SGOTM6 - Celts. Xteam Spam Thread. ;)

Welcome to your team thread for SGOTM06. I hope you enjoy the game.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SGOTM6-START.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Celts
World size - 100 wide by 130 high.
Difficulty Emperor (approximately)
Landform Contiguous Pangea

Here are a number of links you might find useful.

The Constitution (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1733966&postcount=61)
GOTM Reference Thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=71788)
Upload a Save. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm.php)
Download a save. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm_submission_list.php)
SGOTM06 Maintenance Thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=110909)

This Months' sponsored variant is Cultural Celtic Communists the rules for which are as follows.

1. The only allowed governments are despotism and communism.
2. You must win by 100K victory condition.

Your save has been uploaded to the server and will become available to you on the 7th February.

Leif here, reporting for duty!! :salute:

Looks like another interesting one. Hope we do a little better on this one though. :p

Went out and bought some candles and thick, intellectual books to see if it enlightens me to the cultural focus of this game. :rolleyes: Somehow, I don't think it will help. ;) :D

Personally I just set down to break my number 1 spot in 100k chieftain in HoF as a warmup.. looks like I will finish somwhere between 850AD and 900AD.. :)

Oh yeah, I am here.. and HI to the rest of the team since i am new here :)

:wavey: Welcome to the XTeam Gyathaar!! You will have a lot of teaching to do to us cultural illiterates. :eek: I need to go and read your 100K HOF Game! :cool:
I'm sure Alan will be checking in soon. We have him on an assignment to destroy the French, atm. :mischief:

Nothing to read.. I havent gotten around to do the writeups yet.. :p

Hi folks, welcome to the mad house. :wavey:

I've been wresting with the code that handles SGOTM submissions so that it will do C3C as well, but still pick up players who use the wrong S/W version. I think I've hog-tied it now, but migrane brought on by trying to grapple with the multi-faceted challenge that is our SGOTM5 didn't help.

We have 50% new players on the roster this time. Tomoyo is known to the old lags, as we have played some SGs with him. We are hoping that he, WillowBrook and Gyathaar will bring new insights to our cultural deliberations.

You face a challenge. I am a self-confessed war-monger. Witness the effort it takes to force my mouse finger to select the Peace Treaty option in F4 currently. I'm just having too much fun with Russian tanks against Aztec pikes. Lief and Gator will speak for themselves, but I fear they are of somewhat similar ilk. I may even bear some responsibility for leif's bloodlust, along with his Scandinavian ancestry.

So, let's find out who we are, what we want to achieve out of this game, and what bright strategic ideas we have. I'll start by saying:

Level: I haven't played a lot of Civ, mostly GOTMs and SGOTMs, starting a couple of years ago. I feel OK at emperor and uncomfortable at deity. I've been drawn into the GOTM admin team mainly to help with techie stuff like getting results processing organised.

Ethics: I take a programmer's view of Civ3, treating it like any piece of software with bugs and features that I have to work round or exploit. I'm afraid I don't see those little shadows on the screen as people, any more than the pieces on a chess board, and have no moral scruples about cheating, lying, killing, sacrificing or stealing from them if it will speed the objective. I will not cheat against our human competitors, of course, and will always play within the GOTM rule set. If there are any higher ethics we want to use as a team them let's discuss and agree them now.

Objectives: I want to learn new techniques in the game from you guys, and enjoy your company as a team, and I hope I can offer some small insights of my own. Xteam prides itself on a high level of disussion, and I hope we'll maintain that here. If we go *slightly* off topic occasionally, then so be it. It's all part of the process of getting to know and understand each other better. M-B has honoured us by entitling this the Xteam Spam Thread. Let's not disappoint him :D

Over to you. I'll get back to slaughtering Aztecs, and hopefully the French.

Hi All :wavey:

I'm going for 100k in COTM 9, but to say anything else would be spoiler for that game. I too am looking forward to learning from the culture expert. :)

Oh, and I got the pediaicons stuff arranged so that I can see sheep in that test game. And I'm burning a candle to try to get in the right mindset...

Hi! Cute avatar! Anyone we know?

If you think a fast 100k game is about building culture buildings.. then you are wrong.. its all about expanding fast to the domination limit, then fill up the entire area with ICS cities.. only then should you start building culture buildings...

Except from that wejust need to get to commonism, rails and replaceable parts for getting rid of despotism penalti on food, more food from irrigated squares, and faster workers plus infantery (for drafting)

Mainly the first part will be warmongering to gain land, plus capture pyramids, Sixtine and JS Bachs. If possible we also want to gain control of all 8 luxes... So it wont be the peaceful game you might think AlanH :lol:

@Gyathaar - I guess I'll just have to learn from you on the fly! :D

Alan gave a pretty good introduction. I'm pretty comfortable on Emperor but incessantly nervous at Deity. I used to be a nice peaceful kind of guy :coffee: , building Temples and Libraries with reckless abandon and wondering why I got slaughtered all the time. Then these guys got hold of me and I have become a bloodthirsty barbarian. :viking:

Hoping to learn again of more peaceful pursuits, but with a more effective ending. Actually, it would be nice to find a style that blends the builder and warmonger together more effectively. :hmm:

Looking forward to lots of discussion and fun as we try to unravel the mysteries of this new map of M-B's. :drool:

Mainly the first part will be warmongering to gain land, plus capture pyramids, Sixtine and JS Bachs. If possible we also want to gain control of all 8 luxes... So it wont be the peaceful game you might think AlanH :lol:
@Alan - Gyathaar is talking our language!! :thumbsup: :beer: :band:

Hi! Cute avatar! Anyone we know?

Talking to me? It's an alien creature from a Civ II scenario, I believe. I thought it was cute, too.

As for the game, I expect we'll be following a similar strategy to that described for several people's games in GOTM 38, Spoiler 2 (absent revolting to Republic, of course).

As for ethics, pop-rushing will be inevitable in this game, and I've gotten over my distaste for that. But I'm not sure about ROP-rape. I've done it once and didn't like it. I have no problem with the team doing it, but I think I'll ask that I not play any turnsets where we'll be perpetuating such a dastardly deed. Maybe I'll convince myself that they're nothing but electrons and photons, but we'll see.

Now, at some point I know we need to start discussing our initial moves.... but I'm quite at a loss as to which direction to go here.

Alan... I specifically told you not to PM me again when the thread was up. I was at my PM storage limit. :nono:

Anyways, I think we are all familiar with the way to get a 100K victory quickly, especially if we are restricted to Despots and Commies. Kill everyone and whip temples/libraries everywhere.

It's not really as simple as it sounds, not that I've tried it, it's just that everything isn't as simple as it sounds.

On the opening move, should we move our settler? I'm on someone else's computer, with dial-up, so I can't see the screenshot, but I remember a wheat to the north. Settler north? I will change my opinion when I see the screenie again.

Gator checking in and a big welcome :wavey: to our new teammates.

I'm "comfortable" at deity level, although it makes me nervous. In GOTM I tend to be a warmonger because I get better Jason scores going that route. I have experimented with an early 1300's diplo game and a mid 1500's space launch recently but when it comes to a cultural game I'm not at my best.

I look forward to learning some of the finer points of a good cultural game.

@Gyathaar - We will be asking alot of questions and as Alan said we do tend to have good discussions. So I might as well start with one. What do you consider a good DOM limit date for an emporer game?

Assuming the cow can be irrigated, we have everything we need for three 6 turn settler factories.

I would say start by moving settler NW onto mountain, then depending on what we see, send worker either towards wheat or game.. then settler north or west next turn.

@Gyathaar - We will be asking alot of questions and as Alan said we do tend to have good discussions. So I might as well start with one. What do you consider a good DOM limit date for an emporer game?
I estimate we will need to reach dom limit somewhere around 600-800AD with area mostly filled with ICS cities if we want to beat the 1270AD 100k jason bestdate in this game.. meaning we need around 300 cities at around 700-800AD

Couldn't we get +5 fpt by going NE NE and using an irrigated wheat and mined cow (in case we can't irrigate it, +6fpt if we can irrigate). This would give us a 4 turn factory and it would leave the game to be claimed by a second city and possibly share the irrigated wheat on off turns if we can irrigate the cow.

EDIT: Thats if that NE NE plain tile is on the river.

The tile SW S of the cow looks like tundra.

Sorry Tomoyo, I thought you were going to clear it. For me that means dump it to text then delete all. Takes very little time.

Meh. I like to collect PMs. I have one from many different posters at CFC, including most of the OT mods, the big spammers, etc.

NE NE looks good. I would still like to move worker NW if we try that, though. We can actually get a 4-turn factory without improving the cow at all, most likely.

I have all my old PMs, sent and received. Download as Text puts a text file on your hard drive containing them all.

NW, NW (or 3 NW) also gives a 4 turn settler factory after chopping the game.. thou moving to the mountain may unveil other resources too

Hey! We're the first team to page two! :D

Moving NW NW will get us the factory, of course, but, also, we can benefit from a chopped granary. If we time that correctly, it will be very beneficial. The downside is that we will need more worker turns to set it up.

Keep up the good work guys. Sorry I've not been joining in, but it looks like you are working it out well between you. Sound like a bit of spreadsheet work may be needed to work out the way to the fastest start. My 2¢ ...

The worker turns for the NW/NW game option are quite extensive, but I think I'd be tempted to road the BG, and irrigate and road the wheat to get to +4fpt by the time the city expands, and do the game later. Irrigating the game requires about 20 turns, four of which are 'wasted' irrigating the BG to get water to it.

The NE/NE option gets us to 5fpt as soon as the town expands on turn 12 if we irrigate immediately, and the worker can do a road first to accelerate Pottery research during the initial turns. I'm not sure whether there are enough shields in this location, though. We could do with a forest to get the growth bonuses, and I don't see one, though a mined plain or hill would be an option.

Another option is to instead of setting up a 4 turn settler factory, we can set up three 6 turn military/settler factories instead.. one food bonus for each

Sounds like a fun MM exercise :D Would you be prepared to draft the script?

hmm.. to be sure to be able to bring in the cow without having to build temples first, we eithet have to buid at starting position or NE,NE... (unless we want to move towards tundra with capital)

If we build at starting spot, a RCP of distance 3 seems best.. if we build NE,NE.. the capital can be a 4 turn settler factory untill we have more cities buildt.. then we can build a town on the tundra 3 S in RCP distance 4 to work the cow, and another at 3E to work the deer.. and one 4 SW to bring in the BG tiles.. hard to say how RCP 4 will work in the north thou..

Would it be worth moving the worker NW to the MT and then post a screen shot to help further our discussion. That would openup about 12 more tiles and should help determine where to put our cities.

Any thoughts on a roster order, how about starting off with our cultural expert?

Proposed Roster
Gyathaar
AlanH
Tomoyo
leif
WillowBrook
Gator

Since I am new to SGOTM, I am wondering about some things..
How does the save games thing work? You upload them into a special server?
Can anyone in team take the save out again to look at it?
What about images? Is just the normal upload feature used there?

Saves are uploaded here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm.php), which is as simple a page as I could make it. You upload a manually saved file, and the software extracts the score, date, team name, and does other checking stuff.

The latest file for each team is listed here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm_submission_list.php), along with a graph/listing showing relative Firaxis score progress, and that's where our start file will appear when the game starts.

We write up the turn log and post it in this thread, with images uploaded in the usual way. When you upload your file you get a download link that you can copy and paste as a file link in your turn log if you like. But usually I just go to the results page to get the latest file. Any team members are free to download their team file, but it would be considered cheating to download another team's file.

The worker turns for the NW/NW game option are quite extensive, but I think I'd be tempted to road the BG, and irrigate and road the wheat to get to +4fpt by the time the city expands, and do the game later. Irrigating the game requires about 20 turns, four of which are 'wasted' irrigating the BG to get water to it.
I'm not sure why you'd want to irrigate the game. Irrigated wheat + mined game should be enough for a 4-turn factory, shouldn't it? ;)

Size 4.5:
City square +2 food, +1 shield
Irrigated Wheat +2 food
Mined game +1 food, +1 shield
Mined BG +2 shields
Mined BG +2 shields
Expand to forest for +2 shields
= +5 food +8 shields

I hope I'm not imposing since I'm not playing this particular sgotm, but I'd also like to add that consideration might be taken for NW-NW's more central position; thus increasing the number of cities, at least in the second ring.

[delurk]I'm not sure why you'd want to irrigate the game. Irrigated wheat + mined game should be enough for a 4-turn factory, shouldn't it? ;)Hi captain, how's the house going?
Sure, but if you can get more food and share it with other towns you get faster growth. In despotism food is population is power, and we are going to be despots for a looog time. If we need the mine for shields then fine, but there seem to be lots of forests and hills and BG around that location.

Sorry I've been absent, good discussion! :goodjob: RL and GOTM 39 have had me busy, but GOTM 39 is submitted... ;)

I'm not a very good fog gazer, but it looks like plains to the NE to me. I was also thinking about the chances for the water being fresh and how long it will take to get a worker to that cow?

I'm wondering if there would be a benefit to RCP 3 and setting it up so that we could trade off food resources between cities as they are needed. Keeping track of the MM frightens me. :rolleyes:

I'm afraid I have no idea of what 300 cities will look like! :eek: And while I have read about ICS, I have never tried it. Does it look like CxCxCxC? Will this apply to the core as well?

I'm afraid I have no idea of what 300 cities will look like! And while I have read about ICS, I have never tried it. Does it look like CxCxCxC? Will this apply to the core as well?
We will want 2 rings of RCP in the core so we have something to drive research.. we will prolly want to build the FP in the core, and then jump the palace to another place (by abandoning since we cant rush palace with leader) so we can have 2 cores.

After we reach domination limit however, and the rest of the lands is filled there is no reason to not fill in the holes in the 2 cores aswell thou.

If you have no idea idea how 300 cities look like... try to download my 100k save from chieftain.. its only around 230 cities I think, but that was on a 25% smaller map, and I was far from domination limit really...

The fun part is in the culture rush period.. where if you want effective rushing we will have to scroll though every city and rush and/or MM for growth every turn for around 30-50 turns...

300 cities looks like very hard work. Luckily, once we reach communism they'll all be as corrupt as rusty iron. One trick I've seen is lots of palace jumps to create low corruption centres for a while, build temples and libraries there, then jump again. Rinse and repeat. Since we can't jump palaces with leaders in these rules, we'd have to use multiple free palace jumps if we want to try this.

I guess ICS will be required throughout eventually because city count is what ... counts and we don't want to trigger domination. So either our initial city planning needs to allow for infill towns to fit between our initial rings, or we go for RCP radius 3 and 5 from the outset.

[sorry] Crossposted. @Gyathaar: Will our limited govenment options have a big effect on the standard 100k strategy?

Wrote down some stategies that I see for this game (I prolly forgot some things, and proll several typos :p):

First.. Domination limit asap.. with as many cities as possible.. this is the main objective.

1) prolly start with settler rush.

2) since this is emperor, the core cities with low food should start building military.. horses, warriors or gaelic swordsmen most likely..

3) we dont have to worry about despotic GA.. we want that.. prolly around when we have about 40-50 cities.

4) we want to kill off all but one scientific civs (for their free tech when entering new age). Thou if more than one is alive when we reach domination limit, no big deal.

5) use RCP in core with 2 rings, outside this ICS.

6) 100x130 pangea means we will end up with around 275-325 cities when staying within domination limit

7) only move city away from strict ICS placement if it means moving one tile puts it on coast or river, or staying in ICS means building on a food resource

8) coastal cities will need harbors and markets so they can all be fishing villages to support building maintainance in communism

9) build only settlers and military, no culture buildings in the ICS part on lands untill we have reached near domination limit.

10) core cities should get temple,libraries,universities,cathedrals in that order

11) all other cities should get temple,library,cathedral,university
if a city is low on food, make it build temple, worker, library followed by workers instead of settlers (unless coastal.. then should build harbor/market before anything else)

12) the following techs are required, in the following priority:
literature,steam,nationalism,communism,replaceable parts
rails will boost us more than switching to communism

13) we need to control as many luxes as possible, preferably all 8

14) we must get hold of pyramids asap, pyramids will double pop rushing capabilities of culture buildings.

15) we should seek to get JS Bachs, Sixtine and Smiths as soon as we can, in that priority.

16) once domination limit is reached, halt all wars and expansion.. we want our lands to be as concentrated as possible so we can fit more towns inside the culture bounderies. Having all towns as consentrated as possible is much more important than working high food tiles.

17) once (near) domination is reached and rest of lands is filled with cities, turn the core(s) into ICS placed cities aswell.

18) when in the poprushing culture phase... if a city has to work a 1 or 2 food tile, poprush the low food citizen(s) away if possible by shortrushing another build (unless the build was just started). This means we have to scroll though every town every turn.. its easiest to start with the capital and keep scrolling untill you eventually get back to the capital again. Barracks (since military) and explorers are 20 shields. Caelic swordsmen are 40 shields. If coastal harbors and frigates are 60 shields. Libraries and catherals are 80 shields.

19) in the poprushing phase turns will prolly take 1-2 hours each.

20) if a city can make 10+ fpt it can draft an infantery every turn, and should be doing that instead of poprushing untill it gets too unhappy

21) if a town can make 5 food per turn, it will be able to rush temple in 2 or 4 turns, library in 8 turns, cathedral in 8 turns.. and university in 20 turns.. will be making 12 cpt after 40 turns

22) if a town can make 4 food per turn, it can make temple in max 6 turns, library in 12 and cathedral in 12.. 8 cpt after 30 turns

23) if a city makes 3 fpt, it can make temple in max 8 turns, library in 16, cathedral in 16.. 8 cpt after 40 turns

24) about 10% of cities will make 10+ fpt, 40% of cities will make 5+ fpt, 40% 4 fpt and around 10% 3 or lower.. This depends on how many hills and mountains there are ofcourse.

25) after 30 turns of rushing we can expect on average 10cpt per city, and with about 300 cities the win will max be around 15-20 turns away.

26) if we can reach near domination limit and have rails by 700AD, we should be able to win around 1200AD

27) I should have mentioned this earlier.. but we need lots of workers..

28) coastal cities should have their more expensive cultural improvements rushed by disbanding units instead of poprushing if possible.. reason is we will need them at a good size to finance all our culture buildings. poprushing temple is fine.

Edit: fixed some errors

@Gyathaar: Will our limited govenment options have a big effect on the standard 100k strategy?
I use communism for poprushing to build culture buildings fast in 100k games.. I only normally use republic to be able to research to communism faster

Using ICS, what size will the cities grow to? With both Despotism and Communism, we have to use pop rush, iirc. Will the cities grow enough in size to make pop rushing effective? I've done a little here and there, but never on this scale.

Thanks Gyathaar, I'll go have a look at that save! Should be enlightening. :D

On palace jumping, iirc, that won't help much in communism as the corruption is spread out evenly amongst the cities. I can't recall the palace ot FP cities getting much of a break in that. I do remember building courthouses in all my cities though and it helped. But if we turn to pop rushing, perhaps we need more food than shields?

Using ICS, what size will the cities grow to? With both Despotism and Communism, we have to use pop rush, iirc. Will the cities grow enough in size to make pop rushing effective? I've done a little here and there, but never on this scale.
A city never has to grow above size 4 to be able to poprush temple,library and cathedral (not sure on university since we are not scientific.. will have to check that)

size 2: rush barrack (or explorer), swap back to cathedral/library
down to size 1
size 2: rush caelic swordsman (usually barracks when not militaristic), swap back to cath/lib
down to size 1
at size 4: rush cath or library

this can also be done at size 3,3,4(or 5) if the town can work more than one 3+ food tile so the city can grow faster.. there is generally no need to ever have more than 5 fpt thou unless you can reach 10.. better to give the high food tile to another town.

But if we turn to pop rushing, perhaps we need more food than shields?
We want everything irrigated and railed..
a city that makes +5 fpt produce 10 shields per turn no matter how corrupt it is.. (assuming we have pyramids)
+4 ftp is 20 shields per 3 turns
+3 fpt is 20 shields per 4 turns

so a city that works a railed irrigated plains tile and nothing else, still produce 5 shields per turn from poprushing...

@Gyathaar - Thanks for all the info. Your strategies list was particularly good. I'll have to print it out and hang it on my wall! :D

It appears this is going to be like playing 2 games. The first part will be hell bent for leather bloodlust and the second will be a builder's paradise. Food is even more important than ever, as it becomes the shields we need. :eek: I guess I'm going to learn the art of pop rushing in this one... ;)

I've got your 100K save and will check it after dinner. Once we get to the second part of this game, we may want to think about 5 turns per set as I know I'll never be able to concentrate for that long MM without screwing up something!! :blush: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Hmm.. I just realized Gaelic swordsmen cost 50shields in ptw (and prolly in this SGOTM too then) while they cost 40shields in C3C.. that changes poprushing strat a bit..

OK.. we cannot research Relaceable parts.. if you dont research that we have 40 shield longbowmen and cannons we can rush (replaceable parts would actually prevent us from rushing gealic swordsmen too. since it gives an upgrade that isnt there in standard vanilla :p)

This means we will need even more workers thou.. but once the land is improved we can join them to cities and poprush them (assume this is not against rules as long as we dont build them just to use them for poprushing?)

Aren't cannons 50 shields?

I don't really have anything to add... any adding requires thinking and I want to watch the SB.

Harbors are 40 shields, if the city is coastal.

Just had a good look at Gyathaar's 100K win, << Linked Here >> (http://hof.civfanatics.net/files/included/321_768_Gyathaar_Babylon_Chieftain_Standard_C3C_1_ 22_AD1090.sav)

It is very interesting. The score curve is opposite what I am used to seeing, bulging out instead of curving inward. Must have been very aggressive early on. In the Military Advisor screen, under Communism, there are 1,398 units allowed under unit support! :eek: I've never seen so many cities before. We have a lot of work ahead, going from One Built Settler to this is :wow: There are foreign cities within the cultural boundries that have only their one square, no expansion. Can't imagine why they didn't flip?? This is going to be wild and I am sure glad that Gyathaar is on our team. :thumbsup:

EDIT - @Alan - As Gyathaar's 100K is in C3C, I thought you might like a couple of screenies from it so I attached them.

Great stuff. Looking forward to it.

:wavey: Capt, your comments are always welcomed.

This is how culture and culture per turn looked like in that game btw:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/culture1.jpg
I switched to communism in 590AD.. that was why the 0 culture gain that turn

There are foreign cities within the cultural boundries that have only their one square, no expansion. Can't imagine why they didn't flip??
I had one of them flip.. a few turns before the end

Hi captain, how's the house going?
Sure, but if you can get more food and share it with other towns you get faster growth. In despotism food is population is power, and we are going to be despots for a looog time. If we need the mine for shields then fine, but there seem to be lots of forests and hills and BG around that location.
Well, the house is coming along pretty nicely. A month or so more and we'll be all done. One of these days I'll take a few pics and upload them :scan:

I agree that with dense city planning and rigorous MMing, a few 6-turn factories combined with a few 8-turn factories might be better than the one 4-turn factory :goodjob:
You'll have a hell of time MMing all that, is all I can say :p :cool:

oh.. I see the game has started.. you wanted me to move the worker nw and post screenshot?

I think that would be a good idea, Gyathaar. Let's see what's out there.

Logistics:

Does anyone feel strongly about playing order? Do we have any planned absences we should work round in the next few weeks? If Gyathaar starts our worker off is would make sense for him to play the first 20, to 3000 BC.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xt4kBC.jpg

I am thinking we want to build a 1st ring city on the silks to connect them faster plus bring water to the deer (am I correct that you cant bring water over the hill by settling there in vanilla?)

No, water doesn't flow over hills in vanilla.

Agreed on placing a city on the silks. I don't think it can be our first one, as it will take too ong to get there, so that makes NE/NE with the settler look more likely for our first city. That's at RCP 5 from the silks, and allows us to add an RCP 3 ring as well to get close to ICS in the first core.

[EDIT] If we want to create thre factories, is there any merit on moving the settler W to the BG and building there? That would be a 6 turn factory once we chop and wet the game, and gets us going one turn earlier. I know we'd be settling on a BG, but there are other BGs and forests and hills around to provide shields.

I did some fog-gazing.. and there appears to be the tail of a deer in the southern forest:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xt4kBC2.png

Hmm.. is there any way to blow up the images with tags on this board?

Do you have photoshop? It's better to blow it up from the original BMP than using the jpeg, as the jpeg has alrready lost some detail. If you don't have it I'll download the file and try it here.

Here you are. Definitely game on that tile. Well spotted.

Here's the fog edge ...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam_start_blowup.jpg

and here's the game we can see.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam_blowup_ref.jpg

Well, the house is coming along pretty nicely. A month or so more and we'll be all done. One of these days I'll take a few pics and upload them :scan:
Nice to hear from you. Glad to hear the Capt's Cabin is coming along. When are we having the house warming?? :D Looking forward to actually seeing it. :goodjob:
I agree that with dense city planning and rigorous MMing, a few 6-turn factories combined with a few 8-turn factories might be better than the one 4-turn factory :goodjob:
You'll have a hell of time MMing all that, is all I can say :p :cool:
Perhaps I might learn how to do it. Sounds pretty scary though!! :o

So it looks like we have 4 possible starting places mentioned so far. I don't have a favorite at this point, but perhaps a list will help. The pros and cons are quite incomplete; perhaps others can fill them in

1. Settle in place
pros: start production immediately, not on BG
cons: only cow within borders, and we don't know how easy it will be to get to it with the worker.

2. W
pros: only one settler move, allows 3 6-turn factories
cons: on BG

3. NW, NW
pros: not on BG, two food bonuses for capital
cons: 2 settler moves

4. NE, NE
pros: settle on silks in ring-5, not BG
cons: second deer isn't accessible by any possible ring-3 city, 2 settler moves

Have we tasted the water to see if it's fresh? (I know, I could check it myself, but I haven't downloaded the game yet.)

Play order:
I have no objections to the proposed list

Time away:
spring break is Feb 25-March 6; I probably will not be available most of that time (don't know where I'll be, but probably not at my computer :) ).

Micromanaging:
I can MM, as long as I know what needs to be done. As my play will be for the whole team, I'll be much more careful than in solo games. I've set up 4, 5, and 6-turn settler/unit factories before, shared food bonuses, etc.

And thanks for the strategy list, Gyathaar!

So it looks like we have 4 possible starting places mentioned so far. I don't have a favorite at this point, but perhaps a list will help. The pros and cons are quite incomplete; perhaps others can fill them inGood summary.

Have we tasted the water to see if it's fresh?
Salty. Sorry, I was so focused on getting the blow-ups done I forgot to wet my whistle.

Agreed on placing a city on the silks. I don't think it can be our first one, as it will take too ong to get there, so that makes NE/NE with the settler look more likely for our first city. That's at RCP 5 from the silks, and allows us to add an RCP 3 ring as well to get close to ICS in the first core.

[EDIT] If we want to create thre factories, is there any merit on moving the settler W to the BG and building there? That would be a 6 turn factory once we chop and wet the game, and gets us going one turn earlier. I know we'd be settling on a BG, but there are other BGs and forests and hills around to provide shields.
As I understand it, the first part of this game is to conquer to the domination limit as quickly as we can. To do that, won't we need a substantial number of productive cities? RCP of 3 and 5 gives us, optimally, 8 cities in the 3 ring and 12 in the 5. This terrain isn't going to let us have that many, as far as I can see. If we try for 3 and 6, the optimal number of cities goes from 8 and 12 to 8 and 16.

Should we decide we need to build on the silks, then I think we should adjust our start location to a range 3 location, if we can find one. I can see that MB put a lot of thought into this start to make us, who can use RCP, really think about what we're trying to accomplish. As I understand Gyathaar, the ICS part of this game comes into play later, when we fill in. If I understand correctly, the first part of this requires an efficient settler farming operation to expand and prepare a warmaking machine so that we can fight our way to the domination limit. The more highly productive cities in despotism, the better. As I see it, we have to live with whatever we create for quite some time, until we get to the modern era and communism. :eek:

Of course, we may be planning to set it up RCP around a Forbidden Palace, I thought I read from Gyathaar, so we can jump the palace by abandoning our original settlement. If that is so, then we have some more planning to do. Then you could settle the BG becasue we will, hopefully, have it free before we get to the Middle Ages.

Just a few thoughts as I reflect on the discussion thus far. :mischief:

Note that you don't need RCP round an FP. Just a tight cluster of cities as close or closer to the FP than the nearest city is to the palace, so it's a disk not a ring. Rings are only relevant round the palace.

[edit] By the time we get 8 + 12 cities in two rings we'll be building 100% corrupt cities. We don't need 8+16 in the rings. We prolly can't get 20 in two rings, but we should be able to close to the OCN.

Note that you don't need RCP round an FP. Just a tight cluster of cities as close or closer to the FP than the nearest city is to the palace, so it's a disk not a ring. Rings are only relevant round the palace.

[edit] By the time we get 8 + 12 cities in two rings we'll be building 100% corrupt cities. We don't need 8+16 in the rings. We prolly can't get 20 in two rings, but we should be able to close to the OCN.
Of course you're right about the FP. In many ways our only big advantage to this software version is RCP. Leaders and Armies are relatively useless and we know what the scientific civs will get for their freebie. So I am trying to think of ways to maximize RCP because of the power we can get from it early in the game when we need units for conquest. Later, it becomes unimportant as food will create our shields through pop rushing.

Because leaders are relatively useless, I think Gyathaar is right about having to use a free palace jump and building a FP close to our capital as soon as we can. In light of that, I think we need to try to select our capital knowing that we are going to gabandon it up at some point. I think we need to agree to that "up front" as we develop our plans for initial builds and layout.

We put so much into Moscow in SGOTM05 we didn't want to give it up, and rightly so imho. I hopefuly learned something from that and am trying to apply it to this game.

I have no problem with the intial roster order. Setting this one up will require a lot of thinking as squares are revealed. Not that I can't think :hmm: but I recognize when someone has better skills than I. :thumbsup: Good luck Gyathaar, get us headed in the right direction!! :D

Btw.. I notice both Team Offa and Team CDZ are using C3C.. so what team will be the strongest competition do you think? (ofcourse.. goal is to get the best date no matter what version.. :lol: )

I don't know. :crazyeye: Team Smackster seems to be able to get in there as well. With a good plan, I think we can be in it too. :cool: :) All I know is that for me, this will be an interesting game because it is different.

I was thinking about Alan's post concerning number of cities and rings. I don't think we'll prolly get 20 cities in 2 rings as the terrain doesn't look very hospitable to that. However, we can use the corruption model to our advantage by building the original core tight and then, when we jump the palace, trying to keep the cities in the first ring whatever distance our second ring is from the original core. Of course, you all know that, but thought I would say it anyway.

Team Smackster is on C3C too thou..
Ivan, tao and us are on vanilla, Peanut and RowAndLive are on Ptw

My bets are on Offa. CDZ will probably play to honorable SG rules, whereas we know that Klarius for one will use every legal trick in the book.

trying to keep the cities in the first ring whatever distance our second ring is from the original coreNot quite. If we build the FP in the first core and jump the palace then the new palace will need to have cities far enough away that the FP has lots of cities as close or closer. The FP will not be in the centre of the first core, so a tight double ring is favorite. I'd like to try to dot map it, but I'd also like to get on with the next three of four crucial turns of SGOTM 5 :eek:

[edit]Were you involved in our Mongols Jumpmaster SG? We did much the same there, with RCP 3 and 5, and chose an FP site that would maximise the number of cities within a radius 5 disk centred on it. Most AI capitals have radius 5 first rings, or can be adjusted to be so, so when we jumped the capital to an AI capital and reused their core this worked well.

No, I didn't play that one. However, I think that is a sound goal to shoot for. It would be nice to step right into a second core and have our first nice and productive.

I thought about trying to make a dot map, but there really isn't enough showing yet to do anything really meaningful. I think Gyathaar needs to play the first 20 turns and then we need to see where we are. Based upon all this discussion and his experience, I am confident he knows what were trying to do, unless he wants more discussion. That is never a problem. :lol: :lol: :lol:

@Alan - Good luck on those turns. Although we are way behind, it is still interesting to play it out, to me.

Gator produced a roster listing for our team, no one has complained., and it puts our strong culture player up front to set the scene. It keeps players in the same timezone together (Gyathaar and I are in the European zone, the rest are US, I think?), which seems to work OK as it gives time for the other timezone to comment between sets.

Gyathaar UP
AlanH On deck
Tomoyo
leif erikson
WillowBrook
DJMGator13

if we keep up to the mark - 24 hours GOT IT, 72 hours total to POST turns (note to self :rolleyes: ) we should be able to run twice round his roster before WillowBrook disappears mid-term. If it looks like she'll miss out we could do swaps to adjust nearer the time.

Any more discussion needed? Let's wait for an hour or so, then if we're all talked out Gyathaar could make a start.

Well, I am home from work.. and Got it
My bets are on Offa. CDZ will probably play to honorable SG rules, whereas we know that Klarius for one will use every legal trick in the book.
Since you mentioned this.. how does stand when it comes to playing honorable or using every (legal) trick?
Personally I can go any way :)

I asked this at the start of the thread, and only WillowBrook has responded. As I said, I'll do anything within the GOTM rules - the images on the screen are chessmen on a board as far as I'm concerned, so I have no problem with taking advantage of limitations in their programming. But I too can go either way if the team wants to try using something else.

WillowBrook mentioned a dislike of RoP rape, and asked if someone else can do that if it's needed. I confess I seldom use it, probably bcause I haven't seen enough advantage, but I'm about to do so big time in SGOTM5.

I'll use ship-hopping with a clear conscience if it'll get a unit where and when I want him to be.

I'll use a free palace jump, though I prefer jumping the palace with a leader because I have never got my head round the logistics and maths involved, so I've never tried it. But we've been encouraged to use it by the crippled leaders.

Resource disconnect? Sure, why not. We're playing with one hand tied behiind our backs as it is, so I see no reason to hook the other one to it.

Hmm.. I notice an exploit I used in the HoF game that I always assumed was not allowed in GOTM...
The exploit where you go max negative in gold per turn (by 100% science/lux) and let a building/unit be disbanded every turn.
Now I see it isnt listed in allowed and disallowed exploits.. I assume it is not allowed?

I do not think that is allowed in GOTM, negative cash research. You can use it as long as you have money in your treasury. Once your treasury is gone you are suppose to adjust your science level. It should be listed on the disallowed exploits in the normal GOTM thread.

As for other tactics, I game. I rarely use ROP rape unless it has been done to me and I have had it happen. I use ship chaining whenever I can. If you go thru the hassle of prepositioning ships I feel it is worthwhile. No more of an exploit than being able to transverse the continent in 1 turn via railroads.

I'm with Alan and consider this to be a big chess set. However, I do have some scrupples, not many. But the negative treasury trick would seem exploitive to me, but if someone presented very good reasons why we should use it, I might be convinced?? :crazyeye: :mischief: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Settler west does look like a really good choice, since we're gonna jump it. However, I'm leaning towards settler north because it's closer to the middle of the map, away from the tundra that we are seeing.

Also, I don't like to use ROP rape, never used ship chaining because I'm too lazy, and I'm okay with "dastardly" tactics, but I don't want to be backstabbing AIs left and right...

The GOTM rule book would be as long as an encyclopedia if we tried to list everything. As Gator says, deliberate cash-negative operation of that kind is not allowed.

The catch-all is that a member of staff must be consulted before using a ploy that's not explicitly allowed/disallowed. I would recommend we check with m-b before doing anything dubious. Please note that the submission software also tracks some detectable cheats, incuding reloading and game editing.

Good to see the spam continue! Good luck to the new (and hopefully improved) Xteam!

This is the one I'd be worried about being on the Disallowed list:
Pop-rushing
In despotism and communism it is possible to use cities purely for unit rush building. Workers can be added to such a city and then the city can then use them to rush build units. This is disallowed, so do not create these kind of cities. Pop rushing one or two regular citizens to finish a building or to build a unit is within the rules and the spirit of the game. What is against the rules is joining workers to cities for the purpose of pop rushing.

I dont think we should use it, but in end game we could run 100% lux to battle unhappiness from poprushing and drafting, not having to worry about making taxmen or building markets to make enough gold to support the buildings.

When you rush 50-60 culturebuildings per turn it is no big deal to loose one per turn :p

Its really hard to decide where to settle.. currently leaning towards 1 west.. this allows four 6 turns settler factories in capital plus ring 3, or two 6 turn and one 4 turn factory if the cow cant be irrigated.

Any big objections before I go ahead and do it? :)

West is Ok with me. I never like wandering settlers if I can avoid it, as it gets you off to a bad start in relative power. Settling in place is too big a gamble if we can't reach that cow fast, but west one gets us up and running reasonably fast and saves on worker turns to irrigate the game. I don't think we'll miss that BG for quite a while.

Sure, go west. :)

Good luck!

This is the one I'd be worried about being on the Disallowed list:
Pop-rushing
In despotism and communism it is possible to use cities purely for unit rush building. Workers can be added to such a city and then the city can then use them to rush build units. This is disallowed, so do not create these kind of cities. Pop rushing one or two regular citizens to finish a building or to build a unit is within the rules and the spirit of the game. What is against the rules is joining workers to cities for the purpose of pop rushing.


I thought of commenting on this earlier, but the exploit that seems to be banned is building workers for the sole purpose of joining them and pop-rushing. I assume it doesn't cover naturally-grown population or joining workers/slaves that are no longer needed (e.g. after everything is RR) and popping them. As I understand it, we won't be popping workers built for no other purpose, so there shouldn't be a problem. However, I wasn't around for whatever discussion led to the ban, so I'm not sure what all the concerns were.

The main concern is to avoid the creation of worker factories which are used to turn food in one part of your empire directly into shields for use elsewhere. As long as the workers have served a useful purpose as such first then as you say they can be joined back to cities. As I've never used this technique (never even been a communist) I have no feel for what constitutes exploitation in this context. Create six workers/rail one tile/join them/pop rush buildings, all in the same turn, sounds exploitative to me, but I guess I'll have to ask m-b what is considered a decent interval from birth to pop rush for a worker.

Submitted save, and am not too happy with my progress :(

Only positive part is it seems like I picked the best spot to settle in, and we have the 2nd highest 3000BC score of all teams so far.

First the Dotmap:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xt3kBC.jpg

The dots are in RCP 3 and 5, and only the 3 dots with pink rings around are not on rivers

4000BC, turn 0:
I change game preferences to my liking
move worker NW onto mountains, see silks
move settler west

F10 (or rather CRpMapStat since its easier to see what civ advances and starting techs they have there) shows that we have 11 enemies

Japan,babylon,France,Mongols,NeoCarthage,China,Eng land,Iroquis,India,Vikings and America
Totally 5 expansionist civs, so on a pangea map we should have contact with all civs pretty soon.
japan is the only civ that start with the wheel.
Babylon is the only scientific civ, and thus has monopoly on BW.. all other techs are well known.
Sounds like babylon is the AI civ that is most likely to see the industrial ages.. :D

3950BC, turn 1:
Found Entremont.
Settling unveils another river 2 tiles to the SW.. fits perfectly with ring 3 cities :)

Set entremont to build warrior, and work the forest game..

hmm.. with 100% science the only tech that is below 40 turns is pottery at 27 turns. Hopefully we can get pottery though trade or popping hut faster than that, so I start min run on Mysticism.
sci to 20%
worker west

make sure govenor is set to Emphasize production, since i have never played vanilla on this PC before.. it wasnt :p

3900BC, turn 2:
worker SW to game
ouch.. worker spots barbarian warrior 2 tiles west already... it will reach Entremont before warrior complete..

3850BC, turn 3:
worker flees NW or will get killed by barb IBT. Atleast by going NW he will get ontop of a hill and can scount some more land (and perhaps lure the barb away untill first warrior complete)

3800BC, turn 4:
barb ontop of game forest
set entremont to work river forst so it can finish warrior in 1 turn.
worker moves NW again ontop of next hill, and there is a river with a grassland wheat 2NW,2N of entremont.. another 6 turn factory in ring 3

IBT:
the barb enters entremont and steal all our 17 gold :(
warrior complete, set to build archer to better deal with barbs

3750BC, turn 5:
warrior goes southeast to explore, archer will go west and deal with barbs
warrior move shows the deer we though was there.
Entremont is set to work game forest again
worker moves back south

3700BC, turn 6:
warrior southeast, shows river by the cow
worker back to game tile again

3650BC, turn 7:
warrior southeast.. there appears to be coast blocking all passage towards cow
worker finally starts to chop game forest

3600BC, turn 8:
warrior south, see more coast

3550BC, turn 9:
warrior west

3500BC, turn 10:
warrior moves west onto hill.. sees loks of grass and some tundra

3450BC, turn 11:
warrior west

IBT:
entremont: archer -> warrior (will complete before chop finish)

3400BC, turn 12:
archer heads west toward where barb came from
warrior west
raise lux to 20%

3350BC, turn 13:
warrior west
archer west, see goodie hut

3300BC, turn 14:
warrior west
archer west, sees goat in mountains

IBT:
entremont: warrior -> barracks

3250BC, turn 15:
archer pops goodie hut, get barbs.. ouch.. plus its nextto a barb camp.. atleast it is on mountain
exploring warrior goes west, new warrior in entremont moves out to protectthe worker incasethe archer dies

IBT:
the archer kills 3 attacking barbs, loose one hp but is promoted to elite
a chinese archer moves into view west of the barb camp

3200BC, turn 16:
china is up pottery and masonry, and wont part with any of them
archer attacks barb camp
the 25 gold from barb camp allows us to buy pottery from china, but I have to halt the min research for now

42 gold and 2gpt to china for pottery
switch the barracks build to granary
move the 2nd warrior back into entremont as MP

exploring warrior goes west and sees spices

IBT:
forest chop finish, and we get a palace expansion.. I level the ground infront of our cave :D

3150BC, turn 17:
When killing the barb camp, the archer saw another goodiehut, so it heads towards that, and see 2 more chinese warriors.. seems like china has to be close to the west
exploring warrior heads west
worker starts to irrigate
raise sci to 20% again and research at -1gpt (8 in the coffer)

3100BC, turn 18:
archer pops goodiehut.. it was deserted :(
exploring warrior move west

3050BC, turn 19:
archer move NE
warrior keep moving west
meet mongols that is up BW, masonry and mysticism :(

3000BC, turn 20:
entremont grows to size 3, set it to work the silk forest so make a little bit of cash
sci to 10%, lux to 10%
archer NE, warrior NW

Ouch, worker turns. :(

I'm really surprised that we got such perfect RCP rings. I think we can let Entremont grow more and not use the silk forest on turn 22, and have the granary complete before the 4-5 growth. wouldn't growth be the most important thing? (I'm not sure, can someone get a grpah thing and compare it?)

Only problem is if we work another tile we go -1gpt unless we turn off the min research.. and have just 5gold left

Worker will finish the irrigation next turn (or in the IBT), so growth will pick up.. then the road on game will help a lot

Oh, I missed the gpt deal. :blush:

We will switch in two turns, then, on the fourth turn, the road will finish, That means that we will only lose two gold by doing this, but the thing I'm not sure of is the granary/growth timing if we let it grow another size.

but the thing I'm not sure of is the granary/growth timing if we let it grow another size.
yes, I havent even tried to work it out myself :)
The early barbarian attack totally messed up all my worker move and growth timings.
And had I expected we would meet mongols so soon after the chineese, i would have held off on the pottery deal and delayed the barracks prebuild instead :p

It looks good to me. You can't have everything, 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I'll try to hand off SGOTM5 tonight and pick this one up tomorrow asap. If someone can work through the MM details for the granary/growth thing that would be great, otherwise I'll try to muddle through it myself.

We prolly want to work in a forest chop for the silk forest to complete the first settler btw just so you keep it in mind

I think I did this right. It looks like if we continue to work the same tiles and add the river BG after growth to 4 that the granary and growth to size 5 will happen on same turn, which means an empty granary.

Here's a look at my numbers and I have attached the worksheet if someone has more time to play with it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam06_01.jpg

Excel worksheet (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Gator_math.zip)

Well, we're off to the usual XTeam start. Barbs chasing our workers around and stealing all our gold. And then Goody Huts with Barbs and/or deserted. Gyathaar, welcome to the XTeam. :lol: :lol: :lol:

But you overcame the obstacles and we're off and running!! :goodjob:

Just got home and want to look at the save.

Good luck Alan, with both games. ;)

We can delay growth one turn and make the granary complete first by moving the citizen off the deer onto a river forest at turn 27 (meaning making 0 ftp that turn)

Can't we move the citizen from the deer to the forest on 22 and 23?

Hmm.. I would rather move citizen off silk forest and onto a river BG on turn 22 so we grow to size 4 at turn 23 instead of turn 24

Entremont has 5 BG and irrigated deer available to work.. this means that after we get a few settlers out and get one or two of the other settler factories running, entremont can at size 6-7 run a 3 turn factory with 2 warriors plus worker or 1 spear/archer plus worker for a bit (first round would be a barracks-worker).
After we get iron we can disconnect it for a bit and produce a lot of warriors for upgrade this way. (or not connect the iron to the main set of cities, and move the warriors to a special iron-connected city for upgrade)

Great work, Gyathaar, for getting us started, and Gator, for the spreadsheet!

But I'm confused - how are we growing from pop 3 to 4 on T23-24 with only 9+3 food and no granary yet? :confused: ? Don't we need 20 food to grow until we have that granary? :confused:

Good catch, see I knew something wasn't right; that's why I posted the worksheet as well. I'm at work so I can't change the worksheet. That means less shields so granary will complete a few turns after I show. I can change it tonight when I get home.

Great work, Gyathaar, for getting us started, and Gator, for the spreadsheet!

But I'm confused - how are we growing from pop 3 to 4 on T23-24 with only 9+3 food and no granary yet? :confused: ? Don't we need 20 food to grow until we have that granary? :confused:
Doh.. I totally missed that growth ting :p
Not sure on the great work, thou there was nothing I could have done about the barbarian attack... barbarians are definately more clever in vanilla than in C3C btw.. in conquests the barb would not have come a straight line for the worker and capital from that direction even with the 'barb-fix' :)

Here's a possible plan. I make no guarantees of accuracy, and even if it is accurate, it may not be the best plan, and barbs could of course mess things up. For fpt and spt, I've indicated what the city screen will say it will get when you press enter, and the actual number in parenthesis if it differs (due to, e.g., worker completion or city growth)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/WillowBrookSGOTM6A.JPG

Thanks for all the inputs. Having finally completed my set in SGOTM5 - you must have wondered if it would ever happen - I've got it, and expect to play and post the next ten turns tonight. On WillowBrook's timetable I should be able to deliver a full granary, so that's the objective.

Summary
The good news is that WillowBrook's script worked to perfection and our Granary turned up on time and full of food. The bad news is I should have paid closer attention to the financial situation. Probably turned science off sooner and/or moved the archer back to Entremont earlier to help with happiness. It will work out, but it will need careful management.

Other news: There's a Chinese archer taking a look at Entremont. Probably not a problem, but you never know! We have neighbours. An unknown dark red civ - Japan? - has set up shop near the cow across the water, at distance 6 from Entremont.

Turn 20 3000 BC Preflight
Turn off that darned Book Cursor!

Entremont: WillowBrook's plan looks good, and we are already set to do it.

F4: We know Mongols and China. Both have onee extra city and BW, Masonry, Mysticism. Mongols have 325 gold in their vaults! No deals available.

No changes, let's do it. Next turn

Turn 21 2950 BC
Archer fortifies to recover hit point. Warrior NW on mountains, sees Chinese reg.archer and reg.warrior and a river bend. Worker to silks.

IBT
Mongol vet warrior appears on mountain NW of our warrior.
A Chinese vet warrior appears near archer. Chinese units move east.
Archer recovers.

Turn 22 2900 BC
Archer NE, sees river delta to north. Warrior W. Sees incense and a Mongol archer.
Worker starts chop. Will complete IBT after turn 31. F4 no change.

IBT
Chinese units head east and north. Mongol heads east.

Turn 23 2850 BC
Archer N, Warrior W. F4 no change.

IBT
Chinese N, Mongol E.

Turn 24 2800 BC
Archer N, sees coastal inlet to N, salty, and spices. Warrior W, sees river and coastline NW.
Switch citizen from silks to BG/river for 4 fpt, 3 spt to grow in 2 and win 2 bonus shields.
Running deficit at -1gpt. F4 no change.

IBT
Another Mongol warrior appears from west haading east. Chinese warrior heads NE.
Domestic adviser warns about negative cash flow.

Turn 25 2750 BC
Archer east to forest, sees possible land bridges, another salt sea inlet.
Warrior W. Sees more river, mountains. Coast to N is salt.
Confirm governor settings for growth bonus next turn.

IBT
Pop 4. More Mongol units w of warrior, heading N.

Turn 26 2710 BC
Archer SE. Decide not to explore the peninsula as it's likely to be a dead end and wasted turns. Warrior S, sees Mongol border. It looks like their capital, as it's expanded.
Entremont has read WillowBrook's script and is performing to plan. Granary will complete in 3. The bad news is that we are still at -1gpt because the lux slider has to go to 30%. We have 7 gold in the kitty, so I'll run at that to keep the research turns ticking.

IBT Moaning minnie complains about our treasury again.

Turn 27 2670 BC
Archer SE round coast of sea inlet. Warrior W. Mongols have a grassy capital on a river, on the edge of tundra. F4 still no change.

IBT Mongols found Kazan in hills and mountains 4 tiles north of the capital.
Chinese warrior appears north of Entremont.
Treasury drops another notch to 5 gold

Turn 28 2630 BC
Archer E. Warrior W. F4 shows Mongols third city, no other changes. China still two cities.

IBT
Chinese warrior E. Entremont granary complete, starts settler. Treasury 4, -2gpt.

Turn 29 2590 BC
A dark red border has appeared to the east. I think we found our first victim :) No contact.
Archer E. Warrior W - he's walking off the western edge of the map.
Turn science off to reduce -2gpt deficit with granary cost. We have 4 gold. A citizen will complete in 2 turns, and will probably have to work the silks for a turn or two. I doubt if the silk will be on BG, so the shield count may fail :( Do we need to bring the archer back for MP duty? I guess so. Perhaps I should have done so before. We could keep exploring and hope to find a barb camp, but it's very risky. We would lose the granary if we run out of gold.

IBT
Chinese archer appears West of Entremont. Treasury down to 3.

Turn 30 2550 BC
Archer south towards Entremont. Warrior West.

After action
The major issue right now is our treasury. We mustn't let it go negative or we'll lose the only improvement we have - our granary!

When the next citizen pops I think we'll get 3 extra gold in the treasury as we work the silks. We'll then have 5 gold. The current lux spend of 2gpt will support the extra pop point. We have 2 happiness points from the lux slider and 1 from the MP. With pop 5 these should give us 2 happy, 1 content, 2 unhappy.

If we follow the script the extra citizen will work a BG, no river, so no extra gold, and we'll continue at -1gpt. We can keep that up until the settler pops in 3 more turns. Then we'll have pop 3 and can turn lux back to 1gpt, but only for 1 turn nd then we grow again. Once the settler builds we'll be in better shape, but for the next few turns I think the archer should return to Entremont to help with happiness. There's also the small chance that the Chinese archer approaching is up to no good. Our game could end rather fast if he decides to take on our sole warrior.

We also stop paying the Chinese 4gpt in 6 more turns. The archer should be able to get back in business and go to meet our neighbours after a few turns interruption.

Here's a piccie:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam_2550BC.jpg

Where do we want to found first city? 2 north for the wheat, or 2 south to work forest game and build units for mp?

My 2¢: I'd go for 2 north to get some food so that we can create a worker or two. With 2 chops in our first 40 turns we're very short of roads and mines. We can manage happiness if we can get the silks on line and some cash to pay for happy pills. We aren't going to grow cities big while we're building settlers and workers in them.

I think I'd go north also especially since we've seen the red border. May need to place a blocking city up there to force Japan to expand the other direction.

Gyathaar
AlanH just played
Tomoyo UP
leif erikson On deck
WillowBrook
DJMGator13

All yours Tomoyo. Let's keep the gold coming, but try to keep to WillowBrook's script as well.

Got it... I hope to play tonight, but that might not happen.

This thread is way too quiet! (I know, SGOTM5 is still taking time...)

I have no objections to settling north - more food is good.

As for slightly longer-term plans, what do we build in our new cities and in what order? Our settler and worker factories will need granaries. Is Entremont's ability to pump out a military unit with every settler enough military to start with? Should any of our new towns start with a worker before a granary (assuming Entremont's military is enough)? In general, I feel like I can do a decent job planning the first town, but once there are several towns, I have trouble figuring out the best use for each in any sort of coherent fashion (enough workers, military, etc).

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/SGOTM_Xteam_ordermap.jpg

Here's my propositiong for the order of settling, only considering what we see. I think we want to settle northeast too.

I'd swap 3 and 4, given the fact that we have company across the water now.

I'd swap 3 and 4, given the fact that we have company across the water now.
I agree with this but have a question. Should we build something producing culture in order to get the expansion before whoever is there already to claim the cow? It will be interesting to see how far away whoever's capital is.

We may want to send a scout around to the east when we get a chance and see what the lay of the land is over thar.

I'm not sure we should divert effort into a cultural building yet, but I'll bow to the experts. I imagine that city is not too far from home and doubt it will flip to us any time soon. Yes, I figured once the archer has helped out with our current little financial/military difficulty he could head on round there.

Building culture to get the cow before that other city will be worth it unless we can settle next to the cow soon.

We do want to get early culture buildings in the core when we spare the time.

Should we build something producing culture in order to get the expansion before whoever is there already to claim the cow? It will be interesting to see how far away whoever's capital is.



I'm not sure if I completely understand pop-rushing; I haven't used it much. But IIRC, one citizen is up to 20 sheilds, so a city at #4 working regular grassland could pop a temple 10 turns after founding (since temple only cost 30), and 5 turns later, with the expansion, it could work the cow. Assuming the unknown civ's borders don't expand around it. Hmm - between several granaries and an early temple or two, we need to build lots of roads or we'll continue to flirt with an empty treasury.

On a sort of related topic, do we push the tech pace or not? We certainly want to get to Communism ASAP and will need to strategically trade, but do we do things like gift techs to civs to speed the pace? I'd be afraid that, once other civs have better governments, we could get left behind if we push things too much.

I dont think we want to make the tech pace faster than nessesary.. after we have killed off a few civs perhaps

Apologies for my stoopid response. Of course we want to grab the cow if we can. My brain cell went awol as I posted that :( Shows what too much culture can do for a guy.

Pre-turn: Financial and tech situation looks bleak. Else fine.

2510BC (1): 2 gold, -2 per turn.

IT: Our treasury is running low. No duh.

Chop finishes.

2470BC (2): Make an edit to Willow's sheet and keep the game, but give up a BG.

2430BC (3): Settler completes. Start another. Our tresure is running low. Meet Carthage. They are up all visible techs. Continue revising Willow's sheet and get a free shield.

2390BC (4): Meet the Iroquois. They are up all visible techs too. Follow the sheet.

2350BC (5): Mohacs founded. Starts warrior. Meet Japan. They, too, are up all visible techs. Might as well turn the min sci run back on now that we have another city.

2310BC (6): Oh yeah, now we're talkin'. We got 6gpt. Oh, and I watch Utica build a worker.

2270BC (7): Absolutely nothing.

2230BC (8): Get ready to MM next turn.

2190BC (9): Not work the game.

2150BC (10): Settler --> Warrior

Notes:
- I strayed away from Willow's script a bit, not getting the other archer.
- After the warrior completes in Entremont, move the forest guy back onto a rBG.
- Warrior build in Mohacs can and probably should be changed.
- Settler is unmoved.

I'm kinda disappointed. There was an extra gold piece that I could have gotten.

Good work Tomoyo!! :goodjob: Didn't sound too exciting though?? :rolleyes:

I've got it.

Looks like we need some workers! :eek: That could be Mohacs primary job once a warrior pops?

eqWorker will have the road finished in 1, so then we need to get the silks to Entremont via the watered game?

I thought I understood that this settler was to go 2 south. It sounds as though I'm hearing that, because of the cow, we head NE, NE and E, settle and start on a Temple? Which way do we wish to go?

I'll check in again when I'm really awake!! :mischief:

Good work Tomoyo, keeping us out of the bankrupcy courts :thumbsup:

Gyathaar
AlanH
Tomoyo just played
leif erikson UP
WillowBrook On deck
DJMGator13

Have a peaceful turnset leif. Save your aggression for SGOTM5.

You can change the warrior build in Mohacs to a worker if you really want one earlier. (I almost did that)

Looks like we need some workers! :eek: That could be Mohacs primary job once a warrior pops? If not before. Workers are critical. We've used 50% of our worker turns so far to produce 20 shields. That's fine to jump start the granary and first settler, but it means we haven't improved many tiles yet. We need workers!

eqWorker will have the road finished in 1, so then we need to get the silks to Entremont via the watered game?Definitely.

I thought I understood that this settler was to go 2 south. It sounds as though I'm hearing that, because of the cow, we head NE, NE and E, settle and start on a Temple? Which way do we wish to go?My suggestion was to swap 3 and 4 on Tomoyo's map, not 2 and 4, so south next, then NE, then the northern outer ring. But you may be right that we should do NE first, to try to secure the cow asap, then the outer north, then S.

I the red civ to the east connected by land or is there water between?

Water, but we assume there may be a land connection to the north.

I am wondering if that red city could connect to us by going south and east through the tundra? I don't think it is high priority to check it out right now, but when we have more units and time...

Thinking things over, I would like to change the warrior build to a worker and cover Mohaacs with the 5/5 Archer just north as it looks like he is surrouinded by water and won't be going anywhere exciting. Besides, producing workers will keep us from needing any MP support for a while. ;)

Also, I'm not sure I see a good reason not to settle NE, NE and E with this settler, although I'm certainly open to other options.

I'm working on how to extend WillowBrook's script. It is not my strongest ability so I need to struggle with it a while this evening and then I'll move it along. :D

This is contiguous pangea - so we connect somewhere, but given Mad-bax's creativity, we may have to travel half the world to get there by land.

My vote is to settle our current settler in the #4 spot on Tomoyo's map. If that town works a BG, it can put out a warrior in 5, grow and have ten sheilds in the box 5 turns later, and pop a temple to grab the cow.

As for Entremont, I'd suggest a 6-turn warrior/settler factory until we get some more improvements. And if we want to risk barb pillaging and worker-chasing, I'd go for a worker in Mohacs and then a granary. The worker can irrigate the wheat and then chop the forest next to Mohacs - wait, does a forest chop outside the cultural borders still benefit the town?

This is contiguous pangea - so we connect somewhere, but given Mad-bax's creativity, we may have to travel half the world to get there by land.That's true. Also I haven't seen what Tomoyo may have discovered. Lat I saw the warrior was still walking west and was about to start coming back round from the east. So that water could be a complete break.

My vote is to settle our current settler in the #4 spot on Tomoyo's map. If that town works a BG, it can put out a warrior in 5, grow and have ten sheilds in the box 5 turns later, and pop a temple to grab the cow.Sounds good.

wait, does a forest chop outside the cultural borders still benefit the town?Yes, as long as it's in the 21 tile footprint.

Should get a warrior down and explore the tundra to the south when we can btw. Furs and ivory is often found in tundra so.

Settler to spot number 4 then.

Change Mohaacs to worker with a priority to irrigate and road the wheat and then looking for a chop to support a Granary build.

The Warrior we are building in Entremont can go south and east once we have the silks connected. Keep the settlers rolling out of Entremont... ;)

And,
Have a peaceful turnset leif. Save your aggression for SGOTM5.
You know me better than that. :mischief: I would be too scared to go to war with so few units! :p Now, give me 20 horsies and you never know how rash I might become!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

You know me better than that. :mischief: I would be too scared to go to war with so few units! :p Now, give me 20 horsies and you never know how rash I might become!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
I except we will be using gaelic swordsmen instead of horses in this game atleast untill we ge knights.. 3/2/2 unit for 50 shields :)

I've never played with the Euro Sword as far as I recall. I assume it has the usual fast unit retreat capability? It looks like a killer unit for the AA, although it's very expensive. None of the other AA UUs are over 30 shields. Interesting that it "upgrades" at Feudalism to a Frankish Axeman that costs less and moves slower. I'd need some convincing to do those upgrades.

In C3C it just costs 40 shields, and upgrades for free to MDI

It may not cost anything to upgrade here either. But losing movement of 2 to get an attack increase from 3 to 4 looks like a bad deal to me even if it costs nothing. An Axeman/MDI is similar to a longbow with a tad more defence and no defensive shot. I've generally cut them to pieces with fast units whenever I've found them on the other side. I generally don't build defenders or longbows, so an Axeman is a totally alien concept to me. But the last SGOTM and Gator01 have both shown me another aspect of civ3 that I still have to get used to - surviving while behind - and no doubt this one will throw some new curves as well.

I see no reason to upgrade them ever.. I will rather take a attack 3 fast unit than a slow attach 4 unit.. in addition we get 2 shields less for disbanding them in the late game :P

I rarely build MDI in a normal game and I agree that we should not upgrade our UU to gain 1 attack. I will normally push attacks with horse and just wait for chivalry to upgrade them to knights.

As a long term goal do we plan on researching Chivalry or should we go straight for MT. The same reason not to upgrade our UU to MDI works for not researching Chivalry (attack 3 vrs 4 and 50 vrs 70 shields). I see us doing alot of fighting with our UU swords.

It's not quite the same, as the extra 20 shields for a knight over a Eurosword buy you the extra attack without a loss of movement, and make attacks on pikes much more decisive. Euroswords can keep up with knights, and pick off the old wounded units. MT will take a lot more turns than chivalry - 5 techs vs 1, assuming all the first level MA techs are available anyway (Monotheism is the MA freebie for scientific civs in vanilla). I'm assuming we need to start conquering early to expand to the domination limit fast.

Note: I did not discover a link to the red civ (Japan). It seems that it is a very short ferry over. I bet MB made the map so that we have to go all the way to the other side of the map to get there by land.

Euroswords don't upgrade to Cavs for 20 Gold each either! ;)

While I don't think we'll need to research Chivalry, we shouldn't turn it down should it present itself to us. :mischief:

We have a couple of new cities and some tech. However, we're going to have to get some workers.

<< THE SAVE >> (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm6/Xteam_SG006_BC1750_01.SAV)

The turn log:

Turn 40 – 2150 BC Pre-flight.
Change build in Mohacs to Worker.
Look long and hard at Entremont. It needs more worker turns to pump out settlers, not enough shields yet. But we'll try.
Settler NE.
Press enter…

IBT
ZZzzzz

Turn 41 – 2110 BC
eArcher NW onto hill, meets a Chinese rArcher 2 squares NW.
Settler NE.
EqWorker SE onto game.
Exploring Warrior E onto mountain.
Change lux slider from 30% to 20%, roading the silk must have given enough gold to make them happy at 20%.

IBT
Chinese rArcher neads NW away from us.
Entremont Warrior => Settler.

Turn 42 – 2070 BC
eArcher W onto hill.
Settler E.
Warrior fortifies in Entremont.
eqWorker roads.
Exploring Warrior NW.
MM Entremont from rforest (10) to rBG (19) for growth in 1.
Mohacs grew to size 2, so I can’t reduce lux tax, yet.
Our friends NeoCarthage and Japan have Alphabet and will trade it for contact, should I do so? The Mongols and Chinese do not have it so we could use it to trade. We’re making 8 GPT so I decide to hold it for a while.

IBT
A Japanese Warrior stands on OUR cow! :nono:
Mohacs Worker => Granary.

Turn 43 – 2030 BC
eArcher fortifies on the hill facing a Chinese rArcher.
Worker E onto wheat.
Settler founds the town of Lugdunum, starts a Warrior.
Exploring Warrior N, meets a Barb Warrior.
MM Entremont by moving citizen from square 2 to 20 to allow Lugdunum citizen to work a BG. Mohacs works the wheat.
Lux remains at 20%.
Wow, :eek: the Japanese know Babylon, France, England, India, the Vikings and the Americans. They do not yet know the Mongols or Chinese.
The neoCarthaginians know the same civs as the Japanese but do not yet know the Mongols or Chinese. NeoCarthage is nearly on top of the Mongols, so this won’t last much longer.
Trades. These AI civs sure have a lot of gold, where are they getting it from?? :rolleyes:
Visit Hannabaline and trade Contact with the Chinese and Mongols for Alphabet, Bronze Working and 17 Gold.
Visit the Chinese and trade Alphabet for The Wheel plus 17 Gold.
Visit the Mongols and trdae Alphabet for Masonry plus 11 Gold.
Visit the Japanese and trade Contact with the Chinese and Mongols plus 66 Gold for Iron Working.
There is Iron :thumbsup: located 4 squares northwest of Entremont (One square west of red dot number 8 on the city site map) and on the hill east of our cow (the Japanese have claimed it).

IBT
Our Exploring Warrior is attacked by the Barb and redlined!

Turn 44 – 1990 BC
Worker irrigates.
Exploring Warrior NE onto mountain.
eArcher S.

IBT
Our worker has completed the road and we have silks in Entremont.
A Chinese vWarrior shows up near our silks.

Turn 45 – 1950 BC
eArcher fortifies.
eqWorker S.
Exploring Warrior fortifies to heal.
MM Entremont for 4 food to grow next turn, citizen from rForest (10) to BG (13).
Lux slider to 10%, making 12 GPT.
All the civs we know have Writing, Mysticism and HBR. We’re still too poor to trade.

IBT
Chinese vWarrior moves next to our worker, he’s polite so I’m going to try not to worry.
Mongol Scout wanders by eArcher.
Entremont grows to size 6.

Turn 46 – 1910 BC
eqWorker roads.
MM Entremont by moving the citizen from the BG (13) to an rG (5) for gold production, settler in 1.
Lux slider to 20%.


IBT
Nice and peaceful…
Entremont Settler => Warrior.
The Japanese have established an embassy in our capital.
The Iroquois are building The Oracle.

Turn 47 – 1870 BC
As much as I’d like to establish that iron as ours, I send the settler S.
Exploring Warrior N.
Lux slider to 0%.

IBT
We discover Mysticism. Set research to Polytheism at 10%.
Lugdunum Warrior => Temple.

Turn 48 – 1830 BC
Worker near Mohacs roads.
Warrior in Lugdunum fortifies.
Settler S.
Exploring Warrior NE, bypassing the Barb Camp (don’t want to lose him to the RNG). :rolleyes:
Can’t MM Entremont for food because if I do, the warrior won’t complete. That will screw things up a little but…

IBT
The Chinese request an audience and offer contact with the Babylonians for 50 Gold. I apologize and show them the door.
Entremont Warrior => Settler.
The Mongols are building The Oracle.


Turn 49 - 1790 BC
Warrior S from Entremont.
eqWorker mones.
Settler founds the town of Camulodunum and starts a Barracks.
Exploring Warrior N.
MM Entremont for shields, citizens working 10, 11, 14, 15, and 17 at size 4.
Lux to 20% for Mohacs.

IBT
ZZzzzz

Turn 50 – 1750 BC
Warrior S into Camulodunum.
Exploring Warrior N, sees more Barbs, including a horseman, but also finds a GH.
MM Entremont for food, move citizen from square 17 to 19.

We have 4 cities with 9 citizens. Entremont is at size 5 and can be on 10% lux, but Mohacs can’t. Next Warrior should, perhaps, go there until a road is completed. We are researching Polytheism as at 10% as all the other techs we could research have been discovered. We know all the starting techs plus Iron Working and Mysticism. We should be able to purchase Writing during the next turn set. HBR is also available but we have no visible horses, ATM. We are making 15 GPT.


Our neighbors know a lot of other civs that we don’t so our exploring warrior has much to do. The AI civs all know one another but have not traded our contact around, which I think is interesting. We shold be able to pop rush a temple in Lugdunum in 3 turns.

Iron is available to us and we should discuss whether to claim it with the next settler or not. The iron is located where our number 8 city would go on the dot map.

Please feel free to change any build. I tried to note in the turn log where the citizens were as MM happened, hope it isn't too bad. :blush: Entremont needs some more shield production.

Good luck WillowBrook!! :cool:

A picture is worth????

Looks like we get another RCP 5 city on river.. 2N of Lugdunum

Got it! (Ooo - my first succession game "Got it" - how exciting! :p )

But before I play, some team discussion is in order

1. Should the next settler settle next to the iron? (Tomoyo's #8) Connecting/disconnecting will require roading/unroading the mountain itself, which would require more workers than if we didn't have a town at #8. But I'll let the military experts give their opinions here. If we don't settler dot #8, where should we go next?

2. Entremont: I'll see what I can work out as a food/production schedule to keep us getting a settler every six turns. I expect we'll have to go up to size six for a few turns every cycle, which will likely require the lux slider at 20%. But we will need MP in Mohacs soon anyway as it will grow past size 2 soon (but it will also be hooked to silks soon, too)

3. Camulodunum: What should we build here? I don't think we need a barracks immediately; I'm thinking another granary would be good; once the deer is chopped and watered, that's another 6-turn settler or 3-turn worker factory (probably workers to start, until the land is improved)

4. barbs: when is it best to attack, when should we let them attack, and when should we run away? I know about the defensive bonuses on different terrains, but I haven't calculated or gained a feel for how to best handle different situations.

5. The worker stuation: If I have things calculated correctly, Mohacs can finish its granary in 14 turns (without a forest chop), and then start pumping out 3-turn workers (some may be four turns at the beginning due to lack of sheilds). Until then, we'll have to make due. The sourthern worker is mining, and then I'll road to Camu (not sure which tile) - this won't leave enough time for a forest chop to benefit a granary, if we decide to go for that in Camu, but we'll still want to chop the deer down there fairly soon.

6. Techs: do we want to buy writing as soon as we can afford it? I agree there's no point in getting HBR with no horses in sight. Any reason to buy it from one civ over another? (Besides the price)

Anything else I should be thinking about?

Edit: and what is the elite archer doing?

How much does upgrading cost in vanilla? is it same as in C3C where it is umm.. 3 gold per shield (upgrading horseman to knight is 120gold)..
if so warrior to UU would be 120gold each.. and we wont be able to afford many upgrades so better to just connect the iron and make all cities with no food resource start producing them at full speed..

It's 2 per shield in vanilla.

Good stuff, leif.

Gyathaar
AlanH
Tomoyo
leif erikson just played
WillowBrook UP and Got It
DJMGator13 On deck

@leif: I note that you traded for more than one contact at a time. I don't know how relevant it was in this situation without replaying it myself, and you prolly did as well as was possible. But in case it's of interest, I have evolved some generalised rules that I try to follow when I meet someone with more than one new contact:

- Try to buy one contact at a time, starting at the cheapest, and buy them with maps if either of us have MM, then cash. This is because each extra contact you buy is likely to reduce the cost of the next one, it may also reduce the cost of their techs and/or open more 2-fer opportunities, and gold and maps don't reduce in value as you trade them away.

- After I've bought all their contacts, and before I've sold any, I start tech trading around all my old and new contacts, as my techs will now be as high in value as they can be and theirs are as low as they can be.

- Finally, depending on the map and the likelihood of the civs meeting each other, I try to grab as much gold as possible by selling contacts and/or techs.

@WillowBrook: My 2¢ on some of your questions:

1. A radius 3 city next to the iron can't be disconnected without also disconnecting the silks, so I think we should accept that reconnecting the iron will take 9 worker turns on the mountain. I think we should build next to the iron, but not connect it until we've built all the warriors we want to upgrade. If we later want to disconnect to build horses for upgrade to cavalry, a stack of three workers can be used for reconnecting it when that time comes.

4. Generally if you are a warrior it's better to fortify and let the barbs attack you. At emperor we have little attack advantage over a barb. Archers can generally attack barbs OK as long as the barb is not on a mountain or fortified on a hill. The combat calculators give an idea on this. Look at the odds in attack and defence and pick the option that gives the highest chance of survival. I use http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3combatcalc.html

6. We need Writing asap so that we are in a position to see MM when it comes along. It may even be possible to grab MM during the first map trading turn.

I'll leave the other questions to better MM'ers than me.

@Gyathaar: Looking at the ones I know best:

horse to knight costs 80 gold for a 40 shield difference.
knight to cavalry costs 20 gold for a 10 shield difference.

These stack up with Tomoyo's figure of 2 gold per shield

I'm not sure I have the best answers, but I'll tell you what I think?? ;)

1. Should the next settler settle next to the iron? (Tomoyo's #8) Connecting/disconnecting will require roading/unroading the mountain itself, which would require more workers than if we didn't have a town at #8. But I'll let the military experts give their opinions here. If we don't settler dot #8, where should we go next?
I thought I heard Gyathaar say that we wanted an Ancient Age Golden Era. If that is so, then we should get the city built and road the Iron fairly quickly. I can't see us cutting the Iron unless we are trying to rush Knights or Cavalry, and that will be a while and we should have plenty of workers (I hope) by then. Besides, if we want to start conquest sooner rather than later, our UU is necessary. So, I would vote to build site 8 next.
2. Entremont: I'll see what I can work out as a food/production schedule to keep us getting a settler every six turns. I expect we'll have to go up to size six for a few turns every cycle, which will likely require the lux slider at 20%. But we will need MP in Mohacs soon anyway as it will grow past size 2 soon (but it will also be hooked to silks soon, too)
I realized just now that what I forgot was that during the inter-turn when a city grows, we get extra shields. For the last warrior, I MM for shields instead of food and that was an error on my part. I think it will be easy to do a 6 turn cycle once we have a few more mines done. I think there is a bigger question, and that is the production Regular units instead of Veterans, which means building a Barracks somewhere in there. But then, we won't be building Warriors much longer if we hook up the Iron, so what else can we build in conjunction with Settlers? :hmm:
3. Camulodunum: What should we build here? I don't think we need a barracks immediately; I'm thinking another granary would be good; once the deer is chopped and watered, that's another 6-turn settler or 3-turn worker factory (probably workers to start, until the land is improved)
The reason I started a Barracks is that, given our current worker situation, I didn't think we would be chopping anytime soon. Camulodunum is faily shield rich and could pump some vet units and build a Granary while it waits for a worker to get there. That is why I did it, but feel free to change it.
4. barbs: when is it best to attack, when should we let them attack, and when should we run away? I know about the defensive bonuses on different terrains, but I haven't calculated or gained a feel for how to best handle different situations.
I decided not to risk losing our Warrior when he was that far from home because the contacts he will make are far more valuable than the 25 Gold he'll earn if he defeats the Barb Camp.
5. The worker stuation: If I have things calculated correctly, Mohacs can finish its granary in 14 turns (without a forest chop), and then start pumping out 3-turn workers (some may be four turns at the beginning due to lack of sheilds). Until then, we'll have to make due. The sourthern worker is mining, and then I'll road to Camu (not sure which tile) - this won't leave enough time for a forest chop to benefit a granary, if we decide to go for that in Camu, but we'll still want to chop the deer down there fairly soon.
I think we need to discuss our future plan a little more to determine what needs to be produced. Looking at Gyathaar's 100K game, the graph shows that he started conquest fairly early and that requires military. With our UU nearly available, we prolly should think about where we want to produce them and start setting it up so we can begin that phase of the game.
6. Techs: do we want to buy writing as soon as we can afford it? I agree there's no point in getting HBR with no horses in sight. Any reason to buy it from one civ over another? (Besides the price)
I usually go up the tech tree through Writing, so I am in unfamiliar ground. I did try this route once and it was marginally successful. imho, there is no real rush to get Writing as once we know the other civs, it should be cheaper.

EDIT2 - Just read Alan's post (we crossed) and he is right, forgot about Map Making!! We will need Writing soon. (So original edit reason still stands) :blush:

Perhaps it is time to think about getting an Army of EuroSwords built and do what we do best, extort and steal through pointy stick and other methods. :mischief:
Edit: and what is the elite archer doing?
The eArcher was shadowing some Chinese and Mongol units that kept popping into view near Mohacs. I prolly should have moved him into Mohacs to reduce the lux rate and give us more gpt.

Hope that helps. :D

EDIT - Stupidity!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

@leif: I note that you traded for more than one contact at a time. I don't know how relevant it was in this situation without replaying it myself, and you prolly did as well as was possible. But in case it's of interest, I have evolved some generalised rules that I try to follow when I meet someone with more than one new contact:

- Try to buy one contact at a time, starting at the cheapest, and buy them with maps if either of us have MM, then cash. This is because each extra contact you buy is likely to reduce the cost of the next one, it may also reduce the cost of their techs and/or open more 2-fer opportunities, and gold and maps don't reduce in value as you trade them away.

- After I've bought all their contacts, and before I've sold any, I start tech trading around all my old and new contacts, as my techs will now be as high in value as they can be and theirs are as low as they can be.

- Finally, depending on the map and the likelihood of the civs meeting each other, I try to grab as much gold as possible by selling contacts and/or techs.

Thank you for these, they are interesting and helpful. In this turn set, I didn't get any contacts from them as I was more interested in trying to catch us up in tech. The only way I could get some of the techs was to offer both contacts because they wanted so much GPT for the techs (we didn't have) and, iirc, they wanted both contacts to trade for one contact. Perhaps I could have done better, but I was trying to leave us as much GPT as possible so we could look at buying more techs ahead rather than playing catch up. This is also one of the reasons I didn't go after the Barb Camp, I wanted to keep that Warrior exploring to make contact so we wouldn't have to trade for them.

I couldn't believe how much Gold the 4 civs we know have, never seen them that high this early in the game. Perhaps that is why they didn't trade our contact, they already had the other AI civs gold??? :crazyeye:

I think we need to discuss our future plan a little more to determine what needs to be produced. Looking at Gyathaar's 100K game, the graph shows that he started conquest fairly early and that requires military. With our UU nearly available, we prolly should think about where we want to produce them and start setting it up so we can begin that phase of the game.
My game was in chieftain, so I didnt have to do any conquest at all.. I just has to build settlers and workers to make roads as fast as I could in that game :P

I couldn't believe how much Gold the 4 civs we know have, never seen them that high this early in the game. Perhaps that is why they didn't trade our contact, they already had the other AI civs gold???
I am guessing them have been quite busy popping barb huts for gold :p

The Mongols had over 300 gold during my turn set. That's 12 barb huts. I can't believe they did that. More likely M-B gave them a chunk of change to get them started.

In this turn set, I didn't get any contacts from them as I was more interested in trying to catch us up in tech. The only way I could get some of the techs was to offer both contacts because they wanted so much GPT for the techs (we didn't have) and, iirc, they wanted both contacts to trade for one contact.
Ahah! You have to speculate to accumulate. If they would have sold you a contact for gpt you might have reduced the price of techs by knowing more civs with them, or found a 2-fer. Contacts are key to getting tech prices down.

My game was in chieftain, so I didnt have to do any conquest at all.. I just has to build settlers and workers to make roads as fast as I could in that game :P
I don't think we're going to get away with that in this game??? :rolleyes:

How long do you think we should wait to begin conquests? If we are going to build some warriors for upgrade, they should be Vets. We need some Barracks towns and some gold set aside to accomplish this in addition to expanding peacfully for now.

EDIT - Ahah! You have to speculate to accumulate. If they would have sold you a contact for gpt you might have reduced the price of techs by knowing more civs with them, or found a 2-fer. Contacts are key to getting tech prices down.
OK, I'm a knucklehead. By the time I had gotten the contacts, I'm not sure there would been any gold left to try for techs. I think I will go back and see if the autosave is available and try it again. :blush:

I think we should build warriors and hold off connecting iron for a while. 50 shields per unit will be slow going. 10 shields each is much more like it.

How long do you think we should wait to begin conquests? If we are going to build some warriors for upgrade, they should be Vets. We need some Barracks towns and some gold set aside to accomplish this in addition to expanding peacfully for now.


I'm wondering the same thing. My gut feeling (which could be entirely wrong) is that we need to maximize food to produce many workers and settlers for a little longer, but a barracks in Entremont at least would be good. I'll see what I can work out. For Camu, it's cheaper support-wise to first build the granary and then the barracks if we want both, and I think that town will be good for both settler/workers and warrior. I'll take a closer look.

How long we should wait.. we want to get our core fully buildt,and then expand west while building military in towns with no food bonus.
When our expansion bits chinese or mongol borders, we attack them and capture the cities they have had time to build in meantime.

Exception would be if japan or another civ nearby complete pyramids.. then I think it would be worthwhile to go after that civ first to increase our growth.

Only annoying thing is all nearby civs has UUs with chivalry, so going after them before we have to face riders and samurais would be nice (keshniks are not that bad as long as we can attack them before they attack us since they are just 2 defense :p (assume same numbers in vanilla as in C3C) )

@Alan - I owe you a report of the trading round. I just finished trying it a second time and I learned that your point has merit, as always!! :goodjob: I managed to trade for all contacts plus all the techs gained during the turnset plus Writing. The only difference is that it cost 7 GPT to do so, which would have left WillowBrook trying to balance lux with 1 GPT to spare. :cry: The question I had was once the contacts are traded around, the tech cost didn't seem to go down at all. I wonder if there has to be a change in turn for the tech costs to adjust?

Producing Warriors and upgrading them is going to get expensive at 100 Gold per EuroSword! So for 20, that's 2,000 Gold!! :eek: That's worse than horsies to knights. Do we have any other options? :confused:

euroswords are 50 shields, warriors 10 shields.. 40 shield difference at 2 gold per shield is 80gold per upgrade, not 100 :)

Ooops, thanks. :D So it is the same as upgrading Horses to Knights, except it happens earlier when Gold is a little more scarce.

So it is 1,600 Gold to upgrade 20 Warriors instead of 2,000. I think that is better, if we can find it....

Perhaps we can start a traveling minstrel show?? :banana: :band: :dance: :rockon:

Apologies for the delay. Mt ISP has just upgraded me to 1 Mbps service, and in the process they've screwed up my IP address assignment, so my shiny new broadband connection goes at zero bps until their dozy configuration staff get in on Monday morning. :( I've now reconfigured onto dial-up.

As Gyathaar says, the upgrade will be 80 gold per Eurosword, and I don't think we need 20 of them to go out and kill a civ or two. Those puppies are going to be lethal if we get them out there while everyone has spears. A stack of three or four will take down capitals, and two will be enough for outlying towns. Think Legions attacking at speed! It's down to what we can produce most of fastest - gpt or spt.

There are several ways to produce a Eurosword:

A Eurosword costs 50 shields, or 10 shields + 80 gold, or 10 shields plus 2 citizens, or 30 shields + 1 citizen (and some happy pills to counter the whipping). Depending on whether we have a granary the citizens cost 10 food or 20 food.

So to put it simply, we can produce a Eurosword in 5 turns with:
10spt or (2spt + 16gpt) or (2spt + 4fpt) or (6spt + 2fpt)

Using a lot of gold looks a good bet because we have lots of river tiles, all of which will produce 2gpt with roads, and we produce gold as a by-product in cities that are building workers or settlers or barracks or whatever. Using lots of shields means mining a lot of tiles, and that takes time and workers, and we can only build them in cities that aren't doing anything else and have barracks.

So here's what I'm thinking based on the discussion:

- get writing ASAP
- pop the temple to snag the cow
- try to get a barracks in Entremont and keep pumping out settlers (I'll play with possibilities to determine the best build order)
- don't let barbs get the exploring warrior
- continue with minimum research; adjust lux as necessary
- next town is by the iron
- MM mohacs to get granary in 14
- change Camu to granary
- connect towns with roads; road worked tiles

If there are serious objections, let me know. I'll check here tomorrow morning before playing.

Wow, I just logged on after 9 intense turns of SGOTM05 and find a new page of discussion. Too tired to read it now I'll catch up in the AM. Glad to see the high quality of Xteam cooperation is alive and well with this team also.

If there are serious objections, let me know. I'll check here tomorrow morning before playing.
Sounds good to me. :goodjob: Good luck! :rockon:

OK, I caught up on the discussion.

According to Nethog's Civ3 PTW upgrade chart - galleic swords upgrade for 40 gold (same as regular warrior to sword upgrade). It might be worth loading a test game and verifying the upgrade cost.

Contact trading - I can only add that you need to check out the original results of Moonsingers trading exercise that I reused in TDG as our 2nd exercise. There is value in renegotiating peace deals. I'll locate the link and post it.

Here is the link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=92382). SirPleb posted the best results in Moonsingers original posting. Check it out. BTW, this is when I first contact Alan to see if he could locate an old save file.

the save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm6/Xteam_SG006_BC1500_01.SAV)

Here are my notes as I took them; I'll post a summary and map soon.

Turn 50
MM: Change Entremont from working river forest (10) to the other forest (17), and put non-wheat citizen in Mohacs on the river forest. Set Camu to granary.
Archer: south toward Mohacs
(Enter)

IBT: Barb horse appears and attacks exploring warrior, taking one HP.
The Chinese start the pyramids.

Turn 51
Archer into Mohacs, lower lux to 10%. Worker next to Mohacs moves south to BG. Warrior in Camu SW on hill. E-warrior fortifies to heal.

Check on writing deals:
Iroquois want 110g and 4gpt; they’ll sell two contacts for 90g
Mongols want 122 and 4gpt
Chinese want 110g and 4gpt
I’ll wait a few turns till we can pay straight up (we’re getting 17 gpt)
(Enter)

E-warrior defends against barb w with no more damage and promotes, but barb horse takes him down to one HP.
Carthage starts the pyramids.

Turn 52
Fortify archer in Mohacs, move Entremont citizen from forest (17) to BG (13) for growth in one, worker road by Lug, Camu warrior south, e-warrior remains fortified to heal.

(Enter)
IBT: nothing

Turn 53
Uh-oh – Satsuma just expanded and took the cow. I rush the temple in Lugdunum anyway, since there’s now a flip risk. Camu warrior SW, e-warrior will be fully healed next turn. Raise lux to 20% for Entremont happiness.

(Enter)
IBT: Entremont: settler => barracks; Lugdunum: temple => barracks

Turn 54
Settler to just east of iron, Camu warrior S – there are dyes we should claim!

I experiment with the contact hypothesis: I can buy writing for 163g and 1gpt from Hiawatha. Instead, I buy contact with the Vikings for 30g (the cheapest contact). Unfortunately, Ragnar doesn’t have writing. Well, I’ll wait another couple of turns.

E-warrior: do I risk popping the hut? It could be a tech. Or the warrior could die. I move NW to give the barb a chance to attack me first.

(Enter)
IBT: E-warrior survives barb attack, but loses a HP.

Turn 55
Oops – forgot to lower lux. Lower it to 0 (for one turn). N worker moves west (road will connect N towns to the silks). S worker SE (road will connect Camu). Move citizen in Entremont from forest to rBG. Yes! That mine that just completed will make the barracks complete in 2!
Richborough founded, set to worker (this can be changed to warrior if the team decided), Camu warrior E, E-warrior pause to heal

(Enter)
IBT: barb horse and warrior move just N or Mohacs.

Turn 56
Workers road, Camu warrior E on dye. I decide to pop the hut. I get a map (from the Mayans, I think?) Archer takes out barb warrior with no damage. Raise lux to 10%. I leave Mohacs new citizen on river plains – granary will complete in 8, 2 turns before growth to size four.

I decide to go ahead and buy writing from the Chinese: 163g and 1gpt.

(Enter)
IBT: Entremont: barracks => settler. Barb horse moves to hill.

Turn 57
Uh-oh: both mapmaking and philosophy are generally known. Combat calc says my archer will almost certainly win against the barb horse. Problem is, I’ll have to bump up luxes to make Mohacs happy…

Oh, but I can trade maps w/o MM. Let’s do this carefully.
I trade TM with Iroquois, throwing in 12g.
I give my WM and 1gpt to the Japanese for TM and 10g. Wow – they’ve got eight towns!
I sell the Vikings writing and 21 gold for contact with the French, English, and Americans.
neoCarthage: I give WM and 1gpt for TM and 15g
Mongols: give WM for TM and 6g
China: get TM for WM and 2g
The English do not have MM yet
The French also do not have MM
That’s 3 civs w/o MM. Should bite the bullet and buy it? I can probably get philosophy and HBR and the rest of communications by selling it around.
Okay – we can afford it.
Americans: I buy MM and their TM for WM, 11gpt and 12g
French: Should I sell MM for philosophy, contact with Babs and Indians, TM, and (all) 4g, or should I get her WM for MM and my WM? I go for the first option, since that gives more trading partners.
England: get her WM and all 25g for MM and my WM
Vikings: sell then MM for their WM and all 24g
Trade WM with France.

So the good news is we have contact with everyone and at least territory maps, and all known techs except HBR; bad news is we’re paying out 14 gpt.

Archer: kills barb horse, but I have to bump lux rate up to 30% to keep Mohacs happy. S warrior: W, E-warrior: NE (I could go NE or NW, but decide on NE)

(Enter)
IBT: nothing

Turn 58
Archer back to Mohacs, lux down to 10%, Entremont: citizen from forest to BG for growth in 1. 2 warriors explore.

I feel like I should be doing something more after the last long turn…

(Enter)
IBT: English start Colossus.

Turn 59
Lux to 20% to keep Entremont happy. Fortify archer in Mohacs, N worker starts mining next to Lugdunum, S worker moves E to road

(Enter)
IBT: lose S warrior to barb horse! The Chinese start Colossus.

Turn 60
Oh, no! COL AND polytheism are both out there!!! I save and quit.

Turns are getting busier, I see. Well played WillowBrook :goodjob:.

Gyathaar On deck
AlanH
Tomoyo
leif erikson
WillowBrook just played
DJMGator13 UP

Gator's turn. A less exhausting set than your last set in SGOTM5, I hope ;).

Summary for turns 50-60, played by Willowbrook

The good news is that we have contact with everyone, at least territory maps with everyone, and were almost at tech parity (minus HBR) until the current turn. :) The bad news is that we're paying out 14gpt to support the above knowledge, code of laws and polytheism have just shown up, and there are a lot of big civs out there. :(

Here's our kingdom:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/WillowBrookSGOTM6B.JPG

breif recap:

Cities
We have a temple in Lugdunum, but Satsuma expanded the turn before it completed, so we don't have the cow. :mad: We have barracks in Entremont, and two granaries are almost complete.

Tech
I probably should have bought writing sooner - maybe mapmaking wouldn't have already been out there. But we have writing, MM, and philosophy now (see turnlog for details). Unfortunately, COL and poly just showed up.

Maps
I couldn't get more than territory maps for a reasonable price, but did get several WM for MM. We at least know where everyone is and how scary they're looking. The exploring warrior survived some troubles, but the warrior that was in Camulodunum just got killed by a barb horse just to the SW of the above picture.

Looking Ahead
Here are my suggestions for each town:
Entremont: keep producing settler and warrior every six turns. the warriors will now be vets. This means MM the food to have 3, 3, 4 fpt at each size. The 4 needs to be last so that the new citizen goes on the forest.
Mohacs: Should become a 3-turn worker factory (size 3-4 for now). I think we need to mine a grassland to make this work. When the granary finishes, we might want to build a settler first, or go straight to a worker. (With some land improvement, it can become a 6-turn settler factory. But we need workers to do the improving)
Camulodunum: I haven't carefully mapped this out, but I think we can road the BG the worker is on, then move it to the deer and start chopping, then when the granary finishes, build another worker to help with the chop and set to barracks, and the chop should all go to the barracks. Then we can have a 4-turn warrior/worker factory once the deer is watered and the BG mined. (This plan needs to be double-checked. Or replaced if there's a better one.)
Lugdunum: once the barracks is done and the town reaches size three, it can be a 2-turn warrior factory.
Richborough: I don't know what we want to build here, but I set it to worker for now.
Next towns: I think we should get the other wheat. There are two possible ring-5 locations. I don't have a preference at the moment We should also claim the dyes and a spice source before too long. I wouldn't be surprised to see Japanese settlers on our side of the channel soon.

Military plans
I have a feeling the Japanese are going to be trouble. The Babs will also be a culture threat, but the chances of reaching them any time soon are slim. But I'm not a war-monger, so I'll let the experts decide how to handle this. When do we start fomenting phony wars?

Tech
I'm surprised by the pace. But I don't usually play this big a map on emporer (or any level for that matter).

Hmm - no more thoughts at the moment. Gator - it's all yours! :D

Got it. I won't play until tomorrow after work, so there is time for discussion.

EDIT: Crossed with Willow's post. I like the city assessment in Willow's report.

Some quick things I saw looking at the save.

1) We need more workers, should I go for 2 workers from Entremont instead of a settler?

2) We need to keep an eye out for Math and buy it ASAP or should we switch research now? Then we could start on CURR, the AI's favor CONST because of the Wonder attached to it. That could give us something to barter with. Looks like we'll be playing catchup on the techs. That's what happens when playing with 12 civs.

3) Looks like we have plenty of room to continue to settle, we really need a second city cranking out settlers, Mohacs granary completes in 4 that should help.

4) At some point, say completion of 2nd ring, we may want to cut off settling and start amassing an army and let the AI's build cities for us. War will give us more cities and some techs in peace deals. If we wait too long we could be facing some stronger knight UUs.

I think the main reason for the techrate is all the expansionist civs in this game, things should slow down a bit when we enter middle ages.

Preturn 1500BC
open save, review situation and post comments for team. Save and exit.

load up game / turn on animations
eqWorker mines / exploring warrior E (next to Bcamp
review cities - no changes

IBT - Entremont settler => warrior (mm to +4fpt) / 3 civs have MATH

Turn 61 - 1475BC
settler to site #6 (wanted to fill in first ring)
Warrior attacks E to Bcamp - we redline and win promo to elite but now there is a Bhorse in the camp that was not there last turn
check cities - OK

IBT - CHN just claimed the western spice (@RCP9) and 2 archers move into view near the wheat

Turn 62 - 1450BC
Decide not to settle #6 - better go claim that wheat and close off the corner (almost moved settler that way last turn)
settler NE / there are now 2 Bhorses in the Bcamp (I think out warrior is meat) move him N to hill
check cities - mm Entremont to +3fpt +7spt
lower lux to 10% should have done last turn after settler was produced

IBT - WOW a CART warrior moves near the Bcamp and the Bhorse attacks it instead of us / the 2 CHN archers are headed to the Bcamp north of us / Entremont warrior => settler

Turn 63 - 1425BC
moving new warrior to Mohacs for MP (reach city next turn) / settler 3 tiles into Richborough / fort our injuried warrior to heal
check cities - no changes / both granaries will complete before growth

IBT - CHN archer turn around the Bcamp is no longer visible / more civs have MATH but nothing new
Mohacs granary => worker
Lugdunum barracks => warrior

Turn 64 - 1400BC
Tech status to start turn (hmm, why would he say that...)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam06_02.jpg

Can buy HBR for our Wmap and 65 gold [CivAssist values it at 88gold] - I'd rather buy POLY or MATH because not everyone have those two and we could possibly trade, need over 200 gold for those

While trading our Wmap around the horn I come across this deal - IND offers HBR, Tmap and 2gold for our Wmap
That was sweet - update our world map picked up HBR and made 65 gold

I now have enough money to buy MATH from FRA (cheapest price) for 145gold and 1gpt (what's 1 more gpt)

By switching off research I can buy POLY from one of the 2 civs that have POLY but are short MATH
I buy POLY from IRQ (cheaper than from AMR) for MATH and 3gpt
Sell MATH and POLY to CHN for COL and 22gold
Sell POLY to IND for 26gold
Gamble that ENG's Wmap is good and trade them POLY & MATH for it - nice map, removed a lot of fog

(this is why he said that)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam06_03.jpg


Set research to Republic at -1gpt but we have 48gold in our treasury, which is why I made the last trades
lux at 10% sci at 10%

MP warrior reaches Mohacs / settler heading to site #5 (2 more turn to found) / other warrior is healing
check cities - mm Entremont to +4

IBT - CART warrior claims the Bcamp / BAB start building Pyramids after completing the Oracle / FRA starts the lighthouse / MOG, ENG, IRQ start pyramids builds
Richborough worker => barracks

Turn 65 - 1375BC
everyone is at tech parity now
Entremont grew to size 6 - had to raise lux to 20% we went from even to -4gpt

Lug worker W N NE to rPlain NE of Mohacs
new worker N towards site #5
the 2 CHN archer are standing on site 5 so I move settler N to be 1 tile from either site 5 or site 3
check cities again

IBT - CHN archers move off of Site 5 / MON want to talk, trade Tmaps / JPN start pyramids / 6 civs have LIT

Turn 66 - 1350BC
Mohacs worker irr / Cam worker roads / Rich worker roads / move settler SW to site 5 / exploring warrior is healed continue north into the foggy jungle
we down to -3gpt
check cities - mm Cam for food and commerce - only need 1 shield for granary - we improve to -2gpt

IBT - we have 2 Bgalleys North and NW of us / 1 more civ has LIT
Entremont settler => warrior
Mohacs worker => worker
Camulodunum granary => worker

Turn 67 - 1325BC
site 5 settler founds Verulamium - set to worker
new Mohacs worker NE with other worker / explorer N (next to GH)
new settler heading for the dyes
check cities - mm Entremont to +4fpt
lux to 0 for a turn we're at +0gpt

IBT - JPN, BAB, ENG building Great Library
Lugdunum warrior => warrior

Turn 68 - 1300BC
lux to 10% @ -1gpt
check cities - several changes - switch Entremont to settler instead of wasting shields

hold up settler heading towards dyes for a warrior to catch up
explorer with nothing to lose pops the GH - warriors imagine that

IBT - IRQ want to talk, they offer Wmap for our Wmap and 40gold - no deal, trade Tmaps instead / explorer survives 3 Bwarrior attacks / FRA start Great Library after completing the Pyramids, cascade MON switch to Lighthouse / CART, CHN, ENG, AMR switch to Library

Turn 69 - 1275BC
Cam has no MPs up lux to 20% we're at -4gpt (only for a turn - worker completes next turn)
Cam worker to game
settler and warrior S
Rich worker to wheat
explorer heals

check cities - mm Mohacs will produce worker and grow next turn
mm Cam for commerce
we're at -2gpt now

Sell World Map around the horn - gain Tmaps from everyone and 68 gold

IBT - JPN, BAB building Library
Mohacs worker => worker
Camulodunum worker => barracks

Turn 70 - 1250BC
new Mohacs worker heading to Entremont
other Mohacs worker starts mining grass
Verul worker irr wheat
new Cam worker to game where other worker starts a chop
settler & warrior S to dyes
explorer heals
check cities - mm Entremont to +4fpt - will grow and produce settler next turn
lux down to 10% we're +1gpt

1250BC Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm6/Xteam_SG006_BC1250_01.SAV)
Firaxis 181 / Jason 62

Notes to next player
1) start the 2nd worker on a chop - may need to switch the barracks build it will probably complete before the chop
2) continue settler and warrior to the Tundra tile NE of the shell - this is RCP8 and we will need to rush temple or build a colony to hookup the dyes
3) 1 deal will expire in 6 turns then 3 more expire the following turn
4) I realized I set research to Republic and we cannot change to it but I thought it might give us the best trading options, we are currently only down LIT

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam06_04.jpg

:clap: Nice trading!

But what does "tundra NE of the shell" mean? :hmm:

I assume that we will be revolting to republic? Like, right when we get it? We're Religious, right?

Is there any chance that we will be in Republic before the land grab phase is over? That would make Entremont into a 4 turn settler factory, if I'm calculating correctly.

But what does "tundra NE of the shell" mean? :hmm:

I assume that we will be revolting to republic? Like, right when we get it? We're Religious, right?


That would be S SW of settler & warrior's current position. The shell is barely visible at the bottom of the screen shot close to the minimap.

And more importantly we cannot use Republic. Variant of the game is that we can only change to Communism.

:goodjob: Gator

Gyathaar UP
AlanH On deck
Tomoyo
leif erikson
WillowBrook
DJMGator13 just played

Go, Gyathaar.

:wallbash: There goes that... We'll be using some :hammer: to help us with reserach, then, wouldn't we?

Great turnset, Gator!

One thing we might want to keep in mind when improving the land - assuming we use our UU to start our Golden Age, mined BG won't give us any more production in a despotic GA, but mined regular grasslands will. Mined hills will as well (but they take time to build). As for commerce, roaded tiles by rivers won't benefit from the GA, but other roaded tiles will. I wouldn't use this as a guiding principle, but if it's a toss-up as to which tile to improve, this could help.

I'm glad to see more workers, tech parity, a healthy treasury balance, and less fog over the world! (I'll be interested in comparing the Vanilla/PTW exploration/knowledge with the C3C teams', assuming the later trading of contacts and maps is in place for them. And once our game is finished.)

Ofcourse the most distant of all the civs had to build pyramids.. (bet France was set up that far away with good lands just so they could get it first :p)

Killing off just china,mongols and iroquis (plus carthage on the way) will let us control 8 (wines is right outside iroqui borders) luxes... that leaves gems.. there is 9 luxes in this game?

Ofcourse the most distant of all the civs had to build pyramids.. (bet France was set up that far away with good lands just so they could get it first :p)

China and Carthage both started the pyramids near the start of my turnset.
Edit: Oops - I didn't read the writeup carefully enough. Sorry!

Killing off just china,mongols and iroquis (plus carthage on the way) will let us control 8 (wines is right outside iroqui borders) luxes... that leaves gems.. there is 9 luxes in this game?

I'm not sure at all, but the discussion of the SoZ bug in the C3C version (they can build it with silks) suggests that the luxes have just been changed, not that there are any more. Though why one would take out gems on a map like this beyond me.

Hmm.. see you finished off SGOTM5, so I guess I have to start playing this :)
I notice we are at bottom of score of all the teams, I am guessing because we have such tight build and thus claiming territory slower than the test

There is gems in game.. I just meant there appears to be 9 different luxes in the game (silk,dyes,furs,gems,ivory,spices,incense,wines and wool). Is this normal in these SGOTMs?

I think if you use the check boxes to select which teams to display you'll see that the Classic team graphs are lower scoring. That doesn't explain the Classic teams that are higher scoring than us, but it indicates that the C3C software gives a scoring advantage. I have an action item to split the graphs - I might do it by simply providing a check box to select which version to display.

GOTMs from 20 to 31 used to have all the standard luxuries plus wool and cotton. See this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=56874) for details. This was discontinued when ainwood started designing the maps, as there were lots of grumbles about the amount of modding that was being done. I guess the work done on those mods lives on to some extent in the SGOTMs.

I think if you use the check boxes to select which teams to display you'll see that the Classic team graphs are lower scoring. That doesn't explain the Classic teams that are higher scoring than us, but it indicates that the C3C software gives a scoring advantage. [snip]

Yes, the agricultural trait in the C3C version gives an extra food in each city founded near fresh water... this gives a huge scoring advantage to those games.

Well, the more lux the better - 10 would be great. I'm trying to finish COTM 09 with a 100k culture win, and the contant drafting causes a lot of unhappiness.

As for long-term plans, do we want to consider taking on Japan as well? I'm personally miffed at the cattle-rustling that happened under my watch.

Yes, we will want to take out japan aswell, they are close to us and has good lands, but atm they dont appear to have any luxes,resources or wonders we want.. so not highest priority (prolly best to wait for cavs for taking out their samurais)

I am guessing because we have such tight build and thus claiming territory slower
I thought the plan was to have three settler farms pumping away? Isn't that what we should be doing to get our core fully built? I agree we are prolly claiming territory slower, but is this a symptom of lack of focus on our original goal - lots of cities?

I doubt we have lower city count (perhaps 1 city less max), its just that each city claim less territory.. and territory is what gives the biggest part of score in early game.

Score is doesnt matter much in a fastest 100k game.. I fully expect the fastest 100k victory will also have the lowest score (due to unhappiness and lower pop from more intense poprushing)

Sorry I've been out to lunch, some things came up. :crazyeye:

This may be relevent to the discussion of the start. It comes from the Maintenance thread written by M-B.
Difficulty of the Start (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=2560642#post2560642)

You've prolly seen it, but I found it interesting.

1250BC, turn 70:
I switch Richborough to granary since it can work a wheat it should become a settler factory.
Will allow Camo to finish barracks before chop finish, chop will go towards a settler
move mohacs citizen to work river grass instead of forest to gain a gold

IBT:
Entremont: Settler -> warrior

1225BC, turn 71:
send worker in entremont W,Sw to unroaded and unmined river BG
send worker NW of Mohacs to unroaded river grass tile
halt the worker that started chopping forst last turn and start both workers chopping forest this turn si I am sure it finish the turn after barracks finish
move the souther settler pair towards proposed tile by shells (will prevent other civs from claiming the dyes)

pondering where to send the new settler in entremont, and decide on spot 11 to claim more area and work towards the spices.
bring the regular warrior in entremont along as protection since there will be a new one available before entremont grows again
move mohacs citizen back to river forest

IBT:
Lungdum: warrior -> warrior

1200BC, turn 72:
worker on BG start mine, other worker start road

IBT:
entremont: warrior -> settler
mohacs: worker->settler (going to let newly founded cities start on 10 turn workers instead of building more in settler factories for now)

mongols start colossus
vikings start lighthouse

1175BC, turn 73:
new worker goes north

Found Gerovia by the shells, set to worker

buy a worker from india for 26 gold
slave goes SW to start road that tile

send the reg warrior from Lugdunum towards Camo to work as MP

IBT:
nothing

1150BC, turn 74:
Found Augustodurum at spot 11 (the lone tundra tile in grass) -> worker
slave and 2 workers start roads
move citizen in Camo from BG to roaded river grass, and citizen from mined and roaded BG to river grass.. this prevents riot, and rax still finish in 1 turn
move citizen in entremong from forest to roaded and mined BG that Camo used (settler will complete in 3 turns with no loss.. we already have a 6 turn warrior-settler factory set up here)

IBT:
Camo: rax -> settler (will get chop)

france complete colossus in Orleans
chinese and english start lighthouse

1125BC, turn 75:
move the worker SE of mohacs SW and finish the mine there, worker on that tile move NE and start mine

warrior arrive in Camo and with Mp it can work unroaded BG tile

IBT:
lugunum: warrior -> warrior

india start lighthouse

1100BC, turn 76:
workers on newly chopped game start irrigation
worker from south of mohacs goes NW of mohacs

england,japan and china has currency now.. most of our gpt turns expore next turn.. so will wait till then

IBT:
Entremont: settler -> warrior
Verulamium: worker -> rax

1075BC, turn 77:
send new settler from entremont towards the ring 5 site near the goats (with warrior protection)

france picked up currency in IBT, and england and france has construction
all our gold and gpt is not enough to get construction, so I wait (its doubtful so can prolly buy it after another civ gets it)

IBT:
exploring warrior is attack by barb warrior, and wins flawlessly

vikings start lighthouse

1050BC, turn 78:
no change in tech situation

IBT:
japan demands TM and 24gold.. give it to him.. dont want them dropping off annoying units from galleys

entremont: warrior -> settler

india start GLib

1025BC, turn 79:
Found Agedincum -> worker

still cant buy construction, but iroquis has a worker for sale, so give them 27gold for it

IBT:
Lugdunum: warrior -> warrior

1000BC, turn 80:
America and japan picked up construction BT

france will sell us for least money, prolly because our map is worth most with them

WM, 113gold and 19gpt to france for construction

construction to china for currency and TM (they would not give WM)

currency to neoCartage for their WM, literature and 100gold

We have a pretty much complete WM now and in the MA.

prolly want to wait with gifting Babylon to MA untill we have Republic to trade them


QSC stats:
9 cities, 24 citizens
8 native workers, 2 slaves

QSC score according to CRpMapStat: 6058

fireaxis 219
Jason 74

there are settlers completing in turn 1, turn 2 and turn 3 for next player

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xt1kBC.jpg
The red dots mark the remaining ring 3 and 5 spots.. I suggest settling the 2 northern dots and the spot 2 SE of Camo with the first 3 settlers.

Good work Gyathaar, and nice trading. It looks as if we've got the settler factories into gear now. I agree with the plan to make workers in new towns where they can grow in 10 or less.

Gyathaar just played
AlanH UP
Tomoyo On deck
leif erikson
WillowBrook
DJMGator13

I'll get it and play ten tonight.

Looks good, Gyathaar.

At this tech pace, are we going to be able to make good use of our UU? We'll have a stack of vet warriors soon, but with the 80g upgrade cost, it could take a while to have an adequate force, and pikes won't be nice.

And what about wars between other civs?

The emphasis on growth is good for now, but at what point do we start using the pointy-stick method of expanding? I guess when most land is claimed?

Question, since I havent played vanilla in a long time.. can you keep building your UU there too untill you have had your golden age even if upgrades are available?

IIRC, as long as you have not had a GA you can build your UU past when it has been replaced by techs/newer unit.

And what about wars between other civs?

This is a point I think we should consider soon. It would be nice to get some wars started as it should slow the tech pace and get AI forces scattered all over the map.
As an example, let's say something like Japan versus France, Vikings Versus China, Iroquois versus England, Mongols versus America and Carthage versus India.
The AI would be sending its forces everywhere and allow us to concentrate on one at a time. I think it would require us to ally with those close to us and declare on those further away. After 20 turns, we can choose who we go after. It will require that we think 20 turns out though. :eek:

I was thinking about starting some wars like that after I played too, thou france/japan war would not work too well, since I paid france gpt (unless we want to break rep this early).
Declaring on france would break rep, and we dont have any tech to give them for an alliance vs japan (would not want a war vs japan anyway since they would send their forces to us instead of france most likely)

best would be to decare on faraway civs, and allly all our nearby civs vs the far away civs (to prevent them from being allied vs us)

Your point about keeping our Rep intact is well made. I was trying to give examples of wars that might benefit us by spreading out the AI's forces and require them to send them long distances away from their home turf. This would decrease their effective numbers against us when we decide to evict them from their territory. :evil:

I think M-B did quite a masterful job of making this more difficult for apangea game by using water effectively to make it more difficult for us to get to Japan, for instance. This could work to our advantage as well. :devil: The AI is seriously hadicapped in amphibious ops. If we could set it up so that Japanese forces move overland to get at us, through hostile territory (our allies) while we have just enough transports to get our guys over the short hop of water, we could maybe catch them with their pants down. :mischief: Perhaps some food for thought and discussion? :D

That would give us a nice second core, perhaps. :cool:

Turn 80 1000 BC Preflight
F1: Slider 8.1.1, 3gpt net income, 23gpt to other civs. 100 gold in treasury. 19+1gpt are going to France, 3gpt to Iroquois. In four turns 4gpt of this ends.

Entremont - 8 shields in the box, building settler. Pop 5, no food. 4fpt.
Switch to river/forest for 2 turns at 8spt and extra gpt, then one turn on BG at 7spt will bring the settler in three turns.

Mohacs - is going to take 2 turns to grow anyway, so MM it off the wheat for a turn, 5 shields + 1 from the grass about to be mined. This will pop the settler next turn. Give the wheat to Lugdonum.

Camulodonum - 3spt, at 4fpt. 5 shields to build settler, but growth next turn will generate 2 more shields, popping settler.

We now have 6 gpt.

F4:
There are map deals out there. Trade WMs and make 90 gold and we now have pretty much the whole land/coast map.
There are two major land masses - north and south.

The northern land mass is a complete circle wrapping east/west with a narrow tundra bridge in the east, between the Vikings and France. The northern civs are England, America, Babylon, Vikings - narrow tundra bridge - France.

The southern land mass is alomost complete, broken by the straits between us and Japan. The civs here are Mongols, China, Keltoi - water - Japan, Iroquois, neoCarthage. China has already planted a foothold town south of America.

They are connected by one land bridge north of India, sparcely populated, with lots of jungle.

F8: Re. fomenting wars, the power curve shows Japan, France, China, Babylon, America as the biggies. Two of these are our nearest neighbours, the others are in the north. Maybe we want to set up alliances with China and Japan against Babylon and America.

Checking our research status: even at 44 gpt Republic would still take 24 more turns, so it's at least 1000 gold :hmm: The 1st level MA techs would take 30+ turns at that rate. The research rate seems to be geared to a very big map, and we are well advised to be operating at 10%, or even single scientist later.

OK. Next turn:

IBT
Mongol unit south of Gergovia moves west into fog. Barb galleys move. Mohacs settler->settler.
Iroquois are building the GLibrary.

Turn 81 975 BC
Damn! 2 extra shields in Camuldonum from growth, but one was waste, so we didn't pop the settler.
Settler to the forest, now as we can reach it by road. Worker to plains/river to road to the next northern site.
MM everywhere. Camulodonum single scientist for a turn until settler pops. Slider 9.0.1, 9gpt.
Indian worker on BG starts road. Worker moves to grass SW of Entremont and starts mine. Elite warrior near mountain barb camp moves towards it. Combat calculator gives him 69% probability. As we have all contacts and most of the map, exploring is mostly done, so I guess we can take a small risk with him now. Elites have low value in this game, as leaders can only rush buildings or build armies. From the mountain we see a carthage warrior wandering around the jungle.
Trade map again for a few shekels. The nearest barb camps seem to some distance away, nearer to the AI than to us. I assume the end-era uprising has happened?

Tech parity with America, Japan, France, China, England,
Ahead Construction on India, Carthage
Ahead Currency & Construction on Babylon, Mongols, Iroquois, Vikings
Ahead Currency & Construction & Literature on Mongols

IBT
Only barbs move. Camulodonum settler->settler.

Turn 82 950 BC
Settler builds Eboracum in north starts worker. Warrior kills barb camp for 25 gold -1hp. New settler to site 2 tiles SE of Camulodonum. Worker starts road on plains tile in NE. MM everywhere, slider back to 8.1.1, 5gpt.
Buy a worker from Carthage 26+WM

IBT
Entremont settler->warrior. Forbidden Palace offer. Lugdonum warrior->warrior. Gergovia worker->worker. America building Great Wall,

Turn 83 925 BC
Worker SW of Mohacs starts mine on river/grass. Worker near Lugdonum starts mine. Workers south of Entremont head for new tiles to road to unconnected towns. Settler SE of Camulodonum builds Burdigala, starts temple vs Shimonoseki border nad to expand to capture dyes. Warrior explorer N on mountains, expanding map. Optimise MPs so that we can zero the lux slider. 9.1.0 for 12 gpt.
F4 no change.

IBT
Augustodorum worker->barracks.

Turn 84 900 BC
Workers start roads in south. Explorer warrior N to end of mountain peninsula. Settler towards site North of Lugdorum. Adjust MPs again, MM, keep sliders at 9.1.0. Two small gpt deals have ended and we now have 17gpt.
WM seems to be out of date. Buy China's for 4+WM, then sell it around for 33 gold.
Babylon has Monotheism. He made it to the MA. India, Carthage and Mongols are also at parity. So I guess Babs researched Lit or construction and swapped around to get everyone up to MA. Iroquois and Vikings still need Currency and construction. Babylon won't deal on Monotheism, of course.

IBT
Entremont warrior->settler. Carthage completes Great Library. Cascade .. China, England->Great Wall. England completes great wall.

Turn 85 875 BC
Settler to NE city location. Worker starts irrigating plains tile.
Mohacs a scientist for one turn, slider to 10.0.0, 23gpt.
Sell WM around again. India has some cash now, gives 20 for a WM. Buy England's updates and sell them on for around 15 profit.

IBT
Lugdonum warrior->warrior

Turn 86 850 BC
Settler builds Cataractonium on NE coast, starts worker. Slider 9.1.1 18gpt. Republic in 18 turns. Scouting warrior fortifies to heal.

IBT zzzz

Turn 87 825 BC
Japan, Babylon have Mono and Republic. England has Republic. We could buy either for everything we've got with the slider at 10.0.0. After adjustments, slider at 8.1.1 -> 24gpt.

IBT Mongol archer approaching from the south. Barb galleys give sailing lessons. Mohacs settler->settler. Camulodonum settler->settler.

Turn 88 800 BC
Mohacs settler heads west to build SW of Verulamium. Camulodonum settler south. She'll build between Augustodorum and Burdigala. Warrior scout south.
Carthage has Rewpublic and Mono. Still no deals. Slider 8.1.1, 19gpt. F8: neoCarthage seems to be building up.

IBT
Japanese galley heading down the straits. Pursued by barb galleys.
Entremont settler->warrior. Lugdonum warrior->warrior. Richborough granary->settler. Verulamium barracks->warrior. Agedincum worker->barracks.

Turn 89 775 BC
MM everthing. Move three settlers into position. F4 - France has Republic, no deals.

IBT
America offers WM swap. Counter - get 1 gold for it.

Turn 90 750 BC
Build Lapurdum in the west radius 5, Ratae Coritanorum radius 3 west, Tolosa radius 5 south.

After action report
A heavy building set. We have 15 towns, with two more radius 3 sites to fill and radius 5 complete. Entremont is on the warrior phase of its six turn warrior/settler cycle. Mohacs and Camuldonum are building settlers, and Richborough has just completed its granary, which will fill next turn. They all need to be MM'd every turn.

We have 15 warriors, and enough gold to upgrade 5 of them at 80 per unit. We are generating 28 gpt, which will increase by 19gpt at the end of the next set, as our French debts are paid off. I haven't looked at F4 this turn. We should probably get some wars going, but I didn't want to spend the cash for embassies and alliances in case I had a chance to trade for a 2-fer on Republic/Mono. This didn't happen :(

Have fun. Here's the map of our cute little civilization.

Gyathaar
AlanH just played
Tomoyo UP
leif erikson On deck
WillowBrook
DJMGator13

All yours, Tomoyo.

Very nice building set Alan. :goodjob: A little different from SGOTM05? :rolleyes:

Difficult decisions ahead. What do we use the Gold for; upgrades, embassies and/or alliances?

It is nice to see the Great Library got built not too far from home. I think we might need it a little later on. :mischief:

I assume the end-era uprising has happened?
There was no popup about it in my turns, so dunno what happened to it

I should have mentioned in my hand-down report that there's a temple we can pop rush in 3 turns in Burdigala. The worker's roading the dyes so they should then fall into our radius by the end of the next turn set.

Presumably the barb uprisings weren't near enough to upset our military adviser. The only places they could have originated were on that peninsula south of us, or to the west. There was a Mongol archer scouting south who would have stopped any camp forming or killed it, and I guess the Chinese and Mongols may have dealt with any western threats.

Guess it is time for some dot-maps for cities since we will be done with the rings before next player is finished.
I will make some dots to discuss :)

This is the northern area:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xt750BCn.jpg

The 3 red dots will claim the majority of the land, the blue dots are fill in cities, and the green dots will invade on other civs cultural borders..

This is southwestern part:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xt750BCsw.jpg

The mountains and coast makes it hard to follow strict ICS, so I tried to place on hills or tundra when possible.
The pink dots is ontop of spices so should build towards that one first

Not got it. I will wait for some discussion.

Hard to find a way to criticise your dot map, though.

Haven't studied the map but I'd say keep expanding til the land is gone. Might as well grab as much land as possible.

Do we have horses in our area? If so we might want to push forward to MT before doing major fighting. We can always build a handful of our UU and cherry pick a redlined defender with it to kick off a GA later. A later GA would help in getting us to Replaceable Parts and a nice TOE prebuild with the shield bonus.

We should also build up a sizeable worker force to be able to road all our cities and be prepared for RR.

The dots look good. These will mostly be very corrupt cities, so we just want to get them out there asap, and grow them ready for pop rushing. I guess we want to connect them up to give good mobility across our empire, so do we build a worker in each one before we grow it? The workers will also be needed for irrigation and rails when the time comes.

those that can work 2 food tiles should build workers in 10 yes, those that only have 1 food extra can prolly just start with a temple.

We prolly want to have around 200+ native workers eventually (since getting replaceable parts will make poprushing harder)

Unit support should atleast never be a problem for us in this game :p

We have several open questions on the table:

1. Should we be trying to slow the tech pace down? It seems to me that since we are going for a fast date pure and simple, and our date is going to depend on getting to MT, communism and steam as fast as possible, we would want the fastest tech pace we can keep up with. I'm not sure how we determine that. Once we are on the warpath we should have plenty of opportunities for pointy stick work to keep up, though. I'm tempted to suggest we turn off research entirely. We are dumping 5gpt into it now, to no real effect.

2. @Gator: I've seen no horses within our immediate region. There are horses in all the adjacent territories, so we'll have to go out and get them, probably from China or Japan, and probably real soon now while our UU can still cut the mustard.

As for horses, i would say its best if we take them from china.. they are easilly accessible, plus it removes their ability to build riders, which is the biggest threat towards us atm :) Hmm.. china actually dont have iron... so they cant build riders without trading for iron..

China appears to be a nicely spaced core at RCP 5 around beijing too, so jumping capital to Beijing would work out ok..

This brings out the point we should build the FP soon :) Where do we want to build it?

For tech pace.. I say keep as high rate as we can keep up with... Rails,MT and communism will all be major boosts.

Build FP wherever Alan tells us to build it, he is the Master.

As for acquiring horses, sounds like we should keep expanding (settlers) and start amassing an army for a soon to be launched offensive against China. How do we compare to China, ie number of cities and military strength? Gyathaar mentioned China has no iron so not only no riders but no swords. If we can hit them before they acquire Feudalism we should only see spears and archers (actually they need iron for pikes and MDIs as well). EDIT: And horsemen.

Are any of our other neighbors short iron?

For next player: england has a worker for sale

we have 15 cities, most of all civs
china has horses, no iron, 12 cities
japan has 2 iron, 2 horses (and a 3rd right outside borders)- only 1 iron and 1 horse connected, 14 cities
mongols has iron connected and horses still unconnected, 8 cities
carthage has no horses, no iron (but has iron 5 tiles north of borders, and has 3 defense UU), 8 cities
Iroquis has both horses and iron, but neither are connected, 12 cities
India has horses connected, one iron partially connected (not to capital yet), one iron unconnected, and a 3rd outside borders. 9 cities

There are also 2 unclaimed horses and 2 unclaimed iron between india and babylon/america

For the more remote civs:
America has iron connected, no horses, 11 cities
babylon has unconnected iron, no horses, 11 cities
vikings has horses connected, no iron, 8 cities
france has horses, iron outside borders, 13 cities
england has connected horses, unconnected iron, 9 cities

our 15 warrior, 1 archer army is:
average vs mongols
average vs england
weak vs everyone else

on power graph we are behind (in this order):
Japan
france
china
babylon

we appear to be equal to america in power, and ahead of the rest

I agree, China should be our first target, and the sooner the better as it'll take us some time to get iron connected and Warriors upgraded.

I am looking at CRpMapStat and Carthage, Babylon, and Japan have both Monarchy and Republic while England and the Mongols have Republic. Looking at this, I agree with Alan that it is time to turn off research as the Gold, imho, would be better spent on purchasing tech. We are even with everyone but the Vikings and the Iroquois and we are up Currency and Construction.

I think Alan makes a good point about tech pace. It is always been tough for me to balance as war will generally slow tech pace but it also grinds up forces so we can challenge them militarily. Perhaps we should start wars between the rivals we want to take on soon and allow the strongest powers to keep up their research and trading. With a good rep and relations, we can continue to trade with them while savaging the civs we need land from to build our continuous sprawl.

Although it is still small, perhaps our Forbidden Palace would look nice in Ratae Coritanorum. With Gyathaar's dot map, it would be in the center, more or less of the near time city builds we plan and we can fill in around it in ICS.

EDIT - Can't spell :cry:

Given our lack of horses, it sounds like we want to to use our UU to take them from China. So we should hook up Iron and start saving for upgrades? This means we'd have an early rather than later GA, but unless someone has a better plan for military expansion, I'll vote for this.

We definitely want to foment wars, as well, so we'll have to spend gold on that, too. I'm no expert on getting the AI to fight, so I'll let others figure out the details.

I agree that we should keep pumping out settlers, worker is good first build for towns with 2 extra food, and temple for other corrupt cities. Or should the one food corrupt towns first build a warrior in 10, then a temple which can be popped ten turns later with no waste of the 20 sheilds from the population point?

Re: Corruption and the Forbidden Palace:

We are proposing to build a Forbidden Palace in one of our current core cities, and then relocate our Palace to another centre using the Free Palace Jump. Here are some thoughts about where the new Palaces should be.

The Palace core is optimum if it has rings round it while we are in Despot. Once we are in Communism corruption is evenly distributed so we can just in-fill and create ICS is both cores. Beijing has four cities at radius 5.x. We could reposition Nanking to put it at radius 5.x as well. It's currently at 7 and sitting on an olives desert tile. There's not a lot of scope to develop a second ring around Beijing - it currently has three cities at radius 10 and one at 11. We could probably get five or six at radius 10.x. That would give us a productive Palace core of capital plus 5 cities at corruption rank 1 and 6 cities at rank 6.

I've played with a template to find a good place for a FP. A FP built in Agedincum would have 17 cities within radius 5.x based on Gyathaar's dot map and our existing builds. All those would be at corruption rank 1, with only Beijing closer to the Palace than they are. The next annulus of FP cities, up to radius 10.x would all have rank 6. There are more than 30 cities in this range, including Nanking, which would be closer to the FP than to the Palace. If we include the Japanese towns near our borders, and a couple of towns I've added to the dot map, we get up to about 35. I imagine this will exceed the OCN, so we won't do much better wherever we set up shop. We could build the FP nearer to Entremont, in Ratae Coritanorum, which might build it faster, but we'd lose three towns in the 5.x radius.

Here's a dot map with palace positions and ranges. Click the small one to get a 1 MB biggie.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/FP-PalaceJump-Small.jpg (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/FP-PalaceJump.jpg)

Dark blue disks are existing towns. Lighter blue are the next two towns to fill our first two rings. Red disks are new towns to build. Pale blue and orange lozenges are existing AI towns - China and Japan respectively

I agree that we should keep pumping out settlers, worker is good first build for towns with 2 extra food, and temple for other corrupt cities. Or should the one food corrupt towns first build a warrior in 10, then a temple which can be popped ten turns later with no waste of the 20 sheilds from the population point?
A warrior first is prolly better yes, we will always have good use for warriors as MP in this game so (unit support will be of little worry since we will end up with 1000+ allowed units soon enough)

Good thinking, WillowBrook :thumbsup:

See I told you Alan's the man when it comes to FP locations.

An additional thought on the FP or more precisely the Palace jump. We know that we can control the jump thru units so is it feasible to jump our palace several times as we conquer more area? This would allow us to build some basic cultural improvements ans will keep a productive core near the front at all times. The former palace cities can easily be replaced.

See I told you Alan's the man when it comes to FP locations.
You threw down the gauntlet, how could I not pick it up? :)

We could do multiple jumps during the expansion phase, but that should be quite a short period if we use cavalry well, and it may not be worth it. Once we get to Communism the Palace location does nothing to assist corruption. I think the only benefit in multiple jumps then would be flip protection. But by that time our culture should be starting to provide protection in its own right.

750BC (0): Buy a worker from England for 26g and WM.

IT: Entremont: Warrior --> Settler. Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior

730BC (1): Raise the lux tax because Mohacs will riot. Switch a city from worker to temple. There were dyes right outside the radius.

We are a couple of gold short of affording the Mono-Republic two-fer.

After some fiddling and trading, we now have 180 gold, Republic, Mono, and no income. Sorry, team.

IT: Eboracum: Worker --> Temple.

710BC (2): Some civs have Feudalism. :wallbash:

Whip the temple in Burdigala.

This MMing with ICS-ish city placement is a nightmare already! I can't wait until later.

IT: Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior

690BC (3): Dunno. Forgot, I guess.

670BC (4): Camulodorum: Settler --> Warrior. Pull a disbanding/specialist trick in Mohacs. I had to. The city would take our lux tax up another notch.

Whip two temples.

Have a really hard time finding a spare mined BG for Entremont to make a settler next turn, while still allowing it to grab a forest. This better work. :mad:

IT: Mohacs: Settler --> Settler. Gergovia: Temple --> Worker. Austorum: Temple --> Worker. The Japanese settle a city in our southern tundra. Entremont doesn't grab the forest!!!!

650BC (5): Fix Entremont with a taxman.

IT: Entremont: Settler --> Settler. Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior. Camulodorum: Warrior --> Settler. Richborough: Settler --> Settler. Cataractonium: Worker --> Temple. The Chinese steal a city spot!

630BC (6): March settlers.

IT: Verulanium: Warrior --> Temple. Ratae: Barracks --> Warrior

610BC (7): Lindum founded.

IT: China demands TM and 26 gold. I cave.

Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior

590BC (8): Start roading the iron.

IT: Something happened.

570BC (9): Whip a temple.

IT: Lugdunum: Warrior --> Warrior. Agedincum: Temple --> Worker. Lapurdum: Worker --> Temple. Cori: Warrior --> Warrior. Tolosa: Worker --> Rax.

550BC (10): Nemausus founded, starts worker.

Notes:
- Northern settler settles in place, southern settler goes to Spices.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam_550BC.jpg

is MMing with ICS-ish city placement is a nightmare already! I can't wait until later.
Isn't it fun! Sorry to see you had trouble with Entremont's shields. I took over 30 mins per turn when I played my set. Must have run through the core cities at least twice every turn to try to ration out the food and shields, and then I missed once in one of them.

It actually isnt that bad when you get lots and lots of cities.. because then a lost shield or gold wont matter that much :)

Good progress Tomoyo. :goodjob:

Did I read that we're broke? :cry: Oh well, better learn to use the whip. Time to set up to take down China? :D

In the middle of Gator 100K or bust tonight, tomorrow is for this. That'll leave some more discussion time. :cool:

A lot of MM huh? :cry:

I realised that during my turns, our status on the graph went way down compared to the other teams... :blush:

Anyway, we're not that broke anymore, we have 24gpt. In 11 turns, we'll get back that 30ish gpt that I used.

Our tight build is affecting our score, but it's the fastest date not score as we all know. I'd also have to assume that the teams that have taken a sharper turn on the graph have probably kicked off their first war and have added cities and territory.

I took over 30 mins per turn when I played my set. Must have run through the core cities at least twice every turn
:hmm: And why did I want to sit this one out :lol: Oh yeah...My short attention span.

Switch a city from worker to temple. There were dyes right outside the radius.
I already had that covered with a temple build in Burdigala - see my extra post after my turn set. Also, in my latest dot map, I suggest we build a city on those dyes at some point.

Been looking at the map and thinking about what to do after the road is finished on the iron. Those nicely MM'ed warrior/settler factories are going to have to change. A weak MM'ers nightmare!! :eek: ;)

I've thought of upgrading the warriors we have with the gold available and then cutting the road while we save gold to do more upgrades and keeping the factories going. It will take 5 turns to reconnect the iron and in that time we should have gold enough for some more upgrades. This may be the best optiuon? :crazyeye:

If we want to build EuroSwords and keep the road connected, then things get a little tougher. At 50 shields, settler production slows unless we keep the factories building settlers and build EuroSwords elsewhere.

Any thoughts, help?

I would say build the swords elsewhere, and build a spear or archer for every 2nd settler instead if possible (for MP/garrison)

Well, we get about a warrior a turn, which is 80 gold, which means we can't afford it. We should build some Euroswords sometime.

@Alan: Yea, I realised that afterwards, but I had already whipped the temple by then.

I have no idea on what to do with our factories. Can they do settler --> settler --> spearman in 12 turns?

Well, we get about a warrior a turn, which is 80 gold, which means we can't afford it. We should build some Euroswords sometime.

@Alan: Yea, I realised that afterwards, but I had already whipped the temple by then.

The real reason for not building many temples early is because they cost 1gpt each in maintainace, culturewise it is better to build temples early, but building too many of them ruins the economy :)
Building a few where it saves lux tax or grabs luxes is ofcourse wanted :)

We won't be able to build spearmen once we get Feudalism, and they are pretty useless anyway. I'd suggest we just make a settler every six turns in each factory and give the high shield tiles to other towns to build Euroswords.

I think the FP plan looks good. The devil's in the details, though. How do we take out China? We'll soon have iron hooked up, but we need to do upgrades. How many Euroswords do we need before attacking? When do we start phony (hopefully for us only) wars? When we attack China, do we pull in someone else with us?

I'd build archers instead of spears especially if it is for MP duty. Our UU is 2mp so taking spears into combat will not be too practical, although a few at the bottom of the stack would be nice.

We may need to do some shield juggling within our cities. Except for the settler/worker factory cities food (growth) is not important. We want max shields to amass an army.

I'll look at the save and see if there are any specifics I can give, since it's the weekend and I don't think I'm up in any SGs.

@leif - a half hour a turn is a lot shorter than a turn in SGOTM05 was :lol:

EDIT: crossed with Alan & Willow - BTW all 6 of us are online at the same time :eek: I don't think I've seen that before.

@leif - a half hour a turn is a lot shorter than a turn in SGOTM05 was :lol:
SGOTM5 took more than half an hour per turn in 500BC? ;)

I think leif is thinking of somewhat later in the game, when we were involved in multi-front wars. My final turn set was 8 turns to capture 45 cities from 5 different civs ... in a 12 hour all-night session. Prior to that I played 15 turns leading up to war with France, prolly taking over an hour a turn as well.

We won't be able to build archers for very long either, but I agree they'd be preferable to spears. But without looking at the save, I suspect we ought to be able to tune the three settler factories for 5 shields per turn to deliver a settler every two turns, and let the other towns focus on the high shield tiles. We have lots of options for redistributing tiles in our tight core, and this approach would prolly also reduce the MM workload.

@500BC it was barely taking a half hour for 10 turns, even with note taking

Quick city assessment

Settler factories (6 turns)
Entremont (RCP0)
Mohacs (RCP3)
Camulodunum (RCP3)
Richborough (RCP3) really needs a mined BG to stay at 6 turns

Swords
Lugdunum (RCP3)
Ratae Coritanorum (RCP3)
Richborough (RCP3) is probably better here
Verulamium (RCP5)
rest of cities here also

Corruption for RCP3 cities is 11%
Corruption for RCP5 cities is 33%

Based on the above thoughts and the fact that there is only a little area left to expand into (see map), I think we should let the current settlers complete and then start cranking out swords from our RCP3 cities. We could leave 1 city at a time on settlers (rotate which RCP3 city builds a settler to help limit its size and MP need). We should secure the spice which is just outside our border and let CHN and MON fill-in the rest of that area for us.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Xteam06_05.jpg

I'd switch Richborough to a barrack before the current settler completes. Keep an eye out for when one of the civs that doesn't have MONO picks up FEUD to see if a trade is possible. There is a worker E of Richborough which could help road the iron. The worker on the hill NE of Richborough has 9 turns left in mining, he could be stopped and added to the iron road crew. That might shave a turn or 2 off the iron road.

@WillowBrook: I think 15 Euroswords would be plenty to take out China if we do it soon. It should be pretty quick as well, so I'm thinking alliances will just reduce our treasury to no great effect when we need all our cash for upgrades. The worst China could do to us is to buy other civs in against us, and the only ones in a position to do any serious fighting are Japan and the Mongols. Japan has to ship troops to us and we all know how pants the AI is at seaborne invasion. Mongols can reach us by land, but are quite a long way away.

Do we need any phoney wars?

I disagree with reducing our settler rate. The AI will build very sparsely. If we are to reach 300 cities we'd better build them asap.

PS Don't rely on China to build many more cities for us. We'll be deleting them shortly.

Never stop building settlers.. if nowhere to build yet, then just pile them up for when there is room to build later.

In all my culture games my biggest problems have been that I never had enogh settlers, eventually I have had to start poprushing them when in communism before I can start on culture, and that was in chieftain where I had no need to build military instead of settlers in early game

But we also need an army to attack China with and the most cities will take almost 10 turns to build 1 sword and the bulk of our cities will need more than 10 turns. Our best shield city is at 8 spt, we have 3 cities at 6spt, one city each at 4spt & 3spt. All other cities are at 1spt. We could well be facing Muskets by the time we can build 15-20 swords.

We could switch RCP3 cities just to build up an army and then put them back on settlers as the RCP5 cities develope some size and production ability.

Our current strength, if upgraded and used soon, would take down China even if we built no more euroswords. Remember these are fast units, attack 3. They are a match for pikes, and there won't be many pikes in residence yet. They'll eat spears for breakfast on flat ground.

If settler production is a key (and I will defer to Gyathaar here) then we may need to consider a later than sooner attack on China, as it will take us time to generate 15 swords. Or should we rotate the RCP3 cities between settlers and swords. Just trying to think of a way to increase our sword production so that it doesn't take us 30-40 turns to get enough swords.

We should have Agedincum build a courthose prior to starting the FP. I forget what its current build is, but it is a RCP5 city.

I haven't looked at our treasury. Are we saying we have no upgrade cash? When I last saw it we had over 400 gold and were at 24gpt, rising to over 40gpt when a big deal expired. At that rate we could have had 10 swords by now and another 5 in ten more turns. If we leave it too long we'll have to wait for cavalry, as there'll be muskets to beat.

[EDIT} I see we are under 200 gold now. So we've spent 400 gold on something in the last 10 turns? That was 5 sword upgrades.

Our treasury is 184gold with 24 gpt, getting more gpt in 11 turns.

Correct, we have 186 gold and 24gpt. We are paying out 29gpt. Lux is at 10 and sci is at 0.

We have only 1 gpt deal, 29gpt to Babylon for 11 more turns.

Has anyone confirmed the 50 gold for upgrade price? Nethog's Civ3 PTW Unit Summary sheet says it is only 40 gold. If not I might try to run through a test game to verify it. Would MB have changed this?

EDIT: Tomoyo was faster :) , I had to reload the game to check.

Looking back at the turn log I see we spent that hard earned cash on Mono and Republic. Sorry to rant, but neither of those were on our shopping list. We were only researching Republic at 10% so that we could trade it. Once it was out there it was useless to us. Mono doesn't buy us anything much now either. We'll need it to reach the next era of course, but pointy sticks and/or a visit to the Great Library could do that for us. Right now we need the pointy sticks, and our UU window of opportunity is in danger of closing before we've even built it.

Has anyone confirmed the 50 gold for upgrade price? Nethog's Civ3 PTW Unit Summary sheet says it is only 40 gold. If not I might try to run through a test game to verify it. Would MB have changed this?.
Since the shield cost is 50 for a eurosword vs 10 for a warrior the upgrade cost is 40 x 2 = 80 gold. I can't see how M-B could change that, as I imagine the formula is built into the game.

I say lets not get feudalism yet (and not education if it seems like we can benefit from capturing GLib), that way we can keep building UU for a long time.

This is just emperor/demigod difficulty, so should be easy for us to overrun one AI at a time.

I haven't changed it. There was an interesting discussion opened by cracker a while back about the cost of Gallics. The AI don't build them because of the expense. He advocated a reduction to 40 shields for GOTM. Then C3C turned up and lo and behold Gallics are 40 shields. :) I have been thinking about making the change for classic civ in SGOTM.

Right now we need the pointy sticks, and our UU window of opportunity is in danger of closing before we've even built it.

That's been my point of pushing/steering this discussion. I know we have to keep building settlers but we also need some swords. If we slow our settler production now crank out swords, take over China and set up a second production core there, we would then have 2 cores that could both make some settlers to catch up.

Our UU won't be useful for very much longer - another 3 techs, so maybe 30 turns tops. So there's not a lot of point in being able to build a lot more of them. I don't think we'd want to use our UU to capture the Library, even if we can reach them in that timescale. A Library capture should be timed to grab us most of the Middle Age techs, and that probably means using knights or cavalry.

Remember we need to use our UU to get us horses for the cavalry phase - that was one of the reasons for going after China. And we'll need to get to cavalry before the AI gets to infantry :eek:

Ok.. lets go full out on swords, thou I expect the settlerfactory cities has to alternate between swords and settlers to prevent them from growing too big?

We also need to start building the FP if we havent yet to prepare for the palace jump asap

That's been my point of pushing/steering this discussion. I know we have to keep building settlers but we also need some swords. If we slow our settler production now crank out swords, take over China and set up a second production core there, we would then have 2 cores that could both make some settlers to catch up.
I agree. I was thinking we had money for upgrades, but now I see why you are concerned. However, waiting 30 turns while we create new swords sounds like too many turns to me. Maybe we have to declare on Babylon to kill the gpt deal?

@M-B that would reduce the upgrade cost to 60 gold, but where does Gator's 40 come from? Does PtW really get them for that? If so we are at a big disadvantage on vanilla.

I haven't changed it. There was an interesting discussion opened by cracker a while back about the cost of Gallics. The AI don't build them because of the expense. He advocated a reduction to 40 shields for GOTM. Then C3C turned up and lo and behold Gallics are 40 shields. :) I have been thinking about making the change for classic civ in SGOTM.

That's another item that will create a scoring difference between the CivIII and C3C games.

@80gold for upgrade we can afford 1 upgrade every 3 turns, for the next 11 turns and then 1 upgrade every 2 turns. So it would take us 30 turns to have enough gold to upgrade 13-15 swords.

Gold for upgrade on turn
3,6,9,12 (3 turn rate)
14,16,18,20,22,24,26,28,30 (2 turn rate)
this gets us 13 upgrades - not counting any we build by hand

using the treasury would probably only buy us 1 (2 at the most) more upgrade because my numbers already use a little of the treasury

So if we have 13 to 15 vet warriors its time to hook up the iron to start amassing our gold and swords

@M-B that would reduce the upgrade cost to 60 gold, but where does Gator's 40 come from? Does PtW really get them for that? If so we are at a big disadvantage on vanilla.

In the Reference section is an upgrade chart. Here is a link (http://www.civfanatics.net/downloads/civ3/reference/civ3_PTW_units_rev101.pdf) for the PTW pdf.