SGOTM5 - Russia. Game Thread Team offa.

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.

First :) Where's the save?

Edit: Ah, ok...probably on the SGOTM submission page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm_submission_list.php).

Edit2: The roster

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

Ok, time to rumble :)

So, the first potential argument ;): do we want to have our settler and worker just follow our scout as best they can, or do we want to explore independently with one or both of them? In two turns we could have the worker on one mountain, the settler on another, and the scout two tiles beyond a third. Since it's more important that we should found our city in the right place than that we should found it quickly, I think this is the right idea, although I realize there's a good case to be made for a more cautious approach.

Checking in. :)
Who wants to start this off ?
I hate wandering games, so please somebody else to start it.
I would probably go to the three mountains with the three units and then decide for a direction all go then.
OTOH the tricky point is really, if one should take the first decent spot, or scout even more.
Our capital should have a lot of commerce and good production. And with the variant a neighbour close by would be beneficial.

I would like to start us and I agree with Northern Pike on moving the units each in their own direction. Every unit can cover a mountain in 2 (scout in 1) turn.

Hello everyone.

I agree that at regent level we can afford to wander for some time before founding as we will be stuck with one town for a long time. It might be beneficial to start quite close to an AI, so that the first captured towns aren't too corrupt.

I would rather play further down the list as my track record for cow sniffing is dismal.

Hi there.

So we do play the variant? :goodjob:

I don't worry much about the play order, i can only say that my strongest part in the game is the first buildup of an empire (starting settler factories and getting awesome 1000BC stats.)
This is mostly because i start so many games, but finish so few :D
Wandering around is obviously less favorite though (as i guess it is for everyone)

I think we could start now with a 10 page debate about how exactly we need to handle this variant :D

I will do the following tonight - if no one stops me :): I will scout the area for places to settle, then take a break and post screenshots. We will have enough matter to start a discussion about.

Grs, that sounds fine--please go ahead.

i can only say that my strongest part in the game is the first buildup of an empire (starting settler factories and getting awesome 1000BC stats.)

Oops, we're not exactly taking advantage of your strengths by playing the variant then.... :D

Ok, that's the situation at 3800BC. Continue? Settle? P.S. The settler is standing on a bg. And forget about the red dot, it misses the cow.

I think i would settle South east of where it stands so that it has the cow and deer alowing for a 5 food surplus after we cut and mine the deer.

btw, iirc, if the scout opens the goody hut before we settle, it can't make barbs.

From what we see the current position and one tile SE are about equal.
Question is if there is somewhere a food bonus in the sea.
I would move SE and look if there is a bonus, if not go back and settle.

@WOA
The deer is in range anyways.
But I don't think we should cut it. We don't need a settler factory ;) .

i think 5 food surplus is a magic number always good to go for, not just for a factory. I think espescially for after we hit size 7 and need lots of food for growth.


What are your views of this variant:
A: like an OCC, where we will first improve our one city to maximize its power.
B: We need to get millitairy asap to conquer an empire. Possibly moving our capital to one of the conquered cities someday.

I proposed the move because of the BG.

Seeing the map, it doesn't yet look like we are gonna have any empires to conquer very soon.

btw, iirc, if the scout opens the goody hut before we settle, it can't make barbs.

Unless mad-bax has messed with the settings, scouts never get barbs from a hut.

I presume we are going for the variant, it sounds great to me. Although I would kindof like to learn how to get off to a good expansionist start :blush: .

The spot NE from where the worker stands is best in my opinion. Wheat, deer and fish and 2 BG's. We will need some population if we want to afford military.

We can probably build Colossus to improve our economy further and then concentrate on whatever.

1 bg there equals the difference between cattle and wheat. If there happens to be fish on our side as well, the sites are equal in resources.

Its a rather long walk for the settler. On the other hand the worker could have a tile improved already when we settle while in the west side we would have to wait for the worker quite a while.

settling west would mean we could have produced a worker after 7 turns and have the other worker reach the city. In about 15 turns, we would have 2 improved tiles and 8 turns worth of city income with no improvements, meaning a city growth and possibly 15 shields or so.

If we settle east, in 8 turns we would settle there and already have an improved tile. In 15 turns, we could have produced another worker, have an extra 10 or so shields and half a city growth.

Effectively i think the cost of settling on the east compared to the west equals about a 3 turns delay.

Although I would kindof like to learn how to get off to a good expansionist start

A couple more scouts is a must for that. And this is large map so there is heaps to do for our scouts.

the sites are equal in resources.

Nope, the worker's deer can be irrigated. I think commerce will be very important later on and with max possible population we can handle stuff.

Ok, seeing it looks like there are forests in the fog south of the exposed area on the east coast, that side might very well be better, but probably we should settle more southwards than the proposed tile though to catch more green lands.

Ok, seeing it looks like there are forests in the fog south of the exposed area on the east coast, that side might very well be better, but probably we should settle more southwards than the proposed tile though to catch more green lands. I think where the worker now stands.
Unfortunate for the fish, but more green lands is more important IMO.

Irrigating the deer also sounds very good to me. It will provide food to use some of the tundra forests for production.
That way, we could cut most of the forests on green lands and use the forests on tundra as they are.

I am convinced about going to the east coast. We could actually use most of our 21 tiles there without problems.

i think 5 food surplus is a magic number always good to go for, not just for a factory. I think espescially for after we hit size 7 and need lots of food for growth.

I think 4 food is good enough. But we need the shields.
And in a better government we will have a lot food, but no hills to mine.

@gozpel
Don't forget the fur. Commerce and shield bonus.

I haven't had enough coffee yet to continue an argument of where to settle. I just pointed out where I would go if it was my game. And that's NE of where the worker stands.

Unfortunately the area where the settler stands now seems to be the worse of the 3 covered areas and 8 turns walking isn't ideal, so settle NE of the red spot and get this started.

I wouldn't like to move 8 turns to the right, if only because it would put us seriously behind teams that moved their settlers thre straight away. :crazyeye:

Well, we can move the worker south, move the settler southeast, and then move the worker again in whatever direction seems most likely to be informative. After that we can either found on the suggested spot in the west or, if the east seems decisively better when we have more information, start marching the settler in that direction.

It's possible that there'll be more green available in the east, but no site which allows us to take advantage of it.

That's right. We're not competing with a retarded AI here, so we have to settle now.

Well, we can move the worker south, move the settler southeast, and then move the worker again in whatever direction seems most likely to be informative. After that we can either found on the suggested spot in the west or, if the east seems decisively better when we have more information, start marching the settler in that direction.

It's possible that there'll be more green available in the east, but no site which allows us to take advantage of it.

yes, the site where the worker stands.


Anyway, i don't know whats best either and i see you guys want to settle west so lets go settle west now.

I DID change my mind on the worker spot. As Offa said we would lose valuable turns if we drag the settler west for 8 turns and I doubt we can afford that.

I took the liberty of doing 20 and after submitting I see the others did do too.

Moscow founded 3700BC builds scout, scout, warrior, granary (in progress).
We researched pottery at max - warrior code in progress.
We poped 4 huts and got ceremonial burial, eqworker, map, eqworker.

The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC3000_01.SAV)

Reasoning? Ok!

We want our city to grow - pottery and granary. We get no contacts soon, so we want to research cheap techs and pop the expensive ones. Did not work yet though. We will research almost every ancient age tech ourselves on this level (even with only one town), so I took warrior code. You can see by the unusual ammount of letters I write, I am not quite happy with that myself, but I spared two huts for after starting wc and was somehow sure to pop at least 1 resource tech (iron working or the wheel). We can very probably farm on barbs here.

If we keep the roster from the laste game we'd go:

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

Just a suggestion though.

You can see by the unusual ammount of letters I write

:lol:

We poped 4 huts and got ceremonial burial, eqworker, map, eqworker.

:wow: Workers from huts instead of settlers? MB is evil!

I'm happy to continue, but I'll wait for a bit to see if there are any objections.

ouch, what a place. We need map making fast.
I suggest going strait for MM after WC.

The Lighthouse might be a good idea also. It is a 25% land map.

Some scouts should be disbanded for they cost too much unit support. Disbanding them in the city returns 2 shields, but if they have to walk more than 2 turns, i think we better just save the gold instead of slowing the research.

I propose disbanding the southeastern scout, joining 1 worker to the city and moving the closest scout to the city to be disbanded there. The northern scout still has some scouting to do.

I would disband the scouts to Moscow, but not a worker. We need all tiles improved and we need colonies!

EDIT: Oh and btw, you can't join eqworkers anyways IIRC - even if it would not be wrong ;)

I recommend that we research writing->literature->map making.
And we should merge in workers if possible. Maybe build 1-2 before growth to size 6 and then merge then on size 7 or 8.
I would build temple, colossus, library and fit in 1-2 archers, if we are alone.
Otherwise barracks and archers :D .

Keeping last game's roster would be fine with me.

We'll be able to get Moscow a little over 20 spt once we're able to plant forests. That isn't terrible.

Maybe build 1-2 before growth to size 6 and then merge then on size 7 or 8. Does this really speed anything up? It sounds more than strange to me, to sacrifice them for nothing. We will lose shields and commerce too. And we do not even need them inbetween.

@grs
We have only 6 tiles with 2 or more food (before harbor).
At size 6 we can make quick workers (3 turns w/o cutting game).
At size 7 or 8 growth will take very long. We easily can make up for the wasted 10 shields by growing faster afterwards and working forests a lot earlier.

Why is chopping and irrigating the game no option for you? We will need to do that sooner or later anyways.

Why is chopping and irrigating the game no option for you? We will need to do that sooner or later anyways.
We cannot replant trees for a long time.
But we have enough food to work all the existing forests.
When we either get a different government or get a harbor we can already grow to size 12.
Then we would have food surplus, which doesn't help us anything, but the forest is missing.
I don't see a reason to cut the game forest before rails, which we probably never reach.

I want the scouts to live until barbs kill them. As long as there are goodyhuts around, we can get stuff for free. But I have to open the save before I decide what to do.

And merging workers before we really have to? I'll have to look at that too.

Will play this soon.

First the Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC2550_01.SAV)

Pre-turn - Now I get it! The land is mystery so of course we might not need all three scouts, so I will disband at least one.

2950bc - Cow is irrigated, 4 food/turn is nice.

N scout looks around, we might have a passage over the mountains up north.

2900bc - Zero gold in the treasury, research down to 70%.

That is definitely a landbridge, scout spots GH.

2800bc - Scout pops the hut and we learn Masonry.

2750bc - Disband a second scout, research up to 80%.

2670bc - Moscow is pop 4 and needs 10% luxtax. Workers starts roading the fur.

2590bc - Moscow granary -> barracks for now.

The "landbridge" was just a skinny peninsula and scout will pop a GH next turn.

2550bc - Hut was deserted :(

I left a worker with movement left in town, if we want to join him in Moscow. I also think we should join another worker after they roaded the forests.

The scout has to trek back and look what's up NE, there are uncovered tiles.

I want Writing -> MapMaking ASAP! Meanwhile we can build a couple of archers, then Colossus. I think that wonder will help us a lot, especially if we want some military later.

K, i will get it tonights.

Do you guys think collosus is more important than lighthouse?

@gozpel. Looks good.
I wouldn't complete the barracks now. But make a couple of reg archers first (and maybe even a worker for merging later).
We can look for barbs for promotion, but it doesn't look like we go in mass production of units fast.
An option would also be a temple for more culture. We will need culture later, when we want to keep all the cities we will capture.
I would go for colossus very soon then. We need the commerce. This could complete around the time we get writing.
We still have the 2 sweet water tiles, so still can grow every 3 turns, so I would wait with the worker merges after size 6. There is still a lot roading to do.

K, i will get it tonights.

Do you guys think collosus is more important than lighthouse?

I want both. But collossus first.
It will complete quite fast and already help research towards MM.

Yes, the Colossus will be more important than the Lighthouse. Build it first.

I'm all ok with the 2 wonders. I guess it will be kind of an occ strat then (pretty forced if there are no empires to conquer)

I don't agree with the arguement about the temple though. I don't really believe in having culture to keep cities. On Sid, i lose cities to city flips where i have 1/10 the culture, and on regent they flip as well.
Just like units inside captured cities, i think building some culture (except for toa when you do have an empire) is a fruitless efford against culture flips. Cultural buildings in an endagered city sure helps, but that little bit of empire culture looks rather useless to me.

I think we should build just one or two regular units for safety, not bothering with the barracks for now, and then start the Colossus.

We may find ourselves wanting to work tundra tiles before we're able to plant forests, so we shouldn't forget about mining them.

I do not hope to see a single temple before a library as we are scientific. If you want culture (for what reason even) build libraries.

I actually hope not to see a single temple anyway :D

The plan to build wonders sounds good. I don't see the point in building barracks just yet.

Why are we researching warrior code when our goal is mapmaking? Are we hoping to farm barbs?

Why did we build a granary in this game, but not the last one? This is a genuine question: I know you guys are good at starting and I wish to improve.

I build the granary because:

a) We will have 1 city for a long time. We want in size 12 as fast as possible.
b) Our city will not grow very fast once is is size 7 or bigger, so a granary helps a lot.

Last game we wanted to get 5 cities first, to

a) get a good initial score (which we did not need later on)
b) well...get the 5 cities we were allowed to - we did not need granaries for that

Barracks doesn't need to be completed, so switch to an archer. I just left it there if we wanted something else, but I agree that reg archers are alright for now. 2 archers and disband the warrior.

Colossus will be very important soon and we will research faster with it. In a normal game I hardly bother about wonders and almost never build Colossus at all, but in OCC it is almost the first thing I try to build.

I would have gone for MM as soon as possible after the first scouting, that didn't give us any contacts.

About granaries, faster growth equals faster everything, especially with one city. We want that city up to max pop possible. I haven't done the math, but it looks like we won't get 12 pop without irrigating the deer? Calculators? :)

In early game, growth is everything. Granaries double growth and that makes them a very good early game investment.

In normal games i always try to build a bunch of granaries as safety alows me In the deity gotm, i felt i needed barracks earlier and thus only built one granary. Normally i prefer to build 4-5 or so.

In those normal games where you have a settler factory, the granary is first priority because it every settler you build before it takes twice as long and thus delays all subsequent settlers by 4 important turns.

The granary of course also takes time to build. 4 settlers is about the turning point. Building 4 settlers right away as we did takes about the same amount of time as building 4 settlers after a granary. Of course building them without granary gets the first 3 cities earlier than with granary. (At the cost of not having a granary and some less population in the capital)
Therefore we chose to first build settlers last game, but i think it would not have mattered a lot if we did.

We did not build granaries in the other cities because they weren't able to grow past 6 without aquaduct and we could not build an aquaduct.
My preference would have been to build granaries and research strait to aquaduct, and so have 5 cities growing to size 12 asap, but the way we did it turned out very well as it gave time to bulid archers (during the time i would have built granary and archers) who conquered Rome and provided us Iron and another godly city. :)

In this game, there are no settlers to be build, and the city does have the ability to grow size 12. Therefore we just build the granary.

In short i would say, a granary is a godly building, the reason to build one is always there. What you need to search for is the reason not to build one or to delay it.

I will now go play.

We WILL be able to grow size 12 without irrigating the deer.
5 sea + 2 grass + 1 deer = 8 tiles providing their own food.
The city and cow provide 4 food surplus, alowing 4 1 food tiles to be used for a total of 13 citizens.
The 12th will however take 20 turns to get.

Joining the worker later when we are size 7:
cost: 8 turns = 8 gold of upkeep + 16 commerce it would provide as citizen. (working sea) = 24 gold.

benefit: 20 food + 7 turns worth of tile improvement.
The tile improvements are pretty insignificant since there are only 3 more forests to be roaded for now.
the 20 food means half an extra citizen during the time we grow from 8 to size 12.
I will wait for size 7 before joining it.

Turn1:
Research to Writing.
Swich to archer.
scout moves northwards.

After this my game turnset was so exciting, i even managed to lose count (but know 2150BC is 10th) on my turns so what i did in order:

Archer->Collosus.

Join worker for size 8.

Nothing in the north, disband scout.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC2150_01.SAV

OK I've got it. I will play tommorrow. It looks like I will have to press the spacebar 10 times: sounds tough but I think I will be up to it.

Eqworkers can't be joined to the city can they? I can't think of any other possible decisions to make, unless someone (AI or barbs) appears.

As far as i know it's just a name for workers this game. Probably needed to change the goody hut thingy.
Iirc, the worker i joined was also named eqworker.

Some more thoughts:

first we should decide over irrigating the deer.

To grow size 12, we need either to irrigate the deer or to build a harbor. We do not need both. If we have none, we can only get size 10.

First, harbor vs irrigated deer. The irrigated deer would alow us to use tundra. The harbor allows us to use sea tiles. The 2 production lost by cutting the forest would be equal to the ones we get from the tundra. The commerce is also equal. So there seems to be no difference there. Only when there is a golden age, the irrigated deer with tundra tiles are better for then we have 1 more production.

Irrigating the deer would alow us to grow faster at the cost of 2 shields.
But first we need to invest the shields (by irrigating the deer) to grow that size. Mining the deer would be the way in between, but basically the same since it simply remains 1 food for 1 shield.

The collosus will be ready much before we have MM. We cannot build a harbor after the collosus, so we need to go for the lighthouse. Therefore we can expect it to take a long while before we can have a harbor (think 40+ turns or so)

So irrigated deer:
+Is better in golden age
+Costs worker jobs rather than a city job
+Allows faster growth to max size
-takes the temporary investment of 2 spt for faster growth.

Therefore, i think it is better to irrigate the deer.
I am very sorry for not thinking more about this before my turns and moving the workers in the other direction, wasting 2 turns for them if we do decide to irrigate the deer first.


Then about joining the workers:
Assuming we do irrigate the deer and work the 2 tundra tiles (which they already started doing):
If we join the workers after they finished their jobs, we get their production early, effectively undoing the shield investment cost payed for faster growth. Unfortunately, it also undoes the faster growth as we will need to work 1 food tiles. When the workers are ready, we will probably just be size 9. The last citizen would cost 40 turns to grow.

If we wait before we are size 10, the growth from size 9-10 will take 14 turns at 3 fpt. 27 turns better than 40. 2 less citizens however during those 14 turns. means a total of 28 citizen turns. So that seems equal, but of course production now is more important than exactly the same amount of production later. (interest, devaluation etc :D)

We could also choose the middle way where we join 1 at size 9, then grow to size 11 in 20 turns and join the final worker to become size 12.
Here it is also equal, paying 20 citizen turns for getting 20 citizen turns later.

Therfore it is best to join the workers after irrigating the deer.

All together i recommend:
mine + road the tundra. Cut+irrigate+road the deer.
Join both workers when we are size 9.

Just posted it to the Maint. Thread.

Can eqworkers be joined?

EDIT:

And this was the answer:

Yep. Just not built, bought, sold or disbanded.

That leaves me even more puzzled about the concept behind them, but I take it as it is.

That leaves me even more puzzled about the concept behind them, but I take it as it is.
I think the important point is that they cannot be bought. This is for equalizing between vanilla (cheap workers) and PtW.

@WOA
I don't like to join all workers. That's why I wanted some extra workers be built at size 6.
I think that shortly after we have MM we will find some contacts and trade for TW and IW. Then we may need 0, 1 or 2 colonies. If we make workers then, it will take again a lot of turns to get the population back up.
So now that we are over this point, I would indeed chop the game (which I dislike in principle, because it limits our options in a better government).

But I would keep the workers until we know how many colonies we need and just road around our capital (also mine more than 2 river tundra for MM options).
We also need at least one worker in case a barb will pillage our tile improvements.

I would have liked one archer more to roam the lands. He probably could have payed his upkeep by barb camps.

And BTW, GA is a long way to go. We need to capture the Great Library (I see no reason to build it) and build another wonder, or wait for our UU, which is quite late. By that time we should hopefully have captured already a lot of cities.

In vanilla a worker can be bought and sold for about 25g. In PTW you can sell for 25g but they cost around 100g to buy. This means you could buy 4 workers for 100g in vanilla and only one in PTW. My implementation (which differs slightly from crackers) is that both PTW and vanilla start with a worker that cannot be bought or sold. This means that you cannot trade for workers until later and balances the game slightly. You cannot disband an eqWorker because thay have a nominal shield cost of 40, and this would mean getting 10 shields back from disbanding instead of 2. Also it prevents the player from taking all of an opponents workers from them by trade.

eqworkers are an attempt to equalise a disparity between the two software versions, and removes an exploit from the game (by RBCiV lists anyway).

All of the changes made to the rules for this game are experimental, and you can comment on them in the spoilers. I am only giving people the opportunity to experience first hand some of the mechanisms that are available to make competitive games comparable, both game to game and between software versions. SGOTM is your event, and if as a community you want all, some or none of the changes then that is what you will have. My only proviso is that you try them first before passing comment.

Huh? I did not critisise without trying. I just did not know/remember they are so much cheaper in vanilla.

I didn't mean to sound annoyed. I'm not. I'm just saying that for the next game only the changes people want will be kept in that's all. :)

Yep, they were 30 and are now 130 gold to buy.

So usually i just buy them for techs now. :)

Here are the gory details:

2150bc press spacebar
2110bc press spacebar
2070bc press enter for a change
2030bc That was too exciting, press spacebar
1990bc press spacebar
1950bc press spacebar
1910bc Action at last: the workers on the ice complete mining, set to build roads.
1870bc press spacebar
1790bc roads are finished. I make my only real decision: work the final forest and reduce the food surplus to +1 so we will get the Colossus in 2 turns instead of 3. Send workers to the forest game.
1750bc learn writing and commence mapmaking. I haven't started the workers chopping the forest down, but this would be my plan.

That's it. Colossus due next turn.

1750bc (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC1750_01.SAV)

Got it. Will just play before I go to bed. Doesn't look too time consuming. ;)

The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC1500_01.SAV)

Turnlog:

Preflight

Thought about it again. Don't want to cut the deer now.
I want the production now, not in a lot of turns and want to keep a worker.
Workers go to tundra again.




turn 1 1725 worker road, colossus completes -> archer, MM to 10 sh, max commerce

turn 2 1700 zzz

turn 3 1675 archer completes goes hunting (I want at least something to do).
Production to pyramids as Lighthouse prebuild. One worker mines one goes to Moscow

turn 4 1650 moscow grows. Merge worker. Put moscow on starvation diet @ 15 sh for now to shave one turn off Lighthouse

Turn 5 1625 Our cave gets a lawn.

Turn 6 1600 zzz

Turn 7 1575 zzz

IBT: Big news our hunting archer gets attacked by a BW and promotes ;)

Turn 8 1550 zzz

Turn 9 1525 worker moves to next tile, archer spots barb camp

Turn 10 1500 archer moves towards barb camp

6 turns to MM, if we can afford the -1gpt (if we get the barb camp)
We have currently 103 sh in the box. One more starvation turn, then 13 turns at 14 sh and the LH is in the box.

I just had it on heroic epic to count the shields. This is still the LH prebuild.

So another turn-set to not do much to follow, but now we have at least a hunting archer :D

Heroic Epic? :confused:

Heroic Epic? :confused:

MB has modded this game so that the only prerequisite for the Epic is Warrior Code.

Got it.

1250 BC, end of turn (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC1250_01.SAV)

1475 (1): Our archer disperses the Goth camp, gaining 25 gold.

We renovate our cave, installing stairs.


1425 (3): Our worker completes a tundra road.


1375 (5): Map Making is due in one turn, but I can't drop the science rate at all.

Map Making --> Literature. I assume we'll want a library soon, and this tech is normally good trade bait. We might even be able to control which rival civ builds the Great Library.


1325 (7): Our roaming archer spots a Phoenician warrior.


1275 (9): Our worker finishes mining a tundra tile.


1250 (10): I'm mildly baffled as to where the Phoenician warrior's barb camp might be. It could be on the peninsula east-southeast of our roaming archer.

The barbarian menace ;):

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM5-Offa-1250BC.JPG

Just to make sure everybody is aware of.
As I understand the mods in this scenario we have:

- differential naval movement
Should mean that we are able to get contact quickly with the LH (7 movement on ocean, 4 on sea).

- early (standard PtW) contact and map trading
The first trading round should get us a lot of contacts and probably all techs, maps and money around.

- republic with 1 gpt support, no free units, I think :confused:
Do we shoot for that ?

I dont know if republic is like c3c or not. Sorry mb if I may sound mocking again, but this rule changes here and there make it really difficult to know.

Regardless of that we should take republic, simply because it is the better government as long as we do not play AW.

Regardless of that we should take republic, simply because it is the better government as long as we do not play AW.
I usually also follow this rule.
In this specific scenario, I just see the problem that we will not get a nice core, at least for quite some time.
The cities we will conquer will be quite far away and pretty corrupt probably.
With the nerved leaders, there is no chance to get a FP or relocated palace quickly.
Well, let's see how it looks when we have maps and can select our first target :hammer:
Our next research after literature should anyways be on philosophy or CoL, because the other techs we could research are probably already around, with that many civs on the map.

Edit:
Ok math is also an option, forgot that we got masonry from a hut.

The Rule changes are all listed in the maintenance thread. You only have to read them.
The goal of this game was to try to find the minimum mod required to reduce unfairness between the two software versions and to reduce to a minimum the effect of dumb luck - particularly in the first 100 turns or so.

The rules are the same as the out of the box rules, except where stated. All governments are the same as the out of the box version of the game.

The Rule changes are all listed in the maintenance thread. You only have to read them.
The goal of this game was to try to find the minimum mod required to reduce unfairness between the two software versions and to reduce to a minimum the effect of dumb luck - particularly in the first 100 turns or so.

The rules are the same as the out of the box rules, except where stated. All governments are the same as the out of the box version of the game.
Thanks for the clarification.
The maintenance thread isn't all that clear, at least not to me. :crazyeye:
It does state it's based on GOTM23, whatever that means.
Maybe you should add your above post to the maintenance thread.
I'm pretty sure there are others, who are not aware of that.
Especially since GOTM nowadays still uses the C3C republic, even when it calls itself classic.

Ok...I will play now then and start CoL as we need nothing else now. CoL helps us to republic and will come in very handy once we have remote corrupt cities.

We completed The Great Lighthouse in 1175BC and built 3 galleys next in 2 turns each at 15spt and -1fpt. After that I'd do a library at 14spt and +/-0fpt.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-offa-moscow-1000BC1.jpg

Research on literature was completed in 1050BC. We miss the wheel and iron working and I started the wheel next, so we get to know the resource locations.

The barb camp was where Northern Pike suspected it to be and was dispersed in 1000BC. A new one poped next to it and we killed two barbs already now standing with an elite archer next to it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-offa-eastern-barbs-1000BC1.jpg

I sent a suicide galley west. It spotted land, but no contat yet.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm5-offa-western-galley-1000BC1.jpg

The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC1000_01.SAV)

One odd thing about this scenario is that we will almost be compelled to benefit from the rank corruption bug later on. I can't see us being in a big hurry to abandon our lovely capital.

Adding this to our situation: we should think about a harbor. When we enter an advanced government, it will give us 3 food from the sweatwater tile and 2 from the other coast. Otherwise we will not be able to grow. I'd say library now and harbor next.

One odd thing about this scenario is that we will almost be compelled to benefit from the rank corruption bug later on. I can't see us being in a big hurry to abandon our lovely capital.

... and would be totally within the rules of course, since you have not moved your palace to get it there. :) I lurve the small print :)

... and would be totally within the rules of course, since you have not moved your palace to get it there. :) I lurve the small print :)
I would not say so ;) .
If it wouldn't be forced on us, but done deliberately, I would consider it exploiting the bug.
It has the same effect on corruption as moving the palace.
It is not specifically mentioned in the rules, but should be considered to be covered by the catch-all rule for new exploits.

But we will have a hard time to exploit it really :cry: .
We will have to hand-build the FP in some remote location.
We will have to build a courthouse and probably a harbor first in that city, to get corruption to a bearable level.

If we are fast we may even have conquered a big chunk of the world before it finishes. ;)

I would not say so ;) .

But we will have a hard time to exploit it really :cry: .
We will have to hand-build the FP in some remote location.
We will have to build a courthouse and probably a harbor first in that city, to get corruption to a bearable level.

If we are fast we may even have conquered a big chunk of the world before it finishes. ;)

I think mad-bax has changed leaders so they can be disbanded for 250 shields. That would go a long way towards the FP. Therefore leaders may be even more important than normal in this game. A FP in an AI capital would be very nice. A flip would be very unlucky as our culture is strong.

You cannot build a small or great wonder with disbanded units.
And BTW also not a palace.
I asked this already in the maintenance thread.

You cannot build a small or great wonder with disbanded units.
And BTW also not a palace.
I asked this already in the maintenance thread.

That is disappointing. We are almost left with a OCC, but I suppose all will be clear later.

I'm playing now.

These setup probably makes a fp quite pointless. We may really have to think about disbanding moscow later on, but that's only a speculation for now.

we should think about a harbor. When we enter an advanced government, it will give us 3 food from the sweatwater tile

Harbours have no effect on the yield from a fresh-water tile. That's why they aren't even given as build options for cities on lakes but not on the sea.

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.

Don't worry about it--these things happen. Good luck with the bug.

I was tied up yesterday and played 4 turns today, when I came to a point where we need to discuss stuff. And then I read about the bug and I PM'ed Mad-Bax and he will decide if I replay my 4 turns or continue from where I am.

So I won't say anything yet about the game to avoid spoilers.

Meanwhile I want to discuss the choice of government. I can say as much that we might be at war for the rest of the game when we start the warfare, so I want Monarchy.

Thoughts?

Meanwhile I want to discuss the choice of government. I can say as much that we might be at war for the rest of the game when we start the warfare, so I want Monarchy. Why we should be? I can imagine us taking citied for peace and then pick on another opponent. If we switch war targets Republic would be good too - though not as powerful as in c3c.

Well, gozpel, sounds as you met a few people. :D

Monarchy is not necessary IMO in a game where you can make peace at any time.
But the question is, if we can get enough low corruption cities that we can earn the unit support cost in republic.
We should look at the map and then decide which strategy first.
Only after that we can estimate how our commerce will look like in a different government.

We can research Monarchy quicker. CoL 16t plus Philo 10t and then Republic. Poly 20t and then Monarchy.

I'm not fussed really, just wanted to hear some thoughts before I decide on something that people might have different opinions about.

I have a worldmap, but I don't want to post it before I hear from M-B. I don't know what the bug is about.

But I can say as much that we are in for some real fun. :)

What a tease Gozpel.

I quite like monarchy too.

Is it 1 gold no free upkeep or 2 gold with free units for republic?

If it is 1 gold, republic is gold wise simply better than monarchy in every situation. And i agree WW is not so much an issue.

Standard PTW Republic - 0 free units at 1gpt. I think it is worse than the c3c one, but that is another matter.

Monarchy - Offa, gozpel

Republic - klarius, grs, WOA

As I read your answers?

Northern Pike? Make it a tie and I flip the coin :lol:

If you give a good reason after the save is fixed, I might switch, but I would like to see the map and your reasoning for monarchy.

republic: 1 gold per unit
monarchy: 1 gold per unit

republic: 1 extra gold per citizen (multiplied by markets)
monarchy: no extra gold

republic: no free units
monarchy: free units, but fewer than the amount of citizens in the city.

It cannot get any simpler than this. With the old republic, it is simply better economically than monarchy, with many units or with few units.

so it is war weariness vs more gold.

With c3c republic i would go for monarchy, with the old republic i don't understand why anyone ever wants monarchy. (i never had any problem with war weariness in civ3)

The war weariness also does not outweight the economic advantage by far. War weariness needs to be so bad that every citizen more than the free unit support has to be made unhappy by it to hurt republic bad enough to equal monarchy.

In fact, i am quite sure this is the reason republic was changed in c3c. With the old republic, there was simply now reason ever to choose monarchy as republic was always better and monarchy was a redundand part of the game.

example comparison:
City has 10 citizens.
every citizen gives 1 extra commerce.
the first 4 pay the unit upkeep that would not be needed under monarchy.
the other 6 could pay for 6 unhappiness caused by war weariness.
6 unhappiness by WW requires 90 lost units against 1 opponent.

republic: 1 extra gold per citizen (multiplied by markets) Please consider the concept of corruption and how much it will be in every city besides our capital. Please also consider, that currupt cities do not benefit from the lux slider, while they benefit from cheap MP, which you can use in monarchy. On the level this game is on we will get 2 + MP contect people, so using a garrison of 2 keeps a remote city content even without a lux.

In general I am pro republic as you are, but your reasoning is simplifying the matter too much.

On the C3C republic: when you have your core cities above size 6 and a good number of small towns, they support enough troops for normal warfare - you will only pay upkeep costs about the number of workers you have and they pay back their 1g per turn very fast. So you can supply a reasonable military, benefit from the increased commerce and still pay no upkeep cost. This is not possible/so easy with the classic/ptw-republic.

Republic looks like the best choice at the moment. And if we change our minds while our empire is still small, a second round of anarchy won't matter much.

Please consider the concept of corruption and how much it will be in every city besides our capital. Please also consider, that currupt cities do not benefit from the lux slider, while they benefit from cheap MP, which you can use in monarchy. On the level this game is on we will get 2 + MP contect people, so using a garrison of 2 keeps a remote city content even without a lux.

In general I am pro republic as you are, but your reasoning is simplifying the matter too much.

On the C3C republic: when you have your core cities above size 6 and a good number of small towns, they support enough troops for normal warfare - you will only pay upkeep costs about the number of workers you have and they pay back their 1g per turn very fast. So you can supply a reasonable military, benefit from the increased commerce and still pay no upkeep cost. This is not possible/so easy with the classic/ptw-republic.

Yes, my reasoning is for an OCC point of view. Of course we do not know how long it will take before we capture any cities.

Hehe, in the current deity gotm, i am already paying nearly 100 gpt upkeep before 0 AD :D. (but still making 200 gpt so i don't care)

Republic it is then. I'm fine either way, I only wanted a new gov as soon as possible and research to Rep will take approx. 10 turns more than going for Monarchy.

Reason for another gov asap is cash-rushing. I don't want to hear anything about safe research and going for knights before we make a move. We have to act really fast and horses will do well on this level. So after gov-change I want to turn off research for a while and concentrate on military.

You will understand why, when I can post a save and a map. :)

No words from M-B yet, so I have to wait.

Gozpel, if your save and map indicate an opponent to fight, meaning we will soon have multiple corrupt cities, then you are right and monarchy could be better.

We have time to discus further now anyway with the bug :)
(and to play the gotm, i am really gonna submit it this time)

OK guys your save has been mended. You will need to download the 1000BC save from the download page.

Once again I apologise for the inconvenience.

No need to apologize. We all appreciate the immense amount of work you put into these games, and realize that so complex a task can't always be done perfectly.

Due to a big change in my life I have to drastically decrease the number of SGs I play :(. I already had some run out and others close to it, but that proved to be not enough. As a consequence I will withdraw from this and other SGs. In hindsight, I could have seen that before this game started, so I am especially sorry, I did not and joined.

Please do not take it personal that I withdraw from your game. I had much fun on every of my SGs including this, but to keep it that way, I have to lower the number of games.

I am looking forward to play with you all again and will be happy to join this great team in a later SGOTM again.

Good luck grs and hope to see you soon :)

Ok team, here's the situation 900bc (played the new save).

We met the world and I had to give away communications to gain the Wheel, IW, Maths and HBR plus all WM's and all the AI's 500g. I used MapMaking as leverage and even if I would've preferred to keep some civs unknown to others, I think it doesn't matter in the long run. So I gifted all the rest of communications around, so they can't be used for brokering by the AI. They will exchange WM's IT, but our location is protected :)

We have 3 iron and 2 horses on our island and our workers started a road to a chosen horse 7 tiles away. I can't see us build too many swords.

I still think Monarchy will get us where we want to be sooner than Republic and I think cash-rushing will be the way to go to build up some military quickly.

The map is just hilarious, I just love it.

Ah too bad grs :(

Did you get married? :D
================================================== ===
Game:
Hmm interesting.
At least we will have a "city ring" around our capital :p

Grs, it's been great playing with you on two SGOTM teams. I can't argue with your reasoning; I find I enjoy succession play most when I limit myself to two games at a time.

Yep, grs is a fun player and also skilled in different areas. I miss him already, but he got reasons to not to play and I respect that. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him and his "ramblings" <- Joke.

I didn't expect him to quit in the middle of a game though, but real life is real life.

So we have a game to play without his expertise and longwinded explanations...:hammer: Stop it gozpel!

What I need to know is to where are we going from here?

My only reason to going for Monarchy is time. A new gov 10 turns earlier can give us some advantage and as you all know, I'm not a calculator. I just play my games as reasonably as possible and want it to move on. Sometimes I make mistakes and learn from it, sometimes I make brilliant choices and other people learn from that.

My gut-feeling is to go for Monarchy, I don't give a damn about gold-pieces or corruption. I just want them horses out to do what they are supposed to do.

If we want to win, we need to act very soon. I sorted out our 5 cities by gozpelism in the last game, and how did we do? I certainly understand the klariusism arguments by that time, but let us use that tactics for a space/diplo game, they will be very powerful there.

But here we have to get some troops on the road ASAP and play by the RNG.

Good luck grs. I hope the change in your life is a good one.

What a wild map. This looks like fun. I think some of our team members' planning skills will be useful here regarding what to do with the capital. I do tend to agree with Gozpel about attacking with horses, and maybe knights later on. I doubt whether the monachy/republic decision is important, but what we do with our capital/FP is.

Stirring up some wars would be good.

As soon as we capture enemy workers, we should send them home, use them to cut the deer and then as soon as the deer are cut, join one captured and our own worker to get to size 12. Of course, that assumes we have removed that AI from the game while they were cutting the forest so that the added citizen won't cause unhappiness.

Do you think our OCC will be powerfull enough to pump units for standard knight conquest?
Will the AI be equal to us in tech or can we have knights even before they have pikemen ?
If we are fighting knights vs pikemen and lose a knight one out of 5 battles while it will takes 5 turns to build one, that would mean we can only do 1 battle per turn if we want to keep our army size stable. I do not really expect to get the amounts of gold needed for upgrading more than a very few knights.
Therefore, i am not yet suggesting we should do this, but maybe we should think about going for bombardment, alowing us to fight virtually without losses.

I now actually doubt IF we need monarchy or republic at all. We won't really benefit from the lower corruption. (i don't expect any captured cities to become really productive under any government)
The only advantage is to get the 2 extra food from our food boni, alowing us to grow to size 12 without cutting the deer.
Not going to such a government will alow us to pop rush units (possibly catapults without need for barracks) in the conquered cities.
This might be a scenario where our captured cities can be of more use to us.

Now about the capital / FP:

We cannot rushbuild our FP or palace.
Disbanding the capital is the only way to move it.

I think of the following scenario:
We start conquering an area that we like for the capital. We first start working the ground and connecting the cities etc with the slave workers. (knowing the AI, they barely have any tile improvement and moving before those are improved will not help us much)

While we are preparing that area for the palace jump, we could use other conquered cities outside that area to pop rush. (either bombardment or just regular units).

When our area is prepared, we could swich government and jump the palace.
If we do get such an area btw, we will have a small core of productive cities like we had last game and we will also have other cities to serve free units. :mischief:

Another scenario would be to keep the palace where it is, stay in despotism and pop rush units from every city we conquer. If they have size enough so that every conquered city will be able to provide 1 unit (think of knights when we have the tech), i think it can give us a pretty good chain reaction to conquer the world like that.
The advantage of this over the first scenario is that we will immeadiately start pop rushing as we conquer instead of after conquering 8 towns or so. I think our conquest will start off much faster this way.




Just somethings to think about.

I think we still should go for republic.
It looks like there are some cities to get not that far away from our capital.
20 tiles distance isn't that bad on a large map.
Distance corruption can be nicely reduced by courthouses, so towns at this distance can be still quite productive.
I would pump units now (after a harbor) and attack the nearest capital ASAP.
Maybe we have to build some workers first. We could quickly build 6 workers, grow back to size 7 and merge 4 again.
Regent level AI's will not have more than 2-3 spears in their capitals. Other cities would probably autoraze, which is no benefit for us.
It seems there is no scientific civ around. We don't have to worry about pikes for quite some time. So horses and/or swords can get us quite far.
In republic we will be able to out-research the AI even with our one strong city only.
I would have rather sold our map instead of communications. Still I would sell our map now, if something useful can be got. Let the AI come and deliver some slaves to our home island.
Also maybe let them settle some towns.
They would be useful to soak up the barbs in the massive uprise at the beginning of MA.

WOA's imaginative idea of staying in despotism so that we could use captured cities for pop-rushing really made me think. The problem, though, is that we'll mostly be taking cities without barracks, not hooked up to horses or iron, which won't be able to produce anything quickly except regular archers, regular spearmen, and catapults. In any case, it'll be a while before we have to decide definitely for or against this idea, so we'll be able to see how well developed the AI's cities are first.

Why would we want to jump our palace? As MB has pointed out, once we get the Forbidden Palace built overseas on this unusual map we'll receive the benefits of the FP bug, without cheating.

I don't think we can get away with playing this game essentially as a 1CC. There are just too many enemy cities to take--about eighty already. So we have to be serious about limiting corruption and getting the FP built, and that IMO means that we should favour Republic over Monarchy.

Gozpel, unless you're just about to play, could you please post a midway save? Right now only you know enough about the AI civs to make informed decisions.

I never give away my map unless I have to.

I like the poprushing idea and we don't HAVE to be in another gov right away.

The northern island with India, America, Egypt and Spain seems to be the best choice of landgrabbing atm. But here's the save so you can see for yourselves.

Corruption and no leader rush will make it impossible to build the FP or palace in a reasonable amount of time. Therfore, we can only move the palace by abandoning it or use the cities as they are with the corruption they have at that distance.

Gozpel, why don't you give maps?
They actually don't even benefit the AI as they know everything anyway. I much rather give away maps than contacts.
If you trade contacts but not maps, they surely will trade the maps amongst eachother.

First I couldn't get maps without giving away gpt or contacts of one other civ, and if I had waited for a turn then of course Vikings would give away the knowledge of us to the other civs and we would've gained nothing. Remember we we backwards to almost all civs and had very little gold. One contact from Vikings cost more than 100g which we couldn't afford.

So I did the best I could, which gave us 4 techs, WM and all gold and all contacts. I can still give away WM to all civs if that is what you want, I haven't finished the turn yet. I don't like the others to know where I live if I can help it and it's just a matter of choice and I always played that way.

By the way, it would only be a matter of time before Vikings found a way north to find out for themselves as they already knew mapmaking.

I still want a decision of where we should go now. Do we turn off research or do we go a full pace for Republic or Monarchy? I also kept Lit for ourselves for now.

I did not mean to be negative over what you did in this game particular. I also often trade my contacts simply because i need to in order to get what i need.
I just questioned the idea why you prefer trading contacts over maps. (if you have the choise)

I think it is hard to say now where to go.
I think going for the rush building is a risk to take that gives a chance to conquer the world MUCH faster, but there also is a risk of it being much slower. This consideration has a special place in the sgotm competition.

With this decision, comes the decision of governments.

OCC with distant cities to be used "normally": Monarchy
OCC with distant cities for poprushing: Despotism
Replace capital to captured area: Republic

Monarchy will not benefit us as long as we have only one city.
Republic will benefit us any moment we can get to it.

If we want the monarchy option, we should research that way, but there is absolutely no hurry getting there.

If we end up pop rushing, it would be best to pop rush catapults and stop research now. But it would not be a very huge loss if we do research and then end up pop rushing anyway, so this decision doesn't need to be made yet.

If we want to replace the capital, we should go republic and preferably get it fast.

So i think we should simply decide between moving the capital and going republic (for a similar empire like we had last game) or to keep the capital and use the cities as they are with their corruption and go monarchy.

I am sorry for only analysing the situation but not giving an answer. I only hope to have simplified the question for you. I don't play by feeling and experience, only by analysis.
I cannot give an anwer yet to the long term benefits of the choises to make. I think this is a choise for you to answer by feeling and experience.
Maybe however i have loads of time tomorrow and go try analysing the long term issues. :D Don't wait for that however as i can neither guarantee having the time to do so nor being able to come with an answer.

We have to discuss the FP question in specific terms to make a good decision. Let's suppose that we go into republic, take Delhi, cash-rush a courthouse there, and get the city up to size seven with worker merges. Delhi will then produce 8 --> 15 spt before corruption, the total increasing as we get mines built. So, what proportion of these shields could we expect to lose to corruption? This is not a rhetorical question, since I have very little experience with this combination of difficulty level and world size. Depending on the answer, trying to build the FP could be obviously right (66% corruption or less), obviously wrong (90% corruption or more), or somewhere in between.

Gozpel, thanks for posting the save. As far as the immediate question is concerned, I vote for one of the techs leading to Republic. We won't actually be committing ourselves seriously until we start on Republic or Monarchy (or on a Mediaeval tech instead).

We should go in another government ASAP.
Pop-rushing only works good if you have a lot of cities and some luxes connected. We cannot settle cities, so I don't think we will get enough.

Distance corruption is not as bad as you think, especially it's greatly reduced when getting out of despotism.

Corruption calculator (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/CorrCalc.zip)
Let's take Nidaros. It's 19 tiles from the capitol and easy to reach with differential movement.
It will have 58% corruption in despotism initially.
This will reduce to 48% with a harbor.
And 32% in a better government.
All these values would be only half with a courthouse, so that we could get it to only 16% corruption if it stays at rank 1.

Delhi is 30 tiles away. This would be more problematic, because there would be initially 90% corruption, so the first improvements would be more difficult to get.
But with all of the above it could also get down to 25% corruption.

Another reason for a different government is our capital.
Due to the colossus most of tiles we work currently suffer from despotism penalty on commerce.
2 would produce more food, 1 an additional shield.

Re maps:
I see no reason to keep our map secret.
Let the AI come and deliver some slaves.
I cannot say how the situation was, but normally the map brokering on the first contact turn can give all the money and techs around.
But that's all no problem. We have all the money and techs now and probably can stay ahead.

What I would do now is:
Complete harbor, then make some more workers.
Then barracks.
Get the capital to size 12 by worker merges, when it has grown back a bit.
Then churn out units and attack Nidaros (or Peking) ASAP.
We need the foothold on another continent also to be able to buy workers.
These cities will have enough food (Nidaros will need culture expansion first, but then it's better) to grow nicely on their own.
Forbidden palace is quite some time away. We will need a lot more cities first.
Continue full steam research. I still tend towards republic.
But anyways we will need CoL soon.

"All these values would be only half with a courthouse, so that we could get it to only 16% corruption if it stays at rank 1."

I cannot really believe a courthouse halves any corruption. I remember from the formulas it was a 1.2 multiplier or something and also when you build one, it normally matters only 1 or 2 shields. Where do you get that half from ?

I cannot really believe a courthouse halves any corruption. I remember from the formulas it was a 1.2 multiplier or something and also when you build one, it normally matters only 1 or 2 shields. Where do you get that half from ?
Distance corruption is halved by courthouses according to the Alexman formula.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19922
As long as we are talking about only one other city that's the only important factor.
In normal empires rank corruption is the main driver. That's only influenced slightly by courthouses.

I just looked into the save.
Why we have no library?
That's more important than a harbor, which we will anyways not use for some turns.

Thanks for the link to the corruption calculator, Klarius.

Those numbers certainly imply that we should build the FP. Beijing looks like a better FP city than Nidaros, which is surrounded by towns needing an inordinate amount of worker attention before they'll be useful.

I agree that Moscow needs to build a library and a barracks--and then possibly quite a few military units--before a harbour.

I switch to library then....or will I miss out on shields if I do? I might have bungled that up. If we lose shields I switch to barracks.

I play this shortly and will head for Republic at best possible pace.

When it comes to conquering other cities, I don't think we have to worry too much about that just yet. First we need military to do that :lol:

And as we GET more towns that can support our future military, we'll be fine.

feudalism government is not in ptw yet right ?

First The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC750_01.SAV)

Great stats for 1000bc :)

I switch the lib to a worker. Kill a barb with the archer from town and set luxes to 30%.

975bc - Moscow worker -> harbor.

925bc - Archers takes out 2 barbcamps.

Good news: 2 galleys find borders of different colors.

900bc - We meet Spain, they know the Wheel, IW and Mysticism and we're up Lit and MapMaking.
They also know Egypt, America and India.

We also meet Scandinavia, who knows a whole bunch of civs! They know the Spanish techs plus Maths AND they already know MM.

We gained the Wheel, IW, Maths and HBR plus all gold in the world, around 500g and all WM's.

There are 3 sources of iron and 2 horses on our continent. Our workers will road to the horse 5-6 tiles E for a colony.

WM's will be traded around IT, but our location won't be known by anybody. (which the team didn't like, sorry about that). One problem with someone else settling on our island is that they could steal our resources and we can't afford that.

Research CoL at 70%, due in 16t.

875bc - I left the build on the harbor, or we would have lost 14 shields. I have to listen to you guys better.

825bc - Moscow harbor -> library. At least we now have the option to let the town to grow to 12pop.

750bc - Moscow library -> barracks. Play around with the tiles in the city, 14 shields this turn, 13 the next two. We need MP's in town too, that would speed up research a fraction as we are on 30% luxes atm.

Someone proposed we should instigate some fake wars? I like the idea, on the big continent Iroquois are currently leading and are getting quite big.

CoL in 7t, we have 588g and -7gpt.

Btw, there are barbs somewhere N of the warrior.

I wish more of the AI cities were above size one, but basically that looks good. :goodjob:

About eight turns will elapse between the completion of Moscow's barracks and the establishment of our horse colony, so we have to decide what we're going to build in the interval. Perhaps two galleys and two spearmen? We're going to need a few garrison units.

I wish more of the AI cities were above size one, but basically that looks good.

Next player has to tell the AI to focus on growing pop :lol:

Galleys will be essential for this game soon enough, we might as well move back our scouting boats so they can help with transports?

Galleys will be essential for this game soon enough, we might as well move back our scouting boats so they can help with transports?

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. We'd need five galleys for a proper Moscow-Beijing ship chain, which would have the advantage that we could never lose land units at sea, though I think three galleys used the normal way would be enough to keep pace with our production. There's also the consideration that we'll probably want to make our initial landing with more than six units, of course.

I still think we should make some workers now to grow faster by remerging them.

I still would also like to have the iron connected soon and 2 or 3 swords in the first assault, to have some defense in the mix (maybe upgraded from warriors).

I think the 3 galleys should return soon and should be enough. A ship chain seems overkill for our production.

One galley should deliver a unit to pop the 3 visible goody huts soon. We might gain an expensive tech, but only as long as we are in AA.

There is another small thing our galleys have to do first. That's uncover a save trading route to the big continent.
There is still some fow in the way.

Well, it's still some turns to go, but we could already dream about whom to attack first.
I still like Nidaros most.
After culture expansion it has a very nice production potential and a lux.

We do need more military before workers, if only another archer or maybe a couple of horses in a bit to get promoted. The will be too many barbs around to handle for 2 units.

I like Nidaros too, is this the first time I agree with you Klarius? :lol:

Good point about the GH's too.

Doesn't the utter wretchedness of the Viking cities around Nidaros bother anybody? Beijing on the other hand is surrounded by some excellent sites, given that the AI did the choosing. ;)

Alright gentlemen, we're bickering about things that can't even happen in a few turns.

I suggest to make your own warplans with 6-10 horses. (I don't want to hear about swords right now, movement is essential!!!)

Draw feasible routes to Nidaros and India, compare them in your head, ONLY BY THE SAVE, and show us the best routine.

I told you before, this is a very interesting map. Let's do the best of it.

We are a team of so many different skills, let's use them.

Doesn't the utter wretchedness of the Viking cities around Nidaros bother anybody? Beijing on the other hand is surrounded by some excellent sites, given that the AI did the choosing. ;)

Well, nobody says to not take Beijing and the rest of china at some time soon.
In fact we want to take the whole world :D .

If your talking about FP location, we will have to take all of scandinavia and all of china first anyways (and maybe more), to get enough cities.
Then we should build it, where we can complete it fastest. It will still put all the cities we have then into rank 1 due to the rank corruption bug.

A question is, if we still consider a fast free palace jump instead.
For that probably India would be better with more close-by good land.

Will play in about 3 hours or so.
Spam your opinions about the coming 10 turns within that time. :D

If your talking about FP location, we will have to take all of scandinavia and all of china first anyways (and maybe more), to get enough cities. Then we should build it, where we can complete it fastest. It will still put all the cities we have then into rank 1 due to the rank corruption bug.

A fair point, but I'd still like to take our FP city as early as possible so that we can improve its tiles, pre-build there (perhaps granary --> marketplace), and so forth.

Regarding the free palace jump, my instinct is that the game won't last long enough to justify such a radical step. I'd settle for the FP, built as quickly as feasible and made far more effective by the bug.

I agree that a ship chain might be overkill in itself, but I'd still like a fleet of five galleys so that we can land a force large enough not to be vulnerable to the RNG's freaks and flukes.

Change nothing.
We will need a little more protection on our island to potect also our collony(s) against barbs.

Thinking about the bug, we can actually have a rather large productive area. Closest cities are almost 20 tiles from capital, meaning any city within 20 tiles from the Fp will have no rank corruption.
I vote for the Idian/American area to build the FP and building the FP. The closer spacing around nidaros is not so important since we have a 20 tile rank1 radius anyway.
Only problem is the distance corruption to get that FP done, india is a little further away.
There is just way too much forest and jungle around nidaros.
Arabia is also a very nice area and building the pyramids. Its even more remote though.



Turn0: --

Turn1: Board Archer for opening huts. MM food in Moscow.

Turn2: We have a coastal trade route with the Atol, but it is going trough all civ's waters, war with any of them will break it for others.
Keep this in mind when dealing if you want to keep reputation.

Turn3: Barracks->Archer. MM 1 more food as we can only use 10 shields.

Turn4: --

Turn5: Archer->Spear. Science to 10%.

Turn6:
Literature for Philosphy, maps and 94 gold from India.
41 gold and maps from Egypt for Literature.
25 gold and maps from Scandinavia for Literature.
29 gold and maps from England for Literature.
COL->Republic

Turn7:
Spearmen->Galley. Instead of MM to 15 shields with 2 shortage, i chose for growth at 11 spt instead for it is better on long term.

Turn8:
Polytheism from first hut.
25 gold from barb hut.

Turn9: --

Turn10:
Galley->Galley. road to horses almost ready, so this can be swiched to horsemen in 2 turns.


Off topic:
Looking at the map, i notice something and wonder if it was purposly created like that.
The south eastern area is definately best by far as it will grow to size 11 without harbor or cutting deer, has horses in radius and also can produce 18 spt without shortage.
Our place is second best and the northern place is worst.
Is it coincidence that the best geographic placement on the map for building the FP is exactly opposite ? (cuz of distance to good ground)

Haha, I wanted that spot, but the 8 turns of moving there was too costly :)

It's a very clever map and Mad-Bax probably put some thought into when it comes to FP and stuff. Lucky teams that found there right away.

Horses almost online :love:

What, no posts in this thread for 23 hours? Have Britain, Europe, and Australia all been destroyed by meteors? I'd better check CNN. :D

More seriously, I notice that Offa, who's up, hasn't posted in more than four days. Offa, if you're out of touch and can't read this, let us know. ;)

Offa is probably in training, changing diapers :lol:

So who is up?

Well, I suppose Klarius is up whenever he thinks it proper to supersede Offa. It's now 31 hours without a "got it" from Offa. When he returns we can treat this as a swap rather than a skip, assuming that's what he wants.

By the graphs, the Peanut team already started their wars (around 200AD) and is climbing by the points.? Can we beat that? We have 2 turnsets to get things going.

Right, the roster:

-grs was fed up with our antics and quit. :D

-Gozpel
-WackenOpenAir ->Just played
-Offa -> making formula and and powdering a baby
-Klarius -> Should grab it
-NorthernPike -> Eager to have a go

Well, I will grab it in 6-8 hours from now, if Offa doesn't show up in the meantime.
I don't think there is really much to discuss.
We need military now and will not get enough within 10 turns.

I think we should start already get some embassies and start some wars, between the other civs.

I think we should start already get some embassies and start some wars, between the other civs.

Absolutely, start whacking them Iroquois. Maybe by cheap techs and so on.

And also maybe something in the middle of the same continent, just to start GA's?

Plus another little war up north, to get rid of some units?

Hi guys: still here, just about. BT engineers changed a telegraph pole outside my house a couple of days ago and seem to have put all the wires back in the wrong order, so I have no net connection at home (at work now) . I did actually play last night but have left the save at home (Doh!). I will therefore have to come back in tonight to post it.

Klarius, you are welcome to play instead if you can't wait, but if you can bear it, a tough/fun position awaits. I think we have quite enough potential trouble on the home island for now without invading anyone else :eek: .

I have no problem with waiting a little bit.

We should stick to our roster as long as we don't get major delays by that.

We just missed your "got it", but well connection problems happen :crazyeye: .

I have admittedly been busy recently, partly in an extraordinarily disastrous attempt at the new cotm.

Obviously I left my turnlog at home as well. Basically having suffered viciously at the hands of the PRNG recently, I was determined to have as quiet a turnset as possible. I have set up a ship chain to the south but there is no prospect of using it any time soon. I popped 2 huts: a skilled warrior and Currency.

Unfortunately loads of AI have currency too and the Zulu have construction as well and are in the middle Ages. Our island is crawling with barbs, one of which sneaked around our archer to kill our last worker :mad: . Therefore the massive uprising that is to start soon may be hard to take. I don't hold out much hope for our horse colony. I think there are 2 camps to the south of it, one in the SE penisula, and another somewhere to the south of the road, but I haven't found either of them yet. I have just found one camp in the midlands of our island, and there is another in the western peninsula, which I now wish I had dealt with. The imminent middle ages has rather taken me by surprise.

I suppose you could try to start a load of wars to delay the middle ages, but rather think I should have done that myself a couple of turns ago :blush: .
I have started the capital building a marketplace, but it is only 2 turns in and can be switched without loss to a horseman.

I have a phone again so don't have to return to work to post this :) .

550bc nil
530bc. Move worker to horse. the other worker moves back but sees a barb on the next square so also moves onto the horse.
Realize our galleys are asleep and wake them up. Move the galley in the west towards a hut.
Switch to archer as our defence is looking tough with at least 2 barbs lurking.
ibt Spanish are building the great Library.
510bc horse colony built
skilled warrior from the hut: two hit points, doesn't seem all that skilful to me.
470bc the skilled warrior jumps out of the galley to beat an Egpytian warrior to another hut and learns Currency: maybe he was quite skilled after all.
450bc kill 2 barb warriors next to the horse colony: one was squatting on our precious road. Start a horseman.
410bc our tech lead is gone and the zulu have construction.
390bc worker ambushed by barb. Nuts. We kill 2 barbs but the home island is crawling with them.
370bc Our roaming galley lands near another hut, guarded by barbs
350bc our hero conscript warrior kills a barb horse but doesn't promote. The hut is ours next turn.
Finally locate a barb camp on our island.

We are 2 turns in on a marketplace build, so this can/should be changed.
Construction can be bought from the Zulu but the price is very high.
The middle age barbarian uprising cannot be far away, and may be harsh.

350bc (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC0350_01.SAV)

I looked in the save and will play tonight (maybe in two hours).
I will build military and hope the best for the uprise. :rolleyes:
The ship chain doesn't help us anything currently, so I will break it for some turns and do some more scouting around.

I would like all the bigger nations in some wars, but I have to look closer what is cheap and also look to it that the big ones don't get bigger (they should have a two front war).

I would like to build warriors for upgrade, but with the uncertain barb situation I don't think I will be able to hook up the iron.
So I might have to build even some spears :eek: .

I agree about the ship chain Klarius: I just set it up partly because of wishful thinking, and partly for the practice. You might use the first bit of it to try to reach the camp camp in the western peninsula of our island, but really it is premature. In fact the navy in general is a bit ahead of its time considering our weak army.

Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_BC0150_01.SAV)

Preflight
Change build to horsemen.
Build some embassies.
Make map trades where there is gold.
Declare on Vikings and ally India
Declare on India and ally America.
The further away nations have to wait. The alliances are too expensive.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/kl_sg5_1.JPG
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/kl_sg5_2.JPG
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/kl_sg5_3.JPG
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/kl_sg5_4.JPG

IBT:
Massive uprise message. America is in MA.
Moscow horsemen->spear. We have to expect about 40 horses on our island.
We will not be able to deal with them with attackers.

turn 1 330BC
Whack two barbs.
Sink a barb galley.
Pop a hut for construction. We are in MA and get Feudalism.
Trade maps around.

IBT:
Some barbs move. Nothing serious up to now.

Turn 2 310BC
A little map trading.
A little barb whacking.

IBT:
Barbs. Some attacks, still no losses.

Turn 3 290BC
As last turn.

IBT:
Barbs move, one attack, no losses

Turn 4 270BC
Business as usual.

IBT:
Barbs.. Moscow grows to size 11

Turn 5 250BC
....

IBT:
Barbs ?!. Moscow horseman->worker. Size 11 needs 10% more lux, so 10 is better.

Turn 6 230BC
Whack some.

IBT:
??? Barbs ...

Turn 7 210BC
Now I have about the barb defense I wanted on our horse colony.

IBT:
Barbs, Barbs, Barbs

Turn 8 190BC
As usual.

IBT:
Guess what:

Turn 9 170BC
Nothing unusual

IBT:
B....

Turn 10 150BC
Whack a few more

I was all the time busy with the barbs.
I lost no units on them, but I needed all our units.
It seems it's getting better now, but there are for sure still quite a few around.
Republic is due IBT. We should revolt immediately.
I'm not quite sure what to research then. The AI will just follow on with feudalism probably, so we cannot expect any trade soon.
Mono-Chivalry would be nice, but engineering would also be good to have.
Nevertheless continue to build military. In a few turns the situation should allow to build an invasion force.
All the capitals were weak defended and building a long term project. So a handfull of units should do.

Got it.

I notice the Zulus have a one-tile island city. :mad:

I notice the Zulus have a one-tile island city.

Isn't that just great! That can break any team's chances to win by conquest in a decent time.

I think we should go for Chivalry as quick as possible, I don't think horses will do too well against pikes.

Got it.

I notice the Zulus have a one-tile island city. :mad:

So have the iroquois :) . Neither town appears to be sitting on a luxury though so they should be available in negotiations. It didn't stop us last time after all.

I also think we will want knights. Cavalry seems like overkill, but while we have so few cities ;) we can't afford the losses that a horsemen rampage would involve. Surely we won't meet too many pikes until the end.

No losses so far from the barb uprising: remarkable. There are 7 camps on our island. :goodjob: Once they are dealt with we can visit the AI with some elite 'ambassadors'. ;)

50 AD, end of turn (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0050_01.SAV)

150 (0): The Arabs demand Feudalism, we refuse, and they declare war on us.

Republic --> Monotheism.


130 (1): I want a spearman in Moscow before we revolt, so I'm going to wait a turn.

We disperse the Kazakh camp for 25 gold (1-0).

I decide against bringing the French into our war with the Arabs. Arabia leads France 26-11 in population points, and would probably just become stronger if the two were to fight.

We destroy a barb horseman outside Moscow (2-0).

Two barb horsemen die attacking our horse colony (4-0).

Moscow spearman --> horseman.


110 (2): 3-0 vs. barbs (7-0).

We revolt, drawing a relatively harsh four turns of anarchy.


90 (3): 1-0 vs. barbs (8-0).

We reject a Spanish offer to trade world maps.


70 (4): 4-0 vs. barbs (12-0).

The Chinese and the Vikings make peace.


50 (5): We disperse the Phoenician camp on the peninsula northwest of Moscow, having landed forces there by galley (25 gold; 13-0).

The Vikings are willing to make peace for Construction and 80 gold. No, thanks.


30 (6): We enter republic. The math on Monotheism stinks--at anything faster than 40-turn research, we'd run out of money before getting it--so I'm just going to continue min-researching it, as I did during our anarchy. Those of you with more taste for deficit financing than I've got :lol: can always use the gold saved now to jack up the science rate later, if you choose.


10 (7): We land three units next to the Seljuk camp south of Moscow.

Moscow horseman --> horseman. For the moment there aren't any barbs around, and we can keep Moscow at 15 spt.


10 (8): We destroy two barbs in the Seljuk camp, though it remains garrisoned (15-0).

The Iroquois demand Republic, we refuse, and they declare war in us.

A barb galley attacks one of our galleys and sinks (16-0).


30 (9): We disperse the Seljuk camp (25 gold; 17-0).

2-0 vs. barb attacks (19-0).

The Egyptians complete the Great Library in Thebes, and mass switches occur to the Pyramids and the Great Wall.


50 (10): Not much.

As long as we continue to avoid losing units to barbs, we should be able to send off an expeditionary force of nine horsemen and a spearman in six turns. If we were willing to add an elite archer to the mix, we could ship out in four turns. Striking with fewer than the maximum ten units we can ship would be a bad error.

There are still plenty of barb horsemen in sight, but it's six turns since they've come close to Moscow, so the uprising seems mostly to be over.

I've started a road to the nearest iron, and its first length will be complete in two turns. Getting the next length built--on tundra, rather than in a forest where the barbs don't want to attack us--may be trickier.

No techs new to us appeared amongst the AI civs this round, as Klarius predicted.

I'll repeat that we're min-researching Monotheism at the moment, so all our options remain open on the tech front (even if none of them are very good ;)).

The units southwest of Moscow are disembarking, not embarking.

Relative calm around Moscow:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM5-Offa-50AD.JPG

Alright, as I won't attack anybody, just sending troops someplace, where should they go?

We should've sent a handful of archers someplace long ago, instead of this infernal infrastructure we built :lol:

And that elite archer has to be on board when the boats set sail. Hopefully I can get another elite horse or two before that.

I'll play this in approx. 10hrs from now, so give me your ideas and best wishes :)

NP - --Pogo

Is that Pogo.dot.com?

Gozpel, I thought you were a builder. How about a marketplace?

I would still say Nidaros is a good target.
But if you feel lucky enough that we will keep the harbor in Beijing, that would be even better.
But in any case, I think we should now go for some nearby cities as fast as suitable.
Elites are not that important. Leaders are of no big use in this game.
And gozpel, I think you may already get to the point where you can attack.
If so then do it, even if it is in your last two turns.
There is no point in producing more troops, if we don't use them.

I would still go for max research.
We can get some additional money by barb camps and map trading/brokering.
Soon there will probably also be some money around in the other nations, so that tech trading can give some coins.
So I don't fear to go broke by max research.
If we instead continue min research, we should have a market ASAP.

Gozpel, I thought you were a builder. How about a marketplace?

I'll :hammer: you Offa :lol:

klarius: There is no point in producing more troops

Yes, you're right. We should sit back now and wait for flips :D

I snipped it intentionally, mate. You're right, the sooner we get into gear the better. If we have enough I'll go with 6 horses now and the rest can come later.

Did we wait too long? That peanut-graph is very nice.

I prefer min research. There are always ways to get the techs from them when needed. I don't think we will really outresearch the AI in the comming 40 turns. Maybe after we have an "empire" we could start researching again.
This last deity gotm has teached me that getting tech actually is my last and easiest concern in civ. I had not researched for ages and got everything by "different methods" until near the end of the game i noticed i could actually research in 4-8 turns (depending on which tech i'd go for). I am very happy i did not research myself as i was able to do much better things with my gold.

@WOA
The tech pace of the AI is quite a bit different in regent versus deity.
I had to learn for GOTM (didn't play regent otherwise) that you have to research yourself, if you want any decent tech pace in MA.
I don't like the idea that we might still fight with horses for another 50 turns.

Is that Pogo.dot.com?

No, the original Pogo--Walt Kelly's cartoon opossum. :D

I favour Beijing as our first target, as I've said, except that Klarius's screenshots show it to have a much stronger garrison than Nidaros. So the question becomes, does that tell us anything about what the situation is likely to be twenty-plus turns later, when we attack? I don't really know.

I don't like the idea that we might still fight with horses for another 50 turns.

I don't think anyone likes that idea :) But researching with one town only isn't good enough and that will change as soon we get a few more cities.

The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0250_01.SAV)

Pre-turn - Not much to do. Except that I kill a barb.

I keep the minimum research, we will need the gold for other stuff.

70AD - America cancel the alliance against India.

Defend against another barb.

4 boats set sail towards Nidaros, containing 6 horses, an archer and a spear. It's a nice 3 turn journey for the boats, that's my best reason for going there. Plus those gems.

90AD - Zulu wants to trade WM for Feudalism, yeah right.

110AD - Kill barb on defense and kill 2 myself.

Land troops by Nidaros.

130AD - Kill 4 barbs on defense and get rid of another myself.

We kill 2 spears in Nidaros and take the city with 3 slaves. Kill a viking sword.

150AD - France ally with Arabs against us.

Oslo is pop 2 and I send a few horse over there.

2 more horses are shipped.

170AD - Vikings didn't poprush and Oslo is still pop 2 :) 2 spears can't defend against our mighty horses and we have another city, plus 2 slaves. Got their iron too.

(It looks like the bug still makes confusing stuff, all civs on the big continent have their workers in the cities? Is that because the mighty gozpel arrived? :lol: I'm not buying any as it would crippling the AI and it wasn't intended.)

190AD - America and India sign peace.

Defend against barb.

Colonize the iron and we can build MI's.

Rush library in Nidaros for 152g.

210AD - The revenge of the conscript horsebarb as he kills a fortified archer on a mountain top. Defend against another barb.

Rush library in Olso for 152g.

2 more horses are shipped.

230AD - Defend against 2 barbs and kill another.

Kill 2 viking archers and a warrior and :

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/offa-leader.jpg

Send 4 horses towards Bjoergvin, it is pop 2.

250AD - India starts Sun Tsu!

Iroquois knows Mono! No way to trade for it.

I see that Aztecs still doesn't know Construction, so I sell it to them for WM and 55g.
Same tech to Spain for WM and 51g.
Sell WM around for 50g.

We kill 2 spears and 2 archers :wow: in Bjoergvin and take the city. That was close.

Stockholm is on the table if we sign peace with Vikings now. Stockholm and Uppsala is "close".

I tried to figure out a way to make some decent peace-deals with other civs, but didn't come up with anything good.

The leader is in Nidaros, we should build an army right away and go for China.

Also, barbs are still running amock on our island, we need to clean up soon.

Ghandi thinks he's a bad boy and wants 260g for peace. We need to teach him a lesson too.

Slaves are chopping by Nidaros, it needs a harbor.

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

Great start! :goodjob:

Later: The Vikings will give us Stockholm for peace, but not Stockholm and one gold, so we may not be that close to getting another city in the peace settlement. Perhaps we should just take Stockholm for peace and get started against the Chinese. Any plan requiring us to take Goteborg, Linkoping, or Jonkoping, as a way of getting Stockholm and Uppsala for peace, would be too slow.

We should get a Moscow-to-Nidaros ship chain set up now.

Excellent work!

We probably should think about finally dispering the barb camps on our island.
Mad-bax has rather forced us to use leaders for armies, as rushing non wonders with leaders seems a bit wasteful.

still no marketplace

still no marketplace

I know we need that. :lol: But I was only interested in units during my turns. Next player might rectify that?

I really would like to give Ghandi a go too, he always piss me off.

Nice builder turns ;) :goodjob:

I recommend to not make an army.
Just disband for the harbor in Nidaros. That will give two lux' in our empire next turn and we can get some production in Nidaros soon.
As long as we have no barracks around to heal it, a PtW army is no help.

I recommend to not make an army.

I disagree completely. When the player is trying to minimize losses and make a few units go a long way, even a PTW fast army--which is almost guaranteed to remove the two best defenders in a strongly held city--is invaluable.

Klariusism is a very weird theory and gozpelism will always over-rule whacky stuff.

Build army and as NP says, an army is better than a silly harbor that we can rush for 300g anyways.

A horse-army now will be great for many reasons. Killing stuff, defending stuff and pillaging stuff.

Come on, klarius! You just want the discussion for the sake of...just that, discussions! :D
And of course we should discuss things thoroughly, but this is plain silly.

This is another no-brainer.

I apologize for the non-building set. Last gamne I was the setup guy all the time, and I wnated some fun :) I hope you forgive me.

I am serious when I recommend no army.
Armies in PtW are only good to cover stacks IMO.
For that they should have defense and movement.
If you attack with them they need for ever to heal and will trail the (hopefully fast) attack wave.
So the earliest an army makes sense to me is with knights.
That's different than Conquests, where armies of any kind are great.
And BTW, I never pillage on low difficulty levels. Not even in Conquests where it is so easy with armies.

Another small thing:
I looked into the save and noted that we could buy several workers now.
I would buy everything I get for republic.
The civs which don't have republic will anyway have no money to buy it, before they get a new government.

I didn't do it because:

from my log...
(It looks like the bug still makes confusing stuff, all civs on the big continent have their workers in the cities? Is that because the mighty gozpel arrived? I'm not buying any as it would crippling the AI and it wasn't intended.)

WOA, no big deal, but we're a bit past 24 hours for your got-it--do you know you're up? :)

Huh, oh no, sorry, was a bit bussy lately and didn't know i'm up yet.

I will play tonight.

Are you guys against buying those workers? Are the workers not there because of barbs or because of war with neighbours?

I see no reason to not buy the workers.
The AI is improving its land now, even so 2 workers are sitting in the capitals.
So they have more workers.
If there are any additional rules because of the bug/patch mad-bax should mention it.

I agree that we should buy the workers, assuming it seems like a good idea in practical terms. I admire your high principles, Gozpel :worship:;), but our obligation is to obey the stated rules and restrictions, not to devise new ones for ourselves. MB has had sufficient time to ask/order that players not buy AI workers, so presumably he doesn't see a problem with it.

I always buy workers, but I suppose a counter argument is that we want the AI to build roads and grow their towns a bit.

Buy them.

Congratulations everyone for the last game. I am sure you are all wearing your laurels with pride. :)

Stuff my principles :lol: I was only confused for a moment there, when I saw 2 workers in all cities.

You know I'm a scatterbrain sometimes and of course we want those workers. I'm sure the other teams won't have any problems buying them.

Sorry i am delayed, will be tomorrow :blush:

First i rush a worker to prevent having to choose between starvation and rioting in Nidaros.

The primary goal is now to get our new empire running. For that, we don't need Libraries and we don't need harbors. We need that FP.
Nidaros loses about 1 third of its production to corruption now. Meaning we would need about 300 shields before corruption to get the 200 needed after. A courthouse would make it about one fifth, needing 250 shields before corruption.
Since a courthouse costs 80, it is not beneficial to build it. We could however rush it with the leader.

With the cow for food, 3 shields to start with and 1 extra per citizen (before corruption) it will take 46 turns to amass the 300 shields or 41 turns for 250 shields.
5 turns earlier FP means 5 turns earlier our whole empire productive, possibly 10 cities or so. This i think is worth the leader. It should shave a few turns from our victory date, i don't think an army is capable of doing that.

I sell republic for the folowing workers:
2 Japanese + 11 gold.
1 celtic + 50 gold.
2 Aztec
2 Mongol - 33 gold
Load workers for transport.


IBT: Pyramids completed in Madrid.

Turn1:
Rush courthouse with leader in Nidaros.

Turn2:
Nidaros Prebuild palace for FP.
Destroy barb camp.

Turn3:
not much.

Turn4:
lose one horse when taking Stockholm.

Turn5:
not much.

Turn6:
2 arabian warriors landed on our island. 1 is destroyed, 1 damaged.
Lose 1 horse taking Goteborg.
Sign peace with Scandinavia for its 2 remaining cities and Monotheism. Only scandinavian capital remains.
Start research on Chivalry for 9 turns.
2 english workers for Monotheism.
2 zulu workers for Monotheism
1 Celt worker for Feudalism
Monarchy and 25 gold from England for Monotheism.

Build an Embasy in Japan (60-40-0 sliders, 2 spear+1 horse in capital)
Monarchy and Feudalism for Japan to let them fight the Iroquois.

Thats it for now, i only investigated neighbours of our enemies if they lack science. Not gonna spend money building other embasies. America wants to much for an alliance against india.
England could be bought into war for 60 gold, but the distance is too big for them to do any actual damage.

Turn7:
Not much.

Turn8:
Lose a horse attacking the remaining arab warrior (4 hp 2 attack 50% retreat vs 2 hp 1 def, nice work rng)

Turn9:
not much.

Turn10:
ready to declare on china for next player.

Sign peace with Scandinavia for its 2 remaining cities and Monotheism. Only scandinavian capital remains.

Good work! :goodjob:

Nice turns WOA :)

I can't wait for those knights!

We could let Nidaros reach size three, and then merge into it one worker each from England, Mongolia, Japan, the Aztec lands, and the Celtic domains. The town would then have 8-9 spt after corruption, it appears, and would be able to complete the Forbidden Palace in fewer than twenty turns after the merges.

This is clearly the right idea if a city's flip chances are worked out separately relative to each rival civ, and clearly wrong if all the foreigners in town are added together for purposes of the calculation. I suspect it's the former, but that's not much more than an educated guess. Does anyone know?

Regardless of the above, we need to get at least two units into Nidaros and keep them there, however painful it might be. A flip is theoretically possible and would doom us in the contest with the other teams.

Although i do not have information to back it up, i am pretty sure about it being caluclated per civ seperatly. The one problem however is happiness when you get in war with an enemy and have one of its people in nidaros.

Also are the workers pretty important to work our lands there. By the time we have the FP complete, it would be nice to have some tiles worked for the other cities.

Even with those things however, it is certainly still very strong to join some workers in it and build our own multi cultural society :) (will we alow them to form getho's or do they have to integrate? :D)

Please keep buying more workers for techs whenever possible. workers for gold is not a good option imo. If i would have done that for example, we would not be able to do chivalry on a deficit and thus need twice the time for it.

When joining foreign workers, i recommend to do so 1 by 1, closely watching the cities happiness and use some safety margin. Stop joining them not when happiness is in balance, but a little before that.

Look's like we are really start rolling :goodjob:

For Nidaros I would recommend to grow it first naturally.
If changing to the oysters it can grow to size 3 in 2 turns. Then working the fish in addition it gets 7 fpt surplus and can grow every 3 turns.
While growing the slaves should mine the hills and connect the cities.
Only above size 6 we should think about merging workers.
We could use slaves, the flip chance will not increase.
But we may have happiness problems if we are at war with several civs at some time.
We could also peal off a worker in the capital. But for that we should optimise food and shields there and do it in 7 turns only.

I would still make a harbor first.
Connection to the capital also reduces corruption.
So I would save money for 1 or 2 turns and cash rush it.
I think the few shields we have stored in Nidaros now don't make much difference in the end for the FP.
But a harbor could also be made in another city.

I recommend a library instead of barracks first in Bjoegvin.
Culture expansion there will close several gaps and already link to Canton (which I would take right away).

Another small point.
We should send out one galley to lift some FoW every turn.
With this many civs this will net quite a bit gold in map trading every turn.

I've got it. I will try to play tonight.

For Nidaros I would recommend to grow it first naturally.
If changing to the oysters it can grow to size 3 in 2 turns. Then working the fish in addition it gets 7 fpt surplus and can grow every 3 turns.
While growing the slaves should mine the hills and connect the cities.
Only above size 6 we should think about merging workers.

In a normal game I'd agree with this. But the absolutely central issue in this game is getting the FP built, and making the transition from a de facto 1CC to a real empire. Your way of getting Nidaros to size seven would involve fourteen turns with the emphasis not on shield production, and it seems highly likely that the team competition will be decided by less than fourteen turns. Remember, we won't be the only team following the right strategy from the start this time, since this variant locks everyone into the same victory type. So we have to fight for every turn, as WOA has pointed out too.

For the same reason, I'm not bothered by the prospect of occasional unhappy citizens in Nidaros later on. Letting the possibility of (probably minor) problems in the future keep us from seizing opportunities in the present isn't how we've played so far. Didn't the aggressive decision always turn out to be the right one in SGOTM4?

I think 14 turns to size 7 isn't that much.
After that we can pump up Nidaros to a bigger size and it can produce a lot then.
But we also need the slaves to improve the tiles (especially the hills take a lot slave turns) and make roads.
Merging slaves now will not get us as much production as you say.
Another point is that we should look to have a native majority in Nidaros. AFAIK only by that we get the chance that citizens will convert to our nationality.
We only really profit from the FP when there are cities with improved tiles around.

We should go for China now, which I think can be handled with the production of our capital alone.
There is also a lot of work to do in China to get these cities really productive.

China has no iron hooked and we will not let them do so.
Their horses will also belong to us soon.
So our horses should be able to do it.

I think we should join a few workers with care. We should however not join more workers than:
-Happiness alows (with safety margin)
-There are 2 food tiles available that also produce shields.

I am against a harbor in Nidaros, it will cost gold and certainly slow down the FP.
It can be build in another city for the resource exchange and connection to capital.

I suggest not spending money rushing libraries. We want knights asap and start to own the world.

Units will provide us a bigger empire, while libraries will only provide us a little more tech while we are soon to have civalry anyway (and possibly will never even need an other tech at all)

350ad

I want a marketplace in the capital and I am going to build it myself.

disperse barb camp with elite archer in north east of our island.

declare v China.
attack Canton: vet horse wins v reg spear.
vet horse wins v reg horse and captures town, promoting himself.
making the 2 chinese in canton into scientists will give chivalry in 4 turns instead of 5.

ibt realize why WOA hadn't attacked that barb hut in our NE, it was hiding loads of AI who kill our archer.

360ad move 4 horsemen towards Xinjian. Move towards more barb huts in home island. I hope losses won't be too bad as I am currently building no military.

370ad kill a chinese archer who approaches Canton with an elite horse, no leader though.
The attack on Xinjian fails, largely because the first vet horse attacked a reg spear, died and promoted the spear to a 4/4 vet. Grrr. 2 of the others redline themselves but don't kill anything and finally one of the defenders is killed by an elite horse. Check retrospectively: it was an 82% chance to take the town, would have been 92% with another horseman.

disperse the hut in the south of our island near the capital.

380ad retreat from Xinjian. kill a hut in our north west.

390ad Chivalry finished. start engineering on min. surplus of 38gpt.
kill a hut in our north.
kill one spear in Chendu with an elite archer. A horse retreats having inflicted no damage.

410ad recover troops for another crack at Xinjian

ibt Canton Flips to China: nuts. It was a 0.9% risk (no garrison).

420 take Xinjian with first attacker, it still just had the one vet spear.
Moscow finishes marketplace and starts on knight: 4 turns at -2fpt.
kill another hut with a reg warrior.
Canton is a problem though: it is down to size 1 so will auto raze if I take it.

430ad join one jap worker to Nicardos.
an elite archer attacks and takes Chengdu
kill off 2 more camps.

440 Beijing grows to size 7. I lose a horse attacking a spear which has left Beijing.

450 retreat damaged units out of chinese territory.

I have left a few units able to move.
I am afraid that in these 10 turns I haven't made a single military unit as the capital made a marketplace, Nicardos is making a FP and all the rest are building barracks.

Nicardos is 22 turns from FP, but will grow to size 6 next turn. Lots of merged workers then should speed up production a lot,and then we will be in business.

The war with china has been slow work, as I have been afraid to lose many units. The flip in Canton was annoying, especially as it has horses.

China will give Canton or Tsingtao(has a harbor) and a worker/WM/18g for peace.
We have 575g and make +67gpt on zero science.
Score 162.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/new-1.jpg



450ad (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0450_01.SAV)

Well, doesn't look as smooth as expected.
I will have to rush a harbor and barracks somewhere in scandinavia and upgrade horses.
No use impaling horses on size 7 Beijing.
But Beijing has to fall IMO before making peace (if at all).
Then have to look how to set up for cutting and reconnecting iron. Maybe a few short-rushes first in moscow.
But 3-turn short-rushes will cost more than 2-turn horses and upgrade.

Got it. Will play tonight.

No, not as smooth as wished, but I think I 'only' lost one archer (to a barb horde) and 2 horsemen. Our economy is buoyant and will be very good when we finally get the FP. We have a fair bit of $$$ available for either rushes or upgrades.

Canton flipping was very irritating :gripe:, as it had horses and so would have simplied upgrading horsemen to knights, and would have allowed a much better peace treaty with China. A garrison of 5 would have stopped the flip, but would have been a fairly big chunk of our military. We should have knights onstream soon though and then we can start to roll. The FP shouldn't take too long either.

I agree that we ought to take Beijing before making peace (it was very inconsiderate of it to grow to size 7 when it did), but we will want knights for that. It is a pity that the chinese town nearest Nicardos is staying resolutely at size one, or we could take it with horsemen. The eastern chinese town is on a hill so is a very unappetizing prospect.

Overall our progress does seem a bit slow at regent, but it is not immediately clear where/if we have gone wrong.

The save (http://http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0550_01.SAV)

Scandinavia is out and we have two chinese cities.
FP will complete in 3.
Nothing big happened on the diplomatic front.
But we are now strong enough that we can make peace with our enemies, if we want.

Turn log:
Preflight
Dial up Mongols get WM+41g for monarchy.
Trade around WM.
Retreat horses for upgrade soon.
Upgrade warrior in moscow.

Turn 1 460AD
Upgrade 2 horses in moscow.
Pillage road to iron colony and order horse in moscow.
Change Stockholm to harbor and rush it.
Rush barracks in Bjoergvin.

Turn 2 470 AD
Upgrade 2 horses in Bjoergvin

Turn 3 480 AD
Another horse->knight
Japan has engineering. No deal I would like possible.

Turn 4 490AD
Kill two chinese archers. Another upgrade.

Turn 5 500AD
Another upgrade. Short rush to 40sh in moscow.

Turn 6 510AD
Attack on China. Beijing captured. Three spears, no losses.
Canton captured two spears, no losses.
Kill two loose archers. Lose the conscript mace.
Mao still doesn't want to give both his cities.
England gives 17 gold for RoP
We could make peace with France for RoP and she would even throw in a few coins.
I think we have war happiness from her, so no deal.
We can trade with egypt, she has a harbor now. But her few coins she offers for gems are not worth it.
Scandinavia now also has engineering. So egypt will have it next turn.

Turn 7 520AD
A chinese killer mace retreats kills a knight on defense and retreats a knight and a horse.
Pillage iron in scandinavia so I can build horse in moscow.

Turn 8 530AD
Shuffle troops and slaves

IBT
An Indian galley appears near moscow.

Turn 9 540AD
Declare on Vikings. Move troops towards Upsala.

IBT
India lands an archer.

Turn 10 550AD
Kill Indian archer. Galley sinks attacking Indian galley.
Capture Uppsala. Vikings are out.

There are some knights near Beijing. They should be healed next turn for the next attack on China.
FP completes in 3 turns.
There is still not much money around.
The only thing we could get for chivalry would be engineering and some change.

Everything is going quite slow. We will still need quite some time till our cities are really productive.

Yes, obviously you couldn't have garrisoned Canton enough to rule out a flip, and that was just an act of God. I'm still concerned about Nidaros, though. Does the calculator you're using show no possibility of a flip there, or are we just taking the risk? Due to the distance-from-capital factor, if there's any chance of a flip back to the Vikings there's double the chance, so to speak.

Edit: Oops, perfect cross-post with Klarius. :D The above is addressed to Offa, of course.

@Northern Pike
Yes we did take the risk in Nidaros. But the chance was very low.
The Vikings are out now, but there is still a tiny flip risk to the Japanese when the city is empty.
One garrison unit should fix this.

According to dianthus' utility the flip risk in Nicardos was around 0.03% at the end of my turns and is 0.01% now. Not zero of course, but it would be seriously unlucky to flip. We probably should have 2 garrison in it to be safe.

I see that team Smackster's curve is worryingly good, and so they are presumably well ahead of us in their conquest. It has been a bit of a slow start but surely now we are ready to roll. Can we catch up? Hopefully our position has something which compensates us.

Even without the FP, the corruption isn't as bad as I thought it would be in our captured towns. Maybe widely spaced towns isn't all that bad.

I see that team Smackster's curve is worryingly good, and so they are presumably well ahead of us in their conquest.

Perhaps they triggered their GA by building the Great Library in addition to one of the Expansionist Wonders we built? It's a little :blush: that we didn't even discuss this prospect. Assuming that the game's going to end before Military Tradition or Theory of Gravity, the only way we could get our GA now would be by taking the Library (in Thebes) and then hand-building any other Wonder, if I've got the mechanics of captured Wonders right.

Klarius and Offa, thanks for the discussion of flip chances.

Got it, of course.

We should really think now how we proceed in the long run.
I think we will have secured China soon.
Then we have a potentially productive region, but we will still need a lot tile improvements.
Two or three cities in Zululand could also be semi-productive, but that's about all what we can get in our current setup.
There would still be the possibility of a palace jump to the northern continent, but that would be quite difficult to set up.

If I would play alone, I would probably slow down military production after china is conquered prepare the land and turn up research towards MT.

The distances on this map are very large and the AI is still quite lazy building roads. This will still take a long time to conquer.

I don't think that the score of other teams has anything to do with a GA.
The score this early in the game is mainly from territory.
I don't think an early GA helps with that, but obviously some teams started the conquest earlier than we did.

A GA by wonders doesn't look very attractive to me.
Sure we could capture TGL, but what wonder should we build. With all the builds for Sun Tsu around, Leonardo's and Sistene will probably be built before we can accumulate a nice prebuild (if the cascade doesn't break right away).
The upper research branch is uninteresting for us on this map. Planning when the AI will barf up a wonder tech there is difficult.
So my conclusion is:
GA by cossacks or no GA at all.

The score this early in the game is mainly from territory.
I don't think an early GA helps with that, but obviously some teams started the conquest earlier than we did.

Perhaps because they were getting the enhanced production of a Golden Age--that's my point. They may not have had to wait as long as we did to put together a decent strike force.

It seems to me that if we're still playing when Military Tradition becomes available, we're ____ed in the competition with the other teams anyway. I agree that trying to arrange a Wonder GA now would be awkward.

650 AD, end of turn (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0650_01.SAV)

550 (0): I cash-rush a worker in Beijing, to get some benefit from the starve-down there.

Bjoergvin library --> horseman.

Moscow horseman --> worker, since the food box is full.

Shanghai grows to size two, finally.


560 (1): We make peace with the Indians and the French, in both cases on even terms.

Our exploring galley discovers an uninhabited island in the south.

Nanking's best defender is a regular spearman, even though it's hooked up to an iron mountain and the Chinese have Feudalism. Regent really is different. :D

We disperse an Iberian camp on our home island for 25 gold (1-0).

Moscow worker --> horseman.


570 (2): We destroy a regular spearman in Shanghai, but it isn't the whole garrison (2-0).

We take Nanking from its garrison of two regular spearmen without loss, getting two promotions to elite and capturing a worker (4-0).

We disperse a Jute camp on the home front (25 gold; 5-0).

We cut down an Iberian barb, our knight promoting to elite (6-0).

An archer attacks out of Shanghai and retreats our knight.

Nidaros FORBIDDEN PALACE --> barracks. We go from 73 gpt to 110 gpt.


580 (3): We cut down the Chinese archer outside Shanghai (7-0).

We take Tsingtao from its garrison of two spearmen without loss, getting a promotion to elite (9-0).

Moscow horseman --> horseman.


590 (4): We take Shanghai (garrison of one spearman; 10-0), China's last city...and don't eliminate the Chinese. Evidently they're a nomad civ. Too bad; I'll have to starve down Nanking and Tsingtao now.

Two horseman --> knight upgrades in Moscow.

Tsingtao worker (rushed) --> barracks.


600 (5): Nidaros barracks --> horseman.

Moscow horseman --> horseman.

Oslo barracks --> spearman (placeholder).


610 (6): Stockholm barracks --> horseman.


620 (7): We disperse the Burgundian camp to the north of our horse colony (25 gold; 11-0).

Moscow and Nidaros horseman --> horseman.

Nanking worker (rushed) --> worker.


630 (8): We declare war on the Zulus and take Intombe and Ngome, each held by two Impis, without loss (15-0). Our second attack on Ngome generates the Great Leader Peter the Great (now there's pleonasm), who immediately forms an army.

We capture two unescorted Zulu workers.

The Chinese have founded Hangchow--right between Karakorum and London, so it certainly wasn't in unclaimed territory. I form an anti-Chinese alliance with the English (no payment necessary), in the hope that they'll finish off the Chinese before we fight our way through Zululand and Mongolia to Hangchow.

Two horseman --> knight upgrades.

Bjoergvin horseman --> horseman.


640 (9): The Arabs have founded Fez in the north of our continent.

The attack of a Zulu MDI retreats one of our knights.

Moscow and Nidaros horseman --> horseman.

Canton barracks --> horseman.

Nanking library (rushed) --> barracks.

Intombe worker (rushed) --> worker.


650 (10): Three horseman --> knight upgrades.

We take Bapedi from its garrison of two Impis without loss (17-0), capturing a worker.

A single Impi landed near Beijing defeats the knight attacking it in four straight rounds. The next knight destroys it (18-1).

We pick off a Zulu MDI (19-1).

Our knight army moves next to Zimbabwe. The rest of our forces in Zululand are slightly scattered, though, so I'm not suggesting that we have to attack Zimbabwe next turn.

Four elite victories produced one Great Leader this round.

Eventually we'll need to make a peace settlement with the Zulus which gives us both Tugela (the one-tile island) and Umtata in the west.

For the moment we're on a good build-and-upgrade cycle for knights, with Moscow and Nidaros producing horsemen every two turns, while workers rebuild the road to our home source of iron in the same span of time. The impending completion of a road on Oslo's iron hill will mess all this up, though. Perhaps we should start pillaging and rebuilding the road on the gems tile just east of Oslo's iron hill--but then we'd have to keep a close eye on happiness.

In any case, Oslo should switch to building something better than a spearman as soon as the hill road is completed.

Chengdu, Xinjian, and most importantly Shanghai aren't getting any population growth presently. We should micromanage to correct this as soon as each town is hooked up to our road network.

I've set Canton up to get +7 food, so it should grow rapidly.

I've been moving our exploring galley through the blackness for ten turns, so our WM probably has some value, but I haven't tried to sell it because I'm not sure it's in our interests to let our rivals know about the southern island. The fewer cities we have to take there, the better.

The knight next to Oslo is there to provide some kind of central reserve for all our lightly garrisoned cities in the area.

Six other civs now have Chivalry.

To be thinking about cutting back on military production and developing our cities at this point is far too pessimistic. We should push on at full speed for as long as we're attacking spearmen with knights. And when pikemen do show up, our knight army will deal with them. :hammer:

Pushing on:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM5-650AD.JPG

Sorry to inform you guys, i have to go travel for work again.
I do not know exactly when i will be back, i expect somewhere around 22 december.

I like the picture, you must be one of the worst and most quiet war-mongers I ever seen :lol:

Not meaning your forum-talk, but your intentions. Geez, you get the game and do all that!? You did the same kind of stuff in your last turns in the last game.

I'm impressed and very happy to see that you followed gozpelism. klarius doesn't trust knights and you proved him wrong. I ALWAYS want knights, in many games, some even Offa remember. So I'm very happy.

Well done! :thumbsup:

The fixing of MM'ing I do on my own (though I saved your notes for reference) I'm pretty good at MM'ing, but sometimes bungle up wishes and ideas. So not to being totally stupid in my rule as gozpelismo, I listen :)

WOA can't play, that means I'm up. You know what? That makes me happy :)

I will look at the save tomorrow and until then you can post some opinions.

For poor klarius: Just trust these guys (and me), we know what we're talking about. You get your shot one day, when the winning condition will be quite different and your skills comes in to play. Then I will shut up and do what is asked ;)

I don't know how many times I said it before, but what do you think of giving someone on the northern island a "black eye"? Everyone seem to ignore that.

Anyone with a positive answer to my ramblings, would make me happy as well. There's always a day tomorrow :)

The impending completion of a road on Oslo's iron hill will mess all this up, though. Perhaps we should start pillaging and rebuilding the road on the gems tile just east of Oslo's iron hill--but then we'd have to keep a close eye on happiness.

When I started the road again I hoped that we would be able to trade away one iron at some time.
I think we could trade it to India now. They have iron in their land but not hooked. Probably they have no money, but we may get an alliance with it.
If not trading we should rush a harbor in one of the dessert towns and pillage the road again.


I've been moving our exploring galley through the blackness for ten turns, so our WM probably has some value, but I haven't tried to sell it because I'm not sure it's in our interests to let our rivals know about the southern island. The fewer cities we have to take there, the better.

I generally trade maps every turn.
I want to buy one WM anyways, because it gives the locations of barb camps.
The southern island seems to be not reachable for the AI until astronomy.
At that time they will find it soon anyways and they will have spare settlers around.
A few unconnected fishing villages there will be no major problem, so that's no reason to not trade maps.


And when pikemen do show up, our knight army will deal with them. :hammer:
I still don't think armies help a lot in PtW. You may kill two Pikes with the army. But you will lose so many hitpoints that the army is out of business for a long time.
I prefer to use a knight stack and have the army mop up only in the end. That way one can use the army for several cities w/o the need for long healing sessions in between.

But really, when I look on the large culture borders in Iroquois and Arab land, I want cossacks.
There are a lot more towns to capture compared to the last SGOTM.
I think the investment in researching MT would pay of this time.

K before i go, i will go do some investigations on the knight cavalry subject.

The progres looks ok, but i notice something i am less happy with.
We have Goteburg and Linkoping completely in Jungle. Those cities should have produced only workers until enough jungle was cleared for them to get food and grow.
If that had been done, they would now have produced workers, the jungle would have been cut and the cities ready to grow. Now, they barely have any potential. Too bad the barracks and harbor are so far done there. If it were my responsibility i would still be in doubt to change to workers at this point though. A lot of potential is lost here. Some other cities around there should maybe also have build a worker, all that jungle and forest there really should have been cut.

I strongly doubt this game can be won with only knights.

If the AI will not get gunpowder, i think it will take close to 100 turns to conquer the world. If the AI does not get gunpowder within ~80 turns, we could bite trough those last 20 turns with knights. Certainly if we pick the order of destruction with some care and keep the most backwards civ for last.

Will the AI get gunpowder faster than 80 turns?
They probably just started invention. One more needed. They all know eachother and trade, so i think we can expect one to research gunpowder immeadiately after invention is completed. Still, researchin 2 techs for small AI civs on a large map at this difficulty might take 80 turns.
Your call. If you think it will take the AI 80 turns to get gunpowder, i'd say gogo knights all the way.

For us, researching MT will take 35-40 turns, not counting engineering.
Maybe a little less if we can get the AI's to pay us gpt.

I would certainly not go research engineering.
Then, we could also halt research until we can trade/steal/buy invention. After invention, we can probably get to MT faster than the AI gets Gunpowder. Certainly faster than MOST AI get gunpowder AND build musketmen.

The golden age however is in favor of getting MT a little faster.
If we are gonna research, we can expect a production of about 1 knight per turn. This would mean very slow progress in war.

If i state conquering the world would now cost 100 turns,
While our research towards MT will cost 35 turns of rush build gold, i think during those 35 turns, we can do the conquering worth of 15 turns during that time. So we lose 20 turns on the research.
After the research however, we will have a golden age and a unit so superior to pikemen that the conquest of the remaining world will be enhanced enought to win back those 20 turns or most of it. Even if in the end it turns out we could have done it with knights, the loss in time will be minimal, while if we go knights and it turns out we cannot do it with knights, the loss will be huge.

The former sgotm it was obvious because the world was halve as big and our research twice as slow. In this situation, i have to go with klariusism.

PS: there is no way in between, either go to MT full steam or put all cash in rush builds. Sharing between those 2 will cause a strugle in both conquest and research.

WOA, if you have time today, you could maybe swap with gozpel.
Otherwise you might not get another turnset in this game ;) .

If I say reduce unit production, I don't mean to stop the knights offensive. We have quite a few knights currently. That should do for Zulu and maybe also Mongols.
I just thought not to use all money on upgrades, but start research. Still produce horses and upgrade as money allows.
BTW in none of the regent GOTMs I played did the AI research MT.
They never got further than Gunpowder on the lower branch before I :hammer: them with cavs.

cross posted with my PS.
Read my PS.

If we research, we should completely stop the rush building right now (so we can research on deficit) and continu our offensive only with the knights we have and the knights we produce (you can also produce them with 70 shields instead of with cash, incase we are forgetting that :p)

about your regent games, can you answer my question, does the AI research gunpowder within 80 turns?

No, i do not expect them to get to MT indeed. Gunpowder is what it is about however. You really dont want to fight knights against muskets in size 7+ cities that are possibly also on hills. (Offa wanna calculate the number of knights needed to conquer a size 7-12 city with 3 fortified muskets?)

I would have time to play today, but i am gonna do some paperworks, housecleaning etc, so i will leave it to you guys. Hopefully there is just some turns left for me when i get back :D

leo's costs 600 shields, with 15 spt taking 40 turns, just to be ready when we have MT. halving the cost of upgrading horses to cosack from 100 to 50 gold. Might be usefull if during the last 15 turns of our research, we produce horses instead of knights again and mass upgrade them as soon as we have leo's and MT. The cost of building leo's is 7,5 cosack. If it allows us to upgrade 11 more than we could without it, it has payed itself back. (11 not 7,5 because we still need to build horses for 30 shields)

My experience with regent games is that the AI needs 20-40 turns for MA techs. If they are involved in wars its more like 40.
When they have engineering and feudalism they do go towards invention and gunpowder very likely. So invention may indeed come up.

But waiting for gunpowder is too long.

It's very unlikely that the AI will even start on chemistry. The upper branch techs are much more attractive to them.
That keeps them busy normally until they are dead. :D

But waiting for gunpowder is too long.

What do you mean with that ? you mean waiting to start research until they have gunpowder? yes that is too long.

In fact, i think my post is not entirely clear. When i started writing, i was of the preassumption that it would be best to go knights. So what i wrote in the beginning was also with the assumption that would turn out to be best (one always defends its own idea's) the more i reasoned, calculated and estimated however, i came to the conclusion that going MT would be better.

Therefore, in the end i recommended going for MT at max research after we have engineering.

And now added to it that we could build leo's so that we can upgrade more horses to cossacks. I have not really thought about that deeply yet, so leo's is not yet a recommendation, it's merely an idea.

Whatever other tech the AI will get is absolutely not interesting, gunpowder is the one and only interesting tech.

As i said, if they do not get gunpowder and we go for MT, we will have a small loss. If they DO get gunpowder and we do not research, it is kinda game over.
Trying a path in between will surely lead to failure as the conquest will be weak when only investing a bit in it, and research will simply fail if we are spending part of the money on units also causing more unit upkeep.

we must choose, max research after engineering or no research at all.

Delaying the choise until they have invention was an option i first thought about, but i got back on that. If we do that, we will not lose 35 turns on research but 27 or so. However, our golden age then comes too late to be effective, our cossacks come so late they do not provide a benefit but merely are there out of necesity (for muskets). This way we will not get back out lost 27 turns. If we research to MT earlier, we will have a period of Cosack vs pikemen which will cause much less damage to cosacks than to knights, alowing us to get back the time we lost on research.

Offa wanna calculate the number of knights needed to conquer a size 7-12 city with 3 fortified muskets?



Well yes, I am just :sad: enough to calculate that:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/combat.GIF

I assumed regular defenders because that is most likely. As you see the mean losses are 'only' 3 knights, but you do need to attack with a lot of them.

Actually I think this is pretty negative. Lots of the AI won't have saltpeter, or $ or the time to build muskets, and we will face mainly spears and pikes.
The main advantage of cossacks is the 3 movement, and the reduced amount of time spent healing. In general on a regent game it seems overkill to go to MT, but the map is awfully big so I'm not sure.

Just one small comment.
There are currently 134 AI cities on the map.
I think we really have to get to the position where we can take several cities per turn and that means cossacks IMO.
Knights are just to slow as well in approaching cities as in reinforcements.
We are already quite late for a regent map due to the variant and the extreme "good" starting position.

Another small comment (okay makes two).
We are not going for score and not going for domination. Totally corrupt cities don't help our goals.
So there is no need to capture cities beyond Zululand just now. And even later we don't need to keep every city.
We have now a core of potentially very good cities. We should concentrate some time on improving them and only then steamroll over the AI.
Currently we only have two good cities. That's too few IMO to fuel a big knights offensive.

that calculation shows 13-14 units needed for a decent chance. They could be veterans, they could stand on a hill. That could make it like 30 needed for 1 city.
Indeed, maybe the AI never gets there, but IF they do, this proves that means game over for knights.

The cosack vs spear and pike indeed, less healing, more movement, means winning back the time we lose on research.

Are we not going for score?
I'd think we want every tile of territory possible to get the best score possible for this sgotm. Or is it only about finish date this time and does score not matter?

There is no prize for score for this game. It is a race only.

Gozpel, thanks for your comments. :) I like the idea of starting a second front in the north, which would probably save us time in the end. As a first step, perhaps you could try to get two galleys built in Moscow during your round.

If not trading we should rush a harbor in one of the dessert towns and pillage the road again.

Yes, this sounds like the right idea (for Oslo's iron hill), unfortunately. Helping the incompetent regent AI by trading away iron can't be right.

The southern island seems to be not reachable for the AI until astronomy.
At that time they will find it soon anyways and they will have spare settlers around.
A few unconnected fishing villages there will be no major problem, so that's no reason to not trade maps.

No major military problem, but perhaps a time problem. As I've said before, in this game we won't be the only team following the right strategy, so we have to fight for every turn.

I still don't think armies help a lot in PtW. You may kill two Pikes with the army. But you will lose so many hitpoints that the army is out of business for a long time.

But the overall effect of an army which removes the two best defenders in the toughest enemy city, in reducing losses to other units, is tremendously beneficial.

WOA, thanks for the painstaking analysis of knights versus Cossacks, which I admire even though I disagree with your conclusion. ;) I don't have time to reply at a similar level of detail, but:

1. The way to deal with the larger enemy civs and their cultural borders is by RoP-raping them with knights, not by waiting for Cossacks. This will be ridiculously effective against modest regent-level AI garrisons.

2. The assumption that we'll face meaningful numbers of musketmen as soon as our rivals get Gunpowder is too pessimistic, at regent. Feudalism has been around for some time and we haven't seen a pikeman yet. And as Offa has pointed out, whatever musketmen we face will probably be regulars. By the simple HP X DF rule of thumb, that's no worse than attacking veteran pikemen.

(In fact, we all believe as players that getting one musketman for the price of two pikemen is the worst upgrade in the game. At regent this trade-off is no better for the AI than for us, so why worry about it? I disagree completely with "If they DO get gunpowder and we do not research, it is kinda game over" {WOA}.)

3. The longer we wait, the more enemy cities will reach size seven, exactly cancelling out the 50% increase in AF from the knight --> Cossack upgrade.

4. The fact that Cossacks will move to the front more quickly than knights isn't really relevant. We can re-position our ship chains when necessary--but fundamentally, the controlling variable will be production rather than movement anyway.

5. Would a decision not to research now really be irreversible later? If fifty turns from now we decide we need Cossacks after all, we'll have a real core around Nidaros, and will be able to reseach Chem-Metallurgy-MT far more quickly than we could with an earlier start.

6. Let's not underestimate the disparity between our own resourcefulness and the AI's limitations. If large numbers of musketmen show up sooner than we expect, we'll disconnect saltpetre here, RoP-rape there, accept heavy casualties in one necessary case (as versus Greece in the last game)--we'll deal with it. But no ingenuity later will bring back turns we give away now.

7. Remember, the AI is buggy in this game. We may be facing sub-regent opponents, in effect.

8. On the level of meta-analysis, there's no reason to think that waiting for Cossacks will put us ahead of other teams which make the same cautious choice. But closing the deal with knights could put us ahead of the pack.

So the systematic Europeans want Cossacks, and the hot-headed colonials want knights. It looks as though the deciding vote falls to the phlegmatic Englishman. :D

WOA, good luck on your travels. We'll try to leave the 134th. enemy city for you. :lol:

First The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0750_01.SAV)

Pre-turn - Not much to do with our cities, but I'll bite and rush barracks in in Goteborg and Linkoping, so they can build workers next. We need to improve the cities around Nidaros.

Find another 7 gpt, so that pays for my cheap rushes.

Diplo reveals nothing of interest.

660AD - We take Zimbabwe without losses, although the army went to 5/13 after taking out 2 of the 3 impis.

The iron near Nidaros is connected and we have to wait until the 2 luxes in old Zulu-lands are connected until we can start the connect/disconnect thingie. Our workers are roading and will be finished in 3 turns.

I take a long look at the map and the diplo situation. Iroquois are getting too strong and I want them trimmed. We have Chivalry and the civs that miss the tech will probably have it soon enough, so why not give it to them for some muscles against Hiawatha?

I build embassies with Aztecs and Celts, ally the two plus France against Iro's and get my gold back for Chivalry. Monty even paid 3gpt and Celts didn't want anything for starting the war. That should give Iroquois some headache, the 3 civs are quite small, but they will hopefully do some damage. In worst case, they get beaten up themselves and I don't see that as a disadvantage either.

The new source of iron messed up builds, so I let it stay on knights for now.

I buy Engineering from Abe for gems, WM and 226g. Start on Invention at 70%, due in 7 turns.
Peace with Arabia for WM and 8g. Sell WM around for 60g or so.

I'll do what I do best, by ignoring all masterplans and play this as it was my own game. Sorry about that, team. I'm going to research fast and continue attacking at the same time, it always worked for me on lower levels and I'm sure it will work here. So hold onto your hats.

670AD - India completes Sun Tzu in Delhi!

We attack Ulundi and get a leader, build another army. Take the city without losses and I decide we sign peace for 3 cities, including the one-tile island.

To keep the Zulus busy, I establish embassy and send them against China, they have a few archers and a couple of MI's, plus their impis. I also signed ROP, so we can get to Mongols without problems, they will be next.

Invention down to 5 turns with the new cities.

680AD - Iroquois starts Sistine.

Sell WM around for 80g or so, plus 1gpt from Aztecs.

With max possible research towards MT, I just let cities build knights. We don't need too many more units to support if we want our UU quick enough. Meanwhile our troops will take out Mongols and perhaps start something against England.

690AD - That was some well-timed roads :) We completed roads to Linkoping as well, so we have 2 dyes to put together with the new spices and wools. Luxtax zero, but I have to switch to market in Nidaros, as the city will grow to 10 next turn and become unhappy. *pokes Offa in the ribs, so he understands the importance of building marketplaces* :lol:

Look around and see that Cleopatra wants our extra wool, she gets it for 8gpt. Erh, should've looked how much gpt she got, she get spices for another 9gpt. Silly me.

We could get Theology from France for iron, no, let them suffer for now.

Fiddle around and try to get Invention in 2t, hopefully we can squeeze out more gold of the WM next turn.

700AD - I manage to scrape up 35g, which is needed for the next turn and to get Invention.

710AD - We learn Invention -> Gunpowder at 80%, due in 6t.

Take out a barbcamp for 25g, have another in sight for next turn.

Squeeze out what I can from WM and research at 90%, GP in 5t. 41g and -16gpt.

Send some troops towards Mongols.

720AD - Lizzy wants to renew ROP, sorry no. We have other plans for you very soon.

A silly barb steps in front of his hut and denies our knight to get 25g. Ah well, sell WM around again to keep our techpace.

730AD - Take out the barbcamp.

Declare on Mongols and move in troops.

Science down to 80% and we are back in positive gpt.

740AD - We attack Karakorum:

Lousy army goes 2/12, killing a vet pike.
One MI and 3 spears are dealt with and we take the city and 3 slaves. No losses.

750AD - Got another barbhut.

Only one spear in Almarikh and the town is ours.

Argh! Our galley found more one-tile islands in the SE corner of the map. Hopefully there's no way for the AI to get there soon.

7 knights are ready to take on either Ta-Tu or Hangchow next turn. Then it's Englands turn and they won't be a problem with a couple of armies and some knights.

Gunpowder due next turn.

I never disconnected the iron, if next player find that important and can figure out fastest research at the same time, please do that. Otherwise we are adding a few knights now and again, and with some trades for gold/gpt, we can always rush a few knights as well. The upgrade cost would kill our research, that's why I chosed this way.

There are a few library builds, but they won't be necessary, just swap to military in those towns. More knights, faster conquest.

:hammer: Here, 2 free shots at me if I screwed up any plans :)

We will have cossacks within 2 turnsets, I think.

Btw, I didn't sell WM last turn.

Good work getting the more distant civs into wars with each other. :goodjob: We needed to do that. Would it be worth paying for an embassy with the Arabs to get them fighting the Iroquois?

Some points of detail:

1. Chengdu, Goteborg, and Xinjian all need to be micromanaged.

2. Shanghai will never help us much if it's left to grow naturally. We should merge four workers into it--some combination of natives, Vikings, and Chinese.

3. We should march about ten workers backward from Zululand into China and Scandinavia. No one likes to waste worker-turns on movement, but we need our slaves where they can service our uncorrupt cities.

4. Moscow's food box is full, so it should spit out a worker when it completes its current knight.

:goodjob:
looks like you found your european roots.
Even though you ignored every master plan, you pretty much followed what WOA and I intended.
A question. Did the wonder cascade break ?
Was it only Iroquois who could save their build into Sistene?
If so we could think of starting Leo's now to complete in our golden age.

I still think we should trade away iron and build horses (but not upgrade) in the time till we have MT. Moscow is well suited for horses, but not optimal for knights until some forests are planted.

I also would like to have one granary in our FP core and pump some workers. We have still a lot work to do and later they can provide rapid growth.

We should undertake an action to put a unit on every free one-tile island we find.
These things are dangerous. Every time you destroy a civ there is the possibility of a boat settler that may find one of them.
The new ones found are probably only reachable by astronomy (make sure) but we already know 2 which are coastal linked. Especially don't destroy a civ before having secured the one off the zulu coast.
But also the one in the north near America/Egypt is a danger.
Maybe we should also raze some cities and let some juicy land free to attract left over settlers.

BTW, let's put up a roster ;)

-Gozpel - just played
-WackenOpenAir - on travel
-Offa - UP
-Klarius - on deck
-NorthernPike - biting his nails, because of lack of war spirit in europe

I was just wondering whose turn it is, but now I know. I will endeavour to play tonight. I haven't studied this but it looks great. The fast tech speed is particularly good.

I suppose issues to consider are: Leo's prebuild, second front, build horsemen or knights in meantime, capture or raze towns, and is a palace jump ever going to happen. Many of these depend on how long the game is going to last. I would like to pre build Leo, prob in Moscow, and rule out a palace jump.

Without looking at the save I don't really understand the iron problem: is it that we can't disconnect iron without disconnecting lux as well?

@Offa
The iron problem is a road that connects three cities going over the hill.
We are still quite short on workers, so nobody found the time to make a detour around that hill, which would go through two jungle tiles.
Our iron colony near moscow still can be easily dis/connected but the workers there should urgently plant some forests.

I still don't see why everybody is so reluctant to trade away the iron. That's the easiest temporary solution IMO.

-NorthernPike - biting his nails, because of lack of war spirit in europe

:lol::D:lol:

One other issue to consider: are we going to want Astronomy, for caravels?

I bungled up the MM'ing a bit. Try to play under pressure, when your teen daughter sits in the background and you can feel her eyes burning through the back of your head :) I did promise her to be "quick", but I wasn't quick enough.

But ah well, the war plan should be the rest of Mongols, OOC China and England. Lizzy have 9 cities, so that should be enough for next turnset I think.

Then we come to the buffer zone of Celts and Aztecs, which we still have alliances with for 11? turns. Monty is paying 1gpt for 2 more turns there as well.

Embassy with Arabs costs 101g, more than I could afford.

We still have monopoly on Invention and the AI tried to trade Theo for it. I told them all to bugger off and hope they continue on the upper path. A few civs are building Sistine and if someone research Invention soon, there can be a cascade to that.

One army is healing in Karakorum, finally a captured town with barracks :) The other army is almost healed and can take over.

Here it is, there is a lot going on, it took ages:

750ad switch capital to worker.
a few bits of MM.

ibt japs are building sistine. Spanish and arabs want to swap maps for free: no. Archer outside Umtata is attacked by loads of barbs, but lives.
Zulu galley draws alongside the one tile island of Tugela. I swap to a warrior due next turn. Can they attack if it is undefended?

760ad
Mongol capital is on a hill defended by a pike. Oh well here goes:
vet knight kills pike: 3/4hp left
vet knight dies, one hp knocked off the 2nd pike.
elite* Offanoff kills a vet MI but goes down to 2HP
vet knight retreats v spearman which loses 1 HP
elite knight kills the 2/3 pike.
elite knight kills the remaining 2/3 spear and gives a leader! Build an army.
Tatu is ours, size 1, no improvements, and an unwanted source of iron.

Try to attack Zulu city and realize we have an alliance with them. Doh!

We have one saltpeter at present, north of Oslo. We don't need it at the moment of course.
Moscow switched to Leo.
Lots of towns finish barracks etc, all switched to knights.
Karakorum (0.8% flip risk) switched to all scientists and reduces chemistry to 5 turns.
Lots of workers moved back towards Scandinavia

770ad
move more troops towards China.
No battles.
Zimbabwe is a 0.5% flip risk so I decide to try to starve it.
Chem now due in 4 at -44gpt.
Sell Egypt dyes for 50g and 5gpt.
trade wm around for a bit of cash.

ibt Japan is building Leo.
Aztecs also have invention.

780ad kill 3 spears in Hangchow but there is at least one more left.

Some war weariness must have kicked in as Moscow will riot next turn. I give it a taxman, as incresing lux to 10% would add a turn to chemistry.

ibt hero spearman in Hangchow kills 2 zulu and an English knight. He deserves a better fate than the one I have in store.

790ad Take Hangchow with a knight and the Chinese are gone. I withdraw one unit from england ready for declaration next turn.

Moscow's scientist is sent back to the gulag: quite right too. Presumably killing China helped the WW.

ibt Zulu expel us from their borders: makes reinforcing the front tricky.
800ad declare v England and move troops towards them. Drop science to 90% to get chem next.

810ad 6 AI have invention now.

capture Nottingham, just (5 reg spear and an archer).No losses though.

Learn chemistry. Metallurgy in 5 at -53gpt.

820ad take London (3 spear and an archer), No losses.

830ad Take Kazan from Mongols. Their last 2 towns are out of range so make peace for 13g, 2gpt, wm and Ulaan Baatur.

Money is very tight. I don't really want to sell gunpowder.

840ad Offa's Dyes take Hastings (one spear left,one killed last turn) but not without a struggle. Maybe Brighton would have been more their scene.
Kill 3 huts so just able to maintain science.
Take York (2 spears) .

850 there are 2 barbs next to Moscow. I hold my breath and attack one with Moscow's only defender (MI v barb horse, so a loss would be harsh).

Kill an archer outside York and get a leader. Two leaders in my 10 turns: I'm not used to this. I hope it won't break my computer.

Metallurgy is due next turn. I have left the leader in London together with some knights. They have a little movement left. I thought maybe filling a knight army now would be a little wasteful as Cossacks are close.

Our peace treaty with the Zulu has 2 turns to go, and it would be very helpful to get rid of them as they are blocking our way.

I haven't sold our WM in a while so this could be tried for a few ££. I haven't traded gunpowder either.

One of the one tile islands in the extreme SE has silks on it. If the AI get to that we will be in big trouble as they won't give it up.

The front line:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/850ad.GIF


850ad (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0850_01.SAV)

Nicely done! :)

I'm glad you didn't trade away Gunpowder, the longer we keep the AI away from that, the easier it will be for us.

I agree to get rid of those Zulus.

Offa's Dyes take Hastings (one spear left,one killed last turn) but not without a struggle. Maybe Brighton would have been more their scene.

Oops, the typo pretty well kills my pun and your joke. Offa's Dykes!

I haven't looked at the save yet, but fine stuff, clearly.

{Kindly imagine the appropriate smileys; the reply form won't let me use them.}

Look's good :goodjob: .
It seems like you made your peace with the RNG god.
Did you sacrifice a few virgins on his altar? :lol:

I had a quick peek in the save before going to work :D .
Looks like there isn't enough saltpeter around for every civ and we already own two :cool: .

I will continue research as fast as possible then stop research with MT and look to set up some horse production.
We need big numbers of cossacks for the way I like the war.
Though, in my turn-set there will be not much cossack action :cry:
But Golden Age will start soon :D

I intend to play tonight. Got it :)

Oops, the typo pretty well kills my pun and your joke. Offa's Dykes!



Oh dear. Offa's Dunces really.




It seems like you made your peace with the RNG god.
Did you sacrifice a few virgins on his altar?


That god still owes me a few, but I have learned to walk away when she is very cruel. Many units have already died needlessly: when will there be an end to the carnage?

The Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD0950_01.SAV)

We have MT and are in golden age. We have a few cossacks and are building a mix of cossacks and horses.
England plays OCC for some time.
Zulu sneaked out a settler, their old towns are ours.
Leonardo's should complete in 7.

Turnlog:
Preflight
Trade maps around.
Sell RoP to France for 80g.
Build an embassy with egypt for 51g. Only two spears in Thebes.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/kl_sg5_5.JPG
Get 74g for RoP.
Make Rop with Aztecs. They give 2gpt and 38g.
So now we have all cash around short of a few coins.
Give iron to India for Theology.
Pillage the iron road near moscow.
Change several builds in weak cities to horses.
Change Beijing to granary. I still want a few workers and Beijing is currently working unimproved tiles.
Order marketplace in Stockholm, Bjoergvin and Canton. We will need them soon and we will also soon be on 100% tax.
Rush worker in Hastings to get pop down faster.
Rush galley in Mpondo. I want to do something about the one-tile island and our other galleys are so far away.
Trotzky builds an army, but I leave it empty.
And finally ally Japan against Iroqouis for RoP and 2gpt.
Samurai will hopefully really do something to Hiawatha and they are hopefully away when we will go against Japan.

Finally hit enter ;)

IBT:
BH gets 7g from Ulan Bator.
BW promotes our mace near moscow.
Metal comes in->MT

Turn 1 860
Sell gems to Egypt for 8gpt.
MT is 5 turns. Our money should do for the deficit, even with a bit of rushing.
Rush worker in London. Rush library in Karakorum.
Disperse a barb camp.

IBT:
Celts want to renew alliance against Iros. No thanks.
BH overruns our iron colony on home island. I couldn't care less.

Turn 2 870
Canterbury falls to knight army. Only two spears.

IBT:
Another BH on Ulan Bator.

Turn 3 880
Warwick falls w/o losses.
Make peace with England for the last two cities.

Turn 4 890
Not much. With MT in 2 turns I don't want to risk knights.

IBT:
Our wool deal to egypt ends. She has no gpt to renew.

Turn 5 900
Trade wool to egypt for all her 67 gold.
Japan seems to lose against Iros. Ally France for 2gpt against Iros.
Hopefully this will split the forces.

IBT
MT comes in->PP at 0%

Turn 6 910
Upgrade four knights to cossack. Still have no road to Karakorum so no upgrades there.
Land a slave on one-tile island near zululand.

Turn 7 920
upgrade another 4 knights in Karakorum. Position troops for zulu.
Make embassies in Arabia and India.
Declare on America and ally India for RoP.
Ally Arabia versus Iro. Costs 23gpt, but I don't think they will really stay at war for 20 turns and we can afford it now.

Turn 8 930
Several civs have education. Not very interested.
Declare on Zulu.
Golden Age!
Lose one Cossack on a killer Impi in Isandhlwana. City taken.
Upgrade another 4 knights.
Take Swazi.

Turn 9 940
Take Hlobane.
Zulus are not out. See a galley in our north.

Turn 10 950
Zulus have a new capital on the northern island.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/kl_sg5_6.JPG
Fill the empty army with two cossacks for now.
Three civs have gunpowder. And Japan is not valuing it high.
Pillage saltpeter and change several builds to horsemen. Redo road right away.

The region of our next target.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/kl_sg5_7.JPG

Most of the cossacks are under way.
Canterbury will culture expand in 2 turns.
Then Celts should be easy.
Bad thing, the lazy AI still hasn't build roads further into Jap and Iro land :cry:
Japan is losing currently against Iros. They lost their iron already.

Getting the Japanese into the war to use up some Samurai was a good idea. :goodjob: I'm glad you rushed the galley in Mpondo, too.

Got it.

A few remarks on how to continue.
I would recommend to use money for short-rushing or rushing currently. Mainly horses, some galleys and infra where needed (not in corrupt towns without strategic value).
The cossacks and armies we have should do for a few turns.
Only when Leonardo's comes in (hopefully) upgrade horses and continue disconnect/connect to balance horse production and upgrade money.

For the war, I think we should press towards Iros first, even leaving parts of the weaklings aside.
Celts should be taken, but Aztecs and Japs aren't that important.
New slaves and also some out of England/Zulu will be needed for roads near the front.
When there will be sufficient force in that region, continue war there, but also begin to ferry forces to the northern island.

I don't think astronomy is worth the investment, but we will need quite a few galleys.

In the end this will get a quite complicated war, with battles all over the map and very long turns.
So I would recommend not to stick to 10 turns, if it gets too time consuming.
Just everybody do what you can afford within 48hours after got-it and then upload the save.

I've played four turns and a little of the fifth, eliminating the Zulus and the Celts. Our problem now is that we can only make immediate progress against the Aztecs and the Japanese, and we've got diplomatic arrangements lasting another five turns with both of them: a RoP with the Aztecs, a RoP and an anti-Iroquois alliance with the Japanese. Sitting around for waiting for five turns isn't an option at all, since we can now do so much in that amount of time; and using our RoPs to attack the Iroquois next won't work either, because the roads through Japan and Mexico aren't good enough. So we face some questions about the nuances of reputation. How much worse would it be, from the standpoint of our ability to make further RoP agreements, if we RoP-raped these two enemies than if we cancelled the RoPs prematurely but otherwise attacked them honourably? Can we hope to RoP-rape our way through the rest of the game no matter how bad our reputation gets, as our experience in SGOTM4 (albeit with fewer rival civs in the game) would suggest? Would the fact that we're in an alliance with the Japanese make stabbing them meaningfully worse for our reputation than stabbing the Aztecs?

I won't resume playing for at least eighteen hours, so you all have some time to give me your opinions on these weighty matters. ;)


Slightly later: Cross-post with Klarius. I agree with/have done a lot of what you suggest, but not with attacking the Iroquois before the Aztecs and Japanese. The geography of the situation dictates that either we'll shatter those two opponents in the next five turns, possibly eliminating one, or we'll do nothing useful at all. It's strictly a question of how we handle the implications for our reputation, as discussed above.

My experience (but not with so many civs) is that getting RoP is still possible. It just costs a lot.
But to be on the save side we could let one city left over of every civ we betray.
I know the constant flip risk is a PITA, but these flipped cities are no big problem (and raze cities with high risk).
An MA against them with the next target will make them forget our bad behavior.
I think we should not break peace treaties before we have the one tile islands.
We will have problems to negotiate for them anyways, especially with Iros, who have two and one of them is already quite big.
We should definitely hurt the Iros a lot.
That means raze several cities instead of keeping them.

Edit:
But I still see no reason to attack the Aztecs now. They can be taken out quickly later.
I see the problem with the Japs. In a personal game I probably would wait, rather build some roads on their territory first and help them with the attacking forces.
But that's just my style.
I start dastardly tactics typically quite late (too late ? ) , just to finish of the last 3 or 4 civs quickly.

I'm not fussed about rep at this stage. We can't sit and wait when we have got the tech and UU we wanted. Now it's only forward that counts, or we will be fighting a lost cause.

So I vote just take them out, ROP or not.

one tile islands.

Drats, I totally forgot about them. Annoying! :gripe:

Another thing we could try:
Demand something about 20 times from Japs and then try an immediate steal of education.
But that costs a lot, the steal may succeed :eek: and they may fear us so much that they don't declare even when it fails.

Drats, I totally forgot about them. Annoying! :gripe:

... you mean "challenging" of course... ;)

It is a pity about the ROPs but I don't think we should wait. Will we get less of a rep hit if we don't have units in the AI lands?

Those one tile islands are a worry. I wonder why mad bax put so many of them in.

We ought to make a start on the second continent now.

1050 AD, almost beginning of turn (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm5/offa_SG005_AD1050_01.SAV)

950 (0): As Gozpel would say, stuff Canterbury's cultural expansion. ;) We declare war on the Celts and move our strike force just within their borders.


960 (1): We take Entremont from its garrison of three spearmen and an archer without loss (4-0), capturing three workers (two of them originally a settler).

We pick off a Celtic knight (5-0), capturing another worker.

We disperse a "Mycenian" camp for 25 gold (6-0).


970 (2): We crush a Jute warrior on the home front (7-0).

We land workers on two of the three one-tile islands in the southern archipelago.

We take Lugdunum from its garrison of a pikeman and a spearman (9-0).


980 (3): We auto-raze Umfolozi, held by one Impi, and eliminate the Zulus (10-0).

We trample a Bulgar warrior near the ruins of Umfolozi (11-0).

The Jute camp in our homeland is breeding warriors faster than our Cossack can kill them (12-0).

We take Mohacs, the new Celtic capital, which is held by one spearman (13-0). We need workers in this part of the world, so I raze the town, gaining four.

We capture two unescorted Celtic workers.

We take the next Celtic capital, Camulodunum, this one held by three spearmen (16-0). We capture two workers (originally a settler).

We pick off a Gallic Swordsman (17-0).

I sell our WM around for 68 gold.

The Iroquois and the French make peace.

Gandhi wants Chemistry for his WM. No, wait, I'm misrepresenting him--he wants our WM too. :D


990 (4): We take the fourth Celtic capital, Richborough, held by three spearmen (20-0).

We take the fifth Celtic capital, Verulamium, held by two spearmen (22-0). We capture a worker in the town.

Our tireless Cossack on the home front destroys another barb in the same Jute camp (23-0).

One of our galleys repels the attack of a barb galley (24-0).

The Celts would like peace. Er, no.


1000 (5): We auto-raze Gergovia in the west (one spearman, 25-0) and eliminate the Celts.

Our overworked Cossack finally disperses the Jute camp (25 gold; 26-0).

Astonishingly, the Aztecs stab us one turn before we were going to stab them, by forming an alliance with the Americans. So much for that problem, and all that discussion. :lol: We lose three slaves working to improve their road network, but nothing else.


1010 (6): We drop off an archer on the one-tile island near Baltimore.

We destroy a spearman in Aztec Xochicalco, but don't take the town yet (27-0).

We defeat a spearman in Teotihuacan, but again don't take the city (28-0).

We overrun an Aztec longbow/settler pair (29-0).

One of our galleys repels the attack of a barb galley (30-0).

Moscow LEONARDO --> galley. I'll produce a galley a turn in Moscow for the rest of this round.

Various enemy civs are building Sistine Chapel.


1020 (7): We drop off a worker on the third one-tile island in the southern archiplago. We now control or occupy five of the eight one-tile islands we know of, while the other three have already been settled by our enemies. There could still be more in the northern darkness (which we're slowly exploring), of course.

We take Calixtlahuaca from its garrison of two spearmen (32-0), capturing a worker.

We take Teotihuacan from its garrison of two spearmen (34-0).

Some manoeuvring is necessary to assault Tenochtitlan without crossing a river, so I don't attack it this turn.

We trample a Jaguar Warrior and an Aztec archer (36-0).

We defeat the attack of a Hun near Moscow (37-0).


1030 (8): We take Xochicalco from its garrison of two spearmen (39-0), capturing a settler = two workers.

We take Tenochtitlan from its garrison of two pikemen (41-0), capturing four workers.

We take the next Aztec capital, Tlatelolco, from its garrison of two spearmen (43-0).

We destroy an Aztec knight and an Aztec longbowman, and capture an unescorted Aztec worker (45-0).

We declare war honourably on the Mongols and move three Cossacks adjacent to Tabriz.


1040 (9): We take Texcoco from its garrison of two spearmen, also destroying a galley when we enter the town (48-0).

We begin skirmishing with the Iroquois, defeating two Mounted Warriors and an archer (51-0).

We take Tabriz, held by two spearmen (53-0), and eliminate the Mongols. We capture a worker when we enter the city.

The Japanese complete Sistine Chapel in Kyoto.


1050 (10): We take Tlaxcala, held by two spearmen (55-0), and eliminate the Aztecs. We capture a worker when we enter the city.

Three elite victories didn't produce a Great Leader this round.

You'll be playing the 1050 AD turn essentially from the start. I've made one attack to eliminate the Aztecs, assigned a few workers, and done the upgrades, but that's all.

We can attack the Japanese this turn without damage to our reputation, though we'll want to cancel our various agreements with them first. We have units near all three of their outlying cities, so we should be able to eliminate them in three or four turns. Note the Japanese archer next to Tlatelolco.

We should be sure to take Coventry and eliminate the English when our peace treaty with them expires in 1080 AD.

We're beginning to accumulate Cossacks for a landing on the northern continent in Moscow. There aren't many there yet, but we have a Shanghai-Moscow ship chain, and they'll build up quickly. We should be able to send off a strike force of ten Cossacks in five galleys--the prudent minimum, I'd say--during the next round.

One of the one-tile islands we're occupying is within America's cultural borders, which might cause complications if we're ever again at peace with the Americans.