SGOTM5 - Russia. Game Thread Team jeffelammar.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the SGOTM5 Game thread.

Note: EVERYONE will have to install the correct resource graphics whether or not they have played SGOTM4.


Here is the start position.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM5-starta.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM5-startb.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Russia
World size - Large, 25% land give or take.
Difficulty Regent - but plays harder.
The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Here are a couple of links you might find useful.

The original GOTM23 Announcement. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/gotm23_arabs.shtml)
The Constitution (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1733966&postcount=61)
The GOTM Reference Thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=71788)
SGOTM5 Maintenance Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=105346)

This Months' sponsored variant is OBCC - One Built City Conquest the rules for which are as follows.

1. You may never build a settler.
2. You must win by conquest victory condition.

checking in :wavey:

They seem to have transferred Bugsy's team to jeffelammer, more or less. So denyd and grahamiam are stuck with me again. Oh well, looking forward to playing this one. And since there seems to be a river to the southeast, I would suggest moving our scout there. Assuming there is one.

Nice to see some familar faces :wavey:

I'd suggest SE-SE to the mountain for the scout to reveal the the most tiles.

What's the order of play?

I'm going to be unavailable the 23rd to 28th, so I'd like to be at either the top or bottom of the rotation, if possible.

Heya. Good to see everyone here. I look forward to it.

Hopefully I'll be finishing off SGOTM4 in the next two days and will be able to devote all SGOTM attention here :)

But I am definately now here are ready.

I'm here. I've finished my turns, jeff, so SGOTM4 is all yours.

I also like scout to the SE mountain.
I don't have a preference on turn order. We're in alphabetical order on the team listing, and that would suit me. Since denyd wants to be first or last, how about starting with denyd and going in alphabetical order (denyd, grahamiam, jeffelammar, bed_head7, CKS).

Are we trying the variant?

CKS's order is fine with me. and yes, i'm for the varient :) this is regent and i don't see any regent players on this team so we ought to at least tie a finger or 2 behind our backs :)
also, going for the river sounds logical. just hope it doesn't reach the coast in less than 3 tiles :lol:

edit: there are some serious changes to the rules as stated in the first post of SGOTM5 maintenance thread. i suggest we all check them out thoroughly

I don't have a preference on turn order. We're in alphabetical order on the team listing, and that would suit me. Since denyd wants to be first or last, how about starting with denyd and going in alphabetical order (denyd, grahamiam, jeffelammar, bed_head7, CKS).

Sounds just fine to me. I was going to suggest something along those lines.

As for first moves.
We need to know two things. How far are we willing to move? And how can we be sure that we get good moves.
To me the Mountain to the west is as good as the one to the se. We reveal as much, and there is a river on each.
The advantage of the Mtn 2 west is that we know there is a forest in it's radius.
The advantage of 2 se is that it reveals 1 extra square.

The forest might have game, but if we are willing to move far, then that is less compelling.

I would propose sending the scout to one of the two and the worker toward the other (Assuming the scout finds nothing useful). Then the settler would follow one or the other based on better findings.

This start is obviously made to make us think, so let's see if there are any breadcrumbs out there that make us re-think. Anyone see anything?

Edit: Just tried some fog gazing. There are only 2 squares I can see that are not obviously tundra or Mountain. The one 3 west. The one 2se and 1 east.
They both look greener than any other square we can see anything of.

imho, we will have to move the settler around 4T (N/S or E/W) or 5T (NW/SE or NE/SW) to get away from the tundra, assuming that there actually is decent land at the equator. therefore, we should be willing to move a minimum of 4 turns and probably up to 7turn. we only have 1 built city so it's very important to make sure it's at a good location.
we should also build a barracks very quickly. at regent, we may be able to wage our 1st war with warriors and an archer or 2.

imho, we will have to move the settler around 4T (N/S or E/W) or 5T (NW/SE or NE/SW) to get away from the tundra, assuming that there actually is decent land at the equator. therefore, we should be willing to move a minimum of 4 turns and probably up to 7turn. we only have 1 built city so it's very important to make sure it's at a good location.
we should also build a barracks very quickly. at regent, we may be able to wage our 1st war with warriors and an archer or 2.
Assuming that we are willing to move that far, I agree with everything you say.

I am going to throw this out there for thought. Shoot me down if you want.
From our starting position, the two "best" squares we can see are the forests n-nw and n-ne. With those squares and no bonuses we can get 5spt. This would be enough to generate a quick warrior rush. We would have our barracks about the time we grew to size two and the scout would probably have found out something about which way we want to go.
We could (and I think should) treat our first city as a throwaway. Just use it to build the Barracks and a few military units. Then take an enemy city and abandon the capitol getting a palace in a presumably better location. Hopefully the AI will build us a couple cities around our new capitol as well, making it a better setup than if we keep our capitol where we start.

In this scenario, getting the city quick is important and finding a good location becomes unimportant. We just need to be good enough to have the power to build the small starting military.

All that said, a good location revealed by our scout would blow all of this out of the water.

All that said, a good location revealed by our scout would blow all of this out of the water.
yep, that's the part i agree the most with :) (i would actually prefer that the 1st city not be a throwaway, but we may have no choice). i have no faith that a regent AI will build more than 1 or 2 cities before we warrior rush them in your scenario, and if they have a 2nd, it'll be size 1 with no culture that'll autoraze. maybe we should let 2nd cities gather culture by only attacking the capitol? probably the best bet.
the other thing we can due is play this as an 0cc for the 1st 50-60 turns, then unleash hell with our pent-up military.

so, denyd, let's get this one rolling, eh, before you get to enjoy your vacation :) if you want, you can move the scout and then post a screenie we can pontificate on, or you can make the executive decision based on what you see :D

maybe we should let 2nd cities gather culture by only attacking the capitol? probably the best bet.
Exactly what I was thinking.


so, denyd, let's get this one rolling, eh, before you get to enjoy your vacation :) if you want, you can move the scout and then post a screenie we can pontificate on, or you can make the executive decision based on what you see :DI agree totally. Kick it off Denyd. After the scout move make a judgement call on if we need more discusion. Good luck.

OK - I got it and will be playing tonight - I'll check back for any more ideas before starting - I play 20 (until 3000 BC) right?

Any thoughts on research path?

First build is a scout, second is a barracks.

OK - I got it and will be playing tonight - I'll check back for any more ideas before starting - I play 20 (until 3000 BC) right?
Right.

Any thoughts on research path?
Knew we forgot to discuss something. :)

Here are the choices I see.
1. Iron Working - Build a bunch of warriors and hope to be able to colonize iron.
2. Wheel - Hope to colonize horses
3. Warrior Code - Get some Archers to go with our Warriors.
4, Go for Alphabet -> Writing in hopes of trading for the military techs we need.
5. Go for CB -> Monarchy
Has anyone checked the list of opponents? I will when I get home from work, but I don't know if it will be before Denyd starts.

I lean towards #3 since it is the only guarenteed upgrade to our military and we want to wage a war before 2000BC if possible to get some more cities.

First build is a scout, second is a barracks. Agreed.

WC seems fine, but 1st tech research really depends on the Civ's we're playing against. if 3 of them already have WC, then it makes no sense to research it 1st. imho, go for something that no-one else has and then trade up or research nothing and buy all the 1st tier tech's, saving research for the 2nd tier. being regent, i'd opt for researching something no one has yet.

I vote for warrior code unless more than one other civ starts with it. My next choice would be the wheel, with the same restriction. (Does anybody besides Japan start with the wheel?)

I think we need to find a reasonably good spot for our first city. When we capture a city, I want us to have 2 good cities, not one. I'm willing to wander quite a bit to get it.

Scout and then barracks sounds good.

With regard to the tundra at the equator, nothing says we are looking at the equator. Perhaps this is a view centered at one of the poles, or somewhere near it. Notice mad-bax's "The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration" statement.

Turn Log 1

Turn 0 – 4000 BC – There are 15 opponents and Japan is one of them – Ivan SE-SE to mountain and spots a wheat and a BG – that’s where we’ll put Moscow – Settler & Anna (worker) SE

Turn 1 – 3950 BC – Settler S – Anna E – Ivan SE-E spots mountains & hills (iron?)

Turn 2 – 3900 BC – Settler S finds a lake – Anna S – Ivan NE-NE finds a hut and since we can’t get a settler from a hut we’ll pop it

Turn 3 – 3850 BC – Settler & Anna reach wheat – Ivan pops hut for pottery

Turn 4 – 3800 BC – Ivan heading north – Anna starts to irrigate wheat – Settler reaches spot – will have 2 BG & 1 Wheat in initial terrain, is on a river and has ocean available

Turn 5 – 3750 BC – Ivan heading N along the coast finds shells & game – Settler founds Moscow starts scout – Moscow will get a game & fish once expansion occurs – begin research on The Wheel

Turn 6 – 3700 BC – Ivan spots another hut

Turn 7 – 3650 BC – Ivan pops hut for a worker – Olga (worker) heads to Moscow – Anna completes irrigation

Turn 8 – 3600 BC – Anna starts road – Ivan heading NW – Olga heading home

Turn 9 – 3550 BC – Ivan finds another coast and Olga heading home – Moscow builds scout starts a barracks (Mmed for growth)

Turn 10 – 3500 BC – Igor (scout) heading SW spots a furs (colony soon) – Ivan spots another hut – Anna completes road

Turn 11 – 3450 BC – Anna moves to BG – Igor spots a hut – Olga heading to join Anna – Ivan pops a hut for a map

Turn 12 – 3400 BC – Anna starts mine – Olga almost there – Igor pops hut for Ceremonial Burial – Ivan may have found top of island – Moscow now size 2

Turn 13 – 3350 BC – Olga joins Anna – Ivan SW – Igor SW

Turn 14 – 3300 BC – Olga starts to mine – Igor roaming SW – Ivan checking out the NW – Moscow culture expansion

Turn 15 – 3250 BC – Igor confirms SW corner – Anna & Olga complete mine

Turn 16 – 3200 BC – Anna & Olga start road – Ivan finds another hut – Igor heading to checkout SE

Turn 17 – 3150 BC – Ivan approaches hut – Ivan heading to SE – Anna & Olga complete road – Moscow grows to size 3

Turn 18 – 3100 BC – Anna & Olga move to other BG – Ivan pops hut for Masonry – Igor moving to SE – Increase luxury rate to 10% (slows The Wheel by a turn)

Turn 19 – 3050 BC – Anna & Olga start mine – Igor heading to SE – Ivan trying to get home

Turn 20 – 3000 BC – Ivan & Igor moving in known lands

After action report: Moscow will grow in 3 and complete the barracks in 3 (suggest a worker to create furs colony next) – There is still a possible connection to the SE & NE to another tribe, but we might be alone – We should research writing and then Map Making to get off this island – Igor should continue to scout SE and Ivan should check out the western coast – Once Anna & Olga complete the mine, they should build a road to the furs

what's this? Antarctica or Greenland? :lol: very interesting. i got it. will play and post tonight.

Well, this is interesting. We got a reasonable site for Moscow, with nothing else nearby. I guess this is to help encourage us to stick to one city.

Nice hut-popping Denyd. I wonder if the rules for popping workers from huts are the same as popping a settler usually (no settler around).

I agree on researching writing and map making, but I'm going to hope there is a land connection to some other civs. I'm not good at war-making, and I don't use ships well. If even our first wars have to be conducted over water, with only one city to supply the troops, I'm going to be very uncomfortable.

I don't know if it is worth colonizing the furs. We'll get them by expansion fairly soon; we're on regent, so happiness isn't as big a problem; and we'll have plenty of troops around until we find another civ/get off our island. To some extent I think it depends on what we find before we have to decide for sure, but I'm not really eager for luxes right now.

You will pop eqWorkers from huts. Since you cannot build eqWorkers there is no way to prevent them being popped AFAIK. I've tried.

You will pop eqWorkers from huts. Since you cannot build eqWorkers there is no way to prevent them being popped AFAIK. I've tried.
all those changes are quite interesting. i'm curious how this will turn out as i didn't realize you were going for such radical changes to the rules. not complaining, as i'm willing to try pretty much anything.

Well - it's an experiment. A philosophical discussion is fine as far as it goes, but I just wanted to try some ideas to see what works and what doesn't. In the first spoiler you will be able to discuss who got what from huts. There are reasons for all the changes - but this game is carrying them all so that we can go through an informed decision making process on what we want in an SGOTM. I have no axe to grind either way. This was just an attempt by me to reduce the differences between PTW and vanilla and reduce the impact of luck in the early game. Whether you want to keep any of the changes is up to you lot. :)

Well - it's an experiment. :) yep, and i'm a willing lab rat :D i've actually done some playtests for various sg rule mod's before, so if you ever need a hand in the future, feel free to pm me and i'll do all i can to help out :)

as far as this game goes

I agree on researching writing and map making, but I'm going to hope there is a land connection to some other civs. I'm not good at war-making, and I don't use ships well. If even our first wars have to be conducted over water, with only one city to supply the troops, I'm going to be very uncomfortable.

writing, then MM seems fine if there are no land bridges. with 14 other civs, we really need to get out there and find people. after that, i'd just do the cheapest tech available. we need to get our capitol up to pop 12 quickly, so some extra workers can improve the tiles and then be rejoined to the city once done to speed along the growth.
as far as warmongering goes, we are all going to need to throw out our builder hats. :) the goal is conquest and we'll need to bring a big hammer :hammer: to go for this, i propose one 1 or 2 archers for barb purposes, then build warriors for the mighty warrior->sword upgrade path. we need to keep an eye on expenses so we don't overcompensate and mess up our research so maybe we wait on building warriors till after MM is learned. Once we get a galley or 2 out, i'm sure we'll find someone willing to sell BW and IW to us. of course, if we're not alone, this goes out the window :)

I'll pass you on the bic/bix files. I'm currently trying to find a solid solution to the scientifc civ question. If I can do that then I'm done fiddling I think.

Currently the only ideas I have are :-


..to add a tech to each age which is a pre-requisite for all the others.
.. to make one of the existing techs in each age a prerequisite for the others

I don't like either of these as it messes with the game mechanics. :(

I'm thinking we might consider literature before map making. That would let the capital build (dare I say it) the Great Library. Being marooned (if we are), is likely to put us in a tech hole. Getting those couple of techs from huts, will keep us current for a while, put I'm afraid by the time we find anyone, they might be all the way to pikes.

Just as an aside, I wonder if any of the teams settled on a non-coastal tile. They'll be stuck on the island waiting for someone to build them a coastal city before they can start their campaign of conquest.

ah, the infamous difference between civ3 and ptw, the free tech's... i'll help as much as i can. email is linked to my sig or pm them to me. i can start testing tomorrow night, my time, as i'm up in 3 tonight. if you have any specific instructions (civ to play, level to play, map type, etc), let me know in the pm/email. now stop spamming this thread :joke: :lol:

I'm thinking we might consider literature before map making. That would let the capital build (dare I say it) the Great Library. Being marooned (if we are), is likely to put us in a tech hole. Getting those couple of techs from huts, will keep us current for a while, put I'm afraid by the time we find anyone, they might be all the way to pikes.

oh no, not again :( i'd really shy away from that, though i don't mind going lit to get a library in town, i just think we should find out where the iron is located 1st. a regent ai, even if it is ahead, won't have a lot of unit support so i can't imagine it's towns being defended by more than 4 units. cat's and swords will overcome pikes for sure.

My thought would be research writing & then literature. Start building the Great Library while researching Map Making. If someone builds the Great Library, hopefully, we'll already have discovered Map Making and can switch to the Great Lighthouse.

Based on the lack of any signs of AI, unless there's a narrow connector, I suspect that this is a Gilligan game.

ok, sorry for the harsh response. it'll be a team vote, of course. i guess we use the pyramids as a prebuild.

I think that at regent we don't need the great library. If we are the only ones who are isolated, I still think we can trade ourselves out of a hole fairly quickly, and if there are other isolated civs, that gives us other civs in the same boat to trade with.

I don't think we can afford to invest the entire production of our empire into the great library. That is a lot of shields that could go elsewhere. We need to go to war fairly early to capture some cities. We won't be ready if we build the library early. If we are going to delay it, we might as well just take it from whoever builds it, or build it after we have some other cities.

My guess is we've got 30-40 turns before we meet anyone else (unless there is a land link). Right now we are at our limit of unit support (4) and from now on units will cost gold, which will reduce research which will extend the time before we can complete research. Once the northern scout has completed the western coast survey, we should bring him back to Moscow and disband him. The same for the souther one once his work is done.

I'm thinking we build one more worker to assist in improving the land and then based on how long until another border expansion either form a furs colony or join up in Moscow. I'd be surprise if writing is less than 25 turns, so the next 2+ turn sets are going to be complete the barracks, build a worker, unit, unit, unit, by then we'll have discovered writing, and will have most of Moscow improved and will be ready to join the workers back. That's the time we'll need to make the literature/bronze working/map making decision.

i was actually thinking MM for the GLight might work as well. if this an arch, with far flung islands, the Great Lighthouse will be much more valueable that the Great Library. as CKS notes, we will not be hard pressed to catch up in tech @ regent. imho, it would be more beneficial to get contacts with all 14 civs as early as possible rather than wait for them to research stuff for us. however, let's finish exploring our part of the world before we decide whether or not we want to do this. if this is our final landmass, we may be better off palace jumping and investing a minimum amount in the capitol

True, without knowing whether we are isolated, we are planning pretty far ahead of our data. I think that we will find sombody else on our island, but perhaps far away. If there isn't, then the course of the game will be very different for those who settle by the sea and those who don't. (I haven't looked at the save, only the screenshot; maybe all reasonable places to settle are on the ocean, in which case my reasoning doesn't hold up.) Anyway, we won't have to make a final decision on what to do after writing until we've done some more exploring. By then we ought to know if we're alone.

Sorry it took so long to respond. It's been a hectic day here at work and this is the first chance I've had to look in.

Looks like you guys have hashed out a lot of it already.
1. Nice job Denyd. :thumbsup: This is one ugly set of territory and you grabbed the best spot.

2. Good thing we went for the variant. I wouldn't want to build any more cities here anyway :)

3. The Lighthouse is going to me worth a lot given all this coast we have to go through to get away from our capitol. Given Differential Naval movement it will allow us to move 3 instead of 2.

4. I agree that we shouldn't worry to much about getting the Great Library. To me Map Making and some galleys are a higher priority.

5. If our scout finds an opponent to the east, I would suggest using workers to road towards them instead of adding them back. Moscow will grow pretty quick anyway, and the ability to move troops quickly toward the enemy would be a huge boost.

6. If we are alone, then I think Great Lighthouse is the priority. A Great Library boost would be nice, but should not be necessary.

For any of the current strategies we need Writing, so let's revisit the post writing research after the next couple turn sets.

Preflight check: boy, what a crappy landmass. Looks like the other 2 directions had cows (one with cow + game), while ours had the wheat + forest game.

T1: 2950BC move scouts

IBT:

T2: 2900BC Igor (scout to the E) sees a hut. Adjust sci slider to get an extra 5g

IBT: wheel -> writing; Moscow barracks -> spear

T3: 2850BC Pop hut to get WC. MM sliders for happiness (writing in 28T). Our people want to build the HE, I think they’re delusional. MM town to get +5spt and maximum gold.

T4: 2800BC move scouts, move workers as they’ve roaded the mined river BG.

T5: 2750BC Igor finds the end of the island to the E.

T6: 2710BC move scouts again

IBT: spear -> archer

T7: 2670BC MM lux slider

T8: 2630BC MM lux slider for growth

T9: 2590BC move scouts

IBT: archer -> HE (GLight prebuild)

T10: 2550BC Move workers to road game so we get extra gold for research.
Igor the scout is headed to the western black area; Ivan the scout is checking out the northern black area.
HE is a prebuild for whatever we want to do next. It’s worth 200 shields and GLight is 300 shields. Imho, GLight is the wonder we want to have for this game.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/jl-2550BC.jpg

:thumbsup:
I don't have much to say. I agree with using the Epic as a lighthouse pre-build.
I think we might want to pump out a couple chariots or archers first. Barbarians could get to be a big problem if there are any. (And I'm betting there will be)

We could disband our scouts as soon as they finish the edges of our land to reduce unit cost.

One question. Do we chop the forest and irrigate it? If we were able to build settlers, I would say absolutely, and even so I think we should. There are other forests, plus the hills that we can use for shield production and we need to grow Moscow fast to accelerate our self research path.

I'm flying to CA tomorrow to spend TG with my family. I was going to take the laptop anyway, so I'll probably play on the plane and then upload from their house tomorrow night. I leave around 2 PM Mountain time, so comments should be in by then. :)

if you chop, you must do something other than HE. right now, the tile is basically a mined bonus grass. not sure if we want to give up those spt but extra food is always helpful (right now we are +3fpt). war chariots do sound good.

we can either disband the scouts or put them on high lookout points to try to find a boat that wanders by. however, that won't be for a long time so we're probably better off disbanding them after the fog is cleared. this all will delay our prebuild by a turnset but that may be better in the end. I was originally hoping that we could time prebuild such that as soon as we researched MM, we could switch over to GLight and get it within 5 turns. that still may be possible if we crank up the population.

I'm inclined to chop the forest, but either way is okay with me. Definitely we want the lighthouse, and it was nice of mad-bax to give us the heroic epic as a prebuild. I also agree about the ickiness of the landmass we are on.

Good luck, jeff. Find something nice for us, if any such things exist.

Heya-

Just wanted to let you know. Thanksgiving travel got a bit hectic. I'll be playing my turns tonight and posting by early tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

I'm sorry guys, but I have found a bug in the PTW version of the game. Please take a break for a while so that I can get it fixed. I hope I can sort it out quickly.

I really am very sorry for the inconvenience but it appears that I didn't spend enough time playtesting the PTW version since all the big changes were in 1.29f.

I'm sorry guys, but I have found a bug in the PTW version of the game. Please take a break for a while so that I can get it fixed. I hope I can sort it out quickly.
Good thing I checked this before playing. I guess we'll pause.

It looks like we can start up again, as we are supposed to get to 1000 BC for our fixed save. Oh, well. We didn't want to play over the holiday weekend anyway, right?

It looks like we can start up again, as we are supposed to get to 1000 BC for our fixed save. Oh, well. We didn't want to play over the holiday weekend anyway, right?
That's right. I was going to do it very early Friday, but that was when I read the stop order, and by the time we were told to go to 1000 BC, I was on an airplane. I'm playing right now and will be posted in an hour or two.

OK here we go first I wanted to make a couple comments on things I didn't notice before, but are food for thought in your next game.

1. The Spearmen - I would not have built these. Given that we are on regent and are persuing a war type strategy, Offensive units are far more useful. Given our advantage when attacking barbarians, Archers are better for clearing them as well.

2. Worker moves - I didn't notice earlier, but it looks like we have been wasting some worker moves. By having both workers doing the same improvement on the same square. For example: At one point both workers were building a road. Normally a road costs 3 turns, so we wasted a worker turn by having 2 building it. Also, sending two workers to build a road wastes a turn for both of their moves. Not a big deal, but it delays the time till we can re-join the workers.

The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_BC2150_01.SAV)

Turn Log

Turn 0 - 2550 BC - Switch to build temple

Turn 1 - 2510 BC - Workers chop forest. Scouts reveal fog.

Turn 2 - 2470 BC - Not much scouts move

Turn 3 - 2430 BC - Scout reveals the western city spot. Entertainment to 20% as Moscow grew in the IBT.

Turn 4 - 2390 BC - Scouts keep going. Will disband soon as we need $$ more.

Turn 5 - 2350 BC - Scouts still exploring

Turn 6 - 2310 BC - Chop complete. 1 worker irrigates, 1 roads.

Turn 7 - 2270 BC - Disband a scout. Other keeps going.

IBT - Moscow builds Temple -> Archer

Turn 8 - 2230 BC - Entertainment to 10% - no longer losing money.

Turn 9 - 2190 BC - Worker finishes road. Heads to build road to Horses. MM Moscow to use coast instead of forest. Extra commerce still get Archer in 2.

Turn 10 - 2150 BC - Disband second Scout. Worker moves to furs.

Notes:
1. The worker on the fur can either road or build a colony. We are ony 12 turns from the next cultural expansion, so it may not be worth the colony, but an extra lux right now might be nice, I leave the choice to the team and the next player.

2. The other worker should build a road to the horses.

3. When the archer completes, we should immediately switch to the Heroic Epic as a pre-build for Lighthouse. There were two reasons I didn't do pre-building in my turns.
A. I really wanted at least one offensive unit for fight barbs.
B. Given that we only have one city, the Temple allows it to produce more letting it grow bigger.

OK here we go first I wanted to make a couple comments on things I didn't notice before, but are food for thought in your next game.

1. The Spearmen - I would not have built these. Given that we are on regent and are persuing a war type strategy, Offensive units are far more useful. Given our advantage when attacking barbarians, Archers are better for clearing them as well. your probably right, but i rarely play OCB regent, or regent at all, as it bores the piss out of me. however, i don't think i really harmed us at all as i did leave us with 1 archer as well. by 3000bc, we should be seeing barbs and we're not which is peculiar.
2. Worker moves - I didn't notice earlier, but it looks like we have been wasting some worker moves. By having both workers doing the same improvement on the same square. For example: At one point both workers were building a road. Normally a road costs 3 turns, so we wasted a worker turn by having 2 building it. Also, sending two workers to build a road wastes a turn for both of their moves. Not a big deal, but it delays the time till we can re-join the workers.
true, but improving tiles as quickly as you grow is what i was looking at. when i left the game, we are at size 5, working 4 land tiles (all improved) and the fish, growth in 3T. no other tiles were improved. by moving both workers to to game forest, we could improve it quicker and get better benefits sooner for our size 6 town (ie road it to get 2 gpt instead of 1). if i split them, i'd only be working a tile for when we reach pop 7, and that's 3+7= 10 turns away. i'd rather improve the 6th tile quicker so we can get the benefit sooner (extra gold for research) than wait. does it waste worker turns? yep, but it ensures citizens worked optimized tiles, which is very important given the fact we only have 1 city. once the worker improvement rate is faster than growth (ie, when we get to size 7 and need 40 food instead of 20 for growth), then i can see spliting up our workers.

also, i would not bother with colonizing the furs if we'll have them in 12 turns anyways. we can dither the lux slider instead.

true, but improving tiles as quickly as you grow is what i was looking at. when i left the game, we are at size 5, working 4 land tiles (all improved) and the fish, growth in 3T. no other tiles were improved. by moving both workers to to game forest, we could improve it quicker and get better benefits sooner for our size 6 town (ie road it to get 2 gpt instead of 1). if i split them, i'd only be working a tile for when we reach pop 7, and that's 3+7= 10 turns away. i'd rather improve the 6th tile quicker so we can get the benefit sooner (extra gold for research) than wait. does it waste worker turns? yep, but it ensures citizens worked optimized tiles, which is very important given the fact we only have 1 city. once the worker improvement rate is faster than growth (ie, when we get to size 7 and need 40 food instead of 20 for growth), then i can see spliting up our workers.


:thumbsup:
No problems. Your reasoning is fine. I might not have done it that way, but I did want to make sure everyone knew it.

Sorry for preaching to the apparent choir.

I am up, right? Sorry about my lack of contribution to discussion. That should be changing as I finish up with college applications.

ok, no problem (to jeff)

let's post a roster so we know what the order is as it's a little early for everyone to know thier spot:

Roster
denyd
grahamiam
jeffelammar
bed_head7 <- UP
CKS <- on deck

edit: xpost with JD :)

Alright then, I'll get started on it.

2150 BC (0) - I think I'll hold off on colonizing the furs.

2110 BC (1) - Move archer out towards mountain, then open up notepad because I remembered I needed to take notes, then my computer told me I was low on virtual memory and crashed. So reloaded, and both workers are roading in place. Olga is worth one person or forty food, so a colony just isn't worth it. Move Moscow citizen from coast to forest and Heroic Epic is due in 25 turns. Will change it depending on how long it takes to research Map Making. Drop science down to 50% for 3 surplus gpt.

2070 Bc (2) - Moved archer to mountain for lookout.

2030 BC (3) - Archer is now fortified on mountain, awaiting barbarians.

1990 BC (4) - Map Making will take 27 turns, and HE has 22 left on it. I hold off on switching citizens for now.

1950 BC (5) - Realize we have a lake in our territory, so we shouldn't have been working coast. Switch to lake for this turn to get growth without wasting food.

1910 BC (6) - Take a bit of a chance, and work two forest for 10spt to get Heroic Epic in 16 turns. Map Making is coming in 25 at -1gpt which we can afford until our borders expand to get furs. When it becomes necessary, we should be able to use the Pyramids as a prebuild. We are on regent after all, and I would be somewhat surprised at an AI getting it before turn 71, which is the latest we should learn Map Making. With growth and furs, we will probably get Map Making nearer to turn 66 or 67, which should make using the Pyramids for prebuild fine.

1870 BC (7) - Roads finish, and one moves to the hill with horsies to road, and the other moves to a forest we are working to get extra commerce.

1830 BC (8) - This shows my preference for using worker turns efficiently over getting the benefits of improvement faster, as it would take two turns to join the workers back into a team at this point.

1790 BC (9) - Well, I hit enter.

1750 BC (10) - Border expand next IT, so we can drop luxury rate down to 10%, I believe. I am not positive when it happens though, so I left lux at 20%. If someone knows for sure if border expansion happens before check for happiness, then we can drop it now. Only 1g difference, so it isn't really worth any risk, just something interesting for future reference I guess.

Moscow is working Pyramids, due in 32, with Map Making in 21. Not much else to say, as far as I can see.

Things sound good. I'll probably play this evening.

Border expansion _should_ come before happiness checks, but I have no idea if it does. I'll wait to drop the lux tax unless someone knows for sure.

I appreciate getting a turn when no major decisions are likely to be required, because this variant makes me a little uncomfortable - it is really far from my usual style. Easing in is better. :)

1950 BC (5) - Realize we have a lake in our territory, so we shouldn't have been working coast. Switch to lake for this turn to get growth without wasting food.

We **** me. Sorry. I didn't even realize we had a lake. Stupid me. Once again Sorry.


Good job.

Once Map Making & the Great Lighthouse is complete, we should build a couple of galleys and get them out exploring.

I'm always afraid when I'm alone on an island, that the rest of the tribes are busy trading techs and will be in the middle ages when I finally meet them. So I usually go Literature & Great Library and then go Map Making & the Lighthouse. Usually by then someone has already contacted me. Since we haven't seen any barbarian galleys yet, it seems no one else has researched Map Making. I don't remember the barbarian setting on this one.

After Map Making, I'd like to go for Literature then Iron Working. Any other opinions?

imho, we'll need to start with 3 galleys, then build more if required. 4 would probably be best since we have to go in all directions to meet anyone (assumed since we are on a blot in the middle of the minimap).

after Map Making, lit is probably ok, but we should time a library build with it's completion so we waste little and maximize the benefit of this optional tech. otherwise, i would go with IW so we know where the iron is located. swords will be helpful for capturing the 1st cities. after IW, maybe we go for a min run at math while we build up swords for the 1st victim?

I like literature, then iron working. A library in Moscow will help our research efforts a lot, since it will be a while until we have any other cities to help. We need to know there the iron is to get swords for attacking another civ, but we don't need them until we actually have another civ to attack. For this reason, I like lit first.

After that, I think cash will be nice, so I'm currently in favor of a minimum run on something. However, this is getting pretty far in the future, so I expect we'll have other things to consider by then.

i know i mentioned we would need swords, but, after thinking about it, horses may be all we need for now. let's see what the galleys reveal before deciding on IW. horseman may be fine as it's only regent and fast units will probably pay off in spades :)

i know i mentioned we would need swords, but, after thinking about it, horses may be all we need for now. let's see what the galleys reveal before deciding on IW. horseman may be fine as it's only regent and fast units will probably pay off in spades :)

I'm with you. I would concentrate on Horses instead of swords. The only reason I woud change this is if every convienently located AI has a AA defensive Unique Unit.
Unless we have to face Hoplites, Numidian Mercenaries and the like, I think Horsemen are a better bet.

So I would skip literature entirely. I don't want to spend that much time building another wonder, so the main benefit is the library. After we get MM we should be able to trade for what we need anyway.

Edit: For what it's worth, the maintenence thread says that Barbarians are "I'll let you figure it out"

We **** me. Sorry. I didn't even realize we had a lake. Stupid me. Once again Sorry.


Good job.

You only worked it for two turns, losing two food, and I didn't work it in any of mine, so we lost two food total. The box would not have filled any faster with the two extra food or any other possible change for the better. So I would say that it isn't a problem, just something that we can all keep in mind in the future.

As for research, let's hope that once we have galleys out and about they quickly find us a friend or two to trade with, and aim for less researched techs. I don't quite remember what we have, but Literature is good for getting a Library and speeding up research. I am still very against Great Library on Regent. We could follow that up with Math, or whatever tech we judge to be least researched by the AI.

If we aren't going to build the Great Library, then I reccomend we go iron working and then aim for one of the government techs (probably monarchy). They will have the most trade value when we finally meet someone else.

If we aren't going to build the Great Library, then I reccomend we go iron working and then aim for one of the government techs (probably monarchy). They will have the most trade value when we finally meet someone else.
My strategy on research would be this.

After Map Making go for HBR then head for Monarchy. The rest of the tree is stuff we can trade for.
As soon as the Lighthouse is done start making Chariots or Horsemen (depending on if we finish HBR before or after the Lighthouse).
EDIT: After 3 or 4 galleys that is.

Given the conquest goal, I think Monarchy is better than Republic, but we should discuss and decide which one better suits our needs.

The other thing is if there are still no barbs when our current workers finish up, then we probably should go ahead and start building roads to the remoter parts of our island. It will facilitate getting units to whatever spot we decide is useful for crossing to other lands.

Here is the save.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_BC1500_02.sav

Turn 0, 1750 BC Everything looks good. It isn’t clear to me that the peninsula northeast of Moscow stops at the end of the visible land, but I trust that it does.

IBT We expand to get the furs, and we see a barb to the west.

Turn 1, 1725 BC Reduce lux to 10% and watch the barb.

Turn 2, 1700 BC Nothing

Turn 3, 1675 BC Start moving archer towards the barb.

IBT Workers finish roading.

Turn 4, 1650 Start mining the horse hill, send other worker to road the other river forest.

Turn 5, 1625 Continue moving archer

Turn 6, 1600 Moscow grows, set lux to 20%, science to 60% for 0 gpt.

Turn 7, 1575 Archer chases barb

Turn 8, 1550 Archer chases barb

IBT 2 barbs attach archer, it promotes to elite while losing 1 hp

Turn 9, 1525 Archer moves toward barb camp.

Turn 10, 1500 BC Archer disperses barb camp.

We are 10 turns from mapmaking. We would finish colossus in 1 turn, and pyramids in 18 turns, so we are probably also 10 turns from the great lighthouse (300 shields). Moscow also is scheduled to grow in 10 turns.

The barb camp gave us a little cushion of cash. We should take the elite archer back to Moscow and let the vet archer go on barb patrol.

nice CKS, an elite is always good. i assume great leaders will be mostly used for army's since we can't rush wonders and i don't know what we would need 250 shields for except the FP or palace (if they can be used for that).

Roster
denyd <- UP
grahamiam <- on deck
jeffelammar
bed_head7
CKS

Please remember, we need to send the 1000BC save to MB to be fixed!

Let's organize our research discussion a little (for after MM)
denyd -> Lit
grahamiam -> HBR (after waffling :) )
jeff -> HBR
bedhead -> Lit
CKS -> Lit

Seems that the Lit's have it. Any objections?

Once the 1000BC save is uploaded you can PM me in case I don't notice ;)

I'll replace your save from the submissions page. I havent forgotten about giving you the bic/bix files grahamiam.

Looks like it's my turn, so I got it.

A quick review of what I should be doing.

1. Complete research on Map Making if possible
2. Use Pyramids pre-build to complete Great Lighthouse when available
3. Build galleys
4. Complete improvements around Moscow

If we don't intend to build the Great Library, then I don't see any reason to waste research time on Literature. We should go either for HBR (on the road to Monarchy) or IW (IMHO). Based on CKS log, research on MM should complete on my final turn, so the next person will have the tech decision.

actaully, denyd, i think your going to hit the spacebar 10x :lol: should go barb hunting with the other vet archer, i suppose. otherwise, not much to do unless you can speed up research.

imho, we don't need GLib @ regent. we do, however, need more cities and the only way to get them is via pointy stick :satan: weren't you the guy who bankrupted all civ's in bugs1 with some plucky tech trading? don't you think we can do that again? 400 shields = 3 galleys + 31 warriors or ~15 chariots. how many cities can we get with that :D for chariots -> horseman, we'll only need 300g for upgrades which should be doable after HBR is learned, contacts + trading, and min research run on math or whatever. warriors -> swords is about 1200g, if i'm calculating correctly.

I'm okay with horseback riding or ironworking instead of literature. I think a library in Moscow would be nice, but horses or swordsmen will get us some off-island cities. Personally, I prefer swordsmen to horsemen, as I have rotten luck with horses, but their speed is nice.

Especially if we build a bunch of horses, I agree with jeff. We should build some roads out from Moscow to outer edges of our island. We don't want to be wasting turns moving our galleys through lots of coastal waters. My experience has been that barbs don't pillage in no-man's-land, so we'd need an escort for the workers, but we probably don't need to protect the road.

If we don't intend to build the Great Library, then I don't see any reason to waste research time on Literature. We should go either for HBR (on the road to Monarchy) or IW (IMHO). Based on CKS log, research on MM should complete on my final turn, so the next person will have the tech decision.
I've weighed in on my choice already. I like HBR because we know that we have horses availiable.

Going for IW is a gamble since we have no idea where iron will appear.
The only place it could appear is the two mountains. One of which would require a colony to get. Given that this is a custom map, it very well may be there, but I don't want to gamble on it.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_BC1250_01.SAV

Turn Log 2

Turn 0 – 1500 BC – Shift slider to get Map Making 2 turns earlier (it’ll cost 24g)

IBT: The first palace expansion gets us a front lawn

Turn 1 – 1475 BC – Robin (Elite Archer) heading home

IBT: Olga completes road

Turn 2 – 1450 BC – Olga sent to SW woods – Robin heading home

IBT: Not much

Turn 3 – 1425 BC – Olga & Robin move

IBT: Even less

Turn 4 – 1400 BC – Olga reaches trees

IBT: Nada

Turn 5 – 1375 BC – Olga starts road – Robin MP in Moscow – Hood (Vet Archer) heads out to hunt some barbarians – Reducing science keeps MM in 3 and saves 2gpt

IBT: Barbarian warrior (BW) spotted in SE – Anna completes mine

Turn 6 – 1350 BC – Anna heads to woods NE of Moscow – Hood head for BW

IBT: BW heading for our horses

Turn 7 – 1325 BC – Anna starts road – Hood heading for horses will wait for BW – Science to 50% to save 2g and still get MM next turn

IBT: BW heading N – Discover Map Making research Horseback Riding at 70% due in 10 – Switch from Pyramids to Great Lighthouse due in 2 – MM Moscow to get in 1

Turn 8 – 1300 BC – Hood (4/4) kills BW

IBT: Moscow builds Great Lighthouse starts a galley MM to get in 2

Turn 9 – 1275 BC – Hood heading SE to find Barbarian Village

IBT: Not much

Turn 10 – 1250 BC – Hood heading SE

After action: Treasury is 17g and –1gpt research will get Horseback Riding in 9, but Moscow is going to grow next turn and will need additional luxury rate – We might consider MM Moscow to zero growth – The first galley is also going to complete next turn and is going to add 1 to unit support (currently at 1) - No changes on the map, but the next player should be seeing some new lands and might be making some contacts.

Grahamiam was quite right, this took less than an hour including upload/download time.

:thumbsup:

After action: Treasury is 17g and –1gpt research will get Horseback Riding in 9, but Moscow is going to grow next turn and will need additional luxury rate – We might consider MM Moscow to zero growth – The first galley is also going to complete next turn and is going to add 1 to unit support (currently at 1) - No changes on the map, but the next player should be seeing some new lands and might be making some contacts.

Good news. Now we'll be able to figure out who to kill first.

I wouldn't worry too much about the unit support. We're going to have to get used to it for a while. When we start our first attack we'll probably need 6-8 offensive units plus a couple galleys. That will be expensive, but will also pay off by getting us more cities.

Should we discuss which way to send the first galley, or just leave it to grahamiam?


I personally would vote for letting Moscow continue to grow. It might take more luxes, but will probably pay off in the long run. It is a close call, so I am ok with either way.

Roster
grahamiam <- UP
jeffelammar <- On Deck
bed_head7
CKS
denyd

EDIT: Remember to pause after this turn set. We need to PM M-B when we upload it so he can give our opponents more cities for us to conquer.

My vote would definitely be to let Moscow grow.

i'll let moscow grow. as far as galley's go, i'm thinking we need at least 3 right away, maybe 4. with HBR due so soon, it doesn't make sense to bother with chariots. do we want to beeline for Monarachy after HBR or go after Republic? I figure we can trade for IW.

got it, btw.

i'll let moscow grow. as far as galley's go, i'm thinking we need at least 3 right away, maybe 4. with HBR due so soon, it doesn't make sense to bother with chariots. do we want to beeline for Monarachy after HBR or go after Republic? I figure we can trade for IW.

Agreed on Galleys. We need either 3 or 4. Once you start moving, remember that we have differential naval movement on. This actually makes suicide galleys easier because they can get a long way in ocean, so often only spend 1 turn in unsafe water, especially with the lighthouse.

If we can get one more shield from Moscow we'll be at 15. A perfect number for both Galleys and Horsemen.

I'm on the fence between Monarchy and Republic.
I am leaning toward Republic this morning.
As far as I can tell from the announcement, we have a classic vanilla Republic, so no unit support, but also just a 1 gold per.

Reasons for Republic:
1. Extra commerce will offset unit support unless we have a Massive army.
2. Better economy if we find ourselves taking a break from war.

Reasons for Monarchy:
1. No War Weariness.
2. Unit support.

I'm thinking at least 3 galleys and then start on horses. With a little luck we'll be able to find a weak neighbor and snatch a couple of size 2 cities and then get some techs for peace.

As for research, I think monarchy is probably a better choice (though I prefer republic) due to the war weariness & support factors. Once we get to 3-4 cities, this game should get a lot easier.

I'm for letting Moscow grow.

I think 3 galleys are sufficient if we've found neighbors by the time we finish number 3. If we haven't found anyone yet, we should probably go with 4. Then start building horsemen and getting them to a good loading spot.

I like monarchy. At least at first, we will have a massive military for the size of our civ, and I think that war weariness will be a significant issue, at least at first.

i wouldn't worry about the exact number of galleys. if i build an extra, that's another 2 units that can get there much quicker. plus, if we have to survive an ocean crossing, we'll need 2-3x the number of galleys required to get the troops safely across.

From what I remember of the map, there's a lot of islands we'll be able to reach from just coastal waters. The additional movement and safety in sea tiles will probably mean we'll never have to risk any suicide galleys. We'll just have to watch out for the Barbarian galleys. If possible end each galley turn on a sea tile. Safe for us and barbarians won't attack us if this would be their last move for the turn.

I think we'll probably find an AI rather quickly. I'm hoping for an unclaimed tile on another island for us to stockpile troops before declaring. That would save on extra galley costs. We should try to engage the nearest AI to save on extra unit costs until we can get a couple more cities.

Preflight check: Ok, grow in 1T, boat in 2T, 14 shields. Decide we need the boat now so I MM for 16 shields vs 14. will only loss 1 food and we’re 1 food short of pop 10 so this will be ok.

IBT: galley -> galley

T1: 1225BC This shield count will be a pain for the rest of these turns. However, I believe we need those galley’s out and about. Olga is done roading and I don’t know what to do with her. GLight is very useful as our galleys get 7 mp’s vs 6. Galley goes SE’ward

IBT: palace gets a new front door

T2: 1200BC Olga is roading the tundra E of the capitol. At least we can mine it for a shield. MM Moscow off fish and onto forest for 16s.

IBT: Moscow: galley -> galley

T3: 1175BC Hood (vet archer) flawlessly kills a barb on barb camp and collects 25g.

T4: 1150BC MM Moscow off fish and onto forest for 16s. Hood heads back towards town.

IBT: Moscow galley -> galley (I really think this is the best choice)

T5: 1125BC The suicide sister heads due south into open water. Jackpot! I see 2 borders [party]
Olga begins mining the tundra.

T6: 1100BC Contact Zulu. The are up IW and HBR, but down Alpha, They know the French, English, Vikings, Chinese, and Mongols. They have 5 cities total. Move the Suicide Sister next to a greenish/yellow boarder. Lower sci slider to 40%, HBR 1T, +3gpt, 27g in the bank.

IBT: HBR->Myst. Barb warrior approaches Moscow from the N.

T7: 1075BC Westbound galley finds pink border (Chinese?). Also, the Mongols are met. They are up IW but down Mas, Alpha, CB, and HBR. They only know the French and English.
Darn it! Forgot to MM Moscow last turn :(. MM this turn for growth and an extra shekel. Also switch to horse so we can try to barb hunt a little.

IBT: Moscow horse -> horse

T8: 1050BC Meet the Chinese. They are up IW but down Alpha, CB, and HBR. They know the Vikings but not the Mongols. Suicide Sister Galley ends up on Orange borders.

T9: 1025BC Meet the English. They are up Myst and IW, plus have 34g. They know the Aztecs, Arabs, French, Iroq, Jap’s, and Celts.
Horseman kills barb, MM Moscow to get another next turn.
Sell CB and HBR and WM to China, getting IW and WM.
Zulu up Myst so I sell the Alpha and WM, getting Myst and WM
Set research to Poly @ min -> +7gpt.
Notice that the AI’s don’t have any roads.
Sell our WM to the English, getting Contact with Aztecs, TM, and 34g (all of it)
Sell Aztecs WM, getting WM, contact with Iro, and 19g (all of it)
Sell Iro WM, getting WM, contact with Arabs, and 26g (2 short of all of it)
Only up MM on Iro.
Sell Arabs WM, getting WM, contact with Japan, and 32g (all of it), they are only down MM.
Sell Japan WM, getting WM, contact with French, and 11g (all of it), they are only down MM.
We now have 152g in the bank and are missing contact with the Celts and Vikings, but we know where they live :)
Sell WM to England for WM and contact with Celts. Note: English have MM.
Sell WM to Celts for WM and 26g (all of it)
Sell WM to China for contact with Vikings
Sell WM to Vikings for WM and 20g (all of it). They are down Writing and Myst.
Ok, now we have 198g in the bank.

We are missing contact with the Spanish, Indians, Egyptians, and Americans.

Iron is 4T SW of Moscow, on the mountain.

Leave science on Min as we now know our targets, time to get nasty.

IBT: Moscow horse -> horse

T10: 1000BC Thanks to all that WM trading, we know where the barb huts are located. Suicide Sister meets a barb galley.

Moscow is at +2fpt, +14spt. It must be micromanaged every-other turn to get 30 shields every 2T. I am building a mine next to Moscow so we don’t have to do this at size 12.

We can safely transport all troops S and SW (Zulu, Mongols, Chinese, and Vikings), and probably anywhere else we want.

Workers are closed around the capitol so I could protect them if a barb pops out of nowhere. Mine will be helpful at larger size so we can get to 15spt while still working the fish and lake. We now have enough troops if we want to road to all ends of the island.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-jl-1000BC-2.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-jl-1000BC-1.jpg

WOW. What a set of turns.

I've just pm'ed Mad-Bax to let him know we have hit 1000BC. (If you already had, then I guess he'll get two pms.)

We should use the time between now and the new save arriving to plan our next move. I'll post my thoughts after I gather them :)

Interesting land mass though.

we still have 2 options for warring:
1. build warriors now (1 every turn) up to about 8, then upgrade for 320g
2. continue building horseman (1 every 2T), up to about 6.

it may be best to do the warrior -> swordsman upgrade path now, then start building galleys to get them overthere while Olga or whoever builds an iron colony. Once we have 4 more galleys in port, transport them over while building a second wave which will be exclusively horseman.

there are so many targets that i'm left dizzy :) but I would probably go after the Chinese and Vikings 1st since they have decent MA UU's
Zulu and Mongols (they have an MW type UU now) have decent AA UU's and can come later once we have a large force on the land. We should strike fast and hard. We probably only need to research to Chivalry to end this one.
For our future palace, it seems that the land is mostly narrow. The Iroquois and Arabs have very nice land, though it might come too late.

This was a really helpful set of turns.

I haven't thought much about it yet, but my first thoughts are that building warriors now would let us aim for food production in Moscow for a while instead of having to micromanage all the time. The extra attack strength of some swordsmen will be nice, and we have money to upgrade.

I'm all for wiping out the Vikings and Chinese early on.

First: I got a PM from MB. He says he should have our save updated by late tonight.
Second: I'm pretty busy tomorrow, so I may not be able to play till Sunday Morning. (Just so you know)

The more I look at this map, the more impressed I am with it.

1. The closest land for us to invade is the worst land on that big long continent. Arabia and France would be a great spot to build a FP and get lots of use out of it, but that is also far away.
2. The Logical (to me) place to attack first contains two strong defensive militaristic nations.
3. The thin part of the continent being near us, makes me pretty sure that France and Arabia will be pretty powerful by the time we get to attacking them.

So here are my thoughts on what I think we should do.
1. Attack either the Mongols or the Chinese.
2. I would just use horses swordsmen seem like a waste right now.
3. Start going east once we have some more cities.
4. Plan on building a FP as far east as possible as soon as we have enough cities to do so.

That said. If the team wants swords, I will build a bunch of warriors during my turns. Otherwise I will build up horses.

Either way, I will start getting units in place for the invasion of whichever nation earns the right to be our enemy.

EDIT: One other note. I actually would like to tackle the Mongols sooner rather than later. Their UU is strong, but very expensive. I'd like to take them down before they build too many.

jeff, i'm a big fan of horseman, one of my favorite units. However, it just feels like we'd be better off doing an initial 8 swords (via warriors), then go all out for horses. we can start capturing towns sooner (8 turns for warriors + 8 turns for galleys, unless one comes back, which is possible). building horses will take longer and delay the galley builds.

the problem i forsee is the Zulu, with the impi, will really chew up horseman. we will need the swords here and there to pop the stubborn ones. if i were playing this solo, initially, i would use the swords to establish the beachhead and expand slowly into the Chinese, while the horses are built and arrive. once they land, they can speed up the demise of the vikings. leave the swords in chinese territory so we can quickly swing on the Zulu and then work our way E, making sure to divide our enemies when units get thin.

another option is to go for the English, then swing W and NE once we buildup enough troops, but this will divide our troops while we go in 2 directions, rather than keeping a single, strong front.

edit: actually, we could just build 5 warriors, and take the 2 horses and the elite archer with us.

jeff, i'm a big fan of horseman, one of my favorite units. However, it just feels like we'd be better off doing an initial 8 swords (via warriors), then go all out for horses. we can start capturing towns sooner (8 turns for warriors + 8 turns for galleys, unless one comes back, which is possible). building horses will take longer and delay the galley builds.
Good points. Unless there are arguments otherwise, I will aim to have an invasion force ready to go at the end of my turns. I'll aim for 6 swords plus what we already have. I'll get one or two more galleys into position. The one in the west will go north to discover the continent that has to be there. The farther east one will keep exploring and the one by the tundra island will head south to help in ferrying troops.

If I build 6 warriors and a galley, found the iron colony and switch to making Horsemen, I think we can be ready to invade midway through bed_head's turns. (Sound like a plan?)

I guess the main question then is which AI should be the target. If we are going in with mostly swords, then there is no reason not to go after the Zulu first. The main advantage of their UU is much less useful when defending against Swords.

So I guess the candidates for attack are as follows.
1. China - Get em before their UU.
2. Zulu - Militaristic, we might even get some prebuilt barracks from them.
3. Mongols - Get em before they can build many of those killer UUs.
4. England - More central start. Maybe get an early FP over there.
5. Vikings - Seems to me that there is no reason to take them first. Could very well be second if we go China first.

I'm leaning toward either China or Zulu. What do you guys think?

I just took a look at the map and would like to make a case for attacking the Vikings first.

According to what we know already there is a safe passage (crossing via 3 ocean tiles) just NE of Canton, that we could use to ferry troops across to the desert NW of Bjorevin. We could make a pair of trips with 3 galleys, giving a total strike force of 12 units. We'd then be in position to strike at the Viking core and eliminate them before Berserks (the most dangerous units in this game) are available. We'd then be in a position to advance on China and finish them off before Riders are available (the 2nd most dangerous UU in the game). Because the Vikings are at the end of the island, we'd need only a minor defense force to hold that area while advancing on China. We also be able to use the 2 luxuries in the Viking lands for happiness and the iron to upgrade mass produced Moscow Warriors to swordsmen for the Zulus. Taking China would give us access to another luxury and horses. At that point we should be able to steamroll the rest of the world.

Guys, your save has been fixed and uploaded to the server. You can download it and play on.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

thanks MB!

my preference is china, vikings, then a strong push E towards the rest of the rabble, as i outlined above. i think the zulu will require more troops than either the chinese or vikings, but that's just a gut feel.

i'm not worried about the viking or chinese UU yet, but i agree with denyd that it's best to eliminate them before we have to worry. probably doesn't matter if it's chinese 1st then vikings or vis versa.

edit: deleted my attachment so we don't use the wrong save file. also, if bedhead can play before jeff, maybe it's best to do a swap?

One other thing I noticed, is that the amount of resources available. It seems like every nation has access to iron, horses and at least one luxury. We should set Moscow to producing warriors or horses as fast as possible and upgrade them when they reach the other island.

Any thoughts on research? Do we even need to do any at this time? Our cash would probably be better spent on upgrades than research at this time.

We can probably pointy stick research our way to the MA. Just leave a single AI city and sue for all known techs & cash. Then move on to the next tribe. Once the peace expires (hopefully they'll have added another city by then) we can absorb what's left (unless they've got more techs for us) and move on.

As for future FP sites, I was thinking about London for FP site and maybe Paris for a palace jump location. From the looks of this map, I don't think we'll be able to acquire 67% of the dirt, so we shouldn't have to worry about accidently winning via domination.

I have the sneaky feeling that the Cossacks won't be much of a factor in this game.

imho, the only research we need is for a new gov't, hence the min run on poly towards monarchy. we can get the rest via trades. with so many civ's in the game, i wouldn't let any of the initial civ's survive.

London as an FP site's ok. with the current setup, the palace rank corruption bug will help us greatly ;)

Since the save is already available, I will be able to get my turns in before Sunday, so no changes are necessary. I have a few hours to get them in tonight.

I'll check again before I play, but it looks like we are leaning to either China or Scandinavia first.
Since the landing spot for both of them is the same, I will try to setup an invasion to hit the spot between the two of them.

no need to be so diplomatic. pick one and focus on it. as we ferry troops over, we'll be gracious enough to expand the war to include others :)

Not sure what exactly MB did to our save. I didn't detect any big difference except that the AI started building roads. (Maybe that was it)

750BC Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_BC0750_01.SAV)

Turn Log:

Turn 0 - Preflight:
Switch Moscow to Warrior. MM to improve food and still get 12 spt. (going down to 10 didn't give us any advantage)

IBT: Moscow W1 -> W, Arabs start Colossus

Turn 1 - 975BC:
Check AIs, no new maps (all cost 1g). I would have thought MB's edit would add roads, but I guess not.
Olga moves near iron to start roading towards the launch spot.
Anna heads the same direction.
Both horses head out barb hunting.
Ralley Galley (I renamed it) keeps heading north in hopes of finding the missing AIs.
Suicide Sister Galley Explores and starts to head west.
Northward Ho Galley obeys its name.

IBT: Moscow builds W2 -> W3

Turn 2 - 950BC:
Horses still hunting.
Olga starts road. Anna joins her. (yes I'm doubling up after earlier discussions, isn't hipocracy great?)
Galleys keep exporing.
AI's WMs are still worthless.

IBT: Moscow builds W3 -> W4. Barb climbs the iron mountain.

Turn 3 - 925BC:
Hood kills the barb on the iron. A horse disperses barb camp in west, heads back.
I send Suicide Sister Galley around the north of our home. She will still arrive at about the right time to ferry troops and will scout out that area on the way.
Ralley Galley spots Egyptian and Spanish borders, goes to investigate Egypt first.
Egypt lacks Alphabet and HBR, but knows Spain. (Big surprise)
I choose not to do any trading with them as I will meet Spain next turn.

IBT: Moscow builds W4 -> W5, Zulu starts Oracle.

Turn 4 - 900BC:
Horse disperses Barbs in north.
Meet Spain. They know India and America, but are behind in tech.
Trade Masonry to Spain for world Map. (Probably not best choice in retrospect, but Since everyone else seemed to have it it seemed safe.)

IBT: Moscow builds W5 -> W6 : English start Colossus.

Turn 5 - 875BC:
Galleys keep exploring. Horse kills Barbarian Horse.
Trade WM to Spain for Contact with America and India
America is short MM and HBR as is India.
Trade WM to America for WM + 95g
Buy India's WM for 11 gold. (Hope to get better value this way)
Arabia and Iroquois have discovered Polytheism.

Break: Take a 2 hour break to have dinner with friends. Left the game up, so made it look like it took us two hours longer ;)

IBT: Moscow builds W6 -> Galley

Turn 6 - 850BC:
Trade WM +43g to Iroquois for Polytheism (should have done this last turn)
Trade WM to Arabs for WM + 18
Trade WM to Vikings for WM + 25
Trade WM to Japan for WM + 13
MM Moscow Back to 14 shields per turn.
Set research to Monarchy.

IBT: Arabs start Pyramids, Spain builds Colossus.

Turn 7 - 825BC:
Ralley Galley heads south to help in troop transport.
Anna heads south to continue road.
Olga moves onto the Iron.
MM Moscow to 16 spt. Galley in 1.

IBT: Moscow builds Galley -> Horse.
Arabs, Egypt, French, China and India switch to Pyramids.
Vikings and Arabs start on Oracle.

Turn 8 - 800BC:
Olga forms Iron Colony.
Anna builds a road on tundra.
Upgrade 6 Warriors to Swordsmen for 240g.

IBT: Nothing to report.

Turn 9 - 775BC:
Swords head towards the launch point. Robin also heads that way.
Move horse into Moscow to act as the MP that used to be Robin.
MM Moscow back to 14 spt.

IBT: Moscow builds Horseman -> Heroic Epic (See later discussion)

Turn 10 - 750BC:
Move Units toward launch point.
Move Galleys toward launch point.

After Action Report
3 Galleys will arrive at the launch point in the next 2 turns.
The other galley (Northward Ho) is exploring the north and is headed west.
We have 6 swordsmen, 2 archers and 2 horsemen headed towards the launch point.
England and Zulu have both learned Philosophy, but not Polytheism. We can make a trade if we want. (I leave that up to the next player)

We have 17 units for a cost of 13gpt.

I set the Production to Heroic Epic, but I'm not sure that is what we want to do. We could just keep building units. Our 147 gold will allow us to run at a deficit for a while, so maybe units are the way to go.

Invasion. The Vikings only have 1 city over pop 1. We may want to go after China first and then loop back to take out the Vikings once their cities grow.

I have attached a Map of what I think we should do to ferry the troops across. (Ignore it if you see something better)

The red dot is where we would load troops, the green the first galley destination, and the purple the second galley turn and unloading spot.

EDIT: One thing I forgot to point out. The two AI continents still do not know each other. Arabia has MM, so might be contacting India soon, so consider trading contacts when one of the AIs has a useful tech to trade for.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=75875&stc=1

nice set jeff!

lets start building the horseman for the 2nd wave. if we had currency, then a market would be fine, but units is the way to go now. we'll get more towns and the troop support will swell soon enough.

lets start building the horseman for the 2nd wave. if we had currency, then a market would be fine, but units is the way to go now. we'll get more towns and the troop support will swell soon enough.
Sounds right to me. I just did the switch to make sure I remembered to have the discussion on the subject.

For what it's worth

Roster
bed_head7 <-- UP
CKS <-- On deck
denyd
grahamiam
jeffelammar

Okay, got it. Will go after the Chinese. Your map with the galley stuff helps me a lot. Differential naval movement is a pain.

Okay, got it. Will go after the Chinese. Your map with the galley stuff helps me a lot. Differential naval movement is a pain.

In case you didn't notice it, the Galley coming from the north can reach the load points in two turns from where it is by going through the blacked out ocean.

If you knew that, then sorry for stating the obvious.

Looks good, jeff.

City size makes the Chinese a much better choice as a first victim. As long as both the Vikings and the Chinese are gone early, I'm happy. Once we've absorbed the Chinese, the Vikings should be ready for assimilation.

I vote for continuing to produce units (horsemen) in Moscow. We have a cushion of cash and pretty soon we'll have some not particularly productive cities to increase our allowed number of units. These cities aren't going to be good for cranking out units for a while, but our support costs will drop as soon as they are ours.

I also agree that we shouldn't worry about researching past monarchy. We should take what we can get in peace deals and do a minimal amount of trading. We're not in a hurry to rush the tech pace. We will need knights before we get around to the Mongols, unless we can get to them really quickly. I'm leaning toward holding off on them until later and trying to get them involved in fighting someone else first.

We will need knights before we get around to the Mongols, unless we can get to them really quickly. I'm leaning toward holding off on them until later and trying to get them involved in fighting someone else first.what??? please remember, this is regent. do not respect the AI! run over everyone! :hammer:

750 BC (0) - Check things out and am definitely going after Chinese, still unsure about Polytheism-Philosophy trade, though.

730 BC (1) - Okay, here goes. Polytheism to England for Philosophy, WM, 8g. For no particular reason, Writing to Egypt for their WM, 3g. Iroquois give 82g and WM for Philosophy. Arabs give WM, 50g for Philosphy. Go back to Iroquois to get another 45g for our WM. I also decided to make it a galley, since we have two explorin' and two shippin' galleys.

710 BC (2) - Now the Vikings have more cities bigger than size one, so I guess the decision will come at the very end.

690 BC (3) - CoL was discovered by someone, and it only takes contact with India to get CoL and 16g from the Iroquois. After doing this, I trade for every bit of gold in the world so that no one can buy contact with anyone else.

670 BC (4) - Trade for a grand total of 6g, to leave everyone broke again. No contact has been traded, though, so it is working.

650 BC (5) - Halfway point, and I consider marching into Scandinavia with two swords, a horse and our elite archer, but decide to wait for our forces to double in size.

630 BC (6) - Math and literature learned, so a harbor and then maybe some cats. CoL and WM to Japan for Math, 8g, and their WM. Math and WM to Arabia for their WM, 8g, and Literature. I also notice that everyone has contact with India despite my best efforts, but the other three are still unknown.

610 BC (7) - System low on virtual memory again, and reload.

590 BC (8) - What the heck. With six units total, we'll invade Scandinavia. We will have four more dropped off this turn, but why wait?

570 BC (9) - Move towards Nidaros, Scandinavian capital.

550 BC (10) - Well, a vet horse against a reg spear fortified on flatland has about 50% chance of winning, meaning retreat rate will be really low, so I'll send in a sword instead. First sword wins. Second sword loses, redlining the defender. So much for what I thought, as the third sword also loses. Might as well have sent in the horses. First horse retreats against the now 2/4hp defender. Second horse wins, redlining. Overall, not to good. We just traded 60s in our units for 60s in Viking units. Anyway, send in Robin, our elite archer, to finish off the redlined spearman, and he flawlessly captures Nidaros, and Ivan the Terrible rises from Robin's ranks as a Great Leader. If only our first elite win had popped a leader in SGOTM4...

I was going to head after Oslo next, as it is size 2. I have never won by conquest before, so I don't really know what the strategy is, especially in a map as strange as this one. We ought to build some catapults, as three or four catapults may have meant that we caputre Nidaros without loss. Unfortunately, we can't get up to 20spt just yet, though I think we can at 12 and with harbor (though I didn't think to check). And we probably don't need a library until we finish up researching Monarchy and have captured a few cities, making research affordable. And I guess we need a few more swords to replace their fallen brethren. Most importantly though, we need to decide what to do with the leader. I say army for sure, even though they aren't particularly fun after playing with a Conquests army, as we will do lots of fighting, making the Heroic Epic very valuable to us. The main debate I see is between building a sword army or horse army.

Leader, with all three moves remaining.

:goodjob: bedhead! nice to see you decide not to hesitate. we need to strike, and strike fast. as you can see, there were only 2 defenders in town. probably only 3 in the capitol and some others will only be 1. there is no need to wait. the key is to keep attacking in strength, and then wait only when troops get thin. we'll be able to outproduce the opposition once we get more towns.

for the MGL, sword army is fine with me :)

:thumbsup:
Good job not hesitating.

Couple Comments:
1. Not a big deal, but why didn't you use all 3 galleys to take troops across?

2. I'm perfectly willing to trade 2 swords to get another town.

3. The strategy for a conquest game is exactly what you just did. Get enough forces in place and let them have it. In a regent game, I wouldn't bother with Catapults. They won't be able to keep up with our horsemen anyway. Kill ratio is important, but not critically so. You've started us off toward a conquest victory quite well.

4. A harbor won't do us any good in Nidarus yet. Until astronomy we won't be able to trade across seas and oceans. I'd go for a courthouse or barracks first.

5. Army wise, I'd fill it with Horses, but I think you guys already know my preference for speed. If folks prefer swords, that is fine too.

Once we have iron hooked up on the new continent we should seriously consider Denyd's suggestion from a few posts back. We could ditch our iron colony and start mass producing warriors to ship across and upgrade.

I'll respond in order:

1. I was using all three, one was just ahead of the two others so it dropped off its two units and then the other two dropped off their four, assuming you are referring to turn 7-8.

2. I still don't like waste, but I am more of a builder so if you say it is alright, I'll take your word for it.

3. Good to know I did alright, but I don't think it will hurt to have a few catapults if we can pull 20spt. I certainly would not advocate building them at 15spt, which is where we are. As long as we have a few swords, though, it is nice to have some catapults to go along with them.

4. With Great Lighthouse, we can trade over sea, I think. If that weren't the case, I wouldn't bother, but I know in Conquests it allows trade over the sea. Perhaps that is not the case in PTW.

5. I never placed my vote, but I am completely ambivalent.

And I won't protest if the team wants it, but I generally don't like resource disconnect.

3. Good to know I did alright, but I don't think it will hurt to have a few catapults if we can pull 20spt. I certainly would not advocate building them at 15spt, which is where we are. As long as we have a few swords, though, it is nice to have some catapults to go along with them.

i disagree with this. at regent, i'd rather have troops that can hold ground. the other problem i have with it is that it's basically our only barracks town. usually, i build cats in non-barracks towns that have medium to high corruption. however, in this game, i'd even take spears and archers from corrupt towns over cat's.

my overall advise is to keep up the military production. horses are fine, and we can even throw in a sword or 2 now and again.

for the army, either horse or swords are fine. i was picked the sword army just so we'd have a viable unit in case pikes suddenly show up. and, since this is sgotm, i have no problem doing a resourse disconnect/reconnect to get 4 or 5 quick swordsman.

My vote is for a sword army. It will serve as shelter for the horseman and be able to hit hard enough to take on pikes.

We might consider just pillaging the iron next to Moscow for good. If we could pop rush a barracks on the other island and if iron is connected, we could do all our upgrading in the Viking lands.

CKS is up and I'm on deck if I am correct. I'll be unavailable on the 10 & 11th (back to back Christmas parties), but I should be able to get my set played long before that.

I've got the save and will probably play tonight and upload tomorrow morning.

I don't have a strong preference on the army. Swords will be slow but powerful, while a horse army would have survivability that horses don't. I tend to play a slower, safer game, so I'd pick swords if it were my own game. Since it will be my decision, if you want horses, convince me now. ;)

The great lighthouse allows trading over sea tiles. If we have a sea connection, and I think there probably is one, but I can't look right now, a harbor somewhere in Viking lands will be a good deal. If there are only ocean connections, it won't help. Since Moscow is our big, productive city, getting some extra luxes there would help our finances. If we don't have a sea connection, I agree that a courthouse and barracks would really help.

I'm planning on heading for Oslo first. Then we'll see what other size 2 or bigger cities are available. If the Vikings start pop-rushing, we may have to wait for cultural expansion of their capitol before we can attack. If this is the case, I think we should declare on the Chinese, too. Then we can pick off towns from each as they grow or expand.

1. I was using all three, one was just ahead of the two others so it dropped off its two units and then the other two dropped off their four, assuming you are referring to turn 7-8.

I got confused when you mentioned in your turn 1
I also decided to make it a galley, since we have two explorin' and two shippin' galleys. "

At the end of my turns, I had 3 galleys and all 3 of them were 2 turns of movement away from the loading point. My intent had been to have all 3 start ferrying troops, so we wouldn't need to build another galley.

I know this sounds like I'm being a jerk here, but that isn't my intention. Your turns were just fine. I was just trying to figure out where I failed to communicate my intent.


2. I still don't like waste, but I am more of a builder so if you say it is alright, I'll take your word for it.

You don't want a bad kill ratio long term. The thing is that the RNG will always give you some bad runs. Your loss of 2 swords is the result of the RNG not anything you did. Long term I don't want to lose 2 swords for each city, but it is certainly NOT anything you did wrong.

If we have a sea connection, and I think there probably is one, but I can't look right now, a harbor somewhere in Viking lands will be a good deal.
I don't think there is a sea route to the new lands, but I may be wrong about that. I'd have to check the save. If there is no sea route, then we can't trade with anyone (even ourselves) unless we do one of two things.
A. Move our capitol to the new continent.
B. Learn Navigation or Magnetism

On the subject of next build, I say TROOPS TROOPS TROOPS. IM(NS)HO, there is no need for any armies other than the ones we get from leaders. We should keep cranking out horsemen from Moscow until we are ready to implement Denyd's warrior plan OR forever if we decide not to disconnect the iron.

On the subject of next build, I say TROOPS TROOPS TROOPS. IM(NS)HO, there is no need for any armies other than the ones we get from leaders. We should keep cranking out horsemen from Moscow until we are ready to implement Denyd's warrior plan OR forever if we decide not to disconnect the iron.

If there is no sea connection, I think we build warriors in all our new cities and upgrade once we get iron connected there. We are going to have a lot of corrupt cities with poor road connections for a long time. We should use them to build cheap warriors. We'll need some workers to build roads, but they won't be able to get started until the war has moved on a bit. The barracks will be a pain to build first until we get to monarchy since we won't be able to pop-rush much (these towns will mostly be small), but we'll then have a steady supply of warriors without disconnecting Moscow. I don't really like disconnecting the iron in Moscow to build warriors anyway, since they waste a bunch of shields. Throwing away 1/3 of Moscow's shields is a big deal here, since none of our other cities will produce many until we get corruption under control.

If there is no sea route, then we can't trade with anyone (even ourselves) unless we do one of two things.
A. Move our capitol to the new continent.


I had originally been thinking that abandoning Moscow was a bad idea since we'd lose the Great Lighthouse. However, we have this huge long island instead of a bunch of little ones, so sea travel isn't going to be as important. I don't know if abandoning Moscow is the way to go, but I'm open to considering it. Building a palace, or even a forbidden palace, would be a tremendous undertaking without being able to use a leader to rush it.

delete post. we cannot use the leader to rush a FP :(

Actually with only a couple of cities, the 250 shields a GL disbands as is probably most (if not all) of a small empire FP.

As for abandoning Moscow, I'm against it. The location is pretty central (though a distance from) most of the cities we'll acquire in the next 100 or so turns.

The forbidden palace is always 200 shields, but my understanding is that disbanding a leader won't give us shields toward a FP, a palace, or any wonder.

I also realized we can't make an army until we get a few more cities, so that will be my first order of business.

I also realized we can't make an army until we get a few more cities, so that will be my first order of business.
I think we can all agree on that. :D
In fact, I would say that that should be everyone's priority at all times in this game. :hammer:

I noticed something very peculiar while getting ready to play last night, and consequently I didn't start. _Every_ civilization on the large continent has 2 workers for sale (except the Vikings, of course, who had 2 workers until we took Nidaros), while none of the civilizations on the north continent have any. This seems likely to be a bug. I'm going to ask mad_bax about it. If it is just coincidence, do we want to buy them all? We are talking about 20 foreign workers. Between maps and techs, I think we can get them pretty easily. I haven't negotiated with all the civs, but (for example) we can get both Mongol workers for our world map. This would give us a huge advantage, and continue the crippling of the AI, who still haven't built much in the way of roads, but it is perhaps taking unfair advantage of them.

On the sea connection question, we have a definite connection to the northern continent. It is possible that there is a sea connection from it to the long continent, but we haven't explored it yet. I'll work on this.

i would buy around 6 so we can replace the eq workers (use them to rush swords, a library, or a market). i wouldn't buy 20 if that bankrupts us or significantly speeds up the research rate.

WM deals for workers are great! i would do as many of those as possible. if we can get 20 without giving away anything but maps, that would be unbelievable.

This is probably what MB had to fix. The AI didn't know about build the eqWorkers, so when he fixed the file, he probably gave each tribe a pair to get them going.

Buy 6-8 of the cheapest (unless you can get them all without giving up anything important). Letting them build some roads for us will speed up future assaults.

I'm not sure what we can do with our current workers (join to city or disband for shields), but not having to pay their support would help.

This is probably what MB had to fix. The AI didn't know about build the eqWorkers, so when he fixed the file, he probably gave each tribe a pair to get them going.

This is what bugs me. It's been 500 years - 20 turns. Why are they still sitting available for us to buy? And why do all the civs on the long continent have theirs, while none of the civs on the northern continent do? If this was part of the fix, it didn't work too well.

I don't think the AI is going to build roads with these workers (they haven't so far), so I'm inclined not to let them keep them. We can build our own roads with them.

I didn't see those workers when I was playing.

I just got a PM from M-B that indicates that we should just go on.

He said he would check our save to make sure, but that this is an effect of the map, not a bug.

Take the AIs for all they're worth CKS.

Team Peanut had the same thing. I was able to play through the game and watch with a utility as the workers began to hide in the nearest cities at the era change. Because the bug fix included adding two workers to each capital at 1000BC and your era change is soon after this the nearest city it the capital.

Many of the AI will be affected by the era uprisings, it was an intentional "feature" of the map. What was unintended was that workers would dive into the capital rather than other cities. Since PTW and vanilla are playing different competitions because of this bug I see no reason to stop you utilising your success in getting a foothold on another continent so early to its' fullest. Making up some arbitrary rule to kneecap you for X turns would just be lame.

Here is the save.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_BC0350_01.sav

Short summary: We got a lot of workers, found a sea route, and didn't do so well militarily.

Turn 0, 550 BC: Lots of trades for workers
Aztecs: Our WM for 2 workers & WM
Mongols: Our WM for 2 workers & WM
China: Our WM & contact with Celts and Mongols for 2 workers & WM - I have no idea why they haven't met yet.
Celts: Our WM & contact with America for 2 workers & WM - They have met India already.
France: Our WM & contact with America & math for 2 workers & WM & 1 g - They have already met India.
Japan: Our WM & lit & philosophy & 45 g for 2 workers + WM
Arabia: Our WM & contact with America, Egypt, Spain & 128 g for 2 workers - They have already met India.

England, Zulu, and Iroquois all want 100+ g per worker, so I don't buy. The workers are still sitting there available to buy if we want them later.

The workers mine another tundra square. I move our leader out of Nidaros in case it flips, which is very unlikely, but possible. The unhappy citizen in Nidaros becomes an entertainer.

IBT We quell 2 resistors and Nidaros revolts. Moscow builds harbor and starts a horse. Moscow builds a horse every 2 turns for the rest of the time.

Turn 1, 530 BC Move workers toward boats, transport units in boats except Anna starts back to Moscow. Boats explore, looking for sea route. Vikings have pop-rushed and all cities are size 1. 3 Viking archers have appeared, I kill 2 and the workers retreat.

IBT 3rd archer retreats horse, We quell 1 resistor, Nidaros starves, Indians start the Great Library

Turn 2, 510 BC Archer kills warrior. Continue transporting and exploring. Oslo is back at size 2, start moving toward it.

IBT Warrior kills archer on hill. Japan starts GLib

Turn 3, 490 BC England has currency. Vet sword dies attacking regular archer in forest, it takes no damage and promotes. 2nd sword redlines but kills it. Oslo is size 1, so no hurry to get there.

IBT Mongols start the Oracle. We lose our last resistor.

Turn 4, 470 BC Anna joins Moscow. I find a sea route to the long continent, provided the connection to the small continent to our east works - corners touching.

IBT Iroquois start Great Library

Turn 5, 450 BC Moving around. Will declare on Chinese next turn.

IBT Nidaros riots as I had moved an MP out without realizing it. French start GLib

Turn 6, 430 BC Declare on Chinese, move troops next to Canton.

IBT Viking archer dies attacking sword, which it redlines.

Turn 7, 410 BC Sword heals just outside of Oslo. 2 swords and 1 horse by Oslo. Canton attacks: 2 horses retreat, 2 die, archer wins and promotes. Pull a horse from Nidaros just in case it is needed.

Turn 8, 390 BC Horse retreats, archer wins, takes Canton. Start barracks.

Turn 9, 370 BC Move sword up to protect Nidaros from incoming warriors

Turn 10, 350 BC Oslo has expanded, still size 1. Because I had to move the sword up to protect Nidaros, I only have 2 swords and a horse. I decide to attack anyway. First the sword by Nidaros kills 1 warrior. Then the swords by Oslo kill their spear opponents. There is a 3rd spear there. I figure, what the heck, and I give the horse a shot. It dies.

The Vikings will give us 2 cities for peace. I think we should take Oslo and then make peace, taking as many cities as we can get - all but 1 or 2 of them. Then make some progress on the Chinese, who have larger cities. By the time we've made it through the Chinese, our 20 turns will be up and we can finish off the Vikings. This will give us some cities quickly, with native citizens in them, and it will let the Vikings' cities grow and expand so we can take them.

The Iroquois, English, and Zulu still have their workers sitting around. They haven't done them a bit of good. We haven't gotten much use out of ours yet, as they've been moving around, but we're making progress.

I'm not really thrilled with my military progress, but we aren't in horrible shape. Oslo will likely fall next turn, as it lost 2 spears and can't pop rush.

nice cks, another town for troop support. AA warfare can be slow. btw, what are we saving the leader for? load him up with swords or horses and lets us it to our advantage :hammer:

i believe denyd is up and i am on deck.

We can't build an army with the leader until we have 4 cities. :(

G-Man, I won't be able to play until tomorrow night. If you've got the time, please take it and I'll jump in when you're done, otherwise I got it and will be playing on Friday night.

I agree with CKS, take Oslo then peace for a couple of cities. Having the people become instant Russians helps remove the flip risk and will save us some potential troop losses. They should also allow the GL to become a Sword Army (correct?).

I'm glad we started in this corner. These are 2 of the tougher UU's in this game (along with immortals). Getting rid of the Vikings also removes having to have quality garrisons in coastal cities (no amphib landings).

We can't build an army with the leader until we have 4 cities. :(
right! sorry, i'm an idiot sometimes :lol:

denyd: we'll see. 3grams is a grind right now.

We are short on swords, so we may want to build a couple more if we make a sword army. I don't really like the idea of having all our swords in one army.

We are short on swords, so we may want to build a couple more if we make a sword army. I don't really like the idea of having all our swords in one army.
Given the number of swords availiable, I think we may want to make it a Horsemen army.

It would increase the survivability of our Horses as well as being more mobile.

The AI won't attack an horse army with warriors and archers the way it would a lone horse.

It would also allow us to keep our limited swords moving around.

It would probably be a good idea to get 5 or 6 warriors built in Moscow and sent over to be upgraded in China/Vikingland. Having 3 or 4 healthy swords when attacking a city if often the difference between winning this turn and not taking the city at all.

One other item of note: Soon, a couple of tribes are going to advance to the middle ages. That means two very important things.

1. We could soon be facing pikes (swords can take on pike, but horses often become shish-ka-ponies)
2. When the 2nd tribe goes middle ages, any barbarian villages are going to have a bad pony uprising. We could be facing 40-60 barbarian horsemen on our home island. :eek:

One other item of note: Soon, a couple of tribes are going to advance to the middle ages. That means two very important things.

1. We could soon be facing pikes (swords can take on pike, but horses often become shish-ka-ponies)
2. When the 2nd tribe goes middle ages, any barbarian villages are going to have a bad pony uprising. We could be facing 40-60 barbarian horsemen on our home island. :eek:
only if they have iron. have we seen any ai's road yet? barbs are just annoying, but nothing more.

It would probably be a good idea to get 5 or 6 warriors built in Moscow and sent over to be upgraded in China/Vikingland. Having 3 or 4 healthy swords when attacking a city if often the difference between winning this turn and not taking the city at all.

One other item of note: Soon, a couple of tribes are going to advance to the middle ages. That means two very important things.

1. We could soon be facing pikes (swords can take on pike, but horses often become shish-ka-ponies)
2. When the 2nd tribe goes middle ages, any barbarian villages are going to have a bad pony uprising. We could be facing 40-60 barbarian horsemen on our home island. :eek:

Building warriors in Moscow and upgrading in China/Vikingland won't work until we have a barracks and iron connection there. This isn't going to happen until we are a monarchy and can cash rush things - pop rushing won't help because we don't have any people to spare yet. Plus, I think that we need the harbor connection to get luxuries to Moscow, so disconnecting Moscow's iron won't work. If we take a city with a barracks, we should start cranking out warriors there, though it won't be speedy. When we get iron connected (either locally or by harbor) we can upgrade them.

1. As grahamiam said, the AI has been bad about building roads, so iron connection may be an issue for them. It doesn't help that we bought many workers, but they haven't used the ones we didn't buy.

2. I suspect there are several barb villages around. We might leave the next couple of horses built to scout around Moscow in hopes of finding and destroying them.

[delurk]
Just a thought on those unused extra workers. Maybe they were created as eqWorkers, and the AI doesn't know how to use them? I haven't used the mod software before, so I am ignorant of how it works, but it is a thought. Or perhaps there's something in the unit creation that they get assigned numbers upon build, and can't use them because they have no pointers. This gets fixed when they are sold (different set of code). If they were then sold back, they might use them just fine.
[lurk]

[delurk]
Just a thought on those unused extra workers. Maybe they were created as eqWorkers, and the AI doesn't know how to use them? I haven't used the mod software before, so I am ignorant of how it works, but it is a thought. Or perhaps there's something in the unit creation that they get assigned numbers upon build, and can't use them because they have no pointers. This gets fixed when they are sold (different set of code). If they were then sold back, they might use them just fine.
[lurk]

This is an interesting thought. We could try trading workers for workers to see if they'd move out of their cities (as long as they'd trade straight across). Or we could just build our own roads and save up to get the last 6 workers. :)

[delurk]
Just a thought on those unused extra workers. Maybe they were created as eqWorkers, and the AI doesn't know how to use them? I haven't used the mod software before, so I am ignorant of how it works, but it is a thought. Or perhaps there's something in the unit creation that they get assigned numbers upon build, and can't use them because they have no pointers. This gets fixed when they are sold (different set of code). If they were then sold back, they might use them just fine.
[lurk]
In the first turns after 1000AD several roads appeared in AI lands, so I think they were using the workers fine. It just looks like something triggered a mass retreat back into cities. Since all the workers were close to their capitols, they just went there. (Lucky for us)


This is an interesting thought. We could try trading workers for workers to see if they'd move out of their cities (as long as they'd trade straight across). Or we could just build our own roads and save up to get the last 6 workers.
I like the second option. No mercy to the AI.

As a note, I was unaware that you needed cities on the same landmass to trade workers. It certainly explains why we could buy from the Long Island nations but not the short island (is that like the short bus?)

Preflight check: Let the Cantonese worker work the field. Everything else looks fine. Army consists of 1 archer, 1 spear, 3 swords, 6 horses, 5 galleys, 1 leader.

IBT: Arabia demands TM and 35g. I cave as I don’t need the BS.
Moscow horse -> horse

T1: 330BC Vet sword dies against spear in Oslo (2/4). Horses move out of Canton towards Oslo. Workers move to help chop harbor.
Trade WM around for 164g. Buy currency from India for WM and 188g

IBT: India starts Pyramids and finishes Oracle

T2: 310BC Position 4 horses near Oslo, drop off another. Move elite sword S past Nidaros.

IBT: sword defends against Viking warrior; China moves a warrior and archer toward Canton
Moscow horse -> horse
America, Japs, Mongols, building pyramids. Spanish, Arabs, Japs, Zulu and Iro building GLib

T3: 290BC Battle for Oslo: horse dies to spear flawlessly (4/4); horse retreats from spear without scratching it (5/5); horse kills spear and we take the town (2/4). Vikings will talk peace but will only give up Stockholm, a lousy jungle town.
Horse kills Chinese warrior.
Build the Army. I fill it with a horseman cause that’s all we have.

IBT: Horse retreats from Chinese archer; Nidaros riots.

T4: 270BC Move troops to take Bjoergvin. Make about 40g trading WM around.

Moscow horse -> horse

T5: 250BC Capture a Chinese warrior/settler pair, netting us a couple more workers.

T6: 230BC Moving into position for next Chinese town.

IBT: Chop for Harbor in Nidaros finishes; Moscow horse -> horse; English establish an embassy.

T7: 210BC ditto

Iro. Demand TM and 41g. tell them to go pound sand and they declare

T8: 190BC Elite swordsman redlines killing a reg Viking archer near Bjoergivin (I’m waiting for the expansion of borders)

IBT: Horseman flawlessly defends against reg archer; Moscow horse -> horse

T9: 170BC Horseman kills a pesky barb warrior near Moscow (3/4); Kill a Chinese spear/settler pair outside of Beijing, netting 2 more workers and promoting the horse to elite (5/5). Move 6 horseman in range of Beijing.

IBT: Spain demands poly. Tell her to stuff it, she does (no war)

T10: 150BC Somebody went medevil because we get the massive barb uprising near Moscow message. I can see 8 horseman. We have 5 barb camps on our island.

Battle for Beijing: vet horse retreats from reg spear (2/3);vet horse redlines reg spear but dies; vet horse retreats from reg spear (2/3); vet horse kills reg spear; vet horse retreats from reg spear; elite horse retreats from reg spear :mad:
Horse Army kills to Viking warriors, promotes.

Horse Army and 2 swords are hanging out near Bjoergivin, waiting for expansion. Once Bjoergivin is taken, we need to get that horse army over to the chinese side of the war.
I cannot disconnect the iron because you cannot destroy/pillage your own colony.

pRNG is not playing fair :lol: 4 workers are in range of ducking into a boat next turn. Another worker is on a mountain so you can see the barb camp and the # of barbs.

4 civ’s have construction so we may be able to buy it and enter the MA. India will sell it for around 300g and WM.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-jl-150BC.jpg

Ok I got it and will start tonight (might need until tomorrow to finish)

After taking Bjoergivin, we need to decide whether it's better to sign peace for a city or keep attacking Vikings? They will only have 3 cities left at than point. I'm vote for peace to get a city (or 2) and moving on to China. It looks like Bejing might be ready to fall next turn. I'm for taking a couple of Chinese cities and then getting a couple more for peace and moving on to the Zulu's.

With 100 barbarian horsemen roaming the home island, as I see it we have 3 choices on how to deal with them.
1. Hunt them down: Sending out the next 4-6 horsemen to hunt the BH down.
Downside: no reinforcements for the other island for the next 10 turns and potential losses of these units. Upside: Probably will gain 4+ Elite horses for transport.
2. Wait for them to come to us: Build swordsmen in Moscow. Defend the city until the BH are exhausted. Upside: Being able to send 3-4 Elite Swords to across the ocean. Downside: Open to pillaging of Moscow improvements & potential loss of units defending Moscow and no reinforcements for offense against China.
3. Evacuate Moscow: Pull all units out and spend most of the cash. Upside: No losses and support continues for Chinese offensive. Downside: Potential loss of all Moscow city & terrain improvements & no unit promotions.

I'll be starting in about 10 hours and will check in before I begin.

@denyd: there's about 40 barbhorseman on the island. i wouldn't pay attention to them unless they threaten our road.

re: beijing: i hosed the attack and you only have 1 or 2 healthy horses there. retreat and heal is recommended. after taking bjorkwhatever, i definitely agree with going for peace. try to get the town just N of bjork so we have a monopoly on the iron and gems there. i would even consider razing it just so we can get peace sooner with the vikings as it would be great if the horse army could help with the chinese push but shoring up our rear should be a priority.

If you buy construction, we will get an MA tech for free, hopefully it's fuedalism. upgrade the spear to a pike and build 1 or 2 more to absorb barb horseman. if the barbs start threatening to pillage, then use a built horse to take them out. otherwise, don't waste time chasing them. lets get all troops over to the mainland for conquest.

After taking Bjoergivin, we need to decide whether it's better to sign peace for a city or keep attacking Vikings? They will only have 3 cities left at than point. I'm vote for peace to get a city (or 2) and moving on to China. It looks like Bejing might be ready to fall next turn. I'm for taking a couple of Chinese cities and then getting a couple more for peace and moving on to the Zulu's.

I agree with signing peace with the Vikings after taking Bjoergivin.
I would attack China till they run out of 2 pop cities, then peace. Tackling the Zulu next sounds right.


With 100 barbarian horsemen roaming the home island, as I see it we have 3 choices on how to deal with them.
I agree with grahamiam on this. subject. Defend and use a couple horses to keep them off our improvements, but don't defend the colony, they may be nice enough to get rid of it for us. :) Keep the combat in our cultural zone so we have movement advantage for retreating the horses back to Moscow so we don't lose them. Once we have a couple knights we can send one or two out to take care of the barbarian issue.

One thing I think we need to do ASAP is get a start on a Forbidden Palace. I know that we would rather have it farther east, but I think we might want to get one started in Bejing. As far as I can tell, there is no way to rush the FP, so we need to start accumulating shields on it soon. I know we can't build it yet, but if we get Bejing working on it now and then grow that city, we should be able to get to 5 or 6 spt on it. I think sooner is better than picking the ideal spot.

I agree with signing peace with the Vikings after taking Bjoergivin.
I would attack China till they run out of 2 pop cities, then peace. Tackling the Zulu next sounds right.

let me be clear, we absolutely need to take or raze the town N of Bjoergivin. if we can get it in peace, fine, but we must have that space clear or under our control. It controls the local path to the iron.

edit: and i'm fine with starting the FP soon. it'll only take 200 turns or so :p if you want, rush a courthouse there after a chop before building the FP in Beijing. it may help get us up to 2 or 3spt when we get up to a bigger size.

I know we can't build it yet, but if we get Bejing working on it now and then grow that city, we should be able to get to 5 or 6 spt on it. I think sooner is better than picking the ideal spot. the rank corruption bug will help us greatly :) can't wait. 5 or 6spt? that would be great, and unless MB monkeyed with the cost, it should be 200shields

Barbarians: Attack them within our cultural boundaries and along our path to the boats, but don't chase after them outside of this. If we can promote our horses as they move to the boats, so much the better.

Units: I'd like to see us build a few new swords soon. If we get a leader soon, I'd like an army of swords or MI to give us some offensive power while we wait for knights. If we don't get a leader soon, we still need some swords as the horse vs. fortified spear situation isn't good.

War: The war plans sound good. The wait-for-the-city-to-expand plan is a pain, so if we can pick up their size 1 cities in peace deals, we are a lot better off. If we don't take the northern city (if we raze it), we'll need to build some culture to get the iron and gems in our borders.

Research: I'm for buying construction soon. Then head for chivalry, as we don't want to deal with horses until we can get cavalry.

FP: I haven't looked at corruption closely, but I think we might be better off with a courthouse in Beijing before the FP. A few turns of building and a cash rush after we switch to monarchy could get us a courthouse relatively cheaply and let us knock a hundred turns or so off our FP completion time. The problem with Beijing is that it is large, so we'll have to be careful about flips until the Chinese are eliminated. The good things are its size and relative closeness to Moscow, as they increase our potential shield output.

War: The war plans sound good. The wait-for-the-city-to-expand plan is a pain, so if we can pick up their size 1 cities in peace deals, we are a lot better off. If we don't take the northern city (if we raze it), we'll need to build some culture to get the iron and gems in our borders.

I'm against razing ANY cities. We can't build to fill in, so we should avoid leaving any unsettled territory. The only way for us to fill it in is to wait for an AI to settle. This is problematic because the AI often won't settle next to your borders, so they may never fill in the holes for us.


FP: I haven't looked at corruption closely, but I think we might be better off with a courthouse in Beijing before the FP. A few turns of building and a cash rush after we switch to monarchy could get us a courthouse relatively cheaply and let us knock a hundred turns or so off our FP completion time. The problem with Beijing is that it is large, so we'll have to be careful about flips until the Chinese are eliminated. The good things are its size and relative closeness to Moscow, as they increase our potential shield output.
I agree that we should consider a Courthouse before going FP, but only if we rush it. (We might even pop rush it to reduce the number of Chinese citizens, but we may be better of just keeping the population there.)

As for a leader, I think we should consider what we need most. I would argue that our biggest need is better production on the long island. The only way I see to do that is courthouses and the FP. Since the FP can't be rushed, I would suggest that we consider using any leader to rush either a Courthouse or a Colleseum in Bejing. Either of these helps us towards building the FP there.

I would argue that we don't really need another Army, but that anything that accelerates a FP down here is absolutely in our interest.

Actually Great Leaders can be disbanded for 250 shields, so we might consider using one (if we get one) to help Bejing with the FP.

I think it might be a good idea to pop-rush a court in Bejing before starting the FP.

I'm against razing ANY cities. We can't build to fill in, so we should avoid leaving any unsettled territory. The only way for us to fill it in is to wait for an AI to settle. This is problematic because the AI often won't settle next to your borders, so they may never fill in the holes for us.

sorry jeff, i disagree. the goal is conquests, not domination. if we have to raze a city here or there, we should accept it. i really feel we need to end the war vs the vikings (they are broken and should be left for mop-up duty later) and concentrate on getting our troops eastward, into the chinese, zulu, and mongols.

This pic explains a lot better what I think is our best course of action atm. capitol will jump to Linkoping once Bjeorwhatever is captured. Raze Uppsala and take Stockholm in peace. Vikings reduced to dyes island, which we can capture later and get another lux.

edit: warrior from Oslo can block any settlers from the last viking town
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-jl-150BC-razing.jpg

Actually Great Leaders can be disbanded for 250 shields, so we might consider using one (if we get one) to help Bejing with the FP.

I think it might be a good idea to pop-rush a court in Bejing before starting the FP.
Maybe I'm missing something, but as far as I know, the shields from disbanding a unit cannot be used to help build wonders or palaces.

This would include the 250 for disbanding a leader, so the leader would not be able to be used towards a FP.


sorry jeff, i disagree. the goal is conquests, not domination. if we have to raze a city here or there, we should accept it. i really feel we need to end the war vs the vikings (they are broken and should be left for mop-up duty later) and concentrate on getting our troops eastward, into the chinese, zulu, and mongols.

Good points.
I just want to get us more cities now. (Later as we approach the Domination limit would be the time to start razing.)
Also, if we follow the plan and put the FP in Beijing, then we want as many cities near Beijing as possible.

So as I see it, we really want Uppsala for two main reasons.
1. Automatic gems - By having Nidaros and Uppsala, we would have access to the gems in between without having to build a new road and without having to build culture improvements. With the addition of Bjoergivin, we would also have iron without having to do any culture buildings, we would just have to build the road.

2. Once cleared, those jungle squares will give us solid grassland squares. While that isn't a priority now, this is an area of land that will be more productive long term due to the rank corruption bug.

I don't have a major objection to razing Uppsala, if you do it, that is fine, but I wanted to give you my reasons for not wanting to do so.

If we can get Uppsala for peace after taking Bjoergivin, then we should take it instead of Stockholm.
Then we can take Stockholm at our leisure.

If we can't get Uppsala, we might even consider leaving it alone.

One other note. Unless we start building lots of culture buildings, we won't even get close to the domination limit. This is for a couple reasons.
1. The AI cities are spread out, so without level 3 culture, we won't get a tight coverage.
2. Our home island. We aren't planing on taking land there at all (since it all sucks)
3. There is a HEAP of Coast around that we won't ever get in our cultural influence.

These three points combine to make me want to keep every city that the AI builds.

If we can get Uppsala for peace after taking Bjoergivin, then we should take it instead of Stockholm. i absolutely agree with this, but the vikings wouldn't give it up for anything during my turns :( i hope they give it up, otherwise, we're wasting time dillydallying with the vikings. if we want to wait for Uppsala to go to size 2, then at least get the army out of there (after taking Bjoergivin) so we can set it loose while its still viable.

@denyd -> you may want to pillage the chinese horses as you retreat our stack. getting some horse counters would be a pain.

I'd rather not raze Uppsala. If we can't get it for peace, I'd rather let it be for now and come back and take it in 20 turns. In 20 turns it will have grown, and we can make sure the Vikings have a new government so they can't pop rush.

Since we'll know monarchy in 6 turns, I'd rather cash-rush a courthouse in Beijing rather than use a leader. I'm ambivalent about pop-rushing it. I think that the unhappiness will cause more problems than it is worth for the extra no-more-than-six turns we gain. We have cash at the moment, and although PTW armies aren't terrifically powerful, I think they are better than a courthouse we can buy, especially since we don't currently have any powerful units. Horses are poor against spears, but they'll just suicide against pikes, and we'll see pikes soon.

ok, if the team wants to leave uppsala there and come back in 20, that's fine with me. i just ask that we block Linkoping to prevent another settler coming out and that the next war with the vikings is the last war. get stockholm in peace and let's start concentrating our forces eastward :)

i guess the reason i don't see it necessary to keep uppsala is that the gems are only 2 cultural expansions away for us but that's mute now as we're letting it be.

Turn Log 3

Turn 0 – 150 BC – Fire a taxmen in Canton – Trade WM + 300g to Japan for Construction and enter the Middle Ages getting Feudalism as the bonus tech – Almost traded Construction + 130g + WM to Arabs for Monarchy, but decided not to

IBT: Moscow horse->horse – Beijing builds the Pyramids

Turn 1 – 130 BC – Upgrade Moscow spear to pike – Suicide Galley redlines but sinks BG

IBT: Swap TM’s with Cleopatra – Lots of people switch to Great Library & Great Wall

Turn 2 – 110 BC – Northward Ho sinks a BG and spots a couple of BH about to visit Egypt – Horse (5/5) kills Chinese Archer and promotes – Wounded horses leave Chinese land to heal

IBT: Moscow Horse->Pike – Oslo warrior->barracks

Turn 3 – 90 BC – Elite Archer(2/5) kills Viking Reg Archer

IBT: BH Pillages our iron – Vet Horseman (4/4) defends against BH

Turn 4 – 70 BC – Horses rest

IBT: Vet Horse (4/5) defends against BW & 2 BH and promotes – 2 BH show up NE of Moscow & 8 BH show up new Bjeorvin– Moscow pike->warrior

Turn 5 – 50 BC – 3 Units ready for Bjoervin – Horses should be ready next turn

IBT: Discover Monarchy research Monotheism - begin revolt – Paris builds Great Library – Kyoto builds the Great Wall – Government due back in 3

Turn 6 - 30 BC – I’ll let the 3 BH hit Bjoergvin first – Horses approach size 2 Nanking

IBT: BH decide to attack by stack instead – no damage and a promotion to elite – Pike defending horses wins but not promotion

Turn 7 – 10 BC – Assault on Nanking: Army loses 8hp killing 2 Reg spear – Elite Horse (4/5) kills Archer and captures Nanking – Assaut on Bjoervin: Elite Sword (1/5) kills Reg Spear – Elite Sword (3/5) kills Reg Spear – Vet Horse(3/4) kills Vet Archer and there’s still another archer left

IBT: BH – Pillage tiles around Nidaros - Pike defends against 2 BH and is now elite

Turn 8 – 10 AD – Vet Horse (1/4) kills Reg Archer and Bjoergvin is captured – Vikings will not give up Uppsala yet

IBT: Revolt to Monarchy is complete

Turn 9 – 30 AD – Assault on Beijing – Army loses 4hp killing Reg Spear – Elite Horse (1/5) kills Reg Spear – Vet Horse(1/4) retreats) – Elite Horse (3/4) kills Reg Spear – Elite Horse (2/5) kills reg spear (1 wounded spear left)

IBT: Moscow Warrior->warrior

Turn 10 – 50 AD – Horse (2/4) kills Reg Spear in Uppsala – Elite Sword (4/5) kills BH – Vet Horse (2/4) kills Reg Spear and Beijing is captured and we now have the Pyramids

I left a lot of undefended cities. We’ve got 2 elite swords in Bjoervin that should be able to take Uppsala (iron & gems) – Our horsemen are kind of beat up and will need some rest – Our research rate sucks – We’re still 8 units over limit – I figured we’d pump about 10 vet warriors out in Moscow and transport them over and upgrade them to MDI – Once Uppsala falls we’ll get Linkoping for peace (already available), that will add dyes to our list – Have those workers by Canton connect the gems if it’s going to take much longer to get Uppsala – We might consider waiting for knights before taking on Zulus or else avoid using our what’s left of our horses. – All of our target cities are now size two – With no other scientific tribes in the game, our monopoly on feudalism should last for a while.

Looks good. I should be able to take Uppsala quickly.

I'm going to cook some dinner now, and will be playing in about an hour and a half (11:00 MST Saturday night)

I pretty much agree with everything Denyd said. I don't think I will have to worry about attacking the Zulu in my ten turns unless I get lucky in taking out the rest of China.

The save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_AD0250_01.SAV)

Quick Summary: A little progress and a lot of prep for the next player.

Turn 0 - 50 AD: No changes

IBT: The two BHs near Oslo kill our E. Horse. :( Moscow builds Warrior.

Turn 1 - 70 AD:
Move two Swords and a horse towards Uppsala.
MM Moscow from the roaded forest to net 15 spt and 1 more commerce.
Decide that the barbs are more of a problem than I'd like, Switch Moscow to Horseman.

IBT: Viking Archers advance.

Turn 2 - 90 AD:
Lots of movement to get in position. Kill Archer with a horse.
Uppsala is down to 1 pop again, waiting.
Start building Gem road with 6 slaves.

IBT: Moscow builds a Horseman start another

Turn 3 - 110 AD:Move up

IBT: Arabs build Hanging Gardens.

Turn 4 - 130 AD: Move more troops. Not much else.

IBT: Japan demands Monarchy, refuse and the coward goes home. Moscow builds Horseman -> Horseman

Turn 5 - 150 AD: Keep moving up and healing.

IBT: Canton builds Barracks, starts on warrior. Gem road completed.
I noticed something strange. In city screens it shows that we have dyes instead of gems. We still get the happiness, so no big.

Turn 6 - 170 AD:
Raze Uppsala, NO losses, kill 2 Spears- With the gem road built AND an iron colony, we don't need it, and I don't want to keep troops here any longer.
Peace with Scandinavia for WM + 5g + Linkoping
Army healed, advance on Tsingtao with army and 4 horsemen

IBT: Get FP availibility message. Build Horse, switch to warrior.

Turn 7 - 190 AD:
Assault on Tsingtao. Army kills Spear, E. Horse Retreats vrs spear, E. Horse kills Spear, V. Horse kills Archer. A galley dies in the conquest.

IBT: zzzz

Turn 8 - 210 AD:
Troops advance from behind. The Tsingtao force heals.

IBT: zzz

Turn 9 - 230 AD:
Keep moving. We have 3 warriors in Canton waiting for founding colony next turn.

IBT: zzzzzz

Turn 10 - 250 AD:
Found Iron Colony.
Upgrade 3 Warriors to Medieval Infantry (60g each)

After Action Report
I went after Tsingtao because Shanghai is on a hill. I wanted the Elite Sword and 3 MIs to help bust our way in there.

The horses in Tsingtao are fully healed. They should be able to take Xinjian and get them healed up about the time the MIs and Sword show up. Xinjian is pop 1 right now, so it would be razed. Decision is up to the next player.

With a Horse to keep the barbs away from Moscow, we are now making Warriors. I suggest we keep doing so till we no longer have enough money to upgrade the warriors.

Notice the Ship chain from near Moscow to near Canton. I didn't make perfect use of it, but it is well set up.

Roster
bed_head7 <<< Up
CKS <<< On Dec
denyd
grahamiam
jeffelammar

nice :hammer: screenie?

nice :hammer: screenie?
Sure. Here is a shot of the Chinese front.

You can see the advancing sword and the 3 MIs in Canton. Also visible are the troops in Tsingtao and the two remaining Chinese cities.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76792&stc=1

Alright. A swap if CKS has time might be better, since I am a little busy until the 15th.

Edit: Actually, got it, and can play tonight. Got everything done way ahead of schedule.

thanks for the screenie, jeff. i was typing that with my 1yr old on my lap :)

excellent progress! we need to try to keep it up. btw, i thought we were going for a court then FP in Beijing?

is that an AI town on our island? do we want to go get it before too many spawn there?

excellent progress! we need to try to keep it up. btw, i thought we were going for a court then FP in Beijing?
I meant to mention that. Yes, the Court is the plan. I didn't rush it because I wanted the money for upgrading warriors. Also, I just didn't switch it because it wasn't close to time that something would complete. Guess I should have switched it to keep it in everyone's mind.


is that an AI town on our island? do we want to go get it before too many spawn there?
Yep, actually two of them. They just showed up. I knew I forgot to mention something (Sorry).
We might as well trash them when we can spare a few units.

I have finished my turns, but had a few notes and screenshots I wanted to add at the end, so I won't post it until tomorrow when I have more time. I hope that is okay.

Boy, skip reading for a day and the whole world changes! Nice job. It sounds like we are in good shape. I'm glad we've moved on from the Vikings.

I think we should encourage the AI to build on our island. There are a few good city spots that would be nice for us to have. We can raze the bad ones and keep the good ones. These would have rather less corruption than anywhere else, until we get the FP built. They will be far from the palace, so we'll still have lots of first rank cities after we get the FP built.

Nice turns Jeffelammer

I started the barracks in Beijing and forgot to mention to change to whatever the team deemed necessary. Somewhere near the end of the the next turnset our peace with the Vikings should run out and Stockholm should be taken to eliminate them and any flip chances. China doesn't have much left to slow us down, Shanghai should be taken and Tsintin razed (probably auto).

Next up are the Zulu and MDI should be setup to provide most of the offense against them. Horses vs Impi are not a good thing. We should probably use the non-elite horses as MP's in Viking & Chinese lands until knights are available. The elites should be used to pick off Zulu Archers and GL farm while running with the MDI. With Moscow pumping out warriors every other turn, we'll soon run of upgrade cash (+15 per turn is 1 warrior to MDI every 4 turns). We should probably build horses for a while to let the cash build up again. Those horses could be used to clean up the remaining barbarians (hoping for promotions) and then be positioned to capture our visitors once they grow/expand.

It would be nice to get rid of the Mongols before Keishiks. England is next in line and should be gone long before MOW appear. With luck we'll be able to wrap this up without facing anyone's GA. I am a little concerned about triggering a Zulu GA. Shaka can pump out a lot of Impis during a GA. We shouldn't have any problems killing them. But they're likely to slow our advances (kills-heal-kill-heal instead of kill-move-kill.) on the Zulu cities.

It would be nice to get rid of the Mongols before Keishiks.

Remember, in this game the Mongol's UU is not the Keshik. They have a 3/2/2 (+ zone of control) horseman replacement. I expect we'll face plenty of them by the time we get to them, and I'm sure they'll have a golden age while we are at war with them, unless they've already had one. They aren't cheap, but they sound nasty.

I didn't really add anything that made the extra wait worthwhile. Whatever I wanted to add is now forgotten.

Save (http://http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/jeffelammar_SG005_AD0350_01.SAV)

IT - Barb horsie kills our warrior.

260 AD (1) - Give Monarchy to Spain for a couple of workers. Elite Horse kills Chinese archer. Declare war on the Zulu since they are pissing me off. Then another elite horse kills a Zulu archer and takes two slaves (settler).

270 AD (2) - Lose a horse, kill two spears, raze Xinjian. Kill an Impi with our army.

IT - Chinese sword attacks our horse on the iron mountain, and the sword loses flawlessly.

280 AD (3) - Not enough money to upgrade all the warriors we have, so I'll build another galley to make the chain complete.

290 AD (4) - Nothing yet. Still waiting to attack Shanghai.

300 AD (5) - Starting marketplace in Moscow. That gives time to get more gold, and once it is built more gold faster, so we can continue warrior upgrading. Also think I am going to find a new route for the galley chain. Ours doesn't need to be this far back, and since I am giong to send some horseman after the cities on our island before going back to warriors, we will probably have a nice chunk of Zululand under our control. And since they have veteran units and are militaristic, they might have some barracks in towns we'll be capturing.

310 AD (6) - Capture Shanghai without loss. It has a harbor, so our trade network is all hooked up. Galleys moving, and we should be able to do the shipping of units in one turn to a spot in eastern Zululand or western Mongolia.

320 AD (7) - Moving towards Isandhlwana.

IT - We lose a horse to a zulu archer, and another retreats.

330 AD (8) - Lose another horse to an archer, this time attacking though. Looks like the Zulu may be a semi-competent oppenent. This map is going to be a pain to finish off. All the little islands. Just realizing that as others start colonizing.

IT - Lose another horse, but to an Impi! Our horse was on a hill, too! Oh well.

340 AD (9) - Two MI kill two Impi. Then an elite horse loses to a 2/5hp archer. Then we capture it. Also notice this turn that the Zulu city Ngome is on a one tile island, so we'll have to get it in peace.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5_jeffelammar_ngome.jpg

IT - Isandhlwana taken back by the Zulus, though they lost an archer and horse.

350 AD (10) - I had switched research to a single scientist, the scientist disappered a few turns ago, and we haven't researched anything for awhile. I dropped off two MI on the far end of the Zulu empire. Just for fun. Oh, recaptured Isandhlwana.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5_jeffelammar_zululand.jpg

I didn't leave much of a rear guard in captured lands. China is gone (don't remember if I noted their demise) and we still have a few turns left on peace with the Vikings. I was sort of going to try a two direction attack on the Zulu, to speed things up. With the ship chain set up, we ought to send over a few defensive units, so we don't lose any offensive units defending. The galley chain is not perfect, or even in place at the moment, as I used some of the galleys for other stuff. But it will work well enough to move the galleys quickly.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5_jeffelammar_galley.jpg

Things are looking good. I've got the save, I think (the link is screwy), and I'll play tonight or tomorrow morning.

nice :hammer: JD! and good eyes for Ngome :)

I played last night, but I'm having uploading problems. I'll be able to try again after lunch. In the mean time, here is my turn log.

Turn 0, 350 AD: MM Moscow for cash, Nanking for food. Rushed courthouse in Beijing. Switched from spearman to barracks in a few places.

IBT: Zulu galley shows up next to undefended Linkoping, then they offer peace. We can get Ngome, Swazi, Intombe, and 20 g. I stew for a while, then decide to accept. Ngome is the 1 tile island and is size 2 already; it will be harder to get later. If units unload from the galley, it will take forever to get rid of them as we have no nearby units. Later I regret this decision.

360 AD: Switch Nanking to library - we need the cultural expansion to get the sheep and to give both it and Beijing tiles to work. Beijing starts FP. Moscow starts MDI. I sell some maps and move toward the Mongols. I start the workers near Moscow on a road toward Murcia.

IBT Zulus kick our units out. I had hoped the eastern ones would go toward the Mongols, but they didn't.

370 AD: Nothing much, continue moving.

380 AD: Regular Iroquois galley approaches Moscow. I decide to attack it, our galley dies without scratching it. :(

IBT Zulus kick us out again. I wasn't thinking about having no embassy, so no possible ROP.

390 AD: Embassy and ROP with Zulu. I should have done this as soon as I decided to make peace. They paid almost as much for the ROP as I paid for the embassy. Rush library in Nanking.

IBT Iroquois warrior unloads near Moscow.

400 AD: Elite horse kills Iroquois warrior.

410 AD: Realize that those yellowish guys trooping along in Zulu territory aren't Zulu. Declare on Mongols, kill sword and take 2 workers. Declare on Vikings as the 20 turns are up.

IBT Mongols kill MDI.

420 AD: Elite horse kills Viking archer.

IBT: Arabs demand feudalism, I refuse, they declare war.

430 AD: Horse army kills Mongol sword and spear, taking 4 workers.

IBT: Mongols lose 2 swords attacking army, kill 1 MDI

440: Nothing much, just moving.

450 AD: Nothing much, just moving.

There are 4 attackers by Stockholm, but a galley left it a while back. Capturing Stockholm may not eliminate the Vikings. The road to Murcia is nearly complete and there are several attackers almost in place. Many units are approaching the Mongols, who appear to have no horses, as I've only seen swordsmen. The FP is due in 16 turns.

I did basically nothing with the galleys, as the troops Moscow built are headed to Murcia.
Several of the AI now have feudalism. We've been doing Monotheism at minimum; when we switch to Chivalry I think we need to up our research rate. We can set aside some cash for upgrading our horses.
Our horse army has been really nice.

Nicely played - getting 3 cities (including a 1 tile island) for peace was great - I got it and will keep moving forward against the Mongols and hope to finish off the Vikings (wonder where that galley was heading) - I would not expect to see any Arab units for quite a while (maybe by Moscow first) - Knights will probably rule the board for the balance of the game, so I agree with kicking up the research ASAP.

I got it and will play tonight (RL willing)

@CKS, try attaching the file to your post rather than uploading. i can't download JD's post but have no trouble downloading denyd's last save. maybe there's something screwie going on with the uploads server :confused:

:thumbsup:

I like where we are. Only thing nicer would be if we could get the uploads so we could see the nice score graph.


IBT: Zulu galley shows up next to undefended Linkoping, then they offer peace. We can get Ngome, Swazi, Intombe, and 20 g. I stew for a while, then decide to accept. Ngome is the 1 tile island and is size 2 already; it will be harder to get later. If units unload from the galley, it will take forever to get rid of them as we have no nearby units. Later I regret this decision.
I'm curious why you regret this decision. It seems like it was a really good one. We got rid of the 1 square island and got a couple more cities. Seems like a win to me.


The FP is due in 16 turns.
Sweet, this will help us a lot, we will finally have the ability to build things on the long island. :)

When we switch to Chivalry I think we need to up our research rate.
I agree completely. Also we should switch Moscow to build only Horsemen at that point. We may not have enough cash to upgrade everything at once, but I'd rather have many horses lying in wait when we do hit Chivalry.

Once we have Chivalry, I suggest that we head straight for Military Tradition, low research till all horses are upgraded, then max research straight on through. The power of our UU should allow the end game to go nice and quick, including a late MA Golden Age :bounce:

Here is the save.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_AD0450_01.sav

My uploading problem was on my end. I don't have Internet access at home, so I brought the save in to work on a floppy. It wasn't readable here, so I went home again and saved it to a different floppy. Problem solved. (Bed_head7's link had an extra http in it.)

I regretted taking the peace deal with the Zulu because I then spent the whole time trudging through their lands thinking "I could be crushing them as I go." I'm good at second-guessing myself. Plus, it seems like cheating - I avoid combat this way and make the rest of you do it. ;)

I like where we are. Only thing nicer would be if we could get the uploads so we could see the nice score graph.

It is kind of cool watching our orange line head off with the blue one, racing away from the rest.

This reminds me, we have some possible trading partners now. We should look into lux trades with whoever we won't attack soon.

Just a note: I didn't notice yesterday in the GOTM forums, but apparently it was Denyd's birthday.

Happy belated B-day.

:bday:

Happy birthday, denyd. I hope you had a nice day.

Oops, I must not have selected the http:// they give you when pasting over the copied shortcut to the uploaded save. Sorry about that. The only potential thing in CKS' move that he might regret is making the deal during the IT. We might have been able to attack one last time and then make peace. But then again they might have dropped off whatever units if we had waited, so it seems like the right move to me.

As you can see, first spoiler thread is open.

I'm perfectly willing to write up the spoiler, but if someone else is dieing to do it, I'll defer.

I got side-tracked last night (wife with a cold and a hyperactive 3 year old) but should be able to stomp some Mongol butt tonight. (Might even be able to send Ragnar to the losers lounge).

Jeff: My plate is way too full at the moment, please document our glory for posterity.

All: Thanks for the kind words for the B-Days wishes.

I got side-tracked last night (wife with a cold and a hyperactive 3 year old) but should be able to stomp some Mongol butt tonight. (Might even be able to send Ragnar to the losers lounge).

No problem, this is the time of year we all have to juggle more balls than we want to.

If that galley Raggie sent out didn't have a settler in it he should get the "your cities are as dust" message this turn. :hammer:

Please do write it, jeffelammar. I am anxious to read the other spoilers, and based on the quality of SGOTM spoilers, I am anxious to read even our own.

Please do write it, jeffelammar. I am anxious to read the other spoilers, and based on the quality of SGOTM spoilers, I am anxious to read even our own.
Two out of four say it's ok. I'll plan on writing it tonight when I get home from my hockey game unless someone objects before then :)

Situation:

At the end of turn 4
Vikings are gone (no settler on boat)
Signed peace with Iroquois giving $ and getting Monotheism
Researching Chivalry due in about 15
FP due in about 12
Ground troops (3 Elite Swords & 2 Vet MDI) about to reach Almarikh and Mongol core (probably not enough units for more than 1 city, then peace)
Just declared war on Spain took Murcia and got a Great Leader
Also at war in Arabs (won't talk yet), but no sign of troops
GL can reach Moscow next turn
Positioning for war with America and to capture a pair of size 2 cities on our island.
We have lots of undefended cities on the new island

What should GL be used for?
1. He could disband and hurry the Heroic Epic
or
2. He could be used to create an Army
If an Army should I fill with MDI or wait for Knights

(Also Sun Tzu is available)

I'll move on to my other SG and pick this up again tomorrow night awaiting opinions

I thought that the Heroic Epic was a small wonder, and therefore could not be rushed through disbanding. As long as that is the case, lets make an army and save it for knights.

knight army, knight army :drool: :hammer: :hammer:

knight army, knight army :drool: :hammer: :hammer:
I thought that the Heroic Epic was a small wonder, and therefore could not be rushed through disbanding. As long as that is the case, lets make an army and save it for knights.
What they said.

edit: Sorry, but I had computer problems last night, so didn't finish the spoiler. I'll get it done today. Luckilly I had only written about 3 paragraphs when it crashed. Then I spent a bunch of time getting it to talk to the outside world again :(

A knight army it will be.

We're going to have to delay a bit on attacking the Zulu's again. We've got 5+ cities on the Zulu border without a defender and there are a bunch of Impis running around. What I'm going to try to do tonight is take Almanrikh and get some Mongol cities (I'd like at least 2 of Darhan, Kazan, Ulaanbaatar & Tabriz). Then declare war on America and take Buffalo & St.Louis on our home island. After that I'll get some defenders built for those Zulu border cities so when the ROP runs out, we'll be able to attack them again. There really isn't any reason to continue the Arab, American and Spanish wars at this time (once those American cities are captured), so signing peace with them would be fine. If things go better than expected, I might send a couple of units to try and take Punjab on the home island, but I'd rather not be at war with that many AI at one time.

hmm, sounds like the front is getting bogged down due to the fact that the ai is pressuring us from so many different directions. it's disappointing that we cannot press the mongols and zulu's more, with MDI's etc and them lacking vital resources. we may want to start playing dirty (ie, sign peace but don't respect the 20 turns) if we want to keep up with the other teams.

Our advance on the Mongols has been slowed by the fact that the new units from Moscow are being used on the home island (also were using foot units with a long way to go). Once Darhan is secure, I'll be able to free up 4-5 units to move to the Zulu borders. Also with the FP coming on line soon, production in old China & Scandanavia should be able to provide new troops for the Zulu offensive. I think we've about 8 turns left on the ROP with Zulus. That should be just about right to allow the Mongol attackers to complete their work, heal up and reposition for the Zulus. About the same time, we should be done with America & Spain on the home island and have those units in route as reserves for the Zulu elimination war.

this is kinda what i feared. being that we have only 1 productive city up to this point, it was really important that we have a single military focus or front. once the FP was built, the second core would continue supplying troops for the onslaught on the main island and the capitol could then build up troops for other endevours, like securing the home island. right now, by holding back troops, we are delaying the capture of zulu and mongol towns, which will effect our score. hopefully, we can rebound once the FP is built. i would not recommend reversing course as it sounds like we're already committed and we need those towns for score. i have not seen a screen shot in a while so i'm not sure, but I suggest we get barracks chopped and tiles mined for those cities around beijing in anticipation of the production jump.

running over the main island with the 2nd core should be our primary goal now, while the main island can be cleared (and kept clear) with troops from Moscow. after clearing, moscow can build up a knight SoD (say 10 to 15 units) for america, india, et al after the FP is built

If things go as planned, I'll have added 6-7 cities during my turnset. That should keep the score growing nicely.

Beijing's adjoining tiles are all roaded & mined, but the adjacent tiles have yet to be developed. But up til now Beijing had zero culture, so no expansions. Once the FP expands the radius, Beijing will become a production powerhouse as will Nanking & Shanghai. Those three cities should be able to produce the knights we'll need to take the rest of the Zulu & Mongol cities and get us started on England.

:love: sounds great!

edit: btw, here's a handy screen capture utility for civ3 that i use. much better than that alt+print screen stuff. been using it for 4 or 5 months now and it's really nice. hopefully, it helps some teammates to post more pics :mischief:

:love: sounds great!

edit: btw, here's a handy screen capture utility for civ3 that i use. much better than that alt+print screen stuff. been using it for 4 or 5 months now and it's really nice. hopefully, it helps some teammates to post more pics :mischief:
Cool, I've been using alt + print screen and editing in Photoshop, I'll give this a try.

Spoiler is almost done. I'll finish it tonight when i can add some pretty pictures to it.

Nice job, denyd. Congratulations on the Vikings and the leader. I'm also (belatedly) voting for a knight army.

How is the corruption in the towns on our home island? My hope was that we could get some not-totally-corrupt towns with reasonable growth potential by taking these.

If things go as planned with the Mongols, we will be in good shape to eliminate the Zulu once the ROP expires. I'm not keen on playing dirty, but I'm willing to talk about it if we finish off the Zulu quickly and have no other convenient targets besides the Mongols.

Not really sure about local island corruption. The city I took is now size 1 and that 1 is unhappy, so he has to be a clown until the workers connect the city.

If things go well with the Mongols, I might delay signing peace to allow us to keep hammering on them until the Zulu deal expires.

Not really sure about local island corruption. The city I took is now size 1 and that 1 is unhappy, so he has to be a clown until the workers connect the city.

If things go well with the Mongols, I might delay signing peace to allow us to keep hammering on them until the Zulu deal expires.
Just to remind everyone. Every city we take on the tundra island increases the corruption on the Long Island. We would do well to keep it sparse and just not let the AI build many cities there.

taxmen are better than clowns ;)

If all the cities we capture are 15 tiles away or so, then all cities within 15 tiles of Beijing will suffer minimum rank corruption, if my understanding is correct. So maybe we should take the two other productive spots, which are a ways off of our capital I think, and raze tundra towns if they are too close to make them worth it.

I'm interested in upping our city count to allow for a larger military. Since this is PTW, the rank corruption feature, should allow all those cities closer to the FP to produce with little or no corruption. Until we get to England, that should be most of the cities on the long island. The northern tundra cities are simply place holders to prevent additional AI landings and keep the barbarians under control.

Good point about that clown, he'll become a taxman first thing.

OK, here is the spoiler. If no-one objects to its contents, I will submit it to the thread in the morning.

Team Jeffelammar - SGOTM 5 - AKA Hordes from the Russian Wastelands

A ragtag fugitive tribe of the last remnants mankind finds itself stranded at the north pole of an icy planetoid.

Getting Ready

Banding together they pulled on their long underwear and prepared to remove the other nations from the world. :mischief:

Furthermore, for some reason this intrepid band of refugees seems to have lost the ability to make backpacks, so will have to liberate the rest of the world from their evil masters. No remnant of the corruption must remain.

In a flash of brilliance, the tribe decides to appoint a Pentad to lead this lost tribe back into the light. After discussion amongst themselves the Pentad decided to each in turn take it upon themselves to act a a sort of executive office of the week. :rolleyes:

The opening

The esteemed Denyd was chosen to be the first Czar of the Pentad. After gathering input from the rest, he boldly moved the scout to the southeast, revealing the paradise beyond. Moving boldly, he commanded the team to head for this desireable land, finally founding the town of Moscow in 3750BC on the square southeast of the wheat.

Scouts were immediately sent out to find out where the evil ones resided, and by 2550 BC it was evident that we were alone on a polar icecap. It also seemed that the devious fiend who had sent them here had made sure that any direction would have been valid for the first scout.

The Pentad convened and decided that all priority must be put towards learning how to build boats. The slow coastal movement and the amount of coast to get away from the soon to be constructed Moscow shipyards also made the invention of a great house of light a priority.

With these primary goals in mind, it was time to grow Moscow as quickly as possible. A temple was built to allow higher population AND to accelerate the incorporation of Furs into the economy.

The next several thousand years were spent hunting the rogues that kept popping up. A couple of archers spent time hunting them, one of them becoming elite.

The age of Discovery - things get interesting

In 1300BC one of our mad-men figured out that pictures could be used to convey directions to the local megamart. We had been building a large pile of rock anyway so we promptly installed a big lantern on top of it and prepared to search the world for tribes who lived in bondage to cruel overlords. The Lighthouse finished in 1275 and several exploratory boats followed.

At this point we were running Moscow on a 14/16 spt cycle, using either the lake or a forest to assure correct cycling.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=77149&stc=1

Pentad member Grahamiam had the honor of directing the first phase of exploration. In 1100 BC his Suicide Sister Galley reached the coasts of a corrupted nation calling themselves Zulu, soon after contact was made with the Mongols and Chinese. A ferverous trading round ensued in 1025BC. After the dust had settled we had a full map on the long continent and contact with all the residents thereof. We also had aquired a nice little nest egg to prepare for our first purification attempt. We also gained tech parity or superiority vrs all AI nations.

Team namesake and boat anchor Jeffelammar took over and started preparations for an invasion of either China or Scandinavia, chosen because of proximity the availability of a nice safe ocean crossing. In order to muster a large invasion force, it was decided to use swordsmen. Six warriors were built at 1 a turn and then a colony was constructed on the iron mountain. A upgrade was completed and we were off to smash corrupted tribes.

At this time a galley was sent north and discovered what we inventively called "the short island". Contacts and maps were quickly aquired and we knew all of the corrupted nations of the world. Plans for liberation and purification went into overdrive.

The first acts of purification

The valued Pentad member Bed_head7 took over and chose the Vikings as the first victim because they had more pop 2 cities than the Chinese. Unfortunately they also were cruel masters of the whip. In 550BC Nidaros was captured and Ivan the Terrible rose from the ranks of the Archers named Robin. Ivan remained in reserve while we captured more cities and eventually became a Horseman army.

The initial war was slow, but once the Vikings were on their heels we turned attention to the Chinese. At this time every civ on the long island had some workers for sale, so we purchase them and began shipping them back to the long island to build roads there.

At home a couple troops patroled our cultural borders, but no concerted effort was made to eliminate the barbarian hordes.

In 150 BC we traded for Construction and entered the Middle Ages. At this point we had taken Nidaros, Oslo, and Canton and were involved in wars to liberate the Viking and Chinese people and were 5 turns from the discovery of Monarchy. We had narrowly failed to take Beijing in 150BC, losing 1 horseman and retreating 3 more. In retrospect this was a good thing for us, but that is a story for later.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=77150&stc=1

At this point our army consisted of
1 archer
1 spearman
2 swordsmen
9 Horsemen (3 of them in an army)
5 galleys
20 Slaves

Edit: argh. I will have to use the other way of uploading so these images show right when I post it to the spoiler :(

Very nice.

Turn Log 4

Turn 0 – 450 AD – Vet Horse (4/4) kills Reg Spear at Stockholm – Elite Archer moved from Nidaros to Iron Colony heading to Darham

IBT: Vikings land archer & spearman next to Swazi – Moscow horse->horse – Oslo barracks->horseman – Nanking horse->pike

Turn 1 – 460 AD – Assault on Stockholm: Vet MDI (2/4) kills Reg Spear – Vet MDI (2/4) kills Reg Spear and Stockholm is ours and the fledgling Vikings are gone – Ground units advance towards Almarikh – A couple of horses head for Darhan – Collecting troops for Murcia – A couple galleys are sent to heal

IBT: 4 Mongol Swords SW of Ulundi - BH by Swazi – Palace Expansion and we have a right wing – Aztec galley passes Ngome - France starts Sun Tzu’s

Turn 2 – 470 AD – Wake the Celt worker mining the iron (26 turns is long time to wait) – 5 units advancing on Almarikh – 5 in place to declare on Spain next turn – 2 horses & 1 archer will wait for Darhan to grow (change of plans – Darhan is never going to grow, so I’ll raze it) – Army sent to heal

IBT: Mongol Swords heading home – Mongol Sword/settler pair heading W – Moscow horse->horse – Arabs & Iroquois start ST’s

Turn 3 – 480 AD – Continue advancing on Almarikh & Darhan – Declare war on Spain – Sign peace with Iroquois giving 9gpt + 310g and getting Monotheism – research Chivalry 50% due in 18

IBT: Zulus and Mongols sending settlers west – BH runs from our gallant regular warrior in Swazi

Turn 4 – 490 AD – Ares (Elite Horseman) (2/5) kills Reg Spear, captures Murcia and Peter the Great (2nd GL) is born) – Vet MDI (3/5) kills Mongol spear and promotes – Horse Army moves to Intombe to heal and defend against incoming swords stack

IBT: Warrior in Swazi is killed by BH (losing 5g) – Moscow Horse->Pike – Moscow border expansion now includes the iron – Palace Expansion #5 is a left wing – America starts Sun Tzu

Turn 5 – 500 AD – Peter the Great forms an Army in Moscow – Ground troops advancing on Almarikh – Withdraw units from Darhan, will seek this as a peace offering – Units positioning for Buffalo

IBT: Swap TMs with India – Nanking pike->pike – Palace Expansion # 6 is a second floor

Turn 6 – 510 AD – Vet Horse(4/5) kills Reg Spear and promotes – Vet MDI(3/4) kills Reg Spear and captures 2 slaves – Assault on Almarikh: Vet MDI (2/4) kills Reg Spear – Elite Swords (5/5) kills Reg Spear – Elite Sword(2/5) kills Reg Sword and captures Almarikh and a slave – Elite MDI (2/5) kills Reg Sword – Vet MDI (3/4) kills Reg Sword – Declare war on America – Battle for Buffalo: Vet Horse loses to Elite Spear (3/5) – Vet Horse loses to Elite Spear (1/5) – Vet Horse kills Elite Spear and Buffalo is captured – There are now 3 Indian cites on our island – With the capture of 2 cities and our losses, we now have no support costs

IBT: 3 Mongol swords die attacking Vet MDI (1/5) who gets promoted to elite – France founds a city on our island – Swap WM to Aztecs for TM + 4g – Moscow pike->pike – Canton MDI->Horse

Turn 7 – 520 AD – Troops resting & healing in Almanrikh – 3 units advancing on St. Louis – Give 8g + TM to Arabs to sign peace – Trade Spices + Gems to Japan for Wines

IBT: No counterattacks – Nidaros barracks->pike

Turn 8 – 530 AD – Vet Horse (3/4) kills BV (+25g) – Elite MDI (2/5) kills Reg Sword – Sign peace with Spain getting Santiago + WM

IBT: Moscow Pike->Pike – Bjoergvin barracks->horse

Turn 9 – 540 AD – Vet MDI (4/4) kills Reg Sword – Units advancing on St. Louis & Kazan

IBT: Just watching a couple of galleys sail by – Also India just sent out another settler from Chittagong

Turn 10 – 550 AD – Assault on St. Louis: Vet MDI (3/4) kills Reg Spear – Vet MDI (4/4) kills Reg Spear and St.Louis is ours – Assault on Kazan: Elite MDI (4/5) kills Reg Spear – Elite Sword (x/5) kills Reg Spear and Kazan with 3 slaves & barracks is captured – Horse Army (4/14) kills Vet Sword (loss of 10hp)

After action report:
Zulus: Peace treaty is about expire, considering how well were rolling, renewing is not a bad thing, Shaka isn’t much of a threat and we really aren’t a position to defend all of our border cities yet.

America: We’ve taken all we can get for a while. If you can get Houston in peace, do it. Seattle isn’t very defensible.

India: Probably next on the home island attack list. Punjab is ready to be attacked. There is also a settler moving about (with a warrior escort)
Mongols: About to crack. We should have a 7 unit SOD on the hills about Karakorum next turn (2HR,2SW,3MDI). We should be able to take the remains of the Mongol core (Karakorum, Tabriz & Ta-tu) and then sign peace for the remaining non-capital cities.

England: Next on the long island hit list. She just got Engineering (so does France, India & Egypt) and is likely to have pikes in London. We’ll probably need knights for the larger English cities. We may even need to start using catapults soon.

Science: Still have 9 turns left to go for Chivalry. Needed to run too high a luxury rate to research any faster. Hooking up Linkoping dyes will help. You might be able to shave a turn or two if we could get some more cash. Still lots of workers for sale.

Production: FP due in 7 in Beijing. Then production on the long island should take off. We’ve got a lot of land to develop in the Viking core and slaves take a lot longer (but at least they are no support units).

Military: Pretty strong for the current/upcoming opponents. The Celts are probably next and not a threat. Then comes Japan, quite large but currently no iron. We’ve 10 Horses & 10 MDI. When that knight army arrives, we’ll be able to crack the larger English cities.

Note: I noticed after I saved & closed the game, that Nanking needs to be checked to prevent rioting.


I just noticed the spoiler report, but having trouble keeping the eyes open :sleep:

I'll have to read it tomorrow.

got it. @jeff, that's a great write-up :goodjob:

jeff, the spoiler sounds fine. Thanks for writing it up.

denyd, great job. Seven new cities (and no support costs) sounds really good.

We'll be in really great shape after the next set, as we'll have both the FP and knights, and we'll be seeing the end of the Mongols as a viable civilization. It was nice of the Mongols to give us barracks near the front, so we can upgrade our horses conveniently.

As we tromp down the island, we'll want to be careful about renewing our trade deal with Japan, as we'll probably be attacking them before 40 turns are up. In the mean time, the wines are really nice.

Perhaps some of our corrupt cities should start on some catapults for us, just in case we need them for the English.

:goodjob:
Nicely done. :hammer:
Turn Log 4
Zulus: Peace treaty is about expire, considering how well were rolling, renewing is not a bad thing, Shaka isn’t much of a threat and we really aren’t a position to defend all of our border cities yet.

If I read things right, all that is going to expire is the ROP. Since they came at different times. If so, I suggest getting the MI and Horse through Zulu territory in the next four turns and then letting the ROP expire. Once we have our FP finished, we can crank out a new SOD and position it to kill the Zulu. Meanwhile the forces in Mongol territory can continue their work and consolidate the territory, but not push much farther.


Mongols: About to crack. We should have a 7 unit SOD on the hills about Karakorum next turn (2HR,2SW,3MDI). We should be able to take the remains of the Mongol core (Karakorum, Tabriz & Ta-tu) and then sign peace for the remaining non-capital cities.
Agreed.


England: Next on the long island hit list. She just got Engineering (so does France, India & Egypt) and is likely to have pikes in London. We’ll probably need knights for the larger English cities. We may even need to start using catapults soon.
Agreed that we may need knights here. To me that is another arguement for taking the Zulu out before tackling England. That way we won't have a potential enemy in between us and the war we are fighting. (I'd hate to declare on England and then have them bribe the Zulu into turning on us.)

Note: Spoiler is submitted, we are now allowed to read the other posts.

thanks jeff, i read that ;) also, i think we need 80g per horse upgrade, so 800g for those 10 horses. will try to make sure that happens.

Actually the peace treaty with the Zulu is due to expire during the next interturn. They may come calling to renew. We aren't in position to decline their offer (3 undefended border towns). We've still got 3 turns left on the ROP. What we can hope for is that the Zulu just allow the peace treaty to continue without renegotiating. That would give us time to complete the Mongol conquest, upgrade the horses to knights (note that we only have 3 non-elite horses on the long island) and setup defenses around the Zulu. Then with peace signed with the Mongols and our units re-positioned and healed. We could declare on the Zulu and wipe them out.

We should talk about what to do about the Indians. They've got 3 cities and a settler on our home island and are our tech equals. Soon they will have War Elephants and would pose a threat to Moscow. Without any culture expansions, only one of those cities would survive a conquering and we really don't need any more slaves (though they are nice to have around).

BTW: Very nice spoiler

i don't mind upgrading a few of the elite horses, especially with the reduced leader abilities. we could use the extra punch anyways.

We should talk about what to do about the Indians. They've got 3 cities and a settler on our home island and are our tech equals. Soon they will have War Elephants and would pose a threat to Moscow. Without any culture expansions, only one of those cities would survive a conquering and we really don't need any more slaves (though they are nice to have around).
yes, let's talk about this today as I play and post tonight.
those cities are likely to have high corruption (for india) and i wouldn't expect them to produce more than an archer or spear. imho, i say we let them sit for my set as the FP will come online at the end of it. after the FP is online, then let Moscow build 4 or 5 or (whatever is required) knights to go out and remove those cities.

Actually the peace treaty with the Zulu is due to expire during the next interturn. They may come calling to renew.
I don't think they will renegotiate. The AI usually only renegotiates peace when the treaty included a luxury or GPT.

We should talk about what to do about the Indians. They've got 3 cities and a settler on our home island and are our tech equals. Soon they will have War Elephants and would pose a threat to Moscow. Without any culture expansions, only one of those cities would survive a conquering and we really don't need any more slaves (though they are nice to have around).

I think that we should kill all of their forces on our island, raze their cities, and then see if we can get a short "island city" for peace. It would be nice to establish a beachhead over there.

As for the slaves, I say keep taking them. We may not need them, but they sure don't hurt.

Edit
My post crossed Grahamiam's

yes, let's talk about this today as I play and post tonight.
those cities are likely to have high corruption (for india) and i wouldn't expect them to produce more than an archer or spear. imho, i say we let them sit for my set as the FP will come online at the end of it. after the FP is online, then let Moscow build 4 or 5 or (whatever is required) knights to go out and remove those cities.
Sounds just fine to me.

We have a city (Santiago) from the Spanish war on the short island. As long as we stay in monarchy, we should keep adding cities on the short island. They will be difficult to defend once we get into a war with India, we'll probably lose them.

When we move to attack India on the home island, be sure to go after Punjab first. It's the only one liable to not-autoraze.

grahamiam, your India plan sounds good to me. I also think we should upgrade a few elite horses; the extra power will help us more than the ability to get a leader right away, since leaders aren't very powerful in this game.

I think we should remove the Zulu from the game as soon as we've made peace with the Mongols and gotten ready for another attack. I'd like them not to be sitting in the middle of our territory as we move down the island. With knights they should go quickly and we can move on.

Preflight check. Zulu peace treaty does not have any turns on it, RoP has 4T left.
American’s refuse our envoy so won’t even talk peace.
Mongols will give up a town for peace but we want more.
Get 24g sell WM’s
Let Moscow finish Pike so we can secure the towns on the island.
Nanking gets a clown for a turn.
Fire the clown in Stockholm and let citizen work
Fire taxmen in Buffalo and Almarikh and let Citizen work
Shave a turn off Beijing by working the irrigated plain.
Fire clown in Nidaros and hire taxman.


IBT: Citizens in Swazi die due to barb horse
Moscow pike -> horse; Nanking pike -> pike

T1: 560AD Moving and healing, but mostly healing. I move a pike from Nanking to Beijing so we can still finish the FP in 6T. Also, move the other pike in Nanking towards Shanghai.

IBT: Shanghai barracks -> MDI
Indian’s are building Sun’s

T2: 570AD Assembly SoD on hill W of Karakorum.
Sign Peace with America for Houston, 7g, and WM.

IBT: Barb horse destroys work on archer in Swazi; Moscow horse -> MDI

T3: 580AD SoD next to Karakorum

IBT:

T4: 590AD At Karakorum: cat misses; MDI kills spear and promotes (4/5); MDI kills spear (2/4); elite MDI kills spear and we take the town.
Outside of Almarikh: elite horse redlines but kills archer and generates a leader [dance]
Move 2 swords, 1 MDI, and 2 horses into position for TaTu next turn.

IBT: elite sword defends against Mongol spear; resign RoP with Zulu, getting a worker as a bonus :)
Barbarian horse sacks Swazi, costing us 6g. This down is a PITA!
The people want the pentagon, which would be nice.
Cantorn horse -> horse

T5: 600AD Ta-Tu: MDI dies to spear (2/4); sword dies to spear (2/4); sword kills 2/4 spear; horse kills spear (4/5) and we take the town.
Move army and a couple of horses to take Tabriz next turn.
Disperse a barb camp on the home island for 25g.

IBT:

T6: 610AD Tabriz: Horse Army kills spear (10/14); elite* horse retreats (2/3); horse retreats; cat and MDI move in.

IBT: Beijing completes FP -> market, gpt improves by 15; Nidaros pike -> pike; Oslo cat -> pike; Nanking pike -> Market; Tsingtao barracks -> pike
Egypt building Sun’s


T7: 620AD Tabriz: cat misses; MDI kills spear (3/5); Horse Army kills spear and we take the town (4/14)
Peace with Mongols for the town of Darhan, 6g, and WM.

IBT: Chivalry -> Eng; Isandhlwana barracks -> pike; Linkoping worker -> worker

T8: 630AD Upgrade 2 horses. Shutoff research so we can make more money to upgrade horseman (+106gpt)

I’m setting up for an RoP rape of the Zulu for a couple of reasons:
1. we need them out of the way now
2. many other teams are sure to do it and we need to keep up.

IBT: Shanghai MDI -> knight

T9: 640AD Move troops and upgrade horses

IBT: another barb horse raids Swazi for 1g; Moscow knight -> knight

T10: 650AD Continue Positioning troops.

Notes: Research is off. We can upgrade 1 horse per turn this way. Should only need a couple more before we’re ready for Zulu.

We have the 2 big Zulu cities lined up. The horse army will be healed and the knight army will be filled next turn in Kazan.

Zulu have a settler/Impi/horseman NW of Nidaros that are going for our Gems and iron. We probably have no choice but to start smacking them around.

Beijing and Nanking will be ready to start pushing knights after the markets. We need them to get more happy faces for more spt, plus we can always use more money. Right now, one is on market and the other on knight, but both will need them eventually.


It’s getting crowded on the home island. Also, i've been trading WM's for about 5 to 10gpt each round, sometimes i get as much as 15 or 20gold.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-jl-650AD-1.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-jl-650AD-2.jpg

Things look good. Five cities, the FP, and another leader are nice additions to our empire. Good work on the map trading, too. Extra cash is always nice, and with all those foreign workers changing the map, we can take advantage of the AI's willingness to buy it.

I don't want to break the Zulu RoP. We'll have to be traipsing all over the long island, and being able to get stuff for RoPs will be a good deal. We are big enough that people will pay for the privilege of having our troops move freely through their country, and we should take advantage of this. (Are there still a bunch of workers available for sale? Can we get more for RoPs?) "Everybody else will do it," isn't sufficient justification, especially when we have the highest score. Personally, I don't particularly care how we finish in the competition.

Why are we building workers in Linkoping?

Can we get a scientist to give us some research? The AI can't be counted on to give us anything in a timely fashion, so I'd rather do 40 turns with a scientist than nothing. On regent I often finish up a tech that I'm not really researching before the AI get around to it.

It is rather crowded by Moscow. Taking/razing the Indian cities should clear things out a bit. Indus and Chittagong at least shouldn't autoraze, and Indus will be a nice addition with the cow and the game.

I wish somebody would settle on those silks by Moscow. They'd be nice to have.

I don't want to break the Zulu RoP. We'll have to be traipsing all over the long island, and being able to get stuff for RoPs will be a good deal. We are big enough that people will pay for the privilege of having our troops move freely through their country, and we should take advantage of this. (Are there still a bunch of workers available for sale? Can we get more for RoPs?) "Everybody else will do it," isn't sufficient justification, especially when we have the highest score.
I agree with CKS on this, but for different reasons. I would rather save our ROP rape for later in the game against a nation that really requires it. The Arabs and Iroquois come to mind. By the time we get to them we will be in a position to ROP rape 10 or more cities in a turn. Seems better to me to wait. The zulu are weak enough that we can take them fast without a ROP abuse.


BTW: Got it. I will play early Sunday.

Start Edit: After looking at the situation some more, I really wish we had not renewed the ROP with the zulu. We could abuse them, but we won't be able to get ROPs later for abuse against others.

I am now torn, the abuse is all set up and ready to go. Should I go ahead and take them apart?
Additionally, our forces are not in position to attack anyone else. It would take much of my turnset to get them in position for an attack on England.

Beijing doesn't have Barracks yet, so I will probably get that first then crank out knights, the Market does not seem that important to me right now.

We can research Engineering in 8 turns at + 23 GPT. With only 4 horsemen left to upgrade, I think we should start doing so. IF we ROP Abuse the Zulu, I think we can do it with the forces we have now. Unless we decide to disconnect all our iron, we won't need money for upgrade again.

My suggested research strategy is a b-line for MT. Do not trade techs. Keep research at a profit, but not an excessive one.

End Edit

workers out of link are to get the dyes connected faster, thus allowing us to lower the lux rate. once connected, they can join a more productive town (Link has a lot of corruption, even with the FP) so we can make knights faster :hammer:

I'd feel happier with not doing RoP rape, but I don't have a strong opinion. Doing it now will probably have about the same effect for score as doing it to a larger empire down the line, but it is hard to tell how not being able to use RoPs peacefully will affect our score. Of course, if we do get a tech lead, I think we can often throw a tech or two on top of an RoP and that is enough to convince the AI to sign the RoP. I think.

But I trust your judgement, jeff, so whatever you do is fine.

market in beijing and Nanking will allow all 12 citizens to work the fields (borders will expand soon), and we'll get more gold. right now we have 10 citizens, with one forced to be a taxman. barracks is needed too, and it should not be doing a knight 1st, but the town is only doing 12spt since all citizens cannot work. it will do around 15 or so spt if all 12 can work. also, fighting without markets in the core, large cities is very difficult. i think the investment is worth it, but that's just my opinion, and i do feel very strongly about it. it has helped many of my gotm domination games. the markets will produce 5 more happy faces in each of the towns once the dyes are hooked up.

sorry if i went too gung-ho on the rop setup :( it should only take about 3 turns to get the MDI's in place. you can get engineering from the Zulu for mono and gold if you want to not do it but speed up movement. the rop seemed necessary at the time, but in retrospect, and seeing how everyone is reacting to the abuse, it was a stupid move. i apologize.

If the team thinks the ROP renewal was an error, then I too must share the blame. I did little to defend the border cities in anticipation of renewing the ROP. If I had expected not to renew the ROP, I would have defended the cities better and G-Man would have had a choice whether to renew or not.

Moving forward, I think we should start on England ASAP. If I remember correctly, the eastern English cities are smaller and should provide a nice target for our MDI & Sword troops. Once the Knight army arrives we can begin absorbing the English core. Once the ROP expires (about another 10 turns) we should have well defended borders and an attack force ready to take them out quickly.

As for the home island, with Moscow producing Knights often, we should be able to accumulate a SOD pretty quickly and run over most of the AI cities. With muskets on the horizon, we need to make the most of our knights.

If the team thinks the ROP renewal was an error, then I too must share the blame. I did little to defend the border cities in anticipation of renewing the ROP. If I had expected not to renew the ROP, I would have defended the cities better and G-Man would have had a choice whether to renew or not.
Let's not assign blame. We are all in this together and to have fun, not to point fingers. I may have been a little sharp and for that I appologize.

We are still making good progress.

As a note, I just finished playing. I decided to go ahead and commit the ROP abuse against the Zulu since our forces would have taken too long to re-array against England.

I'll get the file uploaded and the turn log posted In an hour or two.

Quick summary is that we took 6 Zulu cities and started to move our forces into position for :hammer:'ing England.

750AD Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_AD0750_01.SAV)

Turn 0 - 650 AD:
Switch Beijing to Marketplace.
I have decided not to undo the ROP abuse setup, so I leave the forces in position and prepare to abuse away.

IBT : Arabs start Sistine (They have Theology)

Turn 1 - 660 AD:
Prepare Treachery. Get forces next to the settler/impi/horsemen stack.
Perform a bunch of MM to maximize commerce while still getting builds in same time.
Trade a Zulu worker, 41gold and Monotheism to the Zulu for Engineering.
Research Invention at 40%.

IBT zzzzzzzz

Turn 2 - 670 AD:
Declare War on Zulu. (ROP treaty broken)
Battle of Ulundi - Horseman army kills Zulu Impi, Knight Army kills Zulu Impi and takes Ulundi.
Battle of Zimbabwe - Knight Kills Impi, MI kills Impi, MI kills Impi and takes Zimbabwe.
Elite Horseman kills Zulu Swordsman.

IBT zzzzzz

Turn 3 - 680 AD:
Knight army kills Zulu Impi in Hlobane
Capture 2 zulu settlers.

IBT Extend peace with Iroquois.

Turn 4 - 690 AD:
Battle of Hlobane - Elite Swordsman takes it.

IBT zzzzzzzzz

Turn 5 - 700 AD:
Move into position for attacks on Bapedi and Mpondo.

IBT zzzzzzzzzzz

Turn 6 - 710 AD:
Kink up Linkoping bringing the lux into the empire.
Battle of Bapedi. Lose Elite MI to Regular Impi, Kill Impi with Elite MI, Kill Impi with V. MI, Knight Army kills archer and takes Bapedi.

IBT zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Turn 7 - 720 AD:
Move toward the last two zulu cities on the long island. (They have a city over in the desert on the western land mass.)
France has discovered Invention.

IBT Japan wants to renew trade for lux, but wants 3 luxes for it. Refuse because I'll have the Wool hooked up this turn anyway. One city goes into disorder because of it, but I shift through and fix the rest.

Turn 8 - 730 AD:
Battle of Mpondo: 2 Catapults bombard. (1 hits an Impi), Elite MI kills R Impi and promotes. Leader immediately forms army. Knight kills R Impi, MI kills V Impi, Knight kills Archer and takes Mpondo.
Battle of Tugela: Knight kills Impi, Knight Kills Impi and takes it.

IBT zzzzzzz

Turn 9 - 740 AD:
Take out a Zulu settler/impi pair.
Peace with the Zulu for maps, Republic 7gold an 3gpt.
Heal units and start moving toward England.

IBT zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Turn 10 - 750 AD:
Continue to move into position for England.

After Action Report
1. It may not be a big deal, but Moscow produces a knight every 4 turns. By doing two turns at max SPT and then 2 turns working the fish we can get two turns with an extra commerce.

2. There is an English Settler pair in old Zulu land. Don't miss them when we attack England.

3. Several Builds could change if you disagree. I have tried to mm the cities to get the best knight build times, but there were some cities that were off cycle, so need to be MMed to maximize knight production.

4. I did build the Marketplaces in Nanking and Beijing.

5. The jungles of China and Scandinavia are severely hampering production. We may want to build some more workers there or send some of the eastern slaves over to work.

6. If you get a chance, we can improve production in Moscow by planting some forests.

7. I think the homeland force is now large enough to tackle the Indians there. There are now defenders in all short island cities (I don't think I missed any)

8. There are several catapults on the way to England. The hard cities are in the west of England, so are our first targets.

9. Since the Galleys were not doing anything, I sent one of them to sail around the south of the Long Island. It should be able to continue to improve our world map so we can keep selling it for more money.

10. When we decaler on the Indians, I don't think we want to keep all the cities. I forgot to write down the once I think should be razed, but I'll edit this post in a few minutes with that info.
Edit I would suggest razing Ganges and Punjaab, neither have any real value to us. Chittagong could also be razed. Keep them if you want, but they will increase corruption on the long island AND will never be able to get about pop 2 or 3. (Punjaab can, but it can't get more than 5 spt, so it isn't worth it either.)

11. We are 1 turn from Invention.

Wow, I had a lot to say. Hope most of it makes sense.
I also started writing this before doing the screen captures, so I'll add a couple pretty pictures in a moment.

Here is a shot of the lands I liberated from the Zulu.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/OldZululand_jeffe_sgotm5.jpg

And here is the galley I mentioned #9. He hasn't gotten anywhere interesting, but should go south and then East around the southern edge of the long island, discovering as much ocean as possible as it goes.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Galley2_jeffe_sgotm5.jpg

nice work jeff! 2 knight army's should do the trick vs England :) we're looking stronger and stronger.

those cities in the rear of former vikings lands could use some culture (Link, Bjoer, Darhan, etc), just so we prevent the AI from building towns back there that we don't want. even a single cultural expansion will cut off a lot of those tiles. also, we should continue with some infrastructure in the FP core now that Beijing and Nanking have markets. While they build knights, towns like Shanghai and Isand.. could build a library, 'duct, or market.

Nicely done. Unfortunately, the score graph shows that we are still even with Team smackster. I guess it all comes down to fastest finish anyway, so that doesn't really matter.

I think that wherever we see one tile islands, we should drop off a unit, obsolete when possible. We don't want some civ without cities to drop off their last settler on a one tile island. That would be disastrous. And while the odds of that are slim, that isn't a risk I want to take.

Oh, and I have the save.

Nicely done. Unfortunately, the score graph shows that we are still even with Team smackster. I guess it all comes down to fastest finish anyway, so that doesn't really matter.
yes, and thier score keeps tracking steeper. keep up the :hammer: and remember to tax starve those new cities so we get all the population points we can :) btw, very good idea on those 1 tile islands. you have good eye for those :)

Nice job, jeff. It's too bad we can't do anything with all these leaders besides make armies. So, the Zulu are effectively gone, and the English are not long for this world.

About the ROP stuff, even though it is not what I would have done, it wasn't my choice to make. For me, this game is about having fun and learning about playing differently. I'm not going to learn anything if we do what I'd have done. And frankly, I'm not a great player and conquest isn't my style, so doing what I'd do would be a really bad strategy for us. ;)

As grahamiam said, we could use some cultural expansion. Since the AI aren't going to place cities close together and we can't build any cities, a little culture would get us more land - giving us score and places where the AI can't go.

Nice :hammer: on the Zulu. Quite an effective ROP rape and excellent point about the one tile islands. It looks like it's time to :hammer: on England. After Elizabeth, the Celts & Aztecs look pretty weak, Japan (still no iron) might be a better choice to prevent him from getting Samurai and then going back for the other two. From the looks of it the last couple of tribes (Egypt & America) our rotation, are pretty weak. The major bump in the road will probably be the Arabia/Persia/Iroquois segment. They've got a lot of land and are even with us on tech. With luck will be able to be sending Cossacks against them. After invention, gunpowder at best possible rate, we need to determine where the saltpeter is.

As grahamiam said, we could use some cultural expansion. Since the AI aren't going to place cities close together and we can't build any cities, a little culture would get us more land - giving us score and places where the AI can't go.
I concur. The main reason I didn'nt build things like that during my turns was so I could get enough of a force together to tackle the English. They will be the toughest AI we have fought yet.

BTW: The new army is empty and headed toward England now. It can be loaded with knights coming from the west as they catch up.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/jeffelammar_SG005_AD0850_01.SAV

760 AD (1) - With Invention learned, we get Theology, then get everyone's workers by selling Theology. Declare on Indians.

770 AD (2) - Declare on English. Raze something Indian.

780 AD (3) - Hastings captured.

790 AD (4) - London captured (?). Indus and Chittagong as well. We have lost all of one knight through this whole thing.

800 AD (5) - Nothing doing. English threaten some island holding, hopefully it will hold. Fortunately, the one tile island is now safely in our possession.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5_jeffelammar_onetile.jpg

IT - The English archer won, and the defense there is down to a warrior.

810 AD (6) - The archer disappeared. Money trouble in England?

820 AD (7) - Capture Nottingham.

830 AD (8) - Not a lot, I guess.

840 AD (9) - Captured Dacca. Indians are off our continent. Capture Liverpool. I think in all of this, I have now lost one spearman and one knight.

850 AD (10) - Capture Canterbury.

Final notes -

In the north of the center island, mainly at Chittagong, the troops that are being produced there are being gathered to head to India. I think all of the center island's resources should go towards the small island, as they are pretty unneccessary elsewhere. For that reason, I moved all the galleys from the south up to the north, or at least began the movement.

At some point, I declared on the Mongols. CKS should have the honor of destroying them during his first turn, as a knight is outside their last city, and an MI took care of their other city.

I would suggest taking the last few worthwile English cities within reach, then take Southend, Dover, and whatever else can be had for peace.

Then in those areas, lets rush a longbowman and try to finish off the Zulus, who have their last city, Swazi, up on that same island.

There is an army outside of Bengal, a worthless island. Its only value to us is through the added territory, so we might as well hold onto it. In addition, it will make a decent landing point for units, and from that point we can take them up to India.

We should be able to tear right through the Celts and then the Aztecs in the next ten. The rate that we capture is escaliting. I razed four cities (three Indian, one Mongol) and captured nine cities (three Indian, six English). Too bad there are no railroads, as it takes forever to get units from one end of the big island to the other.

If we ever need anything from the AI, don't be afraid to renogotiate peace. They ignore our bad rep in renogotiation, so we can pay gpt for stuff. And, they are willing to pay for peace. For instance, I got two workers from the Americans for peace and something like 20g. I think that about covers it. I must have been infected by whatever made jeff write so much at the end of his turns.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5_jeffelammar_england.jpg

Just submitted the save, and it looks like I lost a tiny bit of ground to Team smackster. Entering this, I had no real desire to win, but now that it looks like we are in a tight tight race, it is sort of exciting.

nice :hammer: jd! and it's a good idea to start on 2 fronts, now that the FP core is being productive. good luck cks! get on with India and keep the wave on the big island pushing forward. now that we have knights, we should be trying to capture 8-10 cities per set. if possible, let's get our armies off the worthless islands and onto the worthwhile islands :) (actually, i'm not even sure where you are refering to).

Sounds great. I've got the save. I'll work on India, England, and moving troops down the long island. I'll see if I can eliminate the Zulu while I'm at it.

Nice job on the one-tile island. Also, I'm glad you picked up the extra workers. Roads aren't railroads, but they are better than nothing, and we seem to be forced to build all our own roads.

In the north of the center island, mainly at Chittagong, the troops that are being produced there are being gathered to head to India. I think all of the center island's resources should go towards the small island, as they are pretty unneccessary elsewhere. For that reason, I moved all the galleys from the south up to the north, or at least began the movement.
Good call. We definately want to start the process of getting a big force deployed on the "short island".


I would suggest taking the last few worthwile English cities within reach, then take Southend, Dover, and whatever else can be had for peace.

Then in those areas, lets rush a longbowman and try to finish off the Zulus, who have their last city, Swazi, up on that same island.
It might be worth rushing a harbor over there so we can rush 3 knights to patrol the area.


There is an army outside of Bengal, a worthless island. Its only value to us is through the added territory, so we might as well hold onto it. In addition, it will make a decent landing point for units, and from that point we can take them up to India. We should definately take that city. It will probably be better to setup a ship chain directly to the "short island".

I must have been infected by whatever made jeff write so much at the end of his turns.
:lol:

One other thing I noticed this morning when looking at the save. The Iroquois have built up a 1 tile city to about 5 population. This is a problem as the AI rarely gives up such a high pop city. We are going to have to plan how to take care of it. I see two main strategies for dealing with it.
1. Send a bunch of galley/caravels over and occupy all the tiles, thus starving it it down to 1 pop. Then demand it in peace. (Would take a long time)
2. Research frigates and bomb the heck out of it till it is small enough to get in peace. (Drives us down a lot more research than we want to do).

Either way, we have to be careful not to accidently jump the AI's capitol over there.

Just submitted the save, and it looks like I lost a tiny bit of ground to Team smackster. Entering this, I had no real desire to win, but now that it looks like we are in a tight tight race, it is sort of exciting.
I too wasn't expecting to be in the thick of it, but since we are, let's keep giving them a run for the money. :)
I know we have bumped heads a few times as a team, but I want to say that I am really enjoying playing this game with you guys.

The Iroquois 1 tile island is going to be pain. Either of jeff's options will take a long time. The starve-it-down plan only works if we are at war, correct? And frigates bombard poorly, in addition to taking a lot of research to get. I think the starve plan is better, but we'll need to declare war on them long before we actually go to war, except for the galleys that fill the tiles. Thanks for noticing this problem, jeff, so we have the time to deal with it.

Do we have any other options? I can't think of any way to convince the Iroquois to pop-rush there, but maybe it is stupider than I think.

Do we have any other options? I can't think of any way to convince the Iroquois to pop-rush there, but maybe it is stupider than I think.
i do not know of any other options other than aquiring during peace. we just need make sure that the capitol does not jump there, or we're screwed :) just avoid attacking the capitol, only attack the outlining towns. if they won't give it up, the rush some galleys along the lower coast and starve them while going after Japan. Coastal and sea squares give 2fpt with harbor, ocean tiles give 1fpt with harbor.

Rushing stuff is a bit expensive, and until we get Military Tradition, we probably won't have too much disposable income. Of course, once we have that, we will be upgrading knights. So I would still advocate the easiest solution at this moment, which is rushing a longbowman. Then again, a regular longbowman only beats the regular impi 2/3 of the time. Long term though, getting some fast units to patrol islands will be vital. If we want to start now on that one island, that is fine. But I would still advocate leaving a bit of money in the bank for emergency rushing.

well, we can always shutoff research for a turn or 2 when we get a new tech. when i was up, we were capable of 100+gpt, and that's probably improved by now. we just have to take our opportunities when we can. once we get MT, i would expect that we would turn off research and just short rush cossacks via muskets.

That is true, but lets get MT as fast as we can and then we can rush two cossacks instead of three knights.

I just did a quick survey using CRP-Rings looking for 1 tile island and there are quite a few.

Settled already:
Byblos - Egypt
Tynendenga - Iroquois
Ngome - Russia
+1 with a placeholding spearman

Open (potential settling nation):
1 NW of Byblos (Egypt)
1 N of Shiraz (Arabs)
3 SE of Nagasaki (Japan or Celts)

We'll need to survey the map before settling for peace or taking the capital with a nation to be sure we don't leave one of these hanging. We should also try to get placeholder for those SE islands before someone settlers them.

One thing I have noticed, once you take a tribes most of their cities and their capital, they will tend to be willing to give everything else (all other cities, knowledge & cash) to get peace. We might have to go that path with the Iroquois to get Tyenendaga.

In the north, as for a second front, once we've taken most of the home city intruders, the Egyptians & Americans are quite weak and have a lot of smaller cities. With the number of cities we have now razing is no longer an issue. Alternately, we could start on the mountain island to the west and just start attacking whomever we come to along the way to Egypt. These are all secondary AI cities and will be weakly defended and most will auto-raze.

In the south, with the Mongols, Zulu & English gone (or going), we should probably turn our attention to the Aztecs, Japanese & Celts. At last look Japan had no iron conntected and should fall quickly, the Aztecs trailed in tech and have a weak military. Only the Celts with the Gallic Swords might prove a speed bump in our advances.

Japan's iron was connected at some point, I do not know when, but in turn 8 or 9 when I started looking furthur down the road I saw that it was connected.

Japan's iron was connected at some point, I do not know when, but in turn 8 or 9 when I started looking furthur down the road I saw that it was connected.
then, with all haste, we must go after them and that iron source. don't give them enough time to build more than a few samari :hammer: this makes killing the next 2 opponents between us and Japan critical. we must be swift. hopefully, the next player is able to bust thru them and start on japan before they become difficult. i would even delay the aztec's if that's possible.

It looks Japan's iron is coming from Osaka, one of their northern most cities. We can delay the Aztecs, but staying on the western coast. We have to go through the Celtic core however. From Canterbury we go after Entremont, Mohacs & Lugdumnum, which reduce the Celts to a non-player then we've reached southern Japan. There is a Japanese & Celtic city S/SE of Newcastle, so we'll have to watch our back as we take on the Japanese core.

In the north, it might be faster to sign peace with India, getting a city or two and going after America & Egypt (the weak sisters up there). We can keep sending reinforcements from the homeland until a formidable force is created (maybe with an army or 2) and then run over India (who's bound to have Jumbos by then).

I saw one war elephant towards the very end.

Here is the save.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/jeffelammar_SG005_AD0950_01.sav

Here are a few quick notes. I'll post my turn log after them.

1 Tile Islands: Besides the ones visible earlier, I found three more in a nice little island collection. I don't think anyone else can get to them until Astronomy, but we'll want to get them occupied. The galley over there can transport units over. I thought scouts and warriors built in corrupt cities would be good.

I took Ulaanbaatar (eliminating the Mongols), Bengal, Newcastle, Oxford, York, Coventry, Southend, Calcutta, Entremont, and Camulodunum. Richborough autorazed. We lost Houston; our spearman survived 3 elephants but the fourth killed it. England is down to a pop 1 city by the Zulu; a couple of rushed units will allow us to kill them both. The Celts have 2 cities left, and we will take them in 2 turns. This will also give us our own 7th luxury. I looked a bit, but couldn't find an eighth lux.

India has gunpowder and education, but they don't have saltpeter. France has two sources, but they can't trade yet. We'll have metallurgy in 2 turns.

We can declare on Japan now. There is a settler pair running around somewhere. We have a knight that can advance on the city denyd mentions, and an army in the vicinity if needed. We'll want to finish off the Celts before attacking them, but the troops are moving into position now.

I don't think India is all that strong right now, but making peace with them isn't a bad idea either if we can get something from them. However, their culture is strong, so we'll probably lose Calcutta to a flip if we make peace - we'd need a garrison of about 70 to make it secure.

Turn 0, 850 AD Did some MM, switched some builds to harbors and libraries, sell WM for ~100 g.

IBT Beijing starts a knight, Canterbury riots as 2 resistors are quelled.

860 Take Ulaanbaatar, start harbor there. Vet MI kills Oxford spear.

IBT Ghandi offers Bengal and Jaipur for peace. I decline. Zimbabwe starts barracks, St. Louis starts harbor, Bapedi starts library.

870 Hurry Hastings library - will give us incense. Vet MI dies attacking Oxford spear. Army takes Bengal, starts harbor. Science to 80%

IBT Hastings starts marketplace, Shanghai starts library, many start knights.

880 Vet MI kills spear in Oxford. Rush harbor in Swazi.

IBT Elephants approach Houston. We build more knights.

890 Vet knight kills settler pair. Elite knight dies attacking spear. Knight takes Newcastle. Galley finds bunch of little islands. France now has gunpowder.

IBT 2 elephants die at Houston. Now I wish I'd rushed another unit there. Learn chemistry, start Metallurgy - 8 turns at 80%

900 India has gunpowder, but no saltpeter. Elite horse takes Oxford, starts library. 2 Vet knights kill York spears. Unload 3 knights on hill between Calcutta and Delhi.

IBT Houston spear retreats an elephant, then dies. Elephant kills knight by Calcutta

910 Vet knight takes York, promotes. York starts library. Capitol jumps to Dover. Make peace, getting Coventry, Southend, 17 g, 3 gpt, Wmap. Declare on Celts. Horse army takes out settler pair. Knight army kills archer.

IBT Calcutta longbowman dies attacking knight.

920 Horse army kills Entremont spear. Knight army kills Entremont spear. Knight kills Calcutta pike, knight kills Calcutta spear and takes Calcutta - start walls.

IBT LB kills knight, elephant dies

930 Vet knight dies at Ent. 2 Vet knights kill Ent spears, taking city, settler, worker. Vet knight kills archer. Reg knight kills archer. Knight army kills 2 Camulodunum spears, takes city, sinks galley. Start warrior. MI kills Indian longbow, Knight kills elephant.

IBT Elephants arrive in Santiago. Celtic archer kills knight.

940 Vet knight kills archer. Switch Santiago to spear.

IBT Elephants retreat from Santiago without attacking. LB kills knight near Delhi.

950 Vet knight razes Richborough, nets 3 workers. Vet knight retreats at Lugdunum, Vet knight kills spear at Lugdunum.

Firaxis 564
We've lost some more ground to team Smackster.

nice :hammer: for a builder :lol: actually, very nice :) let's open up 2 fronts so we can pick up some speed. i think denyd get's to implement his plan of peace with the indians for war with the americans and egyptians.

Sounds good to me.

Any Samurai sightings?

Think Japan might sign an ROP? :D

Looking at the map (via CRP Rings), I'm planning a campaign of Nara to Edo to Kagoshima to Kyoto. That will put Japan on the ropes. Then I'll head for Osaka to take away the Japanese iron. Of course, I'm hoping to have finished off the Celts, signed peace with India (for a city or 2) and started moving troops to prepare for America & Egypt. My real reason for wanting to attack America and Egypt, is I hate to type those *&^%$ Aztec city names.

Research to Military Tradition at full speed, then shut off research until all knights upgraded. I was thinking after that we might head for Music Theory. Bach's on the big island would add a lot of happy faces (more points). Remember to starve down captured cities, foreign faces are no points.

I should be able to start tonight (and hopefully finish). I got it.

Just a question, if I happen to get a GL, what's a good use? Has Leo's been built? Save for Cossack army?

Just a question, if I happen to get a GL, what's a good use? Has Leo's been built? Save for Cossack army?

cossack army or rush a court somewhere semicorrupt so we can get another useful town. sounds like a good plan, can't wait to read about it :) i would bag the wonders and just concentrate on military. the key is to win this as fast as possible!

Remember to starve down captured cities, foreign faces are no points. :thumbsup:

First off :thumbsup: to CKS.

nice :hammer: for a builder
Heck, that was nice :hammer: for anyone.


i would bag the wonders and just concentrate on military. the key is to win this as fast as possible!

I agree with this. Once we have all the Knights upgraded, I suggest using all availiable cash to rush more cossacks and any other military units we need. No reason to build up a surplus at that point. More military is the way to go :)

Remember to starve down captured cities, foreign faces are no points.

This is news to me. I just went back and re-read the scoring article (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=18729) in the Strategy section, and found no mention of foreign vrs native citizens.

If this is true, then I have been under a mistaken impression for a long time.

I thought the main disadvantage of foreign workers was that they became unhappy during a war with their nation.

EDIT
Think Japan might sign an ROP?
Since we already shot our Rep, if you can get them to sign it, you should :evil: and then take them to the woodshed.

Points

2 points per turn for happy people (your own nationality)
1 point per turn for content or specialist
0 points per turn for unhappy or foriegners
there's also a multiplier for difficulty

so, a size 12 city with 11 natural citizens and 1 foreign will produce a lot more points per turn than one with 6 natural and 6 foreign. therefore, it is advantageous to taxstarve all foreigner cities captured militarily till size 1, then build the pop back up. any cities taken for peace automatically get our nationality so no reason to starve them.

so, a size 12 city with 11 natural citizens and 1 foreign will produce a lot more points per turn than one with 6 natural and 6 foreign. therefore, it is advantageous to taxstarve all foreigner cities captured militarily till size 1, then build the pop back up. any cities taken for peace automatically get our nationality so no reason to starve them.
I fully understand what you are saying. All I'm saying is that I didn't know that there was a special exclusion for foreign citizens. Guess that is one more thing I learned today :)

I fully understand what you are saying. All I'm saying is that I didn't know that there was a special exclusion for foreign citizens. Guess that is one more thing I learned today :)
actaully, i reread that thread and now i'm not sure :lol: aw, crap, i thought i read a post somewhere in gotm by sir pleb or another dignitary that recommended taxstarving for lowered flip risks and for score, but i may be all wet.

actaully, i reread that thread and now i'm not sure :lol: aw, crap, i thought i read a post somewhere in gotm by sir pleb or another dignitary that recommended taxstarving for lowered flip risks and for score, but i may be all wet.
I'll run some experiments this evening to check on it. I'm flying to CA tonight, so I'll have plenty of time to try these things out while waiting in the airport.

Starving for reduced flip risk is a wonderful thing, but I've never heard of a score difference. I'll be interested to find out what you learn, jeff.

Anyway, your plans sound good, denyd. Interesting idea about Bach's. It would be nice to get someone else to build it and take it from them, but that may not be feasible, as others are losing building capacity as we destroy them. I think that 600 shields would be better used for units, though. Instead, we could increase our lux tax when we are done upgrading, to get roughly the same effect using cash instead of shields.

I didn't see any Samurai, just swords and maybe one MI from Japan. However, they weren't likely to be wandering my way, either.

I'd use a leader for an army. We can't use it on a wonder, and courthouses are still so few shields that they seem a waste of a leader. We will have cossacks soon, and a cossack army would be a nice increase in power over a knight army.

Two quick points before I start.

My thoughts about Bach would have included us building it with a leader (forgot we can't :blush: )

The point in starving down the town for score is the foreign faces aren't worth any points and increase the flip potential. If you take a size 6 city, you'll have 5 foreign faces eating the available food. If there's not a lot of grassland (like in this game), population growth well be slow. If on the other hand, you starve the city down to size 1 (should take about 4 turns), you can start adding native citizens quickly and the city should be able to get back to size 6 in about 30-40 turns and those 5 new faces all are worth points.

I'll post my play results from tonight later tonight.

tax starving also gives you some gpt as well :)

i often que up a worker in resisting cities, that way, if it takes more than 10 turns to quell resistance and starve it, i can also get a worker out of the deal. rushing settlers is also a good one but we can't do that here ;)

Turn Log 5

Turn 0 – 950 AD – Wake up a pair of pikes in non-coastal cities and send them to coastal cities. Wake our elites and send them to the front – Change the scout build to a barracks – Spend 150g to hurry a barracks in Entremont (that will allow for upgrades) – Sign peace with India getting Houston + Jaipur + 11g + 17gpt + WM – Trade Wool to India for ROP – Switch St.Louis & Chittagong to barracks & Dacca to a library

IBT: Lose a knight to Celtic archer – Beijing knight->knight – Entremont barracks->catapult – Nanking knight->knight – Tsingtao knight->musket – Murcia knight->musket – Japan starts Sistine Chapel in Edo – India starts Leo’s in Delhi

Turn 1 – 960 AD – Assault on Mohacs: Vet Knight(2/4) kills Reg Spear – Southern troops advancing on Mohacs – Northern troops moving towards Spain

IBT: Lose our wines deal – Discover Metallurgy research Military Tradition due in 6 (@ -3gpt) – Zimbabwe riots over lose of luxury – Moscow knight->knight – Oslo knight->musket – Bengal warrior->harbor – Japan starts Leo’s in Kyoto (that’s 2 of 6 core cities building wonders)

Turn 2 – 970 AD – Upgrade 6 catapults to cannons in Entremont – Assault on Mohacs: Horse Army(14/14) kills Reg Spear – Vet Knight (2/4) kills Reg Spear capturing Mohacs & 2 slaves) – Heading to Lugdunum: Vet Knight (2/4) kills Reg spear and captures 2 slaves – Trade Chemistry to France for Education + WM + 35g – Trade Chemistry to Iroquois for Wines + WM + 13g – Spend 48g to build an Embassy in Washington – Trade Wool to America to sign ROP

IBT: No counterattacks – Zimbabwe barracks->musket – Shanghai knight->knight

Turn 3 – 980 AD – Assault on Lugdunum: Knight Army (11/13) kills Reg Spear – Vet Knight (2/4) kills Reg Spear and Lugdunum is captured and the weak Celts are destroyed – Knight kills BV (+25g) – begin positioning troops for Japan & Spain

IBT: Aztecs kick out a knight caught in a culture expansion – Karakorum library->barracks – Canton knight->knight – Chittagong barrack->musket

Turn 4 – 990 AD – Knight Army blocked at chokepoint by American MDI – Assembling troops for Japan in the south

IBT: Aztecs plant a pair of cities in our southern lands and a pair of Japanese settlers are roaming around – the American MDI did not move – Nidaros musket->musket – Bjoegvin harbor->musket – Calcutta flips to India taking a vet pike with it – Nanking knight->knight – Hlobane library->barracks

Turn 5 – 1000 AD – Not much action, just a lot of troop movements, hoping that American MDI will move

IBT: The American MDI has moved – Beijing knight->knight – Moscow knight->knight – Tsingtao musket->musket – Southend warrior->barracks – St. Louis barracks->musket

Turn 6 – 1010 AD – Here we go: Declare war on Japan – Elite Horseman (5/5) kills LB

IBT: No Japanese counterattack – Bapedi barracks->musket – Ta-tu barracks->courthouse – Ishandhlanda knight->knight – Mpondo harbor->barracks – Tugela barracks->musket

Turn 7 – 1020 AD – Knight Army (9/13) kills to Reg Spears and Edo is captured – Elite Horse(5/5) kills LB – Elite Knight (4/5) kills Reg Spear and captures 2 slaves – Vet Knight (2/4) kills Reg Spear and captures 2 slaves

IBT: Vet Knight (3/5) defends against LB and promotes – Renew peace deal with America – Discover Military Tradition research Banking at minimum (1 scientist) – Linkoping library->barracks – Camulodunum warrior->library

Turn 8 – 1030 AD – Declare war on Spain: Vet Knight (5/5) defeats Reg Spear and Toledo is captured – Assault on Nara: Cannons remove 2HP – Elite MDI (4/5) kill Reg Pike – Elite MDI (4/5) kills Reg Spear and Nara is captured – Knight Army (3/13) loses 10hp killing Vet LB of a plains – Upgrade our first pair of vet knights to Cossacks

IBT: Lose an Elite Knight to a Vet MDI (1/4) – Shanghai Cossack->Cossack – Kazan library->court – Nanking Cossack-Cossack – Murcia musket->musket – Dacca library->barracks – Indus library->worker

Turn 9 – 1040 AD – Vet Knight (3/4) kills Vet MDI – Assault on Kagoshima: Vet Knight(3/4) kills Reg Spear and Kagoshima is captured – Assault on Madrid: Knight Army (8/13) kill Vet Pike – Vet Knight loses to Vet Spear (1/4) – Vet MDI (4/4) kills Vet Spear and Madrid with Colossus is captured – Assault on Yokohama: Vet Knight (1/4) kills Reg Spear and Yokohama with 2 slaves is captured – 4 more knights upgraded

IBT: America steals the home island iron – Cleo ejects our spearman and then trades WM for TM – Nidaros musket->musket – Moscow Cossack->Cossack – Oslo musket->musket – Jaipur warrior->barracks – Houston warrior->barracks – Palace Expansion gets a third floor

Turn 10 – 1050 AD – Assault on Kyoto: Knight Army (8/13) kills Vet Pike – Vet Knight (3/4) kills Vet Pike – Vet Knight loses to Vet MDI (1/4) – Vet knight loses to Reg Spear (1/3) – Vet Knight (3/4) kills Vet MDI – Elite Horse (3/5) kills Reg Spear and Kyoto with Sun Tzu’s Art of War & The Great Wall is captured – Vet Knight (4/4) kills Vet MDI

After action notes: Keep hammering on Japan, no Samurais seen yet. Taking Osaka will take away their iron. 2 knights heading for Nagasaki and 1 knight & 1 Cossack about to leave a galley next to Shimonoseki (that means silks once it has a harbor) – 2 MDI & Wounded Knight Army about to attack Barcelona (Reg Pike showing), only Seville left after that. 6 Jumbos went past Madrid heading west, I hope not after a very weak Egypt. I wanted us to get there first. After Japan is gone, it’s time to take on the Aztecs. They’ve got a couple of new cities and at least 1 settler wandering around in our area. I’ve been running minimum science and have more than enough to upgrade what’s left of our Vet Knights, it might be time to turn science back on. No one else has metallurgy yet, so it could be awhile before they get cavalry. Taking Kyoto with Sun Tzu's means that all those barracks builds should be changed, but I'll let the next player handle that :sleep:

We managed to gain 2 points on Team Smackster (now 20 behind).

i cannot play till Monday night so I need a swap.

Nice job, denyd.

Sun Tzu's on the long island is nice.

Do we want to research any more? If we can get the 1 tile islands other ways, I don't see much reason to. I'd rather rush units (and libraries for cultural expansions for score) with the cash we save.

I may not be able to check in until Monday.

Nice job, denyd.

Sun Tzu's on the long island is nice.

Agreed. That is one wonderful score.

I think that we are probably all immersed in family this weekend. I could probably play Sunday night, but if Grahamiam is going to go Monday, I say just keep our regular order and don't worry about pushing it.

Merry Christmas to all of you. (And if you don't celebrate Christmas, have a great day however you choose to spend it.)

Jeff