Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 2 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 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=4354542) for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

You are cast in the role of Tokugawa, mighty leader of the Japanese. Tokugawa's brother has left the island city of Kyoto to avenge the death of his wife and only son. He has travelled to a distant land without finding their murderer. So the brother of Tokugawa will settle and found a new Japanese colony, and the Japanese have sworn to conquer the rest of civilization in order to hunt down and destroy their enemy.

The game is on a Standard size fractal map, modified as only Gyathaar knows how, at Epic speed. All victory conditions are enabled, but the laurels for this contest will be awarded to the fastest teams to achieve a Conquest victory. The number of AI rivals has not yet been revealed. It will be played using version 1.61 of Civ4 with locked modified assets.

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php) at midnight, server local time, at the start of August 8th.

Here's the start position.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/civ4games/images/SGOTM02_start.jpg

Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Tokugawa of Japan
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Fractal, hand modified
Game Speed - Epic
AI Aggression - YES!
Barbarians - Raging!!

Please visit the following link to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=168439)

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization IV v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for up to four awards - the Gold, Silver and Bronze Laurels for the fastest finishes, and the Wooden Spoons for the lowest scoring finisher.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by Conquest.

C. 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.

I'm sure you'll enjoy this game :D

Right, I think this is my thread :)

Hi guys :wavey:

OK, can I have a hello from the team members please?

igelkott indicated he will be away for a while so if we don't get a wave from him I will keep his place open.

We will also need a team leader and a team name before AlanH picks one.

i'm in

:salute:

i'll be scouting the 'greek world' between 6th and 20th august. I'll report back and catch up with you when I'm done. hope our warrior can keep kyoto safe until then.

guddorakku! :ninja:

OK igelkott, have a nice time :)

Reporting for duty! :salute:

Looking forward to our game and to discuss it with you all.
Btw have a nice trip igelkott, just don't drink too much "ouzo", we'll need you back safe and healthy... :lol:

Hi Conquistador, welcome.

Anybody else out there?

My humble suggestions:
Team Leader: AndrewN
Team Name: Gypsy Kings - reasons?
1. we're a bunch of Monarch level players;:king:
2. scattered about all parts of the world; :scan:
3. couldn't think of anything else, better or worse :crazyeye:
4. no, I'm not a fan of that band/musical group :p

I have no problem with either suggestion.

I am increadibly bad at thinking up names for anything, my usual solution is to look around and use the first thing that I see :) . This dose mean I come up with alot of band/album names as well :D

as to the band/album names my suggestion would be either 'mothers of invention' or 'hungry freaks'

:band:

Hi team. I don't have any great suggestions for names either. "Itchy Knee" as we're playing as the Japanese (Ichi=1, Ni=2 in Japanese)?

I'm happy with Andrew N being team leader (if he wants to be). Has anyone played a SGOTM before?

Starting setup looks interesting. Are we going to get crippling maintainance costs? I think bronze working (slavery/whipping) will be necessary to get any production out of our capital!

Hi Jon. I haven't played a SGOTM before although I have played SG's before. As I said above, if the team wishes then I will take the lead.

We are still short 3 members and I will give them another PM if we don't here from them by this evening (UK time).

With regard to the maintanence costs, I did a test with the world builder and we will be looking at 7gpt :eek: for the distance maintenance. This will mean we can only research at 50%.

How about settling thoughts for our second city? I would prefer not to settle on the Flood Plains as the site is better to improve. My current favourite site is the plains to the NW as this will get the fish and rice once we get a border expansion, but we will lose the river bonus.

My other thought is to use the settler to explore a bit, we don't have to settle immediately as we already have a city researching.

I agree with your suggested city placement based on the info we've got so far. I presume the crab won't be available outside of Kyoto until astronomy?

As you say we don't have to rush, so we could explore a bit first (will this "unusual" start affect when animals/barbs appear though?).

I don't know how much effect settling closer (exploring en route) to Kyoto would have on maintenance.

Ok folks, I picked the name Gipsy Kings for no readily apparent reason :D, hopefully AlanH will change the name soon.

Now lets get the discussion going, some of the other threads are over 4 pages already :)

OK, here are my 2¢.

I´d move warrior 1E to the hill. If nothing interesting shows up then settling 1NW as suggested seems ok. I´m not a big fan of delaying settling, even this would be our 2nd city, because for practical purposes this will work as our primary city on the mainland.

On standard GOTM people try to replicate a starting save with the announced settings, but this seems harder with all this mysterious environment. Not sure if it will be doable. Anyone brave enough to try?

Ok, I'm available, but will be on vacation from Aug 24th thru Sept 1st. If that is not a problem, I'm in.....

4 pages on this stuff already? I prefer to just jump in and do it. Does earliest conquest victory mean the fastest in the real world? :)

I reckon Settler 1 square SW, if there's any probs move warrior 1 SW and settler to same square. If no probs then settler NW ready to settle plains square next turn. Warrior E if no settler problems.

I'm totally open to other suggestions though!

I'm going to play my broken record one last time for each team:


Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=180489) for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest.

Anything I post there will NOT be repeated individually in every team thread. You may even find some useful information there now :p

OK, here are my 2¢.

I´d move warrior 1E to the hill. If nothing interesting shows up then settling 1NW as suggested seems ok. I´m not a big fan of delaying settling, even this would be our 2nd city, because for practical purposes this will work as our primary city on the mainland.

On standard GOTM people try to replicate a starting save with the announced settings, but this seems harder with all this mysterious environment. Not sure if it will be doable. Anyone brave enough to try?

I agree, first move the warrior 1 east....It would be nice to be on the ocean and river for the second city...

Hi Jeff, no probs with the vacation, going somewhere nice?

Warrior 1E is obviously the correct initial move.

For research, we are not going to get anything quickly, I normaly go for Animal Husbandry first to see the Horses followed by BW. Japan is not very good as we don't have the prerequisite for either tech, one of only 3 civs that dosen't start with Agri, Hunting or Mining, and the only one of those that dosen't have Mysticism for a run at an early religion.

The only second level techs we can go for are sailing and pottery, anybody fancy some early cottages?

Even if we do settle 1 NW, fish and rice being on the fat cross (which is nice) doesn't mean we will be able to work them any soon cause no culture will be generated before a obelisk is built. So how about researching mysticism first?

After that, mining and BW (mainly for slavery, or else we won`t be to build stuff in Kyoto - sushi paradise :yumyum: , lots of food). Also good to spot copper, I think will be needing good defense rather soon (raging barbs!):eek:

The rest of the worker techs (Agr, AH, Pottery, Hunting) should be highly determined by our environment which is yet to be discovered, but if no copper nearby, then Archery will be mandatory.

How about build orders? My 1st thoughts are warrior(s) for scouting while growing the city to size 2 or 3, changing to an obelisk as soon as it is available. After that a workboat (while growing to the fatcross) and a worker.

Edit: I just read the maintenance thread and realized that maybe it is *not* advisable to settle on mainland for a while (maybe not before getting our 1st tech) because of the -7gp distance upkeep. Maybe then scouting for some 7/8 turns might lead us to a better start.

Hi

You currently have two players not checked in. Has anyone emailed or PM'd them? You also have at least two vacations coming up. There is currently one player on standby - retro V. Would you like me to ask him/her to join you?

Hi

You currently have two players not checked in. Has anyone emailed or PM'd them? You also have at least two vacations coming up. There is currently one player on standby - retro V. Would you like me to ask him/her to join you?

That would be me :) , I have both PM'd and emailed them, I sent the emails on Friday.

I think we can take retro V, the more the merrier :D

So I'm a pikey then, cool :D Hi everybody.

Looking around, I see some UK players like me. But you'll mostly see me in the middle of the night GMT, suffering from insomnia over the summer nights. We're starting tomorrow aren't we? That was close getting in, thanks for having me btw.

Only played half a dozen C4 games so far, the latest 2 have been on monarch though cos I find it too easy below that. Not saying I'm uber at all, I'm not. My weaknesses are raging barbs [check] and fast conquests [check], sorry :lol: So I'll get warmed up with a couple of quick emporer games with these criteriae.

As for the game in hand, settling on the beach looks as good a place as any, provided we can expand the borders soonish (what are the traits? aggy and ...?) without detracting too long from mobilising a barb offensive. We prolly want to finance the science deficit by raiding barbie towns. I don't know, maybe there's not that much room for them to settle, in which case we can march straight into our nearest neighbour's territory. Make friends with the other side of the globe (aggresive AIs: possible?), then turn them against each other, keep them weak by keeping them busy.

Not sure what we can do with Kyoto. Build a centralised Palace asap, then give the island away ? :lol: With a galley load of Cover promoted axes waiting offshore to raze it right away.

Um, no more plans from me. I know it's not innovative stuff but I'm still learning the ropes. And this is my first SG, so please excuse my poor etiquette if I slip up. Looking forward to this, Go Gypsy Kings!!

Hey Retro, nice to have you with us.

Some nice ideas in there, like getting cash out of barb towns.

I would say conquest is one of my weak spots as well, unfortunately. Still, im sure my builder tendencies can be quelled ;)

I don't think we'll be able to get rid of our capital esily (AI's probably won't want it, and even if they did, I don't think we could raze it by recapturing it). Moving the palace asap will be important though.

We might not have to build many cities ourselves (just the first 2 or 3?), maybe just capturing barb and AI cities will do.

I haven't played one of these SGOTMs, so might take a back seat and watch the first couple of rounds to see how it goes before trying my hand.

Checking in, sorry I'm one of the latest. I'll read more and contribute to the discussion later today but I wanted to get a word in now so you'd know I'm here.

Due to not having played a proper game with raging barbs or standard sized maps I've decided to get warmed up :D

Here's a similar savegame to what's coming up if anyone else wants to try it out. It might look completely different. In fact, the only part of the map I've doctored is the capital island. This shouldn't make much difference as we don't know where any metals lay nearby the mainland territory, or how much room, if any, there will be for expansion. The important thing is when the second city is planted it will cost 7gpt in maintenance as has been anounced by AlanH. All other factors are the same: monarch, raging, aggy AI, 7 neighbours.

Despite all the dissimilarities, this mockgame could help people, like me, who haven't played many games, to foresee what to expect in an early game with these settings. Hope it helps anyway.

Hi RetroV and archath, welcome to the team.

I have decided on this rosta:-

Jeff1787 (away 24/8 to 1/9)
Jon Shaw
igelkott (away until 20/8)
Conquistador 63
archath
AndrewN
RetroV

Baised on the order in which people first posted on the signup thread.

Now all we need is a suckervolunteer to start us off at the relevant time.

We are in no rush, and I think we still have to consider our opening moves further.

I am still of the opinion we should spend a few turns exploring with the settler to see if there is a better place to settle, remember we won't get a border expansion from the second city without building something or getting a religion, so I think we should consider this a normal game where we don't have a second city immediately.

And on refelection heading for BW first might be a good idea, we are after a conquest so the quicker our opponents disappear under hordes of axemen the better :lol:

Due to not having played a proper game with raging barbs or standard sized maps I've decided to get warmed up :D

Here's a similar savegame to what's coming up if anyone else wants to try it out. It might look completely different. In fact, the only part of the map I've doctored is the capital island. This shouldn't make much difference as we don't know where any metals lay nearby the mainland territory, or how much room, if any, there will be for expansion. The important thing is when the second city is planted it will cost 7gpt in maintenance as has been anounced by AlanH. All other factors are the same: monarch, raging, aggy AI, 7 neighbours.

Despite all the dissimilarities, this mockgame could help people, like me, who haven't played many games, to foresee what to expect in an early game with these settings. Hope it helps anyway.
:goodjob:

Before reading your post I made another attempt at producing a test game, which I attach below.
135020

Regarding the play order, I'd be glad to help and start it but I'm afraid save will be released too late in the night for me. Maybe Retro V would flike to do it so that would help him with his insomnia? ;)

I will be gone tonight through Thursday morning.

I agree with the slow and steady city placement (though i wouldn't have thought of it) After all it is marathon so we halve the opportunity cost of movement.

Starting Thursday I will hopefully be able to play some practice games or maybe those test games, and start actually contributing.

Lol. Yea, the hours I'll spend deciding where to put that first settler should get me through to daylight. I don't mind taking the first round but I think someone with more experience should take it.

AndrewN, your idea about exploring before settling seems good. Research would be twice as fast until we settle. We could even head as far east as possible in order to get closer to the capital.

EDIT: Ah, the plan to explore first had been mentioned elsewhere already. Well, I tried it out and this is how it went.

---Settling immediately reduces research to 50%. Working the floodplains, it will take 16 turns to discover mining (for example). However, Osaka grows after 11 turns and maintenance goes up to 9gpt, reducing research to 40% assuming we can work another commerce tile, leaving 6 turns still for mining. After 17 turns, Kyoto grows, research on mining is complete and then focused on bronze working at 50% with the increased commerce; this is projected at 30 turns. At 22 turns, the warriors are complete (maybe we could have gone for a worker in Osaka, no growth would have meant no rise in maintenance, shaving a turn off of mining and bringing bronze working 1 turn further along in the details of this preview). At 23 turns, Osaka has grown again, religion was at last founded in a distant land, research is reduced again due to increased maintenance, leaving 22 turns for bronze working, and 12 and 13 turns left for expansion of Kyoto and Osaka respectively. This is assuming the second city was working a floodplains and standard 2F1C plots.

---Exploring first means researching at 100%. Mining is complete in 10 turns then switched to bronze working, which is forecast to complete in 19 turns. But after Kyoto expands on the 17th turn, this forecast is reduced by one turn. So, after 28 turns, bronze working was complete and I revolted immediately to slavery, selecting pottery next which, after the turn of anarchy, was to take 11 turns to complete. In this game, which could have gone a number of ways depending on the huts we pop in our game, I settled Osaka on the 33rd turn :lol: next to copper and corn on the coast with some clams or something out to sea (but out of reach until the culture pop) and costing only 5gpt in maintenance, adding 2 turns to the discovery of pottery.

---To summarise, 34 turns after settling immediately we will be 11 turns away from whips, but with cities at size 2 and 3 both about to grow that will only nominally affect the research. On the other hand, roughly 30 turns of exploring will allow us to settle exactly where the metal is and much closer to our capital, giving us better research in future, but no extra warriors (or an initial worker), and only basic production with a size 1 Osaka (which is debatable considering we may or may not be next to copper in the inital starting area).

All in all, I think, if we're going to explore, we may as well get as close to the capital as the landmass allows and wait further until we can be sure of having copper as soon as bronze working is complete. Also, by this time, we can whip the rest of a workboat in Kyoto.

If, during the exploration, we pop a hut and get some gold, I don't know whether it would be a good idea to settle before we know where copper is just because we could run science at a deficit. That's something to consider.

Retro, that was interesting, I forgot the upkeep would go up as the city increased in size.

The other alternative that I can see is to settle near the flood plains and go for pottery immediately while building a worker to stop growth. According to my calculations we will learn pottery at the same time the worker finishes so we can start the money rolling in.

Anyway, I have downloaded the start, I will take a quick look at it, remember no playing :nono: ;)

--- In this game, which could have gone a number of ways depending on the huts we pop in our game, I settled Osaka on the 33rd turn :lol: next to copper and corn on the coast with some clams or something out to sea (but out of reach until the culture pop) and costing only 5gpt in maintenance, adding 2 turns to the discovery of pottery.

---To summarise, 34 turns after settling immediately we will be 11 turns away from whips, but with cities at size 2 and 3 both about to grow that will only nominally affect the research. On the other hand, roughly 30 turns of exploring will allow us to settle exactly where the metal is and much closer to our capital, giving us better research in future, but no extra warriors (or an initial worker), and only basic production with a size 1 Osaka (which is debatable considering we may or may not be next to copper in the inital starting area).

All in all, I think, if we're going to explore, we may as well get as close to the capital as the landmass allows and wait further until we can be sure of having copper as soon as bronze working is complete. Also, by this time, we can whip the rest of a workboat in Kyoto.

If, during the exploration, we pop a hut and get some gold, I don't know whether it would be a good idea to settle before we know where copper is just because we could run science at a deficit. That's something to consider.

I'm not completely convinced that delaying settling too much would be that good. :confused: But if you do decide to take our settler for a walk remember that lions can appear as early as turn 8, :eek: so you'd better scort him with the warrior.

Also, I've opened the game (but didn't play it!:) ) and there is no blue circle near the settler... :hmm:

OK, now waiting for your orders (but eager to start playing! :cool:

Waiting 900 years might be a bit risky, because of the animals and trying to catch up with the AI. But think of the benefits. We'll have whips, chops, access to copper, we could even settle right on top of our first targets :evil:

Something I forgot about, though, there won't be any goody huts. Apparently, xOTMs never have them.

How would having an earlier worker and growing a cottage straight away help in the long run. I'm not saying it wouldn't be the best plan, it's certainly the safest. We'd still have to manage with crippling maintenance costs until we move the palace. And you know how these games like to start off with metal far out of the way.

Something I forgot about, though, there won't be any goody huts. Apparently, xOTMs never have them.

Thats right, the guys in charge think the chance of one person/team getting a tech or settler and another getting barbs might be a bit unfair :D. I remember in GOTM 5 I got 3 settlers and a tech from the goody huts :lol:

In settling terms, it will probably be best to settle quite quickly, the risk of losing the settler to an animal is too great, even if it is guarded by the warrior there is still a reasonable chance of losing the fight. 8 to 10 turns should be the maximum.

Also, I've opened the game (but didn't play it! ) and there is no blue circle near the settler...

I have had this sometimes; not sure why. As I tend to ignore the stupid AI and settle where I want I don't worry about it :)

Ok, we settle sooner rather than later. I admit I only ran into 2 wolves on my test expedition, didn't even bother to heal as there was no real pressure not being the actual game.

Which direction do we head then? I looked at the savegame and it seems like the capital is closer to the west rather than east around the back of the globe.

How about techs? Whipping is too important to divert from, I think. Population only increases maintenance, so we can frequently kill them off and put them to good use.

Oh, and I have just thought of something. We are going to be doing alot of fighting in this game and my personal rule is, unless there is a very good reason, KEEP THE CITY.

In the SG forum, I have seen a number of people who automatically raise the AI's cities, I think they got this from Civ 3. There is very little chance of a captured city flipping away from us, and even if it dose we won't lose the army. Capturing a size 5 city could save us 100 turns before the new city gets to that size again.

Very good reasons include, but are not limited to
tundra/ice city. I hate the crappy little tundra cities that the AI builds. We only want good cities in this game :)
we can't afford it. If we are close to 0% research then we can burn AI cities to slow them down, if the AI survives then they will replace them for us anyway
its too close to other, better cities

Keeping cities is a good thing. We can whip the bejeezus out of them to replen the troops. Even if they do flip back we can always march back in for more dough :D

P.S. Are we gonna wait another day for feedback from everyone else? Or are you gonna get us started? Some of our team haven't been too active yet, they may need more time or they might be waiting for things to get started before sharing their thoughts, I dunno :p

I agree with AndrewN, we should limit our walk in the park for around 8 turns (not that I haven't seen animals as early as turn 6). In a test game with the save I produced, I was walking westward (followed but not escorted by the warrior) when a panther attacked warrior turn 6. He survived and I decided to settle next turn. Then the warrior popped a hut and angry barbs killed him, beelining for Osaka which was razed in a couple of turns :lol:

Anyway if the majority of our team decides otherwise I have no problem with that, I think it is a close call.

Changing subject, I was reading another team´s (Peanut IIRC) thread :eek: *from SGOTM1* :D and think it could be a nice guidance for us, in terms of dealing with playing order, log reports and assorted matters.

OK, I'll take the save and see if there is anything to be seen from the hill to the west and I'll post back. I can't wait anylonger, I must play something :D

That hill is to the east, don't you mean :p ?

Go for it Andrew, get this show on the road. I can't wait either. Good luck with it man.

OK, done it. Remember, the first player must move the warrior to the hill on the first turn.

http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/1264/civ4screenshot0003fm9.th.jpg (http://img391.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0003fm9.jpg)

It may have made our decision easier. If we settle north of the sheep then we can mine and work the grassland gems for 7gpt (+1 +5 for gems +1 for river), just what the distance cost is :). We will also be able to use the sheep and rice, all neatly inside our borders without expansion.

That hill is to the east, don't you mean :p ?

Go for it Andrew, get this show on the road. I can't wait either. Good luck with it man.

East, West. who cares or can tell the difference.

I suppose now is a good time to mention that I have a slight blindspot when it comes to remembering my left from right and my east from west. If I think about it for a while then I can normally get it right, but in times of excitement then I do make the odd mistake :cry:

Um, I think this means you got to carry on. Rules state no playing out of sequence, or something along those lines. This is cool, though. I think anyone would have started like this. Just keep going with it, it looks like a good start.

I have no problems continuing, I will wait until tomorrow to see if any of the others want to chip in.

My tuppence: settle where you said, north of the river (takes 3 turns to get there, but what's the rush), start building a worker and researching mining.

My tuppence: settle where you said, north of the river (takes 3 turns to get there, but what's the rush), start building a worker and researching mining.

Couldn't agree more :goodjob:

I also suggest you carry on now, the rest of the guys seems to be away for a while.

I've been busy, but I'll get caught up on the posts tonight....

Igelkott's away for about a fortnight, then not long after he's back, Jeff's away for a week. Maybe you, Jeff, should continue so you can get in as many turns as you can before you go.

Hey guys, sorry if I've been quiet, I'd kind of run out of ideas based on the limited start info.

I agree that warrior's move has cleared up a lot of choices for us. I'm 100% behind settling north of the sheep, seems crazy not to.

Once settled, the city is safe from animals, so maybe set the warrior doing a loop around the capital to explore the local environment?

Culture is less important with this start location, so I'd suggest mining > bronze working, then look at getting the food resources up for a bit of whipping action. Hopefully we'll find copper nearby, we can look toward settling by it asap and pump out some axemen to hold off the barbs, which of course would get them promoted a bit as well.

OK, what is the order? I can take it when I get back home this afternoon....or I can take it anytime Friday......Jeff

Might sound obvious, but just to be on the safe side: settler 1 NE this turn, then next turn move warrior 1st to the hill SE to check surroundings before moving settler.
I'll also be away from Thursday morning, returning Friday evening my local time (GMT-3?).

Good luck and have fun all.

OK folks, you know what they say about plans and enemies? :lol:

T 0 4000BC Move warrior, find nice city spot for our second city. Research set to mining, due in 10 at max (for a few turns :) )

T 1 3970BC Warrior SE, another gems and a gold resource spotted, change of plans

IBT, meet Izzy, she dosen't like us, its a hard life :)

T 2 3940BC Found Osaka start worker. We now make 1gpt at 40% science and -1gpt at 50% :(, I'll alternernate 40% and 50% research.

T 3 3910BC Warrior spots a hut

IBT, Izzy pops the hut, if we didn't before we now have a target. I want Izzy dead, DEAD do you hear?

T 4 3880BC

T 5 3850BC

T 6 3820BC

IBT, the borders of Kyoto expand. There are some islands in reach of the capital with sailing

T 7 3790BC

T 8 3760BC

T 9 3730BC

T 10 3700BC

T 11 3670BC

T 12 3640BC

T 13 3610BC

T 14 3580BC

T 15 3550BC

T 16 3520BC A group of bears move next to our warrior, as I am on a forested hill I fortify for a turn.

IBT, the bears attack and we win, 1.2 strength left, 5 turns to heal.

T 17 3490BC Mining in, research set to BW due in 30. Kyoto grows and we can now research at 50% for 0gpt.

T 18 3460BC

T 19 3430BC

T 20 3400BC


OK, thats 20 turns. BW due in 27 turns, but that will come down. Work boat due in 3 in Kyoto and worker due in 5 in Osaka, next player must mine the gems as a priority

A group of panthers appeared near the fortified warror and may attack in the IBT but we should win as we are fortified on a forested hill.

Pickies for the lurkers (I assume we have some)
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/3064/civ4screenshot0004ht2.th.jpg (http://img251.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0004ht2.jpg)http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/64/civ4screenshot0005ym2.th.jpg (http://img251.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0005ym2.jpg)

and the save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Gipsy_Kings_SG002_BC3400_01.Civ4SavedGame)

Rosta.

Jeff1787 - on deck
Jon Shaw
igelkott (away until 20/8)
Conquistador 63
archath
AndrewN - played
RetroV - up now

we will keep to the rosta for now. Everybody playes 20 turns for the first round, then probably 10 for the rest of the game unless we get into some heavy modern age combat when we may go to 5

There are huts?!?

Thx Andrew, consider this a got it. I'll play it after BigBrother, but will look at the state of play first after Gordon Ramsey :D

There are huts?!?

THere was one and I was one turn away from it :cry: . If there was any others then Izzys scouts will have poped them.

Its interesting, you can see which teams got that hut by looking at the scores on the results page :)

Thx Andrew, consider this a got it. I'll play it after BigBrother, but will look at the state of play first after Gordon Ramsey :D

You watch big brother :confused: get off my thread, I will have nothing to do with big brother watchers :lol:

LoL, eezamanna.

EDIT first impressions: that's a better site. I predict nothing but forests and grass north of that river, whereas here we get floodplains and gold and a couple of hills. Gonna mine those rocks asap, then, if BW comes in on my round, gonna look around those Phillipines before throwing some nets out around the capital. I'm not gonna get the chance though, I think, cos the borders won't expand into that coastline for a while.

When the worker finishes, do I get a settler going for a 3rd city, or get our defences going ready for barbs?

2nd EDIT: gonna leave it for 24 hrs. Need to hear from more of the team before going in blind. This first turnset is gonna be the first and probably most crucial 100 turns in the game. Please say what you think everyone.

From my point of view, and I'm not very experienced, I think waltzing into the nearest neighbour won't be the best plan, even if it's all about the fastest conquest. I reckon rushing to expand our initial territory would serve us best in the long run. Yea, it probably didn't sound like I thought like that previously, but I'm learning new things all the time in my inexperience, and it seems like early financial troubles with new cities pay off in the long run (I'm gonna play some games with this in mind to see it it's true).

Taking a backseat to find out who and where our potential but temporary allies lie should mean we won't run into a stalemate later on, where our very precise goal of conquest is paramount.

From my limited experience on this level (only played 1 monarch GOTM game, currently playing a emperor one), my 2 cents: barbs will show up soon, most likely around the end of your turn, not sure if they being raging this could be even worse.
This probably means we won't afford to hang around with only 1 warrior. To be honest, if things works like I've seen in my previous games we will need a handful of early troops just for scouting/fogbusting (key for avoiding the generation of barbs near our city). After that, when/if copper shows up we should think about a 3rd city.
Research-wise, after BW I'm for AH (sheep and locating horses) and possibly hunting/archery if copper can't be hooked soon.
About our capital, I'd throw that net 1st, and when food is abundant and we're under slavery I'd whip another fishing boat for scouting, but that's just me.
Logging out...I'll be back Friday evening, cyall.

edit:typos

When the worker finishes, do I get a settler going for a 3rd city, or get our defences going ready for barbs?

Its interesting you should ask that, I was thinking along the same lines. We have a problem as all our cities are going to cost at least 8gpt until we get COL.

If we balance our cities carefully then we should be OK, when Osaka can work both gems then we can support another city and a third when (if) Osaka works the gold tile. What we need is a good site for a production city for our second city, hopefully next to the cooper resource.

Then our 3rd city can be heavily cottaged for cash, possibly the original city site we were looking at on the coast. At this point we should be OK.

In answer to your question, if you do a warrior when the worker is finished and start a settler when we reach size 3.

For research I would normally do Hunting, AH and writing, but I think we need to sidestep to Mysticism for the Obelisks.

On religion, none dropped during my turns, which is a bit of a suprise, but Izzy normally gets the early ones which is an advantage

Do you think we have a chance of whipping Stonehenge in Kyoto, it's not like there's anything more important to be producing there? Can't remember offhand whether its' effects are intercontinental or not.

EDIT: played my turn. What I did:

1. 3370BC. Warrior healed to 2.0 (I hate that) so goes trekking north through the woods.
2. 3340BC. ...
IBT. Boat finished, doing another.
3. 3310BC. Kyoto kicks off its' fishing industry. Micro'd Osaka onto the gems, worker still due in 2 turns but we can add 10% to research.
4. 3280BC. ...
IBT. Osaka finishes worker, going for warrior next. Micro'd back to the sheep for better production.
5. 3250BC. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go (mining gems).
6. 3220BC. ...
7. 3190BC. ... somewhere along the lines research went back down when the gold ran out because of the new setup in Osaka.
IBT. Kyoto grows.
8. 3160BC. Research up to 60% due to a boom in the fishing industry.
9. 3130BC. Found Izzy on a true Iberian peninsula to the north. Seen her first settler pair coming across the land bridge, so I'm guessing she doesn't have any room above her and will be fast heading our way.
10. 3100BC. Can't explore the peninsula any further, Madrid stretches from coast to coast. So the warrior is ordered to map out the western coastline before returning home to see the wags. Osaka workers find some strange coloured stones which appear to be worth a lot of money. Research is boosted to 70%. Workers sent to the southern gemfields.
11. 3070BC. ...
12. 3040BC. Barcelona founded right behind our warrior, completely cutting off the landbridge to Iberia. Workers start swinging their pickaxes again.
13. 3010BC. ... 15. 2950BC.
IBT. Osaka completes warrior, starts another. We ought to have 3 warriors around by the time barbs appear. Kyoto grows as well.
16. 2920BC. Took an executive decision to waste one of Kyoto's prime sea resources, brought a citizen in as an engineer instead. It was only adding 1 slice of bread anyway because of ill health, research was not affected; BW is still due in only 2 turns. If I left the citizen working the sea, we would have been running at -1 gold. The new warrior heads south of Osaka while the old one is nearly home, diverted to the hill overlooking the east desert, seems like a good spot to bust fog.
17. 2890BC. Second mine excavated.
IBT. BW in, revolted immediately to slavery. Good news, from their viewpoint over the desert, our trusty warriors spot a brown smudge in the sand. Closer inspection shows it to be tougher stuff than the wooden clubs they are holding. Yes, we have copper nearby. Research set to hunting and animal husbandry.
18. 2860BC. Worker sent to chop the forests/plains next to the river. We're gonna want to irrigate that plot later.
IBT. Buddha begins His teaching in a distant land, and the anarchy period is over.
19. 2830BC. Whipped the last 4 turns of Kyoto's workboat, lol. It wasn't at max efficiency anyway, what with health and happiness over the limits. Killing one citizen off neutralised these issues, and the next workboat would be finished even quicker.
IBT. Next workboat started, due in 6.
20. 2800BC. Kyoto's fishing industry begins a sideline in clams, now. Not as nice as fish, but good for the libido.

And that's that. (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Gipsy_Kings_SG002_BC2800_01.Civ4SavedGame)

Do you think we have a chance of whipping Stonehenge in Kyoto, it's not like there's anything more important to be producing there? Can't remember offhand whether its' effects are intercontinental or not.

Possibly, it must be worth the attempt. As for intercontinental, the only descriptions I have is 'an obelisk in every city' so I assume it dose.

Even if we fail then we will get a nice chunk of cash to help with the economy :)

Also, quite nicely it will produce great prophets which when merged give +2 hammers, +5 gold which is very useful in a high food city

...the only descriptions I have is 'an obelisk in every city' so I assume it does.Yea, it does then.Even if we fail then we will get a nice chunk of cash to help with the economy :) Failure is not an option :p

If we want it, then the next guy is gonna have to put Hunting on hold and get mysticism straight away. The 3rd or 4th workboat is nearly finished, we don't need anymore of them really, except for exploring. As it stands, Kyoto is growning every 5-6 turns, lol, but it's running into real efficiency issues without a traderoute to the mainland. It can grow to about 8 with 4 angry citizens, then we can do a huge whipping of 4 to finish Stonehenge off quite soon. I'm not so good at crunching the numbers, but what I do know is that that would be the best use of slaves, rather than whipping several small things, as Kyoto would only get 1 unhappines hit, rather than several.

And if anyone wants a look:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v673/retroV/untitled.jpg

I agree, Mysticism sould be researched as a priority and we should attempt Stonehenge in the capital ASAP.

Izzy is probably the best enemy we could have, not too aggressive and not financial :)

We will need to build our second city over near the copper, over on the coast between the copper and stone so that we will get the fishes when the border expands is a possibility. An added bonus is when the borders expand in both cities it will cut off the southern half of the contenent from Izzy for us to settle :)

Oh and retro (and everybody else) could you post your turn set in a new post so there is no chance of anyone missing them, Thanks

Rosta.

Jeff1787 - up now
Jon Shaw - on deck
igelkott (away until 20/8)
Conquistador 63
archath
AndrewN
RetroV - played

So next its Jeff and then me?

I'll have to look at retro's final save once I get home.

Sounds like its all going well, though hard to picture some of it.

Probably worth the warrior near copper scouting that area out, as it's probably where our next city should go.

I agree about Stonehenge- cash if we fail or border expansion/GP if we get it: it's a win/win scenario.

I'm pretty sure Stonehenge is intercontinental from island maps 'n' stuff in the past.

Maybe we should build 2 more warriors (fog busting) and then a settler for the bronze site, unless the scouting shows a rival near it and we need to hurry to grab it first.

Sorry about the stealth post of my turnset.

The rundown at the moment is: Kyoto is growing like mad with 2 improved fish, and about 5 turns from improving clams. Good thing that it's on a plains hill island. Osaka hasn't grown yet, but will in 2 or 3 turns. We're halfway through our 3rd warrior.

Our only neighbour, so far, is comfortably out of the way up north. Noone has appeared to the south yet. We should easily get 3 or 4 cities set up before all the land is taken. Then we need to relocate the palace.

We got stone nearby, but doubt we will get chance to build Pyramids, or any wonders for that matter, on the mainland. Not while we got barbs to contend with. Busting all that fog will be expensive. It's covered in forest, mostly, so that's a lot of warriors to deploy. Pretty sure we're gonna have quite a few skirmishes sooner or later.

EDIT: ouch. Looking at the score graph, we're 3rd from the bottom. Dunno what that means since it's early days. But where did everyone else get there extra points from?

EDIT2: according to the submissions page, there's an extra name in our team lineup; Ronnie1.

Hmm, this is interesting. You guys have built many more warriors that I would. I normally only build the 1 to fortify in the capital.

On relocating the capital, I was thinking we didn't need to, only build the forbidden palace, but then it occured to me we can build a new palace much earlier than the FP :)

I have no idea what the others did differently, it will make interesting reading when we are done

Ronnie1 was in the initially assigned to this team, however the only contact I have had from him was a PM saying he was still interested, so I told him to come here and post with the rest of us.

The warriors can go out and act as lookouts. The less fog there is, the slower the barbs can spawn, and the further away they spawn, giving us more time to react.

(Double post, ah well. To sin is to live).

Jeff says earlier he can only play friday. Why not pass it to Jon if he can play tonight, then it gets passed to Jeff tomorrow?

(Double post, ah well. To sin is to live).

Jeff says earlier he can only play friday. Why not pass it to Jon if he can play tonight, then it gets passed to Jeff tomorrow?

I'll leave it for now, SG's normally work on a 24hr got it/48 hr to play so there is still plenty of time, plus we are not really in a rush. Some teams haven't even started yet :)

If it gets close to the end then we will up the speed a bit if necessary.

OK, I've got it. I'll take my turns today after I take some time reading the posts and looking at the save......

Guys, I am very sorry but I am going to have to drop out. I viewed one of the other teams threads. I now realize it is against the rules, I should have known better....very stupid on my part. Anyway, by me dropping out, it won't jeopardize the team's chances of winning. Good luck!!!

Hi all,

I've just opened the 2800BC save. Good job so far. :goodjob:

However I have a few doubts/thoughts I wanted to share about our current tasks:

1.Kyoto: has a hammer overflow from last whipping invested in a workboat. That is ok to keep it but I'd change production next turn and insert a warrior in the front of the build queue to alleviate unhappiness, about to occur when city grows to size 4. Also there is a worker in that queue, what is the purpose of it?

2.Osaka: when it grows we will surely work next mined gems. So I don't see the purpose of worker chopping those trees now (hurry a warrior?), much better to keep them (maybe pre-chopped) to use when we build a settler, so that does not delay our city growth. So, I'd stop chopping a turn before chop completed, build roads/pre-chop in the other 2 forested tiles, so we would be able to build the settler faster. In fact I guess we could start to build it right after the warrior, I wouldn't build the barracks which is in the queue now.

Also I think that, when we can afford to do it, we could keep a warrior patrolling the lands next to Barcelona... and try to steal a worker ;)

About Stonehenge, I'm ok with it. What I begin to wonder is if an Oracle (CS or MC) slingshot would be at all possible in this game. Wouldn't it be lovely to have early macemen in a conquest-oriented game? Oh, wait: our civ doesn't have macemen: we have samurais! :ninja:

Any comments?

NOOO!!

Did you actually read through it, or just a misclick? You can check with a mod if you think it was an accident. It shouldn't have that much bearing this early in the game.

Don't give up now man :p

..worker in the queue..Sorry about that. I had notions of impeding growth in the capital, because as you said unhappiness is setting in. I reckon we could cope with the lost citizen. There's no rush to defend the city, barbs aren't gonna build ships for a while yet. More importantly, stonehenge should be started unless we want to chance losing it. There aren't any more hammers in the ocean, so the lost citizens from unhappiness won't make any difference (research will be hurt though)....Oracle...slingshot...We haven't got any marble, I doubt we can get it before the AI.

I think I read too much, and then I realized that I was getting info I should not have been privy to....I sent PM to AlanH....I'll wait and see what he says.....

Sorry, guys. Rules are rules. Reading them is not an optional extra.

There's no rush to defend the city, barbs aren't gonna build ships for a while yet. More importantly, stonehenge should be started unless we want to chance losing it. There aren't any more hammers in the ocean, so the lost citizens from unhappiness won't make any difference (research will be hurt though).We haven't got any marble, I doubt we can get it before the AI.

I beg to differ. By not working being able to work the 4th sea tile we will be losing 2f/2c (but the angry citizen will be eating 2 of our precious food). So we won't be able to grow to pop 8 as needed as fast and research will take a hit.

About Jeff1787, I'm sorry to hear about that. But since I understand from your post it was not just a misclick I doubt you'll be allowed to continue with us. Anyways, let's wait for an official word.

Damn, lol. Make sure, you don't tell anyone what you saw. I'm sure you could be forgiven for your first little mishap.

EDIT: You're most likely right, Conq. If there's hammer overflow, then it's only gonna take, what, 5 turns to do one warrior.

I love the Gipsy Kings!

Bombeleooooo Bombeleoooo

:lol: , please don't tell us what you saw, cause in that case I guess our entire team would be disqualified. I am no captain of this team but I agree entirely with AlanH. Rules are rules.

a1Basco is a team CFR spy, lol. No wonder they're doing so well :P

EDIT: what happened, then?

Is Jeff out?

To the best of my understanding from AlanH's post, Jeff1787 is out and then Jon Shaw should be playing next, from the 2800BC save.

Typical, I spend the evening playing civ 4 instead of checking in here every 10 minutes and all this excitement happens :), I sometimes wonder if AlanH actually plays the game.

Sorry to lose you Jeff, but I can understand the temptation. Thanks for admitting it, but I don't think you have jepodised our chances of winning: unless we are going for the wooden spoon :lol:

Jon, that makes you up, can you take it from here? Conquistador, as igelkott is away, you will follow in the hot seat :D

Rosta.

Jeff1787 - alas is no more :cry:
Jon Shaw - up
igelkott (away until 20/8)
Conquistador 63 - On deck
archath
AndrewN
RetroV

OK, I have been thinking about it and I think we need a warrior in out capital, before we start Stonehenge, the number of unhappy citizens will get bigger, I think it will be 2 at about size 5.

Also, we definately don't need a worker in the capital, unless he comes with a rubber dingy :)

OK, I've downloaded the 2800 BC save. Comments at this point:

1. I have changed the worker in the capital to a warrior.
2. There are 4 turns left for hunting. Shall I change the research order to do mysticism next (7 turns)? Currently it is still AH (14 turns)
3. I believe there may be some mileage in whipping small items (e.g. warriors) *during* contruction of Stonehenge. Excess hammers from whipping could carry over to Stonehenge, allowing us to "partially whip" stonehenge during its constuction whilst building other things.

The plan would run something like this:

i. Rush warrior, queue stonehenge next
ii. warrior produced, excess hammers go to stonehenge (try to maximise the number of excess hammers)
iii. continue building stonehenge for 10 turns until unhappiness wears off, then insert another item (e.g. another warrior) at the top of the build queue and rush it.
iv. other item produced, excess shields again pass to our stonehenge project

Let me know what you think. I'm free this afternoon and tomorrow to play, but would like to see if anyone has suggestions on my comments first ideally :)

Looks good. Except this is epic; whipping upsets the people for 15 turns. Plus, I've already whipped a boat, so that's nearly 30 turns of unhappiness to build SH with. Might as well let the warrior run by itself until you finish Myst. Up to you, though. Maybe it works out different.

Good point, I'd forgotten it was epic. I think I'd need to leave it until the current whipping unhappiness is gone before whipping again. Currently the capital is balanced on healthiness (3-3) and unhappiness (5-5), so any extra pop will create unhealthniess and unhappiness. Growth will occur in 4 turns.

I think the overflow from your rush should go towards a warrior, as one unhappiness is due to "demanding protection" already. The workboat could go after that.

Don't worry too much about running a perfect city, wrt health or happies. It's more important to get SH started asap. None of the citizens in the capital are contributing any hammers (except specialists), so losing them to unhappiness is just tough love :lol: All we lose is 2 gold.

I'll try and work it out and re-edit:
Without stone, each whipped pop equals 30 hammers. So we need 6 pop in Kyoto in order to whip 3 of them, giving 90 hammers towards SH. SH requires 120 hammers iirc, and the centre plot in Kyoto is taking 2 hammers away from that total each turn. By removing a citizen and using an engineer to bring that amount of hammers to 3 each turn, we can potentially build SH in 10 turns (3 hammers * 10 turns + 90 hammers from whipping = 120).

I haven't got the game in front of me, though, so I don't even know if Kyoto will grow to size 6 in 10 turns :lol: It's just a rough guide, it's down to you what you do.

OK, I'll just get going then. I'll stick with the workboat to pump out pop for rushing and head for Mysticism right now.

2710: Notified Hinduism was founded in a distant land
2680: Warrior produced (forest chopped). Sent to fog bust on the forested hill south of the gold. Barracks up next. Sent worker to build roads and pre-chop other 2 forests
2650: First barb warrior spotted SW of the captial by out exploring warrior
2620: Second barb warrior spotted E of our capital by our fogbusting warrior
2???: Oops, missed some items. Completed mysticism (stonehenge queued behind warrior) and hunting. Existing barbs all killed but new ones appearing all over the place (2 coming from SE, one down by exploring warrior in SW). "Most powerful civs" completed by Thucydides Spain is 5th...we're last :(
Exploring warrior attacked the barb Warrior damaged (1.3/2) from just killing a Spanish scout. Odds: 96.4%. Outcome: loss. Damn.
2440: Both warriors by our capital were attacked by barbs and won. Baracks completed, warrior up next.
2410: 2 more barb warriors appeared. (1 W, one SE)
2380: West barb attacked and lost. Chopped pre-chopped forest to complete a warrior in Osaka. Another barb warrior appears from the North.
2350: West barb attacks and loses. North barb attacks and wins. This puts the North barb on our gems. He is still full strength. Odd for attacking him 79.5%. After our atrocious luck so far I'm not convinced we'll win. Checked my situation: we have one more damaged warrior, and can build another one for next turn if needs be. Plucked up my courage and attacked the barb. Won. Phew.
2320: Kyoto builds warrior and begins work on Stonehenge. I am using a citizen "specialist" as it boosts production time from 90 to 60 turns. Another barb warrior to the west.

I'm not sure if I've done 20 turns now, so am going to pause. 604 turns left in the game: am I meant to play until 600? Save file attached

AIs start with 2 archers on monarch, so ignore Ol' Thucy.

I sometimes wonder if AlanH actually plays the game.

No, I don't. Even if I had time my computer isn't up to it (yet).

Judging by the late response, you don't have much time to mod either :)

Depends how urgent the need is.

Now I see what it's like when editing old posts :) Just noticed you finished your turn.

Bad luck with the barbs, it's only gonna get worse.

Realised SH costs 180 hammers in epic, my calculations were well off.

So, looks like C63 is up now, unless you got 4 more turns to do :)

Hi all you Kings, Sorry for the late post, this is my first SGOTM so I may need a little hand holding at first. If someone could let me know what I need to do next... that would be great!! Thanks Ronnie

Hey, Ronnie. Just follow the game, add your input, make sure we win :)

Thanks for the patience!! I've caught up on all the posts, looks like a fine start, sorry about Jeff. My experience is that AIs tend to shy away from Stonehenge, so we should go for it. Stealing a worker from Izzy would be great, especially if we are ready to hook up the copper in city 3. The last save I looked at was the 2800 save, am I up to speed?? Side note, I have a family commitment from the 18th to the 21st, if I could get in by the 16th that would help.

@ Jon: You may or may not play 4 more turns. But in any event, you need to upload the file to

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/submit/civ4sgotm_submission_list.php
(sorry, couldn't figure out how to insert link, the 'earth' button did not work properly)
so I can pick up the file and continue from that point.

@Ronnie: welcome to the team, I guess we'll need all the help we can get ;)

It sort of looks like it's just us and izzy on this island. Look at that bottleneck above Barcelona. Nice +50% jungle on there. If we declared war and took that square we could cut her off from the capital until she got galleys at least.

I think we need to be getting a settler over to that copper ASAP. We need axemen badly to fight raging barbarians, and I bet we could seriously cripple Isabella if we got her stuck up there north of the land bridge.

Am I right in thinking that sailing wouldn't give us trade access with the capital until we have all that black explored?

The plains tile 2E 1N of Osaka needs a road for future copper access.

I think I would go for pottery next on research for granary/slavery combo not to mention cottages.

It looks like taxes will cause us to lose nearly half of our research when we found another city. I don't know how to strategize with that so I'll just say that sucks.

Anyways my main point is I think we should fight a war of attrition against Isabella, stealing a worker and pillaging and blocking her new settlements to make her weak for later.

Conquistador: I downloaded the save from this thread: did I need to download it from that other place?

I've now uploaded (to the correct place) my savegame file. Hopefully I haven't done anything wrong :confused:

The link is: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Gipsy_Kings_SG002_BC2320_01.Civ4SavedGame

:ninja: Nice work Jon!! :goodjob: Are we looking to build a settler next? Axemen will make the barbarian hordes that are coming soon much easier to deal with, and we will have a chance to have them promoted when we go pay a visit to Izzy.;) After the copper, horses, are usually my top priority. A mobile army offers so many advantages!!:salute: Are we going to consider some type of Oracle slingshot from our third city? Samurais with city raider promotions are very tough!!:ninja:

3. I believe there may be some mileage in whipping small items (e.g. warriors) *during* contruction of Stonehenge. Excess hammers from whipping could carry over to Stonehenge, allowing us to "partially whip" stonehenge during its constuction whilst building other things.

The plan would run something like this:

i. Rush warrior, queue stonehenge next
ii. warrior produced, excess hammers go to stonehenge (try to maximise the number of excess hammers)
iii. continue building stonehenge for 10 turns until unhappiness wears off, then insert another item (e.g. another warrior) at the top of the build queue and rush it.
iv. other item produced, excess shields again pass to our stonehenge project

Let me know what you think. I'm free this afternoon and tomorrow to play, but would like to see if anyone has suggestions on my comments first ideally :)

Good points, Jon. If you guys have been reading the maintenance thread, there's a post by AlanH reminding all teams that says "Apparently, if you add overflow hammers from a whip to a wonder they are *not* divided by 2, as they would be if you pop rushed the wonder directly.". He also states that "For this game, I am not going to define a rule to constrain the use of these tactics, separately or in combination. Feel free to use them".

In our game we're about to begin building SH (180 hammers). To whip it directly, I guess it would cost like 8 pop :eek: (normally 44h/pop on Epic, but down to 22 for a wonder: 8*22=176). Of course if we do build it partially the normal way we would be able to whip it later for less pop.

So I guess we could be building stuff (only useful thing now are fishing boats), with SH in the queue, and whip the boats when it is a few hammers to complete, so the excess hammers would go to SH w/o the 50% penalty. OTOH, the max hammers carried over from the boat are 43, so it would take us some 4 whips (one pop at a time) to build SH (getting 4 "free" boats - or other interesting stuff further techs allows us - in the process). If we whip each 14 turns (the time we need to almost complete a boat and unhappiness to fade) SH would take about 60 turns to complete. Do you guys think this is the correct approach? Or shall we build it the normal way and whip it when possible even with the penalty?

Another thing to consider is that from 1600BC onwards we risk that is it will be built in a distant land, and that means roughly 20 turns from now.

I could be playing tonight but I think I'll play tomorrow night so I can get more input from you.

@Jon: the link in this thread that you used to download the save also pointed to the proper page we should be always be using (the one with a graph), so no problem I guess. But we always need to upload the save as you did now so the mods can update our progress in that page.

@Ronnie: good points, I'm a fan of Oracle too, in fact it is only marginally more expensive than SH, and IMHO much more powerful if you can grab CS or other expensive early tech like Metal Casting - having gems and gold, forges would be cool. In that sense, I'd be tempted to research meditation/priesthood next (that would take some 14 turns after AH) and then pop-rush Oracle instead of SH, aiming for a MC slingshot.

@archath: I think that to have trade route Kyoto/Osaka we would need to clear the black area and hope there is no ocean gap between them - coastal tiles and/or cultural borders. Otherwise we'll have to wait till Astronomy.

whew, long post. :blush:

@C63 All great points, but I was actually thinking of starting the Oracle in the copper city and combo choping/pop rushing it as needed, while Osaka continues to pump out axemen. I like early wonders for the GP points, if you can get them in without wasting 50-60 turns troop production. If we settle city 3 NE of the copper, we will have at least 8 forests to chop for the Oracle. At 25 hammers average for the chops, we could have it in about 25 turns if we are able to steal a worker.;)

I'm actually looking forward to playing at monarch for a while, I have been getting spanked at emperor after moving up to prep for GOTM9.:cry:

...if you add overflow hammers from a whip to a wonder they are *not* divided by 2, as they would be if you pop rushed the wonder directly...normally 44h/pop on Epic, but down to 22 for a wonder...SH would take about 60 turns...Whilst the Mods allow us to use this powerful exploit, we definitely should (I never knew about this, you don't see this sort of thing in Strats and Tips). However, if you calculate it to take 60 turns, then there's no point, we'll lose it long before. Going for the Oracle instead will have the same problem.

I just can't see any way round it. Perhaps we better forget about wonders in cities without resources or trees to chop :rolleyes:

@RetroV, I still think we should try to build stonehenge in Kyoto, we have nothing to lose because there isn't anything else to build. If we lose it, at least we'll have some gold as mentioned before. The other build option for kyoto is a settler for that island above. However, if we move our palace, then we just have 1 more city at a distance to maintain.

True, we could always run 100% research with the excess gold.

HI to All, I've just spent the last couple hours playing a little test game with the current settings. The barbarians seem to start slowly but get worse as time goes by. Archers around 2000bc, many archers from all directions by 1000bc, we may need to re-evaluate are defensive needs!:salute:

With aggressive traits, and when the barracks' finished, we can cover-promote a couple of axes to sort out the early archers.

Barbs are becoming pretty endemic already, I agree we should beeline for axemen if at all possible. My problem was that getting rid of barbs was taking up all of my time/production/troops... and it was only just beginning.

Generally, I'd prefer to use axemen to clear barbs, but perhaps archers are an easier route- cheaper to build each one, and we don't have to found a new city and set up copper mining to be able to build them.

From my brief experience we'd better watch out for the barbarians 'cos they're coming towards us and I don't think they just want to say hello!

Come on, Barbie, let's go party!

Clear the fog away and we'll be alright.

Right just finished GOTM9 (at 3am no less :) )

Hi Ronnie, nice to see you. I'll put you in the rosta after archath.

Rosta...

Jon Shaw - played
igelkott (away until 20/8)
Conquistador 63 - playing
archath - On deck
Ronnie1
AndrewN
RetroV

Everybody remember, you need to read the SGOTM2 maintenance thread. Also we have to upload the files to the server following the link on the GOTM pages. BTW I would advise people not to look at the graph on the progress page, it just makes depressing reading :cry:

I have caught up with the posts. I still think it is worth going for Stonehenge in the capital, as pointed out we have nothing better to build there and the advantage if we get it is huge.

We also need to get a settler out to the copper spot ASAP. I don't normally play with aggressive AI or raging barbs so they are probably going to be alot worse than I am use to.

The luck we had with attacking the barbs seems to be appaling, although I have lost battles with a 96% or better chance. I think in future we shouldn't attack them but let them come to us. If we have a few warriors fortified around the place, especially on the gems tiles then we should have the advantage until axemen are about.

Ok, let´s try to put the small pieces together before I play my session later tonight:

1.Kyoto on Stonehenge, but I think I´ll build another FB first and whip it when close to completion to get those carry-over hammers, I think we need to scout those nearby islands ASAP - also cultural borders are almost expanding.

2. Osaka: worker pre-chops then to pasture sheep when AH is done. Build plans: warrior(s) then settler when size 3 and pasture ready, otherwise will take forever cause the other 2 forests in city radius have already been chopped :(

3.Research: as connecting copper will take a while (build settler, move it, mine copper) I don´t think we can afford to postpone archery, those warriors will fall easily to barb archers. It is a cheap tech anyway. After that, we could debate between pottery and meditation/priesthood. I´m more inclined to the latter, because our worker will be too busy in the near term (pasturing, roading, mining copper) to be cottaging.

4.Fog-busting: I might be completely wrong, but it seems to me that if we keep our troops patrolling a small area back and forth (uncovering a part of the fog each turn) it can be more effective than fortifying. I think that fog needs to be "dark" for a small number of turns to spawn a barb. It is dull micromanagement :coffee: but that seemed to help me in my early GOTM9.

I'm so glad you're on our side :D

Ok, let´s try to put the small pieces together before I play my session later tonight:

1.Kyoto on Stonehenge, but I think I´ll build another FB first and whip it when close to completion to get those carry-over hammers, I think we need to scout those nearby islands ASAP - also cultural borders are almost expanding.

2. Osaka: worker pre-chops then to pasture sheep when AH is done. Build plans: warrior(s) then settler when size 3 and pasture ready, otherwise will take forever cause the other 2 forests in city radius have already been chopped :(

3.Research: as connecting copper will take a while (build settler, move it, mine copper) I don´t think we can afford to postpone archery, those warriors will fall easily to barb archers. It is a cheap tech anyway. After that, we could debate between pottery and meditation/priesthood. I´m more inclined to the latter, because our worker will be too busy in the near term (pasturing, roading, mining copper) to be cottaging.

4.Fog-busting: I might be completely wrong, but it seems to me that if we keep our troops patrolling a small area back and forth (uncovering a part of the fog each turn) it can be more effective than fortifying. I think that fog needs to be "dark" for a small number of turns to spawn a barb. It is dull micromanagement :coffee: but that seemed to help me in my early GOTM9.

This seems fine, I agree we need a better defender than a warrior.

I also think it is a good idea to see if we can scout the islands near the capital. There may be settling opptunities, although I am not holding my breath :)

My understanding of the barbs is that there is a chance per x dark squares of something appearing. If this is the case then moving the lookout or not will make no difference as it only reveals the same 9 squares.

Ok, I played my 20 turns, up to 1720BC.
The save is here (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Gipsy_Kings_SG002_BC1720_01.Civ4SavedGame)

I took some notes but decided to used the log provided when submitted. I edited it in notepad to shorten it a bit, and attached the file to this post.

To make a long story short:
1. War: 17 battles vs Barb warriors: 2 warriors lost, 15 barb warriors killed :crazyeye: Most troops have retreated to defend Osaka, so fogbusting almost non-existing. :(
2. Research: AH completed (horse found southbound by the river), then Archery, then Meditation, 1 turn to Prieshood.
3.Production:
3.1 Kyoto whipped a fishboat, explored a little, nothing interesting, net on crabs, building SH but still a looong way to go. My bet we'll get some money from it being built in a distant land soon.
3.2 Osaka: 1 warrior, 1 archer (whipped when almost ready, some 40h carryover to settler now building)
4.Isabella founded another city north of stone (NE of Osaka)

Bad news: we don't seem to be doing any good in the game, our land crowded with barbs
Good news: if we look at the submissions page graph, it looks like we're 3rd place, considering the 1700BC date!!! :goodjob: Not sure if that means anything but sounds nice anyways :)

Hi All, I just looked at the new save and have some thoughts. After seeing the log, we can expect the barbarians to get worse before we can fill in the black. I think we should consider building on top of the copper, no need to guard it, and it puts the city a reasonable distance from Izzy's new city. We'll want that seperation when it becomes our new city. We need more troops, more troops, and more troops! OH and did I say we need more troops:lol: The next issue I see is culture, at some point we are going to have to expand our influence. Obviously, if we get stonehenge, no worries, but as C63 said, I'm betting gold.

@C63 where did that turn log come from? I want to include one with my turn sequence.

Also forgot to mention, I'm playing another (3rd) test game with raging barbs, the first axemen showed up at 595bc. Get ready!!:salute:

@Ronnie: The log gets generated for you when you submit: copy and paste from there. I'm interested in the idea of founding on copper. I would like the production for the city, but nonetheless it might be the best option realistically.

With whipping in the capital, aren't we best off whipping for 2 or 3 pop at once (only one lot of unhappiness) rather than multiple small whips? Also, this means we do not have to nearly complete e.g. a workboat (wasting hammers that could have gone directly to SH) then whip to carry over hammers, we can instead whip a new unit for 2 pop, where the first of those pop builds most of the workboat and then the second finishes it and carries over to Stonehenge.

Maybe that's what's been going on already though and I just misunderstood.

@Jon: in theory you´re right, but whipping 1 pop we generate 44h. A boat costs 45h, a warrior 22h, an archer 37h, thus, in practice we can't whip 2 pop for those items, except if whip them before they start to build, but then we incur a heavy penalty anyway. Later, when more expensive stuff is available, we will be able to whip more pop at a time.

@Ronnie: I agree, settling on top of copper seems to be the best option in this scenario. Although, from my limited experience playing at these levels, the barb axemen generally show up only after you have hooked copper.

On hindsight, I wonder if any other team has settled the stone and cow islands and delayed settling on mainland...That should have had a nice effect on science and maybe wonder building...

@C63 Your hindsight looks crystal clear.:rolleyes: It may have been a great early option. Of course I never even considered it. I suppose we still have the ability to settle those spots any time, I'm not sure how that would effect our current science and maintenance. I have to say, I play strictly on feel, I never do any calculations in determining strategy.:crazyeye: Stone would definetly have helped speed the current build. All of those resources will be useful at some point. Maybe we should still settle both spots asap??

Someone remind me of the rules again. You're allowed to download the current save and look at it so long as you don't play it, right?

Right, retro.

@All, Was wondering what promotions you all use on a regular basis? I try to get my axes to city raider 3 before branching out. Sometimes I'll try to have 1 defensive axe in a stack promoted woodsman/medic and try to keep to the forests and jungles. Archers promoted guerilla for hills defense in the same stack if possible. I notice that the AIs seem to promote heavily in the Drill1,2,3, Comat 1,2,3,4,5 - I've never promoted along those lines and was just wondering what your thoughts were on the subject. If this is too off topic for this game thread, please let me know. Thanks Ron

I'm lucky if I can keep my units alive long enough for CR3 :eek: Only a few would make their 3rd promotions. Considering axes get a free Combat1, upgrade them to Cover upon creation, then they gain an extra 5% against the common or garden city defender (compared to a CR1 alternative). If they survive their first 2 kills, then upgrade them to CR1. And if I can take care of them long enough for a 3rd promotion, IMO, they should become medics, taking a backseat and defending other greener troops :D

But then I don't play a lot of raging barb games, so maybe it's more commonplace to have level3 units. In which case, lots of CR3 axes would be nice.

Hi Ronnie, nice to see you. I'll put you in the rosta after archath.

Rosta...

Jon Shaw - played
igelkott (away until 20/8)
Conquistador 63 - playing
archath - On deck
Ronnie1
AndrewN
RetroV


Don't want to seem impatient but...I finished my turn some 36h ago...Now...gogogogo :lol: j/k

@Andrew, If Archath is out of the loop temporarily, I can play tonight, if you remember my earlier post, I'll be leaving on the 18th for 4 looooong days of family fun.:cheers:

Hey guys I'm here, and I should be able to get the game done tonight so you can play it tomorrow before you leave, Ronnie.

There is a slight uncertainty because I just moved to a new house and I'm waiting for my roommate to bring his modem; I'm posting this from my work computer due to my Civ computer being temporarily offline. He's supposed to get into town tonight at 4 pm central time (it's just after 12 pm as I'm posting this)

Assuming that goes smoothly, I'll have it done. In the mean time how about some tips on what you want me to do with my 20 turns?

My 2¢:
Research: not too sure, but what do you think of Pottery,Writing and then Monarchy? With this we could convert Kyoto from a useless, overcrowded island to a nice GP farm - all it would take: a few cheap warriors to rise unhappiness cap and a library to allow us to hire some scientists.

Osaka: tasks for the worker: finish chopping forest (1 or 2 to turns to go) to speed settler build, rebuild gem mine, finish mine SW (also 1 or 2 turns to go), road to copper. After the settler is done, I don't think you 'll afford to build anything but archers, I suppose barbs will only get worse.
3rd city: on top or NE of copper? tough choices... That´ll be a food-poor city.

And most important, good luck, I reckon we´ll need it :)

My ISP dropped the ball so I'm just starting the turnset now.

NEWSFLASH:

I made it this far (9 turns) and now I need some input.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/800/anintruder0000vd9.jpg

I read this healing article: (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=157954)

I don't want to move the archer, because if the barb decides to go up on that mine I'm going to have to spend a lot of hp getting him down from there. I could move the archer but this is why I want to risk it.

It looks like our warrior will gain 20 HP or .4 in power up to 1.7.

So the combat would be
2.0 vs

1.7
+25% city defense
+20% strength
+10% fortify bonus

or 2.635

I'm looking for the odds on that right now.

Edit: and here it is combat oddshttp://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137615

err... it looks like that would give us about a 20% chance of losing the city.
Maybe I should just forget about it and bring the archer home.

@archath, I think bring the archer home, we can recover from a lost mine, if we lose osaka we're toast. I believe the warrior will attack the city anyway, the archer will gain exp. and then can be moved back to the mine.

I just read those threads that you referenced. :crazyeye: I'm actually pretty comfortable with math, took some calculus in college, and those articles, while very interesting, are exactly why I tend to play by feel as noted in my earlier post. When I get in situations like we currently are in, I will lean towards conservative, especially when defending.:salute:

Stonehenge was built in a distant land in 1270 BC.
The previous turn Kyoto had hit 8 pop but stagnant working 4 improved sea resources and 1 citizen, 3 unhappies. There were 91 hammers to go.

A moment of silence please.

Now, should I hurry production, cashing in 4 citizens for gold? It's still letting me build stonehenge there. The oracle is available but its 225 hammers, also a granary is an option.

I say save the pop for a future build. We will get some gold anyway, please don't ask me how much or what the difference in gold would be if you did pop rush now:confused: , refer to previous post.:lol: If I remember correctly, we have not researched sailing yet, so no galleys, I have not seen much feedback yet on settling the little islands, but we may want to build a settler now anyways and research sailing soon. As always, just my opinion.:cool:

wow ok all i have to say is RAPE
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Gipsy_Kings_SG002_BC1120_01.Civ4SavedGame

But the 2 mainland cities are amazingly still standing. I had to rush an axeman with a pop point in Osaka so it's at 2 now, and I've had it starving for 3 turns.

I just finished chopping a new axeman in Tokyo so that's something, and I have Kyoto working on a warrior just as a filler until we get Monarchy.

That was a really frustrating set of turns. Maybe I moved on the copper too fast, spreading out our defenders too much. All of our non-road improvements are razed now and Stonehenge got stolen from us.

WOW,:eek: Well we're not really in a position to go after Izzy. Looks like I'll just try to rebuild some infrastructure and troops. It is 6:00 Pacific time, I'm going to wait until about 9:00 to start the turn set, any wise words would be greatly appreciated!:salute:

What happened to the wonder build, did it get changed to Oracle or cashed out?

Archath, I was looking at the stats page from your save and you did a great job fending all those barbs.

Retro, SH was built elsewhere, we got some $90 (I looked at event log ingame).

Ronnie, you're right: Izzy is building everywhere around us...and there's nothing we can do now except rebuild infra and build troops (mixing archers and axemen?). I'd just set slider to max sci so we could finish writing in 4 turns, then chop a library and a granary in Kyoto. Even then, Monarchy seems like a distant dream...

I really don't know what else to say...Prolly the ones who suggested delaying settling in mainland in the beginning of this thread were right after all...

retro V: I just let the wonder get cashed out, then put the city on a warrior.

Conquistador: Thanks. Those last 10 turns were some serious nail-biters and I was thinking the whole time how much it would suck to return the save with less cities than we started with.:blush:

From now on, smooth sailing!

:mischief:

@ All, Turn5 , research? Monarchy(112turns) Have we decided if we want settle the small islands? If so I would research sailing now(38turns).

@All, Pretty uneventful compared to previous turn sets. Science is on track for monarchy in about 30 turns. We now have 2 axemen with promotions available. Obelisks under construction in both continent cities, Archer @ 1 turn in Tokyo que. I decided to build the obelisks because Izzy sent 2 archers and a settler past Osaka to the NW,:cry: we need to shut her down. Very Important We have open borders with Izzy for about 7 more turns before we can cancel, I figured a few positive pts early might help somewhere down the line. We should cancel after our borders expand. I rushed a Library and Granary in Kyoto, there is still some unhappiness to deal with but it's growing fast. I started building The Oracle in Kyoto, highly unlikely that we'll get it, Gold is probably in our future, but wasn't sure what else to build there. Attached is the edited turn log, Good Luck!:salute:

Good job Ronnie. Is AndrewN next on line? This thread seems pretty quiet the last couple of days. Oh well, took the time to finish GOTM9 :)
About the game, there's a spanish worker next to Tokyo who might be looking for a japanese passport ;) what do you guys think?

Probably got his A level results and has been drunk ever since.

@C63, Maybe a good idea on the worker steal. We may need a couple more densive units if she comes at us hard. Part of the reason I signed the open borders agreement with her, I was hoping for religion to spread in, we may want to give that a few more turns. I have a concern about our cultural boundries. Izzy's cities are expanding, if we get far behind, it may be problematic down the line. I also think we need get a barracks built in Osaka, much easier to work with experienced troops. In my personal games, I always build experienced troops, always avoiding building troops without a barracks. I try to have 3 cities that are troop builders, then, if I want to have 1 of those build a wonder or other needed building, I'm always building troops in 2 cities. As I see it, we need to get to those horses, there are some hills to mine if I remember right, that will give us a 3 city base on the mainland. I still think we should consider settling the islands by Kyoto, haven't seen many comments on that idea. That would give us three cities with a lot gold from the water tiles, and not so much maintenance I think.

Ditto on the activity concern, is there anybody out there??:confused:

There's no roads for religion to spread to us. Open borders don't do much on their own. Maybe if we had a coastal city, which we don't. Take the worker, I say, if only to weaken Izzy's progress. She ain't gonna attack us unless her cities have each got at least 3 units, most of the time. This early in the game, we'll only get dribs and drabs of retaliation, nothing we can't handle.

By all means, settle the islands, if we get chance to research sailing. I fear we have enough to concentrate on to benefit the mainland development. And what about if we relocate the palace? We'll just reverse the positions of the corrupt-city-drawback that we're dealing with now :lol: If we really run out of things for Kyoto to do, just turn it into a GP farm. Save the GPs we get for later, though, when we know what we're doing with regards to centrality. Or just pair them up for golden ages.

@retro, Taking the worker would definitely change the open borders agreement.:lol: I'm not sure if roads make that much difference on religion spread or not, it won't really matter for the culture concern, because the obelisks are almost done. If we can take one of Izzy's cities that has religion, it would be a major coup. Border expansion in new or captured cities will seriously decrease the amount of land for barb generation. I think you're right about slowing her down though, if we don't do it soon, it will be an even bloodier battle down the road.

Where are all the Gipsy Kings? :king: ?

Screw this. It's been over 3 days since someone last submitted a save, and a week since Andrew last posted here. Sorry boss, I'm gonna skip you.

I'll post the report in a couple of hours.

The sun rises anew on the tranquil island city of Kyoto, where the Daimyo King Tokugawa gazes worryingly at the horizon, wishing in vain to be alongside his devoted subjects in their perilous time of need. Finally, with a determined effort, he turns to an awaiting official and barks these orders for the pigeon handlers:

0. 760BC. Whipped the Obelisk in Osaka. Switched from Monarchy to Agriculture.
IBT. Obelisk finished, started on archer.
1. 745BC. Barb axe appears.
IBT. Oracle built in a distant land.

2. 730BC. Kyoto is limited to 4 happies and 5 healthies, which it is currently running at while suffering from 1 whip-weary angry face. In 15 turns, it can go to 5 pop without losing angries. For now, I've stagnated the capital by working the 2 breadloafs, specialising 2 scientists, and building settlers at 25 turns each. There is nothing else it can do for the good of the empire :lol:

IBT. The newly trained archer in Osaka is immediately attacked by a barb axe and dies. Damn, if only I had promoted our axe with another melee bonus. Oracle cashes out for 38 gold.
3. 715BC. Killed the barb, training up a new bow, worker returned to mine the gems, not for the last time, I fear.
4. 700BC. Start moving troops out to bust fog.

An overview of the encroaching Spanish Inquisition, the arrows point to barbarians approaching one turn later:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v673/retroV/Izzyslands.jpg

5. 685BC. So screwed. Professionally illustrated above are my foiled attempts to clear some fog. Had to return the troops for a defensive.
IBT. Barb warrior attacks warrior and loses.
6. 670BC. Retreated the warrior to counter the barb archer.
IBT. Barb axe attacks axe on the desert hill and wins :(
7. 655BC. Whipped the archer in Osaka.
8. 640BC. Barb axe is inside Osaka boundaries now.
IBT. Agriculture finished, continuing Monarchy. Pyramids built in the kingdom of Far, Far Away ("shut it, Donkey!")

9. 625BC. More highly technical defensive maneuvers, too intricate to comprehend without a rudimentary understanding of advanced physics.
IBT. I don't know Newton's Laws, but I still got lucky. Barb axe attacks an axe across a river :crazyeye: Tokyo finishes an archer, reckon we can forego a barracks and just pump out vanilla bows.

10. 610BC During all of this, I've had to redirect the worker from time to time. There's a farm started 1NE of Osaka, plains and river plot. At the moment, he has been returned to the gems yet again.
There's a weak axe moving out to the southern woodlands. I'll leave it to the next guy to promote/heal/retreat as he sees fit.

Turn 116, 760 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman (4.95) vs Barbarian's Warrior (1.33)
Turn 116, 760 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 117, 745 BC: The Oracle has been built in a far away land!
Turn 118, 730 BC: Kyoto can no longer work on The Oracle. The lost hammers are converted into 38g!

Turn 118, 730 BC: Barbarian's Axeman (5.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Archer (5.25)
Turn 118, 730 BC: Barbarian's Axeman has defeated Gipsy Kings's Archer!

Turn 119, 715 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman (5.50) vs Barbarian's Axeman (2.00)
Turn 119, 715 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman has defeated Barbarian's Axeman!

Turn 121, 685 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Warrior (4.90)
Turn 121, 685 BC: Gipsy Kings's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 122, 670 BC: Barbarian's Axeman (5.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Axeman (6.72)
Turn 122, 670 BC: Barbarian's Axeman has defeated Gipsy Kings's Axeman!

Turn 122, 670 BC: Barbarian's Archer (3.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Warrior (2.81)
Turn 122, 670 BC: Gipsy Kings's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Archer!

Turn 123, 655 BC: You have constructed a Obelisk in Tokyo. Work has now begun on a Archer.

Turn 124, 640 BC: You have discovered Agriculture!
Turn 124, 640 BC: The Pyramids has been built in a far away land!

Turn 125, 625 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Osaka!
Turn 125, 625 BC: Barbarian's Axeman (4.56) vs Gipsy Kings's Axeman (6.75)
Turn 125, 625 BC: While defending, your Axeman has killed a Barbarian Axeman!Jon Shaw is next on the roster after me. Unless, of course, Andrew shows up before him.

To be continued... (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Gipsy_Kings_SG002_BC0610_01.Civ4SavedGame)

Good job Retro (and cool write-up :)). I was already wondering if our team was about to retire from the game. Meanwhile, I´d vote for you as captain at least until AndrewN returns.

Gamewise, you changed your mind about the worker steal? Or you were just too busy with the barbs?

I don't mind covering for Andy, if all I have to do is post roster updates. I'm on here every day at least once :scan: :coffee: :lol:

Didn't have the balls to steal the worker. It wasn't until I started playing that I realised we had about 1 each of warrior, archer, axeman and worker. Would have been suicide.

GO Retro!!:goodjob: I'm with C63 if you want take the lead. I will be home from holiday by Tuesday evening the 22nd, may even travel later today. I have been trying to stay up to date while away, oh wait, nothing happened until today, thank you thank you! I do believe I warned you about our troop situation though.:lol: As I said in an earlier post, I disdain promoting along the combat/drill lines. Have found it to be much more effective to promote for the specific unit types @ 25% each and only then add for either offensive or defensive needs, city raider-woodsman/guerilla. Hopefully the rest of us Kings will post a response on a daily basis, so we can at least know who is or is not still interested in competing.:confused:

I don't doubt we all still want to do well. It looks like it's going pretty terrible at the moment, though every other team must be suffering just as much, it will get better eventually.

Lacking any strategy advice for you guys, I guess I'll just say GO TEAM.(i'm still paying attention)

Hi guys, quick post just to say I will play my turns (I think I'm next, right?) tomorrow night (Wednesday).

Will catch up on the posts beforehand of course!

Right, I've played and quite a bit went on. I agree it was all looking a bit ropey beforehand, but we seem in a much stronger position now (no, I am not claiming that is because of me, we just are better off, I feel:).

Lots of battles vs barbs, and we won them all. Isabella isn't too happy with us, but I don't think she's going to attack any time soon. I'm keeping 2 troops in each continental city to try to guard against sneak attacks.

I have been promoting the fogbusters to be all round archer/axeman beaters, and also included one medic promotion 'cos it'll be dead handy in the future.

Our borders have expanded, I've scouted some more nearby land and managed to get fogbusters into areas Isabella hasn't already colonised (she's spreading like a bad smell). I think we badly need to expand if we aren't going t be engulfed by Isabella, so I am training settlers as we seem militarily sufficient right now.

We got a Great Scientist. After much umming and ahhing I opted to get Mathematics for free. I considered doing a poll of you guys, but figured we're going so slowly we need to crack on.

Mathematics leads us towards catapults, allows us the possibility of trying for the Hanging Gardens (the Great Engineer points would probably guarantee another Wonder for free at some point in the future), and also increases our chopping by 50%.

We got Monarchy, and I swapped civics. I angled for Sailing next so that we can colonise those islands near the capital (I think its worth it), or at least hook up the stone once it is in our borders.

The save is here:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm2/Gipsy_Kings_SG002_BC0310_01.Civ4SavedGame

The slightly shortened (I cut out all the combat cr*p) turn log is below:

Turn 129, 565 BC: Barbarian's Axeman (5.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Archer (6.60)
Turn 129, 565 BC: Combat Odds: 17.4%
Turn 129, 565 BC: Gipsy Kings's Archer has defeated Barbarian's Axeman!

Turn 131, 535 BC: The borders of Osaka have expanded!
Turn 131, 535 BC: Barbarian's Archer (3.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Archer (6.91)
Turn 131, 535 BC: Combat Odds: 0.4%
Turn 131, 535 BC: Gipsy Kings's Archer has defeated Barbarian's Archer!

Turn 131, 535 BC: Barbarian's Archer (3.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Warrior (4.30)
Turn 131, 535 BC: Combat Odds: 14.1%
Turn 131, 535 BC: Gipsy Kings's Warrior has defeated Barbarian's Archer!

Turn 131, 535 BC: Barbarian's Warrior (2.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Archer (5.55)
Turn 131, 535 BC: Combat Odds: 0.0%
Turn 131, 535 BC: Gipsy Kings's Archer has defeated Barbarian's Warrior!

Turn 132, 520 BC: Barbarian's Axeman (5.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Axeman (7.75)
Turn 132, 520 BC: Combat Odds: 9.0%
Turn 132, 520 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman has defeated Barbarian's Axeman!

Turn 133, 505 BC: Merit Ptah has been born in Kyoto!

Turn 134, 490 BC: You have discovered Mathematics!
Turn 134, 490 BC: You have trained a Archer in Tokyo. Work has now begun on a Settler.

Turn 138, 430 BC: The borders of Tokyo have expanded!
Turn 138, 430 BC: Barbarian's Archer (3.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Axeman (10.50)
Turn 138, 430 BC: Combat Odds: 0.0%
Turn 138, 430 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman has defeated Barbarian's Archer!

Turn 140, 400 BC: Barbarian's Archer (3.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Axeman (8.27)
Turn 140, 400 BC: Combat Odds: 0.3%
Turn 140, 400 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman has defeated Barbarian's Archer!

Turn 141, 385 BC: You have discovered Monarchy!

Turn 142, 370 BC: The revolution has begun!!!
Turn 142, 370 BC: Gipsy Kings adopts Hereditary Rule!
Turn 142, 370 BC: The anarchy is over! Your government is re-established.
Turn 142, 370 BC: Barbarian's Axeman (5.00) vs Gipsy Kings's Axeman (8.00)
Turn 142, 370 BC: Combat Odds: 4.4%
Turn 142, 370 BC: Gipsy Kings's Axeman has defeated Barbarian's Axeman!

Turn 144, 340 BC: You have trained a Settler in Kyoto. Work has now begun on a Work Boat.

Turn 145, 325 BC: You have trained a Axeman in Osaka. Work has now begun on a Worker.

Things are looking up, at last.

Reckon we need to focus on an invasion force rather than expanding. With cats around the corner, it's nigh time we give Izzy a slap. Before it's too late.


Up in the hotseat next should be Igelkott. Where are you, man? Thought you were back after 20/8. 15 turns OK with everyone?

Conquistador 63 - bench
Ronnie1 - locker room
AndrewN - spectator area
Me - ticket kiosk
Jon Shaw - showers

Up in the hotseat next should be Igelkott. Where are you, man? Thought you were back after 20/8. 15 turns OK with everyone?

Conquistador 63 - bench
Ronnie1 - locker room
AndrewN - spectator area
Me - ticket kiosk
Jon Shaw - showers

1. 15 turns each is fine;
2. Last post by Igelkott on these forums was Aug 4th. No reason to pause game before he posts here again. I think I will play now, we insert him as soon as he returns;
3. After me, and before Ronnie1, archath should play.
4. I don't think we can afford to build any other continental city any soon, maintenance will kill us (if we aren't already dead:crazyeye: ). Instead, as Retro suggests, we should take a few from Izzy.

I'm with Retro on that invasion force idea. ;) I'd skip the settler in Osaka and concentrate on axemen there, mine that gold to keep the science up as much as possible and get on the rice also, finish/chop the settler in Tokyo and send him SE of the horses to get all 3 grass hills. 6/7 Axemen later let's start banging on Izzy! :thumb