Welcome to your SGOTM 10 team thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game here, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

The starting saves will become available on the SGOTM Progress and Results (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/sgotm_submission_list.php) page on May 7th, at midnight, server local time.

Thanks again to Gyathaar for coming up with the variant and developing the map.

You are Elizabeth of England, and your mission is simply to destroy the barbarians, who have evolved considerably in this game, having learnt a few tricks from their cousins in Civ4. They have advanced weaponry, they can build cities, and they have an uncanny capability to learn new technologies.

All victory conditions are switched on, but the winning team will be the one that achieves the destruction of the barbarian nation earliest.

Here's the start.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/images/SGOTM10-start.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - England
Opponents - Six: Mayans, Byzantines, Dutch, Inca, Sumerians, Barbarians.
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Emperor
Landform - Mystery
Barbarians - Non-standard :eek:

The map is handbuilt, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Game mods:
The game uses the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread, with the following modifications:

- Galleys can never enter ocean tiles.
- There are some unusual advanced/modified Barbarian units.
- The Barbarians have research capabilities, and can build cities and wonders.

The SGOTM Mediterranean resources are included, as you can see from the starting screenshot. If you have played SGOTM 9 then you will be ready. Other players will need to download and unzip this small graphics mod pack (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/saves/SGOTM-C3C.zip). Details are provided in the SGOTM Reference Thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t= 112722).

Please ensure that you have incuded the line: NoAIPatrol=0 in your conquests.ini text file.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared, skipping references to PtW or Vanilla versions of Civ3.

The GOTM Reference Thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=71788)
The SGOTM Reference Thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=112722)

Notes:

A. ONLY Conquests version 1.22 (C3C) is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - the laurels will be awarded for the fastest destruction of the Barbarian Nation. The wooden spoons will go to the team with the lowest final score.

C. You MUST play from the start file assigned to your team. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Have fun :D

Checking in. I think we should definately settle in place, first build a warrior. We dont know how rampant these barbarians are, and we dont want to be killed by them very early in the game.

Checking in.

I have no idea what kind of tricks to expect from Gyathaar since this is my 1st SGOTM, but my eye tells me that settling in place is the best option. However, when I play seafaring, I like to start with a curragh. I think it allows one to meet the neighbors quicker than walking.

Checking in from the lone star state of Texas, GMT -5.

While the hill looks like a good place to settle, (good defense, a river for growth, a wheat and some BGs) I think we should send our worker to the game tile due south and see what he finds out. Just in case.

It is my understanding from the signup thread, that the Special Ole Barbarians (SOBs) will be like an AI civ, able to have cities, build wonders, etc. Or, and this thought is scary, could be several versions of the same civ and have several starting places on the map. Six normal AI civs and one barb civ several time, like SQ2: Schizophrenic Shaka (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168344).

:coffee: I am waiting for my copy of C3C to arrive from eBay.

Europe is waking up. Checking in. Welcome new members azzaman333 and McLMan! Hi, CB! Did you get C3C already?

Didn't think of that, but more than one starting location for the barbs is of course quite possible. I don't think they will be too close. That would make early survival a matter of luck, and would knock out too many teams early on. I would start with a curragh and a warrior (or perhaps two) in any order, and use both to scout, perhaps keeping the warrior fairly close. Finding the other civs and the barbs is asap is a good idea IMO.

Our capital can be a 4 turn settler pump at size 5.0-6.0, with a granary, working the city center (+2 fd, +1 sh), irrigated wheat (+2 fd), the chopped+irrigated deer (+1 fd, +1 sh), mined bg (+2 sh), two mined grass or irrigated plains (+1 sh each) at size 5, and one more of those at size 6. We'll need to keep a forest around for the interturn, or mine the hill. Which means three chops available to go into the granary.
Worker moves (I = irrigate, M = mine, R=road, C=chop):
1. MR bg
2. IR wheat
3. CIR deer
4. CIR forest SW of deer.
5. CIR forest NW of deer.
6. IR plains NE of city
Total turns: 10+8+1 (walk)+12+12+12+8 = 63.
If we don't road then that saves 17 turns I think, but loses a lot of commerce. We might think about getting a second worker.

On research: with our double commerce bonus, we should be able to get the republic slingshot. Do we want to try? We're locked into war with the barbs, do we get war weariness from that? If so, then republic may not be ideal, and we can use the slingshot to get mapmaking or so.

Hi team Smurkz,

Checking in! It makes sense IMO, that the barbs start at many locations. Otherwise they might be behind another AI civ from our starting point or so close to us that the game is over very fast (in case we win or also if we get extinct by them). And they should be a real threat to make the game exciting. So I think there are many of them but not to close at the beginning. So the early Curragh would be my choice for production.
We have pottery from the start, so we should consider the very early granary with some four turn chops.

Guess who's the late sleeper... :blush:

Good to see that everyone has signed in already! To our new members azzaman333, McLMan and Marc Aurel, a big hearty welcome! [party]

Gee, I realize I have a lot to learn about C3C. When thinking about the early game neither Curraghs or 4-turn chops were on my mind. In any case I agree with what's been said, no reason not to settle on the spot since we can get that 4-turn factory. I think we should consider a very early granary for fast expansion, but I also think we should play with different alternatives.

I'll be back with some more thoughts later tonight (sun is shining...:cool: ). :)

Some administrative stuff. Our team consists of three Europeans, one Australian and two Americans. I'm not going to try to set up a playing roster that takes time zones into account though, since I firmly believe that we'd be better off playing slowly and think ahead. We've done so to good effect in the past two games, and this game shouldn't be a marathon like the previous ones, so I see no reason not to. The different time zones could be a problem for discussions though, but we've managed well in the previous games. I'll just ask all of us to be aware of this and to check the thread also during times when other parts of the world is awake. :)

Regarding the roster, does anyone have any specific preferences as to the playing order? I generally like to play an early slot since I enjoy the MMing of the early game, but I could really play whenever. A preliminary roster, based (almost :p) on sign-in order, could be:
Niklas
azzaman333
McLMan
CommandoBob
zyxy
Marc Aurel
Yell if you want up or down in the list. :)

Hale and greetings to azzaman333, McLMan and Marc Aurel. Welcome to Team Smurkz. [party]


I've played with azzaman333 way back in Nero04 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=81351). I remember that McLMan was part of
GK2- The Training Day Experiment (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=81351). And I know I've seen Marc Aurel lurking around the forums.

My C3C just arrived a few minutes ago but I've got some other tasks to do before I can allow myself to install it.

By way of history, Niklas, zyxy and I were part of Team Smurkz in SGOTM 9. Niklas and zyxy were part of Team Durkz in SGOTM 8, where they took the Golden Laurels. And just to state the obvious, Niklas is team captain.

The roster is perfect for me! No complaints from my side.

Regarding the roster, does anyone have any specific preferences as to the playing order? I generally like to play an early slot since I enjoy the MMing of the early game, but I could really play whenever. A preliminary roster, based (almost :p) on sign-in order, could be:
Niklas
azzaman333
McLMan
CommandoBob
zyxy
Marc Aurel

Roster order is fine; zyxy already know what to expect when his turns follow mine. :D

Please ensure that you have incuded the line: NoAIPatrol=0 in your conquests.ini text file.
I know that the above change is important and just wanted to make sure everybody saw it, since it hides in the first post.

Galleys can never enter ocean tiles.
That's odd. Either a lot of ocean or the SOBs have been protected to prevent a suicide galley from discovering their home. Does this also apply to curraghs?

Legacy Issue
In SGOTM 9 I found it helpful and informative to post pre-turn strategy plans which allowed the other players to review the plans and offer advice and options. I would at least like to consider doing that in this SGOTM. Perhaps not on the first 20 or 30 turns, but soon after that.

By way of history, Niklas, zyxy and I were part of Team Smurkz in SGOTM 9. Niklas and zyxy were part of Team Durkz in SGOTM 8, where they took the Golden Laurels.Actually, me and zyxy were part of Team Durkz in SGOTM 7 too, where we got a solid 2nd place :smug: (in the PtW category, with two participants) :blush:

Good spot about the NoAIPatrol=0, I missed that (though I had it fixed already). On a similar note, I'm not sure if our SGOTM fixes for PTW will work for C3C as well, we should check that.

I think that the ocean travel restriction is set for galleys only. The reason being that they want it to be ok for us to find out where the barbarians are hiding, but we can't send troops there until they've had a chance to get up in tech to those more fun units hinted about (I would think the 'uncanny' research they have means they will know anything that anyone else knows).

Regarding the pre-turn strategy posts, I too found them useful, so I second CB's request. They don't need to be very detailed, in particular not in the early game. I'll be sure to post some strategies for the first turnset (once we've decided what to do).

I started playing with them spread sheets but I never got far today, to much other stuff happening. I'll post a few start suggestions tomorrow and we can discuss pros and cons. As always I encourage all of you to post spread sheets, though for some reason there never seems to be any takers :rolleyes:. If you want to use the spread sheet I'm using, go look for a post from Offa in the sign-up thread and follow the link in his sig (it's an excel file so I can't attach it to this post).

Hi Marc Aurel! I hope you enjoy the smurkzperience! And good to see Niklas didn't sleep the whole weekend ;).

The roster looks good to me.

Roster order is fine; zyxy already know what to expect when his turns follow mine. :D

Yup, a crisp and clean empire, ready to take over the world with an army of horsemen ;).


I know that the above change is important and just wanted to make sure everybody saw it, since it hides in the first post.


Good catches on both cases. The AIpatrol setting means the barbs (the white ones) will move about.


Legacy Issue
In SGOTM 9 I found it helpful and informative to post pre-turn strategy plans which allowed the other players to review the plans and offer advice and options. I would at least like to consider doing that in this SGOTM. Perhaps not on the first 20 or 30 turns, but soon after that.

I think this makes sense. I would prefer to move a little quicker than in SGOTM 9, but I would like to see some discussion before every turnset to make sure we are all on the same track. Writing plans is a good way to focus the discussion I think.

-------------------------

The save is in. We are at war with Dr Evil of the Barbarian Nation (huh, it's a nation?). There's no civilopedia page on either Dr Evil or his "Nation". According to the F3 guy we are weak compared to them. The F4 advisor doesn't know about their military, and his envoys to Dr Evil never return (will this change?). He has something else to add:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10BC4000_F4.jpg

Since when do barbarians know something about culture? This will not do! Lizzy hasn't had her milkbath yet, and already she gets these rather displeasing reports. It will be up to our first player to do something about that, on the double!
Fortunately there is better news:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10BC4000_F6.jpg

The victory screen shows that the barbarians have the top culture city (Barbarian Stronghold), and have 100% of the worlds population. Demographics show that they have just one city atm.

I found the following barbarian units in the civilopedia.

Barbarian guard: an oversized cannon modestly prices at 20 shields, with attack 0, defense 8, movement 1, bombard 9, 3 shots, and range 3. It requires no advances, and no resources! In strength this unit comes between cannon and arty bombardment-wise, and between rifleman and infantry defensively.
Pirate ship: costs 40 shields, attack 1, defense 2, movement 9, bombard 3, 1 shot, range 1, transports 1. It requires astronomy but no resources. The high movement value reflects the differential naval movement mod; by comparison, frigates move 10. Apparently it can travel through ocean (?), and perhaps it can enslave (it seems the pedia text was not edited very well.)


They probably have access to all normal units as well. The barbarian guard will be a tough cookie until we get cavalry - and even then. This strongly suggests the barbs will be on an island by themselves, unreachable until astronomy. The easiest way to defend against barbarian landings will be to sink their relatively expensive ships, that can be taken out with ease by the Man-of-War or with some losses even by galleys.

When we take the fight to them, the guard unit is tailored to fit the usual AI play style - defend with outrageous numbers. The bombard function means that it is a dangerous unit in stacks, and we'll need many attackers to take a barb city. Probably huge arty stacks are the way to go - it will be slow and cumbersome, and I don't like it, but what else? Wait for tanks is another option. If we can get some armies, then cavalry armies might do the trick.

I am somewhat puzzled by the astro requirement for the barb ships. They will be at war wit everyone, so their research will stink, unless they get some huge bonusses, like half a dozen settlers or a big research lead.

Woohoo, the game is on! Consider this a tentative "got it", which will be real unless someone else really wants to go first.

zyxy, nice analysis! :)
I wouldn't be too worried about the cultural stuff though, IIRC they will be said to be disdainful unless we have a substantial lead over them. My guess is that they are at 0, like we are, having just settled their Stronghold.
Regarding their research, the first post claims that they have an "uncanny" ability for that, so my guess is that they have some extra tricks up their sleeves. Perhaps they will get any tech that any other civ has? Or two others, like if they had a permanent never-obsolete Great Library?

Those guard units are really nasty, with three shots per turn at range three and bombard 9, you don't want to be close. Add to that the fact that they are really cheap and you realize it will take us a long while before we can even think about attacking them. The pirate ships don't seem all that dangerous though, and they only have room for one unit, so I wouldn't worry too much about landings. Not giving it until Astronomy is probably so that they can't land any of their guards in our lands during the AA, that would be quite devastating...

With just the one Stronghold, I wouldn't worry too much about barbies close by our starting location. We have some really good early production with the game, so we could chance on the VEG (Very Early Granary). Rough calculations give that we could have it in 16 with a chop if we build it right away, could be worth it. What do you think?

I'll be back with some spread sheets later today.

zyxy, nice analysis! :)
I wouldn't be too worried about the cultural stuff though, IIRC they will be said to be disdainful unless we have a substantial lead over them. My guess is that they are at 0, like we are, having just settled their Stronghold.
Regarding their research, the first post claims that they have an "uncanny" ability for that, so my guess is that they have some extra tricks up their sleeves. Perhaps they will get any tech that any other civ has? Or two others, like if they had a permanent never-obsolete Great Library?


Thanks. You're probably right about the culture, I wasn't serious about it anyway.


With just the one Stronghold, I wouldn't worry too much about barbies close by our starting location. We have some really good early production with the game, so we could chance on the VEG (Very Early Granary). Rough calculations give that we could have it in 16 with a chop if we build it right away, could be worth it. What do you think?

I'll be back with some spread sheets later today.

The barbs might have some settlers as well, but I agree that we probably don't have to worry about them too soon. Are there ordinary (white) barbs? The setup information isn't fully clear on that.

It is perhaps good to note that we could run the settler factory 1 size smaller if we settle 1 tile NE. It doesn't really save on worker turns, as we would have to irrigate towards the deer, but would save on lux tax.

The early granary sounds good to me. Sixteen turns is not very long. Whether we push out a warrior and/or curragh first might depend on the timing of the granary compared to growth.

I like your analysis zyxy. I think you're right on track about the barbs being on another continent. I believe this game will mirror Civ IV in at least one other way than advertised. Map type. I wouldn't be surprised if this world turned out to be just like a Civ IV 'Terra' world. We'll have to slug it out on our Pangea-like continent for resources with the rest of the AI's, then launch an amphibious invasion on the "undiscovered" continent, which is always chock full of advanced barb cities.

I read somewhere (Maintenance theread maybe?) that there ARE the traditional white barbs. (God bless 'em :p )

A couple of things I've discovered from the save.
Barbarian Nation's ...
...traits - Militaristic, Seafaring
...culture group - European
...Unique Unit - Pirate Ship (as if the Barbarian guard isn't unique enough)
...Starting Technologies - Barbarian Tech ???, and The Wheel.
...Favorite Government - Barbarism
...Shunned Government - Democracy

What is Barbarian Tech? My guess would be ability to learn any technology that is known by at least one other Civ.

@azzaman333, McLMan and Marc Aurel : Guys, just to let you know, we are a 'chatty' group. Last time I checked on SGOTM 9, we were averaging about 3 posts per game turn (not turnset, but turn). I know that Niklas and zyxy are better players than I am, but I never found them to be distant nor elitest. They do not suffer from the disease of 'Not Invented Here'. And they are quite willing to explain, in detail, the whys of what they do.

So if you have an idea, a comment on something, or a question, please post it.

Time to be the Inquisitive Idiot

Coming from Vanilla and PTW I know that there are differences in C3C. These are the things I know to be different:

New civ traits; England in PTW has different traits from C3C.
Ring City Placement is not a factor in C3C.
Four new wonders: Statue of Zeus, the Mausoleum of Mausollos, the Temple of Artemis and Knights Templar.
Something called the 'Republic Slingshot'.
A bonus tech for the first civ to learn Philosophy (I think).
Some unit called a 'curragh' that is common to all civs (I think).
Scientific Great Leaders.
Industrious workers have been slowed down; now work 1.5X faster than normal workers, not 2X faster.

These are things I found different when I have read the SG logs, so this list may not be complete.

Since our strategy is still undeveloped, I don't know how these differences will affect our strategy. But they could.

And this list is just a guide/reminder of what is different. If I write something down it helps me to remember it.

EDIT:
Bamspeedy has compiled a list of changes that are 'Not A Bug' >>HERE<< (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1393964&postcount=3).

Thanks for the list CB. The only Civ III I've been playing for a short while now has been some Vanilla SG's. I'll need to refresh myself of the C3C differences.

You do get a bonus tech from Philosophy. And the 'Republic Slingshot' takes advantage of that. It's pretty simple. You just research (in order): Alphabet, Writing, Code of Laws, and then Philosopy. If you're the 1st to discover Philosophy you can pick Republic as your free tech. The advantage is in getting the commerce bonus of Republic really fast.

Probably the biggest change in C3C is how strong Republic is. It has unit support in this version, making it THE government to be in, bar none. Monarchy is the way to go in an Always War game, but in a standard, no variant, game I like to get to Republic soon, & stay there.

For THIS game I don't know which government would be best. I don't think we should try for the slingshot because Republic may just not work down the line. If the landmass and starting locations are like I suspect, I think we need to find out where the Horses & Iron are sooner, rather than later. And by that time we might have a better idea on which government to head for.

I've played with my spread sheets, but it's not a nice and simple start, the numbers won't add up nicely. At long last I have some scenarios that I think would make strong starts.

The first is the Farmer's Gambit, going straight for a VEG for the earliest possible settler pump:
http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/7317/smurkzstartplan11eb.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
It sacrifices some early growth by working the game and bg instead of the then available wheat at size two, but the end result is that we get the granary before the growth to size three and gain both shields and food from it.
The trickiest part here was to time the chop so that the shields are not wasted. The only way to get the chop to go to the granary build is to go chop before mining the bg, but that would make us lose more shields in the long run, and would give the granary on the same turn as in the scenario above. By not mining the wheat right away we can have the chop go to a curragh after the granary. Note that either of the curraghs marked above could be a warrior instead, with a slight waste of shields but no effect on the turns.

The second scenario starts out with a curragh and a warrior before the granary for Exploration Galore:
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/6647/smurkzstartplan29jn.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Compared to the above scenario we let the chop go to the granary instead, still skipping the road on the wheat. We delay growth to size 4 until the granary is built. The effect is that the worker comes online a turn later, the first and second settlers are likewise delayed by one turn, and every settler thereafter by two turns. The gain here is of course the early curragh and warrior, 16 turns faster for the curragh and 11 for the warrior. The commerce effects of the two are comparable, the first slightly stronger, but the second could potentially generate more research if we use the warrior as a MP early on.

What will it be? Farmer's Gambit, or Exploration Galore?
I tend to lean towards the latter, the two turns lost on the pump could easily be made up by meeting the neighbors faster, and scouting out good places to settle future towns.

I'll be going on a conference tomorrow, will play tomorrow night once I get home, approximately 24 hours from now.

Regarding research and governments, I think we should definitely try for a slingshot, though I'm not sure what it would be. If we think that Republic is no good for this game (something I'm not so sure of after SGOTM9), we could use the sling to Map Making or Polytheism, or possibly even Monarchy (though we might lose it if we chanced for that).

I agree with McLMan about resources though - we want to know where they are as soon as possible. But I think we can trust the AI civs to research TW and IW for us, they tend to go for those fairly quickly.
My first choice of research would probably be Writing in any case, since that's the only tech we can't hope to trade for early on. Once we have it down, in about 40 turns, we'll know who our neighbors are and what the situation is. But hmm, 40 turns is pretty much, maybe we'd actually be better off researching something faster first and using that as a barter...

Regarding research and governments, I think we should definitely try for a slingshot, though I'm not sure what it would be. If we think that Republic is no good for this game (something I'm not so sure of after SGOTM9), we could use the sling to Map Making or Polytheism, or possibly even Monarchy (though we might lose it if we chanced for that).

I agree with McLMan about resources though - we want to know where they are as soon as possible. But I think we can trust the AI civs to research TW and IW for us, they tend to go for those fairly quickly.
My first choice of research would probably be Writing in any case, since that's the only tech we can't hope to trade for early on. Once we have it down, in about 40 turns, we'll know who our neighbors are and what the situation is. But hmm, 40 turns is pretty much, maybe we'd actually be better off researching something faster first and using that as a barter...
Since you mentioned Map Making and Writing, consider this:
7. Map trading isn't available until navigation (NOT mapmaking like Civ3/PTW).

8. Communication trading isn't available until Printing Press (NOT Writing like Civ3/PTW).
Unless this game has been modded back to Vanilla/PTW, it will be some time before we know all our neighbours.

I have added a question about this (when can we trade maps and communications) in Maintenance Thread.

EDIT:
SGOTM 8 was modded to allow earlier trading of maps and communications. Not this one.

Time to be the Inquisitive Idiot

Coming from Vanilla and PTW I know that there are differences in C3C. These are the things I know to be different:

New civ traits; England in PTW has different traits from C3C.
Ring City Placement is not a factor in C3C.
Four new wonders: Statue of Zeus, the Mausoleum of Mausollos, the Temple of Artemis and Knights Templar.
Something called the 'Republic Slingshot'.
A bonus tech for the first civ to learn Philosophy (I think).
Some unit called a 'curragh' that is common to all civs (I think).
Scientific Great Leaders.
Industrious workers have been slowed down; now work 1.5X faster than normal workers, not 2X faster.

These are things I found different when I have read the SG logs, so this list may not be complete.

Since our strategy is still undeveloped, I don't know how these differences will affect our strategy. But they could.

And this list is just a guide/reminder of what is different. If I write something down it helps me to remember it.

EDIT:
Bamspeedy has compiled a list of changes that are 'Not A Bug' >>HERE<< (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1393964&postcount=3).

Good list. Our traits are seafaring and commercial, both give a gold bonus and seafaring gives higher naval movement. Our UU is the Man-of-War, and unlike in vanilla, it's a good one as it can enslave.
IIRC, RCP is actually bad now. All cities will be ranked as the lowest one on the ring. Also, the FP just acts as a center for distance corruption, not for rank corruption, and so it can be built near the palace without much loss.
Curraghs are a great addition. As McLMan says, contact trading is delayed, which means the AI's have lots of trouble getting to know each other, and if we get early contacts this is to our advantage.
Scientific GL's are off I think.
Min research is 50 turns now.

IIRC, RCP is actually bad now. All cities will be ranked as the lowest one on the ring. Also, the FP just acts as a center for distance corruption, not for rank corruption, and so it can be built near the palace without much loss.

I'm pretty sure that if the are built on the same ring, the later built cities get more corruption. RCP is meaningless, and has no effect on the game whatsoever.

Regarding research and governments, I think we should definitely try for a slingshot, though I'm not sure what it would be. If we think that Republic is no good for this game (something I'm not so sure of after SGOTM9), we could use the sling to Map Making or Polytheism, or possibly even Monarchy (though we might lose it if we chanced for that).

I agree with McLMan about resources though - we want to know where they are as soon as possible. But I think we can trust the AI civs to research TW and IW for us, they tend to go for those fairly quickly.
My first choice of research would probably be Writing in any case, since that's the only tech we can't hope to trade for early on. Once we have it down, in about 40 turns, we'll know who our neighbors are and what the situation is. But hmm, 40 turns is pretty much, maybe we'd actually be better off researching something faster first and using that as a barter...

I think Republic is the way to go. If the barb nation appears late on the scene, then republic will pull us through the MA.

Min research is 50, so we'll have to go at max. Just mentioning it in case you forgot.

On the start: I am leaning more and more to moving the settler NE. This will save a 10% off the lux tax early on, give an extra river tile in the city radius, and make a productive hill available for later, instead of a less productive plains.
Perhaps it is a good idea to move the worker to the game first, as CB suggested. If he doesn't see anything special in those forests, then move the settler. The worker could chop for a curragh (with some shield loss), or road (with 3 worker turn loss I think), or move back to the bg (1 worker turn loss).
The obvious disadvantage is that we lose a turn before settling, we have to irrigate towards the game, and we cannot work the game tile in the first ten turns.

Apart from this, I agree that your second scheme is better than the first. In the first, those settlers simply don't know where to go! It might be nice to get a second curragh or warrior shortly after the granary.

I like your analysis zyxy. I think you're right on track about the barbs being on another continent. I believe this game will mirror Civ IV in at least one other way than advertised. Map type. I wouldn't be surprised if this world turned out to be just like a Civ IV 'Terra' world. We'll have to slug it out on our Pangea-like continent for resources with the rest of the AI's, then launch an amphibious invasion on the "undiscovered" continent, which is always chock full of advanced barb cities.

I read somewhere (Maintenance theread maybe?) that there ARE the traditional white barbs. (God bless 'em :p )

A couple of things I've discovered from the save.
Barbarian Nation's ...
...traits - Militaristic, Seafaring
...culture group - European
...Unique Unit - Pirate Ship (as if the Barbarian guard isn't unique enough)
...Starting Technologies - Barbarian Tech ???, and The Wheel.
...Favorite Government - Barbarism
...Shunned Government - Democracy

What is Barbarian Tech? My guess would be ability to learn any technology that is known by at least one other Civ.

Nice research! Of course we can use MapStat to learn things we are not supposed to know ;).
Perhaps the Barbarian Tech is a prerequisite for building the Barb Guard, to prevent other civs from doing the same. And perhaps Barbarism is a corruption and war weariness free government that spawns MGL's at a rate of 1 per turn...

@azzaman333: good to know. Ok, then we don't worry about RCP at all.

@all: if you want to voice your opinion on how to play the start, this is the time!

@all: if you want to voice your opinion on how to play the start, this is the time!

I think the 2nd scheme is the best way to go. Tough choice between move/don't move. (And I thought it was a no-brainer stay put at first).

Thanks for all the hearty welcomes!:)

Concerning the start my own analyses have shown the following:

-I would go for the republic slingshot!
-I prefer the second version of Niklas spread sheets. curragh-warrior-granary!
I think reconnaissance has slighly more priority! And after that we should go for fast early growth since the barbarian problem seems to be not solvable early on. Once because of their defensive capabilities and as far as I can think like Gyathaar, he wouldn't have designed an SGOTM that is finished before 500AD.
I think everything about the differences between C3C and PTW/Vanilla is said. Republic is the best choice for government in C3C and going there with the slingshot is that effective, that every top player uses it in a COTMas long as he cannot finish by conquest in despotism. Only shortcoming can be the war weariness. So we have to estimate the possible influence of this. WW is critical if we loose cities to the barbs. A much less influence is loosing offensive units and fighting defensive battles (+2 WWpoints each) But I don't believe in an early barbarian war, so we can alternatively :
- head for communism government
- get all the luxes for happiness
- build happiness wonders

Just got back from the conference, figured I'd play my turns but it seems we're not quite decided yet. If we settle in place then it seems we have a consensus that the Exploration Galore scenario is preferable. Moving or not is a completely different story. I'll try to whip up a spread sheet for the move scenario with preferably a curragh and a warrior first. I wouldn't bother moving the worker to the game though, we can't hope for anything stronger than the 4-turn pump anyway, better to get it up fast.

I'll be back with a sheet in a while, and I will play tomorrow.

Alright, I came up with a scenario where we settle NE on the plains:
http://img456.imageshack.us/img456/8330/smurkzstartplan34tn.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Please someone double-check me because I'm really tired right now.
The tricky part here is that we must irrigate towards the game so early growth is reduced. Compared to the second of the previous two scenarios, this one delays the first two settlers another two turns, and every settler after that by one turn. It is considerable weaker on raw commerce (~25 raw commerce over 30 turns) but on the other hand we'll get most if not all of that back by running at a lower lux rate once we start getting more towns. Also this scenario includes an extra worker while waiting for the town to gain in size.
I should note that I tested a scenario with more emphasis on growth after 10 turns by working the wheat, but result is overall weaker.

So, open question again, what will it be? Do we move or do we stay in place?I'm leaning towards the latter simply because I think that everyone else will stay in place, and it's fun to be different :D. It seems slightly bit weaker early on, but I have a feeling we'll be paid back later on, both with the more productive hills tile and with the lower lux rate once our empire starts growing.


Regarding research, can we agree on going for a Republic slingshot? If so then I'll go for Writing at max from the start, ETA ~40 turns.

I can't check your sheets because I don't have excel at home. But just by looking at them and running down each column I don't see anything that looks odd.

It is pretty much a push whether or not to move. I'll vote for settle NE on the plains. The settler delays don't bother me, and anything that will mitigate our lux slider will be a huge help.

As far as research, I think we should go for a slingshot, but we should choose carefully after we know more about the lay of the land.

Nice work, Niklas! I don't see obvious improvements over this sheet. In particular, we cannot really use the wheat before the granary: it would just let us grow quicker, but the extra food is lost in the (nearly) empty granary box. It's a shame that we have to chop the game so early, as it is a strong tile, but I don't see another option that will get the granary before growth.

A few minor issues:

Shield totals on turn 24 and 27 assume a forest is used on growth. Let's hope that that actually works, and that the stupid governor doesn't choose an oyster or so. The ETA on the warrior build is unaffected anyway.
For the settler build, we can work a forest instead on the bg on turns 28 and 29 to get 2 extra shields (with gold loss) if necessary. Also, I would switch around the worked tiles on turns 25 and 27, that is: oysters on 25, wheat on 27. Hopefully the higher food surplus will induce the governor to choose a forest on the interturn.

On turn 34, I don't think we roaded the tile SE of the capital, so the move would take 2 turns, delaying irrigation by 1. The settler build will be unaffected. Perhaps a better idea would be to mine thie river grass tile for the extra gold. We would need both workers to finish in time. We can of course postpone this decision for a while.

I'm not a good fog gazer, but there's definitely lurking something on the plains 3 NE of our settler. It looks like a lux. Depending on what it is, we may have to adapt our plans anyway.

I personally believe settling in place will be more beneficial. Mainly for the hill as defense. After COTM 23, i truly believe Gyathaar is completely evil, and it would be foolish of us to move and waste our hill defenses. And due to the lack of clear advantage of moving, its (probably) in our best interests to stay put.

Aha, a differing opinion, great! That leads to more analyses, which in turn lead to a better solution, or at least a better understanding of the solution at hand. Not to mention a higher post count! :p

Pros of settling in place:
Faster expansion with the settler factory operating (one turn) earlier, corresponding directly to the turn we spend moving.
Better defense bonus from the hills.
Of these two, I think the former is the significant one. In the past year or so that I've been playing (S)GOTM I haven't once suffered an attack on my capital. With a start like this, with a settler pump, the chances are even less. Any attacks we'll see will surely be targetted at our secondary towns.

Pros of moving NE:
Higher production capacity within the 20 tiles.
Lower luxury rates.
An extra early warrior.
Of these, the second is the one that we expect to pay off the most. It would hurt a great deal to have to run at 20-30% lux rate when you have 10 towns and only one or two really benefits from the higher rates. Of course this may be moot if the surrounding area is swarmed with luxuries, but I doubt it.

My conclusion is that neither start is obviously better. I would go with the move simply because it could be better, and the worst that we stand to lose is a single turn of expansion. I don't feel strongly about it though, but right now the majority seems to be in favor of the move. I'll start playing in a few hours, once I get home, so I guess that's the route I will go. I'll post my strategy shortly. :)

Strategic plans:

Mid- to Long term strategy
Explore the world, meet our opponents.
Find the Barbarian Stronghold.
Research fast to get up to good enough units to take on the barbarians.


Strategy for my turnset:
Settle Smurkzdon one tile NE of the starting location.
Follow the production scheme outlined in the spread sheet in post #30 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4023095&postcount=30) (modulo the small changes pointed out by zyxy).
Research Writing at the highest speed possible, with respect to (un)happiness.
Use curragh and warrior to explore our surroundings.


Regarding the extra tiles on growth, zyxy is right in that the tiles should be switched around on turns 25 and 27. If that is done, the governor will give us a forest on growth on turn 27, of that I am 100% sure. On turn 21 we will get the mined BG, no question. On the turns 10 and 21 the governor will choose the wheat since he always prioritizes to get at least +3fpt after growth, only after that will he consider shields (thus the need to switch 25 and 27). This is not in my turnset though.

Sounds like a good plan. Will you play 20?
Btw, differential naval movement is on.

Alright, playing now. Will play 20, and I will keep my initial spoiler fairly detailed. Wish me luck! :)

EDIT: Mental note: we're playing in C3C, start the right exe dammit! :blush:

Mental note: we're playing in C3C, start the right exe dammit! :blush:
Stupid is as Stupid does, sir! :D

My low-tech workaround: three desktops icons, one each to Vanilla, PTW and C3C.

@CB: Thanks, but I already have three different icons. It's just the habit of pressing the middle one that's hard to lose... ;)

I've played 1 ½ turns, and I need to stop already. The reason? See for yourselves: :D
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3338/sheep8pe.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Yep, that's sheep on the plains, which means a free 2fpt 2spt tile before improvement. This also means that we may not need to chop the forest early on after all, since an irrigated sheep tile will provide the desired extra +1fpt. I need to rework that spread sheet... :)

Arghhhh! The attack of the killer sheep!

It seems that a 4 turn warrior-settler factory is possible at size 5.5-7.5, that is, if the granary handles that well. (At some point the foodbox empties, and I've forgotten where.) In any case the lux tax will be too high to make this a good option I think. A 4 turn settler factory is possible at 3.5-5.5, needing only 1 of the bg's.

Latest version, taking the sheep into the picture:
http://img270.imageshack.us/img270/986/smurkzstartplan4corrected5la.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

In this scenario we leave the game tile unchopped, instead chopping the forest tile next to it. Benefits over the previous one are an extra curragh or warrior (which could possibly be traded for a one-turn speed up on the first two settlers, no effect in the long run), the second worker comes online one turn faster, and the settler pump is running at 3.5->5.5 which means even lower luxury rate.

One thing worth noting: It is possible to run Smurkzdon as a 5-turn combo factory producing 2 warriors and a settler, or some 20-shield unit plus a settler, at 5.0->7.0. We are one shield short of running a 4-turn warrior-settler combo.

Also noteworthy is that once the settler pump is running, the game tile is all but unused (except to provide the +2s on growth which a mined hills could do instead). This means we could give it to a secondary town, possibly chopping it for faster growth there. We could also chop it, irrigate it and use it in the pump, letting the sheep go to some other town. However, if we want to run the 2-warrior combo factory later on we need it with the forest intact (for a single 20-shield unit we don't).

If I hear nothing in the next 30 mins or so, I'll keep playing after this schema.

EDIT: Crosspost with zyxy. The granary can't handle 7.5, it doesn't exactly empty but you need more to fill it up.

EDIT2: Oh, and the last two lines are just to show that we can easily have a 2-turn worker pump if we like.

EDIT3: Changed the spread sheet to a correct one.

>>The Save<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC3000_01.SAV)

4000 BC (0):
Settler moves NE, worker SE. Worker uncovers more hills to the east, and what could be a lake or more sea.

3950 BC (1):
Settle Smurkzdon NE of the starting location, and the stuff hiding in the fog turns out to be a flock of Sheep (+2f, +1s, like a cow) on the plains. Great! :) But the spread sheet needs to be reworked a bit, with that powerful tile to use.

Reworking spread sheep... eh, sheets.

Smurkzdon is set to build a warrior, ETA 5 turns. Worker starts mining the BG.

MMing:
Lone citizen is set to working the BG tile.

Research:
Research is set to Writing at 100%. We are currently doing 5 bpt, which gives an ETA of 48 turns as Writing costs 240 beakers. This will drop dramatically.

3900-3750 BC (2-5): Nothing happens, just press end turn.

IBT: Smurkzdon warrior->curragh

3700 BC (6):
Our newly commissioned scout, duly named Pug, moves E to the hills. Sees some desert and a FP.

IBT: Worker finishes mine

3650 BC (7):
Pug moves E, sees a few more hills. Worker starts road.

3600 BC (8):
Pug moves S onto hills, notes a marsh beyond the hills.

IBT: We get a strange message:

http://img437.imageshack.us/img437/2297/techthief6ab.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Guess that answers the question about them having some special trick up their sleeve...

3550 BC (9):
Pug moves S, uncovers a vast stretch of marshes, and some fish.

IBT: Worker finishes road on the BG.

3500 BC (10):
ETA on Writing dropped to 34 (i.e. 43 when counted from the start).

Worker moves W to the forest, gets a good view across the bay. More sheep. Pug moves S through the marshes.

IBT: Smurkzdon curragh->granary. Smurkzdon grows to size 2 and cultural borders expand.

3450 BC (11):
Our first curragh, named Huzzah, moves NE-N. With DNM and the seafaring trait our curraghs have 5 moves, so we can make them moves three tiles by going sea-sea-coast.

Worker starts chopping the woods. Pug keeps trekking south through the wetlands.

MMing:
Citizens are set to work the BG and the forest. Lux rate is set to 10%, again upping the ETA on Writing to 38 (or 48 cf start).

3400 BC (12):
Huzzah moves 3W across the bay. Pug moves S.

IBT: Didn't take very long...

http://img437.imageshack.us/img437/479/techthiefcomplete3qv.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

3350 BC (13):
Huzzah N-W. Pug S.

MMing: Move the citizen from the forest to the game. Growth is sufficiently delayed.

3300 BC (14):
Huzzah NW-W-S. Pug S, finds a cow and possibly the southern shore(?).

IBT: Worker finishes the forest chop. 10 shields to the granary.

3250 BC (15):
Worker moves E. Huzzah moves SW-S.
Pug moves S and sees a hut. Should be safe to pop since we're far from the capitol in case of barbies.

IBT: Volcano is active S of the wetlands.

3200 BC (16):
Worker moves E onto the wheat. Huzzah moves SW-S-E. Pug moves S.

3150 BC (17):
Worker irrigates wheat. Huzzah moves S-S-E. Pug moves E.

IBT: An Inca Chasqui scout shows up just outside Smurkzdon. :eek:

3100 BC (18):
Diplomacy:
Inca have BW, Mas, WC and CB. They don't have Alpha. They would trade any one tech straight up for Alpha, or BW+CB for Alpha+9gp. I'm going to leave it right there and finish my turns, the situation should be the same 2 turns from now, and we can discuss it.

Huzzah moves S-SE-E. Pug moves NW and gets three angry barbie warriors on his tail. Good thing he's on a mountain. Beyond those mountains is jungle with dyes, first lux so far.

IBT: Chasqui Scout circles our borders, another shows up to the north. Pug is attacked by one barbie, defends flawlessly. The other two don't care.

3050 BC (19):
Huzzah moves S-SE-E. Pug moves S to hills.

Check the diplomacy screen again, the trade costs are still the same so Pachahuti isn't researching Alpha it seems.

3000 BC (20):
Leave Huzzah and Pug unmoved for next player.

Not much hand-off notes, the spread sheet says it all. :smug:

EDIT: The spread sheet was not quite correct however, there were two places where the schema said forest but where the forest was already chopped. It was just a matter of using the forests a bit earlier though so no big deal. I'll change the picture in the previous post to show the correct tiles.

"Technology Thieves"?

Sounds like a way to keep the SOBs interesting in this game. Possibly a super-duper version of the Great Library, but may take three Civs, not two, to trigger its effect. Or maybe it is tied to how advanced we are. Impossible to tell at this point, but if the SOBs can suck technology from other civs...well, we have an opponent worthy of us.

If TT is what it sounds like to me, then is there a way to keep the other civs backwards or at war with each other while we try to hunt down SOBs and exterminate them?

I am terrible at MMing, and often with city placement as well so i would definately prefer if i was closer to the back of the roster. If thats okay with you guys. :)

Nice play! Let's just hope that that Chasqui knows how to behave...

The 'pedia says that the Technology Thieves is a cheap and never expiring GLib. But I don't know how accurate that info is.

@azzaman333: actually there will not be any cities to place in the next 10 turns, and MM-ing is on the spreadsheet. But if you want, I'm sure Niklas can switch you around. In any case, decisions such as city placement are team decisions IMO.

Odd, cryptic discussion going on in the maintenance thread. What do you guys think they're talking about?

I wonder that too, but I'm trying to push it from my mind since I trust the admin's decision. According to the discussion it's something we'll find out about sooner rather than later, so I guess we can just play on and see. :)

@az: (yeah, you'll all be abbr. soon enough :p) If you don't want to play a turnset this early, I'll move you to back in the roster, no problem. This gives us the following roster:
Niklas - Just Played
McLMan - UP!
CommandoBob - On Deck!
zyxy
Marc Aurel
azzaman333

So, McLMan, go for it! :whipped:

I think there is little to say regarding the next 10 turns, the spread sheet should cover most things. One thing you might want to consider is to switch the order for the next warrior and curragh in case we don't trust Pachahuti. We'll be paying some upkeep for units until we get our second town settled, but that's life.

Interesting variant. I'm curious how this one plays out. Good luck Team Smurkz (from the [civ4] side)

On the next turnset: I think it would be better to build the warrior before the curragh, to scout some land for the second city. South east along the river looks quite good, perhaps one of the forests east of the river next to the bg would be reasonably good. West is nice too, but can probably wait - this is our backyard. What direction did the Chasqui come from?

@Methos: thanks!

Odd, cryptic discussion going on in the maintenance thread. What do you guys think they're talking about?

I think I know. If you don't want to see it, don't look at the spoiler.


The barbarians can conduct spy missions. In particular, sabotage. In the maintenance thread it is stated that this feature could cost you the F(orbidden) P(alace). This is the only thing that I can come up with that would do that.

Odd, cryptic discussion going on in the maintenance thread. What do you guys think they're talking about?
They're talking about something that does not belong in a thread.

I plan to ignore the maintenance thread for a while or until AlanH says that something important has been posted there. Or unposted there.

We had severe gameplay issues in the last game, and it was handled through the maintenance thread. The system works; just PM the Mods with your concerns and trust them to do the right thing.

Niklas - Just Played
McLMan - UP!
CommandoBob - On Deck!
zyxy
Marc Aurel
azzaman333

Ok, unless somebody speaks up, I'll play tonight. Follow the spreadsheet, report any new findings. I will switch the build to a warrior. I don't see any sense in being risky at this point.

If I get stumped, I know where to come for help.

The Chasqui both came from a general E-ish direction, probably NE-ish.

Regarding city placements, we should keep in mind that we get +1 commerce in the center in any town on the coast. Ther first few towns will probably still be better off along the river, but in particular the site 2SE-S between the sheep and the game looks like a good candidate. I assume that towns near lakes don't get the bonus? The lakes to the SE make for some really nice lands to settle, but that means clearing a lot of wetlands first.
Upwards along the coast would be good to chart out, our second curragh will take care of that for us. I would take the second warrior more or less straight E, or possibly even keep him at home to save us luxury cost.

@McLMan: I hope you mean to switch after the granary has completed. ;) Good luck! :)

Ok, unless somebody speaks up, I'll play tonight. Follow the spreadsheet, report any new findings. I will switch the build to a warrior. I don't see any sense in being risky at this point.

If I get stumped, I know where to come for help.

Sounds good. Switch to warrior after the worker you mean?
On the trades: it's up to you of course, but I would probably hold off. Inca probably know someone as they have 5 techs already. But they offer full price for alpha (CB+BW is same value as Alpha), so their contact doesn't have alpha. meaning we're better off finding more contacts first.
If their scout came from E-NE, we should probably head that way with our warrior, and use lux tax for now to keep the capital happy. Most land seems to be E anyway.

Please note that there are two distinct resources called 'lambs' and 'sheep'. Not only do they have different stats, but one is a luxury. I notice you may be treating them as synonymous.

Please note that there are two distinct resources called 'lambs' and 'sheep'. Not only do they have different stats, but one is a luxury. I notice you may be treating them as synonymous.
Tsk, tsk.. giving wrong info to throw them off? :)

There are 3 resources.. lambs, sheep and wool..

Umm, that doesn't seem quite right, AlanH. :p
It's true that 'lambs' and 'sheep' are different, but both of the occurences that we've found so far have been of the 'sheep' variety, i.e. +2f +1s. Lambs on the other hand have only the +2f. The fullfledged luxury is yet another version, called 'wool', and is +2f +1s +1c and a luxury.

You know I'm the master of meta-information mining - should I construe your comment to mean that there is a 'wool' luxury somewhere close by that we haven't found yet? :mischief:

The discussion on the resources is here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/gotm21_features.shtml).

EDIT: Cross-post with Gyathaar.
EDIT2: The link I gave has some wrong info, which is mirrored in the resource graphics - olives give +1f +2c and not the other way around.

Sorry. I thought you were seeing lambs and thinking they were sheep. Also I've been away from playing too long and forgot about wool. Please ignore my post. :blush:

I'll now go away and hide.

Sounds good. Switch to warrior after the worker you mean?
On the trades: it's up to you of course, but I would probably hold off. Inca probably know someone as they have 5 techs already. But they offer full price for alpha (CB+BW is same value as Alpha), so their contact doesn't have alpha. meaning we're better off finding more contacts first.
If their scout came from E-NE, we should probably head that way with our warrior, and use lux tax for now to keep the capital happy. Most land seems to be E anyway.

Yes, I mean after the worker.

Thank you for bringing up the trades. I usually try to hold off from trading until I know at least 2 other Civs. If I meet another Civ during my turnset I'll most likely come to the team to discuss what to do trade wise.

A couple of questions.
1) If I have a problem is it ok for me to post a save here in the thread and not on the progress & results page?
2) Am I supposed to post the save to the progress & results page at the end of my turnset or is Niklas after I post it here?

Preturn
Opening screen greeted to a display of pug's meeting with seedy characters. Insticts tell me to run away. (They're on mountains after all!) So Pug heads. Curragh continues down coast. Hit Enter

IT
Granary completed -> Worker
Get message from domestic advisor
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/lowtreasury.jpg
Running 90% research, 10% lux at -1gpt. 10g in the treasury. Can drop to 70% research and get writing in 30 (0gpt), but will hold at 90 for now.

Turn 1) 2950 BC
Worker finishes irrigation of wheat. Begin building road.
Pug, heading South, finds goats along the West coast.

IT
Chasqui Scout disappears into the fog to our West
Pug's barbs heading E and S

Turn 2) 2900 BC
Pug moves SE to a hill, to take another peek below us before heading E and hello.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/byzantinecontact.jpg
Theodora is up BW, WC, & CB. We have nothing to offer her. And here we stop for now. The only thing she doesn't have that the Inca have is Masonry. I can trade Alphabet straight up for Masonry, but can't get anything else with it. I could then turn around and trade Masonry to Theodora for ??? According to CAII, Masonry doesn't carry enough value to get more than one tech out of her. If we trade, which one? We should be able to trade Masonry straight up for any 1 tech (BW, WC, or CB).

I haven't made any trades, and am waiting for discussion.

1) If I have a problem is it ok for me to post a save here in the thread and not on the progress & results page?
2) Am I supposed to post the save to the progress & results page at the end of my turnset or is Niklas after I post it here?

Answers:
1) I would post it here, it's much easier. Post as attachment (not upload), then the risk of some unauthorized person accidentally downloading it is minimal.
2) You do it please.

Other things:
phewww, that Chasqui scout didn't finish us when he had the chance. Good call on research, no point keeping cash around at this stage.

On trades: I don't know. Masonry + BW (or similar) for Alpha is not a lot, and we don't really need any of these techs right now. We will have to hold back on trading writing away until we have CoL at least, so not much opportunity after that.

Let's see: Byz are seafaring + scientific, so start with Alpha + BW. Inca are Agri + Exp, and start with Pott + Masonry. So Inca have discovered BW, WC, CB (total base cost: 8), and Byz have discovered WC, CB and Pott (total base cost: 7). AI's research at regent level IIRC, so this would come down to 192 beakers and 168 beakers respectively, at monopoly price (factor 24). We accumulated about 100 beakers sofar, so this seems a bit much. (AI's do get an extra worker and 20% discount on growth/production, but I doubt this would nearly double the gold output). Obviously, they could have popped some tech(s).
So my best bet is that each knows more civs. Inca has no money, that reinforces the point. Perhaps we can estimate how long it would take for Inca and Byz to meet each other, and hold back for that many turns? Btw, do Byz have any money?

On the two questions, what zyxy said. :)

On diplomacy: I think it's a safe assumption that the Incas know someone else, they had all those techs already a number of turns ago. Also, as zyxy noted, the fact that they have no money is a strong indicator. The Byzantines could possibly have generated 168 beakers so far, in 22 turns that's ~7.6 bpt on average. AFAIK the AI also have a higher number of free happy citizens, and so could run at 100% research. If they had a food bonus (or FPs), and settled on the coast (seafaring) near a river, then it's not impossible.

In any case, I would hold off the trade for now. We have no immediate use for any of those techs, and with a monopoly higher up the tree (CoL, Philo, Republic perhaps) we're more or less sure to get all of them in one go.

OK, no trading for now. The Byzantine warrior and the tile the Inca Chasqi Scout disappeared into are 15 tiles apart. If they head straight for each other, they will meet in 7 turns. Although it could be sooner if one or both are on a mountain or a hill. I would think we have 5 turns safely. What do you think?

I don't think Theodora has any cash either. Don't really remember though. :blush: Seems she would know someone also. Not so far a stretch to think we're in tight quarters with all other 'normal' civs if my theory on this being a Terra map is correct.

On my way to work, will play later. Here's the save if anybody wants to check it out.

126316

I checked the save, Thedora does have cash: 20 gp! That's an even stronger indicator, she knows someone else for sure, and probably traded them Alpha.

Since BW, WC and CB are now no longer monopoly techs for Pachahuti, we could get any two of them straight up for Alpha, and we're close to getting all three.

In any case, I think we are better off holding back on trades for now. We'll catch up soon enough for sure. Also we can get better trades if we meet more of our neighbours. I say wait, regardless of whether Pacha and Thea would meet up and trade.

Agree with the captain. If PeachyCuty ( :crazyeye: ) would give Masonry + another tech for alpha, then I might be tempted. But I would not give out alpha for 2 second hand techs.

The area where our warrior stands right now could be a nice spot for a blocking city. But that's for later.

O, and please remember to do something about the unhappy persons ;).

OK, back at it. Sorry for the delay, had this been a 'normal' SG I'd have prodded on and taken my lumps later had I done anything screwy. Since this is a competition I'm going to be extra cautious.

Turn 2) 2900 BC (Continued)
Need to set lux to 30% to prevent rioting. Research at 70%. Writing in 27. -1gpt
Hit Enter.

IT
Smurkzdon: Worker -> Warrior
That worrisome domestic advisor thinks 8 gold isn't enough to run at -1gpt. You can tell she doesn't manage a household.

Turn 3) 2850 BC
New Worker Moves NE
Pug moves E to hill and sees Byzantine border.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/byzborder.jpg
Double check to be sure Smurkzdon is working correct tiles. Then triple check.
Lux down to 10%, research back to 90%.

Turn 4) 2800 BC
Old Worker Moves NE
New Worker begins irrigation.
Pug moves to edge of Byzantine border.
Adjust worked tiles.

IT
Smurkzdon: Warrior -> Curragh

Turn 5) 2750 BC
Old Worker begins mine.
In what can be considered a dumb move, I move the new warrior SW to stay close, but check out what's behind the fog to our West. Doing so removes an MP, and therefore I need to readjust the sliders & tack 2 more turns onto writing.

Turn 6) 2710 BC
Our curragh finds what appears to be a small island in the South.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/smisland.jpg
Move Warrior back into city. Readjust sliders.

Turn 7) 2670 BC
It's a group of small islands at the SW corner of our Continent.
(Adjusting worked tiles every turn)

IT
Smurkzdon: Curragh -> Settler

Turn 8) 2630 BC
New worker moves NE to sheep
New Curragh heads in clockwise direction.
Pug skirting Byzantine border on an Easterly heading.
Need to adjust sliders to keep from going broke, and rioting. With the MP in Smurkzdon, need 20% lux rate and research needs to drop to 40% to keep from going bankrupt. 0 gpt now. 0 g in treasury.

Turn 9) 2590 BC
New worker begins irrigating sheep.
Pug finds a hut very near Byzantine territory.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/pugshut.jpg

Turn 10) 2550 BC
Pug eagerly pops the hut and ...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/hutbarbs.jpg
A little gift for Theodora.
Curragh's looking, MM worked tiles.

Post-turn.
Pretty uneventful, but still stressful turnset. We need to be careful with the Treasury, or lack thereof. I was hoping for gold from the last hut, but no such luck. We'll have a Settler in 2 turns. It's past time to start thinking about where to put him. Unfortunately, we don't know any more about our immediate area than we did at the start of my turnset. I guess I shouldn't have been so eager to check out the Byzantine border and cleared more of our immediate surroundings. I think either 1S of the game, or 2 SE of the Wheat for the 1st city.


http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC2550_02.SAV

Turnset 03 2550 BC

End of Turnset 02 Stats:

Writing 21 turns +0 gpt (4.4.2)

Cities:

Smurkzdon (4) grows in 1, settler in 3.


Military:

02 workers
02 warriors
02 curraghs


New citizen should work the almost-mined grassland.

Next build ? Warrior or settler? I favor warrior to allow city to be at size 4 when the settler pump starts.

Where to put next city?

Dotmap 2250 BC
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/2250BC_WorldMapTrimmedDotted.jpg

Light Blue looks good because is can grow and is on the easternmost hill of that clump of three hills (sees further east than the others). It has access to a flood plain and a BG and has forests near by to chop. However, it is also on the other side of the River Thames (yellow line) from Smurkzdon, which means it will take foot units two turns to travel from Smurkzdon to Light Blue once the way is roaded.

Red is just a defensive outpost to the north. It has nothing to recommend it except that it is on a hill. Like Light Blue, it is two turns away from help.

Pink is probably the worst of the four. Pink will automatically improve the marsh, has access to a fish and can grow to size 12. Its main purpose is to serve as a stepping stone to the south.

Yellow is coastal, on a hill and next to a river. Good defenses, good growth and some sea commerce. Its main use would be to build boats and save travel time by bypassing the pennisula to the west of Smurkzdon.

I don't consider any of these dots set in stone.

You cant build a city on marsh, you have to clear it first.

Looking good! We have rounded the edge of the continent already!
Question: should Huzzah explore those islands (in the hope of finding another continent) or keep going East?

On research: it seems we'll be getting Writing in 50 turns. Do we keep going full steam in the hope of shaving off some turns, or do we cut our losses and switch to minscience? We would have to get more than 3 beakers/turn to do faster than minscience.
I think we should keep going at the highest rate possible (but perhaps keep 1 gold in the treasury, I would hate to lose that granary.) The situation will improve when we get a second town out - it will add money, cut unit upkeep, and build us some MP's. I didn't calculate, but hopefully we'll be able to get it quicker than 50 turns.

It might be a good idea to modify the plan to build a warrior after the settler, as you suggest. Possible scheme is below. Each line lists: turn number; tiles worked; shields/shieldbox; food/foodbox; finished build at IT (if any). Stuff in brackets is due to tiles used on growth; Worker actions remain the same.


30; wheat, sheep, bg, bg, (game); 7(+2)/23; 4/20
31; wheat, sheep, bg, bg, oy; 7/30; 4/14; settler
32; bg, bg, oy; 5/5; 2/16
33; wheat, bg, oy, (bg); 5/10; 4/20; warrior
34; sheep, bg, bg, oy; 7/7; 3/13
35; sheep, bg, bg, oy; 7/14; 3/16
36; wheat, bg, bg, oy, (sheep); 7/21; 4/20
37; wheat, sheep, bg, bg, game; 9/30; 5/15; settler


At this point we are at the start of the settler factory (turn 37 in Niklas' sheet, turn 38 in my scheme). So a 1 turn delay on all settlers, in exchange for an extra warrior. As we need to scout for the next spot, this is not too bad I think. In fact, it might be good to do a 2 turn worker at this point, if we decide to clear those marshes or jungles.

Dotmap: I think you cannot settle on marsh before clearing it. [EDIT: crossposted with Az.] I think pink and yellow dot are quite good, but they need more worker action than we can spare for now. As you say, red dot is not great. There must be a good spot to the west, but we need to scout first. Blue dot seems best, perhaps moved 1 E or NE to get more usable grass in range, and keep it on the east of the river. It has some forests for chopping and will make a nice rax town. I would move the worker that is now on the bg (once it finished roading) 2 tiles E to scout the terrain - it will just get ahead of the settler, and perhaps see something of use. After that, use this worker to improve around blue dot. The other worker can build a road from Thebez to the new town.

EDIT: the new city can start a warrior I think, and after that a rax (with chops.)

It seems our two friends have met - alas, no more trade opportunities.

Small note: you can switch the citizen from game to bg this turn. It adds a gold.

Well done zyxy, I concur!
I would settle #2 directly in the east. The blue dot seems good, but 1E of there seems to be better. But I would like to learn more about the surroundings before settling down there. We can spare the MP of Smurkzdon, if we build the warrior right after the settler, so I like the idea to throw in one warrior more.

Well played McLMan! :goodjob:

I think you did everything fine. The warrior for MP was a good idea considering the high expenses we have, and exploring along the Byzantine border was also a good idea. A solid turnset. :)

Regarding research, we're more or less at the low water mark now. We'll go up a bit, and down a bit again, until the first town is settled. After that it's straight upwards. I'm pretty sure we'll have Writing within the next 10 turns. It's 63 turns left, that means an average of 6.3 over the next 10, that should certainly be doable. If not, we won't miss it by much.

For settling, I think the blue dot is a good location, with the FP and a BG in the first 8. It will give us a good commerce boost with the river tiles, and it can also borrow the BG from Smurkzdon on turns when it's not needed there.
The pink dot will clearly have to wait, and I'm not sure I agree with the red dot. A town on the coast would be better to have, for ship production and for the extra commerce in the center. Perhaps we could settle one town on the coast, say W-NW of Red Dot, and perhaps another E or SE?
I also want to see the tile 2SE-S settled, with the game, the oyster and the sheep it will be a very strong location. I'll call this White Dot. It's also on the coast, which is nice.
Order for settling would be Blue, White, then one of the Red ones. This will also depend on what we find out east, it may be the case that we need block something, grab some luxes or the like. Possibly we want to send an early settler down to the dyes before Thea grabs them.

I think Huzzah should continue up the east coast, we know there are more civs to meet there. We can move out towards the east once we have a clear grip on what our home looks like.

@CB: Go geddem!

Revised Dotmap 2250 BC
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/2250BC_WorldMapTrimmedNiklas.jpg

Blue first, followed by White and then a Red '?', depending upon exploration.

McLMan tosses his sombrero into the dotmap ring ...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/2550dotmap.jpg

Slight variation on everybody's favorite may allow for better placement of other cities. I know RCP is dead in C3C as far as corruption, but I still like to use it because it's efficient.

Id make yellow dot coastal (1NW) Other than that it looks good. Of course, purple and red dot might move due to exploring the tiles around there.

I must ask for a skip; I cannot play until Monday.

My son got in from college late this evening. Tomorrow (Saturday, actually today) is an election day, and as an election judge I will be tied up all day. Polls are open 7am to 7pm and I will there open to close. Sunday is always fairly busy, but this is also Mother's Day and we have out of town family visiting us at lunch.

CB: no problem, enjoy your family meetings!

This means I'm up; I'll play somewhat later today. I'm counting two votes for CB's blue dot (N + CB), 2 votes for 1 tile E/NE (MA+z), 2 for Mc's dark blue dot (Mc + Az (? Not sure if that was a vote)). Nice split!
I think we really want the second town to be very productive and Mc's dot is too much in the marsh for my taste. So I'm going to go with one of the first two options. I'll let it depend a bit on what my scout finds further east.

Mid to longterm plan:
- kill the barbs. Hard to say how yet, but fast research probably helps.
- get republic slingshot.
- make contacts and explore the world.

Plan for this set (10 turns):
- follow N's scheme from post 41, with zyxy's modifications in post 68.
- settle light blue or next to it.
- research at max.
- after N's scheme runs out, use one worker near capital (roads), the other near new town.
- Send out long range explorer east. Perhaps explore western region for settle spots, if I can spare a warrior.

Turn 0, 2550BC: I wake the warrior to go explore the east. lux 30%, sci 10%. I'll minsci for a few turns, we can go back to max later. We are making a whopping 2 gpt, our problem is lack of roads. Check the advisor screen. The barbarian stronghold is a size 9 city! No wonder the barbs have half the world's population...

IT: The barbs run away from Pug, and we meet Sumeria with our northern curragh.

Turn 1, 2510BC:

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC2510sumertrade.jpg

Gilgamesh lacks Alphabet and offers to fund our research efforts. Well, thank you! We sell alpha to Gilgamesh for Masonry + 12 gold. lux has to go to 40% :eek:, but science can go to 60%.

IT: 'don settl -> warr.

Turn 2, 2470BC: lux 20%, sci 80%. We spot the incan borders very close to our blue dot, and The Unsinkable sees sumer border further up north.

Turn 3, 2430BC: Inca have a worker for trade. Unfortunately, we have nothing to sell.

IT: 'don warrior -> settl.

Turn 4, 2390BC: Pug sees dark blue borders and Huzzah sees yellow borders. lux 30%, sci 40%.

Turn 5, 2350BC: we contact the Netherlands (yellow). They are up BW, WC and CB, we have nothing to trade to them. Blue borders still 1 turn away, must be the Maya. sci down to 20%. I don't like to settle aggressively towards the Inca capital, so will go for the hill (blue dot).

Turn 6, 2310BC: The Unsinkable sees more Sumer borders. We spot some goats south of the capital.
Pug meets the Maya who lack Alpha. They will offer a worker + 2 gold, or WC/BW + 18, or CB + 32. Time to check with the team. I like the worker deal.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC2310MeetTheMaya.jpg

Questions: do we settle where we are? Do we make a deal with the Maya? Where does the next settler go? S-SE of our warrior might be nice. EDIT: or better directly west, then he can share the game. And we can fit a city at the rivermouth down south.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC2310GreaterLondon.jpg

The world according to CivAssist:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC2310TheWorld.jpg

The save is attached.

I think the trade is a good one. We'll be picking up the techs soon enough anyway, and a slave worker is worth a lot more than mere money. I say get the worker.

I think we should settle Blue Dot, but it's not an obvious choice:
Moving E means we won't get the FP within our borders until we settle another town to the N. We'd also overlap quite a bit with Cuzco. I'd consider this a bad choice.
Moving SW gives us only the BG, the fish and the lake as early workable tiles, not a good idea either.
Moving NE would mean trading a lake, a marsh fish, a forest, and limited access to the wheat, for two BGs and a desert (and another BG once we've liberated :mischief: Cuzco) within the 20. Within the 8, we'd be trading a hills, a forest and a marsh (+ wheat access) to a desert, a G and a BG, somewhat beneficial. However it would put the town at distance 5 instead of 4.5, and lose us a turn.
Not an easy choice, settling NE is slightly stronger in the short run due to the extra BG, but in the very short run the lost turn will hurt. I would settle on the spot.

----------------------:king:----------------------------

Those goats are nice to see. We should certainly settle a town S-SE of the warrior, though not the next one. I still think White Dot, the location NW of the warrior, is good, though I could settle :p for straight W as well. That would mean losing access to the oyster, but we'd be able to use one of the goats instead.

In general I like overlap in the early game if you have more goo tiles than your towns can work. The oyster is a good example since Don will only use one, as is the game which is unused (except on growth, we should mine a hills to lose that dependency). Thus I wouldn't mind seing White Dot settled.

Umm, zyxy, I notice you've uploaded the 2150 BC save, will we have a spoiler? :)

Blast. I wrote the spoiler in notepad, and I would have sworn I uploaded it. Must have forgotten to hit the submit button or something....

Here goes:

Turn 6, 2310BC (cont'd): After consultations, we sell alpha to Maya for worker + 2 gold. We settle Smurkz Castle, it starts a warrior, and steals the wheat for 2 turns. lux 30%, sci 70%.

IT: The Maya send 6 warriors to greet Pug. Or are they heading for Byzantium?

Turn 7, 2270BC: We have met all opponents now, so our Pug will return home and scout terrain for settlement now. We can spy on the Dutch later. Our Cuzco spy sees spices next to Cuzco. Nice.

IT: Inca remove our scout from the Cuzco area. 'don settl -> settl.

Turn 8, 2230BC: We urgently need to settle to the east, but this first one goes west because we haven't scouted east yet. Probably the next settler will be ready too before we have scouted the area. 'don is now at the start of the 4-turn settler cycle. lux 20%, sci 80%.

IT: Maya kick Pug out.

Turn 9, 2190BC: lux 30%, sci 60%.

Turn 10, 2150BC: The Inca apparently sold the Wheel to Maya and Sumer. I'll leave full movement on the worker and the settler.

handoff notes:

We share a continent with all rivals, except the Barbarian Nation apparently. They must be overseas. There seem to be several sealanes - West of Byz, NW of Sumer, S of Amsterdam, possibly down south at that group of islands, and maybe nore in the east. In due course we may want to station some galleys there to spot for barb vessels.
I would settle SE of the sheep next. The 2 settlers after that should go east IMO, to block Sumer and Inca: one town on the coast, and one somewhere near that river. The idle worker can start irrigating in that direction. Tentative dotmap is below.
I think we need another worker, maybe after the next settler. He can go west to improve the sheep town - it will need irrigation in particular.
Smurkz Castle could be a rax town I think. Worker can first chop and road the forest and then mine the bg. After rax, we can start training some warriors.
I think Pug should head west to scout the mountain area. The cuzco guy should head north, but will probably be kicked out again.


Dotmap:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC2150dotmap.jpg

I think dark blue is priority, followed by lightblue and lightgreen to block the east. After that, we can block the south with red, pink and orange (if we are quick enough). Of these three, we could perhaps do orange (dyes!) first and then backfill. Red and pink need quite some worker action, orange needs one worker and can build it itself. Yellow can be filled in later, the marsh needs to be cleared first. This dot also requires lots of worker action. The five darkred dots make for nice commerce towns (lots of sea), and can be filled at our leisure. It looks cramped, but I think each has 12 tiles to work, which should be enough.
Of course some dots may have to be moved depending on what our scouting warriors see, in particular lightgreen and pink.

The save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC2150_01.SAV)

Great turnset zyxy!

Got the save! Too late to play now. Will do so tomorrow. That gives you time for more discussions. Easy for me since I share your thought settling the blue dot next.
The Barbarians - they are oversea? What does that mean for our strategy? How much warring will we do on our continent? What is right time for the invasion? Should we force finding the other continent or better wait and care for our own growth?

Thanks. :)

Quick comment on barbs: Gyathaar said that the Barbarian Guards cannot be built but are acquired in limited quantity by the barbs - that might mean a SoZ-like approach. In turn this means that an earlier invasion than industrial age might be feasible. Would it be helpful to get GLight? Maybe not; an ancient age invasion of barb land is really not feasible I suppose. Well, we can think about it.

Just as I thought, a Terra map a la Civ IV. I think we should make nice (as much as possible) on our own Continent. I'm sure we'll be lacking strategic resources (iron) in our "settleable" area which may make it necessary to go to war at home before taking on the barbs. Obviously a good productive coastal town to crank out naval units will be necessary.

EDIT: Nice thought about the GL zyxy, I think it would be good to have as it makes the "ferry" run faster when bringing reinforcements to the New World.

Ok. stopping after turn 4 for discussion. Last turn we got Writing and were the monopoly tech brokers. We got:
BW,IW,CB,Wheel,WC, Mysticism and 144gold. Besides 4 Incan gold we own all the gold in the world. Nobody has a tech we don't have. Blue and light blue dot are settled without interference.
Since we want that republic slingshot, I guess we go either Philosophy or CoL. However in an emperor game there is a certain risk at that. Do we go for phil and nobody has researched CoL for trade our free tech is wasted. Do we go for CoL, maybe someone else grabs the free phil tech. You are more experienced than me. I know theory says - try the Phil and give all required techs to everybody around and go full speed Phil hoping for someone to get CoL. I know there is a calculation on the probability of the AI's next research. I have checked this, but am not sure about this. I had a few games in the past, in which it hasn't worked. So I stop for advice to give you all the chance for intervention. What would you research?

Ooops, for your analysis you need to know:
Byzantines are technological even to us.
Maya, Dutch and Inca are missing IW.
Sumeria misses IW and mysticism.

Sorry for my low input, these past two days have been rather hectic.

Sounds like you're making great progress. It feels kind of silly to say now, I know I should have chimed in earlier, but the one thing I would have done is to hold back Writing from everyone to stop them from getting Philo. Not sure it would have worked, there could have been an AI 1 turn from Writing and we would have lost the momentum of the trade. So I guess in hindsight it was all for the best, and the trade you got is really good. :)

So, with that option out of the way, how big are our chances to get the Republic slingshot? I know the AIs tend to shun Philo, but can we rely on that? I would certainly not want to go for Philo straight away in the hopes that some AI gets CoL before that, and besides we'd have nothing to trade for CoL. So I see two alternatives: we go for CoL at full speed and then Philo at full speed, hoping against hope that we get there first, or we go straight for Philo and choose MM or Poly as our free tech.
I have very limited experience of C3C so I'm not sure how feasible the first alternative is, but if possible I would certainly prefer it. Comments?

On a different note, I notice you got IW in the mega-trade. The obvious question is, do we have any iron close by? The answer would influence our decisions for where to place the upcoming towns... :D

Sorry, Niklas, I know but I was a little deep in analysis. But I can assure you, I had in mind not trading Writing if possible. The Dutch were just short of getting Writing (They wanted to pay 5gold for it. Since nobody had Writing, they must have researched it themselves) They would have traded it around and we would have lost a lot without being better off with the slingshot, so I saw no alternative than getting the techs for us.

On a different note, I notice you got IW in the mega-trade. The obvious question is, do we have any iron close by? The answer would influence our decisions for where to place the upcoming towns... :D

Yes, we have iron already in our borders. The tile SW of Smurkz castle! BUt we could have gotten also horses, settling the green dot first. Now I hope we get there with the fourth settler.

I would go CoL -> Philo from here. My C3C experience is extremely limited, so I cannot really say if the AI's are still likely to go for MapMaking first. I could imagine that they find Philo more interesting now that it gives a wonder and a free tech. But perhaps the AI's that do not have IW yet will go for that first, while Byz go for MapMaking as that enables their UU. Polytheism and Maths also enable wonders so could be attractive to them.

Philo is much cheaper than CoL. And we can do 100% research now. Plus we are the most commercial civ on the planet. So I don't quite believe that some AI will get CoL for us while we get Philo.

But I think the best argument for going to CoL first is: what's the point of not doing it? All techs besides the government techs can be obtained quite easily in trade. The whole point of the slingshot is to get the republic much earlier than otherwise possible. Getting "another free tech" is nice, but not a clear advantage IMO.

EDIT: very good news about the iron. Lets get a rax up, build 6 swords and kill that Inca capital! And it sounds like you made a very good decision on the trades!

@MA: I suspected as much on the Writing front, and you certainly did the right thing. Good call, well done!

I must agree with zyxy after reading his analysis of the situation. We can easily get whatever techs in deals, but not Republic. So even if we were to miss the slingshot, that would only mean that some AI got a free tech, most likely MM or Poly, that we can then trade for. So aim for CoL, keep your hat firmly on your head, sunglasses on, and hit it! :cool:

I wouldnt go CoL -> Philo, because the Byzantines will learn Philo very early, since it gives a wonder which will enable its golden age.

Here is my turnset!
I am a little pressed by the International Air and Space exhibition in Berlin at the moment, since my project the Moon lander 'Mona Lisa' is shown there. –and some odd calcs for CIVSGOTM distracted me during lunch break. So, sorry for taking so long for this and the small conversation from me.:( Next time it will be stress free again.:) – Unless my turnset comes before Sunday.;)

Turn 1 : The Mayas building the Oracle, Settler moves to blue dot. Scouts are scouting.

Turn 2: Smurkzbury founded on blue dot. Science slider adjusted to not waste beakers.

Turn 3 : The Byzantines start “The Colossus” Next settler is born and directed to light blue dot.

Turn 4 : We get Writing. Since the Dutch are also close to it, we sell it around and get BW,IW,Wheel,WC,CB, Mysticism and 144 gold. W esee iron SW of Smurkz castle and horses next to green dot. Redirect settler to get the horses. I agree to try to get CoL. Since zyxy and Niklas also vote for CoL, we are researching this. It’s due in 24 turns.

Turn 5: The barbarians sabotage our settler peoduction. That’s what they have been talking about in the maintenance thread. It must happen during my turnset! Aaaarrgh!

126989

The Ionca are buildingf the Oracle. Our warrior scout passes through the lands of the Inca to scan the Sumerian lands. Pachacuti is not amused.

Turn 7: Huzzah is made a suicide galley and heads east from the other side of the continent. Now the Dutch start on the Colossus.

Turn 8: Smurkingz is founded SW of green dot to keep distance to the Sumerians

Turn 9: Oxmurkz is founded on light blue dot. Huzzah finds the barbarian lands!

126990

And these barbarians promptly start on the colossus:

126992

Turn 10 : We win a battle with the barbs in the mountains near Smurkzbury

That’s it in 1750 BC:

126991


Next settler is ready to head to orange or pink dot next turn.
We have now 14 turns to CoL at 70%. We need an MP more in ‘don to get the slider up and need to connect some luxes. I hope we get to orange in time. However we should now plan to invade Cuzco with its spices IMHO

The save:

Wow, a turnset full of surprises! :eek:
Well played MA :goodjob:. And look at that territory graph soar! :D

It's really nice to see that we have uncovered the secret continent already.
Surviving two turns at sea is 9/16 since we're seafaring, so the odds were slightly on our side. Huzzah! :)

It's annoying that we have no local luxes. Cuzco's fate is sealed. We should build up a force of swords and have our way. In C3C, upgrade costs are 3gp/sp compared to 2gp/sp in PTW, which makes a warrior->sword strategy more costly, in particular as we are hurrying for CoL and Philo. I would hook up the iron as soon as possible, and hand-build us a few swords. Cuzco shouldn't take that much to go down.

Castle should build a barracks right away, as should Bury and Ox. Ingz builds too slowly for it to make any sense. Possibly one of them could finish a warrior for MP in Don.

I'm not too worried about that sabotage. We caught their spy so it will take a few turns, and gp, to replace it. Also sabotaging is not cheap, so it will probably happen near the beginning of a production. Regardless, we'll cope with it. Nice twist IMO. :)

Roster: Niklas - On Deck!
McLMan
CommandoBob
zyxy
Marc Aurel - Just Played
azzaman333 - UP!

Az: You get the honor of exploring the wierd and wild lands of the Great Beyond! Find us some barbies, will ya? :D

Nice set! Lots of surprises indeed. Good blocking in the east, looks like Inca ran out of room already.

Some wishes and questions for next set:
- of course settlers were a high priority, but IMO we are working too many unimproved tiles now, and could use some (2-3) workers urgently, to irrigate to Ox, 'ingz, and 'bury. Landgrab can wait a few turns for this I think. The northwest is ours uncontested, and if we get orange dot [next priority?] then Byz will probably head elsewhere. In general I would do workers and settlers in roughly equal numbers in 'don, depending on need of course. Once we start settling the marsh, the need for workers will skyrocket.
- Az, do you know how to run 'don as settler or worker factory?
- agree with setting up war machine for Cuzco. I think raxes in 'bury and Castle is enough - Ox is not going anywhere before it is properly irrigated. Anyway, how many swords do we want? 6? 8?
Do we want to keep Cuzco, or raze/replace? It's on a bg [of course :D], and if we keep it we miss out on another bg 2E of Castle. So perhaps move the town W or SW?
Do we want to take out Inca entirely, or just the capital?
- why not move the warrior from 'bury to 'don? Saves lux tax, and the town is not threatened at all. In fact, I would send the warrior from Oxmurkz down to 'don as well, then the warrior from 'don can run settler escort. This of course is slightly risky, but only for a few turns.
EDIT: this may not be good. It seems Ox and 'bury need an MP for happiness once we lower the lux tax. Still a few extra MP's would help, so perhaps let Ox build that warrior, move hurt warrior to 'bury, and then move extra warriors to 'don...
- it would be nice to know if there's a sea passage to barb land. If so, then GLight becomes a viable option to try and knock them out early.

I agree we could use a few more workers, but I'd like to see orange and pink dots settled first. That will create a border of sorts and we can safely settle behind it. My vote is thus to build another settler after the one currently being built, and then go for a few workers.

Regarding Ox, I would still argue barracks. Sure it needs irrigation, but that won't take all that long. And building a barracks is slow business, so by the time it's done we'll probably have the lands around nicely developed for some solid production.
This is the way I generally play my games btw - a settler factory (or two), and the rest of the towns build barracks followed by the early warring unit of choice. In my experience, two towns building swords is not enough, we need more.

Hmm, I see very little input in this thread. Remember that we have two games to play, not just the CIV one! :nono:

azzaman333, you still around? Since I can't play tonight anyway I'm not going to skip you just yet, so you still have until tomorrow evening until I pick it up myself and play.

Come on guys, more talk talk talk! :whipped:

Come on guys, more talk talk talk!
The Inquisitive Idiot rouses himself from his stupor long enough to quietly mutter "must finish 9...must finish 9...must finish 9" before he goes back to programming again.

But you are right, we have been too silent. No talking means no thinking and that means, in a game like this, no plan and ultimately no victory.

Is it too early in the game to talk about how we want to win? I mean, it seems a no-brainer that we need to crank out military units, but any idiot (myself included) can do that.

As posted in the IV thread, sorry for being absent. I'd also like to be more active in the discussions, but you guy's are so thorough I find I don't have anything to add.

but you guy's are so thorough I find I don't have anything to add.

This is how I felt in both SGOTM8 and SGOTM9, but please realise that any help is still beneficial. These are exceptional players and very knowledgable at the game, but a differing point of view (even one less knowledgeable: read-me) can still help out the team.

Just let everyone know you're schedule, and they'll work with you.

I'm looking forward to the outcome of this one. Good luck from [civ4] Team Smurkz!

I cant play at the moment. My computer had a major crash and i am trying to recover the lost data. (although it didnt affect any of my games)

Az, sorry to hear that. Good luck getting your files back!

I agree we could use a few more workers, but I'd like to see orange and pink dots settled first. That will create a border of sorts and we can safely settle behind it. My vote is thus to build another settler after the one currently being built, and then go for a few workers.

Well, I guess 1 more settler is ok. But basically every town we found from here on will be unproductive unless it gets a bunch of workers. We have a lot of plains to irrigate, and a lot of jungle and marsh to clear.

Regarding Ox, I would still argue barracks. Sure it needs irrigation, but that won't take all that long. And building a barracks is slow business, so by the time it's done we'll probably have the lands around nicely developed for some solid production.
This is the way I generally play my games btw - a settler factory (or two), and the rest of the towns build barracks followed by the early warring unit of choice. In my experience, two towns building swords is not enough, we need more.

Well, irrigation will take long without workers. In any case, I would like to get at least 1-2 more warriors. Orange and Pink dots each need an MP/cardboard defender, Thebez needs two, most of the other towns need one MP for happiness. And it would be nice to scout that mountain region to our SE.

A few small notes:
- capital can work two oysters instead of game & plains for 1 turn for more gold, and still do settler in 1. Also, we could consider letting Castle have the wheat a bit at some point, as the capital is slightly oversized - unless the extra gold income makes up for the extra lux tax.
- worker near 'bury should stop roading, chop that forest first, and then road. This is quicker. The chop goes into the rax.

@az: Ouch, nasty, but good to hear you're still with us. Hope it works out with your data. We'll skip you this time around then.

Roster: Niklas - UP!
McLMan - On Deck!
CommandoBob
zyxy
Marc Aurel - Just Played
azzaman333 - skip once
Got it, will play tomorrow since today has wound on too long already.

Regarding the extra settler, I realise that further towns will be unproductive for quite some time. But I don't want them settled for the sake of their usefulness per se, I just want to grab that land for future use.

I'll see what I can do about more warriors. Also it's true as zyxy says that Don is at too high a level, with this many smaller towns there's no way the higher size can outweigh the lost gpt across all of them.

- capital can work two oysters instead of...Good to see you've got the MMing mindset - but you don't need to tell me, I'm going to check over every town every turn to look for these things :p. I'm suffering from MM-mania you know. ;)

In this post >>HERE<< (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4069142&postcount=150) azzaman333 states that he will need to be skipped for the three weeks, which would mean he could be back around June 12 (four Mondays from now).

Just took a long look at the save, and the only comment I have is we have a great shortage of workers. 3 at the moment, and one currently being built (due in 8).

Regarding tech choices, I think we need to find a safe means across the water ASAP. We have everything we need for an early invasion of the Barbarian continent. Iron, Horses. And enough room to expand into that we shouldn't need to fight anybody on our continent. If we end up needing rubber this could change.

Regarding our neighbors, I think we should be a good guy to all of them. Help them along in tech and resources. I'm sure we'll need all the help we can get vs. the barbs. Even though they won't be much help with the invasion, they could be a distraction for barb invasions to our continent.

Sorry guys, I've had the game running in the background all day hoping to get the time, but I haven't managed a single turn. I will play tomorrow though.

I'm doubly sorry since as a team leader I'd really like to adhere to my own standards :wallbash:. I hope you guys won't follow my bad example. :(

I too think we need more workers, but we also desperately need more luxuries. Grabbing the dyes is crucial. So is attacking Inca, since we can get both wines and spices from their lands. We can trade for much, but not everything.

Other than the Incas, I think McLMan is right, we should try to play nice as much as possible. Without the possibility of a second core, we're not that much in need of more land, and we're not likely to be backstabbed while we all have a common enemy. And many productive cores is better than one, even if many of them are AI-driven.

I've been peeping in now and then. I originally signed up for SGOTM10 as well, but backed out in fear of getting in over my head - time. Enjoying the read. :)

... and we're not likely to be backstabbed while we all have a common enemy. And many productive cores is better than one, even if many of them are AI-driven.
I don't think that the SOBs will be everybody's enemy. I think they are our own special, personal foe. If they were a common enemy, they could be knocked out by somebody else before we did the deed.

I do think we can form MAs against Dr. Evil and his minions. We may even need to make peace with them while we plan and execute an ROP rape. In the end, all the world may be dogpiling on Dr. Evil. I just don't think it is something built into the game.

And yes, I plan to take special joy in :dance: on his grave!

>>The Save<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC1525_01.SAV)

1750 BC (preflight):

Workers: Wake the Bury worker and make him start a chop.

MMing: Don can work the two oysters instead of plains and game, gaining 2 commerce.
Castle will finish worker in 3 since the mine will be done on turn three.
Bury gains nothing from working game, and it is needed for Don on growth.
Ingz and Ox are nothing to do about currently.

With the extra commerce in Don from the oysters we can set research to 80%.

IBT: Don settler->worker

1725 BC (1):
Settler heads out to claim the dyes. ETA is 9 turns, hope he makes it.
Pug scouts into Sumeria, meaning to get out next turn.
Huzzah moves S along the distant coast. Sees fur and iron.

IBT:
Gilgamesh asks us to leave, and so we will.
Bury warrior->barracks

1700 BC (2):
Not much really. Move settler and some warriors, Pug out of Sumeria again.

IBT:
Don worker->worker
Castle warrior->barracks

1675 BC (3):
New warrior from Castle follows settler for barbie protection.

IBT: Ox warrior->barracks

1650 BC (4):
Start chopping a forest near Castle. Chop at Bury done.

IBT: Four Maya warriors on the gold near our settler pair. Barbie hunt?
Don worker->settler

1625 BC (5):
Make that seven Maya warriors - gee.
Need a mine near Don to handle the +2 on growth bit.

IBT: Maya wants us to move The Unsinkable from their waters. Something about upsetting the fish.

1600 BC (6):
Warrior from Ox as MP in Don. Finally lux rate to 10%.
Spot barbie camp on the far end of our W peninsula.

The lands on the other side are incredibly fertile, but no sign of settlements.

IBT: Not much

1575 BC (7):
Lux rate back up to 20%.
Must irrigate towards Bury from the lake E of there.

IBT:
Ingz worker->worker
Chop near Castle uncovers a BG, glad we didn't settle there. :)

1550 BC (8):
Flawlessly lose the fight trying to attack a barbie camp. :(

IBT:
Maya learn Maths.
Byzantine settle Varna by the dyes, two turns ahead of us. :(

1525 BC (9):
Save game when I note Varna, we need to discuss what to do. I managed to move the new settler plus the warrior escort for the old settler before this though.

Handoff notes:
CoL in 2, expect some overflow.
Two barracks will finish next turn. Go for warriors after that.
We should really discuss the dotmap again.

Roster: Niklas - Just Played
McLMan - UP!
CommandoBob - On Deck!
zyxy
Marc Aurel
azzaman333 - skip until further notice

Got it!

Will take a look at things and ask questions / wait for discussion before playing.

Flawless gameplay as expected ;).

It seems Theodora is chalking up her name for a little border correction...
My first reaction is that we simply settle the other southern dots we had marked, but I am not looking at the save right now. I'll do that in the evening.

Btw, nobody has philo yet? And Byz have not uncovered a new tech? That's very good news I think!

I have looked at the save. Very nice! A few more comments.


not sure about the settler. We can still settle on the intended spot, 1S of the settler where the warrior is. Byz culture is slightly higher than ours, but not enough to cause serious flip risks I think. Alternatively, we settle the two spots we selected further north, and that would seal the border. I'm fine with both options. In both cases, we are looking at a small war with Byz for border correction in the distant future. Also, it seems Byz have the most land after us, and we may want to "balance" them a bit compared to the other civs.
It seems many of the civs are running out of room to expand, except Byz. So we can expect some wars to break out soon, and our raxes are up just in time :). The next worker coming out of 'don should hook up iron IMO. Building a few warriors is not so bad, but we need swords soon, and building is better than upgrading in a research-type game.
It seems the Sumer capital is also immediately on our borders, and will expand very soon. Meaning we probably will have to push them back a bit as well. A real war is probably easier than a culture war. Sumer is not going to help much with research anyway, they're too small.
Castle can do a sword every 4 turns it seems, maybe even every 3 at size 5, while it should be quite easy to get 'bury up to size 3 so that it can do (probably) 6 spt for sword every 5 turns.
Castle needs another MP, then lux tax can be lowered.
We still need more settlers and a lot more workers, so 'don is busy for the next few sets. We'll need lots of workers to clear jungle and swamp, bring irrigation NW, and connect Smurkingz.
Do we want to trade CoL for Math in 2 turns? I think not, we don't need Math really. Preferably wait for a 2fer or even more - I would like to get at least MapMaking as part of the deal. Of course if someone else (is about to) discover CoL, then trade for what we can get.

@zyxy: Thanks! :)

First of all, to adress CB's comments: The barbies are eternally at war with everyone, Gyathaar said as much in the sign-up thread. Note how everyone is polite with us, it's because of our common enemy.

I'm torn whether to settle the dyes town or not. I think I'm leaning towards the latter though - we won't have any use for a town that close to Thea if there's nothing attached to it, better to consolidate our borders. How about moving the settler W from its current location, to get the cow and both fish in range? I would plant the second settler SW of the gold, those two towns together would almost make a solid border (except for a small gap S of Castle).

Regarding research, we'll get CoL in 2 and will most probably get Philo in 8 after that (22.5 bpt, we're now at 20 bpt, 25.7 bpt for 7 turns seems to high). Hope is still with us. :)

I agree that we should consider connecting to iron pretty fast. Each warrior->sword upgrade costs 60gp, so we can't afford many of those even if we shut off research completely. Better to build swords from the ground. If we manage to get the slingshot, we can most certainly have Castle and Bury make 10spt in Republic.

We should get another settler to settle a ring-1 town on the W peninsula, it could be reasonably productive fairly quickly. Apart from that we can lay low with the settlers and focus on even more workers, to make settling near the lakes possible.

Regarding trades, I see no reason to trade away CoL just yet, and certainly not for Maths alone.

----------------------- :king: -------------------------

In the longer run, it is very very interesting to note that there is a safe passage for a galley to the other side if we get the Great Torch...

We should really discuss our long term strategy in more detail. Anyone care to fire up the discussion? (I don't have time to write any more tonight.)

Pre-turn
A lot to do, will basically stick to the plan. I'm not the best MM'er so I'm going to take it slow and deliberate.
Some goals:
-Settle the border towns.
-Build Workers
-Get another 1st ring Settler ready.
-Hook up iron.
-Look into trade options with CoL, try to get more than Math.

Turn 0) 1525 BC
Move Settler W to get cow and fish.

IT
Dutch curragh appears along W coast.
Castle: Rax -> Warrior
'bury: Rax -> Warrior

Turn 1) 1500 BC
Kowzville founded -> Warrior
Research slider to 50% for CoL next turn.
I screw up the differential Naval movement and leave The Unsinkable in a sea tile.

IT
We learn CoL -> Philosophy
Smurkzdon: Worker -> Worker
The Unsinkable sinks. :(

Turn 2) 1475 BC
Huzzah rounds the tip of a cape in the New World
Research back to 80% Philosophy in 9.

IT
Castle: Warrior -> Warrior
'bury: Warrior -> Warrior
Sumerians are building the Oracle.

Turn 3) 1425 BC
Begin roading iron.
A lot of activity in the open land S of Smurkz Castle
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/busyplace.jpg
That's 8 Mayan, 2 Dutch, and 3 Incan Warriors

IT
Smurkzdon: Worker -> Worker
Castle: Warrior -> Warrior

Turn 4) 1400 BC
Byzantines know Map Making. I also just now notice that the Inca know HBR.
Huzzah clipping along.

I'm going to stop here and ask for advice. The recent discovery of Map Making has me worried about trading CoL before somebody else gets it. Should I trade CoL for Map Making with Byz, then turn around and trade it for Math with Maya, and then trade it once again for HBR from the Inca? Do you think this will work? Am I jumping the gun here?

127601

First of all, it's very good news that Byz have researched MapMaking!

I think I would hold off trading CoL. In fact, Byz will not give MapMaking for it. In 6 turns we'll have Philo, and probably Republic, which means we can trade for whatever we want.

On another note, the GLighthouse has been brought up a few times. I am beginning to think we should build it, so that we can cross over to the other continent. The only reasonable location to build it is 'don, and it could use mines on the hills if we want to do this. It should probably do a few more settlers first, though.
However, with all those Colossus builds going on, we may not stand a chance. In any case, this can wait for the next set probably.

Overall strategy – just that is the point I was thinking about. Our task is to destroy the barbarians and doing that very fast – nothing more. Now we know better than at the start the situation concerning the barbs. They are as a special AI alone one their continent and all normal AI’s are on our continent. What does that mean? Accomplishing our task would make an invasion necessary in each case. From or goal we know: the earlier – the better. So we would have a dire need to get the Glight from that point of view. Only argument against this point is, if we find something that make the invasion easier the longer we wait. Then the correct time is subject to a trade off. Otherwise I would think we need to go there asap and ignore the other civs on our continent. (besides the Inca for their luxes) Gyathaar won’t have made barb hunting that easy. If their “Technology thieves” works like the Glib (with two civs knowing the tech) it would be a great benefit for us, if the other AI’s would not get too far on the tech tree by a certain trimming we would have to apply. If a single known civ would be enough for giving the barbs the tech – this point does not matter for analysis on when it is best to invade the barb lands, since they will be on an even level in tech no matter when we come. I rely normally on building a lot of good attackers and try to destroy the enemy attackers with them rather than to build a good defence. I believe most warmongers play that style. If we do so in SGOTM 10, than it would be a good idea not to research a defensive unit tech, if we can manage to hinder all other AI’s in getting good research capabilities. For BW it is too late, but Gunpowder and especially nationalism I would not research, for not giving this tech to the barbs for free to make them build good defenders.
The most influencing point on the invasion strategy is the barbarian guard defenders. Gyathaar stated that the barbs cannot build them, but get a limited number of them by another game mechanism. Thinking about that statement, I only could have imagined two things: A wonder like the SoZ pumping out a guard every five turns or they get them by popping the huts on their continent. In the latter case it would be wise to go there asap to claim the last remaining huts for ourselves, thus easily eradicating the barb nation. However I believe more in the first alternative – the wonder. The question would be, when do they get this wonder? Is it when metallurgy is available, since this unit seems to replace the cannon? Can we avoid to deal with the guards, if we have done the invasion before metallurgy is researched?
These open issues all seem to argue for an early reconnaissance landing.
Has anybody something obvious, I have overseen, against this early invasion? What is your opinion?
Is one civ knowing a tech enough to let the barbs know it, or do they need to know two AI’s for getting it working? In the latter case the conquest of our continent would need to be analysed in detail to see whether we might be fast enough to get a significant advantage from not giving the barbs the techs by their wonder. However the barbs might have that good lands that their research works well without any help.
ATM I tend to be fast at heading towards the barbarian lands to have the task finished before they get these guards. In any case we have to find out how they get them. So I would vote for the Glight asap without any further delay. The turn we are ready to switch ‘don to build a wonder we should do so and trade for MM, getting at least maths also. Best if we have a prebuild for a galley ready then to see whether we can get to the other continent from our peninsula, in case Huzzah will be sunk by a barb galley, now that there is MM researched by the Byzantines.

These open issues all seem to argue for an early reconnaissance landing.
I agree. I think we need to find out a few things:
1) How many civs must know a tech before the SOBs learn it.
2) When does the Glory of Gyathaar (GoG) start to produce these special units that we want to avoid.
3) How many cities does Dr. Evil have.

My guesses on these are as follows.
I think that the SOBs have a permanent Great Library bonus and the rules to the Great Library still apply; two civs must know the tech before the bonus kicks in.
Marc Aurel's analysis of the Glory of Gyathaar feels right; we'll find out the hard way.
I suspect that the Barbies aggression is set to max, but I don't know how this affects city building. I don't think that the guys in the white shorts will produce any more cities than any other AI.

I don't know if it is a good idea, but I'll offer it up anyway. I think we need a city on Barb-land as quick as is reasonably possible, followed by starting more cities, up to five or so and consider doing a palace jump to across the sea. The advantages are two fold: our core is closer to the action and we can get more units into the war faster; we won't be limited by how many fighters we can fit into a boat.

Regarding the trades situation, what zyxy said. MM is way more expensive than CoL, and Thea isn't going to part with it for anything we could give her. We could trade for HBR, then trade CoL, IW and HBR for Maths probably, but we certainly wouldn't get MM for HBR, CoL and Maths when they are already known by 3 each. Let's just wait until the AIs trade a bit among themselves. Just 6 turns to go...
Btw, McLMan, you should play 11 turns to get us back in line after my 9.


Regarding the Great Torch, after looking at the save I don't think we'll stand a chance building it ourselves. Constantinople (Byz) builds Colossus since 2030 BC, Amsterdam (Dutch) since 1870 BC and Lupaca (Barbie) since 1790 BC by MA's turnlog. The two first are capitals (although admittedly somewhat small, 4 and 3 pop resp.) and the AI has a bonus on building. Even if we started right now in Don, I still don't think we would stand a chance. And putting Don to this task would severely hamper our development in all other areas, in particular we need workers.

We do have alternatives. First of all, we could capture it from whoever builds it (assuming it's not the barbies). Second, we are seafaring with 75% survival chance at sea/ocean each turn. A galley would onlly need to survive one turn in the open, which means we could use a suicide chain to get the troops over, each galley bringing on average 6 units to the other side before going down. The Torch costs what 10 galleys do, that's 60 units to be ferried. Sure, the Torch gives us extra move with all ships for quite some time which is also useful, I just want to demonstrate that it's not infeasible to do without it.

So, what about those barbies? I'm not so sure an early conquest is feasible:

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/4155/barbiepower2pz.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

We really need to find them and see for ourselves. I agree with CB, not at all a bad idea, a core on the other side is something we should consider. We must be careful when settling though, those barbie guards...

Speaking of which, there is a third alternative for how the barbies get them - they could simply start out the game with a fixed number. They can't get them through huts since then our huts would also give them. The wonder idea is much more plausible, but there is one thing that speaks against it: there's no Glory of Gyathaar in the pedia! In fact there is no custom wonder except the Tech Thieves that we've already seen. Let's just hope that it's not through TT they get their Guards...

I'm imagining something along the following lines: Get MM, fight some short border correction wars, build up galleys and a settling invasion force, suicide-chain the units to the other side, set up a new core, build units, whack-a-barbie. I guess the feasibility of it all depends on what the barbie lands look like. Go Huzzah!

OK, pressing on! Thanks for the help guys. Hold off on trading, get some Settlers out, find somewhere to build galleys, and getting the GLH doesn't seem feasible.

IT
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/gothorse.jpg
'bury: Warrior -> Warrior
Riverz Bend founded SW of the gold hill

Turn 5) 1375 BC
Huzzah sees someone on the other continent !!!!
<signoflife.jpg>

IT
All those warriors heading NW
'don: Worker -> Settler
Castle: Warrior -> Warrior

Turn 6) 1350 BC
Mining hills outside of 'don

IT
'bury: Warrior -> Warrior
Byzantines are building The Oracle

Turn 7) 1325 BC
Moving warriors of our own to see what all the fuss is about in the NW.

IT
Castle: Warrior -> Warrior
Smurkinz: Worker -> Chariot

Turn 8) 1300 BC
We'll have an overrun of 1 beaker with Philosophy

IT
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/slingshot.jpg
Immediately revolt to Republic - We draw a 5 turn anarchy
Pyramids built in Ur

Turn 9) 1275 BC
The iron is hooked up!
Should have traded last turn, but nothing's changed
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/mayanbigtrade.jpg
Also manage to get HBR and 30g for CoL from Byzantines
I also sell HBR to Gilgamesh for all his gold (35)
Huzzah finds a potential problem.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/huzzahfindsgalley.jpg

IT
Huzzah sinks the barb galley without taking any damage.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/huzzahwins.jpg
Go Huzzah!!!

Turn 10) 1250 BC
Another turn of anarchy

IT
nothing much

Turn 11) 1225 BC
Nothing to report. 3 more turns of anarchy.

The date I'm ending at strikes me as odd, and looking back I played a turn without logging between 2 and 3. I've played 12, so we're still one off, but in the opposite direction. :rolleyes:

Construction is "picked" as the next technology, but we don't have any beakers in it due to the current revolution.

Holy crap! I was just playing with CAII and realize that I messed up big time by switching to Republic already. Even with research off we'll still be getting negative gpt. I can't believe I did that. I've run into that problem before, revolting too early, and it really messed me up. I'm truly sorry, I was just so excited about getting to Republic so quickly.

***Link to the Save*** (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC1225_01.SAV)

Speaking of which, there is a third alternative for how the barbies get them -they could simply start out the game with a fixed number. They can't get them through huts since then our huts would also give them. The wonder idea is much more plausible, but there is one thing that speaks against it: there's no Glory of Gyathaar in the pedia! In fact there is no custom wonder except the Tech Thieves that we've already seen. Let's just hope that it's not through TT they get their Guards...


Inspired by your third variant, I found a fourth possibility. They might have the ability to enslave units and turn them into barbarian guards. If that's true only a real overwhelming would be effective, since they would get stronger with every unit we lose by counterattacks. What was the other special barb unit? A pirate that is as strong as our UU, the MoW also an enslaving unit? Hope Gyathaar doesn't check this post, if it is not true, to not give him evil ideas for the future.

Good news that we got republic! :)
Bad news that we can't afford it. :(
But nothing that can't be done anything about. All things considered, I would have revolted. Well played in any case! :goodjob:

Clearly we should have checked earlier if we could support Republic. I did not even consider that we might not :blush:. In hindsight it's pretty clear, with fewish towns and no luxes. There are two ways to go from here that I can see:
Go back to despotism, count the 5 turns as lost, fight some wars to gain more land and luxuries, revolt again at a later point when we can gain from it.
Disband all our 16 warriors, reclaiming 32 gpt which puts us above what we could get from despotism. Build more towns in our backyard, and slowly, controlled, build up a small army of swords to claim the land and luxuries that we want.
There are benefits and drawbacks of both approaches, neither is clearly better than the other. There are of course also middle roads, such as disbanding all but (say) 4 warriors, upgrade those to swords (240 gp) and go grab Cuzco. Note that we don't have that much gp to upgrade warriors to swords anyway, and the warriors won't do any good as MPs any more. So my vote is to do the disbanding (make sure we get something good for the shields) and continue to expand from there. Comments?

Roster:Niklas
McLMan - Just Played
CommandoBob - UP!
zyxy - On Deck!
Marc Aurel
azzaman333 - skip until further notice

@CB: Normally I would have said play 10 if you like, but 1000 BC is the QSC cutoff, so if you want to play 10 you should upload at turn 9 in any case. :p
Go go go! :hammer:

Well done! Very good that we got philo first, and a bunch of techs in trade!

Questions:
- Can we trade for luxes? Dutch have incense to spare, but we need a trade route. A harbor would be cheap for us, but Amsterdam (or Rotterdam) needs one too I believe. Should we sell MapMaking to the Dutch?
Inca have Spices, but again - trade route needed. And we may want to attack them in less than 20.
- Do we want to give/sell Math and IW to everyone? Our rivals might research construction for us, to speed things up. In any case, we'll want to gift Byz and Sumer at the age change for their free tech.

The switch to republic is always a bit painful at first, the more so because of our lack of luxes. I would definitely not get back into despotism. This coming turnset we can amend things a bit by setting research to currency, reorganizing the economy towards more gold, disbanding a bunch of warriors. Also, keep on training more settlers (each town gets 1 free unit). EDIT: also, we can use specialists in highly corrupt towns - they are much better than in vanilla.

For example, if we mine the sheep and one of the hills, we could run 'don as a 4 turn settler factory while working those yummy oysters for lots of gold at the same time. Start at size 3, 15 food in the box, then [tiles listed in (brackets) are assumed to be worked on growth)]:
turn 1: sheep, oy, oy, (mined hill): +5 fd, 7 sh
turn 2: sheep, oy, oy, mined bg: +5 fd, 6 sh
turn 3: sheep, oy, oy, mined bg, (mined hill): +5 fd, 9 sh
turn 4: sheep, oy, oy, mined bg, mined bg: +5 fd, 8 sh -> 30 sh
EDIT: gold output, not counting the city center: 10+13+13+16, so average 13 per turn.

Or we could leave the sheep as is, mine both hills and run a 3 turner (making a bit less gold). Start at size 4, 15 food in the box, then:
turn 1: sheep, oy, mined bg, mined bg, (mined hill): +5 fd, 10 sh
turn 2: sheep, oy, oy, wheat, deer, (mined hill): +10 fd, 8 sh
turn 3: sheep, oy, deer, mined bg, mined bg, mined hill: +5 fd, 12 sh -> 30 sh
EDIT: gold output, not counting the city center, and assuming we use the riverside hill (roaded) on the last turn: 10+15+17, so average 14 per turn. But lux tax will be higher in this case, so unless the lux tax needs to be high for some other town our net gain is probably less.

(Someone please check this!)

Also, we could send some warriors up north to hit the camp. And perhaps just disband them afterwards, we want the gold and no barbs in our backyard.

For the longer run: get a 10 sword army, and get the two Inca luxes.
Even longer: build markets.

EDIT: our rioting towns cannot lose food. So we can hire scientists there, and get almost 50 beakers this turn towards currency! When they stop rioting, carefully choose where to grow, and where to stabilize. We can make a bit of money/research in anarchy ;).

Thanks guys for being understanding. I'm still kicking myself though. I even starte this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=145491) the 1st time I ran into this problem. And afterwards I had always made sure Republic was going to work before switching ... until now when it really counts.

McLMan pointed us towards Construction, but zyxy mentioned Currency in his last post. Continue with Costruction or change to Currency (no beaker loss) ?

Two reasons for currency:
1. we could use markets.
2. AI's are likely to go for construction first.

Research
I would go for Currency definitely. The AIs almost exclusively favor Construction, so we should go for one of the other three. Myst has been around for a while, so there is a chance that someone is researching Poly. Lit is optional and we don't need it at this point.

Trade
zyxy's idea is good, we should be sure that everyone has Maths and IW. Sell it around for what scrap money you can get.

MMing
Don can hire 2 scientists, Castle 3. Bury, Ox, Ingz, Kowz, Bend 1 each. That makes for 30 bpt (zyxy, where did you get 50?) to be put into Currency right away. 3 turns left on Anarchy means 90 beakers. The trick here is that towns that riot don't lose food, so Don, Castle and Bury cannot be allowed to stop rioting.

Once we're in Republic, Castle can do 10+ spt at size 5 at 0 fpt by working the hills being mined. Bury should be allowed to grow to size 5 to possibly do 7/8 spt for swords in 4. Ox might be able to get 5 spt.
For Don I would follow zyxy's 3-turn plan, but that requires the hills to be mined. We'll be better off by pumping out more towns than by getting some extra scrap in our pockets.

Regarding lux tax, you probably need to run at 30 or 40% to keep Castle from rioting at size 5. We need luxuries!

Military
It's a bit tricky choosing what units to keep since our veteran warriors are out in the field. I would keep the two veterans in Don and Castle, and the two in or near Bend, and let these go to Castle. The ones near the barbie camp on the peninsula can survive until the camp is gone, then be disbanded. The rest I would disband as soon as possible, in a town if they are anywhere near.

We should upgrade those warriors that we keep to swords, we have the money to upgrade 3 right away. CB, here's a challenge for you. When your turnset ends I want to see 6 veteran swords in or near Castle. :ninja:

Hope I didn't forget anything. Good luck! :)

MMing
Don can hire 2 scientists, Castle 3. Bury, Ox, Ingz, Kowz, Bend 1 each. That makes for 30 bpt (zyxy, where did you get 50?) to be put into Currency right away. 3 turns left on Anarchy means 90 beakers. The trick here is that towns that riot don't lose food, so Don, Castle and Bury cannot be allowed to stop rioting.

Like this:

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/smurkz10_BC1225_specialists.jpg

Well, it is 48 bpt really. Of course this only works for one turn, after that the towns will get happy and need food. If you really want to optimize, you then fire enough specialists to push them back into riot again (and not losing food, or at least not much), and on the turn after hire specialists again. This will also bring the towns back to happiness on the turn we enter republic.

I think on the second turn you could hire two specialists in 'don (-1 food), three in Castle (-1 food, use wheat here), and one each in 'bury, Ox, Kowz at neutral food, while 'ingz and Bend should grow IMO and not hire any specialists. Grand total over three turns: 48 + 24 + 48 = 120 beakers.


We should upgrade those warriors that we keep to swords, we have the money to upgrade 3 right away.

I would keep some money in our pockets, just to be safe. At least for the first few turns, to see if we can run the republic well.

@McLMan: don't worry about it. I still think this is the right decision. We just need to cut some useless warriors, that's all.

End of Turnset 05 Stats:

Construction 50 turns, 225 gold +0 gpt (80% science, 20% luxury)

Cities:

Smurkzdon (4) grows in 1, settler in ?.
Smurkz Castle (4) grows in ?, sword in ?.
Smurkzbury (3) grows in ?, sword in ?.
Oxsmurkz (2) grows in ?, rax in ?.
Smurkingz (1) grows in ?, horse in ?.
Riverz Bend (1) grows in ?, worker in ?.
Kowzville (2) grows in ?, warrior in ?.


Military:

10 workers (9 Smurkz, 1 slave)
16 warriors
01 curraghs


Citizen allocations:
Everybody becomes a geek on the IBT as we learn Currency. Switch between geek and farmer until we enter Republic, as detailed by zyxy in Post #124.

Worker allocations (in anarchy turns):
Smurkz 1225 BC
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/1225BC_SmurkzEmpireTrimmedDotted.jpg

(NW of Smurkzbury) irrigating plain, 4 turns, then makes road here OR irrigates another plain near Smurkzbury
(SW of Smurkzdon) build mine on hill, 20 turns
(E of Smurkzdon) build mine on hill, 16 turns
(2E of Smurkzdon) build road on irrigated plain, 4 turns, begin road to Riverz Bend?
(SW of Smurkz Castle, on iron) build mine on hill, 22 turns
(NW of Smurkz Castle) build mine on hill, 22 turns
(2SW of Smurkingz) build road on desert, 4 turns, begin road to Riverz Bend?
(E of Smurkingz) build road on hill, 4 turns, begin to mine here
(NW of Oxsmurkz) irrigate plains, 7 turns, builds road here OR begins to chop the forest -> rax
(N of Oxsmurkz) slave, irrigate plain, 8 turns, builds road


Warrior allocation (16):

Warrior on peninsula - barb hunting, disband
Warrior on peninsula - barb hunting, disband
Warrior on peninsula - barb hunting, disband
Humpty-dumpty in Smurkzbury - disband -> sword
vWarrior in Smurkzbury - disband to aid sword OR send to Smurkzdon to escort settler
rWarrior in Smurkzdon, disband -> settler
rWarrior in Smurkzdon, disband -> settler
rWarrior in Oxsmurkz, disband -> rax
rWarrior N of Smurkingz, move to Oxsmurkz (3 turns), disband -> rax
rWarrior in Smurkingz, move to Oxsmurkz (4 turns), disband -> rax
rWarrior in Smurkz Castle, disband -> rax
vWarrior in Smurkz Castle, upgrade to vSword
vWarrior in Riverz Bend, move to Castle (4 turns), upgrade to vSword
vWarrior E of Riverz Bend, move to Castle (5 turns) upgrade to vSword
rWarrior in Kowzville, disband -> a non warrior/sword build in Kowzville
vWarrior spying on Incas, move to Riverz Bend (4 turns), disband -> worker


Sell Math and Iron Working for cash.

Good news, no wandering settler/spear pairs in the land of the Orange.

Settler goes where?

No luxuries in the Land of Smurkz. Bad, very bad.

Kowzville to curragh/galley?

Huzzah looks for a short passage between Smurkz and alleged Barb Land, then come back to examine the coast.

EDIT: Plan to play Sunday evening or Monday morning. My son is getting ready for a mission trip to one of the Congo Republics (the one that used to be Zaire) and that has taken more computer time in the last few days than I expected (updates, printouts, etc.). Monday is a federal holiday here in the States, so I can stay up late Sunday and pretend to be English (after watching some British comedies on a local TV station; 'As Time Goes By', 'Keeping Up Appearances' and 'My Hero'.

Looks good to me. Very detailed planning!
You might consider keeping the warriors in Kowz and Bend for now. Leaving them entirely undefended is slightly risky. Same perhaps for 1-2 other warriors on the border of our empire - e.g. in 'ingz. Alternatively, you can always move some of the new swords to 'ingz.

Good luck!

Decide to play only nine turns to end at 1000 BC.
All Smurkz citizens get pocket protectors, slide rulers and thick, black frame eye glasses.
We want to learn about money (Currency) not how to play with real life Legos (Construction).
Currency in 9 turns!

Kowzville warrior -> galley
Wake Pug and move towards Oxsmurkz.
When built, plan to send the new settler and some military protection, to Kowzville, to be ready to board the galley.

Sell Math to Sumeria, 5 gold (all).
Maya already have Math and Iron Working.
Sell Math to the Dutch, 17 gold (all).
The 'Zines already have Math and Iron Working.
The Incas already have Math and Iron Working.

Hit Enter.

Dutch complete the Colossus in Amsterdam.
Barbs are building the Great Lighthouse!

Mayas have 9 barb hunting warriors on the English peninsula.

Huzzah meets a Burgundian galley.

[I] 01 1200 BC

Move barb hunters closer to barb camp.
Pug moves to Oxsmurkz.
Huzzah E, NE and N.
Rename warrior near Machu Picchu to IncanSpy and move towards Riverz Bend.
Move warrior near Riverz Bend towards Smurkz Castle.

Geek Report:

Smurkzdon 4 geeks -> 1 geek, grows in 8, will riot
Smurkz Castle 5 geeks -> 2 geeks, grow in 20, will riot
Smurkzbury 3 geeks -> 0 geeks, grows in 20, will riot
Smurkingz 1 geek -> 0 geeks, grows in 7, is content, will not riot
Oxsmurkz 2 geeks -> 0 geeks, grows in 9, will riot
Kowzville 2 geeks -> 0 geeks, grow in 7, will riot
Riverz Bend 1 geek -> 0 geeks, grows in 4, is content, will not riot

After these changes, Currency in 48.


Lots of riots.
'Zines are building the Oracle.

[I] 02 1175 BC

IncanSpy W to Riverz Bend.
Barb Hunters surround the barb camp, wait for the third warrior to show up before attacking.
Pug arrives in Oxsmurkz.
Huzzah N, N and NE. Fog is only two tiles thick between Smurkz and alleged Barb land.
Warrior moves towards Castle.

Geek Report:

Smurkzdon 1 geek -> 4 geek
Smurkz Castle 2 geeks -> 5 geeks
Smurkzbury 0 geeks -> 3 geeks
Smurkingz 0 geeks -> 1 geek
Oxsmurkz 0 geeks -> 2 geeks
Kowzville 0 geeks -> 2 geeks
Riverz Bend 0 geeks -> 1 geek

After these changes, Currency in 8.


Theodra wants Philosophy. We give it.
We become Republic.
Castle, 'Bury and Kowzville lose people. Ouch. Did something wrong. Or else the game did something unexpected.
Huzzah is lost at sea? I thought that by being seafaring we were exempt from that in sea tiles.
Mayan barb hunters move back, since the barb camp is surrounded by the English.

[I] 03 1150 BC

Last warrior arrives near barb camp, all three ready to attack next turn.
IncanSpy moves toward Riverz Bend.
Warrior moves towards Castle.

Geek Report:

Smurkzdon 4 geeks -> 0 geeks, grows in 3, settler in 4
Smurkz Castle 4 geeks -> 0 geeks, grows in 3, vSword in 8
Smurkzbury 2 geeks -> 0 geeks, grows in 7, vSword in 9
Smurkingz 1 geek -> 0 geeks, grows in 4, rHorse in 15
Oxsmurkz 2 geeks -> 0 geeks, grows in 10, rax in 4
Kowzville 1 geek -> 0 geeks, grows in 5, galley in 22
Riverz Bend 1 geek -> 0 geeks, grows in 4, worker in 7

After these changes, Currency in 11.
With the happy slider at 20 % both Castle and 'Don are calm for now.
-39 gpt.

Disband Pug in Oxsmurkz, rax in 3, not 4.


Sumerians are buidling the Mausoleum of Mausollos.

[I] 04 1125 BC

Worker01, NW of 'Bury, irrigation done, begins to road.
Horses connected to 'Don.
Worker02, 2E of 'Don, SE, SE and S, to begin the road to Riverz Bend.
Worker03, 2SW of 'Ingz, S, SE and W, to begin the road to Riverz Bend with Worker02.
Worker04, E of 'Ingz, begins to mine that hill. Road to Cuzco is complete. Resource trading with Incas now possible.

Attack on the Barb Camp
vWarrior vs. cWarrior, takes 2 HPs, wins, promotes to Elite and gets 25 gold.
Disband the other 2 warriors.

IncanSpy arrives at Riverz Bend.
Kowzville Guard, (the vWarrior in Riverz Bend), wakes up and moves towards Kowzville.
Disband Humpty-Dumpty in 'Bury, vSword in 7.
Disband rWarrior in Oxsmurkz, rax in 2 down to 1 (1 shield to go).
Disband rWarrior in Castle, vSword in 7 down to 6.

Currency in 9, -27 gpt; 'Don, Castle and RzB grow in 2 turns to help stem the red ink.

Oxsmurkz rax -> vSword, 15 turns

[I] 05 1100 BC

Worker05, NE of Oxsmurkz, roads the freshly irrigated plain.
Worker02 and 03 move onto the forest tile SE and S of Castle.
Kowzville Guard SW.
Disband the eWarrior at the barb camp site. It would only promote to a vSword, not an eSword.
Don't need any MPs in Republic, but there are many non-English around Riverz Bend. Fortify IncanSpy to keep the others honest and away.
vWarrior arrives in Castle, upgrade to vSword for 60 gold.


Dutch are building the Great Lighthouse.

[I] 06 1075 BC

Kowzville Guard SW.
Worker02 begins forest road, 6 turns.
Woker03 helps, road finishes in 3 turns.
Castle now at size 5, bump the happy slider to 30% to keep Castle calm.
Hire a geek in 'Don, still +5fpt, needs only 2 shields to complete settler.
Incas will trade Spices for Republic. No.


Smurkzdon settler -> settler, 5 turns.

[I] 07 1050 BC

SettlerToKowzville, just built in 'Don, heads towards Kowzville.
Kowzville Guard arrives in Kowzville.
rWarrior in Kowzville disbanded, galley in 16 not 18.
Worker01 completes road, moves SE and S to irrigate this plain.
Disband both rWarriors in 'Don, settler in 4, not 5.
Disband vWarrior in Castle, gives vSword in one turn and reduces military expense for one turn.


Sumeria wants Code of Laws. We give.

Smurkz Castle vSword -> vSword, 5 turns.
Incans are building the Mausoleum of Mausollos.
Cuzco (Inca) builds the Oracle.
Sumerians building the Mausoleum of Mausollos.

[I] 08 1025 BC

SettlerToKowsville, moves to be SE of Castle, heading to Kowzville.
Worker01 irrigates.
Worker05 moves to bring water to 'Ingz, SW, S and S; next turn E onto plains to irrigate.
Mayan slave begins road.

Money is tight (76 gold, -22 gpt), talk to Maya about Republic. 1 gpt and 76 gold (all)
Byzantines, 38 gold (all).
Incas, spices and 14 gold (all).
Sumers, 9 gold (all).

To have a positive cash flow, must drop research to 20%, Currency due in 17 vs 5 turns.

To get luxuries (spice) must deal with the Incas, who earlier wanted spice for Republic.

Must trade, to boost our gold before we start losing units/improvements and to drop our luxury slider.
No other civ is religious, so all will have some bad turns when they change governments.

Sell Republic to Incas for Spice and 14 gold (all).
Drop luxury to 20%, leave science unchanged, now only -13 gpt, not -22 gpt. Will need to adjust when Castle grows next turn.
Sell Republic to Bzyantines for 38 gold (all).
Sell Republic to Mayans for 76 gold (all) and 1 gpt.
Do not sell Republic to Sumeria for 9 gold.


Kowzville riots? It had one happy and one unhappy, but that was at 30%, not 20%.

Mayans are building the Great Lighthouse.
So are the Byzantines.
Sumerian settler/archer pair trespass onto the mountain 1N of 'Ingz.

[I] 09 1000 BC

Up the happy slider to 30% for Kowzville, now at -21 gpt.
Worker02 and 03 finish the forest road, move S to begin a marsh road to connect Riverz Bend.
SettlerToKowzville 2S and ends in the marsh north of Bend.
One Mayan warrior next to these two workers and settlers. Not too worried.
Worker05 moves east onto plain, to irrigate next turn.
Fortify the Kowzville Guard.

[IBT]

And the save is >>HERE<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC1000_01.SAV).

Population Loss:
In changing governments, it looks like the game did something we did not expect. In anarchy, when cities rioted, and we turned all our citizens into scientists, we did not lose any population on the IBT when everyone was happy. When we moved from anarchy to republic, I think we expected this to carry over, but it did not. It appears that the game checked the government type before it checked the citizen allocation. This meant that it saw first that we were a republic and that our people were happy and that we did not have enough food to feed them all and so some places starved. I think we expected the game to check how many people were happy, then see if they were fed (but since it the government was anarchy ignore this check) and then move into a republic, which would give us one turn to feed our people.

Anyway, we lost population in Kowzville, ‘Don and Castle.

Unit Upkeep
In PTW, unit upkeep in Republic was 1 gold per unit per turn. In C3C, it is 2 gold per unit per turn. To offset this, our towns, cities and metropolises contribute to unit support. Each town will support 1 unit, each city 3 units and each metropolis 5 units. After this is calculated, then we pay 2 gpt per unit.

We had 26 units and 7 towns. The first turn of Republic we got hit with 38 gold in unit maintenance. Even now, we have 16 units (9 workers, one settler, 2 swords and 4 warriors).

At first, on turn 4, I did not quite grasp this and once I did see it I thought that when our cities grew this imbalance would take care of itself. Wrong. We were still losing at least 22 gold per turn.

By turn 8 we had 76 gold and -22 gpt. Something had to be done to prevent bankruptcy and losing city improvements. To get a positive cash flow had to drop science down to 20%, which gave currency in 17 turns, down from 5. Still had some warriors in the outer cities to keep the AIs honest as they walked across our land. Decided to sell Republic, since this would add money to our goldbox and thus delay bankruptcy for several turns until our cities grew to size 6. If we stopped having trespassers soon we could disband the outer warriors also. The Incas had spice to trade for Republic and that would help keep our connected cities happy for a while. We were able to get almost all the world’s money and bought us some time to fix things in the process.

Huzzah
Lost the Huzzah in a sea tile. Thought Seafaring prevented that. I now know it doesn’t, just reduces the risk.

The Way West

Before the Huzzah was lost she was able to shed light on the ocean to the west. However, the news is not good.

The West Ocean 1000 BC
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/1000BC_WestOceanTrimmedDotted.jpg

Based on Huzzah’s mapping, we cannot cross the West Ocean in one turn with galleys. It will take two turns until we get Galleons which have a movement of 8 and can safely stay in sea tiles.

This is not good news.

Wonder Race
The Barbarian Nation is building the Great Lighthouse. The Dutch, Mayans and Byzantines are also building the Great Lighthouse.

Settlers
In a bold move, I have one settler heading to Kowzville to be loaded into a galley (that is still being built) and head overseas. ‘Don will build another settler this turn.

Fortified Units
The warrior in Kowzville is fortified in case it needs to be disbanded. I haven’t seen any AI activity around this city, unlike ‘Bury and Bend, which are on some main East-West road that the AI uses. The two swords in Castle are fortified also.

Workers
Have two workers (Worker02 and 03) in the marsh north of Riverz Bend to build a road. Worker05 needs to irrigate the plain he is in. The other workers are already assigned tasks.

Alright, looks good!

Comments and plans:
- weird about the pop loss. Your explanation is probably correct.
- good job on balancing the budget. The republic sales are a bit cheap, but considering the circumstances I think it's a good choice. In any case, we want research partners.
- I think lux tax can go to 20%. Kowz can hire a beakerhead. A bit of growth in this corrupt town is not worth 7 gpt.
- Castle should grow to size 7. I'll see to it.
- ingz has no rax, and should not build military. Maybe a market, or later switch to lib.
- I would use the settler on our own lands for now. First need to get our economy up, then think about overseas colonies. In any case, we may want to send some scouting horses across first.
- Good thinking on the road to Bend. We may want to train a horse or two for border patrol, then the two vet warriors can be upgraded.
- Dutch still have incense for sale, but no trade route. I am tempted to build harbor in 'don next. I am not sure if that will do us good though, as I've forgotten how the game decides there is a trade route. Perhaps it is better to keep building settlers. OTOH, 'don needs to be a bit bigger to operate as settler factory, so sliding in a harbor might be good, and might help to bring in extra food that can be translated into extra gold with the proper tile swaps. Well, how's that for wishywashy?
- War plan: best attack route to Cuzco seems to be from 2S of 'ingz (on marching in, we are protected first by river, then by forest). This tile needs a road. Inca don't have iron hooked yet, but Cuzco is size 7, so we probably want 8-10 swords to attack. We have 2, with 3 upgradeable warriors (60 gold each). Probably 'bury and Castle each will contribute 2 more swords and 1 horse during the next set, Ox probably 0 or 1, so I guess my job is to get the war machine ready for the next player.

Questions for CB:
- Are the Maya and the Dutch heading back to their own lands? And how about that Sumerian settler?

Questions for the team:
- What are the war aims vs Inca? Which towns to capture, which to raze?
- Is it true that our rep will not get a hit if we break the spice deal with Inca?
- What to research next? Or perhaps nothing, and buildup the treasury? In any case, we will be increasing our unit count, so research will be slower for a while.


I'll be away from next wednesday for a week, so I would like to play Tuesday evening. If that's too soon, I will need a skip.

Questions for CB:
- Are the Maya and the Dutch heading back to their own lands? And how about that Sumerian settler?

The Mayans are heading back home. The Dutch were heading back to the east and turned around and went back to moving westward. Could be a new barb hut on the penisnula.

The Sumerian settler and archer have only been visible the last two tiles. They have headed due south each turn. I think they are heading to a gap between the orange and pink lines down by Castle. Can't see them trying to fill that one tile space south of 'Ingz.


Questions for the team:
- What to research next? Or perhaps nothing, and buildup the treasury? In any case, we will be increasing our unit count, so research will be slower for a while.
We still need Poly, which no one knows yet, to get into the Middle Ages.
Will the AI research Literature for us?

Nice job CommandoBob. Way to keep the economy alive, and at the same time keep the AI honest. I think you're right, an empty city that close would be too tempting.

The Mayans are heading back home. The Dutch were heading back to the east and turned around and went back to moving westward. Could be a new barb hut on the penisnula.

The Sumerian settler and archer have only been visible the last two tiles. They have headed due south each turn. I think they are heading to a gap between the orange and pink lines down by Castle. Can't see them trying to fill that one tile space south of 'Ingz.

We still need Poly, which no one knows yet, to get into the Middle Ages.
Will the AI research Literature for us?

Thanks for the info. The F3 guy indeed claims barbs near 'bury. I suppose the Maya will be heading back soon as well. I'll send a unit over to scout ahead of our settlers.

EDIT:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC1000dotmap.jpg

Here's a new dotmap.

Compared to the old one, I moved Red Dot one tile NW to avoid crowding Kowz. Consequently, Blue Dot has been moved one tile NW, and Lightblue Dot one tile N. I moved Green Dot 1 tile E so that it can share the oy and fish. Orange, Pink and Yellow have not been moved.

This gives us all land tiles in the western corner, as well as all coastal tiles except for one between Red and Blue Dots.

Our settler in the south can go to Red Dot. Green Dot would be good for the next settler.

Dot map looks good, though we could possibly move Red Dot one tile NW. This means it will not be on the river, but will bring in both the goat tiles to use for Bury, Red and Yellow. I would think that the immediate gain of those two high-yield tiles would outwheigh the later cost of an aqueduct.

Regarding the spice deal, it is true that we will not get a rep hit. It's not us paying the per-turn deal, so we're not cheating anyone.

On research, I'm ambivalent whether to press on or save money. At this point it is quite possible that the AIs are researching both Poly and Construction already, and we'll probably be able to trade for them for Currency if they appear. Thus we could potentially turn off research until that happens, to save some money for military effort and future negative spendings.

Important announcement! :smug:

Team, we have been given a new player. Please give a warm welcome (back) to our lost brother, ControlFreak! [party] :band:

@ControlFreak: Really glad to have you back on board, it was a pain to see you go after SGOTM9. We can really use a master spa... analyst for this game, so jump right in! :D

Important announcement! :smug:

Team, we have been given a new player. Please give a warm welcome (back) to our lost brother, ControlFreak! [party] :band:

@ControlFreak: Really glad to have you back on board, it was a pain to see you go after SGOTM9. We can really use a master spa... analyst for this game, so jump right in! :D

Yerback! :dance: :banana: :xmascheers: :bounce: :woohoo:

That's great, welcome back ControlFreak! Long time, no post. :D

In SGOTM 9 we were one of the most spammy, er, chatty teams. We didn't get to 1000 BC in that game until Post #248 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3368295&postcount=248), here we did it by Post #127 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4102823&postcount=127). Yes, we missed you, ControlFreak. :)

Hey, welcome back CF! :)

I agree with the new placement of red dot. It could actually become one of our most productive towns, with all those hills. Just need to clear some jungle and irrigate some grass.

On research, I think halting research for a few towns to build up the treasury is fine. AI's should be getting Poly soon, and Constr as well hopefully.

I'll start playing now.

Turn 0, 1000BC:

Foreign: Maya, Byz and Inca are all in anarchy, due to the subversive work of CommandoBob's secret spy ring, no doubt. Very evil :D. Netherlands and Sumeria are still safely ruled by despots, while the Barbarians have Barbarism for government. The Dutch have spare incense but we cannot trade for it unfortunately. There is little or nothing else available for trade. Inca don't have iron hooked up yet, but it is in their borders. Inca are showing a great foresight regarding their fate:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC1000mausoleum.jpg

Domestic: sci 80%, lux 20%. Switch Castle and 'bury to horse, and 'ingz to court for now, but this should probably be changed to market or lib, or perhaps FP. Kowz hires a scientist. As a net result, income went up by 4 (+3 from the scientist), and spending on science increased by 11 (+3), while entertainment went down by 7. Some food lost in Kowz, some gained in 'bury. Move 1 sword from Castle N, so that the warrior in 'ingz can be freed next turn. Upgrade warrior in 'bury to sword for 60 gold, and start moving the Kowz warrior to Castle.

IT: Dutch and Maya run to our west coast again. Sumer settler goes SW. 'don settl -> settl. 'bury horse -> sword. Bend worker -> worker. Kowz is happy again.

Turn 1, 975BC: Send our reg warrior out to explore Sumeria for a few turns.
'don is a bit too small, will focus on growth shortly.

IT: Sumer settler pair heads west. Maya and Dutch keep moving to the peninsula. A barb warrior appears.

Turn 2, 950BC: Our horse kills the barb, losing 1 hp. sci 30%.

IT: Inca threaten for 23 gold. I think we can risk it - if he declares we get war happiness and it is only half a dozen turn too early, and there are no Inca troops to be seen anywhere. Besides, Peachy is building a mausoleum. And.....
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC950peachythreat.jpg
Well, what can I say? I may have the body of a feeble woman,...

In other news, a Dutch curragh visits Kowz, coming from the northwest, and the Dutch and Maya keep heading to our peninsula. Sid is happy with us:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC950currency.jpg
We start construction. Castle horse -> sword.
And another one that wants to be laid to rest:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC950barbmausoleum.jpg

Turn 3, 925BC: sci to 0% for a few turns. We make 27 gpt net now, pretty good.

IT: Sumeria is annoyed about our warrior in his lands. His settler pair heads back home, oddly enough :confused:
Dutch and Maya keep moving NW. Maya now have 12 warriors in our lands, scary. Byz also start a mausoleum. Must be some general death wish.

Turn 4, 900BC: our horse finds the barb camp. Our warrior spots Sumer. Really weird, we have two capitals on our borders.
Castle can almost do 15 spt, but is stuck at 12 for now.

IT: Sumer settl pair continues to retreat.

Turn 5, 875BC: We're first, before a handful of Dutch and a dozen Maya:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC875barbcamp.jpg

We found Smurkz Rocks!. It starts a harbor, which it will get pretty fast with a chop. Castle has to hire a scientist for a turn as 'don needs the wheat. Net income is now 41 gpt.
Sumer has a worker available, and as Republic is widely known by now I send it to Sumer for 1 worker + 16 gold (all they have).

IT: Sumer kicks our warrior and sends the settler pair back to the west. Three Inca warriors suddenly appear on the western peninsula - odd. Maya and Dutch are heading back. 'don settl -> settl. Castle sword -> sword. 'bury sword -> sword. Mayans finish the GLighthouse in It's-a-chicken. Everyone switches to the Mausoleum, except the Barbs who go for the Great Wall.

Turn 6, 850BC: I am slightly alarmed by the three Inca warriors to our west, so I keep a sword down there. Goatfish is founded, it starts a worker. I upgrade our last vet warrior and disband the last regular one.

IT: The three Inca warriors and one dutch guy head north, the others return east.

Turn 7, 825BC: This is all rather nerve wrecking. Several of the AI, in particular the Maya, have large armies of warriors running through our lands. Hopefully this will end quickly now that we start to fill up the peninsula.
There are now 6 swords in position near Castle, with several to come in the following turns.

IT: A second sumerian settler pair appears. Ox sword -> sword.
And the lucky winner is:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC825byzmausoleum.jpg

Turn 8, 800BC: We have nearly 190 gold now, and Construction is not around yet. We can do it in 8 turns at -23 gpt, so: sci 80%, lux 20%.
'bury has grown and is unhappy. It hires a scientist for now.

IT: except for the two sumerian settler pairs, the single Dutch warrior and the Incan triple - apparently they like to scout in force - every foreigner is heading home. Castle sword -> sword. Byz start Artemis, so they must have Poly.
I just finished two road sections, and now the volcano is active :sad:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC800volcano.jpg

Turn 9, 775BC: Well, at least our worker can run away, and so he does. Check on trades for currency: The lovely Theodora will give Poly + 23 gpt + 55 gold, and her total budget is 26 gpt + 65 gold. Sumeria will offer Poly + 2 gpt, and has no more. Inca offer Poly plus pennies, Maya and Dutch only pennies - they don't have Poly. I think Byz, Inca and Sumeria have all been researching Poly, Byz got it first and sold it for petty cash. Anyway:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_BC775currencytrade.jpg
and all others can keep their pennies. We can now sustain deficit research for much longer :D. I switch 'bury to a horse for fogbusting and rearguard duty.

IT: 'don settl -> settl. 'bury horse -> horse. Inca and Sumeria start Artemis.

Turn 10, 750BC: No good trades available, and the trade situation has not changed significantly.
Heart of Smurkzness founded, starts harbor.

notes:

War with Inca: we have 9 swords ready to launch an attack on Cuzco next turn, including the one in 'ingz. Is that enough? War aim should be elimination of Inca I think. In principle we just want Cuzco, Tiwanaku and Ollan (naval base), but to prevent flips and such it is probably better to take the rest as well. EDIT: we could build an embassy in Cuzco to see the defenses, but it is lost money I think. 9 swords is quite safe against three vet spears. If they have four, we need some luck - or they have to be regulars.
Cuzco would probably be a good place for our FP. It has reasonable production. Alternative sites would be Castle or 'ingz.
We probably want to curtail Sumeria as well, as the culture pressure exterted by Sumer is too big. Alternatively, start some lbis in 'ingz and Ox - need to learn Lit first of course.
Learning Lit might be a good idea anyway, and 'don and Castle could use libs soonish.
The age change will take place in 5 or 6 turns. So we need to prevent barb camps in the peninsula. Also, we may want to consider gifting the scientific civs - Sumeria, Byz - up for their free tech.
'don is now at the start of a 3 turn settler cycle:
turn 1: sheep, oy, mined bg, mined bg, (mined hill): +5 fd, 10 sh
turn 2: sheep, oy, oy, wheat, deer, (mined hill): +10 fd, 8 sh
turn 3: sheep, oy, deer, mined bg, mined bg, mined hill: +5 fd, 12 sh -> 30 sh
The courthouse in 'ingz is a prebuild, I don't know for what. Library? FP? Market?
The foreigners in our lands are heading home, except the three scouting Inca and the single scouting Dutch on the northwestern peninsula, and the two Sumerian settler pairs - heading SW, generally.
There are chops in progression near Castle and near Rocks.
The volcano near Kowz is about to erupt - be careful!


The save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC0750_01.SAV)

Very well done zyxy. What a pro!

I don't think we have anything to gain by waiting to invade Cuzco. More cities = more unit support. I also think it would be a good idea to get the FP sooner rather than later. I agree that Cuzco is the perfect spot.

@ ControlFreak - I'm looking forward to playing with you. I've had a great deal of fun so far. I'm honored to be able to participate with the storied Smurkz team.

Still no sign of CF? :hmm:

Anyway, great play zyxy, and CB before that! :goodjob: :goodjob:

Some masterful trading these past turns, with the huge (at this stage) gpt deal with Thea as the cream of the crop. Things are looking better and better. :D

Roster: Niklas - On Deck!
McLMan
CommandoBob
zyxy - Just Played
Marc Aurel - UP!
azzaman333 - skip until further notice
ControlFreak - waiting for sign-in
Still swamped on my part, but things will settle down a lot towards the weekend. I'll be back with more thoughts tomorrow.

Welcome back Control Freak! Looking forward to seeing your excellent analysis! :dance:

Got it. Will play this evening.

Hello all! Thanks for all the warm welcomes.

As you might guess from the big delay between my signin and Niklas' first announcement things are REALLY crazy for me. There have been big changes at work and the dust still hasn't settled. I'm not exactly sure what my status will be in the coming weeks.

With that said, I will try to find time to catchup on the thread while I wait for my C3C disk to arrive. I will post again when I'm ready to play but hopefully I will be able to at least participate in the discussions next week.

Looking forward to playing with you.

@CF: Good to hear from you! Take your time catching up, we want you in the best possible shape for the long analyses to come. ;)

Today I've been through my annual evaluation session, i.e. a bunch of senior researchers evaluate me and what I've done during the past year. I know I've been doing well, so I wasn't really worried what they might say, but it has taken me some time to prepare for this. Now it's done and over with, so back to the game! :D

As I said previously, things are shaping up really well. I've been looking at the QSC statistics (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/results/sgotm_qsc_results.php?month=20010), and they make for an interesting read. Seems we are one of only two teams to have managed the slingshot, I guess we should count ourselves very fortunate. :eek:
The research of A-team is quite astonishing, but we know that we're at most 10 turns after in getting Poly and Currency. Of the other teams, Team Liz is really something, with 13 towns and a large military already at 1000 BC. They have 3 granaries so I guess they went for early all-out expansion. I'm not too worried though, nothing is decided at this point, and as noted they don't have Republic...

On to the game at hand:

Research
It is quite possible that some AI gets to Construction before us. Most probably that will not be Byz, so we should be able to trade for the "remainder" of beakers on it using Currency.
I would definitely gift Sumeria and Byz up to MA to see what freebies they get. I'm hoping they won't get Engineering, since the AIs don't value it and we should be able to get a monopoly quite easily, trading for the rest.

Military
Our 8 swords should be enough to take Cuzco, but I'm a bit worried about the three Inca warriors in the west. Our presence in the area is not very strong, the single horse is not reassuring. I think we should move the horse from Don over there as well, and fight the war so that we are never the target of a counter attack. In other words, hit the stack with the horse and then move away. Also consider rushing the horse in Bury if the fighting goes sour.

Over There
We can cross over to the other side using galleys only if we can capture the Great Beacon. But if that cannot be, we can still use suicide galleys as I outlined in a previous post. But perhaps we're not ready to face the barbies in full until Astronomy anyway, those Caravels will be able to make the trip over nicely (CB, how do you count? :p). Caravels have move 7 (seafaring) and can stay in sea tiles, so they are fine.

@MA: Good luck! :)

So that's it. Sorry, it took longer, cause you made me crazy with your MM abilities. Don't have time to write an accurate comment before Tuesday. So only a few short notes.

Was a critical situation with many armies running around undefended cities.
In short the barbs have finnished the Great Wall. Not good!

The war with the Inca ran bad. We have only Cuzco and Ollantaytambo so far. The defenders took quite a lot of swords. (5 I think). Their attackers often penetrated our borders and really made me panicing. But atm only one settler/spear combo is running through our lands. (Next to our horse defended iron)

128695

I gifted both science civs into MA and they both drew Monotheism. Currently we go researching engineering. (due in 13 turns)
We have settled all dots or have a settler for the ones unsettled. So I switched 'don in the end to producing swords. There is one sumeriam army in the west that must be blocked to deny them our westmost settling spot. The settler to there is on course.

The save:

I've skimmed the thread, but probably didn't retain it all. I do have a question though. (Forgive me because I don't own C3C yet so some of the rules are foreign to me.) The Huzzah was a curagh right? I ask because the first post in our thread states the following rule:

Game mods:
The game uses the default rules as defined in the SGOTM Reference Thread, with the following modifications:

Galleys can never enter ocean tiles.

So doesn't that mean you're stuck with either curagh (can we make them any more after MM is learned?) or wait until Caravels.

Also, I'm assuming you know the World Map, but the only pics so far have fog over your Northern Neighbors. It's tough for me to analyze, if I can't open the game and can't see the lay of the land. (C3C Disks are due in tomorrow or Monday. Thanks for humoring me until then.)

Doh, of course, galleys can't make the crossing! We knew that at the beginning, but somehow it fell out of my mind. Thanks CF for pointing that out. So in hindsight it was a really good thing we didn't go for the Torch since it wouldn't have mattered at all. Caravels can still make it over without it, and galleys can't cross at all (and curraghs can't carry units, and we can no longer build them). Astronomy here we come! :rockon:

@MA: I would really like to see a more detailed spoiler from you, is it really impossible for you to get one up before tuesday?
Actually, if you play a turnset I would expect you to also post the results afterwards, otherwise it is a lot harder to carry on the game. In the future, if you don't have time to both play and post, please ask for a skip or a switch. :nono:

From what I can see from the save, the war is indeed not going overly well, but not all that bad either. We have captured two of our main objectives, and the Incan offensive forces are obviously taken out since they don't appear anywhere. It shouldn't be too hard to mop things up. Good work also in the west, and the settler block is a great idea! :goodjob:

A few things surprise me though, the temple in Castle foremost of these. Why would you build a temple instead of swords in our number one producing town in the middle of a burning war? I can imagine an answer, Castle is already at size 8, needing one clown and with tight borders. With a temple we could get rid of the clown and go from 13 to 15 spt, making a sword in 2 instead of 3. Not sure I think it's a good idea though, Castle can already make 15 spt at 0 fpt by borrowing the BG from Don, who will easily finish the sword in 2 in any case (and continue to make 10spt after growth). But at this point I think it's best to finish that temple and let Castle do 15 spt at a higher fpt, and also get access to more tiles from the border expansion.

Also if we want Don to build swords, we should consider a barracks first. Survival rate against spears increases a lot as veteran. A vSword vs fortified rSpear has ~71% chance of winning, a rSword vs fortified rSpear only about 55%. Since the barracks are only 40 shields (change in C3C?), I think we should go for one.

I also see that we now have a harbor in Rocks, that's great! And looking at the diplo screen, we can get Incense from the Dutch who are way behind in tech, we can give them just about anything for it. Weird that we can't also trade with Byz, CAII says we can and they have a harbor. :hmm:

Roster: Niklas - UP!
McLMan - On Deck!
CommandoBob
zyxy
Marc Aurel - Just Played
ControlFreak - waiting for game
azzaman333 - skip until further notice


Got it, will play during the weekend (and here I was thinking I would get to play some CIV test games... ;))

@CF: Actually we don't have a full world map, since in C3C you cannot trade maps until Navigation. We know a bit more than what you can see from the posted screen shots though, here's a picture of the north from CAII:

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/5682/fullworldmap5qx.th.jpg (http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fullworldmap5qx.jpg)

Right now you're still out of the loop, just say the word and you'll be put into the roster for real. :)

>>The Save<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC0350_01.SAV)

Pregame checks:
Research: Engineering in 13 turns, should be able to get that down to 10. Putting the slider to 80% means -6 gpt but Eng in 11. I do that, we can well afford it.

Trade: Byz and Sum have Mono, Byz also Monarchy. Some lack Literature, Dutch lack a lot more. Dutch have Incense to trade, Byz has spare Dyes but can't trade with us for some reason. Sell Poly to William for his fine smelling herbs and 15 gp.

War on Inca: We have 7 swords, all on the front. They will not do by a long shot. Castle will build swords in 2 turns, Don in 3 after barracks, Bury in 5 and so will Ingz after barracks. Move one sword into Cuzco, flip risks are fairly low and will never decrease unless we stop those resistors.

MMing: Switch some tiles around between towns. Many towns will soon grow and will get extra shields. Goatfish will not grow fast enough to be able to build a worker, change to a galley.

IBT: Settler pairs turn back E.
Castle temple->sword (in 2)
Inca start GLib.

530 BC (1):
Smurkzmouth founded on peninsula. Start harbor.
Wounded galley moves to Smurkzmouth to heal.

IBT: Gah, for all my preparations I'm still sloppy enough to let Don finish the sword! :wallbash: Oh well. :)
Don sword->barracks
Dutch are building ToA.

510 BC (2):
Lots of units in Cuzco, but no supression of resistors. Will try for another turn while they heal, then I will take the other route...

IBT:
Quell one resistor in Cuzco.
Castle sword->sword
Bury sword->horse
Ingz barracks->sword

490 BC (3):
Put Cuzco on starve, citizens as scientists.
Whack an Inca spear guarding a settler, gain two slaves. :D

March 7 swords on Tiwanaku, ETA 2 turns.

IBT: zzzz

470 BC (4):
Kowzville grows and gets a scientist.

IBT:
Quell another resistor in Cuzco.
Don barracks->sword (at 15 spt)
Castle sword->sword
Borders of Castle expand.

Barbarians are revolting (as if we didn't know ;))

450 BC (5):
Battle for Tiwanaku (town, hills):
vSword vs rSpear (archer freeshot hits), lose at 2/3.
vSword vs rSpear, lose at 3/4.
vSword vs 3/4 spear, lose at 1/4.
vSword vs 2/3 spear, win and promote to 2/5
vSword vs rArcher, win at 2/4
vSword vs 1/4 spear, win and promote to 3/4.

Tiwanaku captured with two slaves, 4 resistors.

IBT:
Incan generals show their stupidity, leaving an archer and a horse for me to whack. Quell two resistors in Cuzco, enough to make it riot, allowing me to hire 5 scientists without loss of food for a turn.
Ox sword->sword

430 BC (6):
Byz have learnt Feudalism, woohoo! :D

Make horse retreat with sword, then follow up with two horses to kill horse and archer.

Milton Smurkz founded in the heart of our lands, where the wetlands are now cleared. Starts a granary for lack of something better.
Peninsula settler reaches its destination well ahead of Sumerian pair.

IBT:
Waah, Byz extorts Literature. She is polite though, so I chance it and she steps back. Phew.
Quell another resistor in Cuzco, one guy left now.
Don sword->sword
Castle sword->sword
Inca are building GLib.

410 BC (7):
Interesting news, the Barbarians have now become a Republic. As if they knew what that meant, pah.

Smurkz End founded, filling the last of the peninsula.
Some overrun expected on Engineering in 2, switch scientists to taxmen.

IBT:
Inca rSword from Mucho Picky attacks our 3/4 sword, on mountain across river, and wins at 1/3. :mad:
Cuzco starves.
Bury horse->horse
Ingz sword->sword

390 BC (8):
Whack-a-mole (aka 1/3 sword). Follow up with a large force intent on Muchos Picky.

IBT:
Watch two Byz Dromon ships disappear out on the ocean! :eek:
Learn Engineering.
Cuzco starves to 5.
Don, Castle sword->sword
Heart harbor->worker
Byz are building Sun Tzu.

370 BC (9):
The 23 gpt deal has run out. Time for some trades.
Thea (Byz) would not part with Feudalism for any price, since she just learnt Literature. She would however give Monotheism, Dyes, 27 gpt and 60 gp for it. Gil (Sumer) would almost give Monarchy, Mono and Wines for it, but what would we do with Monarchy? He has no gpt and no gp.
Trade with Byz: Eng <-> Mono + Dyes + 27 gpt + 60 gp
Trade with Sum: Eng <-> Wines

The last trade is a bit cheap, but the wines will let us lower the lux slider making us gain a lot more than what meets the eye. Also we want some help in research.

In an act of mercy, sell Literature to William (Dutch) for 29 gp.

Set research to Theology, ETA 9 turns at 90% means -6 gpt only.

IBT:
Gah, Smurver riots, failed to note that it was not happy after the slider went down.
Cuzco settler->temple.

350 BC (10):
Last thing I will do:
The battle for Machu Pichu (town, grass):
eSword vs vSpear, wins at 3/5.
eHorse vs rSpear, loses at 1/3 (5 hp lost in a row :mad: )
vSword vs rSpear, wins at 2/4
3/5 eSword vs 1/4 spear, wins at 3/5.

Mucho Picky captured with two workers, 4 resistors.

Save game, time to hand over.

Hand-off notes:
Remember that we have Engineering now, so rivers are no obstacle.
Flip risks are steadily decreasing, but I think the best way to get them to 0 is to take the last towns. However,
every resistor we can quell means another 3 bpt scientist, so it's worth it.
Huamanga and Curry-how-I-row-to-china are easily reachable from Mucho Picky, it should be easy to mop this war up.


For the future, what to do with our military? Any more wars to fight? Sumer has quite a high cultural pressure on us...

Roster: Niklas - Just Played
McLMan - UP!
CommandoBob - On Deck!
zyxy
Marc Aurel
ControlFreak - waiting for game
azzaman333 - skip until further notice


McLMan, since you are up in both game I reckon you will want a skip or switch in at least one of them, just say the word. :)

I got it! I've asked for a swap on the Civ IV side. I'll review the save, post an agenda, and wait for discussion before I begin my turns.

Doh, of course, galleys can't make the crossing! We knew that at the beginning, but somehow it fell out of my mind. Thanks CF for pointing that out.

@CF: Actually we don't have a full world map, since in C3C you cannot trade maps until Navigation. We know a bit more than what you can see from the posted screen shots though, here's a picture of the north from CAII:

The galley thing may be my only rules contribution this game. Having never played C3C my understanding of what happens when is still whacked. The Map Trading at Navigation is annoying but explains why we don't have the WM yet.:crazyeye:

I didn't get the game on Saturday and we're travelling starting Wednesday. Please put me in the roster to play M-R of the week following (week of June 12th). I'll be back and my wife and kids will still be in New York. Perfect Civving time!

Please put me in the roster to play M-R of the week following (week of June 12th). I'll be back and my wife and kids will still be in New York. Perfect Civving time!
I'll be sure to do that, please just tell a poor non-english what M-R means :blush: (wikipedia says Magnetoresistance... ;))

Ok. I've re-read the last several posts and have taken a long look at the save. I don't have much of an agenda for these next ten turns other than to finish off the last 2 Incan cities, and continue to research Theology asap without large defecit spending. Upon completion of the research, trade ourselves back to parity.

Cuzco is currently building a Temple. I assume thats a pre-build for the FP? I think getting the FP asap will be a big boost, and earlier it was mentioned that Cuzco is a good place for it. I agree.

What to do with the Settler in Cuzco? Huamanga & Corihuayrachina are in good locations so I would think capture rather than raze and re-settle.

Looking to the future ... In order to win we need to be the 1st to destroy the Barbarian Nation. I think every decision we make from here on out should keep that in mind. In particular, we need to get to them, and we need to take a lot of guys when we go. CB had a nice idea with a Palace jump to the other continent. But for any of this to take place we're going to need to get across the water safely. Beeline to Astronomy? Regarding the situation at home, will additonal wars on our own continent help us to beat the Barbarians faster? I don't really think so at this point. Maybe we'll find we have no saltpeter after researching gunpowder and need to expand borders, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.

I'll be sure to do that, please just tell a poor non-english what M-R means :blush: (wikipedia says Magnetoresistance... ;))
M = Monday
R = Thursday

I first saw this abbreviation when enrolling for classes in college, way back in, uh, the last century. This gave each day a one letter abbreviation:
M - Monday
T - Tueday
W - Wednesday
R - Thursday ( since the T is used with Tuesday)
F - Friday

and I use:
S - Saturday
N - Sunday

Truly obscure and meaningless pieces of Americanna information.

Truly obscure and meaningless pieces of Americanna information.

Even for us Americans. :D

I'll be sure to do that, please just tell a poor non-english what M-R means :blush:
No need to :blush: that would be my fault for poorly communicating. As a project manager, I deal with days of the week a lot. Single character abbreviations are most efficient but also very confusing when the point of reference is lost. Thanks CB for the clarification.

I haven't received the game yet so I hope that I will tomorrow.

Good Luck McLMan. I agree that the FP would be a good build to finish early. Especially if we're considering a palace jump to Barb Island as soon as possible. I also agree that killing off our "friends" is not in the best interest of winning this fast. With a normal AI opponent, having a small non corrupt core pumping out lots of military for a coordiated strike can eliminate any AI, no matter how strong. Letting the other AI live will speed research (in case we need marines to kill the Barb Capitol) and would allow them to attack and weaken the Barb Army once they can ferry units across.

Here's something else I was just thinking of. If we can suicide a settler over and manage the palace jump, can we teleport units by putting them in a useless city and gifting it to a friend? (Was that already mentioned?) Of course we may already have Navigation by the time the Palace Jump is possible.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. My initial guess was that M was indeed Monday, but I couldn't get the R right. I generally use two letters for each day, in Swedish or English. ;)

@CF: We can't suicide anything over since galleys can't enter ocean tiles, remember? :p
Apart from that, the teleporting is a banned exploit in xOTM games, don't know if it pertains to SGOTM as well but in any case I wouldn't want us to use it. In any case Astronomy is not that far off, and that is all we need in order to get units across.

The temple in Cuzco should indeed be an FP, I just hadn't gotten that far in my line of thought when playing. :crazyeye:

Regarding military actions, I see four reasons to go to war at this point:
Some AI has something we want. This is clearly the case with the Byzantine dyes in Varna, but as long as we have no problem trading for them then it should all be fine. Also Byz are most probable to give us some valuable research help.
AIs are exerting a high cultural pressure on us. This is true for Sumeria, CAII reports flip risks of 0.1-4.2% for Ingz and Ox who are near the border. The truth is probably closer to the lower end of that range, but it's still a risk.
We want more towns to help unit upkeep. When we go to war against the barbies, I reckon we'll need a lot of units.
We want to set up research camps. Each scientist gives 3 bpt in C3C, which makes these more worthwhile. A corrupt town with two irrigated grassland tiles in range can support 2 scientists at size 4 for 6 bpt.
I think the last of these should not be underestimated. The counterpoint is that keeping the AIs alive will give us some research help, the question is which will be most useful to us. The AIs will get more bpt out of the land than we would, but on the other hand they might just spend it on the same thing we are researching, throwing all those beakers down the drain.

If we are to keep warring, I would first secure the old Inca lands, make sure they are dead and buried, and then go after Sumeria. Their land is mostly grass for plenty of nice science camps, and it would reduce the pressure on our border towns. We should leave them a town somewhere though, we may just need their free tech if we need to go far up the tech tree. What do you all think of this?

For the turnset at hand, some ideas:
Research should be straight for Astronomy. Theo will come in at most 8 turns from now, then it's on to Education.
Tiwanaku needs that temple in order to expand the borders over the wines. Currently we get wines from Sumeria, but we don't want to rely on that. There are two forests between Tiwa and Cuzco to chop to speed it up.
Don and Castle could both use libraries, we're in the mopping up phase of the war now and we don't really need more swords. You could switch right away even.
Switch Goatfish galley to harbor instead? If we're going to meet barbie ships in battle, it might be good to have that extra hp.
I would take the Incan settler from Cuzco 3N, to bring in some FP tiles in range and get those olives from Sumeria. Cultural pressure will be high though.
Definitely keep Cory and Hua, they are perfectly placed.

Can't think of anything else right now, good luck McLMan! :)

Pre-turns
Understand and agree with the team's discussion regarding these turns.

Turn 0) Remainder of 350 BC
Move swords for attack on Hua and Cory
Switch 'don and 'castle to libs
Switch Goatfish to harbor
Move Incan settler toward spot 3N of Cuzco
Put scientists to work in resisting towns.

IT
A lot of Dromon activity on the West Coast
Oxmurkz: Sword -> Lib (14)

Turn 1) 330 BC
No resistors quelled.
4/4 Sword attacks 3/3 archer that had come out of Huamanga and wins 3-3
The Netherlands are a Republic

IT
Smurkzbury: Horse -> Market (20)
Rocks: Rax -> Market (25)
Goatfish: Harbor -> Galley (8)
Our galley was lost in treacherous waters

Turn 2) 310 BC
4/4 Sword loses to a 3/3 spear in Huamanga 2-4 revealing another 3/3 spear
4/4 Sword wins vs 2/2 spear in Cory.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/coryfalls.jpg
Readingz founded on location discussed.

IT
Smurkingz: Sword -> Lib (10)
Dutch are building the Great Library

Turn 3) 290 BC
4/4 Sword loses to 3/3 spear 0-4 at Huamanga
4/4 Sword wins vs 3/3 spear 3-0
4/4 Sword loses to 3/3 spear 1-4
4/4 Sword wins vs 2/3 spear 2-1 and ...
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/huafalls.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/incadestroyed.jpg
Raise lux slider to 20% to prevent rioting due to WW

IT
'don: Lib -> Market (6)

Turn 4) 270 BC
Moving units to the N to try to prevent flips
Lower lux back to 10%. Research can stay at 80% 3 turns to Theology either way. (+17 gpt now).

IT
Castle: Lib -> Market (6)
Huamanga riots because it's not hooked up. Hire a scientist.
Sumerians building the Great Library
Barbs building the Temple of Artemis

Turn 5) 250 BC
Nearly start a war as I almost attempt to walk through an Enkidu Warrior in our territory!
Moving troops North

IT
Machu Pichu: Spear -> Treb
Smurkzmouth: Harbor -> Galley
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/barbGL.jpg
I guess Tech Thieves wasn't enough.

Turn 6) 230 BC
Worker moves. Moving troops North
Drop research slider to 70% & turn all but 2 scientists into taxmen to decrease overrun of Theology.

IT
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/Theologylearned.jpg
Begin researching Education switch specialists to scientists, due in 8 (-1 gpt)
Kowzville: Harbor -> Galley (15)
Bend: Rax -> Sword (15)
Maya building Sun Tzu's

Turn 7) 210 BC
Worker moves. Units North.
To trade or not to trade, that is the question.
Here's what I can get for Theology. If this were SP I'd trade it for everything I could get. Or should we hold it as a monopoly tech?

From Maya: Feudalism, 3 gold, 1 gpt
From Byzantines: Feudalism, 10 gold, 4 gpt
From Sumeria: Feudalism (or Monarchy), 1 gold, 0 gpt.

What do you think we should do?

Here's the save. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC0210_01.SAV)

Definitely trade. What use would we have with a monopoly tech at this point? The only thing we could hope to do with it is to trade for some other monopoly tech, but what would that be? Printing Press is of no use since we know everyone, Chivalry or Invention could come in handy but in any case we're sure to be the first to Education as well, and it will bring us what we want.

I also think we should consider gifting the Dutch up to par, we have no reason to keep them backwards. I say drain everyone for what they will give, starting with Byz and Sum to get Feu and Mon, and then gift everyone everything.

Some other nit-picky comments from looking at the save:
We need to put more effort into quelling those resistors, we're losing a lot from that. Since the Incas are gone, quelling is automatic, one resistor per unit in the town per turn. In particular Cuzco needs to start growing to get that FP built.
Bury can change two coastal tiles for two plains, trading 1 commerce for 2 extra spt.
There's still a taxman in End that could be made a scientist.
Readingz can work the flood plain for faster growth and no loss of shields.
The slaves mining near Olly and Cory are wasting their work, the extra shields will be lost to corruption in any case. Better put them to work chopping forests near Tiwa.

Turn 7) 210 BC (Continued)
Trade Theology to Byzantines for Feudalism, 10 g, & 4 gpt
Trade Theology to Sumeria for Monarchy & 1 gold
Trade Monarchy, Engineering, & Theology to Maya for 3 gold & 1 gpt
Trade Currency, Monarchy, & Construction to Netherlands for 4 gold
Then gift the Dutch Monotheism, Feudalism, & Engineering.
And finally gift the Dutch Theology to bring everybody up to par.

Thank God for nit-picky! :) It's that type of analysis that will help me be a better player. I put all of Niklas' suggestions to task. Most impressed with the mining slaves. Nice catch. I tend to try to improve everything, without any thought into what's exactly being gained (or not in this case) vs. what could be gained by working elsewhere.

IT
zzzzzzz

Turn 8) 190 BC
Nothing much, worker moves. (New and improved! With a purpose!)

IT
The resistance in Cuzo & Tiwanaku has ended!
Heart of Smurkzness: Worker -> Galley (30)
Byzantines are building the Sistine Chapel
Dutch building the Hanging Gardens
Barbarians are building Sun Tzu's & Hanging Gardens

Turn 9) 170 BC
More worker moves.

IT
'don: Market -> Mace
Resistance in Oly has ended
Goatfish: Galley -> Galley
Smurver: Harbor -> Galley
Maya building Hanging Gardens
Barbs building Sistine Chapel
We lost our supply of incense!

Turn 10) 150 BC
Again, nothing much. Dutch will give us incense + 3 gold for iron. Didn't make the trade, will leave that for the next player, but I think we should do it.


*****The Save***** (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_BC0150_01.SAV)

Overall strategy post II:

First of all : Congratulations to team Smurkz of SGOTM9 for the gold laurel!

:goodjob: [party]

Second: @ Niklas, yes I shouldn’t have played and swapped. It took me longer than awaited to complete my turns and I just didn’t want to lose the progress, when I saw that I wouldn’t be able to complete my turns before my weekend journey. I thought it was along the game rules that I would have to finish, if I had started. But I could have played only 5 turns or so ? So it is my fault! Sorry, I hope that won’t happen again.:blush:

Judging that graphs we can see that Team Liz, Klarius, Wotan and the X-team conquered the the other AI lands. Since fast science is the key in this phase, they would have wanted the scientists rather than the research of the other AIs. Additionally the unit support will have been an issue. With these strong teams deciding for war we should not be surprised if come to the same conclusion. However it seems that the A team has gone the cooperation route with the other AIs.

Can we assume that once we have astronomy, we can accomplish the invasion? We still have no clue on how the barbs get their guards. Another thing that worries me is that we do not know exactly which techs the barbs have atm. They will have at least all that we and the Byzantines know – but do they have more? What I can see from their land is that the continent seems not to be very large. Do they have a large science rate by themselves? I don’t think so. The key to their technology is the TTthieves. We agreed on our belief that they need two civs to learn a tech from this wonder. So destroying all other AI’s would have the side effect of denying the barbs our techs, what might be a huge advantage, since our commercial power seems to be larger than that of the barbs. This seems for me a clear argument to go on with the war. We do not need to destroy the Dutch, since they are way back in research but could get a couple of beakerheads in their cities also. What we need is to avoid anybody getting Nationalism before we clear the continent. But remember that only applies, if the barbs need two civs to learn a tech.

Concerning the guards I admit that the hut popping and the wonder won’t be the mechanism. However I also don’t believe that the barbs have them from the start, since Gyathaar stated that they need a game mechanism, (something that somehow works) to hire them. I really believe that it is the enslaving. So if we always attack in stacks we can avoid this unit completely. We just reconquer any unit lost the next turn. That is the easy way. The guard is a very effective unit since it has a range of 3. That means no fast unit can approach it in barb territory without being hit.

The barb capital will be a strong fortress. Something like:

-surrounded by rivers from 4 sides
-placed on a hilltop

We should consider spy missions to learn the defences before the attack. Anyway the rest of the barb cities won’t be a real problem. They seem to be normal cities that can be conquered as every city, but the real quest will be the conquest of the capital. And I fear this capital will get stronger by every attack repulsed by enslaving units and making them to guards. Do we want to conquer this first or do we postpone the capital conquest for later?

What would happen? The barbs will be a strong civ. The power graph shows that. If we land a too weak invasion force they will destroy it and get stronger by a couple of enslaved guards. What are the options?
We can wait until we have superior numbers and then overrun the capital. (A clear Con is, if there is a better way we will lose SGOTM10, cause there will be a team who finds that way.)
Are there other ways to conquer a city than by pure power?
A culture flipping can be excluded with all these wonders in Barb Stronghold.
A propaganda mission won’t be possible on the capital. This bonus gives us –40% on flip chances and even if we have a veteran spy and a demo against anarchy situation (+35%) we won’t get a chance to flip “Barb stronghold”. Can we lure the defenders out of it? After our landing the barbs will as every AI throw all their offensive units at our beachhead. But not the defenders. And the main force will be defenders.

Early attack: Can we do it with Cavalry? Very fast with 3 moves with a stack of defenders. And then running uphill crossing a river against a fortified defender. The main question seems to be what is defending barb stronghold before we start the combat analysis. I am a little bit stuck in these analyses since I am missing on important info.Concerning these calculations I am interested whether we can get the +100% effect against barbarians, if we have the Great Wall or not in case of these special barbarians? I must have missed some post on that issue and cannot find and remember. Does anybody know ? However, I think the key to winning this game early is managing to have barbs obsolete units during the attack and that seems to mean not giving away any techs and crippling the other AI’s research.

Hi, I'm back.

Looks like we've made some great progress! Inca are gone, and we are well into the Middle Ages.

I agree we need to start thinking about how we want to attack the barb nation.

Some ideas:
- Astronomy will enable the Pirate Ship for the barbs, and they will get astro as soon as two others have it (probably). So perhaps we want to research Chemistry first, so that we are closer to Magnetism and Man-of-War? OTOH, if we get astro soon, then we can start exploring the barb continent and get some idea of what lies in wait for us.
- Cavalry will probably do the trick versus the barbs. I don't think we can knock out all the other AI's before getting to cavs and MoW, so we'll have to live with the barb nation getting to our level techwise. Perhaps we should not trade away more tech than needed.
- No idea how the Barb Guards are generated, but mass attack is almost always a good idea.
- In the mean time, ein frischer, froehlicher Krieg on Sumeria might be good. It will shorten our border, give us more land, and the Pyramids.

Minor stuff:
- we need more workers. Several towns are at size 6 and unable to grow, and should skim off a worker asap.
- perhaps cashrush a court in Cuzco.
- I would build libs before markets in general.
- towns bordering Byz lands should get some culture improvement I think. I prefer a lib over a temple.
- agree on the iron vs incense trade. Leave the 3 gold.

I wonder if these guys would fall for the old 'Hey, it's an undefended enemy city!' gambit or its close cousin, 'Hey, some undefended workers!'

Alright, well done McLMan! :goodjob:

Incas are gone, infrastructure is doing good, research is progressing nicely. I feel we're doing quite well. :)

Roster: Niklas
McLMan - Just Played
CommandoBob - UP!
zyxy - On Deck!
Marc Aurel
ControlFreak - waiting to jump in, some time M-R next week
azzaman333 - skip until further notice


I don't think we should base too much of our strategy on assumptions. We don't know how the barbies get techs, we don't know how they get guards, we have no idea what kind of forces we are likely to meet. IMO we should just assume that they are another AI, albeit powerful, and act accordingly.
I don't think they have little land at all, I just don't think we've found all their land yet. Look at the large black area in the NW of the minimap, plenty of land could be hiding there.

Agree with zyxy on the libraries, we need to get research up. Bury and Rockz are the primary recipients. I also question the granary in Milton. I know I started it, but I don't think it's a good idea in any case :p. I think a library here too. Machu Pichu is building a Trebuchet, might actually be useful.

On research, I think we should go to Astronomy as soon as possible. We want to be able to go to the land over there, and we want to get units on foreign soil. The only reason I see to research the lower range techs first is that some friendly AI is likely to go to Astronomy for us.

Ein blitzkrieg um Sumer seems inevitable. Sound the wardrums!

I will be able to play again in the very near future. Roughly 2-3 days. :)

Agree with zyxy on the libraries, we need to get research up. Bury and Rockz are the primary recipients. I also question the granary in Milton. I know I started it, but I don't think it's a good idea in any case :p. I think a library here too.
Food for thought:
Just how smart do we need to be to beat the Special Ol' Barbarians?

I see we are learning Education, if for nothing else to nullify the Great Library. :lol:

After Education comes Astronomy and we can sail across the oceans to BarbLand. They get Pirate Ships, their UU. How does that compare to Galleons and Privateers? (I'm at work, no access to game).

We're seafaring and so are they. Could we be facing some major naval battles in this game?

Don't have any answers; will look at the save and begin planning for my turns later tonight.

Overall strategy post III:


It is for sure better to have detailed infos on the game mechanism to judge what is the best to do. But in fact not knowing the special mods is the thrill of the SGOTM. Gyathaar really worked hard every time to find a surprise for us to make it somehow exciting for old civ3 veterans. The key to win the competition is therefore to best read Gyathaars mind. Not that I am able to do so, but one might find some hints in his past actions. What I believe is, that every SGOTM is designed to meet the special abilities of the players civ UU. SGOTM9 saw the berserks in a central role attacking Mahatmas 1 tile island early to make India palace jump. The hydrophobic Americans were a little bit limited to make full use of their air units (amongst them their F16) – even if some teams made the invasion by diplomacy and teleport. This time the UU is the Man of War. And we should await any special role of this unit here. I support zyxys idea of heading first to chemistry. We should minimise the time between astronomy and magnetism. With zyxy I think the time, during which the Barbarian Pirate ship rules the sea after astronomy until the arrival of our strong unit shall be as short as possible.
In principle the UU of the barbs, the Pirate ship is like the normal Privateer. What is special about it? It has the same attack and defence values than a normal Privateer. It is slightly faster (move 9) than a caravel to make sure it may catch a transport. Fighting on the seas then is a 50-50 chance. But the odd abnormality of the unit is, that it can carry a land unit!! Why should a privateer carry troops? It is designed to attack! In a counterattack to sink the land unit the privateer is very weak and our MoW have a 3:1 situation against them when attacking. No; the Pirate ship cannot be made to carry invasion units (AIs suck at oversea invasions). The only plausible reason seems for me that they can enslave land units on enemy ships and carry them home after transforming them to Barbarian Guards. The bad thing is, that the pirates can also attack other AIs on the sea and terribly the Dromon can run across the ocean. They are obviously not judged as galleys by the mod. So we better destroy the Byz than the sumerians for not letting the Byz transfer victims to the barbs.
I agree with Niklas comment, that the barb land might be much larger than we can see by now. In the victory screen the barbs are depicted with having a larger territory than we have now. So their land mass will be a bigger one. However I do not agree with the cavalries doing the invasion - even in large numbers. If we have to face the guards, we see a unit defending with 8 – fortified, in a city, on a hill, across a river that is just simply a defence value of 20! And the defenders have in each case a shot at us free. They fire: rate 3, range 3. This is somehow like a combination of infantry/artillery. So if these units can be avoided or at least their number minimised, this is game decisive. Only because of this, I think we should consider to be cautious and wait with barby land scouting. IMHO we wouldn’t lose much if we go to chemistry first, then go by astronomy to magnetism, but without becoming seaborne with caravels and first clear the oceans by our superior MoW fleet. Getting the Pirate ships down in attack is easy and going with MoW stack fleets lets us destroy any successful Pirate in the next turn. Next we should research to MilTrad and make the invasion with galleons/cavs hopefully facing only muskets in “barb stronghold”. Ignore my thoughts about the Great Wall, that is obsolete by then!
I believe that Gyathaar has set this up as a certain trap for all who just only want to be normally as fast as possible. I believe there must be somewhere a certain trick to master this. And I would wait for our strength the “sovereigns of the seas.”
Rule Britannia - Britannia rule waves!

End of Turnset 10 Stats:

Education 5 turns, 455 gold -4 gpt (80% science, 20% luxury)

Cities:

Smurkzdon (9) grows in 6, vMace in 3.
Tiwanaku (5) grows in 12, temple in 45.
Smurkz Castle (10) grows in 5, market in 1.
Machu Picchu (4) grows in 10, trebuchet in 6.
Smurkzbury (6) grows in 9999, market in 7.
Smurkingz (6) grows in 3, library in 1.
OxSmurkz (5) grows in 9, library in 5.
Ollantaytambo (5) zero growth, temple in 40.
Kowzville (5) grows in 1, galley in 12.
Riverz Bend (4) grows in 7, vMace in 11.
Corihuayrachina (2) zero growth, temple in 52.
Huamanga (2) grows in 17, courthouse in 24.
Smurkz Rocks! (6) grows in 9999, market in 9.
Goatfish (3) grows in 1, galley in 8.
Heart of Smurkzness (2) grows in 9, galley in 29.
Smurver (3) grows in 10, galley in 10.
Smurkzmouth (1) grows in 1, galley in 11.
Milton Smurkz (3) grows in 2, granary in 13.
Smurkz End (2) zero growth, harbor in 16.
Readingz (2) grows in 3, temple in 52.
Cuzco (2) grows in 9, Forbidden Palace in 94.


Military:

14 workers
01 spearman
12 swordsmen
05 horsemen
01 galley, 05 in production
00 mace, 02 in production
00 trebuchet, 01 in production

Total Units: 33
Allowed Units: 25
Support Cost: 16 gpt

Builds:

vMace [2] (Smurkzdon and Riverz Bend)
temple [4] (Tiwanaku, Ollantaytambo, Corihuayrachina and Readingz)
market [3] (Smurkz Castle, Smurkzbury and Smurkz Rocks!)
trebuchet [1] (Machu Picchu)
library [2] (Smurkingz and OxSmurkz)
galley [5] (Kowzville, Goatfish, Heart of Smurkzness, Smurver and Smurkzmouth)
courthouse [1] (Huamanga)
granary [1] (Milton Smurkz)
harbor [1] (Smurkz End)
Forbidden Palace [1] (Cuzco)


Notes and thoughts:

Lots of galleys being built. We must be planning a massive upgrade.
Who do we give Education to in order to break the Great Library?

Make more libraries. (Niklas)
Need workers from the aqueduct challenged cities. (zyxy)
Trade iron to the Dutch for incense and 3 gold. (McLMan)
In Milton, granary -> library (Niklas)
Favor libs in cities along the Byzantine border (zyxy)

Do we want Leonardo's Workshop?
Can we influence who gets Sun Tzu? Currently a three way race between the Barbs, Mayas and 'Zines.

Tell me I am wrong on this.
Below is MapStat for 150 BC, the Civ Info tab.
150 BC MapStat
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/150BC_MapStat_CivInfoDotted.jpg

Does this mean that the UU is two units? I hope not, the Conquistador treats everything like it is a road.


Marc Aurel makes some strong points on not researching Astronomy next, in the last third of his post. If the carrack is the base unit of the Pirate Ship, us researching Astronomy and thus dropping the cost does us no favors.
Before we get there, I would like some discussion on what we should learn after Education. I like what MA says, but the time it will take to research Invention, Gunpowder, Chemistry, Astronomy, Physics and Magnetism may be too long.

I may just play until we have almost learned Education, stop, post and discuss at that point.

Lots of galleys being built. We must be planning a massive upgrade.
Yes.
Who do we give Education to in order to break the Great Library?Preferably we'd like to get some value out of it. I'm not too worried about the Great Library, since the Tech Thieves are probably enough for the AIs. There was nothing in the setup making sure that the barbies would get GLib at all, so there is some other mechanism in play here. Two reasons to give it away though: Someone might just have researched Invention while we managed Theo+Edu, in that case we could trade; or we simply want to gift the AIs up to ensure that we get the best possible research help.

Make more libraries. (Niklas)
Need workers from the aqueduct challenged cities. (zyxy)
Trade iron to the Dutch for incense and 3 gold. (McLMan)
In Milton, granary -> library (Niklas)
Favor libs in cities along the Byzantine border (zyxy)'
Yes to all.

Do we want Leonardo's Workshop?
Can we influence who gets Sun Tzu? Currently a three way race between the Barbs, Mayas and 'Zines.
I'm not sure about the first. For the second, it would be great if we could keep ST from the barbies, but I don't see how that could be done. Sure we could trigger someone's GA by declaring and losing to their UU, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Tell me I am wrong on this.
Below is MapStat for 150 BC, the Civ Info tab.
...
Does this mean that the UU is two units? I hope not, the Conquistador treats everything like it is a road.That's weird. I have no idea what it means, a pirate ship that can move on land? Let's just wait and see.

Marc Aurel makes some strong points on not researching Astronomy next, in the last third of his post. If the carrack is the base unit of the Pirate Ship, us researching Astronomy and thus dropping the cost does us no favors.
Before we get there, I would like some discussion on what we should learn after Education. I like what MA says, but the time it will take to research Invention, Gunpowder, Chemistry, Astronomy, Physics and Magnetism may be too long.I think I'm swaying towards the longer research route as well, MA indeed makes a strong point. I guess it's just my curiosity that wants Astro and caravels asap, but I think I might just regret it. If it is indeed the case that we cannot win the game with a fast invasion, which certainly seems the case, then minimising the time of naval battles before our MoWs is clearly the clever thing to do. So go the route to Chemistry, hoping that the AIs help us with Invention and Astronomy along the way.

@azzaman333: Glad to hear you're back on track. Will put you back in the roster then. Come on and join the discussion! :)

@azzaman333: Glad to hear you're back on track. Will put you back in the roster then. Come on and join the discussion!

I dont really have anything to say, since you guys cover just about everything. :)

Milton Smurkz granary -> library, 23 turns.
Corihuayrachina temple -> library, 72 turns.
Ollantaytambo temple -> library, 60 turns.
Readingz temple -> library, 72 turns.
Tiwanaku temple -> library, 65 turns.

Hit Enter.

Blue settlers appear to head home.

Smurkz Castle market -> vMace, 3 turns.
Smurkingz library -> worker, 1 turn.

[I] 01 0130 BC

Inca01 to MP to improve a BG.
Other Inca slaves become MarshInca01, 02 and 03, and will be sent to drain marshes and jungles, freeing English workers to do better things.
Auto move these three to Castle.
Will add more slaves as they complete tasks.
Leave the four swords in place south of Tiwanaku.


Smurkingz worker -> worker, 1 turn.

Mayas are building the Sistine Chapel.
Dutch are building Sun Tzu's Art of War.

[I] 02 0110 BC

Worker11 is highest worker.
MarshInca05 is highest slave.
Workers need to be groups of three to work tiles more quickly.


Smurkzdon vMace -> vMace, 3 turns.
Smurkingz worker -> worker, 1 turn.

[I] 03 0090 BC

zzz


We learn Education, begin to learn Invention, 7 turns.
Smurkz Castle vMace -> vMace, 3 turns.
Smurkingz worker -> aqueduct, 12 turns.

[I] 04 070 BC

Theodora will buy Education for 7 gpt and 22 gold (all).
She is willing to trade Chivalry for Education as an even swap.
Having gold is better than being Knightly (at least, in this case).
Sell Education.


Oxmurkz library -> aqueduct, 17 turns (vs. harbor or uni, seemed best for growth)
Barbarians are building Leonardo's Workshop. Ouch!

[I] 05 0050 BC

First MarshIncan arrives at the marsh 2NW of Riverz Bend. 32 turn to clear the marsh. Eight slaves = 4 turns and sixteen slaves = 2 turns.
Five MarshIncan clearing this tile, more are on the way.
Smurkz Castle vMace -> university, 10 turns.


Smurkzdon vMace -> university, 11 turns.
Goatfish galley -> galley, 6 turns.

[I] 06 0030 BC

Sixth MarshIncan arrives.


Smurkzbury market -> worker, 2 turns.
Sumerians are building Sun Tzu's Art of War.

[I] 07 0010 BC

Sell Education to Maya for 4 gpt and 91 gold (all).
Sell Education to the Dutch for 3 gpt and 36 gold (all).
See a Barbarian city on the east side of Barbland.


Smurkzmouth galley -> galley, 10 turns.

[I] 08 0010 AD

Two more MarshIncans arrive and start to work.


Machu Picchu trebuchet -> library, 40 turns.
Smurkzbury worker -> worker, 2 turns.
Smurkz Rocks! market -> worker, 2 turns.
Barbarians are building Knights Templar.
We lost our supply of dyes. And wines.

[I] 09 0030 AD

Theodora wants 300 for wines.
Gilgamesh wants Education for wine.
We learn Invention in 1 turn, so decide to wait.
Dropping the smart slider to 70% and we learn Invention in 2 turns. Too long, want Invention to bargain for goodies.
Hired some clowns for one turn.
Oxmurkz and Ollantaytambo will riot or starve, no food in the food box, let them riot.


We learn Invention; begin to learn Gunpowder, 8 turns.
Smurkzdon riots, did not expect that.
Oxmurkz and Ollantaytambo shut down, as expected.
Smurver galley -> galley, 10 turns.

Hanging Gardens built in Caesarea by the Byzantines.
They are now building the Knights Templar.
Dutch are building Sistine Chapel.
Barbarians are building Knights Templar.

[I] 10 0050 AD

First marsh cleared, spend one turn to irrigate.
Theodora will spend Dyes, 20 gpt and 2 gold (all) for Invention. Done.
Gilgamesh will spend Wines, 6 gpt and 15 gold (all) for Education. Done.
Smoke-Jaguar will spend 2 gpt and 24 gold (all) for Invention. Done.
William will spend 3 gpt and 12 gold (all) for Invention. Done.
Our gpt goes from -44 to -13.
Reassigned citizens due to new happiness.

[IBT]

And the save is >>HERE<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_AD0050_01.SAV).

Right around Turn 8 I realized that I did not trade with the Dutch at the first of the turnset. My bad.

Military Units
We built several maces and galleys and one trebuchet and we had several swords from the last war. These are still in the city of origin. The swords are still in the field. No direct threat, so I ignored them.

Worker Groups
3 workers (09, 16 and 17) on the mountain between Goatfish and Smurkzbury, building road in mountain, done this IBT.
3 workers (05, 06 and 07) building a jungle road due E of Riverz Bend, began this turn, 3 turns to go.
3 workers (08, 14 and 15) on the hill between Bend and Huamanga, building road, 2 turns to go.
2 workers (04 and 13) NW of Huamanga, building mine, 3 turns to go.
2 workers (02 and 03) S of Castle, building road, done this IBT.
2 workers (10 and 11) building a road on the irrigated lamb tile NW of Smurkingz, 2 turns to go.
1 worker (12) on the olives W of Readingz, building a mine, 11 turns to go.
1 worker (01) on the peninsula, building a mine, 5 turns to go.
1 worker (no name) NE of Heart of Smurkzness, jungle clearing, 14 turns to go.

As much as possible, we need to keep our workers in groups of three when building roads and mines, since these turns are calculated in multiples of three. Chopping is a ten turn task (or it was in PTW). Irrigating is a four turn task, which means if we assigned a stack of three workers to irrigate one tile, it will take two turns and 6WT to complete a 4WT task.

8 slaves (MarshInca01 to 08), just finished irrigating 2NW of Bend. Suggest they clear a roaded marsh across the lake.
4 slaves (MarshInca09 to 12), 2 SE of Milton, are roading the marsh. 12 just joined them.

It will take one slave 32 turns to drain one marsh, 48 turns to chop one jungle, 12 turns to road one marsh and 18 turns to road one jungle. We have 12 slaves and most of our marshes are already roaded.


In the next 12 turns the marshes will be gone from around Milton.

MarshIncans 50 AD
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/50AD_MarshIncansTrimmedDotted.jpg

(3 Blue tiles are marsh, 9 Red tiles are jungle, 1 Yellow tile is jungle.)

Next turn, MarshIncan01 to 08 move to one of the roaded marshes. Either one will take two turns of travel. It will take four turns to clear one marsh (6 elapsed turns), then move to the other marsh and clear it (10 elapsed turns). MarshIncans 09 to 12 will road the tile they are on and be done in 4 turns. They then begin to clear marsh, needing 32 turns to do so, or eight turns. For a total of twelve turns to clear out this tile (maybe less if the other MarshIncans join in).

After the marshes are gone, we need to clear jungles with the slaves. That will be a little trickier. It looks like we could split the slaves into two groups of 6 slaves each, and each group could build one jungle road in 3 turns. These would be close to each other. After the roads are built, we could combine all the slaves into one stack and chop one jungle in 4 turns and then chop the other jungle. From start to finish one cycle would look like this:

Two groups into two jungle tiles: one turn
Each group roads their jungle tile: three turns (four elapsed)
Groups combine and clear one jungle tile: four turns (eight elapsed)
Clear the other roaded jungle tile: four turns (twelve elapsed)

As of now, I would suggest starting on the west side of the Red Jungle, with the jungle 1E of Goatfish and the tile 1E, 1SE of Goatfish, clear 'em, move south, clear 'em, then head NE repeating the process, ending up with Yellow tile. Ten jungle tiles, 60 turns to clear, with present worker allocation.

I am sure ControlFreak could improve this and I expect that he will.

In the meantime, our native English workers should be improving the areas around places like Castle, Cuzco and the sortof outlying cities. They should be chopping forests, building roads and mines and irrigating. Working in the jungles should be left to the slaves, at least for the next several turnsets.

Roster:

Niklas
McLMan
CommandoBob - Just Played
zyxy - UP!
Marc Aurel - On Deck!
ControlFreak - waiting to jump in, some time M-R next week
azzaman333 - available, waiting to be assigned

@azzaman: good to see you are back!

@CB: nice play. Good trades, too bad about the riot.

Got it.

Some comments:

- We are training a lot of troops, and they eat money. What's the plan? Sumeria? Do we want them out, or OCC for the free tech? We have plenty of troops for Sumeria I think, but perhaps the vet swords could be upgraded.
- Galleys upgrade to galleons. Do we need so many? Four or five seems enough for ferrying.
- We need more workers. We don't have a dedicated worker pump, so we'll need to skim them off here and there. If we decide to go after Sumeria, then we can make a few worker pumps with the aid of the Pyramids.
- While I understand the need for roads, I would rather clear jungle and marsh before building roads on these tiles. We cannot really afford to waste worker turns at this stage.
- I would have cashrushed a court in Cuzco. It still looks beneficial to do that, so I might. 56 turns for the FP is really too long, and our towns in the south and east are hopeless without the FP. Might add some workers to Cuzco, or set it to growth for a while.
- Kowz and Bend could use some culture.
- I am not sure about the aqueduct in Ox. We'll see how many shields it makes when the riot is over. Perhaps harbor -> worker?
- Similar for ingz, perhaps market -> worker?
- We have at least 1 regular sword, and a regular spear??

Maybe the barbs get their cities from huts?
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_AD0050_BarbCitiesFromGoodi.jpg

Sorry for my low input, been swamped between work, wife's upcoming birthday and GOTM55 (and yeah, the World Cup :blush: ;)).

@CB: A solid turnset, good calls on the trades :goodjob:, though a big bummer that you didn't grab that incense for us. Now it probably goes to Byz... :(

I'll take this opportunity to change the roster:
Niklas
McLMan
CommandoBob - Just Played
zyxy - UP!
ControlFreak - On Deck!
azzaman333
Marc Aurel


So zyxy, don't wait to after R to play. :p

For Sumeria, I say go for it, and take them down to OCC. Agree with the rest of your thoughts. And yeah, where did that spear come from???

Some thoughts on how to tackle the barbs:

The Barbarian Guard (BG) unit has high defense and bombard, and zero offense. So it can only be used in a defensive role. Meaning it just has to sit there and wait for us to come in range or attack it. Also, it comes in limited supply. This suggests a pillaging tactic. If we pillage the roads and in particular unhook all resources in barb land, then they cannot move about much, and the only units we'll face are BG's, archers, spears, cats, Pirate Ships, and possibly Templar Knights. The lack of roads means they will be divided, and relatively easy to conquer.

Of course this means the Barbs should not get Nationalism. We know they have a spy agency, and it is quite possible that they are stealing techs. For example, in the last set, the Barbs start the Knights Templar a few turns after Byz discovered it. The Chivalry tech is still a monopoly now, so they didn't get it through the GLib, or TechThieves, if that works as a lib as well. Of course they may have researched it, and there is little we can do about that atm. But their research should normally not be able to keep up with us throughout the MA.

So I would suggest the following strat:
- research to Chemistry, then Astro and on to Magnetism. After that, to cavalry.
- when Astro comes in, send a bunch of horses over to pillage and scout. Possibly build a town on the barb continent.
- when Magnetism comes in, build MoW's and station them just out of reach of Pirate Ships. Try to start our GA with these guys.
- when cavalry comes in, build a true invasion army, and start razing barb cities. Perhaps add some trebs to the stack for softening up the BG's. Or simply attack in large numbers.
- keep the other civs backward. They are bound to head for Nationalism asap. In particular, watch the Scientific pair.


I'll play this evening probably.

So I would suggest the following strat:
- research to Chemistry, then Astro and on to Magnetism. After that, to cavalry.
- when Astro comes in, send a bunch of horses over to pillage and scout. Possibly build a town on the barb continent.
- when Magnetism comes in, build MoW's and station them just out of reach of Pirate Ships. Try to start our GA with these guys.
- when cavalry comes in, build a true invasion army, and start razing barb cities. Perhaps add some trebs to the stack for softening up the BG's. Or simply attack in large numbers.
- keep the other civs backward. They are bound to head for Nationalism asap. In particular, watch the Scientific pair.



Good strategy – especially the pillaging! However I have some doubts, that it will be too easy to invade that continent. Remember SGOTM 9, where Indias capital was built on a hill with iron. If it is correct, what you have shown about the first barb city we saw, that they just march into camps (or huts) to found cities, then Gyathaar might have placed a hut on all important resources and now we will see them all under city center tiles. We simply might not be able to deprive them of their resources without conquering a city. But if we do not try we would not find an easy way to fight, if there is one. So let’s try it. One single remark I have to your strat:

Sending over horses seems too weak for me. We wait until cavalry for the invasion. In order to not let the AI rebuild what we have destroyed, we should do the pillaging shorter before we go to attack. Our horses sending in small numbers means having them destroyed after a certain time by the barbs IMHO. Replacing them constantly means we present our caravels constantly to the Pirate ships. From Astro to cavalry it is Physics, Magnetism, Metallurgy and Mil trad. If we do not let the other AIs participate in research that is about 30-40 turns. I am sure we can optimise this a bit. But if we pillage after Magnetism and advent of our MoWs, when we can protect our transports it is still early enough before our real invasion army crosses the water to cripple the barbarian economy before. Maybe we have knights then, which are much better defenders then horses and will not be so vulnerable to counterattacks. Remember the barbs have also knights by now. And we will be save from BGs if enslaving on the sea really is the mechanism how they generate them.

Your observation with the chivalry monopoly and the Knights Templar being built by the barbs indeed indicates IMHO, that the TThieves is not like the Great Lib, but more like a planted spy, that has reduced or no costs for technology stealing. In this case we cannot get any tech superiority. So I agree that avoiding nationalism is mandatory. But before this tech, we would profit from AI research help. The point will be to slow the research rate of the other AIs down after we have cavalry. With Sumeria and the Byzantines both scientific civs are in our reach and we should try to reduce them both to one city before we go invading barb island.

Hi all!

Back from Reunion, very sleep deprived, but wife and kidless for the week. I have the game but have not installed it yet. I hope to get that done tonight. You're asking a lot of me to learn the new game and then step in and play in a day, but I'll see what I can do.:p

Workers
It's nice to see CB trying to put together the things we posted about in SGOTM9.:goodjob: The philosophy for roading first is in the long run, if you're going to use BIG stacks to clear jungle, you're saving the cost of roading a tile as a jungle rather than after clearing by having the workers move to the roaded tile for free. I won't be able to do the math until I have the game installed but to compare the two methods you need to evaluate:
Workers move onto unroaded tile (all waste).
Workers road tile (no waste as long as the right multiple).
Workers clear tile (no waste as long as the right multiple).
Loss of production/food by citizens working the jungle.
How important are the roads strategically

I swamped getting back to work right now so I hope to give an example for the case of our swampy jungles when I get the game. But my brief study of the screen shot would lead me to a compromise between your approach and zyxy's approach. The only town that NEEDS more improved tiles seems to be Goatfish and possibly Kowsville but harbor means all of the coast is "improved tiles". Since it doesn't seem anything is suffering from lack of tiles, it is not necessary to complete the actions that quickly. The benefit would be from adding shields IF the town isn't corrupt. So if the towns are corrupt, there is NO incentive to clear these tiles. If they are productive, it would be nice to have a few more mines, but realize that we would be losing the extra (2) commerce from the coast (one because it's coastal and one because we're seafaring) in exchange for the 1s from the mine. The only other thing is it would be nice to have a road running directly from Milton to Kows through the Jungle from a unit movement point of view.

So my compromise would be to use three workers to road from the marsh through the center two jungle tiles to get Kowsville connected more directly to Milton. (8 turns counting movements) while the remaining slaves clear the already roaded marsh. Then the road can be used as a jumping point for workers to access all the jungle tiles. After the road is built, then we can send smaller (3) stacks of workers into each of the jungle tiles to clear them then road. Having the Western most marshes cleared first gives Goat fish the tiles it needs.

Note that mining the hills around Goatfish is actually more benefitial than clearing the jungle if it's productive. Goat fish is near max size and should use hills at 0fpt for the biggest benefit. Those it makes sense to send stacks of 3 workers onto the hill, road in 2 and then move more workers to the tile and finish the mine in 1 or 2 turns.

Battle Plan
Not knowing the rest of the map/civs it's tough for me to weigh in on the battle plans but I would agree that if zyxy has the units he needs, a little clobbering should be the plan.

Since chivalry is available I would love to have some pillaging knights running around the barb continent. But based on the discussions, I agree with avoiding astronomy so we won't ship them over until Cavalry is nearly available.

MapStat
And for what it's worth, is the representation of UU in Mapstat something to do with a Multiple unit? In otherwords building a "Pirateship" results in a Carrack (possibly modified), preloaded with a Conquistador? I had originally thought that the parenthesis indicated more than one UU unit for the civ, but I editted the Gallic Swordsman to Japan and MapStat still states Samurai with no parenthesis. I couldn't figure out how to create a type of unit with PTW editor that made MapStat use parenthesis.

I opened the sav file with CA II to take a better look. It indicates that the nonimproved tiles worked in the slave area are hills. I think that should definitely be the priority before working on the marsh or jungle. And when the hills are improved, there is still a lot more to do around the FP area before the marsh/jungle need to be cleared. Hold off on those high WT tasks that have low productivity improvements until we get the core improvements completed. The Cusco should definitely work the FP and Irrigated Grass to get up in size before focusing on the FP. I wouldn't join workers though since they would just start working unimproved tiles. Use the workers to improve Cusco land.

I also think that more galleys now will just drain the economy waiting for upgrades/units to fill them. They should be switched to horses that can upgrade to knights. This implies we should strive for Leos, but I'm not sure we have a good candidate.

The Sumerians are a good target since they will help with the territory around the FP when it's built, have nice grassland territory and wines. The problem is that it necessitates we turn our back to the other three civs on our continent. Is that a good idea?

Don't forget we're going to loose wines the minute we declare war. We're also breaking outstanding trade deals but I don't think it hurts our rep since we don't own them anything. The declaration actually gets them out of their 6gpt + wines IOUs. ("I Owe You")

The Mayan's are not a bad target either. They seem to be behind, have a small territory, aren't giving us any luxuries. Our troops would stay near to the other Civs if they backstab us. It also leaves Sumerians and Byznatine healthy enough to do some damage to the Barbs or at least settle some cities overthere that we could take in a peace settlement. But if we're worried about enslaving of AI ships then this strategy is actually a drawback. Also the Mayan land isn't as close to the FP as the Sumerians.

Eitherway, it's going to take some unit shuffling to get in an attack position. I'm thinking zyxy is going to set me up for the spike, er... strike.

This implies we should strive for Leos, but I'm not sure we have a good candidate.
The Barbarian Nation started building Leo's Workshop back in 70 BC. :(

Workers
I tried to get them into stacks of three, but that did not always happen. I clumped the slaves together mostly to make their WTs and tasks easier to compute. For me, it is easier to calculate WT with either a full stack of slaves or native workers. I saw that we had a lot of jungle to clear and began on that.

So the slaves are all in two tiles; eight are free this next turn in one tile, one in the other tile. Let the other slaves finish their road and use these unassigned slaves to build the jungle road to Kowzville. Nine slaves, two turns to build the road. The only other nearby option are the 3 workers NW of Goatfish on the mountain. It will take them 2 turns to get to that first jungle tile, the same time needed for the group of 8 slaves. Depending which is the first tile, the solo slave can reach it in one turn, if due south or two turns, if southwest and then south. Depends if the jungle road to Kowzville will be NW or N of Kowzville.

Well, I got the game installed and was able to open the save so I should be ready. How's it coming zyxy?

Well, I got the game installed and was able to open the save so I should be ready.

Don't forget to set the AI Patrol thingee, mentioned in the initial post.

Also, don't forget to get the small graphics file mentioned >>HERE<< (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2574490&postcount=3) under the heading Resources and PediaIcons setup for ALL Conquests players.

And...get ready to rumble!

Turn 0, 50AD: We are working way too many unimproved tiles, so: switch Machu Pichu, Smurver and Smurkzmouth to worker, 'ingz to market -> worker, Ox to horse -> worker. For culture, switch Kowz and Bend to lib . Cashrush court in Cuzco (184 gold). Disband the regular spear and sword. Send some troops towards Sumeria. They are supplying us with wines and 6 gpt, so a war will hurt. Decide to rush a lib in Tiwa (180 gold) to grab our own wines. Costly, but so is the lux tax. Keep sci 80%, lux 20%.

IT: Cuzco court -> FP. Tiwa lib -> worker. Mauchu worker -> worker. 'bury worker -> lib. Ox horse -> worker. Rocks worker -> worker. Goatfish galley -> worker. Maya star Leo's in Yax.

Turn 1, 70AD: Send a few horses into Sumeria to scout. They have pikes in Sumer, but not in Kish. Upgrade some swords to MDI. Best thing may be to go around Sumer first. Ur is the main prize anyway.

IT: Sumeria boots our horses. Another Byz dromon arrives. 'mouth worker -> galley.

Turn 2, 90AD: Dutch have 2 workers available, but we have nothing to sell except gpt. sci 50%, lux 20%, to raise a bit of cash for upgrades.

IT: Ox worker -> worker. Rocks worker -> lib. Goat worker -> lib. Milton lib -> market. Smurkz End harbor -> lib.

Turn 3, 110AD: Sumeria has learnt Invention. Upgrade more swords. sci 70%, lux 20%.

IT: Three Byz Dromons that were stationed near Kowzville cross over to BarbLand. Smurver worker -> galley.

Turn 4, 130AD: Dutch now have Chiv and would sell it for iron. Byz will buy Spices now, so we sell Spices + 1 gold to Byz for 7 gpt.

IT: A fourth Dromon crosses the pond. Castle Uni -> MDI. 'ingz market -> worker. Ox worker -> horse. Barbarians start SoZ in Chanca 2.

Turn 5, 150AD: Sumeria boots our horse. Mauchu worker -> lib. Sumerians start Sistine Chapel in Umma, the Barbs start Cops in Cherokee :eek: !

IT:

Turn 6, 170AD: Switch 'ingz to horse to avoid massive waste, and Smurver to Sun Tzu to redirect a chop.

IT: Castle MDI -> MDI. Ur built Temple of Artemis.

Turn 7, 190AD: Our armies move in position for the attack on Sumeria.

IT: Forgot to turn down science :blush:. I checked against the autosave and we lost about 150 gold here - the effect of playing civ4 I guess. Anyway, we learn Gunpowder, and start Chemistry. 'don Uni -> MDI. Tiwa worker -> worker. 'ingz horse -> worker. Some remaining wonder cascades.

Turn 8, 210AD: We have one source of saltpeter. sci 60%, lux 20%. Checking for trades: Dutch and Byz have Chivalry, and Byz have 23 gpt. Nobody else has anything except petty cash. Byz will trade almost all their money for horses, so
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_AD0210_ByzHorses.jpg
We sell horses + 3 gold to Byz for 20 gpt. I think we could use Chivalry, so we sell iron to Dutch for Chivalry + 24 gold. Both trades are slightly risky, but the payoff is nice. Switch 'don and Castle to knight. Ox switches to knight automatically.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/zyxy/Smurkz10_AD0210_SumerianWar.jpg
Our forces are launched against Kish and Bad-tibira, 4 MDI, 1 sword and 1 horse each.

IT: lost 1 MDI (and 1 damaged) at Bad-tibira, killed 1 horse, 1 galley. 'ingz worker -> aqueduct.

Turn 9, 230AD: At Kish we kill 2 Enkidus and a longbow at no losses and take the town. At Bad-tibira we are too weak to attack the pike-defended town, so I kill an Enkidu and a Sword camping outside instead. Ur is still defended by Enkidus. I'll make an attempt to knock out the Sumerian Iron sources.
Switch Smurkzness from ST back to galley.

IT: lost 2 MDI, 1 horse and 1 galley, some of these in unlucky combats. 'bury lib -> worker.

Turn 10, 250AD: Kill 1 Enkidu in the open. Pull back the remains of the western invasion force (1 galley, 1 sword, 1 MDI); this was essentially a failure, sorry about that. Kill 1 pike and 1 Enkidu at Agade at the loss of 1 MDI, and take the town, as well as 1 slave. We now have two units on each of the Sumerian iron sources (that we can see), ready to pillage the next turn. I hope they survive.

notes:

It should be possible to get 'don and Castle up to 24 spt, for 3 turn knights. Probably need to mine some plains around 'don, and perhaps return the game tile to 'don. I did not MM on the last turn.
Sumer and Bad-tibira are defended by pikes, and Sumer is on a hill. Ur was defended by Enkidus on turn 9 (last turn I saw it). There are two Sumerian settler pairs just south of Ur, protected by a pike and archer. Might be nice to kill if they get in range. We have units on two Sumerian iron sources for pillaging. Watch out, Sumer has longbows. We are somewhat thin on forces, but we'll get a few knights soon, hopefully that helps to regain the initiative.
Although it makes for an ugly frontline, I would make Ur the next target, because it is probably/hopefully weakly defended and holds a nice prize. Sumer will be a tough nut to crack, we may want to get some trebs for that. We may want to consider knocking out Sumeria completely because of flips - I think we can do without the free tech. Perhaps it is even an advantage.
Barb Nation has Astro. Byz have been sending Dromons over.
Byz seem to be the only rival that actually has money. They are probably the only strong researcher as well (except Barbs). We are trading resources away to Dutch and Byz. The Dutch trade could kill our rep if the deal is broken, so watch out. Our Wines and Chivalry will not get us anything but change. I would not trade away Gunpowder for the measly 18 gpt Theodora is offering. Better wait if someone comes up with Astro IMO. If we want to prevent Nationalism from spreading too soon, we should not trade away more techs. The IA is approaching quickly...
We could still use a few more workers, but the situation is looking up.
Knights might be the best unit to send over to Barb Land for pillaging, mainly because the Barbs will probably get cavs shortly after we do. The knights defense is equal to the defense of a cav, but their attack is lower, so knight-knight combat should give us better odds of survival than cav-cav defense (on their land, we will be defending most of the time).


The save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_AD0250_01.SAV)

Got It and looking at it now.

My Anaylsis (for what it's worth)
Although it wasn't the typical zyxy overwhelming offensive that I've grown accustomed to, you did a lot with very little. We have a clear path to the Pyramids and should be getting reinforcements shortly. I agree with going around Sumer. No one wants to fight pikes in a big city on a mountain. Hopefully I can muster enough reserves to strike at Ur soon, but I'm guessing the pike escorting the settlers will move into Ur and the Enkidu warriors will escort the settlers. The iron cutting is a good idea as well. To bad that means they can build really cheap spears again.:( Of course that won't matter much since they're building wonders in two of their five cities. It would be great if we can take Ur, and their northern holdings, move their palace to Sumer and have them finish Sun's for us. Of course the war weariness will probably not make them a likely candidate.

You did a great job building workers! I'm just wondering why they're all spread out. Since you said we're working too many unimproved tiles. We should (at least for the roaded tiles) gang up as many workers to clear one tile extremely fast. The marshes should have had all the workers on them (up to 12 WT).

My War Plans
At first glance I'm changing Ingz from duct to knight because we need more units and it will be on high sheilds, low food at size 5 for a bit. Reading switches to a barrack and then unit production while we're at war. We're building too many non-war related things to conduct a decent campaign. And since we're going for military build up anyway, I'm going all out in the northern cities. The librarys down south can stay as most of them will consoldate our border and prevent flips. Plus their to far away from the current action to help much with the Sumerian campaign.

Our treasury is at 67g so we really aren't going to be able to afford a ton of galley upgrades. No sense building more in the NW so I'm switching them to Trebs to help against Sumer in about 10-15 turns.

I'm stealing the last three units from the south to help against Sumeria. If we get back stabbed then this will have been a mistake, but the cardboard cutouts we're much protection regardless. When the libraries finish, the south can start building units too and that will protect against invasions. Until then, we can always rely on the shields we've built toward the library as an insurance policy.

Technology
Based on our previous tech discussion I was assuming that we could get Magnetism without Astronomy in C3C but now I see that we still must research Astronomy and Physics before getting our Man-O-War. So am I going to bee-line to Magnetism so we can hit the seas with our UU or do we go for MT first knowing that the Great Wall will be obsoleted by Metallurgy? I'm leaning towards Metallurgy because now that the Barbs already know Astronomy, the other civs can research it quickly. Going for metallurgy should let the civs learn Astronomy, we can trade for it with Chemistry. Then I think we would do the Physics and Magnetism, trading/gifting Metallurgy to the AI hoping that someone will research MT for us. I have 7 turns before I get to that decision so I'm going to start playing tonight and finish up tomorrow after I hear your discussions.

Sorry about the underwhelming offensive. I was hoping to strike before pikes came in large supply, and that unfortunately failed in the west.

The workers are in relatively small stacks because it was not always possible to combine them efficiently. And I don't like to waste turns on movement or overflows. Well, I might have done a better job here I guess.

Your plans generally look good to me. Not sure about the rax in Reading, the town doesn't make a lot of shields. But maybe that can be changed with some improvements, I don't know.

I would not count on the AI to research anything for us except (perhaps) astronomy. I would most certainly not gift them up. If we have to face rifles, then our cavalry will get killed in large numbers, so the AI's should be kept backwards.
Researching Metallurgy and Mil Trad before MoW's might be good, especially if Astro isn't available for trade yet. But it is a bit risky, and we are basically relying on the Byz to hold back the Pirate Ships with their Dromons.

No problem with the war. I'm am going to have to sit tight and get some reinforcements though. I played three turns. (I did it in three sittings so the reload count is going up. It's taking me extra time to figure out the new worker turn counts and new specialist MM.) The counter attack from Sumeria, in the shape of longbows is getting discouraging. I guess I underestimated how much range they'd have in their roaded territory. I left some horses in places I shouldn't have and paid the price.

On the bright side, Don and Castle are making 3 turn Knights and the Medi are almost healed enough to strike Ur.

I woke the Galleys to help the offensive. Once they get there the trip to Bad will be one turn at sea versus 5 turns by land. Unfortunately they are 6 turns from getting into position.

The barrack switch in Readingz was more for the ability to switch to something else without loosing a lot of sheilds. I even contemplated switching to make a regular Medi. Readingz strength at the moment is in worker making with all the food and the current corruption. Once the FP is built, it will be able to pull in decent sheilds so the barracks will pay off in the long run. And the library will be a quicker build when the time comes. (I'm still not sure we're going to need more technology after MT.)

I was only thinking about the offensive on the Barb continent and wanting Mil Trad before Magnetism so there would be troops to put in the boats. But I remembered we could use caravells/settlers to start moving our core towards the Barb continent earlier. They are going to need protection and the Man-O-War should help with that.

I will plan to go for Metallurgy if the barbs still have a monopoly on Astronomy because I'm sure the AI's will get Astronomy before we're done with Metallurgy. When it's available, I will buy Astronomy and research Physics/Magnetism before Mil Trad. If all goes well, the GA should be triggered about the same time MT is learned so Cav production should get a boost.

There's also some small islands off the coast of Barb continent that would make good launching pads and are easily attack proof until marines. Those should be the first destinations for our landing parties so our boats have places to hid and heal.

Good going guys, and again appologies for my low input.

Well played zyxy, even though the missed slider was a bit sloppy :p. I think the war on Sumeria was as good as we could hope for, no need to appologize.

I would not be worried about trading techs to the AI. The barbies obviously have strong research capabilities of their own since they got an Astro monopoly. We're going to face rifles whatever we do.

@CF: Sounds like a good start, keep it up. I really like the idea of those launching pads off the barbie coast, that's a brilliant idea. :)

Having taken a break from the game I starting thinking (which might be trouble). Is this war on Sumeria really worth it? What do we stand to gain. We are avoiding Sumer so we're not going to get a big border expansion. We've slowed research down, we are throwing units away on the Sumerians rather than building for the barb attack which could come in the next 10 turns with Astronomy. The pyramids won't help us much as most towns are already at maximum happiness and there's not much room for settlers yet. We have lots of food bonuses and irrigation can make us grow also.

The real kicker is that Ur is on a hill and size 9 so even the Enk are formidable for our Knights and Medi. The fact that they cost LESS THAN 10s means there's a ridiculous amount of them. Had I realized what their unique unit was I think I would have been against the war to begin with. And considering we launched with only a dozen units, we didn't get the foothold we needed.

I'm going to finish late tomorrow. Let me know if it's OK that I retreat. (otherwise, I fear I may leave the next player with no army to speak of.)

For Sumeria, I say go for it, and take them down to OCC.
Have any cities been captured? If I read your comments correctly, none have.

What if we let them connect iron again? Then they would build Pikes and not Enks. Stronger units, but more expensive and hopefully fewer of them.

Just looking at the 250AD save. Perhaps pillage everything around the cities and starve them out?

Heres the save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_AD0350_01.SAV).

Perhaps pillage everything around the cities and starve them out?
This was actually a good idea but it took too long. I got Sumer down to size 7 but I really want to show some gain on my turnset so I had enough units and I took the town at size 7.:rolleyes:

Trying to starve Ur is a different story. You're going to need a bunch of worthless units to cover all 15 grass tiles. They have 3f from the center so you can leave at most 2 grass lands. They would be able to use the 2 grass and 3 hills/plains/forest for a size of 5. That means you need 13 units, no within striking range of the town do get them to start. You can do it but the war weariness is killing us. I'd rather get the 16 Knights/Maces and bring the four or five trebs up there. If you want cannons we can do that too soon.

Here's the turnlog.

00 - 250 AD
Did most of the changes mentioned in my previous post. Having the low treasury is a bit of a burden but I leave research at 60%. Because there are gpt deals due to expire in 7 turns (Chem due in 7 at 60%). I'm tempted to sell gunpowder now even for the pittance of 18gpt but I realize that Byz have a gpt deal with us for 4 more turns. I will renew then with Gunpowder and get what I can from the others.

MM to minimize waste on growths/builds. Not to much tile swapping to bulk up Don yet since it only needs 20s to finish the Knight. Castle looks like it may have issues with corruption preventing it from getting to 24spt. (I'm getting 22 or 23 max.) I wake the two workers that just started mining Huamanga. It needs more irrigtation to grow faster and can still use it in the future as it switches to use the hills/mountains.

IBT - Don and Kastle Knight>Knight. 'Bury worker>knight. Huamanga court>barracks. Readingz barracks>worker. Enkidu uses roads to get to the hill N of Readingz.

01 - 260 AD
The Mace makes quick work of the offending Enkidu. Pillagers do their job. A sword enters the FP of Sumer hoping to start them a little. Extra horse on the N iron attacks across the river to kill an unguarded 1HP longbow. Galley drops off wounded Medi and picksup a new Knight, then heads to the Bad where the rested sword debarks. I forgot the Knight can't get off the boat this turn. Elite sword does some scouting NE of UR and see a roadway toward a hill NE, NE, NE. The southern horses arrive and take over MP duty to quell resisters. Medis are still healing in the barracks towns.


Do some fancy shuffling of workers to take five workers and finish an irrigation plus the two turns of mining in one turn.

{add picture later}

Do similar move to finish mine and get 5 of 12WT remaining on the Marsh.

Castle will to 24spt at -1fpt and can do 23spt at +2fpt using the fish so we can build knights in 3 with a little MM. I chose to leave it at 24spt and switch one the knight is due in 1 just to make my life easier. Don should get to 24 in 2 turns when the plain mine finishes, which should complete the knight in 3.

Mobilize the galleys to help transport the Trebs to the NE.

IBT Ur begins building the Knights Templar. (3 cities building wonders!) Longbow avenges his friend by killing our horse, but it was still a net of 10 sheilds to kill the 1HP last turn. To bad there was no retreat. Kish quells and riots. Kowz ville celebrates WLTQD after another scientist was hired. Bend library>court. End Treb>Galley.

02 - 270 AD
Knight retreats from Enkidu. Horse finishes him and sword covers. Units are nearly healed. Sword/horse pair approach Ur and find the Pikeman as expected. The river poses a problem to attacking from the east. I plan to use the forest SW of Ur for the swords and medis, ETA 3 turns.

[i]IBT two longbows attack our horses and make them retreat. Then a Enkidu/Archer Pair and Medi move next to Agade with a longbow a tile from each of them. Kish resistance ends and riots.

03 - 280 AD
Our medi kills the Enkidu and gets promoted to 3/5. Next kills the Medi. I bring a horse from Kish to kill the archer so that the Medi can kill the longbow.

MM Don and Castle.

IBT - Don, Castle Knight>Knight (MM to 24s). Barb Stronghold builds Leo's. 1HP vet horse upgrades to Knight for 120g.

04 - 290 AD
While I'm waiting for troops, I start a pillaging campaign to reduce the food around Ur. Probably useless since there's so much grassland. I would need 15 units just to cover all the food tiles. Actually sumer is much easier to starve. It just has three food tiles. I'll work to get units there to starve.

[i]IBT LB makes horse retreat near Ur. Smurkinz Knight>Aquaduct. Agade flips taking a wounded elite mace with him. Heart Treb>Galley. Mayan's cascade to Knights Templar and finish it. They also cascade to Sun Tsu.

05 - 300 AD
Horse kills LB and promotes to elite.

Have to raise Lux to 30% due to war weariness. Units start taking the food tiles from Sumer. I'm going to leave Agade alone for now.

IBT - Barb ships arrive! Caravell and two Pirateships. No units debark yet. Goat Lib>Barracks. Readingz worker>worker.

06 - 310 AD
All food in Sumer is covered. Long term their max size should be 3. (Each citizen eats one food from the city center, they are agricultural.) So far no starving.

I have to move two knights towards the barb boat to deal with possible invaders. Hope they don't have more than we can handle on the boats.

Sci drops to 20% for Chem in 1.

IBT - Barbs drop off a longbow and knight then the boats sail away. Sumer want to talk but I tell them to stuff it. Chemistry>Metallurgy. Don, Castle Knight>Knight both MM to 24spt at -1fpt. Oxsmurkz Knight>Knight.

07 - 320 AD

Knights make quick work of Dr. Evils goons, losing 1HP each. They head back toward Sumer.

With the flipping of Agade, the best path to Ur is right by Sumer anyway. I have enough units there from the pillaging and the starving that I may just hit Sumer first.

I'm going to hang onto chemistry until Astronomy appears. Or atleast three more turns when the dyes runout. The Mayan's have at least 20gpt and are weak compared to us. I think they might pay to be in an MA against the Barbs so I buy and embassy with them for 46g. They have the GLight and are 9 turns from Sistines with 5 entertainers.:rolleye:

I made a little money in the deal. They give 34g +3gpt for an Alliance vs the Barbs. (Profit of about 50g.)

The Dutch are also weak compared to us so I try them next for 43g. They have Sun's due in 3 which gives them a good shot I think. This time my plan backfires. They don't know the Barbs yet so we can't get them in an MA. At this point, I guess Sumeria know the barbs as does the Mayans because of the path of the barb ships. Hopefully the boats will explore the dutch soon and we can recoup my investment.

I set science to 40% for Metalurgy in 14. I'll speed it up if the AIs get astronomy, but for now that's 43gpt.

IBT - as my units make their way towards Sumer, they've opened the door for the Settlers Trapped in Ur. I don't know if my Knights can catch them, but the nice thing is they'll draw units away from the core. Longbow kills a mace. Milton Market>barracks. Readingz riots from growth. Sumer is now down to size 8. Two more turns and they lose the bonus of being a city.

08 - 330 AD
I move all the units I can into striking distance of Ur. With the settlers leaving, I notice that the Pike and two Enkidu left with them. I feel I might have enough units to strike at Ur.

[i]IBT - I feel like Sumeria is playing our game. Now that I can strike Ur, they move all of the settlers and Pike/Enkidu back into Ur.:( If they kept the standard 4 units for the Pyramids and now added about four more units, there's no way I have enough units to win the city. They also have a galley coming down the eastern seaboard. I move a knight over to counter.

09 - 340 AD

Knights reposition toward Sumer. I think we're better off attacking there when the size gets low enough.

Don and Castle need MM. Knights are ready to strike Sumer but will wait for starvation.

All AI have Astronomy. Up Sci to 60% but don't buy Astronomy yet. I will wait until next turn because the dyes deal is up.

Sumeria drops off a horse and archer of via galley. We have no troops in the area! The Dutch build Sun Tsu. Barbs build Cops in the cascade. Don, Castle Knights>Knights, Bury Knight>worker. Readingz worker>worker.

Byzantine start cops, Dutch finish Suns, Sumerians cascade to Sistines. Barbs building Sistines. Barbs finish Cops.

10 - 350 AD
OK we've got 11 level 4 attackers and 4 swords. I'm going to attack with the trebs and then decide if I want to attack the city. They do a collective 1hp of damage to the pike. First Knight takes a catapult hit and does no damage before retreating. Second Knight ends at 1/4, killing the pike. 2/3 Pike is next defender. Mace redlines pike but dies. Knight dies and promote Pike to 2/4. Knight takes Sumer!

I keep the town but in retrospect, I should have razed it and replaced.

Other units are going to move toward Ur. We had about a 50% success rate against a city on a hill with pikes. I think that there are about 8 pikes/enkidu in Ur at the moment. You would need 16 Knights/Maces to have success there. Good luck.

Please check happiness. I forgot to do that and we've been accellerating in war weariness. I purposely left three towns at -1fpt so that they get the right number of sheilds. Don and Castle can be switched to 23spt after the one turn of starving. You should get Knights to build every three turns and actually accumulate food.

I'm out for the weekend so have a good time discussing. My guess is we want to keep making Knights, build up enough and then strike at Ur. We also need to watch for landings from the Barbs (or other civs). Our defense behind the scenes are nil.

Well done!

I cannot really find it in the log, but did we sell Gunpowder at some point? In any case, it spread around. But, we can now sell Chemistry to Theo for Dyes + Astro + 39 gpt + 25, and that is all she has. Maya will give a further 23 gpt + 98 for Chemistry and that is all they have. Nobody else has anything but change. This should enable us to run a higher science rate and deal with unhappiness.

What are the remaining goals of the Sumerian war? Should we try for Ur and then make peace & refocus on Barbs? OTOH, flip risks are quite enormous, and it would be nice to get a GL out of this war.

I don't quite like it that we have no units in the west, we need some defenses against Barb Landings. And why are all our ships up at Sumeria?

It seems the Barbs have settled the northern part of their continent, so maybe we should make an effort to settle the south. There are nice luxes there. Ivory, Gems, Silks and Furs. In any case, I would send a caravel with knights over asap to explore a bit.

Cuzco could be set to high production, low food for FP in 11, this might be better. Next player beware of the lightblue archer near Cuzco.

I was waiting to sell Gunpowder because there was a gpt deal that was going to run out in a couple of turns. Someone got it on their own and sold it around. I think it was the Mayans or the Dutch since they ended up with all the gpt/cash.

I agree that chemistry should be sold for dyes and all the gpt you can get out of the Byzantines. Then sell it for astronomy plus all the gpt from the Mayans or Dutch. (If you can get astronomy plus all the gpt that the Byzantines have, then that's fine too.) I just don't normally make trades on my last turn. I think I read that in SG etiquette.

If we take Ur, the rest of the Sumeria will be easy. So I think the question is do we stop now, or do we wipe them out. We already had Agade flip, we're going to have to work really hard to keep Sumer from flipping.

I guess my preference would be consolodate our winnings. Stay at war with them but pull back so we're not getting more war weariness. Keep enough units near Sumer to retake it when if flips. Work on getting culture in Sumer and starving the foreigners out. Basically just fight a holding war. We should get cavalry soon which will make taking Ur and wiping out the Sumerians easier.

I'm sorry about the lack of Western Defenders. I felt I need to move everything towards Ur when I planned to attack that. Now that the goals of the war may have changes, we can bring some knights over that way to deal with landings. Also, having two knights built every three turns is really nice for dealing with landings.

I had brought the ships over thinking they would help move troops up the coast to attack Ur when we were going around Sumer. Now that Sumer is ours, there is no reason for them to be there and we should figureout which harbor to upgrade them and where they should sail. Be aware that the Barbs have Navigation and can strike from anywhere. Without our Man-O-Wars I'm afraid of sending too many caravels into open waters.

The continent that the barbs have settle in the North but not the South is probably not their mainland. It seems that ships can first from our East, meaning that there is probably another continent in the fog there that the Barbs started on. I would think that they would have totally filled their starting continent by now. But sending Knights over is a good idea at any rate.

The blue archer near Cuzco was part of a landing party. The redlined knight barely killed the horseman that accompanied the archer or we would have lost a city to them. I move some new knights towards the archer and they should be able to kill him next turn no matter where me moves. Make a not of the tile the archer is on because that's where the barb landing party came also. Seems to be a favorite spot that we could just set up a patrol on and kill intruders easily.

I had Cuzco set to growth for one more citizen. I felt that we could catch up and finish sooner that way but I didn't do the math. It was just a feeling.

:whipped:

Three days gone and no posts from anyone. :crazyeye:

Niklas...Roster!

azzaman...Get it!

:whipped:
:p

Got it. I have been waiting for some discussion on what to do tbh. :lol:

Sorry, sorry, been busy all weekend. :eek: Now give me that whip back! :whipped: :p

CF, well played as expected. :goodjob: No telling that this is your first C3C game. :p

Roster:
Niklas
McLMan
CommandoBob
zyxy
ControlFreak - Just Played
azzaman333 - UP!
Marc Aurel - On Deck!

I'll post some thoughts on the game in a few hours.

Military
The Sumerian campaign is indeed painful. We should have gone for them earlier, but as both CF and zyxy have noted, this is the time to gear up for the barbie war. We can't really afford to keep the war up, so I too vote for consolidation.

I would raze and replace Sumer, and preferably Kish as well. We can't keep Sumer from flipping without a lot of culture in there, and that would be far too expensive. Razing is cheap in comparison, and accomplishes the goal of getting the cultural pressure off our core towns. And a replacement town would never exert the same pressure even if it would flip.

Off-shore Invasion
Galleys should go home asap. Mouth is the closest harbor, for upgrading to Caravels/Galleons. We want to get troops over there as fast as possible, preferably with a few settlers to establish a southern beachhead. We need to figure out what towns we can shave off a settler from.

I would be careful to send all our Knights over though. We'll need cavalry surely, and those that go over seas can't be upgraded. Just a small token force should go over first as recon/beachhead.

Trade and research
Make the trade with Byz that zyxy outlined. Get all gpt you can from everyone for Chemistry. Research Met->Phy->Mag.

Can't think of much else at the moment. Oh, ware the landing parties, note the tile that CF indicated. Good luck! :)

If i get up before midday tomorrow, i'll play it when i get up.

Got it. I have been waiting for some discussion on what to do tbh. :lol:

I was hoping our silent members would speak up if I shut up ;).

To no avail it seems.

But I do think that if you want some discussion before your set it is a good idea to post some plans and/or pointed questions. That usually gets the discussion going.

But I do think that if you want some discussion before your set it is a good idea to post some plans and/or pointed questions. That usually gets the discussion going.

I dont make plans, because when i do something always happens to stop it from working.
(and judging by the fact i am up at 3:50 am, it looks unlikely i will play before midday. i need some.... :twitch:slee.......epppppppppp:sleep: )

I dont make plans, because when i do something always happens to stop it from working.
My plans fail because they are flawed. Some little point that I ignore or overlook often turns out to be the reason that the plan fails.

I overlooked something major in SGOTM 09 and delayed the building of the Forbidden Palace. From that point on we began the practice of posting our plans and allowing others to comment and improve the initial plan. This kept us focused and on track.

The task we have in SGOTM 10 is very different from 09, but the planning and communicating is still very important and critical.

I have learned to trust my plans to the team because my teammates can improve my plans. And point out things and tasks I may have missed, along with pointers on how to handle them.

Doing some catching up. Will comment (for what it's worth) within 24 hrs.

I dont make plans, because when i do something always happens to stop it from working.
Hmm. I really don't like the sound of that, makes me nervous. For one thing, without planning you will never be a very good civ player. You can probably win up to monarch, but on emperor you get whopped, am I right? :p
But regardless, in this case it's not so much that you should make plans, it's that we as a team have plans that we have come up with through discussion and that we expect you to at least loosly implement. This is a team game, not a relay. Since you haven't posted any thoughts on the game whatsoever, it's really difficult to know how much you've actually been following our discussion. Have you?

CB's makes some good points, again. We should really reinstate our strategy posting, this time before something happens that shows the need for them. azza, will you please post your thoughts on strategy for the upcoming turnset, and the bigger picture. As CB noted, the idea is that by posting your strategy before playing you give the rest of us a chance to give suggestions and point out things you may not have thought about.

You can find the format I use for my strategy posts in the post I did for the first turnset here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4025213&postcount=35) (I expect a few more bullets from you since we're further into the game :p).

@CB: The FP was minor, the MP swords were the big one. ;)

For one thing, without planning you will never be a very good civ player. You can probably win up to monarch, but on emperor you get whopped, am I right? :p



Quite right! Just to add the saying everybody knows at the position, where it belongs:
If you fail to plan - you plan to fail!

@Niklas - you can have the whip back. I was just checking to see if it still worked, and indeed it does.:goodjob:

@azzaman333 - playing with Team Smurkz is fun and laidback, but most of all a great learning experience, no matter how good you are. The reason ALL of us learned something in SGOTM9 is because we posted our intentions and allowed others to 1)see some good ideas we never thought of and 2)see some flaws before they were played and correct them. No one is expecting you to write your turnlog before you play. :crazyeye: We're just expecting to see your long term goals and short term goals to make sure that we're all on the same page.

Playing ten turns at a time, if you have a different set of goals than the rest of the team, you can take us a long way from our goal by playing your entire turnset without the benefit of feedback from the team. Considering many of these competitions come down to a four turn difference between first and second place, ten turns is a long time! (And yes, we will be first.:p)

In SGOTM9, we got in the habit of posting a Long Term bullet list and a Short Term bullet list. If the action was really heavy, we sometimes also added a This Turn bullet list to set the things that were expected to be accomplished on your turn set. I can think of at least two things that are in that catagory. But rather than me writing your plan for you, why don't you post your strategy and see how it stacks up to what our Master Plan is.

Okay. Planning time begins now. I guess i should take a look at the save, and write a plan from there. :scan:

For the record, i can beat Emperor with a decent start (at least 1 extra fpt in capital)

Short Term Plans;
Make peace with Sumeria, replace Sumer with English settler.
Try to reduce the 30% spending on luxes (hopefully ending the war and buying dyes from Theo will get it down)
Start building up Knights for the planned invasion of Barbaria.

Long Term Plans
Kill the barbarians :lol:
Research Mil Trad to upgrade the knights
Research to Magnetism so we can trigger our GA, and transport more troops to the barbarian lands.
Nuke the **** out of Barbarian Stronghold :mischief:

Italics signify what I doubt will happen, but would be fun if it did.

That's an excellent start, and I don't foresee anything going wrong that will make your plan fail.;)

There are a couple of things we've talked about that you want to make explicit in your short term goals:

Trade Chemistry to get the world's gold, gpt, luxuries and Astronomy.
Get the galleys upgraded and in a position to ferry some scouting units over to the other continent.
Bolster defense against landings in the east and west (at least a couple of knights within range of both shores. (My bad for leaving us so exposed.)
Build the FP ASAP.


And for your long term goals, replace the :lol: with "as soon as possible". It is funny that we all already know the goal it to kill the barbs. The key to winning this competition is to have that purpose be the single most important. That means we can not delay doing the things that are required to kill the barbs.

At the moment our strategy for eliminating them seems to be (revisions, suggestions are welcome):

Get units overseas to scout/pillage.
Get cities offshore to use a launching pads.
Get a core closer to the Barb Stronghold using a palace jump.
Build enough units to stunt the barb's so far impressive growth.
Finish them off.

At the moment, we're working off the premise that:
We can send knights over for the scouts.
We can settle some or most of the visible barb contient (they are making slow progress settling the land).
We can build enough Cavalry (during our GA) to prevent needing more advanced units.

Since that is the strategy, and our current assumptions, the most important things you can be doing on your turn are trading for Astronomy, Upgrading to Caravells, and getting Knights over to the barb lands.

I really blew the caravell thing because I moved them out of position. I probably lost us three for four turns by dedicating all our units to the Sumerian war. At the time it seemed necessary, but I really wasn't taking my own advice. I lost sight of our ultimate goal and got wrapped up in a worthless and wasteful war against Sumeria. The team needs you to help us recover from my mistake by getting the caravells/knights ready to depart for the new world ASAP.

... and getting Knights over to the barb lands.

And a few settlers as well (to the south part). We will probably not be the only ones who want to grab those luxes. We definitely want to be first. Well, you may not be able to get settlers over there in ten turns, but at least we could try to start on it.

Settlers....that begs the question of whether we should fight for the pyramids or not. If we had the pyramids, would we be able to produce settlers faster?

My thinking at this point is that the pyramids will NOT help us produce settlers faster. Additionally, any settler that we plant on the Barb Continent will have to deal with repeated attacks, probably by large stacks of units. So most of our core sheilds will be going to unit production rather than settler production.

It's fairly obvious that Gyathaar has given the barbs some pretty terrific terrain for them to be researching as quickly as they are. It stands to reason that they are equally endowed when it comes to sheilds. So sending a settler over with a single Knight defender is probably not going to last very long. I think the knights should go over and scout to see how bad it is. We may be better off trying to capture some barb cities than sending over a lot of settlers.

Also keep in mind that our caravells aren't much match for the Navigation aided pirateships. We can't plan on carrying units at sea that long. Look for a small island that is near (1-2 turns) to our mainland cities and settle our first town there. That way we have a place to hide our ships. When enough cavalry are ferried there, we can found a Barbland town, move the cavs there and start our attack.

Good points. I think you are right about the Pyramids - we should have started this much earlier. About the barbs: they started with a huge city (size 9 IIRC), are possibly getting techs through a GLib type wonder, may have a special corruption free government, may have additional science buildings, etc, etc. Many reasons why they could be keeping up in tech.

And an island is maybe not so hard to defend. What if we can manage to sail, let's say, three caravels - ooh, the Santa Maria, the Nina and the Pinta - with 1 or 2 settlers and 4 knights down to that island with the silks? Sure it is a risk, but there are dromons around to fight the pirates, and if we leave one caravel empty for extra safety it might work. There would be one turn of real danger as we have to pass near that Barb town.

I've looked at the save for a while and I have to agree that fighting for the Pyramids is not worth the effort at this point.

I think we're going to need to send over a very large force and fortify on a hill or mountain if possible to stave off what will likely be a very big Barbarian stack and/or river of units. It's worth sending over a couple of Knights to start just to see what we're up against.

I also think that taking a stab at the silk island would be a worthwhile endeavor.

I really don’t like, what I am doing now. – to contradict a plan many team members already have agreed. Most times I keep quite then to not disturb the ongoing. And this time I also don’ want to irritate azzaman! But I also want to show, that I am still busy following the discussion and having my own ideas. That’s all, this post should do. So here is my opinion:
I would go for a frontal assault on the Sumerians and directly head for conquest of Ur and then take the rest of the Sumerian cities. I really do not expect an attack from the Byzantines and I think it is possible to finish the Sumerians in about 12-15 turns. However after that I think concentrating on the barbs is quite the best route to move on. I am only for this Sumerian war, cause we have invested a lot and it was agreed by most members to strike at Sumeria and I judge the current situation as a normal one in a conquest game. Finishing a game before 1000AD by military means often forces you to fight with only a small advantage. I believe the situation at the front and our reinforcement rate are enough to guarantee a victory in 15 turns latest. And before that I in any case didn’t want to invade the barb continent. MilTrad can be gained in about 8-10 turns or so. And I don’t think you made any mistake here, CF. The situation looks good IMHO. We believe the barbs to be somewhere in the north of the continent, so Sumeria might be a good shortcut for transporting our troops to the barbarian center in the critical phase of the game. I am not too fond of founding a new core on the other continent, cause it will take a lot of time to build up a new core and we can fight the barbs probably without much effort from our current base.

Please don’t fight this opinion too hard.- As I said, I only wanted to show up that I am still with you, but would proceed in a different way if I would play this alone.

I really don’t like, what I am doing now. – to contradict a plan many team members already have agreed. Most times I keep quite then to not disturb the ongoing. And this time I also don’ want to irritate azzaman! But I also want to show, that I am still busy following the discussion and having my own ideas. That’s all, this post should do. So here is my opinion:

Marc@ this type of post is EXACTLY what the team needs. If everyone always agrees with the previous posters we are prone to GroupThink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) which is very, very bad. (Related to the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.)

We are not always going to agree. That's a good thing. By posting your different view point it forces us to evaluate more than one option and almost always leads to a better option that is a compromise between the two situations. In SGOTM9 we had a lot of negotiations and quite often came to a new and improved plan that wasn't something that anyone had thought of on their own.

In this case, we've got three members that said, don't go for the pyramids - focus on getting to the barb continent, one player that agreed with them but may have done so just because three of us had already voted and one player that said let's take the pyramids and all of Sumeria.

Can we do both: pyramids+Sumeria and get to Barb Island? If not, why not. Is the perceived delay in getting to Barb Island if we go for the pyramids first real or imagined?

Having just played and seeing all the 10s Spears (Enkidu) running around, my thought process was that we would loose our entire army of knights trying to take Ur. That would set us back a lot against the Barbs who are not currently fighting anyone. If we had Cavalry, I think we could easily wipe out Sumeria. Cavalry is coming in ~10-15 turns if we chose to go that route first. Maybe we could fight a holding war against Sumeria until cavalry are available and then wipe them out. That would let us prioritize the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria trip for 10 turns. Then when they set sail, we forget about them for a few turns while we upgrade to cavalry and take over Sumeria. We don't need our Man-O-Wars for this first trip to the new world. They will come in handy after we have cavalry because: our GA will help build cavs faster, and our boats won't need the protection until we get a lot of units travelling over to the Barb land.

I'm not saying this is the only answer either. This seems like a good time to take those extra days to work together. I don't want anyone feeling like they don't agree with what we're doing, and I don't want anyone feeling like they got beat on until they agreed with the group. Lets see what we can do to incorporate Marc's ideas into the plan to the point that we're all happy, preferably before azzaman plays. No matter what we decide, it will still be azzaman's game to play for ten turns.

My abilities are not good enough to conquer Ur, so if you want to keep going with the war, you would be best off to switch me with someone else. I find it hard to get a good idea of the neccesary army to attack a city. Also, I make some stupid decisions when at war.

Marc@ this type of post is EXACTLY what the team needs. If everyone always agrees with the previous posters we are prone to GroupThink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) which is very, very bad. (Related to the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.)

We are not always going to agree. That's a good thing. By posting your different view point it forces us to evaluate more than one option and almost always leads to a better option that is a compromise between the two situations. In SGOTM9 we had a lot of negotiations and quite often came to a new and improved plan that wasn't something that anyone had thought of on their own.


Thanks for that CF. I really like to have discussions that way. Gives me really motivation to follow the game progress in detail.


Having just played and seeing all the 10s Spears (Enkidu) running around, my thought process was that we would loose our entire army of knights trying to take Ur. That would set us back a lot against the Barbs who are not currently fighting anyone.

Maybe here is the difference in our view points. I agree that we will lose many battles against the Enkidu. But not an equal number of knights, cause they often will retreat. (to a fortified position where our MI's and swords provide shelter) I had calculated (please check this):
vet knight attacking (4)

vet Enkidu defender: (2)
fortified +25%; in city + 50%; on hill +50%;
gives a probability of attacker win of 43.6%. (Assuming 8 defenders, what is conservative I believe) we lose 5 battles if RNG gods are against us. But 2 of the beaten knights will retreat, so that we lose the production of 3 turns keeping the same strength than we have now. Additionally we have the trebs to reduce the Enkidu vets to regulars, thus increasing the attacker odds to 60%. The same numbers apply for the city on the western shore.

Agade will be easier to conquer - no hills so that attacker odds go up to 54.3% (both vets) and I doubt Sumeria has more than 2 defenders in that town.

The number of turns I calculated by:
3 for Ur;
4 for Agade (healing in between)
(4 in parallel to agade for the western city but also with healing)
3 in reserve for a flipped back city
4-5 for the same parallel offensive to the remaining two cities


If we had Cavalry, I think we could easily wipe out Sumeria. Cavalry is coming in ~10-15 turns if we chose to go that route first. Maybe we could fight a holding war against Sumeria until cavalry are available and then wipe them out.

That is much better IMHO! Since war weariness is influenced by the number of turns you have at the end of the turn units in enemy territory (-1). Attacker losses also influence this (-2) The worst is losing a city (-17) I have to look for the exact number. Got it from the academy article of Oystein, where is stated :

War weariness:
Add 1 wwp if you have units in enemy territory when in war. (In beginning of the turn)
the following describes the effect for a human:
Add 1 wwp for each
- lost unit without defence value
- improvment pillaged/bombed
- unit that are bombard down to 1 hp
Add 2 wwp when a human attacker is defeated
Add 2 wwp when a unit with defence value is attacked. (Even if you win)
Add 16 wwp when a size 1 city is captured 17 wwp for bigger cities.

So losing cities (also by flipping) shall be avoided to keep ww down. But positioning the cavs outside the foreign borders and then strike with the 3 moves at the city and take it is a very nice strategy for wars in republic as is to raze the cities or what best in most cases - just be fast!


That would let us prioritize the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria trip for 10 turns. Then when they set sail, we forget about them for a few turns while we upgrade to cavalry and take over Sumeria. We don't need our Man-O-Wars for this first trip to the new world. They will come in handy after we have cavalry because: our GA will help build cavs faster, and our boats won't need the protection until we get a lot of units travelling over to the Barb land.


OK so for me. But remember, I fear the barbs get their guards by enslaving through pirate ships. So let's be cautious. In any case we should do the tech for gpt deals to balance war weariness.

BTW : Quite interesting your link to Group think. I mean the German page that has a long article about it.

Thanks for that CF. I really like to have discussions that way. Gives me really motivation to follow the game progress in detail.

And that is what makes SG's so much fun!

So it sound like the compromise of leaving the war ongoing with Sumeria until MT, fight a holding war would satisfy Marc Aurel concerns that we have too much invested in Sumeria to settle now. What do others think? azzaman, are you still around?

For this holding war to work, we're going to want enough Knights to easily recapture Sumer or Kish if they flip. We're also going to want to prevent them from connecting the iron in the North.

Priority One would still be getting Knights to Barb Land. Priority two would be getting an island settled over there that is easily defended (fill all tiles with cheap units - an unconnected island can rush warriors).

If we get a leader, we may seriously consider using it for an army so that we can build the Military Acadamy. I recall SirPleb's attempt on Sid level HOF where a long chain of armies used their ZOC to knock all the AI units down to redline before killing them. If we can set up a similar scenario here, we can offset the production advantage the barbs get. EDIT: Forgive me, my knowledge of leaders is limited to PTW. I'm guessing the separation of Military Leaders and Scientific Leaders probably affects this scenario. I must research the leader rules in C3C.

EDIT 2: Some excerpt from SirPleb's HOF Game.:
His Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=81424)
Army Bonuses (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1749445&postcount=82)
Funnel of Doom (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=1781304&postcount=136) - This is akin to the alternating entrance strategy that we used against India, but takes advantage of the ZOC for the units in the walls of the entrance.

My abilities are not good enough to conquer Ur, so if you want to keep going with the war, you would be best off to switch me with someone else. I find it hard to get a good idea of the neccesary army to attack a city. Also, I make some stupid decisions when at war.
I must have missed this the first time through.

FWIW, If we go with the holding war against Sumer, your fears of attacking Ur are moot. You would need to keep enough units near Sumer to retake the city if if flips and enough to fend off the longbow/enkidu pairs that will come. You also need to get enough units near the east and west coast to deal with landings. In this game, you will not escape having to wage war, we are always war against the Barbs.

Niklas@ this is up to our captain. Please post roster so we can continue or let azzaman333 know he's up anyway.

Hmm. I'm just not sure what the point of continuing the Sumer campaign is at this point.
Pyramids? Their usefulness to us at this stage is very limited.
More land? Unless we have to research to, say, Amphibious Warfare, we won't need those science camps and we'll never get to use that land for anything.
Because we invested time and resources into it already? Worst reason there is, always always cut your losses rather than keep on fighting "just because".
If there is no better reason than either of these, and I've seen none mentioned above, then I simply see no reason to go on.

Regardless of what we choose to do, I still think we should raze and replace Sumer, no reason what so ever to hold on to it. It will just tie up units to guard it from a flip, and will be destined to flip sooner or later in any case.

And regardless of what we choose to do, I think azza should play the upcoming turnset. Not feeling confident with warfare is no excuse, on the contrary. The best game of all is the one where everyone learns something. This would be your big chance to learn warfare, being forced to do it with the rest of us commenting on your decisions afterwards. :p
I guess the above would sound rather scary to some :crazyeye:, but you should know that we never complain, we always give constructive critisism. Right, CB? ;)

EDIT: Oh, and azza, good luck for the Socceroos in tonight's game. It'll be tough, Croatia is good, but a draw is good enough for you. Here's to hoping you win! :beer:

Okay, I'll play the save after the Soccer. Although I'm not sure why I am up now, 4.15am, when the game doesnt start until 5am local time. :crazyeye:

I guess the above would sound rather scary to some :crazyeye:, but you should know that we never complain, we always give constructive critisism. Right, CB? ;)

I never felt like I was being singled out and made an object of ridicule when I made mistakes. I knew I was outclassed by my teammates. In fact, SGOTM 09 is only the second non-Chieftain game I have played to completion. The other non-Chieftain games are SG's here, at Monarch and Emperor (Nero04, tao_01, D'Artagnan01, and Who-5).

So, azzaman, do your best. Don't be afraid to stop in the middle of a turn and ask a question. For me, stopping my turnset was only hard the first time, until I realized that part of being a good player is knowing when you are not good enough. After that, it was much easier to stop and ask for help.

After all, if these guys had given me bad advice, do you think I would signed up again?

Go azzaman! And go socceroos...er bummer, score says 1-0 bad guys already.:(

Just some last minute guiance:
Build a settler to replace Sumer. Then raze the city. (I haven't check the save to see if we want the new city in the same spot or shifted slightly.
Move some Knights toward the Western Pennisula to prepare for barb landings. Move some Knights toward the Eastern Short to prepar for barb landings.
Trade Chemistry for all the worlds gpt, gold, luxuries and Astronomy.
Move/Upgrade all the galleys to be in a position to launch a scouting mission. Depending on your ability to build settlers, you may be able to launch a settlement to an island off the coast of the new world.
Settling for peace with Sumer is up to you, but the team concensus is don't invest a lot more resources into that war. I don't care if you make peace or fight a holding war. (Just don't pay for peace. :p )
You're going to decide if we continue with Military Tradition after Metalurgy or if we switch to Physics/Magentism.

Pre-Turn; 350 BC;
Make peace with Sumeria forr all their gold (8)
Trade Chemistry to Byzantines for Dyes, Astronomy and all their gold (25 + 39pt)
Trade Astronomy and Chemistry to Maya for all their gold (98 + 23pt)
Trade Chemistry to Netherlands for all their gold (7)
Move as many units into Sumer to try and quell the resistance to rush a settler.
Change Readingz to settler.

IBT Turn;
Barbarians complete Sistene Chapel in Chanca.
2 Pirate Ships and a Caravel turn up outside Smurkz End.


I'm stopping here to ask a couple of questions.
Have we had any Pirates come down here before?
What landing spots have the barbarians used in the past? (i remember it being mentioned somewhere)
What do you think of the settling points? (marked with red)

2 screenshots, 1 of the pirates, 1 of the settling locs.

http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/8561/smurkz11hv.jpg

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/6526/smurkz22vb.jpg

EDIT: According to Mapstat, there is a higher chance Kish (3%-6.2%) will flip than Sumer (2%-5%).

Double EDIT: Probably because of the 6 garrisoned temp in Sumer. Which begs the question, why are we not abandoning and replacing Kish? :hmm:

Just for information: After 3 weeks of free time, I am not available again until Wednesday. :sad: So I have to skip despite the large amount of spare time I've had. But anyhow I did a turnset in CIV. So - best wishes from me and see you Wednesday. Go, Get those superbarbs:D

Have we had any Pirates come down here before?
What landing spots have the barbarians used in the past? (i remember it being mentioned somewhere)


Ouch, that's not nice :eek:. Can you get some troops to the area in time? Otherwise, maybe cashrush some?


What do you think of the settling points? (marked with red)


I like the rightmost one. On a river, lots of food and production, and once we get a library it will have no culture pressure.
I would move the other one 1 tile W or SW, to get on the coast. I think we do not need the wines.


EDIT: According to Mapstat, there is a higher chance Kish (3%-6.2%) will flip than Sumer (2%-5%).

Double EDIT: Probably because of the 6 garrisoned temp in Sumer. Which begs the question, why are we not abandoning and replacing Kish? :hmm:

You are right, we should perhaps raze-replace Kish as well, or suppress flips by stationing a garrison. How many troops would be needed to make it flipfree?

Potential Landing
This is the first time barb ships have come from the NW. Previously they landed troops on the East Coast
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads12/CF_SG10_Landing.jpg

It looks like you have a knight due on the IBT and another heading that way from the capitol. With the Trebuchet due next turn you will hopefully have enough to kill the landing party. Question would be, do we rush an extra just in case.

Razing cities
I think we did talk about razing both Sumer and Kish. Sumer needs 99units to prevent flipping. Kish needs 44. I'm not sure we want to have a bunch of troops in Sumer incase it flips. Having settled for peace, we won't be able to retake it without killing our rep.:( We need a settler in place ASAP so that we can raze it. I agree that the first replacement should be the western dot if not on Sumer itself. Where Sumer sits now is out of reach from Ur's radius and it keeps the wine. There are plenty of hills so losing one doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. My vote is to refound Sumer where it stands.

Kish is a bigger problem to relocate. To get out of Agade's radius it would need to move S, off the coast or 2SE onto the wines. Neither is a good option. I dread losing the coast more than the extra food from the wines because we're going to need ports for our invasion fleets. It may be OK to have the one tile overlap that would be left when moving 1SE. The flip risk should be quelled with just a few units if there are no foreigners and only one tile of overlap. My vote is to refound Kish 1SE and garrison it to prevent flips.

Keep in mind that there were three settler pairs in Ur during the war. My guess is they are all heading NE, but if you raze Sumer without the settler to replace it, they may resettle it quickly.

I too think we should refound Sumer on the spot, that will bring in the most tiles in range for Smurkingz and Readingz. Resettling Kish as well is a good idea, and 1SE seems the best location.

Those barbies are a problem. The three ships can carry up to 5 units, do we have that many troops to counter with?

We are getting 2 knights in 2 turns, not including Smurkz Rockz, near the ships.

We seem to have limited options regarding the pirates. We've rushed a knight at Smurkz Rocks! so now we have some defense on the peninsula. The pirate ships will move before it is created, so we will be reacting to their moves, not preventing them.

What we don't want to lose are workers. We have seven workers and two slaves on the peninsula, from Rocks! to End. Some are very exposed. Can they be moved?

Nasty thought: what if the Reds capture a city? Not pillage, but capture?

We are getting 2 knights in 2 turns, not including Smurkz Rockz, near the ships.

That sounds like they will be too late. I guess you could rush MDI's from Smurkz End and Smurkzmouth? Together with the Treb and Knight that are finishing already, that might be enough...

If the Red ships have only foot units, we can rush the maces on the peninsula and defend our cities for a bit, allowing knights to come and beat down the invaders.

If the Red ships have Conquistadors, a 3/2/2 unit, well...I think we will lose one city, either End and Mouth, possibly both, this turn.

A human player would take both cities, knowing that it will take several turns for a counterattack. An AI, on the other hand, may just capture workers.

Regardless, we need to rush some military in End and Mouth, and hope those cities are not captured on the IBT.

EDIT:
In 310 AD the pirates dropped off foot units, an LB and Knight, so my fears of Conquistadors may be exaggarated.

I cant play the rest of my turns for another 2-3 hours, so i will play then.

I am not sure they will unload up on the peninsular. I have seen AI's wander down the coast many times, for no good reason.

*sigh*

I've lost my Conquests disk. :(

I've attached the save incase i cant find it within a reasonable time. :( Sorry :(:(:(

EDIT: I attached the save to the previous post, must've misclicked.

I've lost my Conquests disk. :(

I've attached the save incase i cant find it within a reasonable time.
Ouch! Thats no fun. I remember how upset I was when I installed C3C and then vanilla didn't work (when it did with PTW!). I can just imagine how frustrated you are. :(

It might be better to upload your save through the SGOTM submission page and then link to that save file than just attaching it to a post. That way the moderators have a record of the game status when your turn(s) ended, even if it was only a partial turn.

I just did that, so HERE (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_AD0360_01.SAV) it is.

Roster:

Niklas
McLMan
CommandoBob
zyxy
ControlFreak - Just Played
azzaman333 - UP! but on hold, looking for Conquests disc
Marc Aurel - On Deck!

The biggest threat to an SG is inactivity. As Marc Aurel implied, it's been a long time since the game was forwarded. I'm not sure what the recommended waiting time is to find the disk. My preference would be to have Niklas pickup the game until azzaman finds his disk and/or Marc Aurel comes back Wednesday. Niklas, if you can't play, post the roster as you see fit.

I'm not intentionally punishing azzaman. Sorry about losing your CD, and I do wish there was a no-CD option for C3C, but we need to move a little or risk losing the team's interest.

Regarding the pirates and Caravell, I'm not sure that the AI knows to load units into the pirate ships. I would think the most that we would face is 2-3knights.

Good points, and sorry for not doing my job :blush:. I've "got it", and I'll find time to play tomorrow.

Niklas - UP!
McLMan
CommandoBob
zyxy
ControlFreak - Just Played
azzaman333 - On Deck! and looking for disks
Marc Aurel

‘Land Ho!’ cried Niklas and pointed. ‘Two points off the starboard bow and three leagues downwind.’

‘Huh!’ asked Marc Aurel.

‘He means over-that-a-way,’ said zyxy helpfully. ‘And not too far, either.’

‘But not close enough,’ said the skinniest aboard the boat. ‘You there,’ pointing to Marc, McLMan, azzaman333 and CommandoBob, ‘grab oars and start to paddle. I want to be on dry land by noon.’

Slowly the men paddled and by noon the boat was beached on the coast and the seven people had climbed atop of a near by hill. By nightfall they had made crude shelters and started a fire.

As they huddled around the campfire all were silent. The wrath of the thin one was still in flames and no one wanted to be burned. Again.

‘We must know what happened,’ said Niklas. ‘We are your closest and most trusted friends. We cannot help you if you do not reveal what the events of that night.’

The person spoken to was still mad and reluctant to speak, but knew the time had come to speak.

‘I am Elizabeth of England,’ said the person and paused.

<OK,> thought azzaman333, <we have a name. Finally. So what?>

<Elizabeth. Elizabeth? That’s a strange name for a dude.> thought McLMan.

‘I am a woman,’ said Elizabeth.

‘You are? I mean, yes, I see that you are,’ said CommandoBob, jumping to his feet. ‘Well, I mean I take your word that you’re a woman ‘cause I don’t see any of the obvious outward physical manifestations that are normally associated with womanhood and I didn’t knooow uh ah oops I think I’ll go off and die now.’

‘Please forgive him,’ said Niklas quickly. ‘He has not been himself lately…’

‘There is nothing to forgive,’ replied Elizabeth with a hint of a smile in her voice. ‘He speaks the truth but intends no hurt. And while I do not lack the outward physical manifestations of womanhood, as he puts it, they do exist, even if they are less prominent on me than upon others of my sex. I assure you I am fully woman.’

<Well, that explains all the nasty, cutting remarks on the boat,> thought McLMan. <Just a woman being a woman.>

‘Y-y-yes, I’m sure,’ stuttered the relieved CommandoBob. ‘I did not mean to call that into question. But if I may be permitted, has someone else been less kind than I in describing thy womanhood?’

Quick as a flash Elizabeth was standing next to CommandoBob, ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked in angry, tense voice.

‘I mean that if some lowly cur has caused thee pain by mocking thy petite breasts I would consider it an honor, a duty and a privilege to visit death and destruction upon such a person.’

‘You would?’ she replied in a small, shocked and yet pleased voice.

‘And I!’ exclaimed Marc Aurel, thinking <clever, little brown noser>.

‘I also,’ declared Niklas.

‘Me, too!’ ‘I’d love to help!’ ‘Count me in.’

‘Well, since you have all been so gallant, without even knowing transpired, I must tell you,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Dr. Evil, of the Barbarian Nation, had indicated that he had seen my picture and wanted to meet me and marry me. I know that is a very strange tale, but my father had done the same thing, much to his regret. I did not know which picture he had and knew I would look less than any picture of me. Yet I went. I was blindfolded most of the way and know not whence way we went. When we arrived a great feast was prepared and I met Dr. Evil and his friend of sorts, a man-like creature with a soft, high voice called Michael Jackson. The repast was fine and I retired to my lodgings a great while later. As I was changing into my night clothes Dr. Evil came bursting into the room. He stopped with a shocked look on his face and pointed at me and asked ‘What are those?’ And before I could reply he cried, ‘You’re a girl! Nooo! And I thought I liked you!’ Now he became wroth and began calling for his minions to lay hands upon me and take me away posthaste, which they did. Blindfolded, they led me away, partially clothed and threw me into the sea. The next thing I know I am in thy boat and at thy mercy and that we came hither hence. And now you know the tale.’

<Sounds fishy to me,> thought Niklas, <but after pandering to that wimpy Gandhi for over half a year, I’m ready to crack some skulls.>

<English! She’s one of my people. Let’s help her out and beat the living snot out of this Dr. Evil guy,> thought zyxy.

<Now what have I done?> CommandoBob asked himself. <I royally stuck my foot in my mouth and in trying to remove it I have just pledged to fight to the death for Lizzie the Flat-Chested and her Bumps of Honor!>

Slowly CommandoBob looked at McLMan, azzaman333 and Marc Aurel and measured the strength and resolve in their eyes. He turned to zyxy and saw the rage in his cheeks. He eyed Niklas and saw him give his head a small nod. Lastly he turned to face Elizabeth and saw the anger and hurt in her eyes.

‘My queen,’ he said heavily, dropping to one knee, ‘we are Team Smurkz. We will avenge thee.’

Only bad news I'm afraid. I've really tried, but I couldn't play anything today (which incidentally is my first day at work after vacation...). I had brought the save with me on my laptop in order to play on the bus or during lunch, but I forgot the CD at home... :wallbash:

I will play tomorrow during the day (as long as I remember that disk...). sorry :blush:

With all the CD problems we're having it has caused me to double check. Yep, CIV in one, C3C in the other. I thought about taking them out and hiding them, but decided I'd forget where I put them with the way our luck is running.

Great story CB. I'm hoping the "gift of gab" that you guys have will wear off on me some.

I don't have anything new to add regarding the dirction of our game. I can only agree with the plans as laid out in the previous posts (the ones that don't mention discs). :)

:mad: This is getting ridiculous! I've brought the game with me, got the CD, but I can't load the save!! Keep getting "DataIO operation System Error: LEAD" messages. I've reinstalled the game, redownloaded the save, but to no avail. :(

What this means is that I can't play on my laptop, and I don't think I can find the time once I get home. This in turn means that the game is more or less up for grabs at this point. We must get the game going again. If azza has found his CD, go ahead and play. Otherwise, whoever feels he has the time to play, please do so (but post a got it first so we don't play in parallel).

Doh, it's a good thing to reinstall and repatch the game :crazyeye:. Now it works, and I'll play some turns after all. Wish me luck! :)

Good Luck.

Nice spoiler, CB! (except that I'm not English, but whatever.)

And good that this is moving again! :)

And I am moving too. Moving home, that is, in 2 days. This will take a few weeks, it is hard to say how long exactly (but I hope to be back before the game ends). During this time I will have no or very limited internet access, and probably no Civ access. So please skip me until further notice.

>>The Save<< (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm10/Smurkz_SG010_AD0420_01.SAV)

360 AD (0):
Alright, we have three barbie ships threatening our peninsula. They can possibly contain up to 5 units, we have two knights and one treb with more coming behind. Move most units towards the west, and galleys towards Mouth for upgrading.

Speed up the FP build by one turn working a forest instead of the flood plains.

Research to 80%, Met in 4.

IBT: Pirate ships head west, phew. Sumeria wants us to get out of their territory, we will.

Sumer settler->wealth
Rocks knight->knight
Smurver treb->caravel
Readingz settler->knight

Barbies are building Magellan.

370 AD (1):
Raze Sumer, resettle Smurkingham.

IBT:
Don, Castle knight
Ingz aqueduct->knight
Milton barracks->knight

380 AD (2):
Raze Kish, resettle Smurkz Vineyard 1SE.

IBT:
Bury settler->knight
Kowz lib->market
Hua rax->knight

390 AD (3):
Research to 70%, Met in 1.
Upgrade 4 galleys->caravels

IBT:
A lone pirate ship shows up near Mouth.
Metallurgy researched, continue on Physics.

400 AD (4):
zzz

IBT:
Pirate ship bombards End, but fails.
Don, Castle knight->knight
Mouth MInf->caravel
Maya learn Music Theory.

410 AD (5):
Load troops into caravels for the expedition. We have too large a military...

IBT:
Pirates sink a Sumer galley off the east coast. Then unload a knight, same place as before.
Ox knight->aqueduct

420 AD (6):
Boats set sail.
Need to stop, and I don't know when I can start again, so better to hand off at this juncture.

Hand-off notes:
I chose to go the Physics->Magnetism research path before MilTrad because I feel we would be much helped by a GA. We need to get those MoWs out into the waters, and the GA would help us research MilTrad faster.
There's a barbarian knight (there's an oxymoron for you) near Olly, don't miss it!
Four caravels are poised to make the brave trip over. I filled two of them with 5 knights and a settler, and the last two are brought along for cover in case of attacks. I think we should be careful to send any more knights over, it will probably be better to wait for MilTrad first.
We're paying huge upkeeps on our military. Can we do away with some units?

Roster:
Niklas - Just Played
McLMan - On Deck!
CommandoBob
ControlFreak
azzaman333
Marc Aurel - UP!
zyxy - skip until further notice


@azza: Since you haven't said anything, I assume you're still not ready to play. Yell if I'm wrong and I'll reinstate you.

@zyxy: What, the general leaving when we're poised on the brink of actual warfare?? :eek: Oh well, good luck, and drop by as often as you can. If you're not English, where is this home you're going back to? :)

Nice spoiler, CB! (except that I'm not English, but whatever.)
Oops! Since your location was London, I put 2 and 2 together and came up with 5! :blush:

And I am moving too. Moving home, that is, in 2 days. This will take a few weeks, it is hard to say how long exactly (but I hope to be back before the game ends). During this time I will have no or very limited internet access, and probably no Civ access. So please skip me until further notice.
In a few weeks we may have made it all the way to 1000 AD. :D :eek:

We will miss your input, so don't be gone too long.

(Remember, you can change your subscription to this thread to email you updates.)

Took a quick peek at the save and only have two questions:

420 AD Overseas Sailing
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/420AD_OverseaSailingTrimmedDotted.jpg
A normal caravel has movement of 8, since we are seafaring we have movement of 9.
I am almost ashamed to admit it, but I cannot recall if we pay 2 movement points to leave the sea tile or if we pay 1 movement to enter the ocean tile. So I charted two routes across the sea, one for each cost.

Of the two, I like the southern route, since we will be further from the Reds.

420 AD Overseas Settling
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a358/Box180295/SGOTM10-Smurkz/420AD_OverseaSettlingDotted.jpg
I am sure we discussed this several pages back (but I am too lazy to look for it), but where do we want to settle overseas?

The ivory looks like a good spot (with a harbor, which are cheaper for us, another luxury is connected). Getting gems might be important and so they are circled also. An island base, even with iron, is probably not what we want, is it?

I have found my disk (it was in my PTW box :blush:) but I've gone over my download limit for the month. If I use much more, the internet will probably be shut off completely. So atm I cant download the save.

Got it and will play today and tomorrow in the evening! (Last time it took me two evenings)

@zyxy: What, the general leaving when we're poised on the brink of actual warfare?? :eek: Oh well, good luck, and drop by as often as you can. If you're not English, where is this home you're going back to? :)

Going back to the Netherlands. Well, I'm very disappointed to miss the exciting part :sad:. But I am sure you will do fine without me. Don't play too fast, please ;). And good luck!

Oops! Since your location was London, I put 2 and 2 together and came up with 5!

Very flattering that you think my English is that good :D. London has a lot of foreigners, from all over the world.

(Remember, you can change your subscription to this thread to email you updates.)

Good idea!

Good luck on your move zyxy.

CB@ all movement points are taken when entering a tile. The southern route looks best.

I would prefer to settle the two tile island or the iron island. The two tile island is easily defended with one unit. The iron island will take many more to fill the tiles, but probably could be protected with a handful of knights. The problem is, if they die, we're stuck rushing more or shipping more. Neither is a good option. Once we have an island city, we can scout the barb mainland and see how defensible a city there would be. We can also heal ships if they get hurt on their travels.

azzaman@ can we email the saves to you?

EDIT: gotm server is down at the moment.