES put us on top of the list indicating we have finished (if the 860 date didn't do that already).

So other teams will know it.

They can know whatever they wan't though. It is in the bag :)

I play another SGOTM with any or all of you. :)

I PM'ed M-B about the graph immediately when I saw it, I guess it's too late to care about it now.

Well done everyone. That game really was pretty spectacular.

We are the best :king:

I PM'ed M-B about the graph immediately when I saw it, I guess it's too late to care about it now. He should make thie information visible again anyways, so that's a step in the right direction :p

I'd be glad to play another game with this team, though as Klarius says, SGOTM5 is still some distance off in the future.

BTW, is the award for quickest variant victory given for the fastest finish in absolute terms--in which case our position is obviously very strong--or for fastest finish relative to victory type?

relative to jason dates

I think our case is very strong in both situation.

The thing i liked most about this team is that there is no obvious best or worst player. (although when i saw northern pikes progress those last 10 turns, i seriously doubded if i could pull that off)

All together, the discussions and disagreements worked out perfectly. Possibly none of us would have been able to do this by ourselves. I would possibly not have build the lighthouse, someone else maybe would have researched for MT, yet another one might have gone republic before researching the more important things.
All of these would have had an enormous impact delaying the victory by centuries. Together we came to all the right solutions.

It's only my second sgotm, but i think this team situation is pretty rare.

Yes. At times I thought we were arguing too much to pursue a coherent strategy, but in fact it all came together beautifully.

Well done guys. Very impressive. :goodjob:

The next game will be a new and somewhat differently configured map. You will not be required to make any further downloads even though the mod will be a different version of the GOTM mod.

Well, I lurked some other treads and saw that mad-bax being the last poster raised some suspicions (ok our score on top was the major point).
So another post. :)
I also have to admit that I slightly miscalculated the target date for 20k.
They would have to reach only ;) 1600 to beat us.
And as an example for green laurel competition:
If a team should reach 20k in 1600 and has a Firaxis base of 1200 (3000 with Firaxis bonus), they would score 6607 Jason.
1200 base Firaxis is near to impossible to reach in a 5CC IMO.
Now compare this to our Jason of 9341.
But there are still some other teams far back so don't get to sure about victory.
If we would have known how easy it went in the end, we probably could have shaved off another few turns by playing more aggressively in the earlier phases.

Edit:
Another small point.
It doesn't look that any team has really big problems with the 5CC.
So the wooden spoon will go to the latest victory overall most probably.
That may be still a very good 20k result wrt to Jason best date.

What struck me from lurking the other threads is that from a coldly pragmatic standpoint, we shouldn't have posted the spoiler. We seem to have taught at least two other teams how to build the FP in a 5CC. :p

I have also had a bit of a laugh reading other spoilers. It is very agreeable to see them slowly piece together that we did indeed finish in 860ad.

I will be very surprised if anyone beats us to either prize, especially if they all stick to the variant. A few other teams are trying conquest, but it will take some doing for them to beat us. It would probably be difficult for us to beat our own score if we tried again. The 20k teams will have to play superbly to beat us, bettering Gozpel's mark by centuries. If they do that then they deserve the award!

In the original game the fastest conquest was 960AD, obviously not using a 5CC variant. Although the starting Civs were altered, the map was otherwise identical to the original. It just hammers home the fact that this game was a benchmark performance IMO, and I find it difficult to believe it will be bettered.

I think there are teams that thought of building the FP independently of you. The staff team for instance certainly did. But you are right to point out how careful you need to be when posting in spoilers. Personally I don't like spoilers much - they are "leaky" by nature. But since they are demanded, then I must provide them. I would suggest that the initial spoiler posts be presented in the game thread before posting in the spoiler thread to allow some judicious editting.

When I got my first award in GOTM, it was this game and 20k victory.

But I didn't even nearly as good as a couple of team seem to be doing. I don't remember exact date right now, but it was mid 1800? And mind you, I played a pretty good game then.

Leaders are essential for a good score in PTW and 20k, but I would bet a penny they won't get enough to beat our score.

Playing as a team really changes the parameters and the outcome, with different nviews on certain tactics and so on. Well, gozpelism won this time :lol: I just loved that in the spoiler. Btw, grs is spreading the word about klariusism now, what it means only we know :)

So they finally starting to figure out we won already? I checked this morning and noone even breathed a word about it.

@mad-bax
Well, I don't see any problem with teaching the others a few new tricks.
Teams having no member knowing this, probably need a little bit help :D (and most teams do have somebody).
Especially the FP in 5CC is not such a big thing and I think really it helped us most, because it was the incentive to settle down in the south, not by the corruption effect.
New Rome could have been a very productive city anyways with just a courthouse.
It just needed the decision to go for the good land.

I also generally think all this secrecy is no good fun.
Ok people may think that XTEAM profited in SGOTM3 by knowing the exact target date.
That may be true, but if you really read the thread carefully, you will find that I thought that we needed to be as fast as possible anyways, because other teams were still far behind in turns (like the Staff slowpokes :p ).
That we managed to get exactly 1 turn faster than Smackster was just accident (well and I wanted to save mad-bax the headache of thinking about a tiebreaker :lol: ).

The thing i liked most about this team is that there is no obvious best or worst player.

It seems like a bunch of specialists was teamed together here. :crazyeye:

I demanded a fast settling and won the arguments. But I do have some experience in 1000bc training and I know there are few players that can beat my town-count by that date, if I put an effort in to it. Ask Offa.

Offa is a real strategist and I read his GOTM's and just wonder what makes him such a scatterbrain to not beat the best players. He have a great knowledge of the game and great strategies, but somehow he seem to be beaten by RNG every time :lol:

grs is a player I really like to play with. I only started play with him recently, but his sour humour and different tactics from mine makes him a great team-mate.

WoA, I never played with him before, but will absolutely take another chance with this dude. Great knowledge and a talent to adapt to new situation is something I lack, comparatively.

klarius is also new to me, but that abyss of knowledge and calcuations was of great value here, as it made me really think of what I was doing now and again. The ramblings are so fun, I almost copied/pasted them for future reference. :)

Northern Pike, I never played with him before either (I think?) But read a few items where he was involved and I knew he was an asset. But the plug of totally screwing the ROP-abuse to where no man never been before, just shocked me. Absolutely brilliant!

I wonder if we will play together again? Mad-bax will probably kill that opportunity.

It doesn't matter anyways, it was memorable and fun.

Indeed so. :goodjob:

(No, Gozpel, we hadn't played together before. :D)

The policy is that teams that have played before may stay together, even if stronger than average. If someone leaves the team, then I will obvously place a less experienced person with you since it will give the other teams a small chance of beating you, and it would be great for the new player.

From my point of view, it was nice to see such a range of opinion within one team, and that you could solve the arguments without falling out with each other, and perhaps this is the real strength of the team. If everyone agrees (or more likely are frightened to disagree) then the team can only play as well as the player calling the shots IMO.

I hope that most of you at least will stay together.

We're all good dudes, M-B :)

By good, I mean nice fellows of course. I can be a hothead now and again, but noone here even tried to challenge my "obvious" intelligence and then I tend to listen instead of pushing my agendas.

I won the start, that's all I asked for really and then when the complicated stuff started I let the people that handled it better, handle it :lol:

It's quite funny really, I kinda felt for everyone's point, when I didn't have a good one myself. And subsequentedly tried to keep a middle lane, only to keep the discussion going. And all these brilliant guys had something smart to say, well, most of the time.

grs wouldn't ever do this :rotfl:

Sorry.

The satisfaction i have from this game just doesn't seem to end.

While i have had many words to say during this game, i am quite speechless now. Just hoping the team will stay together and having fun reading the other teams threads. :)

You are very kind Gozpel. I suspect in GOTM I am usually a fair bit behind by 1000bc and play catch up (or drift behind) after that. When I replay the qsc I am pretty good. I live in hope though. :crazyeye:

Our game has clarified a few points to me:

1. It is impressive just how well a 5CC can work: beating the original conquest date. This goes along with the idea that there is such a thing as too much early expansion, and concentrating on developing several solid productive cities can be better.

2. We clearly focused on conquest right at the start, and kept this focus throughout. I am often as little hazy in my aims.

3. Micromanagement yields large rewards.

4. Archer rush can be very effective.

5. Knights work well at Monarch. Which fast unit to use (ie usually knight or cavalry) is always a bit of a decision to make, but I think we definitely chose correctly here.

6.The game isn't really fixed to prevent leader generation at useful times.

Yeah, i had this discussion in a gotm first spoiler also. The choise between many cities and developed cities.

I always choose to build settlers only from the factory (if a factory is possible) allowing me 12-15 cities. while all the other cities only build 1 or 2 workers and then start to develop.
Other players often get round 20 cities but with much less total population.

This game had made me think a lot more about this subjected and kinda assured me i'm doing the right thing with producing settler only from 1 city.

I think in the stats, total citizens + workers is much more important than the number of cities.

In the last gotm, which i still haven't finished, i think even building only settlers from the capital might have been too much. (got 15 cities 53 pop, 21 worker). I haven't played beyond the 1000BC yet, but it will be hard or impossible to beat the dates already posted in the first spoiler (130 dom, 250 conc).

Also does that game clearly show me spoilers are as the word sais spoilers.
While i have reached the qualifications for the spoiler, it has given me vital information for the rest of the game. It indicates information from those that actually finished the game within ancient age that can be helpfull and it ocntains finish dates. I would like to say i do not use the information i read in the thread, but i cannot ignore information that i have. I know i will have to reach conquest before 250 AD or domination before 130AD and i cannot play as if i don't have that information.

Next gotm, i will try not reading the first spoiler before i completely finished the game since it does spoil the fun for me as well. At the moment, the feeling that it will be impossible to win the fastest date kinda ruins the fun for me in the gotm. I hate playing games that i can't win. Obviously the competition against the AI is not what keeps me playing a regent game.

Good job everyone!

The first SGOTM I didn't play and gozpel won a prize. :crazyeye:

I probably won't play SGOTM again as long as it requires separate downloads anyway. :)

IMO the most important reason that you won first is you chose to play conquest victory. Cultural win just doesn't stand a chance.

btw, sorry to supres the fun a little, but i just took a look at the 28 results, and not 960 but 840 is the fastest conquest by smackster. He just has a lower score.

@WOA
To your last comment that's COTM04 you have to select GOTM 28 from the dropdown.

to your previous post

I really think that if you want to be fast you shouldn't go the path of many cities.
As an example:

in Gotm34 I scored the second best conquest date at 720AD only beaten by Drazek (couldn't he stay with his usual domination).

my QSC had less than half the cities of the quick expanders.

But on OTOH you need the many cities for score. In the beginning score is made mainly by territory. So I ended up with only 12th in score.

In COTM04 I looked more on score (more cities and especially territory by building ToA). Conquest date was still decent, but not as good.

But now I was 4th in score (why does EMan all of a sudden come out of the HOF abyss).

After being away for half a day and having to read for the other half, I am just here to say three things:

Ok, I :love: you all too!

You are all aware that this game is over and yet post 1/2 pages a day :crazyeye:

Klarius: I sneaked a diplo medal in Cotm3 and a 20k one in Cotm4, with probably having less than half cities you had :p

:clap:

Congrats! Very nicely played.
I sat this SGOTM out (too many wooden utensils to my name) and lurked amongst the teams. I enjoyed the spirited discussion and techniques used. I can now add the RoP rape technique to my tool bag that I have learned from NP. I always knew that people used it but I have never seen it used to such good results. :goodjob:

@ NP & grs - you guys are making me feel bad. Almost everyone that I have teamed with has gone on to win medals after playing with me and taking home the spoons :lol:

Hey, there's nothing wrong with being a good-luck charm, albeit one with delayed effects. :D

Thanks for your comments. I hope we'll play together again; I expected that we would in KA01, of course, but then the team was split into two.

I posted a small summary in the final spoiler.
So everybody can legally read and post there.

Your usual excellent work--thanks. :goodjob: The only way you're ever going to shed this duty now is by founding a new team. :lol:

Nice summary :thumbsup:

Great write up Klarius. Thanks :goodjob: .

:goodjob: :beer:

Good work, klarius :)

Well done guys, I don't want to tempt fate but looks like you have wrapped up both Laurels, I've looked at a few of the other threads and I don't think anyone can get close to you.

Certainly chosing Conquest was the way to go, it became clear to me mid way through the game when we found the AI to be so weak but we were well on the way to 20k by then.

smackster

Thanks--although I don't want to take anything for granted either. ;) It does seem strange that so few teams committed themselves to conquest from the start.

Only one team AFAIK. I think 20K is the easiest choice to make. Doesn't look like the best choice ATM though does it?

The next sign up thread will be posted tomorrow BTW, and the next game will start no earlier than 15th November. I am considering putting it back a little to allow more teams to complete the current game.

If we do a team sign up, i'm in for it !

I will be gone for work a little while though. Leaving the 9th, returning somewhere between the 15th and 20th november.

That's great to hear, MB. Thanks in advance for the work you've been putting in on the scenario. :goodjob:

WOA, you can put me down for the team sign-up too, if you'll excuse the excessively spatial idiom. ;)

Well, let's discuss SGOTM5 a bit.
We have already 4 members signed up by themselves and WOA was also eager to play. I posted this in the sign-up thread.

Looking at the starting position, I have to say I hate it :mad: .
I don't like wandering a lot before settling, but it's necessary in this position.
Especially for the variant one should have a decent spot even if it takes 10 or more turns to find it.
OTOH regent level w/o variant isn't really a challenge even at a lousy starting position.
So my vote goes for variant and scouting a lot before settling :( .

Yes the start is bad, it will require scouting and a good portion of luck to find a decent spot. It should not be so hard to win it on regent, even if we settle after 10 turns. Considering the level, I agree with taking the variant.

So my vote goes for variant and scouting a lot before settling :( .

That sounds like the right choice.

We shouldn't say anything here about our plans that we'd want to keep secret, because technically it's our SGOTM4 thread and anyone except the laggards in that game (hi, Staff Team! ;)) is entitled to read it.

I'm happy to go for the variant as well, which of course scouting.