SGOTM5 - Russia. Staff Team Thread.

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.

*bounce bounce*

Ok, so where is everybody? :p

Finally got to 1000 BC in GOTM37 (micromanaging a 6f/4f settler factory takes freaking forever, lemme tell you), so I thought I'd take a break (possibly for a week) and check in.

*waves*

Flip a coin on which mountain the scout goes to? Or see if we can bribe the info out of mad-bax? I have chocolate chip cookies ...

Renata

Well, it is 'one built city' then presumably we want to make it a good one. My only concern is that there are three possibile mountains for sending our scout to, and (probably) only one-out-of-three is going to show us teh best location (of the three) - potentially this makes blind luck have quite an impact on the start of the game.

That said, I "Guess" SE (At least there is a river).

Hi Guys.

I will go last in the rotation. So who's feeling lucky? :)

Are we sure we want to start this before the other game is over?

I'm all for bribing MB, my contribution is speculaas ('typical Dutch' seasonal cinamon cookies). If even that fails :eek: I could remark that West and SouthEast have rivers, I have a better feeling about West for some reason.

OTOH maybe the climate is reversed with the hot parts on the edges of the map, in that case North or South would be better.

BTW - the link to the Arab GOTM where the civ, the difficulty, the starting location, the resources, the land configuration, the world size and the %age water are completely different to this game, is really insightful.

Thanks, MB! :p

I just returned from my trip and see that yet another game is about to begin. I think we should begin even though we are still finishing up SGOTM4. That is sort of on cruise control now and will end when it ends.

This game requires some thought. With only one city the location is key. I think it would be worthwhile to send our scout to all 3 mountains and then make a decision. So what if we lose some turns. We will then be able to determine the best location for the city and make up in productivity what we lose in time.

I'd argue:

turn 1: scout to a mountain, worker toward another, settler stays put
turn 2: if nothing interesting, or if more needs to be seen, scout back to center, worker to mountain, settler stays put
turn 3: if nothing interesting, or if more needs to be seen, scout to 3rd mountain; move worker and settler based on results.

Sound reasonable? Whoever plays first could, if desired, check in with the results of each of the first few turns to consider the situation.

Renata

I like that suggestion as well. I was initially thinking "settle ASAP", but logically that's a bit impulsive, and getting the first city in the 'best' place is far more important. :)

Here's a stupid question: where's the save?

Renata

You can download it from the submissions table. :)

Ah. Duh. I had been using the oh-so-convenient link in the first post of the SGOTM4 thread to get there for that game, and I suppose something went "ping" in my brain.

Thanks!
Renata

I should put those links back in the game threads. Thanks for the reminder Renata.

Oh - and do we want to play the sponsored variant? (Archer-rush anyone?)

Why not, let's see how we can beat these penguins. :D

Renata, were you planning to get us going on this one? We are now trailing the flock already. If you can't, I will.

Go ahead -- last night and tonight are write-offs for me. I can play tomorrow if you finish.

Good luck!

Renata

Allright, I will play now. I'll stop to discuss if anything pops up. And can finish tomorrow night (CET) so that Renata can play after me, on her 'tomorrow night'. :)

edit: I will follow the moves she suggested.

Go for it Space. Fancy your chances at milking this? :)

OK, I just followed my hunch and move the scout west. And this is what he revealed:

So, I guess we can only make use of the cow *and* the river if we allow four tundra in the first nine tiles (that's if we settle W,W,W,SW, ie 4 turns after the AI). If we decide to wait what the worker reveals, we'll be at least 1 additional turn later. What do you guys think? I have the sudden fear that MB made this symmetrical. BTW why is the worker an eqWorker, it *is* a ptw save, isn't it?

Go for it Space. Fancy your chances at milking this? :)

Missed your comment. :) Yeah sure, why not! :lol: I'll just have to gen-engineer the cows for a longer fur and eat pinguins instead of grass...

Yes it is PTW. It's an eqWorker so that you can't make, sell, buy or disband the starting units. This is then the same as 1.29f. It is also something to do with not getting settlers from huts. You will get eqWorkers instead, and so the same restrictions apply. The only way to get rid of an eqWorker is to join it to a city, or get it captured....

All other workers will be normal workers. You will buy, sell, build and capture normal workers.

That explains it, thanks MB.

I couldn't resist so here's the situation after have the second turn. I moved the settler SW in a kind of compromize and move the worker S,S.
The Scout continued west.

West still looks good, but... what if we are alone on an island. We need to be on the coast if that's the case. Hmm, what was the landform again?

I'm starting to have a sneaking suspicion that the territory is roughly the same in every direction. We may have started at the north pole, with the good stuff around the edges. :p

In any case, I don't think we can argue too much with a cow and river. It works for me, if others agree.

Edit: missed the second page. Umm, yeah. In other words I agree with you. The map type wasn't mentioned in the set-up; just the % land (25%). It could be anything. In other words, we probably should be on the coast, just in case. For max use of the good tiles, that means settling on one of the grasslands, and away from the river, if I remember the screencap correctly. Might be back to edit this in five seconds.

Renata

But can afford not to be on the coast with our 1 and only city (for the time being at least... :evil: )?

Quasi- edit: Ok, so we can get both coast and river. I don't think we want to settle on the bonus grass, so that leaves the forest next to the furs or whatever's in the patch of fog by the cow.

It does look like the other directions are similar. Cow's better than wheat, though.

Renata

I would like to see a few more tiles west. We can "plan" to go that way, and maybe have the worker circle around by the northern mountain. It doesn't look like there is much room at all out-west though. :(

Oh wait, one more thought. In the eastern site that the worker is looking at, there's a spot where we could settle on tundra and still have coastal access. (Same's true in the west, though, if all there is for grassland is the three visible tiles.)

Renata

If this is "Based" on GOTM 23, its starting to look familiar, in terms of the land shape. It looks like where Russia actually was in that game (although in that there was less tundra :p)

Yes, the wheat spot is better for sea access, but I'd hat to lose the cow. Shields are important too.
Renata, I've heard you mention spreadheets in the pre-game thread for gotm37... could you compare settler SE,SE,SE,S, with probably grass 1 S of that spot with either the forest near the cow or 1 SW of the cow (probably grass too)?

edit: I haven't played that game, can you enlighten us? :)

edit: I haven't played that game, can you enlighten us? :)
Very hazy memory of it - of course, it was well over a year ago!

We started in a desert area, down a wide valley with things like goats etc and lots of floodplains. Good wheat, not a lot of shields. Needed to expand quickly out of the valley. It was a pangaea IIRC. I can't remember too much except that I took over the world with Ansar warriors!

However: On the assumption (big assumption) that we are starting where russia started, then we can expect Arabs north / north-east of us, and I think there are civs on a lobe out east. Really can't remember much more than that.

Is W NW of the scout definitely grassland? I can't quite tell from the screencap.

I used a spreadsheet for the beginning of GOTM37 to help me decide what build order was best from the beginning, taking into account worker moves, population growth and drops, and such. I finally settled on scout-worker-warrior-granary-settler, using one chop fror the granary and another for the first settler (slight shield waste), allowing 4-turn settlers from then on out. The spreadsheet helped me tell that scout-worker-granary-settler only saved one turn, for example (with greater risk of barbs), and that scout-settler-warrior-granary-worker probably wouldn't get out any more settlers by 1000 BC than the first option would (I was too uncertain about corruption in town 2 to do more than estimate), plus would have slower tile development. I really liked scout-granary-settler-warrior, but I just wasn't prepared to go that long undefended on deity with restless barbs.

Um, anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah. I'd be happy to compare any scenario you like to the best of my ability (I still make some mistakes), but I wouldn't have time to do so before tomorrow night, anyway. (Posting from work here.)

Renata

If this is "Based" on GOTM 23, its starting to look familiar, in terms of the land shape. It looks like where Russia actually was in that game (although in that there was less tundra :p)
Actually, maybe I'm thinking about a different game. :hmm:

If it was largely the same map, then as a pangaea, we should be much further south (not around the middle). And come to think of it, I don't think russia were in that game, because it was historical (ish) - Egypt, zulu, ottomans etc.

Ie - I'm probably leading us all on a wild goose chase.

Is W NW of the scout definitely grassland? I can't quite tell from the screencap.


Nothing definite, but it isn't sea that's for sure and I don't think it's tundra either, worst case it's BG. I mean if we want to settle it, it gets wasted anyway. So it not being sea is all we need to know at this stage.

Ok, so then there is a definite difference between the two visible sites in terms of whether or not we need to "waste" a grassland tile by settling on it and still get a coastal city, right? Is there a fourth grassland tile to the east, though? If there's only three, the value gained by being able to settle on tundra is nil.

Renata

From what we see now that indeed is the case. All spots discussed are reachable in 3 turns (the settler still has movement).

If we are going for the cow, should we go straight west (claiming the cow from the start but the Fur won't be available until the second expansion)? Or for the trees (where we'll probaly have more land tiles but will get the cow only after the first expansion)?

If we decide on the western spot, we have time to explore that coast some more with the scout, and who knows, maybe we'll find a landbridge. ;)

I'm getting here a little late. Glad to see the game has started. It feels to me as if Mad-Bax is being a bit sneaky here. He puts 3 mountains in the start screen to tempt us. Then no matter which mountain you go to there are immediately goodies in sight (at least that appears to be the case although we haven't yet gone north). Maybe one of the 3 is much better than the other. If we jump at the first good looking spot we may miss the best one. We can't build one city and then abandon it if we find a better location. So I suggest we be very careful and explore all points of the compass before we decide to build to the west.

That would mean three extra turns for the scout and then after that at least 4 additional turns to the settling spot.

My interpretation is that MB wants the teams to be behind the AI in the beginning of the game. I think the chance of the Northern lands being simular is much higher than 50%. The fun in OBC is the need for capturing of AI cities and not how to wander around to find Avalon, IMO. I think (and hope) Ainwood is right and there are bridges to the AI lands, or at least a Greenland near our Northpole.

The fun in OBC is the need for capturing of AI cities
I see the light.

I'd say that we MUST be on a continent with at least one other AI. Otherwise, anyone who doesn't settle on the coast has exactly zero chance (they can never get of the island, ever).

If we decide on the western spot, we have time to explore that coast some more with the scout, and who knows, maybe we'll find a landbridge. ;)

Don't get me started on land bridges ... If Ainwood's been reading the first GOTM37 spoiler he knows what he's been doing to me with land bridges. :crazyeye:

@ Ainwood -- It wouldn't actually be "never get off the island". It'd be "wait for the AI to show up and build a coastal city, capture it, and *then* get off the island. Still, what you say does make some sense -- it could be a very very long wait for the AI with basically nothing to do (not exactly an interesting game) -- and we would get to use one more grassland tile if we went west and settled inland on tundra.

Arrghh, too many decisions.

Here's another one. Wherever the AI turn out to be, corruption in any towns we capture is going to be impossible. The nearby territory is next-to-useless, even once the AI do arrive with their settlers. Nor do we really have the kind of civ that can do well in a pure fast-as-heck OC conquest (jags and impis would be better -- we'd be stuck with slow archers or slow-and-expensive swords if there aren't horses in reach). What do we do about that? Palace jump?

And another, not so much a question as a thought that occurred to me: Much as it tempts me to chop every forest within reach to get our infrastructure built, I think we should consider leaving a few up. Reason being, we have limited tiles that have any food potential at all. Once we get out of despotism, I'm guessing we're probably going to want to irrigate every grassland we have in order to build population; that means working forests for production. And we won't be able to plant any until we get engineering.

edit: And one more thing. :lol: DocT's "Best Start Ever!" succession game might have some good tips with us. They could build settlers, but their start was even worse than this one. All their towns had to be built quite a ways away.

Renata

I'd say that we MUST be on a continent with at least one other AI. Otherwise, anyone who doesn't settle on the coast has exactly zero chance (they can never get of the island, ever).

There were many risks with this map. And I nearly didn't use it because of the risks. There was a risk that a player would settle at the start position for instance. That would kill the game. The risk you talk about is not as bad as you imagine actually, and as the game unfolds you'll see why. I was quite careful to ensure that a single poor decision by a player would not kill the game. I just ask that you play into the game a little before drawing any conclusions.

Getting impatient with us, MB? I just :love: the puzzle you handed us. :lol: Don't worry I'll continue tonight and play 20.

I'm just a bit sensitive about my first "official" map, and the fact that it is quite a bit different from previous maps. I'm just being a little precious. :p

I like the fact that we are challenged right from the start. It is a puzzle and I think we are on the right track to solving it. Of course, with little help from me. I would have been charging around looking everywhere for the best place to settle. It's a good thing I am on a team with some players who can think.

I would have been charging around looking everywhere for the best place to settle. That what I think too!:D

3950BC - turn 1
So after all that discussion, I think I'll go west and claim the cow. Settler W.
Press enter.

3900BC - turn 2
Scout W,S revealing more land. :)

3850BC - turn 3
Now the land does end, so basically our first impression was right. I'm still torn about whether or not, but the deer that was revealed finally makes me decide for the forest spot.

3800BC - turn 4
The settler has arrived on the spot, the worker is still underway.

3750BC - turn 5
Moscow founded, start scout
And we can finally start research, select Warrior Code at max. (Archer rush?)

3700BC - turn 6
Scout pops a hut: maps. :(
Worker arrives at BG.

3650BC - turn 7
Moscow will expand it's borders to claim the cow in 9 turns, so I will improve the BG first, Worker starts road.

3500BC - turn 10
Moscow completes the scout, start Rax.
New Scout moves North.

3250BC - turn 15
Moscow grows, claiming both the cow and the deer.

3200BC - turn 16
Another hut popped, maps again.
Eastern scout finds what looks like a land bridge.
Worker moves to the cow.

3150BC - turn 17
GH yields Ceremonial Burial
Worker starts to irrigate the cow.

3000BC - turn 20
Our 2 scouts haven't found any AI yet. But we're in a good position to start a nice early attacking force. We have no military units yet though, funny to be playing this as a farmers gambit... :lol:

Not very hospitable terrain. Some of those peninsulas must be land bridges. At least, I hope they are.

I had high hopes for the one in the south east, but as you can see nothing but wild geese. :)

That has to be the strangest land mass I've ever seen. :lol: That western peninsula with the four mountain looks promising for a land bridge, as does that patch of land that's about due east of our starting position. Where is the deer? SE of the furs, or two SW of Moscow? If it's over grassland, then I wouldn't mind chopping *that* forest.

Shall we scout with archers from now on? ;) A few spearmen to go a-pillaging might not go amiss either, since the AIs all look to be far enough away that getting to them early will be problematic. This is so bizarre.

I would very much like to play tonight, but I have a lot to do to get ready to go to my parents' tomorrow. Can I play it by ear and take it if I have time?

Renata

I guess the immediate concern is that we may quickly run out of things to build. We must get on the offensive ASAP, because research will be slow, and we won't have much infrastructure that we can build. That leaves units, and then the unit support costs will start to hurt.

Also, the longer we wait, the stronger the AI will be, and the more units we will need to make a significant dent in them (vicious circle if you like). With no close-by AI, the corruption in any cities we capture will be high, so we won't be able to build more very quickly "close to the action". Again the distance will play an important part, because of the turns required to move the units to the front lines.

In short - I think we need to find the AI ASAP, build a few workers for roading, and as many vet (archers) as we can possibly support (5 or 6 only, probably). I suggest we use our gold for unit support rather than research early-on, and hope to extort techs in peace negotiations. Any workers that we can capture will be a great bonus as well.

That sounds good to me. I'm thinking one more military tech might be useful, though. BW would allow spearmen for the aforementioned pillaging -- something I think could be extremely powerful in terms of slowing down our enemies. Archers can pillage, too, of course, but we'll lose more of them. I thought about The Wheel (more speed=good with the AI so far away, and I would really really like to know where the horses are), but we'd have to get all the way to HBR before we had 2-move units that packed any punch at all, and the way the map currently looks, we'd have to road some mountains in order for chariots to get out of our little area. So at the moment I'm thinking bronze-working would be better. Thoughts?

Renata

I think you are right to go for BW. And then I like ainwood's scenario.

I also will not be able to play tonight or tomorrow. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in America and I have 13 family members arriving tonight and tomorrow. Needless to say my wife will hit me over the head with a turkey leg if I try to squeeze in some turns. So Friday is the earliest for me. Renata sounds as if she is on her way to a Thanksgiving celebration also. Perhaps you should take it next ainwood.

No problem! I will try to squeeze in ten before I get on with posting the COTM 07 pre-game. :)

I still may be able to play tonight. My boyfriend is on the computer currently (just stepped away for a few minutes to move the laundry up), researching some things. I'm not sure how much longer he'll be occupied with that. If it's early enough that I'm not about to pass out on my keyboard, I'll try to grab it tonight. If I haven't played in the next three hours, though, assume I couldn't. In either case, I'll be out of commision from then until sometime Friday.

@ zagnut -- 13 family members?!? Eeek! You're brave. :) Happy Thanksgiving!

Renata

Well, I'll be at work for another three hours, so suits me! :D

@ zagnut -- 13 family members?!? Eeek! You're brave. :) Happy Thanksgiving!
And we all get along. It's a really nice gathering. Not at all like the TV shows where everyone in the family is stabbing someone else in the back and the father is always a jerk.

By the way, I just took a look at the save and we already have Bronze Working. Did you mean we should go for Iron Working to get Swordmen?

No, it meant I forgot we were scientific and would have started with it. But read on ...

Turn Report:

3000 BC (preturn): Ok, not that bad of a site, really, all things considered. Four grassland tiles, two of them with bonus food. We can get to as much as +6 food in despotism if we like, if we chop and irrigate the game. Since it's adjacent to that little tundra pond, we can, and probably should since we'll be more flexible that way -- we have three tundra forests available pre-engineering for extra shields when needed. Also three lake tiles for extra commerce. A lux, and a very nice river. Haven't done the math, but we should be able to get to size 12 quite easily after the government change. Could be much *much* worse.

All looks good in Moscow. Turn up science to 80% for WC in 1, hit enter. (*not* Space ;) )

IT -- OOOOkkkk, what is that? We don't have pottery, but we do have alphabet?

http://civfanatics.net/uploads8/pottery.JPG

And yet we had a scout, so we're expansionist .... I dungetit. At any rate, we already have bronze working, so we're still scientific! (Forgot that, oops.) I'll research pottery instead. Anyone have any insight into this? Oh, and we can build the heroic epic, too, if we like.

2950 BC (turn 1): Worker finishes irrigation, starts road. We'll waste food on growth, but I think the cow tile is still the best option -- barracks next turn on growth. Pottery in 8.

2900 BC (turn 2): Moscow barracks-archer. Will build a couple of warriors after for MPs. Lux to 10% in the meantime. Pottery now in 9.

2850 BC (turn 3): Scout that was in the northeast has reached the mountains that look like they lead west.

2800 BC (turn 4): Worker finishes road, to grassland. Scout finds goody hut, will pop next turn. Pottery back to 6 turns with the cow road built.

2750 BC (turn 5): Worker starts mine. Scout gets ... Masonry. Well, it's better than a kick in the pants. No settlers can be popped anyway, right? Other scout finds another goody hut. Can't quite tell whether this eastern extension of our area is a dead-end or not.

2710 BC (turn 6): archer-warrior. Goody hut gets us a warrior; I'll send him over to Moscow to to the MP thing, so will build only one warrior now. Does appear to be a dead-end over here. There's only one possible isthmus tile left, a little north.

2670 BC (turn 7): switch warrior to spearman -- hate to waste as many shields as a warrior would. Lux to 20%. Pottery in 2 @ 70%, -1gpt.

2630 BC (turn 8): Nothing, except this doesn't look really good to be an isthmus over to the west, either ...

IT: pottery-mysticism

2590 BC (turn 9): Moscow spearman - ? Set to warrior right now, but next player might want to change it. I've seen no sign of barbs yet -- would we rather have a granary? Research off. I'll be able to tell next turn whether or not this peninsula goes anywhere; in the meantime, spearman stays put one turn. Lux to 10%, archer contines to follow western scout.

2550 BC (turn 10): I can't believe it; it is a peninsula. Switch to granary; it's going to be a while before we meet anyone. I think we should get the scouts to take a tour around the perimeter of what appears to be our island, just to make sure we didn't miss anything, but in the meantime. Well, heck, in the meantime I don't know what. Shall we discuss? Western scout has another goody-hut to pop to the south; if we get a tech from it, it should be either wheel or mysticism, depending which one we're "researching" at the time. I fortified the spearman and have turned our two roaming military units south to check out the area more throuroughly where we can see what appear to be nearby islands. Maybe there's a teensy isthmus there; heck if I know.

Long-Story-Short Summary:
one barracks, one archer, one spear, one conscript warrior, warrior code, pottery and masonry, no contacts nor isthmus located

Strange.

Renata

PS @zagnut -- My family's great that way, too. Good times.

PPS at all -- see you on Friday (barring any more nosey-parker comments tonight)! and happy holiday to all, even if you're not celebrating it. :)

CivAssist confirms that we ARE expansionist and scientific. MB may have played with the starting techs though. Maybe alphabet to get us to map-making, if it is (as it appears to be) a critical tech!

Aah you found me out. :)

Actually there is a little more to that which will come out later.

As found:

Well, there is only one little spot that <might> harbour a land-bridge. Will check that out. Otherwise, full-steam ahead to map-making.
We have not yet had any research on mysticism, so I change to writing without losing any research. Max that we can research it at without going broke is 39 turns. We are spending 1 GPT on luxuries, and 10% science also costs 1GPT. Looks like we'll have to do writing at min research, so I figure a scientist is better than an unhappy person.

However, seeing as we have a hut to pop, I won't research it yet - I'll stay with Myst for a turn, and just put on zero research.

Turn 1:
Move archer back for happiness control (we grow next turn). Start worker roading mined tile. Warrior to last unexplored tile. Press that little blue / orange flashing circle.


Turn 2:
Moscow grows, and we get a second unhappy citizen. He is unhappy because he wants to be a scientist. I can oblige, in fact that is what the planning committee had in his 5-year plan.

Pop hut. Get a warrior. Yay. Not.Unit costs are 3 GPT. Too far to walk-back, so I disband him. Switch to writing. In 32 breaking even. Are those 8 turns worth 5 GPT? I say "yes".

Turn 3.
Archer back in Moscow, keep luxuries at 10 and fire our scientist.
Its also too expensive to keep a useless scout. Disbanded and writing now in 24 (breaking even).

Turn 4:
Road completed, start working that tile, and worker off to road furs.
Is becoming more clear that last unexplored section is also not a land crossing.

Turn 5:
Last peninsula is a dead-end. Disband a scout, and we are now back to zero unit costs. Writing in 19.

Turn 6:
Never seen / noticed this before, but a little green dot appears next to Moscow (obviously an overlay the programmers put in for some reason)
Granary completes next turn, so I MM to get a couple extra commerce.

Turn 7:
Complete granary. Decide that commerce might be nice, so go for Colossus. 3 CPT will help with territory expansion for points as well.

Turn 8:
See first barbs. Maybe barb farming for cash is a good option?

Turn 9:
Spot barb camp.

Turn 10:
Barb attacks our conscript warrior. We win (on a mountain), but no promotion. Move towards barb camp.
Moscow grows, so I up luxuries to 20%. Colossus in 16. Will have furs roaded next turn, so am happy to run a 1 Gold deficit for a turn. Writing in 16.

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.

k folks, we need to get on with and play upto the 1000BC point. MB asked to be last in the rotation, that makes Zagnut Up.

Space
Renata
Ainwood - just played
Zagnut - UP
Mad-bax - pretty busy :eek:

Just for future reference: I am probably out of commission until after Dec. 17 -- I have too much left to do to finish out this semester. I probably won't even be able to submit GOTM 37 except as a deliberate conquest loss, which my pride will probably not allow me to do. Even in the middle ages, I've only been able to find time to play maybe five turns at a time; it's driving me nuts, and I'm not getting anywhere. I'll be back to normal after mid-December , but ...

Arrgh. I didn't expect things to be this bad. Very sorry.

Renata, frustrated

OK I will take it tonight. When last heard from I was having 13 people over last Thursday. Well, 8 of them stayed until Saturday evening so things were a little discombobulated at my house. That is why I have been out of touch for the last couple of days.

It's not a problem at all, Zagnut. The game was stopped for a couple of days anyway. I just wanted people to be aware that we could start playing again. :)

And in view of last SGOTM, I thought that putting up a roster wouldn't be a bad idea... ;)

BTW is that a definite skip until halfway through December, Renata? :sad:

2150 - Turn 1 - Take game and see that there is not much for me to do. Colossus and Writing both in 16 turns. Maybe I just have to push return!

I see our Conscript Warrior is next to a barb camp in the forest. I don’t like the odds and will send him searching for other barb camps.

IT - Furs are connected.

2110 - Turn 2 - Reduce lux to 10%.

2070 - Worker start road towards Deer.

2030 - Warrior moving back toward Moscow.

1990 - zzzz

1950 - Pop grows in Moscow and increase lux to 20%. MM to get Colossus in 9.

IT - A barb Warrior appears from the SE.

1870 - Turn 7 - Send Spearman to forest to challenge barb Warrior and hopefully move him out of the adjoining forest and onto tundra.

1830 - Turn 8 - Warrior attacks our Spearman and dies. Worker completes road.

1790 - Start building road on Deer. I would chop the forest but will leave that decision to the wiser heads.

1750 - Turn 10 - Our Warrior climbs mountain and sees barb camp to the SE.

OK. I'll play tomorrow night.
Anyone care to do the sums as to how much extra commerce we will get out of the Colossus in despotism?

I figure 4 extra commerce per turn.

BTW is that a definite skip until halfway through December, Renata? :sad:

Not definite; I don't know really. If a miracle happens and the papers go quickly (not likely; I am the world's slowest paper-writer), I may be able to play without wanting to kick myself afterwards. There's just so much to do. :(

Anyway, I don't know.

Renata

I figure 4 extra commerce per turn.

Remember the tile penalty for despotism. If a tile is producing 2 commerce it will produce 3 with Colossus, the third commerce is lost under the despotism tile penalty. All our productive tiles are on a river and roaded already....

You may be right though... I haven't counted. IIRC there are 5 river tiles.

The Colossus can certainly be vetoed. I just didn't know what to spend our shields on (A temple seemed pretty pointless, as did something like the pyramids). To be honest, I didn't check the gold. :(

I don't think it needs to be vetoed. It'll give us some free culture to counter that of the AI, remember that we need to keep what we conquer to be able to build up a good sized army. Or do we want to play this as a proper OCC?

I don't think it needs to be vetoed. It'll give us some free culture to counter that of the AI, remember that we need to keep what we conquer to be able to build up a good sized army. Or do we want to play this as a proper OCC?
A variant on the variant! How about OCC going for a Culture20k?

Hmm, after last game some warmongering wouldn't feel bad to be honest. We could consider a 100k attempt, although might be too long a game for this team. :mischief:

Some analysis re: Colossus.

Our maximum population in despotism is twelve with both the bonus food tiles irrigated. (game and cow for +6f, two grasslands and two lake tiles for still +6f, and six tundra forests and/or ocean tiles at -1f each) If I'm reading the screenshot right, we have only three tundra forests to use prior to engineering, two of which are on the river and one of which has furs. Money-wise, each additional citizen in the fields breaks even on the lux tax as long as it's able to produce at least 2 commerce per tile used, right?

So let's see what we have in despotism, with and without the colossus.

Without Colossus:

3 grassland/river/road tiles for 2 commerce each, and one grassland/road for 1 commerce. 2 lake tiles for 2 commerce each. One forest/road/river/furs for 3-1=2 commerce. One forest/road/river for 2 commerce. One forest/road for 1 commerce. Three coast tiles for 2 commerce each. Two commerce from the city tile. [Right? I'm never sure on this one.]

I get 24 commerce at size 12, of which we will have to pay 2gpt towards barracks/granary upkeep; 0 towards military if we keep it to two MPs, a worker and a barb farmer; and (if I'm calculating correctly) 8 commerce towards a 30% lux tax to avoid specialists. That leaves a maximum of 14 commerce per turn towards research, our treasury, or our army.

With the Colossus, we would get a bonus commerce in at least three tiles (the forest and the grassland that aren't on the river, and the fur forest). I'm not sure what base commerce is for lake tiles or the city center (with river); if it's three, we'd get one more for each of those, too. So that's anywhere from 3 to 6 extra commerce per turn once we're working all of the appropriate tiles, or anywhere from 17 to 20 total.

*shrug* I think it's worth it. In any case, I think our next build should probably be the heroic epic, provided at least that mapmaking is sufficiently far away.

As for chopping the forest over the game now vs. later -- is the loss of ten shields to a wasted chop and the loss of a little production on HE worth the faster growth? Dunno, I've done enough analysis for today. ;) Back to work.

edit: With the mandatory victory condition now, a non-specified win is as bad as a loss, right? So let's go for conquest.

Renata

Thanks for that reminder Renata! :thumbsup: I forgot about that. :blush: I can always blame it on the boss... :p

As I said, I think the Colossus is worth it, for the culture alone. No upkeep is important right now. I don't think the forest should be harvested until we have more cities, unless we end up with a useless total of shields. Do we need that food point to grow to size 12? Would a Temple pay back it's upkeep in happy faces?

Yes we would need those (2) food points to get past size 10. A temple would approximately pay back its upkeep. It costs 1gpt, and the cost of one happy face via lux tax is also 1gpt. But whether or not we came out slightly ahead or slightly behind by building it would depend on a lot of factors that are hard to calculate. City size and income are the main ones. It also depends on which way the lux tax rounds, though -- anyone know?

Let's take as an example a hypothetical size-12 Moscow with Colossus, making 27gpt after corruption. Without lux tax, the happiness situation would be

- H CCC UUUUUUUU without temple
- H CCCC UUUUUUU with temple

20% lux tax, rounded up = 6 happy faces
- HHHHH C UUUUUU without temple (not ok, go to 30% lux tax at cost of an additional 3gpt)
- HHHHHH UUUUUU with temple (ok)
Net savings from temple in this situation: 2gpt

20% lux tax, rounded down = 5 happy faces
- HHHHH UUUUUUU (not ok, go to 30% lux)
- HHHHH C UUUUUU (not ok, go to 30% lux)
30% lux tax, rounded down = 8 happy faces
- HHHHHH C UUUUU (ok)
- HHHHHHH UUUUU (ok)
Net loss from temple in this situation: 1gpt.

Yet making 23gpt, the situation is exactly reversed:
30% lux tax, rounded up = 7 happy faces
- HHHHHH UUUUUU without temple (ok)
- HHHHHH C UUUUU with temple (ok)
Net loss from temple in this situation: 1gpt.

30% lux tax, rounded down = 6 happy faces
- HHHHH C UUUUUU without temple (not ok, go to 40% lux at cost of 3gpt)
- HHHHHH UUUUUU with temple (ok)
Net gain from temple in this situation: 2gpt.

To sum up: heck if I know.

Renata

To sum up: heck if I know. Renata
That's the best analysis I have ever seen. :)

Let's just move on. Mad has thrown us a curve ball that none of us may be able to hit. Since none of us have ever seen a situation such as this, anybody's guess could be the right one. HE sounds good to me because we will be at war as soon as we get off this island.

I don't know about the chop but I am willing to concede to space's analysis.

At this point we should be doing everything we can to discover Map Making. Colossus will give us a bit more commerce and that should provide some more money for research so I am for it.

Re the Colossus. Sorry for putting a spanner in the works, I was just interested to see if people actually bothered to calculate whether a wonder was worth the cost or not, particularly since it has to be built. Same goes for a temple. The upkeep it the same as the gold spent in raising the slider until the pop gets to about 9, so is it worth it? I didn't mean to cause a huge debate.

Eventually the Capital will need to produce some units. If the resources exist then they will be either swords, horses or archers. If we're lucky then we will be able to build either swords or horses. It would be good to get the Capital to 15spt if possible in that case. If it's not possible and we can only make 14spt (for example) then maybe we could build half a dozen warriors. If we get iron then we can upgrade them to swords, and if we have no iron but we have horses then we could disband them for 2 shields to get horsemen in 2 turns. This is not a clue by the way. I haven't tried it.

Please skip me on this rotation - I've been a bit busy. ;) ... and I will be busy for a couple of days yet I think. Sorry.

We can only get 11spt before engineering (pre-corruption, if any) with the game forest chopped & irrigated; 13 spt with it in place. (3 forests, mined bg, center tile, mined regular grass, irrigated cow = 11spt). If we go back and mine the cow after we're working all three forests that'd make 14spt, but again, that's pre-corruption, and I think we'd have one shield loss by then in despotism?

edit: I forgot the possibility of mining tundra tiles. Still can't get the max shields past 14 (pre-corruption) in any configuration, though. Once we're out of despotism the arithmetic changes -- we'll get one extra shield from the furs, and any corruption we have at that level of shield production should disappear.

Renata

Please skip me on this rotation - I've been a bit busy. ;) ... and I will be busy for a couple of days yet I think. Sorry.

Space - UP
Renata
Ainwood
Zagnut - just played
Mad-bax - still pretty busy

I can't play today, but probably can tomorrow.

Re the Colossus. Sorry for putting a spanner in the works, I was just interested to see if people actually bothered to calculate whether a wonder was worth the cost or not, particularly since it has to be built.
I started it knowing that it could be vetoed, and I never build temples unless coing for a cultural win (or I rush them for a border expansion maybe). The sole aim was to get to map-making as quickly as possible. I didn't want to build units, as that meant support costs. I figured that the Colossus would increase gold, and in the absence of any other building options, I didn't bother with the 'by how much' question.

The Heroic Epic could have been a worthwhile alternative though.

Normally a Temple is superfluous, in this case I think it could save us some flips. Remember that our Palace will be far away, until we'll be able to move it to a island/continent with lots of pre-built towns on it.

Since I'm not able to play tonight yet anyway: who's in favour of switching to HE?

I say go ahead and build the Colossus. Ideally, I'd like us to have both Colossus and HE before going off to war, but if I had to choose, I'd take the Colossus. (I never have any luck with leaders, anyway, and what do we even want them for in this game other than a army or two? Can't rush anything game-critical, anyway.) If we want to get both, obviously Colossus will have to be first. HE is 200 shields; we should be able to get that in about 25 turns, and I doubt we'll get mapmaking much (if at all) faster than that even with the Colossus. If the disparity is too much when you get there (say, HE in 30, maps in 20 or something), then maybe it'd be better to build a temple, or to get a head start on units.

My $0.37. (Inflation, plus my big mouth.)

Renata

I tend to agree - we can probably get both before Mapmaking. :)

pre-turn
Leave the Colossus build as-is.
Press enter.

1725BC - turn 1
Move warrior S.
Writing due in 3.

1700BC - turn 2
This is Regent so I attack the Barb camp, we get 25g. No promotion.
Can move the slider back a notch, Writing in 2.

IT
Our cabin gets some nice stairs.

1675BC - turn 3
Zzz, hmm, hum, ha? Oh Writing in 1, can't slide the slider back.

IT
We get Writing, start Map Making.

1650BC - turn 4
Map Making due in... 28 turns at a deficit of 2gpt. Send the Warrior Barb hunting.

1625BC - turn 5
Colossus due next turn, we can afford to lose a shield to get 1 more food.
Worker starts the chop, as discussed.

IT
We get Colossus, start... hmm HE is 29 turns, MM is due in 21. We might want to time a pre-build to get the Galley the moment we research it. Oh well, I'll start it and we can still veto it after discussion.

1600BC - turn 6
Forgot I MM-ed for food. :rolleyes: HE due in 19.

1575BC - turn 7
Zzz

1550BC - turn 8
Walking the Warrior.

1525BC - turn 9
Cultural borders expand, good for score, ahum.

1500BC - turn 10
Moscow has grown to 8. Warrior can't find any barbs and moves of the mountain, time to explore the North.
Pooh, pooh, these must have been the most uneventful turns I've played ever.
Over to the next better player. :)

edit: I just realized that I forgot to move the spear in the city for an extra happy face, sorry guys!

The roster:

Space - just played
Renata - UP
Ainwood - on deck
Zagnut
Mad-bax

I can possibly play tonight, but I won't know for sure until I look up from finishing my homework and see what time it is. :) Tomorrow's out for certain, and the weekend's probably toast as well. So if not tonight, I'll have to skip. I'll keep you updated.

Renata

Alright - if you haven't played by this evening NZ time, then I'll assume you've skipped. :)

Oooh, make me do math to figure out when that is. You meanie.

Renata

Well, you need to first clarify what I mean by "evening". BTW - we're now on "daylight saving" time. :D

(About 2-3 AM EST).

Well, my dog ate my homework assignment, so I could play. (Actually, I left my homework assignment in my car, which my boyfriend kindly took for the day to replace a flat tire, and I have to wait for him to get back with it before I can do my assignment. Awfully convenient, no? Anyway, on to the report, which was uneventful.)

1500 BC (preturn) -- looks good-ish. For a single city at 1500 BC in the tundra, anyway. ;) Move spearman back into Moscow, gaining a content citizen. Assume he was on the furs for a reason.

1475 (snooze)
1450 (snooze)
1425 (snooze)
1400 (snooze)

1375 BC (turn 5): Chop on game forest completes, start irrigation. Maps in 11/HE in 12 now. Attack a barb camp and win, add 25g to our treasury. Our warrior promotes to regular.

1350 (snooze)

1325 BC (turn 7): Rather belatedly realize we've been working a forest with no road on it instead of the one that does have a road. Whoops. Fix that, takes a turn off of maps.

1300 BC (turn 8): Moscow grows to size 9, no tax adjustment needed. Maps and HE both in 7 working all available forests. Still -2gpt.

1275 BC (turn 9): Irrigation finishes. Now a trifecta: growth, maps and HE all in 6 turns. :p Send worker out to road the last forest. Spot another barb camp on a hill at the top of the southeastern peninsula.

1250 BC (turn 10): Start road. That's all folks, that was quick. :)

Renata

Well done, Renata. The advantage of boring turns is their speed. :) No such luck for ainwood, he needs to find a way to prebuild ships when building the HE. ;)

The roster:

Space
Renata - just played
Ainwood - UP
Zagnut - on deck
Mad-bax

That should be no problem for ainwood. He will just change a couple of bic, or are they bix?

When we get Maps I presume we will load up the Galley with a couple of units and go hunting. Maybe not declare war on the first civ but be ready if we see a likely candidate. Or maybe we should send the first Galley exploring with no units and build a couple for the second Galley. What thinketh ye?

Presently 'all' our units are pretty busy keeping the people happy and the coffers filled. I say empty Galley for contacts and likely-target hunting, the next 2 each loaded with 2 vet Archers... :evil:

Get save:
Can offset HE by one turn to get Mapmaking one turn earlier. Moot point if forest was worked though.... Better get that forest worked. Don't bother with change, as it will won't speed a galley.

Turn 1: 1225 BC:
Move warrior towards barb camp.
Worker is apparently building a road, but no animation.

IT:
Barb warrior attacks us. We win.

Turn 2: 1200 BC:
Disperse another camp (lose one HP - warrior was on a hill).

IT:

Turn 3: 1175 BC:
Fortify warrior to heal.

IT:
Barb warrior appears.

Turn 4: 1150 BC
Back off tax to 0% and hire a scientist. Will get MM next turn. Cash neutral, but will get an extra point for a specialist instead of an unhappy guy. Work lake for an extra 2 gold.
Leave warrior fortified on hill (can attack barb next turn).

IT:
Get mapmaking. Start Ironworking at max (figure we'll need offensive units, and this is one-tech vs two for horses).

Turn 5: 1125 BC:
Complete HE and start galley. Leave scientist, as we have grown to size 9.
Get a palace addition.
Iron working in 9 at -2GPT with scientist, or in 10 at -2GPT with luxuries higher. Latter gives us 12 "citizen points" per turn, former gives us 10. We'll get more gold next turn with the road completed, so go with the lux for more points. Figure one turn on IW won't make a difference, because 1.) we don't know if we have iron, 2.) won't finihs a galley for 3 turns, 3.) would need to connect iron (maybe build a worker).
Beat barb warrior.

Turn 6: 1100 BC:
Road completes. Options:
Lux 30%, Sci 70%: IW in 8 at -2GPT; 12 citizen points / turn.
Lux 20%: Sci 80%: IW in 8 at -2GPT; 10 citizen points / turn.
Lux 20%: Sci 80%: Scientist hired: IW in 7 at -2 GPT, 10 citizen points / turn.

Go with lux @ 30%.
Decide to start roading our continent.

IT:

Turn 7: 1075BC:
Galley next turn.

Turn 8: 1050 BC:
Galley -> Galley.
Now at -3 GPT.

Turn 9: 1025 BC:
Move galley some more.

Turn 10: 1000 BC:
QSC Stats: 1 city; 10 citizens. 1 Galley; 1 spear; 1 warrior; 1 archer; 1 worker.
IW in 4; galley in one (should we consider the GL??)
Score = 85.

BTW - the naval movement thing threw me a bit, but the easiest way by far is to have a 'goto' and see where you can get in one turn.

I sent the first one out empty. The next can wait around and get archers or swords depending on whether we have iron. If we do have iron, we can maybe save our cash for a couple of warrior upgrades.

Finally a chance to get off the island. :thumbsup:

I don't think we can afford the GL, we need that non-built city ASAP. With all the peninsulas we're bound to find a crossing somewhere.

The roster:

Space
Renata
Ainwood - just played
Zagnut - UP
Mad-bax - on deck

Remember that something needs to be done to the save at this point. We'll have to wait for the go from MB.

I rather like the idea of waiting around another 500-1000 years for someone to build the GL for us and then going and pounding it out of them. Of course, if the AIs are as isolated as we are, it could be a while for it to be built! Still, though, I agree with space; we really can't afford to build it ourselves.

Yay, we're afloat and going places!

Renata

I will fix the save in a little while. Just hang on for a bit.

The save is fixed.

Good luck zagnut!

Thank you. I will play today and report back.

IT - A barb Galley shows up to challenge our first Galley. We build a second Galley.

975 - Turn 1 - Start Archer. Figure that even if we have Iron it may be far away and may take awhile to road to it. A couple of Archers will give us some offensive power when we go hunting.

First Galley destroys barb Galley. Loses one HP. Reduce lux by one. No change in IW.

IT - zzz

950 - Move Galleys. Warrior kills barb Warrior who came out of the fog.

IT - Complete Archer.

925 - Turn 3 - Load Archers onto Galley and it takes off to the north. First Galley is going south.

IT - Discover Iron Working.

900 - The good news is that there are 3 sources of Iron on the continent. The closest is to the NE 4 squares away, so it will take some time to road to it.

I elect to research Philosophy which is a rather advanced tech. It will take 12 turns at break even so Mad can elect to change it if he wants. The Wheel will only take 8 turns. I figure if we meet any other civs they will hopefully have discovered the Wheel and we can trade for it.

875 - Let the Archer finish and then start on Worker so that we can get to the Iron faster. I try sending the northern Galley out into the ocean but the foray only reveals more ocean so I retreat to coastal waters.

850 - Turn 6 - Worker complete. Start Warrior. Reduce lux to 20%.

825 - The southern Galley forays into the ocean to no avail and retreats. The northern Galley does the same. New Warrior is sent to protect the Workers building road to the Iron.

800 - Turn 8 - We can build a Warrior each turn. The problem is that each Warrior costs one gold to maintain and that increases our deficit. Start another Galley.

775 - zzz

750 - Turn 10 - The southern Galley is on the SE side of the continent and has found a likely place to cross. It is not a safe place as it ends on a sea square and not a coast square. But so far it is the only place that offers any chance of crossing without finishing on an ocean square. I set out and then returned because I will leave it to Mad to decide if this is the place to cross. The north end of the continent is no good. There are at least two sea squares before reaching an ocean square.

edit: Perhaps it isn't a good idea to let Mad make the decision about where to cross since he made the map. Maybe it would be a good idea if Mad and Space switched for this turn.

There is a Warrior poised to attack the barb camp in the south on the next turn. The Warrior in Moscow is there to heal. A barb is approaching Moscow from the SE.

[...]edit: Perhaps it isn't a good idea to let Mad make the decision about where to cross since he made the map. Maybe it would be a good idea if Mad and Space switched for this turn.[...]


I would agree, if I didn't have appaling luck with suicide Galleys. :cringe: In CotM6 I was surprised I didn't create a new island with all the wrecks I left at the bottom of the ocean...


Seriously, I think it's a good idea to switch this rotation, what d'ya reckon MB? Downside to that is that I probably don't have time tomorrow since we'll be celebrating Sinterklaas-avond, so it'll be Monday before I can play.

For fairly obvious reasons I can't really take a turn until contact has been made. Apart from anything else it would spoil the fun for the team. I'll jump in the turn after contact is made. Is that OK?

That's fine with me.

pre-turn
Checks OK, press enter.

IT
Moscow Galley -> Warrior

730BC - turn 1
Disperse the Barb camp, no promotion.
Since we do want some upgrades I decide to not do any deficit researcing. This means Philo in 9 instead of 5.
Upgrades will cost 40g each.
Keep the Galley in port to allow the Archer to kill the Warrior without having to invest in happiness.
I decide against crossing since the Northern Galley finds an interesting island.

IT
Moscow Warrior -> Warrior

710BC - turn 2
I'm tempted to try for the Great Lighthouse since we can't afford anymore upkeep, but I'll build one more Warrior.
The Northern island turns out to be only mountains and very small, continuing North with both Galleys.

IT
Moscow Warrior -> Great Lighthouse

690BC - turn 3
Move the eqWorker on the Iron mountain to be turned into a Colony. Send the other one back to mine the Tundra that is worked.
The Northern Galley spots a grey border!!!!!!!!

670BC - turn 4
Create Iron colony, upgrade 1 Warrior.
Move the Galley to the grey border and meet the Indians:
They know Egypt, America and Spain, and have the wheel and Myst, have 8 cities.
They won't trade contacts unless it's for gpt, and we might want to break that deal soonish.
With two Swordsmen available next turn, we should be able to take a city and have some 'pointy stick' diplo pressure.

IT
India asks us to leave and has sold our contact to America, they now both know Philo.
Barbs attack our Iron Guard, it promotes to Elite.

650BC - turn 5
America has 10 cities.
We buy Contact with the Spanish and 9g for our WM.
Spain lacks Iron and the knowledge of Map Making.
So we sell MM and 48g to Spain and get contact with Egypt, The wheel and their TM.
Apparantly there are 2 sources of Horse around, both far away I should add, Lahore has some too... :evil:
Egypt lacks Map Making too, we get their TM, Philo and Myst and 4g (all they have) for it.
Get Indias WM for ours.

OK, so now we are at tech parity (only the AMs are up Horseback Riding) but a little broke.
So I sell Philo to Spain for their WM and 59g (all they have).
OK, next upgrade done.

Load 1 Sword in the third Galley and it sets off. The upgraded Warrior can go North to meet it, and maybe upgrade using the barbs up there.

630BC - turn 6
Moscow grew, and needs some more lux.
Some of the superfluent troops go barb hunting, I decide to keep the Galley out of Indias waters and wait for the Swords.

610BC - turn 7
Egypt found a hut apparantly, so sell our WM for theirs and the 25g.
And we get Am's WM and 1g to boot. :)

590BC - turn 8
Lots of Barbs to be found.
Galley sails.
In other words: Zzzzz

IT
Moscow Sword -> Great Lighthouse (this can of course be veto-ed)

570BC - turn 9
India and America now both have CoL and HBR, no brokerage opportunities.

550BC - turn 10
Disperse 2 Barb camps, but no upgrades (the reg Warrior is probably a write-off).
Move 1 Sword in place to board the Galley.
I'll leave some movement on the Archer Galley, but I would leave it in place and wait for the Swords to arrive.


Here's a map:

I can't quite see under the box in the lower-right corner - is that continent directly connected via coast? If so, then this is important as a harbour will allow direct trade routes. Does that continent have iron?

Wouldn't you know that the crossing would be exactly on the other side of the continent from where we founded Moscow! Any team that founded a city in the NE will have a big jump.

Wouldn't you know that the crossing would be exactly on the other side of the continent from where we founded Moscow! Any team that founded a city in the NE will have a big jump.
Unless there are crossings on all sides. :hmm: There appears to be 'similar' city locations on all sides.

Was this save fixed with regards to the AI workers? I only see a tiny bit of land improvement.

Paging mad-bax, mad-bax to the white courtesy phone ...

Renata

SSShhhhhh! If they haven't hooked-up any resources yet, it makes them easier to kill! We staff need all the help we can get! :D

Bwahh .. well zagnut did ask for a game we could win in the SGOTM4 congrats thread, didn't he? ;)

Renata

The game is fixed. I did not have the know how to add roads to the game without crashing it. So I just gave them an extra worker and let them get on with it. If you can get to the AI before they connect up their resources then you are a better man than I Gungadin. :) The AI will be weaker for 50 turns than in the 1.29f version though, which is a shame because it was already an easy game.

The map is not in perfect symmetry BTW. ;) There is a "pre-conditioned" settling spot in the east that zagnut referred to that you can see by putting the scout on the eastern mountain from the start position. That mountain however was the one that you could not see a river on - so nobody chose it. :) Everyone played the percentages - but they will learn - oh yes.

Hopefully each site would lead to a completely different game but of similar difficulty.

I can't quite see under the box in the lower-right corner - is that continent directly connected via coast? If so, then this is important as a harbour will allow direct trade routes. Does that continent have iron?

Yes, there is a sea route. And yes there are enough Iron sources for all AIs. Only Spain hasn't connected the Iron at this point. Bombay has unconnected Horses and might be *the* target. Spain is the weakest but has less interesting land.

The roster:

Space - just played
Renata - on deck
Ainwood
Zagnut
Mad-bax - UP

Unless there are crossings on all sides. :hmm: There appears to be 'similar' city locations on all sides.
I don't think there are other crossings as we sailed around the entire continent before finding the sea route across to the other continent in the NE quadrant. The fact that Moscow is so far away from the new continent means it will be a long time before we can get reinforcements over.

Mad-bax says the game is easy, but it looks a little daunting to me. The cities that we conquer on the new continent will be corrupt and liable to flip as our culture must be about the lowest. Although the problems with AI workers may have leveled the field a lot. It will be a long time before we can get a new core established on the new continent and move our Palace.

All of this good news indicates to me that we should go to war with the weakest civ and not the strongest. Any thoughts?

Our culture is still pretty high compareed to those 4, thanks to the Wonders. Given the geography I still favor the Indians as the most likely victim. I think we can take Bombay and the Horses, and deny them those furs. Any other AI would be further away still. The strongest are the Americans, ATM.

I agree about the corruption, we want to jump the Palace at some point. Preferably with a Leader.

Once our tundra tiles are mined, we can start building a road across the continent. Sending units on foot to be picked up on the far side by galley will save a little bit of time at least.

Also, we can expect some AI landings eventually on the far side of the continent. With some careful planning, we should eventually be able to capture a town when it's size 2 so we can keep it. In the meantime, if we kill a settler or two we'll be in better shape with regards to workers and might be able to get the road built more quickly. (The same applies to our expeditionary force, by the way -- worker capture should be a high priority.)

Renata

[...]
Also, we can expect some AI landings eventually on the far side of the continent. [...]

:thumbsup: ...which is also why I was generous with Map Making.

Oooh, sneaky. I like. :D

Renata

Good points. It certainly helps to have 5 brains thinking through the problems.

I agree about the corruption, we want to jump the Palace at some point. Preferably with a Leader.Remember: It is disbanding the leader; not rushing the improvement (200 shields should get us a Palace though).

Right! I forgot about those other thingies going on in this game. :blush: I'd better readup on them before I play the next round.

Will leader-disbanding work on a Palace? It wouldn't for a wonder or a small wonder, right? Is the Palace a wonder?

Renata

The Palace is a city improvement IIRC.

The Palace is a city improvement IIRC.Correct - the "Center of the Empire" flag is a City Improvement one, not a wonder one. :)

Hey! I didn't know that. :) That's good isn't it? So in future games it should be possible to pre-build the FP in the capital and then rush a capital elsewhere. Palaces are cheap before you reach OCN IIRC.

I have the game now and will play this evening I hope - unless my boss has other ideas.

As for exploration, please tell me in which directions to go with the galleys - I would have a preference you see ;)

Two Galleys in the North are meant for troop movement... :evil:

The third, which is at the east coast, shoud head further east were sea tiles appear beyond the ocean. :scan:

@MB: Need to skip?

I'm Sorry people. I was going to try to play this evening, but if someone else could play and let me play on Monday then that would help me out a lot. Otherwise I will try to get it this evening.

:(

The roster:

Space - just played
Renata - UP
Ainwood
Zagnut
Mad-bax - needs a skip 'till monday

Got it.

Renata

Sorry, I don't got it. I'm having a bad week. Please skip me.

Renata

OK - no problem. I'll see if I can play later this morning. :)

Get save:
First thing I notice is that Buffalo is a one-tile island city -> We MUST extort this in a peace treaty!

I will gather forces and attack india.

I figure that a harbour is essential. Switch to it.

IT:
Americans start GL.

Turn 1: 530 BC
Eastern galley spots land, but ends on sea.
Load swordsman and send galley off.


IT:

Turn 2:
Disperse a barb camp.
Galley survives! Moves onto coast, but no cultural boundaries visible.

Moscow: At 30% lux, 10% tax we have 13 Citizen points / turn,

IT:
Fortified warrior gets promotd to vet beating-off barb.

Turn 3: 490 BC:
Moving swords into position... We really need a few more galleys for ferrying. Worker is roading to the northernmost point.

IT:
See lahore send out a settler. Its back to size 1 and will autoraze - Bangalore might be a better target.

Turn 4: 470 BC:
America has polytheim. We are now 3 techs behind them. They won't sell. I don't buy.


IT:

Turn 5: 450 BC:
About to move into indian territory, so I declare on them (keep our reputation for now).
Land next to Bangalore - size 3, level 2 and is defended by a spearman (maybe 2, but this is regent!)
Harbour next turn.

IT:
See warrior move to tundra NW of Bangalore.
Moscow harbour => Gelley (ferry duty). Redistribute production to get growth faster.

Turn 6: 430 BC:
Disperse barb camp.
Swords lead attack on Bangalore. First wins, second loses. Archer beats spear, and it has an archer as well! Destroyed to capture, but we are vulnerable to warrior counterattack.

IT:
Resistance in Bangalore ends.

Turn 7:
Sword beats indian warrior (fortified).
Eastern galley crosses ocean and finds Japan. They have contact with no less than 10 other civs! Two techs ahead of us.
I decide not to trade - we'll try and get contacts ourselves.

IT:

Turn 8: 390 BC:
zzzz

IT:
Egypt declares on us (Alliance with India).

Turn 9: 370 BC:
Galley completed, start sword.

IT:
Barbs sink our eastern galley! :cry:

Turn 10: 350 BC:
Dispatch a couple of barb warriors to protect our worker. Will delay further swords north though. Mobilise unit in bangalore.

:blush: Forgot to save the final save, so I reloaded and replayed it. And then forgot to mobilise the troops in Bangalore. :blush: :blush:

New contacts! :thumbsup: There seem to be opportunities for some brokerage, even without selling contacts.

edit: @MB: can you play tomorrow?

Space
Renata - skipped this week
Ainwood - just played
Zagnut - on deck
Mad-bax - plays monday?

I can play today. Will take the game in about 2 hours.

I won't be able to play until Tuesday now. I forgot I had Monday off for the childrens Christmas play, and I can't promise to play that evening because I have to get up at stupid o'clock to get a plane in the morning. Tuesday night looks OK ATM, and Thursday will hopefully be my last day at work until 3rd Jan, in which case I should be OK to play for a while. :crossed fingers:

Tuesday is OK. If all goes well, Zagnut will play today. :thumbsup:

@Zagnut: The warrior was moved off the colony in order to attack some barbs without delaying our swords going on the galleys, so it will need to go back before more barbs arrive.And we might be able to speed teh journey north by galley chaining.

OK. I will guard the colony and see if I can set up a ship chain.

Also, I just took the game and came back here to review your notes. I see that we have contact with all of the other civs. I am going to see what I can get from the other civs by trading maps.

Good luck! I figured that we could get the contacts by ourselves, albeit before the barbs sank our galley! :( So I didn't really explore the trade options much.

If you get a world map zagnut you may want to post it. It's worth having a look at to draw up a plan.

Are we going to build warriors and upgrade to swords, or just build swords straight up? I'd use resource disconnect personally.

Resource disconnect will cost us a worker every time. Not a bad option, because we could do (say) 6 at a time. However, our current bottleneck is in getting the troops to the front-lines. Another galley is on its way (ship chaining), but its still going to take about 6 to 8 turns to get them from Moscow to the other continent, and we're now at war with TWO civs up there!

If you get a world map zagnut you may want to post it. It's worth having a look at to draw up a plan.
I just got here to post the results of my map trading. I thought we might want to talk about strategy now that we know the entire world. (See below).

My notes as I traded:

Decide to offer our WM to the other civs:

Mongols give Horseback Riding, Math, TM, Contact with the English and 19 gold.

Zulus give Code of Laws, Contact with the French, Aztecs and Chinese, TM and 24 gold.

Vikings give Polytheism, TM and 61 gold.

Arabia gives TM and 122 gold.

China gives WM and 1 gold.

America gives 2 Workers (Yeah! That came as a result of the WM trade with China), WM and 3 gold.

Spain gives 2 Workers, WM and 1 gold.

Then I just try to pick up whatever gold is left. Get some World Maps and another 41 gold. We now have all the techs and almost all of the gold.

We have 488 gold. We can research Currency at +1 gold in 35 turns. All of the other techs - Monarchy/Republic/Construction will take 40 turns even at +1, which is about 40% science. I would favor going for Monarchy since we are going to be at war for some time.

We have 4 new Workers which will help in developing our ugly little continent.

I won't continue until we have discussed the situation.

:cooool: :clap:

I just had a little thought: First: What is the OCN for this map? We need to capture enought towns that we can get the FP built. The beauty is that by design we will all benefit from the rank bug in the corruption model! :D

I think we need to get in and wipe-out the indians ASAP to get a foothold on the continent that can be turned into a productive area (FP essential ASAP).

I agree with Zagnut that Monarchy is the way to go.

I don't know how you tell the OCN. I agree that we should try to destroy the Indians as quickly as possible, but that is going to take a bit of time. How about getting embassies and trying to entice the Spanish to keep the Indians busy in the north? The Spanish are behind in techs and so they may not be too much of a threat to take any Indian towns.

Egypt probably isn't too much of a threat. They are weak to begin with and have a long way to travel before they can reach our continent. Therefore we don't have to leave many units behind to defend against them. The barbs are going to be our constant threat.

What to you say to the following strategy:
1. Research Monarchy
2. Use our new Workers to mine two more tundra squares to get some additional shields and commerce.
3. Establish a ship chain from the end of the road to Bangalore.
4. Disconnect the Iron to build Warriors and then reconnect using a slave and upgrade the Warriors to Swordsmen. We also have Horseback Riding now so we may want to build some Horsemen soon. There are two Horses on our continent. The closest one is in the NW, near our road system, but it has a barb camp on top of it.
5. Looking ahead, we should plan for a barb uprising. Maybe we can spare a couple of Warriors to perform sentry duty on mountains.

Monarchy at 10% and/or single-scientist sounds good. We can either buy currency once it's spread around a bit or pry it out of an AI. I'd like to use our peace settlements as much as possible to get towns rather than techs/gold (especially early on), so buying currency would be my preference.

Can the new workers go road to the horsies first? The mined tundra squares won't do us much good until we revolt (most we can get is 14spt in despotism, and we're mostly going to be building 30-shield units). I'd like to start building horsemen as soon as is practicable, too -- our UU is a horse unit, after all.

We're going to have some uprisings to deal with as soon as two civs learn currency, so we're going to need a few units to stay on our own continent.

And another variation on the same question I asked before with regards to the Palace: can the FP be built by disbanding a leader at all? Because if it can't, I'm guessing at least 50% corruption wherever we try to build it (closest town to Moscow would be best, of course), which translates to quite a long build time. In other words, if the FP is not rushable, it's either consider abandoning Moscow or leader-rushing a palace; or start planning the FP build right now in order to build it as efficiently as possible.

And it's always possible we won't get a leader in any reasonable amount of time.

Thoughts?

Renata

@Zagnut: I say it sounds good. :)

You're right about the uprising thingy too, we might be abe to upgrade some troops if we plan well.

I think the Northern continent will serve us well as a safe place to build our Palace-less core. When that lil' land is AI free we might want to jump the FP to the 'main land' to speed up conquest there.

edit: X-posted with Renata. Abandoning Moscow sounds drastic! I do hope the FP is a city improvement too, but contrary to the Palace, I'm not sure, it could well be considered a Small Wonder by the game.

The FP is a small wonder, and so you can't rush it. :( Actually, disbanding moscow may be the way to go. :( :(

So that seems to mean that if we get a Leader we should use it to build a new capital on the Indian continent. That could happen soon or not for a thousand years. If it happens, then great, but I think we should plan for it not to happen soon. That means our short term plan should be to defeat India ASAP.

If we get the opportunity, Moscow may want to build a courthouse, then. If we are able to "leader-jump" the Palace, we'll want Moscow to retain at least some productivity. It's going to take us some time to get one of those Indian towns up to speed sufficiently to make a Palace move worthwhile in the first place (we'll need it to be decent-size, and it'll need a whole pile of worker improvements*), so we have at least that long before we have to decide whether or not we want to abandon our homeland. ;) And we should keep in mind that we will *not* be able to resettle Moscow to make use of its already-improved tiles at whatever level of corruption it'd wind up as, because we will not be able to have a settler handy.

*Just occurred to me that the relative lack of AI tile improvements will work at least somewhat *against* the PTW teams, because we'll have to do it all ourselves! :)

Renata

Good thinking Renata.

The other point to note is that points are important in this game, and Moscow is currently giving us about 50 out of our total 61 points / turn (unweighted)

A courthouse sounds good, but military units and Galleys for awhile yet. If there are no objections, I will follow my 5 steps set forth above.

I have to go out for about 2 hours. If when I return there are no objections then I will play.

OCN is 24 and the default for a large map. Distance corruption is about 55% everywhere IIRC. The easiest Civs to attack have the worst land to grab. (Vikings and Spain). The best land is in Arabia by far, but they are a long way away. How difficult will it be to kill the Arabs and Iroquois if we leave them to last?

So yes, we can free jump, in which case I would suggest Arabia. Building the FP wouldn't be too bad so long as we join foreign workers into the city to get production high quick. Every city we take will be rank 1 for a long time. We could also keep Moscow for a long time, build the lighthouse and use it to open several fronts at once.

I would certainly look to getting the Arabs, Japanese and Iroquois at war. But the more wars, and the more complicated the MA network, then the longer the AI will fight, and the fewer units we will face. In the end it just comes down to hit points and movement points. We must maximise ours and minimise theirs.

2 cents, but worth less.

IT - Move our 4 new Workers to build a road on same side of river as Moscow so we don’t have to cross the river to get to the ship port.

330 - Turn 1 - Warrior kills barb moving on our colony. I figure we need 6 Galleys to do a ship chain to Bangalore. We now have 3.

IT - Forgot to kill a barb that moved onto one of our roaded squares around Moscow. It pillaged the road.

310 - Swordsman => Swordsman in Moscow.

IT - Destroy barb village that was built on top of Horses. Will road to Horses.

290 - Workers complete road and I realize, much to my chagrin, that we still have to cross the river to get to the colony and so the road I just built was useless. Check for trade - none available.

IT - Spanish complete the Pyramids.

270 - Two Swordsmen make it across to India. Now have 3 Swordsmen to attack.

IT - zzz

250 - Still moving units.

IT - Chinese complete the Oracle.

230 - The Arabs and English now have Literature but want a bit much for it. I decline.

IT - zzz

210 - Turn 7 - Move Swordsmen into position to attack Bombay. Lahore on the coast is only a size one city.

IT - Moscow Galley => Swordsman.

190 - Turn 8 - Attack Bombay. Vet Swordsman dies redlining Spearman. Second Swordsman is redlined killing Spearman. Third Swordsman kills Spearman but is redlined. There is still an Archer in the city. Move Archer out of Bangalore. Change citizen to entertainer to keep the peace.

IT - Indians move a Warrior to attack the redlined Swordsmen.

170 - Two redlined Swordsmen retreat. The Iroquois now have Literature. All 3 civs that have it want contact with Spain, WM and about 50 gold. I don’t see that we need Literature now so think we can wait to trade for it later.

I have most of the ship chain set up but cannot remember how to transfer the units. I will leave it to the next person.

IT - zzz

150 - Turn 10 - Two redlined Swordsmen retreat to neutral territory. The Vikings, Arabs and English now have Construction. They want Contact with Spain and about 270 gold. It looks as if the Arabs and English are going to be the tech leaders, with the Vikings and Iroquois close behind.

That's a shame about the failed attack on bombay - but at least most of the troops live to fight another day. The extra galleys will be a great benefit. :goodjob:

Well done, Zagnut. :)

Santa's elves have told me Renata is done writing that paper and has the tree (almost) decorated... ;)

Are you able to play the next turns, Renata?

Space
Renata - UP?
Ainwood
Zagnut - just played
Mad-bax - on deck

:)

I don't think I can play tonight, sorry! Have the aforementioned Chrismas-tree-put-upping, plus I figure I should at least pretend to study for my final tomorrow. I can play tomorrow night after my final, but that's still almost 40 hours from now.

I can't tell from mad-bax's post whether he thinks he can play before that or not. If he can, then it's probably best to just skip me altogether and I'll catch the next rotation. If he can't, then as I said, I can play tomorrow night.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm still not 100% sure it's not a train ... ;)

Renata

I will play tonight and tomorrow.

I have looked at the save, and we seem to be in good shape. I think we need to find a way of getting Moscow to 15spt, or we use resource disconnect to build warriors and upgrade to take the Indian continent.

I'm a little concerned that we have not build the lighthouse, so in lieu of this I think that knights + astronomy has to be the way to go. I don't want to put too much into research however, and I feel that MDI will be OK until Chivalry comes up. We should just go for astronomy right now.

Please trade at least one world map per turn so that we keep an up to date picture of where the barb camps are. The uprising is imminent and we will need to defend the colonies.

Is the Lighthouse really vital? Looking at Ainwood's screenshot, it appears that there are safe crossings both from our continent to the island and from the island to the far continent. (from coast tile, go sea-ocean-sea-coast) If that's so, then we'd only get two (significant but not critical) benefits from the Lighthouse: faster movement/shorter galley chains and a larger choice of landing points overseas, particularly on the large continent.

Renata

No you don't *need* the lighthouse in as much as you can reach anywhere without it. But to finish quickly we need to set up ship chains to wherever our units need to be. In fact they will need to be adjusted every couple of turns, otherwise we lose losts of movement points in innefficient land travel.

We might be lucky and have one of the 'locals' (America: Seattle = probably not, Egypt: Alexandria = possible or Spain: Madrid = best bet) build the GL for us. Maybe we can use some of that money to investigate how long they need?

America is building it in (philidelphia??) - a desert city anyway - will take them aa very long time (especially on regent).

But whoever captures it could be a target - its a lot of shields to invest when you've only got two cities!

Edit: Did you get the actual cities from the save space?

yes (etcetera)

150BC: Pre-turn.
Decide to starve Bangalore to increase gpt.
I won't start any wars this turn so I won't buy Embassies yet.
Need some more boats for the chain so I change the rax in Bangalore to galley for now.

130BC:
Pillage the iron road and set Moscow to warrior.
Retreat our stack towards Bangalore, since taking out the warrior would leave our archer undefended against an archer.
.
.
.

90BC:
Monarchy and Currency become available. I can't get Monarchy and so I don't trade anything. Continue research at 10% just to gradually reduce the cost of buying.

.
.
.

50BC:
IBT:
Celts build Great Lighthouse.

.
.
.

30BC:
The new swordsman I landed in India attacks an indian sword an loses flawlessly. :(
Upgrade 8 warriors.

.
.
.

10AD:
Start out stack ;) towards Bombay.

30AD:
Spanish contact becomes widely known on the "big" continent.. so
Buy Lit from Japan for Contact with Spain and 15g
Massive Barb uprising pop-up appears.


50AD:
End of turn.

I didn't trade because I wanted the cash for sword upgrades, and we can pointy stick all the techs we want anyway.
The stack going to Bombay is not fully healed as I took out a couple of swords on the way.
The ship chain needs one more galley in it to work properly.
I think we need to take out Delhi to get a lot of cities in a peace deal. This will take a while. It would be worth adding another two ships to the chain to increase it's range to the Calcutta area.
Remember the uprising has happened. So build warriors and upgrade them to get rid of our gold, and get all the workers into Moscow under the sword stack in (I would guess 4 turns time). I have traded for a WM so the barb camps are up to date.

We should be able to push on now, but please let us take out the biggest civs (India, America, Arabs, Iroquois) first.

So.. my 2 cents for the near future.

1. Take Bombay and then Delhi. Sue for peace and take as many Indian Cities in the Deal as we can.
2. Take America next. Same deal. Take 3 or 4 cities by force and then make peace. At this point we may take the last of the AA techs in the deal, and if our free tech is not already in circulation trade it for all it is worth.
3. Build lots of boats. Bangalore need build nothing else for a while. We need robust ship chains, and we need to uncover the rest of the map to find any one tile islands. We should put units on these islands. We must not allow one tile island cities to become the capitals of any civs. I don't want to give any clues, but I was aware of this in setting the map up.
4. Techs. I don't think we need any at the moment. Currency is no good to us until we can get a couple more luxes, and I doubt we will need to research past chivalry unless we feel Astronomy is important.
5. Build the FP in Delhi. I would join workers into it to speed this up. We can't build it in Arabia in time now I don't think.
6. Moscow. I would mine the cow and the game for 14spt. I am already mining a couple of Tundra tiles. We can then fill the granary and MM to produce 14shields one turn and 16 the next for 30spt and a horse/sword every two turns. We can get 15spt in Monarchy without starvation.
7. We should line the road to the staging galley pick up point with swords in transit, and use the barb uprising to promote as many units as we can, for strength rather than leader potential. With HE we should get a few leaders which personally I would use for courthouses and then markets when we have luxes.
8. We should declare war as necessary to take out any cities at size 6 (particularly on fresh water). Taking them at 7 is not economical.
9. I am not against breaking our rep. Our research will be pointy stick and we cannot trade resources and lux for a long time, and it will be all over by then anyway. I would ROP rape at will, make peace and redeclare the same turn. Every nasty backstabbing trick. Getting cities in peace deals is quicker, and we can get the size 1 cities which will have no foreign citizens and will become productive quicker.
10. We should select a city for mass producing workers to join into cities. Not waiting for cities to grow will probably be the tactic that will determine the winner IMHO. Washington is an obvious city for this.
11. Once we are in Monarchy we should buy an embassy and get Arabia, Iroquois and Japanese fighting each other. Iroquois vs Japan and Arabia vs either of the others. Just pick the cheapest Embassy. Scandanavia needs to be kneecapped too. They have no right to be as strong as they are. If they get berserks it could be a problem.

So, we need to take cities for unit support as a priority and build nothing but units. When we get to the MA we should switch to horses ready for upgrade to knights, and we should secure a source of horses on the Indian continent because we may have trouble holding our horse colony during the uprising. Lots of short sharp wars continually taking cities in deals. Slow units we have now can mop up the straggling cities while the main fast stacks (knights) are ferried around on ship chains to the various civs. We should try to clear the large continent from 3 places in one go. Either end and somewhere in the middle. Trying to go from one end to the other will take for ever. One effect of the worker screw up is that our movement will be seriously hampered. We have about a dozen swords now. I killed 3 Indian swords, 2 archers and a warrior.
I lost one sword, which is a pity as I think it would have made the difference for Delhi. India has republic, but not monarchy. We can buy Monarchy but it would take all our gold. We should not do it IMO. We should use all the gold for upgrades. 20 swords will wreak havoc.

Note that although the continent we are taking at the moment is easier to get to, it has no luxes. All the luxes are on the big continent. We should switch our attention to it ASAP. Once we have our 20 swords wandering around I would leave them to it and rearrange the ship chain to get to the other continent. I would not wait for the continent to be cleared.

Verbal (or literal?) diarrhoea. Sorry.

Should get interesting now. (I hope :cringe: )

Looks promising! :thumbsup: Too bad about the lack of luxes. I agree on taking America on next. They'll be a tougher opponent if we let them be. Agree on the all out war preparations, too... :hammer:

Space - UP
Renata - on deck
Ainwood
Zagnut
Mad-bax - just played

Got it. edit: I'll offer something to the RNG gods first. Hmm, what to take....? :hmm:

Well Mad, you sure did offer a lot of great suggestions. :crazyeye:

It looks as if the game is going to get really interesting from here. The start was a challenge and I commend you for a good map. I will be out of the rotation for a while. I leave on a Christmas skiing vacation on 12/16 and will not return until 12/25 or 12/26. I do not have any way of playing while away because I do not have a laptop. I may be able to find an internet cafe to keep up with the carnage, but I won't know until I arrive.

Good luck in the game and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season. :xmas: [party]

Well Mad, you sure did offer a lot of great suggestions. :crazyeye:

It looks as if the game is going to get really interesting from here. The start was a challenge and I commend you for a good map. I will be out of the rotation for a while. I leave on a Christmas skiing vacation on 12/16 and will not return until 12/25 or 12/26. I do not have any way of playing while away because I do not have a laptop. I may be able to find an internet cafe to keep up with the carnage, but I won't know until I arrive.

Good luck in the game and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season. :xmas: [party]
Have fun Zagnut! Where are you headed - Vermont?

Have fun Zagnut! Where are you headed - Vermont?
Yes, I am going to Stowe. My oldest son was up there last week and said the skiing was good with several inches of snow every day. I just hope it doesn't rain.

Do we have any other skiers on the team?

Whenever I get the chance! :thumbsup:

pre-turn
Checks OK, press enter.

IT
The Indian Archer kills one of our Swords!
Two Egyptian War Chariots arrive.
The Barbs are definitely going to kill our Horses Colony. :(
Moscow Warrior -> Warrior

70AD - turn 1
The swords can only board the Galleys next turn, one movement will be gone so the Galleys can all move up a spot.
Kill the two Indian Archers, we have an Elite Sword (3/5). I'll let him heal next turn, I think I should wait until the next 2 Swords arrive.

IT
An Indian Sword attacks our Elite and dies. No leader.
One Egyptian Chariot dies, but the second kills a Sword. :(
India sends out a settler pair.
Almost all the AI know Construction now.

90AD - turn 2
Upgrade 2 Warriors and disconnect the Iron again.
Our Swords waiting for the ferry kill 4 Barb Horsies, no upgrades, but no scratches either.
India has settled on our island.
Move the Spear to protect the Workers near Moscow.

IT
India sends another Archer.
Bangalore riots. :smoke:

110AD - turn 3
Land 2 Swords next to Bombay.
Move the Sword back to protect Bangalore.
Kill 4 more Barb Horses, no upgrades.

IT
Archer gets upgraded by a Barb.
Indian Archer wounds a Sword to 2/4 before dying.

130AD - turn 4
Kill 2 more barbs.
Bombay is down to size 1, but it has culture so no problem.

150AD - turn 5
Kill a Barb with a Spear, that's a first! :lol:
I will take a crack at Bombay next turn...

170AD - turn 6
Yessssss, we take Bombay without losses, 2 redlined Swords though :cringe:
I sign peace for Chittagong, Bengal and Jaipur. Chittagong is on our continent, it might be slightly productive even.
Ah yes, Currency fitted into that deal too...

Sign peace with Egypt since we can't get at them, giving them Currency and getting WM and 38g.

The contacts get traded round, so I decide to make the most of 'em.

190AD - turn 7
Dispersed 2 Barb camps, 1 Sword gets upgraded.
Move troops about to take aim at America.
Those cities really help, we now make +16gpt.

210AD - turn 8
Upgrade 3 more Warriors.

IT
Bangalore completes the Galley.

230AD - turn 9
Fiddelin' with the Ship chain, it's not quite right yet.

250AD - turn 10
Refounded the Horses colony, it's next to Barb camp, so a sword guards it.

Looks good, Space. Can we defend Chittagong, on our continent, against the barbs?

Have fun skiing zagnut!

I can play tomorrow tonight. In the meantime, could someone explain to me how a ship chain works? Because I'm clueless ...

Thanks!

Renata

Move units in ship, sail the ship to one that is waiting exactly 1 sailing distance away, wake the units (they should have movement) and load them in the waiting ship that still has full movement, rinse and repeat.
These are the watery rails...
In this case we don't have a coastal city in the right spot, so the units should be loaded when the ferry just arrived (in other words they should already be waiting). The setup is not completely right atm, two galleys in the same spot, but I'm sure you can figure it out! :queen:

edit: @Zagnut: yes, most of the barbs are gone already.

@Zagnut - yes, I am a skiier, but haven't actually done it since I was at University (Nearly 10 years ago :()
In the meantime, could someone explain to me how a ship chain works? Because I'm clueless ...

Thanks!

Renata
What space sad. Key bit to note it that "loading" units (waking them from one ship and loading them on a different ship on the same tile) takes zero movement. Moving them from a ship on one tile to land or another ship on a different tile does take movement. If we had a harbour on the other continent, we could do even better (unload them into a city).

Keep skiing. It's a wonderful sport that you can do for the rest of your life. I have spent a lot of money in my life on skiing for my family, especially with 3 boys, but I don't regret one cent of it. So I die with less money - we had great fun and are still having it. I just want to live to 70 so that I can ski for free at most US ski areas.

Ive skiid at Killington, just up the road from Stowe. North facing and bloody cold but great snow. No queues on the lifts either - except Sundays when New York emtpties onto the slopes. Haven't been skiing now since the kids were borne, but they are 4 and a half now and old enough, so I might try to get to France in February. My wifes cousin is a ski instructor there and owns a chalet. Probably booked though. :(

I haven't gone skiing in years. *pout* I really have to try to go this year, but with my boyfriend in India for a month (not that he skis anyway) and all of my skiing friends and relatives tied up with new babies and such, it'll probably be just me, myself and I. :) Which is all right, actually; sometimes it's fun to just be able to ski wherever you want without having to accomodate the scaredy-cats or keep up with the crazies. :p

Renata

You know what Nike says: "Just do it" Get those old boards out and go to one of the nearby mountains. It's been so cold recently that I am sure they have good snow at Hunter, Windham and even Mountain Creek.

The short version: captured New York and Chicago, lost Bombay to a flip, learned Monarchy, in anarchy (3 turns), have piles of swords wandering about.

The long version:

preturn: Ooh, bright shiny cities. Coolness. Now what to do with them? Go around and check diplomacy, make sure our assets (such as they are) have been sold around to anyone with money -- they have, except for a possible trade for Republic with the Mongols, which isn't worth it. Ten turns left on Monarchy. Sell WM around for a little money.

I like mad-bax's idea of what to do with Moscow, but our workers are currently tied up elsewhere. They won't be able to get more mines built before we're already out of despotism. In the meantime, I can squeeze a bit more gold by making two of Moscow's citizens into specialists and turning off the 10% science and reducing lux to 20%. +16gpt.

Other cities. Jaipur has presumably been whipped, and needs a unit in order to be able to work a tile. Building warrior, ok. Bangalore galley, 28 turns .. switch to worker. Need some roads over here in the worst way. Switch Bengal to galley to compensate. Chittagong stays on galley. Bombay is a pretty bad flip risk, sad to say. Culture there would reclaim three of the five tiles currently claimed by India -- worth it, I think. Switch to library.

Wake swords in Bombay and Bangalore and move all but one in Bombay in the direction of New York.

260 AD (turn 1): Moscow warrior-warrior. Notice the Iroquois have another of those pesky one-tile-island towns.

IT: Scandinavia wants 39g to keep from bashing our puny heads in. Ok, Ragnar. Moscow expands its borders. Mecca builds the Great Library.

270 AD (turn 2): Moscow warrior-worker. Upgrade four warriors to swords. Ring up Lincoln -- yeah, we hate you. Bye, now. Capture a worker and move five units to threaten New York. If any of them get nailed on the IT, I'll wait one more turn for two more swords to arrive.

IT: No attack. Americans have completed road to New York, move a worker in for safety. Hehe.

280 AD (turn 3) Moscow worker-warrior. Capture New York, losing an archer. In resistance. Able to garrison it with a 3/4 archer and an undamaged sword. There's cultural pressure from both sides, all but two tiles of which can be alleviated by building a library. Will set to libary for now, pending outcome of war. GPT jumps by 6.

290 AD (turn 4) Moscow warrior-warrior. Upgrade another sword.

IT: Resistance ends in New York. A barb-hunting sword gets promoted.

300 AD (turn 5) Moscow warrior-warrior. We're up to 22 swords total; 14 units are on the India/America continent at the moment. I suppose the arrival of Monarchy will be as good a time as any to switch over to a horse army. I'll continue shuttling over swords during my turns; next player can decide where to go next.

310 AD (turn 6) Galley chain gets a bit messed up, inevitably. :p Jaipur warrior-? What can we possibly build there? Galley, I guess ... Chittagong grows and will take forever to grow again. As good a place as any to locate the scientist for the next four turns, I guess. Moscow warrior-warrior. Upgrade another few. Ok, for future reference: America's one-tile island is Buffalo. The Iroquois' is Caughnawaga. I can see at least one more on the map, a desert island east of Arabia.

IT: Arabia demands 29g. They will regret it, of course. ;) Bombay FLIPS. Blech. London builds the Great Wall.

320 AD (turn 7) Oh, the Great Lighthouse was built! Missed that somewhere -- it's in Entremont, for future reference. Chicago is captured with the loss of one sword. There's a warrior/settler pair just over the border is Spanish territory -- able to capture with an archer for two more slaves. Chicago is, you guessed it, under cultural pressure. Set to library. I'm a little undecided about what to do about Bombay flipping. On the one hand, we have four swords in the area that could attack in three turns. On the other hand, that would take focus away from the America war. Lincoln will talk, just this turn, but won't give up very much yet -- just Miami, New Orleans (both in desert in far SW of continent), or construction. Decide to continue against America.

IT: Counterattacking American sword kills one of ours.

330 AD (turn 8) Kill the American sword with one of our elites. Moscow warrior-warrior, upgrade two swords, you know the drill.

340 AD (turn 9) Moscow warrior-warrior.

IT: Monarchy learned. Try the revolt immediately, draw 3 turns. Not bad!

350 AD (turn 10) Nothing much. We should be able to trade Monarchy for Construction from either Egypt or France, but I'll leave that to the next player. Two turns to go until next American town can be captured. Washington's already size 7; couldn't get there in time. Still not much on the table from Lincoln, might want to try again after next town taken, or might want to march on Washington. Dunno! Still some barbs wandering about; have a few swords out patrolling and a couple more tied up on the colonies. Ship chain is only moderately functional -- three units are stuck in transit at the moment. If you can get it working properly, it *is* long enough to reach Bangalore. Might want to start dismantling it in favor of heading elsewhere, though.

I need to sleep. Have fun, Ainwood. :)

Renata

Flipping will be a big PITA. This is why I say make peace, take as many cities as we can, redeclare same turn and take the last couple of cities away from them.

Yeah. The problem at the moment is that war is so incredibly slow. It's taking five or six turns per city to get into position and attack. At that rate, in order to take enough cities to make the AI give up any reasonable amount, it'd take like 30 turns of war. We're getting more units over there, slowly, which will help some. Switching to horses will help, too. We're in desperate need of workers; we still can't travel quickly even in our own territory. I wasn't able to buy any in my turns -- none on offer. I did capture four and build two (one in Moscow, one on the other continent), so we will get our road network eventually.

Chivalry will be a great thing for us to have. We'll have to see what turns up with our free tech.

Renata

I'm all for fast units, especially since we can't plop down 'attack' cities to speed up movement. Warring feels like jogging through deep water ATM. Actually it will help when we don't have to break up our road each time to disconnect the Iron.

Once we get all the swords to India/America - we can leave them to it. We can always build more units there later. So we need to move the ship chain, and possibly add some boats to it to take on the next civ - Scandinavia or Arabia? I Tthink Scandinavia as we can progress to the Arabs from India once that is done and dusted. I think we will need 8 to 10 horses. Send them all over at once and then form the chain.

I agree that Scandinavia would be a good point to start conquest on the other continent.

The roster:
Space
Renata - just played
Ainwood - UP
Zagnut - on the slopes :envy:
Mad-bax - on deck

OK: Posting for some advice / input:

Short story: Captured seattle. Am going to starve washington. We are in monarchy and making lots of money. The question: We have a leader - what should we do with it?

It can be disbanded for shields, but apparently these shields can't be used to build a palace or a small wonder. If we've rushed anything in this city, then we can't switch to a palace / wonder. In short: If we want to build an FP, we need to do it brick-by-brick. If we want to build a palace, this has to be via a palace jump, or brick-by miserable brick. In short - great leaders are now even more useless than in C3C (unless we want a colosseum). I think we want an army, which we can fill with swords, so it will be obsolete in a few turns.....

Thoughts?

I think we should start a FP, but its going to take 192 turns. What we really need is a city close to Moscow that can put-out a few shields per turn to build the FP in, then jump the capital. But the more I think about it, I think Msocow will need to be disbanded. Move the capital to the north, build the FP in a nearby city, then move the capital again.

How about disbanding the leader for a courthouse and then building the FP in that city. If we can pump workers out of Washington then we can build it up quickly - should only be about 25 - 30% corrupt, raise lux tax if we have to for 20 turns or so. I think we can have an FP within 30 turns. Once we have the FP, every city on that continent will be rank1 and distance1 I think.

The game has probably got 150 turns or more left in it. 30 turns fro the FP is not a killer IMO.
Jumping the palace would work too though, since we can get more shields quicker. I'm not absolutely sure which would be best, but I just thought I would offer an alternative.

How about disbanding the leader for a courthouse and then building the FP in that city. If we can pump workers out of Washington then we can build it up quickly - should only be about 25 - 30% corrupt, raise lux tax if we have to for 20 turns or so. I think we can have an FP within 30 turns. Once we have the FP, every city on that continent will be rank1 and distance1 I think.

The game has probably got 150 turns or more left in it. 30 turns fro the FP is not a killer IMO.
Jumping the palace would work too though, since we can get more shields quicker. I'm not absolutely sure which would be best, but I just thought I would offer an alternative.
We can probably buy a courthouse now - I was thinking New York. It will cost 288, and we have 488 gold. Its only size 1, but with a courthouse, we can certainly add workers and build it up - corruption will be under 50%.

Edit: Washington is size 9. We can attack it now, and as you suggest, pull workers out of it. There are also three in washington for trade at the moment, so we can use them as well.

The closest town to Moscow that has any production potential at all is Bangalore, which is already on the far continent. There's absolutely nowhere else even remotely suitable, IMO. Bengal and Chittagong are useless for anything other than unit support, and the other AI towns on our continent aren't much better, unless there's been a new one founded since my turns. The best that I'm aware of is in entirely the wrong direction, even.

I opened my save, and I don't particularly like any of the options. None of the second-continent towns has any tile improvements that would make it suitable as an immediate replacement for Moscow. Washington comes closest, but until it gets some mines, the maximum it can make in shields is something like 5. The other towns are considerably worse, and even if the palace was jumped right now, they have so little improvement or infrastructure, and they're so small, that we'd be lucky to get ten shields total out of the lot. We'd also lose our access to horses, because our colonies would be unusable, although all we'd need to do to fix that is to rush one library. And Chittagong and Bengal would still be useless. :)

To sum up, I'm not a fan of an immediate or even near-term jump of the Palace; I don't think the gains would be worth the (permanent) loss of Moscow.

Longer-term, the equation changes, particularly if we capture Delhi, which is about the only town on that continent that's remotely suitable at the moment. But longer-term, the benefits of building a FP also become more obvious, so let's look at that.

Bangalore. Size two at the end of my turns and (I'm presuming) size 3 or close to it right now near the end of Ainwood's. Far enough from America to make joining American workers safe enough, I think. We should also have one native worker floating around somewhere over there if that's preferred. Just don't join the purchased Spanish ones! :)

Bangalore currently has no improvements, unless Ainwood's rushed any. To be worthwhile to build the FP there, I think it will need three. Library for border expansion to make use of the best tiles. Harbor for corruption-reduction and access to the furs. And the courthouse mad-bax mentioned. The leader could rush whichever of these is most expensive; the other two would have to be done with cash. With three MPs and furs-access the town will be happy to size 6; it'll need an unknown amount of lux tax (or sacrifice of the sixth citizen's production) to manage WLTKD at that size.

Maximum gross production from Bangalore at size 6 is 9spt until and unless forest chops turn up more bonus grasses. At the moment it has only one in its expanded radius. Fastest way to get there is to irrigate two regular grasses, mine the bonus grass, and work those three tiles plus the three forests. I'm not quite sure where all of our workers are right now, but I'll assume we have enough of them reasonably close by (don't forget the three MPs :) ) to get Bangalore up-to-size with all necessary city and tile improvements in 10-12 turns.

The next question is how much corruption Bangalore will face. I'm not sure how to judge this. From my save, I really can't at all -- not only is there the despotism/monarchy difference, but Bangalore can only manage a maximum of three gross shields prior to expansion, which really isn't enough to judge by. Ainwood might be able to tell if there's a second commerce gained yet, which might help to judge. (There wasn't one in despotism, even at max commerce, which was six or seven.) If there's not, he might want to rush the harbor to see if connecting to Moscow helps -- we'll eventually need a harbor there anyway, so it might as well be now.

If there are any signs of life in Bangalore with a harbor, I'd be inclined to go the FP route there. Library/courthouse will help, as will WLTKD, and if we're inclined to be really radical, we could even sacrifice the near-useless Bengal and Chittagong to the cause, since without them interfering, Bangalore would be rank 1 from Moscow (if a rather distant rank 1!). The rampaging swords could surely make up the unit-support loss before it killed us.

So to sum up, here's my current thinking:

-- Don't palace jump yet. A palace in Washington or any of our other current towns wouldn't make up for the loss of Moscow for a while yet anyway, so we can afford to hold off on that until we either have sufficient population/tile improvements in India/America to make it worthwhile, or until we capture a more suitable new capital (Delhi).
-- In the meantime, spend the cash to buy a harbor and a library in Bangalore, and send the leader there. Get the necessary workers and improvments there to get it to size 6 and in WLTKD. If it shows any signs of life in terms of commerce (shield production will still be rather low pre-tile-improvements, so might not be the best way to judge), use the leader to rush a courthouse. Get the irrigations and mine down ASAP, and disband the two towns if you think that'll help. Later on we could consider whether there'd be anything to gain from letting it grow more. I'm guessing 35-45 turns total from now to get the FP built in Bangalore, depending on how long it takes to get to full productivity, and on just how much production we can get.
-Keep trying for another leader, presumably at a time when we can fill an army with something other than ancient-era units.
-Reassess the palace jump proposition once we have enough in the way of tile improvements/production potential in a captured town or towns to make it worthwhile.

Or something like that. Just my two cents; feel free to disregard. :)

edit: New York? Looks again. Hmm. Well, it has slightly more production potential than Bangalore does thanks to that game, but it's one town and a few tiles more distant. Hard to tell how much of an effect that will have. Workers are presumably closer-by, which might save a few turns of set-up; plus, the harbor that'd be needed could be build concurrently in Bangalore instead of consecutively, also saving a turn or two. Hard to say.

Renata

As Found: Anarchy! Can't do much.

Indian's move galley next to empty Bengal. Guess we'll lose that....
American sword loses to our sword.

Turn 1: 360 AD:
Decide discretion is the better part of valour, and use our ship chain to block-off the landing sites near bengal (use two swords).
America has only one source of iron, so I send a task-force to delete it.

IT: Indian galley makes for punjab instead.

Turn 2: 370 AD:
Get elite sword beating barb horse.
Since when had the french settled on our continent?
Request india to leave our waters - they "will" but don't. So much for peaceful gandhi.

Ship chain is a pain to work out what galleys are what, so I imgainitively rename them - much easier!


IT:
We get Monarchy.
Japan completes HG in Edo.
Indian galley bypasses us.

Turn 3: 380 AD:
Assault on Seattle begins! First vet sword wins, as does second. We capture seattle, plus two workers.

Most civs have monarchy, so I sell it for what I can. Get WM 30 gold and construction from Zululand. This gets us into the middle ages, and we get monotheism.
Unfortunately, we're the only scientific civ.

Sell Mono to:
Aztecs: 2 GPT, 60 gold + replublic.
Iroquois: 20 GPT, 3 gold + WM.
England: 46 gold.
scandinavia: WM + 30 gold.
India: 29 gold.
Monarchy to Mongols for 16 gold.

After this trading, no-one has more than 14 gold, and no-one will part with even one GPT more.
We now have feudalism on minimum with one scientist. We are making 39 GPT. Best we can do is feudalism in 20, breaking even. I figure that 3-turns for a library is a good investment (will net us an extra 15 beakers / turn), so I switch moscow to this. Will short-rush it with a horse.

IT:
Iroquois start SunTzus.
Our peeps want to start the forbidden palace.
Resistance in seattle ends.

Turn 4: 390 AD:
Damned galley sinks (it was skirting around a spanish galley, and I stuffed-up on the differential movement. I HATE differential movement! :mad: )
Pillage american iron.
America will only give one city for peace. Destroy an archer / settler pair, then attack two swords out in the open with elite swords. The second gets us Ivan The Terrible!

IT:

Turn 5: 400 AD:
What to do with our leader.... Can't disband to build FP, as its classed as a wonder. I <think> he can be disbanded to build a palace, but do we want to move our palace? In any case, we need to build the FP somewhere.

After some good discussion, the plan is as follows: Rush courthouse in New York, and try to grow it. Will connect-up Bangalore and build a harbour there to reduce corruption.

Courthouse rushed in NY, Harbour bought in Bangalore (300 gold :ack: )

IT:
Not much.

Turn 6: 410 AD:
Moscow: Library => Horsemen.
NY - Courthouse => Library.
Bangalore harbour => Library.
Americans start SunTzus.

Decide to keep min research towards feudalism, as we need cash to rush library in NY ASAP.
Capture Washington for the loss of one swordsman. American capital jumps to philidelphia (Where they are building SunTzus). Start worker. Will try to crush resistance ASAP.

IT:

Turn 7: 420 AD:
Rush library in NY.
Lose elite sword redlining american sword.


IT:
NY Library => FP.

Turn 8: 430 AD:
Move some stuff around. Washington still in resistance, but decide that pressing on with attacks will work as well as quelling resistance.

IT:
Washington starves a little bit.

Turn 9:
Capture philidelphia for loss of one sword.
Merge native worker into NY, and its now making 3 SPT. Merge another couple of workers, and are now netting 4 spt.

Turn 10:
Fail to take houston. Lose one sword, kill one spear and one archer. Red-lined spear left defending.
Washington STILL in resistance, as is Philidelphia.
I'd like to take another couple of american cities before we go for peace - if possible move the american capital a bit further away by taking boston and atlanta. However, Buffalo (the on-tile island) is the fourth-biggest city, so however we work it, we'll probably end-up with an american capital in either Miami or Atlanta when we sue for peace (and we MUST get buffalo as part of the deal).

We could actually rush a couple of libraries. I think I left luxuries at 30%, and they can be dropped.

The only option if we can't get buffalo is to station galleys on all the sea and coast tiles to starve it. Looks like a good turnset though ainwood. :goodjob:

Well, they're quite happy to give-up buffalo now, but I'd like to take a couple more cities first - if only to reduce the flip risk, but they will also help as core cities (atlanta especially).

I'm up. Play within 24 hours. I'm on holiday - in theory anyway.

Played a number of turns....

How do we feel about our rep? Coz I would quite like to make peace with America and then take their capital next turn or two (to avoid ROP rape.) :)

Will await (with baited breath) for further instructions.

Well, considering that our research capacity is sadly lacking, it might be nice to keep it for a while. However, I don't expect the game to go past cossacks, so.....

Are you suggesting an ROP with America? I'm a bit confused as to what ROP rape you're thinking about.

Hmm, sounds more like he's intending to break a peace deal but declaring after retreating.
Since this is going to be all-out war, I don't thinlk it'll matter much. Most of our research will be of the pointy stick variety. Dastardly tactics will get us far. The most valuable points are those that are gained early. Normally I don't use 'em, so it'd be nice to experiment a little... :evil:

450AD: As found. Couldn't reduce lux because New York won't tolerate it yet. Fired all the clowns and hired tax men instead. Stak on single scientist research for now. Good Job on Moscow! 2 turn horses is exactly what is required ATM.

460AD:
*esword kills spear and takes Houston.

470AD:
Resistance quelled here and there. Start moving troops toward Atlanta and Boston. I will leave Boston alone, as I am afraid the palace will jump to Buffalo.

.
.
.

500AD:
Take Atlanta for the loss of 1 vSword. I know I know. But it takes so long to move swords around.
They won't give up enough for peace yet. I want to break our rep. Not sure if it would go down well with the rest of the team however. Atlanta comes complete with a courthouse. Cheers Abe :)

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.
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520AD:
Japanese land a settler pair right next to an eSword. It is soooo tempting. But I resist as where they will settle will be a good city for us later.

530AD:
Take Miami. I can get a lot of stuff from America now, but Boston will flip everything. So I can take peace and declare again, or I can just press ahead and take Boston, hoping that the capital won't go to Buffalo. It's thier biggest visible city. :(

Take peace for Baltimore, New orleans, Detroit, Buffolo, Feudalism, 9g and World map.

IBT:
We get kicked out of America.

540AD:
Rush a settler from Washington.

I decide not to continue. I think we should look at the save and decide what we should do next as a team.

Forgot to mention... and I don't have the save open so I might not be perfectly accurate, but..

Research is currently set to Engineering. My intention was to go to Chivalry. There are no beakers towards it, I just didn;'t get round to switching after getting Feudalism.

The cattle tile SE of New York needs roading to speed our forces into India, to get those horses back!

New York needs watching closely. It is full of Americans and desperately unhappy with life. I suggest we strip it of it's population by rushing settlers from it as soon as the FP is done. The save is a bit of a mess as I just saved and exited on the point af declaring war against America again. Sorry.

3 of the added citizens in NY were added to speed the FP. Maybe the soundest defence is to completely wipe-out the americans. How many cities do they have, and how many are a long distance away?

The version I just opened has us at peace with the Americans. At any rate, though, they have three cities left. Boston, which is nearby and needs to be taken out regardless, plus St.Louis, on a three-tile island over by Buffalo, and San Francisco, out east of Kolhapur; i.e. quite a long jungle slog away. Both towns are size 2; no idea where the capital will go and not sure it matters much. If anyone has a flip calculator, we could evaluate the odds in New York once Boston is out of the way. I'm estimating 7 spt in New York once one more worker is joined, by the way, if we do whatever it takes to put it into WLTKD (any non-American/non-Indian ones about, even? I know we used to have a couple of Spanish ones on the pillage detail). Since we're in Monarchy, we can make use of a third MP there (not to mention in Moscow), too.

Noticed one other thing, by the way -- Washington is about to build a settler. Tsk, tsk, mad-bax. :)

Renata

Well, he might be using those settlers for population redistribution, rather than founding cities! :D

Whatever he was planning to use it for, I think we need to devise a suitable punishment for the game designer almost breaking the rules. Something nicely creative, perhaps in keeping with the Russian theme ....

Tie him to a chair and make him watch old Soviet propaganda films?

Renata

:D

Actually you are right... No building settlers is the rule... No building cities is what I thought the rule was. :o I just wanted to get rid of Americans from that city ASAP to reduce flip risk.

Thanks Renata.... We'll have to change the build to something like library or court.

I guess this makes me up, got it. I don't know when I can play, but I'll try to find some time somewhere.

The roster:
Space - UP
Renata - on deck
Ainwood
Zagnut - on the slopes :envy:
Mad-bax - just played

[...] If anyone has a flip calculator, we could evaluate the odds in New York once Boston is out of the way. [...]

There's a built-in flip calculator in CrpMapstat. It only gives the current situation, so it cannot be used to calculate things in advance, but still, I find it very useful. :thumbsup:

edit: The current situation from the save

More remarks:

New Orleans is about to be barb invaded, this could cost us some serious money. Anyone against disbanding that city? It is far away and it has Desert and Mountain tiles ony.

It'll take a while before we can get to St. Louis, so we'll have to do this trick again. Take Boston, hopefuly San Fran will be the capital, get St. Louis in a deal (may take a while too though, before they're willing to talk again) and attack San Fran after that. When it's St. Louis where the Palace goes, then take San Fran in the deal and sign peace. We can save that one for when we've reached Egypt. Since it's not a 1 tile we should be ablt to take it at some point.

Gift it to the Indians or Spanish and take it back in a peace deal later.

How soon befor we can leave the Northern Continent to its own devices and just use units there to finish the job?

I want to adjust the sip chain about now for the southern/Eastern Continent and use units from Moscow for that. We could have 8 to 10 knights on the turn Chivalry is learned with which we can start taking out the vikings. Let's go for it I say. 1 front will never be quick enough. :evil:

I'd say we could probably start shifting that now. We should have enough units there to finish off Boston, and we'll require a regroup after that anyway. The FP will finish in 25 turns or so, at which point we'll be able to start actually building (as opposed to maybe the occasional rushing) units on that continent. I'm guessing we have enough units there to still make progress for that length of time, which should allow Moscow's production to be shifted elsewhere. The turn reports have sounded quite efficient so far -- not many units lost -- which should help. Unless Space reports in and says we're down to only ten units or something, I'd go for that.

Renata (sorry for incoherence, haven't slept!)

Do we have a save route to the west part of the southern continent? I seem to remember a preference for Scandinavia.

Re the other continent: How 'bout mopping-up those without feudalism / iron? knights against pikemen is a bit unneccessary ATM IMHO.

I agree. The others should be made to war however. I would invest in a couple of embassies and create an intricate tangle of wars. This is efficient as it will give us fewer units to deal with and delay the research of gunpowder.

Guys and gals, I can't play until tomorrow night. If somebody else wants to have a go before me, be my guest.

I'll do it. :) Laundry night tonight; have to keep myself occupied somehow. :p

Renata

Ok, that was not my best set of turns ever, to say the least.

Biggest ignominy: got New Orleans razed on us when I mistook an American settler pair for a Spanish one. (No units in NO, obviously.)

Second biggest: Lost our trading rep, apparently by breaking the peace deal with America. Chivalry came available to trade for that same turn and cost something like 20gpt; I held off wanting to build a few more horses, and a few turns later it was impossible to buy. I didn't think that could break a trading rep, but I can't think of anything else it could be.

Third biggest: Lost a 20gpt payment to us by declaring war on the Iroquois, who must have been paying us for something or other.

A maybe? Redeclared war on India on the second-to-last turn with a galley in their territory. I'm not sure if this killed our ROP rep or not; when I checked with Scandinavia (who we have no alliances or anything with) the following turn, I could still make an ROP. So I'm not sure.

More stuff that stunk but wasn't my fault: lost three swords taking Boston, blech. Lost a galley to a barb, double blech.

At any rate, now that all of that nastiness is out of the way and you all want to clobber me, the good(ish) news. America is down to one town (San Francisco), which happens to be on our continent -- I got St.Louis and engineering in the peace deal after taking Boston. More to the point, there are three swords and a horse with movement left on them right outside the borders. Next player can decide whether or not to just wade right on in or declare nicely first. It takes 50% lux to keep New York happy making 7 spt while at war with America.

13 turns left on the FP build in New York, down from 30 when I got the game.

We're back at war with India, and just took Kolhapur. In addition to the four units at San Fran, we have another four or five outside Madras. There are a couple of horses at (I think) Atlanta; three units are in New York, and there are another four or five spread around here and there. A couple of those can probably be pulled out once America is gone if reinforcements are needed. Several cities are empty.

The galleys have all been shifted to our east coast, and workers are building a road over there from Moscow. Seven units have been transferred to galleys -- mostly horses, a couple of swords. A couple more horses are out and about but still a few turns away; next player can decide whether or not to wait for them. In any case, I think our best bet is to go for the Celtic territory next. Entremont has the Lighthouse, which will be very valuable to us, and although the Celts have Feudalism now, they lack (native) iron. The next player might want to check whether they've been able to trade for it or not before making the final decision. Option 2 is Arabia, I think. They've been at war with the Iroquois for a while (since before my turns), and have lost three or four cities to them. They don't have any iron hooked up.

Some more notes:
I did buy several embassies. We're at war with the Iroquois, and I spent over 200gp to buy in Japan. Japan has captured one Iroquois town. I also declared on the Zulu, and tried to buy in Scandinavia against them, but they wanted far too much. I bought in England as well (England has the Great Wall, by the way), but haven't seen any sign of city-swapping in that area yet. Haven't noticed any additional wars breaking out spontaneously.

What else -- okay. I bought a library in Chicago, which brought in the horses on expansion, so we now have a source of horses independent of the colony, at least provided Bangalore doesn't flip to Spain. The library there should probably be built as soon as possible, because Toledo's culture expanded again. Since the iron by Washington is unhooked, we can run a pillage/upgrade scheme on horses to knights (if we can ever get the cash) by unhooking the iron by Moscow.

I'm building a few barracks in former America. Might be worthwhile building a few cheap MPs somewhere or other if we have the productivity or the cash to spare.

Since I ruined our opportunity to buy Chivalry with gpt, I think the best choice will be to pointy-stick it out of India. They'll need some caution, though, because they now have both that and Feudalism (obviously), and have recently hooked up their horses at long last (they always had iron). Not sure if attacking them again will prove to be the best choice in the long run, but with Kolhapur between me and San Francisco, I couldn't resist. (Kolhapur only had two reg spears.) Space, you can tell me how it goes.

Cheers, all, and please don't clobber me.

Renata

That sounds like one tough set of turns! :eek: Sorry to have put them in your lap, Renata. I'll try to make up by :hammer:-ing India.

Oh, one more thing to take into consideration in the Arabia or Celts sweepstakes: Arabia has the Great Library in Mecca. I'm not sure how useful it'd be, especially compared to the lighthouse (which will also enable trade between continents IIRC), but I thought I'd mention it.

Renata

Got it, and I'm playing and in turn 2. I have a quick question: India already want to give up Chivalry for peace. I am inclined to take it and upgrade the Horses to knights before sailing to the other continent. India isn't ready to give up any cities just yet, but I guess that can wait, getting Chivalry in more important ATM, agreed? Since our rep is already shot, we can declare again when we're ready. :evil:

What kind of position are we in to inflict more damage on India? I presume the FP is iminent, so a couple more indian cities might be nice. However, if we're losing horses (and have the cash for upgrades), then go for it. :)

Considering India have the aforementioned combination of Feudalism, horses, Chivalry and iron, I wouldn't argue. Am now kicking myself for sending all the horses over to the boats already, but I guess it'll take us a couple of turns to get the cash anyway, right? (Say "right" it'll make me feel better -- I'm having a godawful day. :p )

The horses and swords on-continent already will go a lot futher against Spain than against India at the moment (hint, hint), even if we lack the cash and/or local barracks to upgrade most of them right away.

Edit (crosspost with Ainwood) -- Should be about ten or eleven more turns to the FP. The concern with India is as I mentioned above, but I presume Space has taken Madras without too much trouble, so maybe they're not as well off as I think? It'll take all the horses a few turns to get back to Moscow for upgrades anyway, so ... *shrug* Up to her, anyway.

Renata (good luck!)

Hope your day will get better, Renata. :)

Yes we are losing Horses, that's why I'm tempted to make peace already, we lost a Horse and a Sword and I think the RNG wasn't too bad either (pikes!). India has War Elephants and doesn't even need Horses anyway.

The FP will take at least 13 turns probably more because America had a city elsewhere :cringe: the people are unhappy so we need entertainers or hurt our already meagre upgrade ability.

I will not be playing anymore today, but I guess I can finish tomorrow night.

Where the heck did America get another city? I know I took the only one they had but San Francisco (capital) when I made peace the last time, and that was only a couple of turns earlier. Probably that settler pair that killed New Orleans. *sigh*

Sorry once again.

Renata

Don't beat up yourself over that, I should have checked before declaring.

Well, except for the minor detail of an extra three or four turns of unhappy foreign citizens, it makes sense to take San Fran anyway -- a very remote capital like the Americans have now is a lot less likely to cause flips, I'd think. So neither of us should beat ourselves up. Not over this anyway. :)

It occurred to me last night that there was nothing much we could have done to prevent it, anyway -- with that settler out and about, America wouldn't have died no matter what happened. About the only chance would've been for me to realize New Orleans was threatened, rush an archer, and try to kill the settler pair. But reg archer vs spear-on-mountains is rather a long shot anyway.

Renata

[...] But reg archer vs spear-on-mountains is rather a long shot anyway. [...]

Indeed, quite literally so. :lol:

Did we get a city razed bya settler / spear pair! :eek:

I would have relied on these to be flagged as defensive units, and assumed that they would ahve walked right-on-by past all sorts of empty cities. Strange AI behaviour!

We did indeed. Am hugely embarrassed. Apparently the defense-only flag doesn't much matter when there's no defense. :P

Renata

Er, the evening is over already again and I didn't get to play the turns. I'm afraid you'll have to wait some more. :sleep:

pre-turn
Boston is about to riot, fixed it.
Press enter.

IT
Boston Worker -> Worker (I will use it to put some Russians in New York. ;))

660AD - turn 1
Declare America again... :evil:
India has pikes.

IT
India attacks our stack with a Warelephant, our *eSword wins (2/5).
America sends out one of its defenders... :smoke:

670AD - turn 2
we take San Fran (we lose a vHorse and vSword), but America lives on :cringe: well, maybe we can make peace later and get Chivalry from them.
Ahah, it's Denver, tucked away in the moutainous strech.

Attack Madras and claim at the loss of 1 vHorse and 1 vSword.
India will now give up Chivalry and 61g (all its money save 1).
After consulting the team I agree, bad move Ghandi.

680AD - turn 3
Land all Horses to return to Moscow and upgrade.

690AD - turn 4
Kill an American Spear, but they still don't want to make peace.

IT
Iroqs and Arabia sign peace.
Atlanta finishes the Rax

700AD - turn 5
Upgrade 2 Horses in Atlanta, America still doesn't want peace.
Trade maps around and there's an interesting development: Japan as a city near Silks on an island south of Moscow.
I might be sensible to switch allies, and attacks Japan, we can use some happiness.

710AD - turn 6
Upgrade 5 more Horses. FP due in 10. :( America still doesn't want peace, all our troops are city bound for policing duties.

720AD - turn 7
One more upgrade, move the Knights back to the ships.

IT
The Zulu want peace: no need for that yet.

Not much to tell about the last turns. I've cancelled the Allience with Japan so that we can make peace with the Iroquois: they have a ship on our coast.
On the last turn I messed with the slider and forgot to check Moscow. Serious weed! Sorry.

Maybe I've lost us some time by not attacking India or Spain the last couple of turns, but I think that our prime concern is the FP. The Americans being not willing to talk peace was a serious let down.

Hello all, I have returned from computer oblivion. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas holiday.

I will try to catch up on all of the posts and would like to just take my turn in the regular sequence.

I did, Zagnut, thanks. I hope you had a good time too. :)

The roster:
Space - just played
Renata - switched with Space
Ainwood - UP
Zagnut - back from the slopes and on deck
Mad-bax

Ooh! I had forgotten about this (somewhat). Might try to play tonight. :)

:bump: ahem

Now that we are solid last again (in terms of no of turns), can we please get playing again? ;)

:bump: ahem

Now that we are solid last again (in terms of no of turns), can we please get playing again? ;)
:blush: I will try to play today - got some admin stuff to do first though. :)

As found:

Will look to attack the Celts to capture the Great Lighthouse, secure wines and obtain a central foothold in the southern continent. Most of our knights are on their way there, so this is preferable to attacking in the north.


IT: Iroquois land archer next to Boston

Turn 1: 760 AD:

Move Knight to cover Boston.
Mobilise fleet in the south.
Miami will riot, so hire a taxman.

IT:
Archer loses to knight.

Turn 2: 770 AD:
MM New York to shave a turn of the FP Build. Due in 3.


IT: Iroquois want peace, but they won;t give us all their cities and techs, so I decline.

Turn 3: 780 AD:
Moscow knight - marketplace.
The world knows theology and a coupld of civs start leos.

IT:
A couple of civs start sistenes and sun tzus.


Turn 4: 790 AD:
Its really taking a long time to get to the Celts. :(
Hire a tax-man in kolhapur.

IT:

Turn 5:
NY - FP => Barracks.
Seattle library => Barracks.
America will talk. I get peace, theology and invention for 55 gold lump-sum.
I guess we should start researching, so I go gunpowder in 12 at a slight positive GPT (we'll beat the AI to MT, hopefully).
Actually => Once reassigning entertainers due to peace, gunpowder in 11.

Turn 6: 810 AD:
zzzzz


Turn 7: 820 AD:
Chicago barrack - knight.

IT: Japan kick our galleys out of their territory. :mad:

Turn 8: 830 AD:
We've got a new target - I'll attack Japan (secure their islands!)
Declare on Japan and unload knights next to Nagasaki. Mobilise two knights from Moscow to attack Matsuyama (secure silks).

IT: Not much...

Turn 9: 840 AD:
Stop a riot in kolhapur.
Take nagasaki for no losses.

IT:
zzzz

Turn 10:
Unload knights next to Shimonoseki.
March on Yokohama.

Turn 11:
Take shimonoseki.
Lose eliete sword attacking yokohama.
Adjust science for GP in 3 at +17 GPT.

Turn 12: 870 AD
Take Yokohama at the cost of one sword and one knight :(

Turn 13: 880 AD:
zzzz

Turn 14:
Hire enough scientists to get GP next turn at 0 science (5 required).

IT:
Get GP, start chemistry (11 turns at +2)

Turn 15: 900 AD:
Good news is that we have saltpetre, and we are the only civ with gunpowder. There is not an abundance of saltpetre on this map; in fact most civs don't have it! :D

Very good news about the saltpeter! And turning on Japan will get us that extra lux. :thumbsup: Thanks for playing 15 turns this'll get us almost back into it... :yeah:

The roster:
Space
Renata
Ainwood - just played, regardless of other duties :thumbsup:
Zagnut - UP
Mad-bax - on deck

I've got it and will attempt to continue our glorious march to free the masses and punish their evil overlords.

Take game and see that we are at war with Iroquois, Japan and Zulus. Find 2 Knights adjacent to Matsuyama which ainwood kindly delivered. I will put them to use next turn and hopefully secure the Silks for us.

I think ainwood just declared war on Japan to get their island between the continents. I don’t think it is a good choice to attack the Japanese mainland at this time. Their capital is on the coast, on a hill and size 11. Any other city we take will be at great risk of flipping. I think I will continue the plan to attack the Celts first. We are also now at war with the Iroquois who border the Japanese to the north and the capture of the northernmost Japanese town would likely be attacked by the Iroquois and lost.

IT - Spanish found a city next to our Horse colony and it is lost. However, we have another source of Horses.

910 AD - Turn 1 - Capture Matsuyama. Start Harbor. Send 3 empty Galleys from the mid continent island back to the mainland for more troops. It will take 5 turns to get there. Only 2 full Galleys are available and they start the journey to the Celts.

Load 2 Workers on a Galley to send them to Matsuyama and connect the Silks.

IT - Some more civs start Sistine’s and Leo’s.

920 - Japan will not give any cities for peace. I stay at war with them and move 2 Galleys into their territory, but they are on the way to the Celts.

IT - Japanese show their Sumurai to warn me off. Philadelphia goes into unrest. I give it a taxman and remember to load CivAssist.

930 - Moving units.

IT - zzz

940 - Before I start a war with the Celts I make peace with the Japanese. They give 67 gold, 20 gpt and their WM.

I am going to stop at this point and call for a conference - I don’t see how we can win this game in the next thousand years. Our lines of supply are so long and our production of units is so slow that it will take forever to conquer the other civs. I only have 4 Knights to take on the Celts. It will be another 20 turns before more are available. We could go back to disconnecting the Iron and building more Horsemen but we don’t have a lot of money and are using most of it to get to Cavalry ASAP (6 turns to Chemistry).

I would suggest that we not invade the Celts now because we probably won’t be able to defend any city that we capture for more than a couple of turns. Also, do we have a short-term and long-term strategy for the game?

I've got it and will attempt to continue our glorious march to free the masses and punish their evil overlords.

Take game and see that we are at war with Iroquois, Japan and Zulus. Find 2 Knights adjacent to Matsuyama which ainwood kindly delivered. I will put them to use next turn and hopefully secure the Silks for us.

I think ainwood just declared war on Japan to get their island between the continents. I don’t think it is a good choice to attack the Japanese mainland at this time. Their capital is on the coast, on a hill and size 11. Any other city we take will be at great risk of flipping. I think I will continue the plan to attack the Celts first. We are also now at war with the Iroquois who border the Japanese to the north and the capture of the northernmost Japanese town would likely be attacked by the Iroquois and lost.

IT - Spanish found a city next to our Horse colony and it is lost. However, we have another source of Horses.

910 AD - Turn 1 - Capture Matsuyama. Start Harbor. Send 3 empty Galleys from the mid continent island back to the mainland for more troops. It will take 5 turns to get there. Only 2 full Galleys are available and they start the journey to the Celts.

Load 2 Workers on a Galley to send them to Matsuyama and connect the Silks.

IT - Some more civs start Sistine’s and Leo’s.

920 - Japan will not give any cities for peace. I stay at war with them and move 2 Galleys into their territory, but they are on the way to the Celts.

IT - Japanese show their Sumurai to warn me off. Philadelphia goes into unrest. I give it a taxman and remember to load CivAssist.

930 - Moving units.

IT - zzz

940 - Before I start a war with the Celts I make peace with the Japanese. They give 67 gold, 20 gpt and their WM.

I am going to stop at this point and call for a conference - I don’t see how we can win this game in the next thousand years. Our lines of supply are so long and our production of units is so slow that it will take forever to conquer the other civs. I only have 4 Knights to take on the Celts. It will be another 20 turns before more are available. We could go back to disconnecting the Iron and building more Horsemen but we don’t have a lot of money and are using most of it to get to Cavalry ASAP (6 turns to Chemistry).

I would suggest that we not invade the Celts now because we probably won’t be able to defend any city that we capture for more than a couple of turns. Also, do we have a short-term and long-term strategy for the game?
I think its worth attacking the celts, as they have no iron, so should collapse fairly easily. The main reason for attacking them (for me) is to secure the great lighthouse - this will really speed-up the supply lines, because of the differential naval movement.

re the Japanese - I only declared on them because they kicked me out of their territory when I went to attack the celts. Another reason why we need teh GL -> to open up sea routes that aren't dependent on wandering through other civs' territories.

Are we getting any production out of ex-America yet?

When you say 20 turns, do you mean literally? Can we take any units from the Japanese island? This is only regent; I'd hope the Celts wouldn't have too many units in Entremont, but maybe you could check. A sneak attack would keep them from reinforcing.

I wasn't expecting the Japanese detour. :)

Renata

Renata

America is starting to produce some Knights. However they are far away from the action in the Celtic homeland and should probably be used to mop up the other cities on their continent.

The 20 turns was a guess and was based on the fact that we don't have many Knights available and are not producing them quickly. 3 Galleys are on the way back to the homeland, but by the time they arrive, there will not be 6 Knights available. Then they have to sail the long trip over to the Celts. I agree that the GL will speed things up.

I guess I would like your thoughts on whether we should focus our attacks east and west from ex-America or whether we should strike at the middle of the other continent (Celts) and work north and south from there. Either way will take a long time. Cavalry will obviously help but we should try to build up our gold supply to be able to upgrade Knights. Do you think it is still worthwhile to disconnect the Iron and build Horses to upgrade?

I haven't opened the save and so my comments may be completely out of line. We should have - or nearly have the FP built. It should be possible to acquire a reasonable core around this city and increase military production. I think that we have to build horses and upgrade and am not completely happy with the rush to MT. As has been said this is Regent. Half a dozen knights can run riot against most civs (but not the Japanese ;) ) If we can build a spear in each city and then build courthouses and horses the tipping point should be reached earlier than you think. It always seems difficult before the tipping point is reached. I still beleive we are doing ourselves a disservice by not manufacturing a widespread and complicated tangle of alliances and wars. Allowing the opposition the luxury of building stuff is a bad thing IMHO.

For me, we should turn science right down or off. Use every red cent for upgrading horses to knights, and wait patiently for the tipping point. We can then research MT after this.

The Celts are a good target for the GLH, but I'm not sure what the position is with America and India. It was my belief that we could manufacture the units to conquer the Indian/American subcontinent on that landmass, and use Moscow to build a horse every other turn for making a start on the big continent.

The next 20 turns are crucial of course, and not losing units is very important. We should be very careful with them. I will look at the save this evening and see what's what. :)

:bump:

If there is no possibility of someone else playing, then I will try to get some turns done over the weekend.

Wasn't Zagnut already playing?

Yes but he hasn't posted for 3 days - I just wanted to know if he could play, or if he wanted a swap or skip. He should play if he can obviously.

He hasn't submitted the 4 turns he's played, it would be a shame to let those go to waste.

Thanks, here I am. Still here after all these years. :)

Yes, I can play. Sorry for the delay. Will start in about 7 hours.

I will whack their butts and then post. I will follow Mad-Bax's suggestion to switch to Horsemen and then upgrade them. I will delay the Celtic invasion because there are only 4 Knights available for the job and while I am sure they will be successful in capturing the first Celtic city, I am not sure they can defend it after capture.

I will also turn off science to get money for the upgrades and see if I can entice a tangled web of alliances in a world war. Yippee!!