NOTE: I have NO intention of making the LK series all deity, all the time

World = Open to discussion
Difficulty = Deity
Barbarians = Sedentary or roaming - I hate barbs
# Civs = 7
NOT culturally linked, NO restarting players.
Civ = Open to discussion


Signed up:
LKendter


10 turns per round - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.


Mandatory requirements
Play The World Expansion
Must SHRED Emperor, Deity experience preferred.

The following tactics are PROHIBITED:
RoP Rape - if you have to ask...
RoP Abuse (irrigating all tiles with a city building wonders, denying resources with a RoP, etc.)
Scout resource denial - parking a scout on a resource, as the AI won't ask scouts to leave
False Peace Treaties (must wait for the 20 years to end)
Declaring War to break trade deals including actions like the Demand exploit to force a war, or demanding to leave territtory
False Alliances (ally with several people vs. a civ then peace with that civ), and other actions that completely abuse the AI limited diplomacy ability.
Spy exploit - If you fail to plant a spy, you CAN'T try again. The exploit is: you can infinitely plant a spy until the Civ declares war.
Demand exploit - You may make ONE demand a turn per civ. The exploit is: you can demand to the end of time, and guaranteed to get a civ furious and almost to war.



OK, the big question:
Who wants to start a deity game, and with what parameters?
LK36 was my first deity win, so please don't suggest beyond deity (50% factor, or other things to make it way harder).

I am more thinking civ, a possible goal, and a map other then my norm to support the scenario.
One possibility is Korean space race with a twist - We must build the Internet, and trip our golden age during the space race.
I am open to other PTW civs except Mongols that I am currently playing.

I am interested LKendter. I am currently playing the Ottomans and Mongols, but would be very interested in trying out the Spanish or the Carthaginians. I think the best idea I can come up with is a national culture victory with the Spanish (who as religious, get cheap temples). In my deity experience, there is always at least one civ that runs away with culture, so we would have to destroy them and perhaps others militarily in order to secure the culture victory. What do you think?

Hey Lee. I might be interested. I'd like to play an industrious civ, doesn't have to be an expansion civ, though. Also not looking for a variant, just a deity game with a non-RBE2 start.

- Sirian

LKendter, K7 is wrapping up much sooner than I had expected on such a large map, even with some slow play over the holidays. Emperor vs. 'zerkers was a bloodbath. I had forgotten how large the Emperor to Diety jump is. So count me in if you have some space.

I am pretty easy on settings. I played as Spain and Otto over the holidays (both conquest victories), and have a game as the Arabs going now, possible culture victory if I can take out the Babs. Korea is the last PTW civ I haven't played, but my first was Carthage so I would revisit them (to satisfy Sirians desire for Industrious as well as Speakers request). Maybe we could just play with Diplo off, to take away that bailout victory possibility and allow us to forget about the UN. 7 civs makes it a standard map? or is that large? I like to play random map age and shape, gives a bit more unknown to the fog.

I'm game. I really like the Industrious trait. Using Carthage would be fine with me, as would eliminating the Diplo victory condition. I posted my Deity victory in the RBE thread. I usually play to the point where victory is ensured and then start a new game, but decided to complete a game so I could post it.

I will commit to the standard 24-got it/48-post it requirements if that's the course we take. Please let me know if you would like any other information about me or my playing experience.

Lee,

If you'd like one more, I'd be game. Otherwise, don't worry about it.

JMB

We are at 6 possible players!

I am at work, so I can't confirm Carthage being Industrious. I haven't played them yet, so I am up for a game with them.

I feel Industrious and Religious are in a tie for the best trait in the game. Double speed workers rock, but I can't argue with cheap temples that make domination much easy. I personally prefer domination to conquest, as I always found it so painful to have to get every last city like civ2 required.

I posted my first deity win in LK36, and I did help with a key trading round. Reagan has posted a deity win. Speaker is playing deity right now.

What I need now:
1) Confirmation from Sirian if he wants to play. I know he plenty of deity experience. That will decide if JMB makes the game.

2) Gothmog is an unknown - what is your previous deity experience?

3) JMB played TH3, close to deity. Have you played an actual game of deity?


It appears we have at least a couple of votes on turning off Dipblowmatic as a win. I can't live without that option.

I don't play much on large maps except my world map series, so I will stick with standard size world. Random weather and age is fine. I still prefer large continents - I really don't want a GOTM #14 situation here.

I'll confirm that Carthage is Commercial and Industrious.

In solo games I play Diety exclusively, with totally random map settings. I win most of the time. I like to take different paths to victory. Check K7 for an example of my experience SHREDDING (make that embarrassing) Emperor, and check RBE3 for an example of my Diety play - although I joined 1/3 of the way through. I'm an old civ2 hand as well. When I got civ3 I played once at Monarch, once at Emperor, the rest at Diety.

OK, no question that Gothmog is in.

I don't mind Commercial at all - less corruption is always good.

Clearly in
Reagan has posted a deity win.
Speaker is playing deity right now.
Gothmog mainly deity player.
Sirian if he confirms.

JMB is in *if* Sirian is a no, and a better clue on deity experience or at least shreding emperor.

@Sirian - If you have time/inclination, I'd appreciate the opportunity to play this one with you. I've read your reports on here and on your Web site with great interest. Your writing style is easy to read and your analysis is exceedingly helpful.

@LK - (1) I am a pretty amiable team player-type guy, so my comment about the Diplo victory condition was more a signal of acquiescence than advocacy. In other words, I'm open to playing with the Diplo option on or off, although my "vote" would go towards keeping it on. (2) You are right that Religious is right up there with Industrious for preferred traits. I try not to use the Egyptians too much because they are so powerful. I like Carthage because Commercial is a very valuable trait and my preference for a builder style of play does not necessitate very many government changes, which somewhat reduces the Religious trait's value.

I have posted a deity win in the thread of my SG game, but I'll post it again here for ease. I agree with you on religious and industrious being the two best traits. I usually used the egyptians in vanilla Civ3 and have since moved on to the Ottomans in PTW. I would love to try the Carthaginians if we go industrious or the Spanish if we go religious.

I guess if you blinked you missed a shot at this one, eh? Oh well, I will have to fill in the time with the LK-WM testing, and try to get one of the Epics done before the deadline.

Lee,

I have beaten deity a few times (e.g., RBE4 and RB Epic 17) but am by no means an 'experienced' deity level player. I'm easy whatever happens.

JMB

If we play an industrious civ (any) and no added variant rules, I'm in. Diplo option on or off is fine either way.

- Sirian

@JMB - sorry, but I you missed the 5th slot

=============================

Player order

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog
Speaker

=============================

Parameters agreed on -
Civ = Carthage: Commercial and Industrious.
Standard size world.
Random weather and age is fine.
Large continents
Roaming barbs
Standard 7 opposing civs.

1 no diplo, 1 yes, 2 either wayincluding me.
I will start later tonight and see if more comments on Diplo.
As of now, just 1 clear no = keep Diplo.

I'm looking forward to thumping some AIs with y'all. :hammer:

I would say keep the Diplomatic option on. I find the Diplomatic victory to be very satisfying. It encourages honorable play and the race to get the UN can be quite exciting, especially with a perfect prebuild.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LAK-237.jpg

4000 BC - I never like goodie huts at suicide range. However, I can't waste 3 worker turns to get rid of it. It will pop in 10 turns! I am tempted to move off the forest for most short-term shields, but long time this city will rock. Carthage is formed. A warrior is ordered, what else? The mandatory pottery is started.

3850 BC (I) Warrior #2 is ordered.

3750 BC - We spot our first luxury - gems.

3600 BC (I) - Warrior #2 is ordered who will stay home until the hut pops.

3550 BC (I) - The hut pops with a free warrior. I don't argue - it will hurt the gpt short term, but I get another exploring unit.

3400 BC (I) - On conscript warrior is attacked by barbs, and is now a regular.

3350 BC - We have a first contact - Russia - I really want to find India, but never argue with contact. We have a successful trade of Alphabet to Russia for Bronze working and $22. We spot wines, but I have a feeling that Russia will be there first with the 6-unit stack I spotted.
(I) I hope to spot another civ, so I start a 40 turn minimum science on math.

3300 BC - Another trade that favors Russia a bit, but I can't argue the change to get another tech. I ship Masonry to Russia and I get Warrior Code and $13 (all cash).

3250 BC - The free warrior continues to earn his keep, as he frags a barb camp.

3100 BC - South and southeast don't go very far, so the other civs must be north.

3000 BC - We get our second contact - the Mongols - Did we get all the aggressive civs nearby?
The good news is he did NOT find Russia yet. I give him Alphabet and get Burial, Wheel and $10. We have tech parity with the expansionist Mongols :confused:
We have a nearby source of horses [dance]

2900 BC - Our third contact - trading won't be a problem. Aggressive civs will be - it is the Germans. I want to find commercial India! No trading with them, as I won't give Alphabet up for simply $25.

2850 BC (I) - The granary is completed, time to pump out settlers.

2710 BC - I hate deity barbs - our warrior is slaughtered trying to stop the barbs. I have to switch the capital to archer. Our settler will be delayed several turns.

2670 BC (I) GACK - Carthage is hit by disease.

2630 BC - We have a rare deity moment - I pop a hut, and get mysticism. It seems like I always get barbs at higher levels.
(I) We see the typical disease, round 2.

2550 BC - Germany is still way behind the times, so I pay 3rd civ prices for Iron Working to the Mongols, $146 and $2/turn. We have **2** potential iron sources :)

Summary - We have barbs floating around the capital, ESCORT settlers!
The warrior should lose versus the barb camp on the mountain - don't bother. He has more value to help escort settlers.
Based on the landmass side - I think we have another civ not yet found.

LKendter
Reagan (currently playing)
Sirian (on deck)
Gothmog
Speaker

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-2550BC.zip

This is our first dot-map.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LAK-238.jpg

Yellow dot - gives gems, and the direction Russia will come from - the highest priority IMO.
Blue dot - weak growth, but it gives horses.
Black dot - the only spot with growth in that desert mess.
Red dot - a bit of a question mark on location - need to understand the fog covered question mark square.

Great timing. I just finished watching one of my all-time fav movies -- "Spartacus" -- and checked-in here in time to see the game is ready for me to play. This is my "got it." I will endeavor to play my turn tonight and post a save.

2550 (0) - Except for wondering why our Worker is improving (mining) a tile Carthage will likely not use for awhile instead of building a road to future city sites, no changes are necessary.

2510 (1) - Our "barb camp warrior" begins his trek northward to help fortify Carthage or escort helpless settlers. Before his departure, he notices the rude barb beasts have tamed beasts of their own and are now riding horses. One is now ready to begin wreaking havoc. MM Carthage to grow at the same time the settler pops, without losing production.

2470 (2) - The Russians have had Workers in their capitol for two consecutive turns. They must be under barb seige or, more likely, already warring with one of our fine neighbors.

2430 (3) - Carthage: Settler -> Warrior. The Russians continue to protect their Workers. If they let them go during any of my remaining turns, I will so report.

2390 (4) - Our Archer dispatched a barb (but not the camp yet).

2350 (5) - Carthage: Warrior -> Warrior.

2310 (6) - zzz

2270 (7) - Carthage: Warrior -> Settler. Mongols appear to be headed towards the barb camp south of Carthage. Bis has acquired IW and Myst during my seven turns, while never having more than 25 gp in his account. He has 25 gp more, so I take it for Alphabet. If he doesn't get it from us, he'll get it somewhere else, right? I'll readily admit that valuing early techs is not one of my strong suits. I generally will sell them if the other civ is paying bottom 50% civ prices and has 25+gp in the early game. Right or wrong?

2230 (8) - Someone must have Writing because the RoP and Alliance options appeared on the diplo screen IT.

2190 (9) - Carthage gets wracked with disease again. Someone teach these people to wash their hands already! Mongols now have Writing and don't have contact with Germany. Given that Russia also has contact with Germany and is likely at war with Germany and not the Mongols (due to proximity issues), I sell contact now. Mongols will give 67 gp for it. Instead, I give contact+1gpt+43gp for HBR.

2150 (10) - The scourge of disease strikes again. Utica, our Cartier(tm) of the North, is founded and begins work on a Granary. The barb camp in the middle of Mongolia is on a hill, so I left it alone. The horsie below Carthage kept our Archer parked in Carthage. If the fleabitten horse stays where it is, no harm no foul. Russia's Workers remain parked.

I recommend going for red and then green dots. Note that the water by red dot is NOT fresh. I have also moved blue dot, which will avoid some overlap and gain a grassland, but will cost the use of the two tiles circled in grey. I have also circled in purple two Wine squares.

Good luck, play well, Sirian.

the save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-2150bc.sav)

the pic (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/carthage2150bc.JPG)

IT: Granary at second town vetoed. Swap to warrior-worker combo.

Early: Gifted HBR to Germany. They have taken Moscow, are at war, and they might trade for or get the tech soon anyway, so we might as well get the diplo benefit from this. The barb horse in the mountains attacked a Mongol unit and lost. I sent our next settler NORTH.

Middle: A new barb camp appeared northwest of Carthage, and a barb warrior came out to pester our unescorted settler. I dispatched him with our archer, the settler continued north. Mongols have already settled in the area up there, claiming the third iron. Our archer cleared the barb camp successfully. A barb warrior kills one of our two warriors at Town 2. Good thing I had trained a spare. The spare wins the next fight.

Late: Our settler arrives at the lake and settles on the only bg tile in the area. IMO, no choice. This was the only tile not overlapping the Mongol town that was still on the fresh water. We do NOT want to piss off the Mongols with an aggressive settlement. (Anybody here who has never read my Epic 13 report, might want to take a look. I used defensive settlement in GOTM14 and was not attacked by Persia until well into AD years).

My second settler grabbed the coastal dot on the river. I trained a worker out of Town 2 and our third worker out of the capital. We're industrious here, folks, GOT to take advantage of it with a few early workers. The more roads we get built, the faster we can move out our settlers and respond to barb threats.

The capital demands micromanagement every single turn. That mined hill is seeing heavy use. Run four food on the first turn, using the hill, then switch from hill to flood plain, 6 food on second turn sees the city grow a size (growing every two turns now!) and that causes the hill to be picked back up automatically, meaning we get the hill every turn. It's a little work, but now is the time when such work pays off the most. I got two settlers and a worker out of our capital on my brief round.

There are dyes in the jungle just north of us, much closer than the wines. BAD NEWS, the Mongols have already settled there! :eek: If any of you have ever played "Go", you'll understand why I sent that settler north. I've got a new dotmap, and we need to prioritize pushing north, not south. We don't want to wait too long and lose the horse-iron blue dot, but we'll have time to send at least two more settlers north before we have to pick up the blue dot to be 100% sure we don't lose it. The good news about our third city, up on the lake, is how much territory it covers for preventing new barb camps, and gives us some room in which we can somewhat safely move workers and new settlers. Remember, on deity, NO settler is safe with one escort. We can be on a mountain with a vet spear and lose to a barb warrior. You escort settlers by clearing the way in front of them, not pairing them with units. Sometimes the unit pair ain't a bad idea, either, but it's not enough and not always best.

LK38 - 1750BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1750bc.zip)


- Sirian

Here's the new dotmap. I urge top priority to pink dot. We already have cover in that area, where our archer cleared out a recent barb camp. Then we should go for either green or orange, really reach out there and try to make a bold grab. After that, we must clean up dark blue and white dots to secure the resources. We also need to scout the jungle and see where, if anywhere, we want to add a safe dot to flesh out our border with the Mongols. Germany and Russia are warring, and both pretty far to the east, especially Germany. The Mongols are, for the moment, our only real settlement rivals, so if we push in their direction first, we may lead them to stop pushing our way and start filling in their backside, giving us a chance to fill in our backside.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1750bc.jpg

Good luck.


- Sirian

Sirian :
Talking about defensive settlements in GOTM14 ; when is your report published I CAN'T WAIT ANYMORE MAN !
Looking at your save game I saw this huge Maginot line of fortresses across the isalnd so I already have a "guessed" idea of what was your early expansion and ensuing strategy : quite interesting !

I see the granary is really earning it keep :)

Our first luxury of of Gems is secured.



The capital demands micromanagement every single turn.


I agree 100% - the fastest we get those settlers, the more cities we can grab. I was tweek it a lot my turns, along with changing the luxury tax.

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing)
Speaker (on deck)

Great turn, Sirian! It was a real boon to find fresh water up north. I agree with your dot map and proposed settlement order. Grabbing both the Dyes and the Wine would give us a real boost, making (1) pink, (2) green, (3) orange my preferred order.

"Got it"

This is what I like to see, 24 hours pass and 3 turns already played. I may slow the pace a bit here, I'm at work now and I'll play tonight but may not get it posted until the morning.

The granary is indeed huge, as always when no AI starts in your second ring! The mined hill was also an excellent move.

I'll be looking to settle as many new cities as possible. Trying to push north as far as I can, possibly all the way to the orange 1st, while on the lookout for mongols moving south. I may use the archer to clear up the fog west of the orange to make sure we don't miss anything there. I don't see the mongol settlement near the dyes but I guess I will when I open the save. That also suggests that I try to grab the wines sooner than later. Too bad none of our other cities have any bonus food, that could have accelerated our settler production some.

Where is our ancient rival Rome?

Originally posted by Gothmog
Where is our ancient rival Rome?

Where is Rome? How about where is anyone? Our continent is huge, but still only 3 civs found. If Russia gets knocked out, we could be looking at just 2 civs.

good luck with this one guys, certainly is a lot of land for you to deal with there. As an emperor player looking to move onto deity this is exactly the sort of game I love to follow, so plenty of analysis and screenshots please!!!!

The continent could just be oddly shaped, I was wondering if there is a bottleneck somewhere east of Utica. The mongols either have lots of room to their north, or there is another civ up there.

Let's see, there are 7 civs... It wouldn't be unusual to have 4 on one continent and three on another.

Well played so far everyone. It looks like we will be in great shape as far as resources and luxuries are concerned. One question about the Numidian Mercenary being contructed (trained?) in Utica: Since it is Sirian who was building it, I do not doubt there is a good reason. Perhaps it fits perfectly with a settler or worker, or something along those lines. If it is for military police, then a warrior is 1/3 the price and just as effective. Obviously you already know all this, but I'm just curious as to what your plan is.

Needs could change and the NuMe might be vetoed for something else. However, barbs are a raging menace to our civ in this game, whatever they may be set at. We already blew ten shields on a warrior lost to barbs in that city. The NuMe's are our UU, and also our military strength. Defense 3 fortified on on a hill ought to fight off even Deity barbs. We have to get military from somewhere, and we need some mil with more teeth. The one archer we already had is the only reason I got as far as I did on my turn. Otherwise, the camp north of Carthage would be owning us, and wrecking our improved tiles.

Deity barbarians change everything. They are formidable. Not unbeatable, but nothing like any lower difficulty, including emperor. I don't know if we have the time to train a NuMe there, but if not there, then where? If we had just ONE of them, we could secure vs barbs on whatever frontier we like, including the possibility of WHIPPING to get one of these things trained earlier. Having one ready for escort to green dot would be nice. Perhaps changing to warrior, then doing the NuMe and whipping its last 20 shields, would be better. Up to next player.

We need to get more cities going as fast as we can, but we have to have some military with teeth to cope with these barbs. The AI's will send units to dispatch the camps eventually, but how far we can push farmer-style expansion with SO MANY barbs and camps running loose is a difficult question. If a town were overrun and improvements lost (barbs can now destroy at least walls, maybe more) it would be a big setback. That's another reason not to let the blue dot go for toooo long. Barbs in the mountains or hills to the south would have to be cleaned out by the AI's and that could take them a while.

There are too many variables to know the best plan. Where and when will new camps pop up? I can't predict that. We've got to have more than just warriors, though. It's a tough balancing act that can go wrong in either direction rather easily. I was lucky to see our archer win two fights vs barbs in hill terrain. If the archer had died out, we'd be in a pickle right now. Yet it's hard to slow down to build a NuMe at the capital, with so much food rolling in and only one high-shield tile fully improved.

I don't actually have a plan, only an awareness of competing needs.


- Sirian

That works for me Sirian. I know exactly what you are talking about in regards to Deity barbarians reaking havoc. They are the real horde, not the Mongolian army. NuMe also have an attack of 2, so they can take out a barbarian on flat ground. Thanks for the explanation.

The barbs are simply at roaming.

Summary: The mongols have lots of room to the north and east and haven't sent any more settlers our way. We settled the orange dot and there is a settler presently standing on the green dot. We met the Scandinavians (Vikings) and they have contact with the Koreans and the Indians. We have a good WM and tech parity excepting CoL. The Koreans have an island to themselves and the Indians share with the Vikings. The other civ is Persia and they must be on an island by themselves.

My Report:
I look things over: Russia still has workers in her capital and the Mongols have writing. I decide to change the NM being built in Utica to a warrior and send the one garrisoned there to scout out the lands near our future wine settlement. I can’t remember if I am supposed to play 10 or 20 turns on my first go, so I decide on 15.

Early turns (1725-1600): I rush the settler in Carthage at pop 5 with 20 shields left. I want the orange dot. Math is discovered and I start min on Poly. I trade Math to the Mongols for writing and 140 gold, to the Russians with 70 gold for the two workers cowering in Moscow. One industrial worker + one slave worker can build a road in one turn so this will help us connect our empire. Germany has nothing and gets nothing. We have too much cash and the Mongols will extort us soon. I send the archer to disperse some barbs north of Theveste, and our northern scout runs from barbs discovered up there.

Middle turns (1575-1475): A barb horse emerges from the fog east of Utica, I cross my fingers and attack him with a warrior out in the open – and win in the red. The Mongols have CoL now, but we are nowhere near affording it. IT the Mongols extort us for 31 gold, OK for now Mr. Ugly pug. The Mongols do help us with barb control east of Utica attacking the camp on a hill. The northern scout is attacked by a barb horse coming out of the fog while on a hill and survives in the red. Russia and Germany are going at it, this will help us as Russia would certainly have grabbed the wines by now otherwise. Carthage produces another settler, and a settler reaches the orange dot location. We now have Gems hooked up. Hippo founded on orange dot, this will mark the northern extent of our empire.

Late turns (1450-1350): Our settler heads out for the wine gambit, I have a scout around there and our chances look good. IT Ragnar calls us up, wanting to sell us Philosophy for 160 – I pay him 155 for it. He has contact with Korea and India (our future commercial trading partner). On my turn I trade Biz Phil, and Math for MapMaking+WM+10 gold. Biz's WM included the Scandinavian TM. Russia already has MM and is up CoL and communication with Korea and India on us, they must have made first contact with Scandinavia. They would sell us CoL for 158+WM+1 gpt, but I hold off awaiting more contacts to drive the price down. I swap Theveste from NM to galley. Ragnar will trade his treasury (32 gp) for our WM so I take the opportunity to trade our WM+90 gold for his WM. Then I sell our WM to the Mongols for 8, to the Russians for 70, and to the Germans for 43 (treasury). I use the profits to buy embassies with the Mongols (running 100% science, 55 turns to pyramids, no buildings, 1 entertainer and 3 spears) and Germany (running 80% science, have a ‘racks and 3 spears). Russia is down to 3 cities and may not last long so I decide against spending the last of our cash on an embassy. IT Russia calls up and offers us contact with the Koreans for our treasury (100 gold) – no thanks. On my last turn Carthage completes a settler, barbs appear north of Theveste and I swap it back to a NM. Our settler reaches the green dot to grab wines and define the eastern extent of our land grab. :thumbsup:

Thoughts: I left the settler in Carthage unmoved on my last turn so the next leader can decide what to do with him. The NM in Theveste is due in 1 turn, but could be swapped back to a galley if the next leader is feeling bold against the barbs. We have a NM due from Utica in 3, I didn't whip it (and whip it good) because the timing of our growth wasn't ideal, but maybe I should have in retrospect. We will want a galley ASAP to settle the southern island and to get contacts if they aren’t brokered around before then. The Mongols extorted us 9 turns ago, so watch out in another 11 turns - don't leave cash in the bank. Remember to MM Carthage if below size 4 as noted by Syrian (swap hill to flood to generate 6 food on second turn), at size 5 and 6 no MM is necessary as it produces 5 food with hill in play. There are still about 5 turns of whipping sadness left in Carthage. Think about using the whip again after that, with the AI having galleys about they could swoop in and grab our choice spots. We want to secure horses, 2 iron, and those cows ASAP. Working from Sirian’s dotmap that makes our priorities Dark Blue, Light Blue, White in my opinion. It looks like a good game! Enjoy.

Save and screenies to follow.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1350bc.zip

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-1.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-2.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-3.jpg

@All
10 turns is the standard move -
I am not sure why I missed it when I last posted the turn order

:( pity i misses this one.

If Russia is about to go down the tubes you can always pay them gpt for contacts/CoL when it looks like they are about to go under.

When I took a 'big picture' look at things I realized they have two cities up near the mongols. I am not sure how or why this happened (i.e. why they passed up the wines), but it should ensure their survival until the Mongols get tired of them. They have lots of 21 square overlap.

Expansionist civs can get a free city in PTW. I already saw this happen in my PTW games with Vikings and Mongols. The probably got a free city, an then added a second city from that one.

You are probably right LK. I recently got two cities and a settler while playing the Arabs. I was shocked.

I saw a Russian archer headed south with my wine scout, so maybe those bonus cities will tip the scales and allow them to survive the German onslaught. It would be nice to have a small buffer civ between us and Germany for a while.

Got it. Will play and post today.

Edit1: Will play tonight and post tomorrow.

Edit2: Done

IT: Micromanage Carthage as per Sirian's instructions. Change slider from 6.1.3 to 7.1.2, gaining 3gpt. Trade WM to Cathy for WM and 3 gold, to Ragnar for WM and 3 gold, to Genghis for 1 gold, and to Otto for 4 gold. Decide to send the settler resident in Carthage toward the pink dot, which probably should have been settled long ago. The archer will clean up the settlement while the NuMe takes out the roving barbarian. Germans offer an alliance against the Russians and RoP but I decline.

Early Turns: Theveste changed to Galley. Not sure what to do with Carthage after it grows. It automatically chooses the forest square, making Carthage grow and finish the Settler in 4 turns. After toying with several other ways to micromanage it, I decide that is the best way. I settle near the wines. I make contact with Korea when I find a city they founded on our eastern border. Our NuMe gets his first action. I don't really like his animation. I found pink dot, aka Sabratha. I clean up the barb camp to the east. I trade our WM and 51 gold to Korea (they give the best rate) for contact with India. India lacks Mathematics, but first I offer them our WM to which they offer their WM, 1 gold, and....Code of Laws! Uh, that works for me Gandhi. We are now at parity with everyone but Russia, Scandinavia, and the Mongols. All 7 civs are now found.

Middle Turns: I continue map trading every turn. I am starting to consider it to be mildly exploitative. What do you guys think? The first settler to come out of Carthage is sent to the dark blue dot, with a NuMe clearing the path for him. The AI civs want 5gpt and 222 gold for Polytheism, but for now, I hold out, until one or two more of them have it. Change the slider back down to 7.1.2 from 6.1.3. Remember that when Carthage grows from 4 to 5, it needs an extra luxury, but when it goes back to 4, it should be readjusted. Keep Carthage going as per Sirian's instructions. Mongols sign an alliance with Russia against Germany. The barbs around Utica are a huge pain in the ass. They pillage a road and mine. Perhaps I should have attacked them, but they were across a river, so I didn't want to risk the NuMe. Russia is down to only two cities. I am growing a little antsy keeping so much cash around, so finally I trade 258 gold and 1gpt to Scandinavia for Polytheism. Korea offers their WM and 71 gold for Polytheism and Otto offers their WM and 31 gold. This will bring our total cost down to 156 gold and 1gpt. I take it because if I don't, someone else will. I start on Repubic, under the assumption that it is much easier to trade for Construction, Currency, and Literature.

Late Turns: Theveste finishes its galley and I keep it on another one. The next player can change that if he wants to. Our regular archer kills a barb warrior and is promoted to veteran, losing one hp. India founds a city near one of our yellow dots. We had better fill in our backside next turn before India does. Our veteran warrior in Leptis Minor takes 3 hits before he dispatches a barb horseman.

Conclusion: Like Gothmog before me, I have left a settler in Carthage, for LKendter to move where he likes. I recommend the light blue dot in Sirian's dotmap, or near the horse inbetween Utica and Ulaanbaatar (if we think we can win the culture battle). We are at complete tech parity, ahead of India by mathematics and Polytheism, with only 1gpt of payments, going to Ragnar for 17 more turns. Gandhi, Wang Kon, Genghis Khan, and Otto are all Polite toward us, and Cathy (who is almost dead anyways) and Ragnar are both annoyed with us. I have left the two cities closest to the Mongols on Temples, due in 24 and 25 turns, and of course, they can be changed if LKendter wants. I have left one NuMe in the eastern desert to clear out any barbs, although at this point, he is probably not necessary, as the Indians have a warrior running around and they don't have the disadvantage against the barbs that we have.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38,_1100_BC.SAV

LKendter (currently playing)
Reagan (on deck)
Sirian
Gothmog
Speaker

I see it - of course, it arrives when I am flying tonight :(
Expect something very late tonight, or maybe tomorrow.

A few comments, note I have not looked at the save or seen a map, just read the report:

I am worried about the light blue dot. We are lucky that Korea didn't settle there rather than wherever they ended up in the east, same for India. They do have our maps now and they will be back with more settler/galleys. This is potentially a powerful city for us. I am glad you settled the dark blue dot though. IMO the pink dot could have waited some more. The mongols are the only grab risk there and they have good room to expand up north without having to cross our territory (and potentially be slowed or blockaded by our troops). Which is why I settled orange first and put even white before pink in my report (it's on the coast).

Nice work with the India contact/trade. You got to them before they had a WM of our continent. I would probably have waited for galley contact, or a contact trade. I don't consider the WM trade exploitive, its just a payback for some of our northern and northeastern scouts.

I might have gone for monarchy, as we will not be ready for Republic until we have at least a couple of market built (and that implies currency). But I understand your reasoning.

I would not have let the barbs pillage our bonus grassland mine. I don't know the sequence of events that led to it, but that is a harsh blow for Utica.

With industrious, a pillaged tile isn't as bad. We ought to have enough workers to repair the damage quickly once the area is secure.

Remember, we are non-religious. If we switch to Monarchy, that just means we are going to have to have another round of anarchy when we switch to Republic. Considering you really dont get Democracy until the very end of the Middle Age if not the beginning of the Industrial Age when you are not researching yourself. The WM trading I am talking about is going back every turn and getting 1 gold per civ, when really we don't have anything new to show them. I chose the pink dot before I knew the Indians were in town (remember I chose the site at the very beginning of my turn, but I also chose it because it can become a productive city rather quickly. Also recall that Sirian urged it as a top priority. As for the pillage, well, there really was nothing I could do. The barb would not attack my NuMe and kept sitting across the river, so I didn't want to risk the 30 shields it would take to build another one, or let him sack the city. An archer may be necessary over there to civilize those barbs.

LKendter, if you read this before you play, please notice that Leptis minor is set to complete a warrior next turn and DOES NOT need one. This was an oversight on my part, as two exploring warriors returned home before Leptis Minor produced anything and I forgot to change it. An archer would be a better fit I think.

Sirian urged pink before orange. I settled orange first and stand by that decision (I would have gone for pink if I had seen any mongol threat). I believe with orange settled, the need to get pink diminished, as described above. Also, if you haven't noticed already, I may not take Sirian's comments as the gospel. He is a good player, very thoughtful and writes well, but not the final authority by any means. The light blue has two cows and would (will) be majorly productive. I mention my fear of the AI's swooping in at the end of my post. I litterally hopped out of my seat when I read that you were going for pink first hoping that we wouldn't lose light blue before the end of your turn.

As far as the Monarchy vs. Republic. As I said, I understand your reasoning, but thanks for elaborating. If we go to war (I hope not), and get our golden age from our NM, we may wish we were in Monarchy. I mention in my report that I would have whipped another settler, you chose not to. Sometimes differences are just that, not better or worse just different.

I would have attacked the barb, maybe with a warrior (I don't know where you sent the two that were in that area at the end of my turn), maybe with a NM (it does attack at 2). Again just a difference. Hopefully I wouldn't have let him get in that position in the first place (as I said I don't know the sequence of events).

Sorry if you felt my commentary was too harsh, I didn't mean it that way. Your play was fine, only the pink dot do I consider a small bit of weed and hopefully I will be proved wrong. I like to play in SG's to find out about other playing styles. I like to comment and be commented upon. I will refrain next time if you say so.

Generally, Republics do quite well in wartime, especially if you are not the aggressor. With a non-religious civ I would almost always go towards Republic rather than Monarchy (unless I want the Hanging Gardens for some reason.)

No, I appreciate the commentary. Commentary and discussion are how we get better. And isn't that the point of playing an SG in the first place?

I think it was a great stroke of luck stumbling across a Korean city like that. It was even luckier that they gave us CoL for our WM. To be at total tech parity at this point, with only 1gpt in outgoing payments is a minor miracle. There is a chance that we might even beat the AI to Republic. We could even sneak a wonder, if we wanted, if we start a prebuild.

My .02 on the recent issues:

- Monarchy v. Republic - My general approach is to self-research Republic first because it's usually an either/or choice given the high value that the AIs place on both techs. Republic is likely going to be our gov't of choice, especially given our non-Religious traits. I support the decision to begin Republic research.

- City sites - Settling near the cattle to the SE of Carthage (assuming that's possible, which looks unlikely) should be very high on the list of things to do next turn.

- Wonders - My standard view regarding self-building wonders on Deity prior to ToE, especially when still trying to get general city improvements and military in place, is to fuhgedaboutit. I'm having a hard time imagining a situation in our current game where straying from that philosophy will have a positive expected value.

Gothmog leaped out of his seat with concern at pink dot. I did the same upon reading that the capital got whipped. :eek: That is something I would never do. To save THREE TURNS on a settler? No settler is that urgent. That's 20g in added lux IF LUCKY, this if it costs just 1gpt to raise lux by 10%. Or... if not doing that, then keeping the capital at lower size for an extended time, which costs at least 2gpt (river tile) and at least 1 food or shield per turn, for each population reduced. If the city were sitting on size 6, it could produce 6spt (forest, mined hill, two plains, two flood plains) with 2 suplus food and 12 to 14 commerce per turn, and be done with the settler as the city goes to size 7. From size 5, whipping means the city dropped all the way down to SIZE TWO. At size two, the city is pulling in only six commerce per turn. Sheesh. The lost population will mean at least two turns delay on all later settlers anyway. :smoke:

I do agree with Gothmog that players should make up their own minds, not blindly follow my suggestions. However, that cuts both ways. I would urge others not to be whipping our capital please. Population is power. :) Thanks.


- Sirian

@Reagan: Normally I would agree with you, regarding wonders, however I have just had one of the most bizarre results with prebuilding in an Emperor game, where a palace I started at 8spt, completed in 86 turns, managed to steal a major wonder and win the game for me, so I am now realizing that anything is possible. This is not to say that it is applicable in this case, and it probably isn't, but I just wanted to keep all our options open. If we prebuilt now, for what it's worth, we could probably get a Middle Age wonder, though it definitely isn't worth it until we get City Improvements.

@All: Just to clarify, I wasn't blindly following Sirian's suggestion. In my opinion, the pink dot was the best available site for our next city. Its terrain is half hill, half grassland (with some jungle over the grassland), and by the time we get to Republic in 40 turns or less, it will be one of our top cities. Light blue dot has two cows, yes, but it also does not have fresh water anywhere nearby, and has only plains and water in its radius. Let's not overrely on bonus tiles so much that we lose sight of the whole of the City Radius. Until we can irrigate without fresh water, those cows will produce 2 food, 3 shields (if mined), and 1 gold, or one shield better than a mined bonus grassland tile, but since a potential city on light blue dot would be 8 tiles from Carthage, those extra shield would almost certainly be lost to corruption anyways.

This is the sort of discussion I enjoy! Well, I saved three turns and got to a spot I thought was critical to block off the rapidly expanding mongols. They haven't sent another settler our was since. They went east instead. We got a bit of luck in the east and I got the wines spot as well. I was really thinking it would just cost us some gold and with Germany and Russia fighting I didn't think we'd need it anyway (tech pace slow). I did lose track of the fact that we had a nice river spot and could grow past size 6. This might have changed my analysis a bit (a small bit of weed that is). With those flood planes we could be larger now than we are. Why didn’t anyone tell me this before, did I have to prod? As I said before, please offer comments on my turns, especially on questionable moves. But still, from Sirians analysis I gained 3 turns, lost some gold (ofset in part by 3 turns earlier city production), and delayed future settlers by two turns. If we couldn’t grow past size 6, I would take that deal again (in the current game where gold isn’t really a problem and the tech pace is slow). Given that we could grow past size 6, there must be some way to configure our city to produce settlers every 4 turns with its array of resources. I would have tried to get that to happen (rather than the average of every 5 turns we’ve been doing - three during my turns and two during Speakers). So thank you for pointing that out, although I could have done without the Sheesh. Were you upset by the final authority and gospel comments? We should definitely try to configure our capital to produce settlers every 4 turns (I think this would take a size 6-8 cycle).

I agree with the Republic choice. As I said, I might have gone for Monarchy. We might have been able to trade it. But I think actually the Republic choice was best given the high price the AI charges for governments. I learned something I already was leaning towards here.

@Speaker: You are right about the potential productivity of the pink spot. I was just really worried about AI invasion after we gave our world maps away. The way I typically lose at Diety is to not get enough of a core set up in the very beginning. It is great that we have had no problems in that area yet.

I agree that we should try to figure out a way to get a settler every 4 turns. Perhaps LK could look into it during his turn (if he hasn't already played).

You can only work with the tiles you have. We don't have BG tiles at the capital. We have flood plains. That means choosing food OR shields. Unless... you simply let the grow larger and keep it there, where you can get food and shields. There's just no way to get these tiles to four turns per settler. I agree with the urge to speed things up, but your whipping sped up one settler at cost to everything else.

Did it turn out that the Mongols were racing for Orange Dot? Did you three turns earlier grabbing that actually make or break the difference on us getting that location? I didn't get that sense from your report.

Settler production rate can be limited by food or by shields. In the case of lands with no food bonuses, the fastest settler rate is ten turns per settler. It takes that much food, with granary support, to grow the city two sizes. This can't be sped up no matter what. Whipping to try to do so would completely fail to recognize that it is the food, not the shields, that is limiting production.

Well, for our capital, it is the shields that is limiting, but you speak of a settler every five turns as an unacceptably low output. That would be absurd, in my view. If we had drawn lower food totals, we'd be stuck with a settler every ten turns at best, and training units in between each settler.

Fact is, we have the food and shields to put a settler out every five or six turns. That is monumentally good. It only works if we keep the city between size 4 and 7, though. Dropping it to size 2 means a delay of running four or five turns of max food and virtually no shields just to get back up to sustainable settler production of one every five turns, OR WORSE, not do that, and continue to shrink the capital even more, this with every whipping adding unhappiness that lasts an additional twenty turns, compound.

There is just no scenario in which whipping your capital comes out ahead.

As for losing light blue dot, there's no way Korea or any other AI's from other landmasses could hold those cities if we don't want them to do so. Right there on our core, with them having to ship reinforcements over by boat? We could take the cities away from them if we had to do so. Inland cities are another story. If we take on the Mongols or Germans, its a much bigger task.

I urged pink dot because of the quality of the land. You got the orange, that was a good move. You got green also, and that was very good. We're doing fine. But the land at our capital is a conglomeration. We can only sustain a high production rate at a higher population, to get both food and shields at the same time. This is very different from a low food, high shield, all grass layout where you WANT your capital sitting around at size one because you need those settlers out the door the moment the food allows it.

If I think hard, I could come up with some emergency situations where I might deem it worth it to whip the capital. Almost all of these involve countering some unexpected and dire threat. If the intent is to boost production, it is always a step backward. The capital would have produced five or six shields on its own anyway, so for fifteen or sixteen shields, you traded away ten food, PLUS the shields and food and commerce lost from working fewer tiles, PLUS the unhappiness for twenty turns, which would be tripled (not doubled) if a second whipping were done.

I never whip the capital. Even if I had all flood plains and desert I wouldn't do it. I'd get the thing up to size seven and run some desert mine tiles. For settler production, I'd run break-even or even deficit food at size seven, then max useful food to get back to size seven, then high shields again, round and round, the fastest total continuous settler output.

I realize there is a sense of urgency, to try to get something done on your turn. Everybody feels it. Ten turns go by quickly. All we can do is all we can do. You don't want to set up something big, not have time to finish it, and have someone else come along and undo all your gains. But Deity-capable SG players who've proven they can be part of winning teams... if any one player tries to do everything and win the whole game, it will likely only result in setbacks that others then have to try to undo. Sometimes the best thing you can do on your turn is to suck it up and leave the glory for the next guy. Sure, if you've got an open shot, take it. But if you don't, then pass the ball to the guy who is open. You'll get credit for the assist. If you never pass the ball and always take the shot, even if you don't have a good one, and especially if you miss a lot, you'll get credit for that too. :o That you ran overtime on your turn to go get the green dot... maybe that was just confusion. I don't know. But really, you don't have to do it all. We will achieve more if we work together and trust one another. You can analyze, leave suggestions for the next player, veto choices of your predecessors. If your own results come out well enough, people won't object. If you take charge and rework what someone else was doing, then it needs to work out often enough that people continue to trust your judgement. That trust thing is a two-way street. :)

In fairness, though, when I made my dotmap, there was no contact with the other continents. You may be right about increased priority to light blue dot. I don't really know. I also don't tend to analyze and criticize other player's turns. I have a need to keep my mouth shut and choose my moments wisely, because if I went completely unchained, I'd nitpick and analyze everything, and the important points would be lost in the tumult. If I want my opinions to carry weight, it's up to me to make them weighty, not toss them around like rice at a wedding.


Hey, it's unusual to be sitting around waiting on Lee to have time to take a turn. :) He spends all that time in hotels, he usually is on top of everything and needing to fight off boredom between those intense periods of doing his job. We all get busy sometimes, though. I hope he has a safe flight. :D


- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
Sometimes the best thing you can do on your turn is to suck it up and leave the glory for the next guy. Sure, if you've got an open shot, take it. But if you don't, then pass the ball to the guy who is open. You'll get credit for the assist.
- Sirian
Yup, there's nothing like opening up a game to an awesome setup. Me, I'm actually one of the players who prefers to do the setting up, to devote my ten turns to getting everything sitting right in place for the next player to open up a can of whoop-a$$ cola on the AI. When I'm handed that big, pointy stick I feel the pressure to wield it just right, but if I hand it to someone and see them masterfully execute it, it gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling inside too that I was a part of a grand scheme, and a team effort.

In RBP1, I was quite happy to have spent alot of my one set of ten shipping a TON of MDI's right up to the Ottoman & Arab borders & parking them, and rather than trying to conquor three civs on my turn, just beat up on Korea. When the player who followed me opened up the game and proceeded to use all those well-placed units to wipe out the Ottomans & Arabs in record time, it made me feel all warm & fuzzy too :)

I second Sirian's comments. He also described a lot of the current problems with the Houston Rockets basketball team (and I'm not talking about their penchant for whipping the capitol). They are a collection of talent that will be super-tough in the near future, but they have a couple of high-quality guards who often put pressure on themselves to make something happen and then fire up subpar shots at the end of the shot clock. The worst part of that is the guards have good passing ability and can really make the offense click when they work as a part of the team.

Anyway, that last part was more of a :rant: about the Rockets than commentary about our current team. The main points are that we (1) don't whip Carthage unless absolutely necessary and (2) operate as a cohesive unit that tries to pick up where the other guy left off while setting up our successor for a good round. We're in solid shape!

:mad: I left my PTW disk at the hotel, so I won’t have access to it again until late Sunday night (playing time doubtful that night). To avoid delaying the game, I will swap places with Reagan. No rush for Reagan to get back, as I will be stretched on Monday with 3 games due. I am glad to pick up some part time work, but I already squeeze 3 billing days in at night (this year :eek: ) which really eat into my gaming time.

LKendter (on deck)
Reagan (currently playing)
Sirian
Gothmog
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Got it. Because we have extra time during my turn, I thought I'd get some consensus about our next city site. Given the likelihood that we'll lose the double-cow spot, we have four choices: (1) settle on the Wines site on our eastern border, near Germany; (2) settle the last first/second "tweener" site west of Carthage, by the Iron; (3) drop a Settler on a boat and see how the land to our south looks; or (4) aggressively settle by the Mongols and snag some Dyes (see attached pic). Before I begin moving our current Settler, please let me know your preference.

the pic (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/citysite.JPG)

So that the team can see it

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/citysite.JPG


@Reagan - to get the picture in your post
!img]www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/citysite.JPG !/img]

Replace the ! with a [

My feelings on Red Dot

**NO**
1) This is a cultural suicide city. It is surround on 3 sides the the Mongols, and can NEVER control it full 21 squares.
2) If we are lucky, it will simply flip to the Mongols. More likely, this city would sour realations with the Mongols - possibly producing an early war - bad news at deity.

I agree with LK, but I disagree that the light blue dot is definitely lost. We already have the NuMe there who can act as a sort of blockade. I would recommend one of the two following options: send the settler toward light blue dot and if the Koreans do in fact settle there, put the settler on the galley that is hanging around that spot and drop him on the southern island and maybe accompany him with the NuMe. The other option is to send him in between Leptis Magna and Utica (probably on the single hill jutting out into the jungle, next to the bonus grassland, securing the horse. That will be a culturally tense area, however, so you might want to move one more tile away from Mongolia.

Edit: On second thought, after reviewing the save file, the Koreans do have a settler under the warrior who is in sight. They probably will settle near the two cows.

Well, now that two of you have voted against red dot, I'll make it a majority and take that option off the table. I included it only because I wanted to present all of the choices, not because I thought it was a good one. I'm ambivalent regarding the other choices, so I'll wait until late afternoon today or tomorrow morning to play my turn, giving us time to reach a consensus.

Guys, I am going back to college today, and my internet access will be sporadic at best for the next week. If my turn comes up and I am absent for 24 hours, please feel very free to skip me and I'll pick it up the next time around.

1100 (0) – Traded our WM (which I’ll do on alternating turns from now on) and lowered lux for a total of 9gp+1gpt. Sent our Settler on his journey towards the other Wines. Swapped Hippo from Temple to Worker. The Persians' border is just peeping out of the fog to the north of Frankfurt. They can only be contacted via Galley unless Germany or someone meets them first.

1075 (1) – We are in a nasty position relative to the barbs by Utica and Leptis. I withdraw our NuMe and two Workers into Utica (rather than risking a cross-river attack onto a forest square). The Mongols have Construction now. We now have an embassy with every civ except Persia. Russia was pretty cheap, so I went ahead and established it even if they aren’t going to be much of a force in this game. Our Galley begins its trek towards the Persians.

1050 (2) – Vikes have Construction, too.

1025 (3) – The Mongols took out the barb camp, which caused a new camp to spring up at our next most likely city site. Korea settled the cows.

1000 (4) – Our Mongol pals took out all of the barbs by Utica. Our NuMe will be there to escort our new Settler, though. The Vikes, Mongols, Germans, Russians, and Indians are in a full-blown steel cage match now. The Mongols are using a Deity-RoP to get to the war front(s) to the east.

975 (5) – The Russians very aggressively settled next to Leptis. Their name just hit “the list,” I presume.

950 (6) – Carthage spits out another Settler.

925 (7) – zzz

900 (8) – The Koreans have entered the fray – leaving us as the only peaceful civ.

875 (9) – zzz

850 (10) – With one more turn of MM, the forest clearing at Theveste should allow the Granary to complete before pop growth. The Germans have met the Persians and now have Literature. I acquire the Persian map from Germany and trade it around to the rest of the world for +69gp. The southern island is ready for settlement, as is the Wines square to the east. My successor should meet the Persians during his turn, which means buying contact at this point is not a good idea. Hopefully our meeting Jerxes will come in time to trade contact to some other civs. With the world at war, we are in a great position to cultivate friendships through trade!

Good luck, play well, LK (and have a good trip, too).

the save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38850BC.SAV)

You link was lk38850BC.SAV
The correct link was LK38850BC.SAV.

Please watch the case in the future.

Also, please you .zip in the future.
I had more problems with corruption when using .sav format.

I "got it", very late tonight or tomorrow night.

Sorry for the typo. I forgot to check the link after making the post.

Doesn't our Commercial trait reduce corruption?

Reagan: Lee's talking about save file corruption. Our commercial trait won't help with that. ;)

He wants you to zip the save files before you upload them. I'd prefer that too, so I don't have to manually redirect where the file is supposed to go, or have to go looking for it if I put it in the usual place. For me to download and open a zip file is two clicks: all the zips go to an incoming folder. One click to download, one click to unzip, both already pointing to right directories. However, if you upload a save file, that actually takes me longer to deal with. Ironic, but true.

Sometimes those new to SG play don't see the sense of zipping the save files, insist they don't want to do it unless persuaded it is necessary, and it can get to be as much work trying to convince them as it would be to deal with the problems we are trying to avoid with the Zips. :( Except for one thing... If a game does happen to be held up by a corrupted file, it seriously damages the flow of the pacing trying to sort it out. Some SG's have actually not survived this adversity.

Anyway, Lee's asking you to zip the save games before upload.


- Sirian

@Sirian - Thanks for the explanation. Guess I have some 'splainin' to do, too. I like to joke around a lot but have a dry sense of humor. I knew what LK was referring to and will try to zip my files in the future. It just seemed funny to me that one of our traits fights corruption, that's all. :lol:

@All - Who's a Simpsons fan on this team? If there are a few of you, I'll try to occasionally drop a few lines into my turn reports. If not, I won't.

850 BC - What a weird map - you rarely see continents this absurdly close. Korea was just 2 squares from our landmass?
I raise luxuries to 30% - I can't remember if happiness, or pop reduction from settlers occurs first. I don't want to take a chance.

:confused: I can't figure out what we are up to with settlers - we have a first ring spots unclaimed, but there a settler to claim a 2 square island?

I hate wasting workers turns, but Hippo and Sabratha will critically need WATER when Republic arrives in 27 turns, but we are mining the logical path to get water that direction. Irrigated grassland and mined hills is a powerhouse city, so I want to start our path that way.

I find an Indian worker for sale, and I snag it for $105. The lone Indian city on our continent pays off.

I switch one of them temples to NM - we need more barb fighters.

(I) India / Mongols ally vs. Germany.
Leptis - completes worker, and starts another.


825 BC - At this point the settler is there, so Oea is formed.
On the other hand, building the wine city at its current location results in cultural overlap - I move it a square.
Our nm frags a barb camp near the iron - next up white dot.
(I) A ton of Germans and Mongols kill each other my Leptis.
Korea completes the Great Lighthouse.

800 BC - Hadrumetum is formed - not a great city, but is does claim more wine.

775 BC - (I) Sabratha completes nm, starts another.

730 BC - Cadiz (A.K.A. - white dot) is formed. With us just one tech from barb hordes, I am glad to get that in place. The Mongols have Republic, Construction and Monarchy

690 BC (I) India and Korea peace treaty.

670 BC - First contact with Persia - I can't believe that he only has contact with Germany!
I know we would be extorted for contact in no time so I get everything I can out of it.
I buy construction from India for contact, wm, and $198.
Contact to Mongols for wm, $115.
We trade wm, poly, math and contact with Korea for Republic, $5. :)
I sell Persia construction for wm, $250.
Contact with Russia is only worth $22 - no surprise.
Contact with Vikings is worth $33.
I sell construction to Germany for $152.
I sold the updated maps around for a decent chunk of change.

This may hurt is a barb camp shows up with all of this cash, but I revolt to Republic - we draw 5 turns of anarchy. Bozo is well employed for the moment.

650 BC - Cirta is formed - close to the red dot site.
(I) Russia and India sign a peace treaty.
Barbarians kill a foreign unit near Leptis.
A barb galley nails our galley :(

630 BC - All of a sudden every one has Literature - I buy it from India for $110 to start to reduce our cash.
Our nm kills a barb by Leptis without a scratch :)
3 turns of anarchy left.


Summary - I didn't mention it in my reports, but I did trade maps every turn.

The nasty time of massive barbs will arrive shortly, hopefully longer then 5 turns.


LKendter
Reagan
Sirian (currently playing)
Gothmog (on deck)
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-630BC.zip

IT 630BC: MM to halt starvation at Utica, increase food in cities that can, and change to taxmen in cities that can't.

570BC: We enter Republic. Massive Uprising at the camp north of Hippo. I check. Four civs have changed ages. India has not, but has Monarchy.

Currency @5th from Korea for ~330g.
Monarchy @6th from India for Currency @6th and ~320g.
19g from Germany (all the had) and RoP, for Currency @7th.
Monotheism @5th from Germany (scientific) for Republic @7th and Monarchy @7th.
All of Ghandi's cash (what we paid him, plus change), and RoP, for Monotheism @6th.
76g and RoP from Mongols for Monotheism @7th.

We have picked up three techs and three diplo-boosting RoPs for ~200g net. No gpt payments. All civs but Russia now tech-parity in the middle ages.

I then take our cash and rush three important temples: Rusicade, Sabratha, and Hippo. Our current income is 37gpt. Start lone scientist on Engineering.

530BC: Rush walls at Hippo, as 8 barb horses move into view. We have a nume and two other units here, and its on a hill. Here's hoping.

510BC: The barbs headed for the Mongol town. :lol: One lone barb penetrated past L Magna, though. We lost a warrior attacking, but did win with our nume from L Magna.

490BC: Well, some of the barbs are back. Situation is a bit dicey with several horse floating around on our north border.

470BC: Korea has settled the iron south of L Minor, in overlap range. At some point, we are going to want to attack and take over this town and the cattle site, but it will take a little while before we are ready. How long to wait will depend on a lot of things. Korea will probably be perm-furious with us after this, so don't act rashly. Certainly the early industrial age is the longest I can imagine holding off, though.

Also, I took a look at Scandinavia... they are rather closer than the map indicates. If they picked us as a target, sailed their ships across the bay and attacked amphibiously with Berserks, we'd be in a heap of trouble. I decide to pay 3gpt for RoP, to try to improve relations. This brings them up to cautious.

450BC: I attack a barb horse in our territory near Hippo with our vet archer. He loses 0-4. :(

430BC: The Mongols have arrived! They lose one archer attacking the barb horde, but eliminate all but one unit, which then races deep inside our borders. I had sent a spare warrior up from the capital, he attacks and wins, eliminating what looks to be the last of the uprising. The camp is still there, so we could see one or two more harassers, but the big threat is gone.

Our settler has arrived at the yellow dot in the desert, last dot left from my old dotmap. Next player will have to settle. This site sucks now, but could be near oil or saltpeter, and with electricity and rails, will eventually be useful. Might as well get it, and then cash-rush a temple and try to stay ahead culturally of the equally bone dry AI competitiors on the coast. There are no other useful sites. The far north is still open, but sure to be highly infested and too dangerous even if we did send a settler pair.

I also rushed the temple at L Minor (our main wine town). I took a screenshot on my final turn, but forgot to paste it to file and overwrote it when I pasted my report from the text file. Oops. :o I'm not going back for another one, though. Sorry.

Our capital is size 9 and capable of reaching 12 most easily. It's so strong on food, it can even do settlers or workers from there if we need them. I have it as one of the cities where I am building a barracks, currently. It already built a temple.


I emphasized temples on my turn, and barracks. I got units into all our towns, but these are mostly cutouts. We have a few barracks due to complete and our border situation is in good shape. Barb threat is under wraps. I deliberately avoided connecting any iron for now. We don't need them for Numes, which replace pikes. We don't need them for swords, with no military campaign on the horizon. I did connect the horses, I urge training of horsemen and numes for now.

Oea, the much-disparaged LK-disapproved-of island village, is bringing in 2 gpt income and hosting our lone scientist, so that important cities don't have to slow their growth to keep our research going. It is also now impregnable to invasion from all but the Vikings, and being farthest from the capital, is not even adding corruption anywhere. With us being commercial, it is even short of total corruption, incredibly enough.

I'm afraid the AI's have already discovered Feudalism, not six turns after they got to the middle ages. That is quite a tech pace. If you see a chance to get two-for-one on techs, go for it, but otherwise we're good for now. We can build numes, horsemen, courthouses, aqueducts, cathedrals, harbors, markets, libraries... we have plenty of tech to hold us for a long time, in terms of what we can actually USE, so I urge saving cash and using it to rush courthouses, harbors, temples, for the next period of time, taking a longer view with our short term economic resources, and only move up in tech when truly choice opportunities present themselves. With the current tech pace, we won't get engineering before the AI's do unless they beeline up the education branch, but you never know. 33 turns left to go.

I also looked at the FP situation. This being deity, we're not likely to expand beyond our current territory for some time. The only site I liked at all was Leptis Magna. It's a little close, but there is a lot of fertile land up there, should we eventually challenge the Mongols for the dyes, etc. This is also the most fertile part of our outlying lands. The wine region is very rugged, and it's closer on the map to the capital than it looks, because of the parallelogram aspect of the tiles. (The world map is mathematically square). On Deity, early FP tends to be more urgent than ideally located FP, and this site actually has strong future potential if we can ever take some of the jungle away from the Mongols. With no rival site even remotely close in total potential, I went ahead and ordered the FP to be started. There is also a harbor underway so that we can get some trade going here soonish.


If Gothmog takes only nine turns this round, we'll have the turn numbers back to normal and not have to bust our brains tracking how many turns are left in the round. :)

LK38 - 430BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-430bc.zip)


- Sirian

Oea, the much-disparaged LK-disapproved-of island village

It wasn't the city I objected to, so much as the PRIORITY. I would have built the two site by the capital *BEFORE* the island site.

I also looked at the FP situation. This being deity, we're not likely to expand beyond our current territory for some time. The only site I liked at all was Leptis Magna.

I have to agree on no really good choice here. This game we defintely have the potential for move the capital via leader.


I glad the barbs didn't to much harm ;)


LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing)
Speaker (on deck)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

I'm not touchy about others raising issues about the state of the game after my turn, but I would like to offer a few more detailed explanations than were in my turn report.

City placement choices - I posted a message requesting input regarding city placement. The only responses were to veto the worst of the choices, which I had included only for completeness. I decided to snag the Wines first because they were the most at risk for being lost and a luxury can be sold for big bucks as soon as everyone is out of despotism. :groucho: We had another Settler due from Carthage in 4-5 turns who was slotted for the first-ish ring city site to the west. Unfortunately, the shifting barb camp changed that plan. Rather than waste several turns waiting to :slay: the camp (or, worse, lose the Settler to a barb), I sent him to the island and figured the next Settler would catch the close site. Because of their proximity, I figured the Koreans would send a boat to the island if we waited too long. As it turns out, we got all of the city sites we wanted. :band: By the way, the Settler was on the Wines because I had to [dance] around the warring Mongols/Russians/Germans and there was a Russian Archer parked on the best city site. I moved out of their path hoping we would be able to take their spot the next turn.

Mining the grasslands - While it is correct that mining non-bonus grasslands is not always the best course of action, here is my thought process. It doesn't take any longer to irrigate a mined square than to irrigate an unimproved one. We have super-speed Workers who can irrigate in, what, two turns? We had ~30 turns+anarchy left before Republic was due. I had no reasonable expectation that we would be trading for Republic any sooner than that. Shields were at a premium in that area, so it made sense to squeeze out some production before shifting to food.

Luxury rate - There is no need to raise the luxury rate when a pop point and Settler are due on the same turn.

Again, I'm not upset about these things but I do want y'all to know I'm not some newbie who fails to have a reasoned purpose behind all of the moves he makes. :D

Re Sirian: I felt the mongols would go for the orange dot and possibly pressure the pink dot site as well due to all the good land down there (possibly going for a costal site inbetween). I didn't have a good WM at that time and didn't know they would end up expanding to the east. I am not sure how settling the orange dot changed the mongol expansion pattern and I don't know if the three turns was make or break. To find out I would have to do a replay. Five turns per settler is great, growing every two turns four is max (obviously). I felt there was some urgency to settling our northern and eastern borders and was willing to sacrifice to do that. It was a trade off and I made it consciously. Sorry if you dissagree, but this is a SG :)

I write my report while playing, I don't have internet access at home right now (my old provider sucked and I haven't signed up a new one yet). So I connect at work and at the library. I really didn't know if I was due 10 or 20 turns, so I took 15. If you take a look at K7 (or even RBE3) you will see I like to set up things for others (ala falsefire) as a priority. Flow is needed (and thus discussion).

I don't have PTW where I access the internet and so haven't seen a map. I think we lost the light blue dot, and settled another one near the eastern wines? Now Russia has come for her share of the wines, yes? I guess I'll find out tonight. Consider this my 'I got it' and I'll be playing tonight. I will go 9 turns to get us back on even numbers.

Oh yes, good work on the trading Sirian and LK - esp. the work with the scientific germans.

Also, I agree with LK and would have settled the 'fill in' spots before the island. We lost the iron spot south of the pink dot to the Koreans? I think due to barbarians, ah well those are the breaks.

As I stated before, my main worry early in Diety games is grabbing enough territory. I don't mind falling behind in tech or culture. Those AI's love to settle in what I consider my homeland.

Move the capital via leader? To where? :)

The only way that might make sense is if we take over Korea, completely, while all the other AI's are still strong.

Moving the capital means abandoning low corruption in our original core. Yet that's where all our markets, banks, factories and high population will be. It takes a lot of time, care, and effort, to build up a new core from scratch. Even captured cities have to build all culture from scratch.

Lee, I think you're still overestimating the importance and value of distance between the two palaces. In GOTM14, I built my FP in a city about the same distance from the capital as this site would be. I conquered the world in 1750AD and won the conquest trophy. That was with having to produce troops into the modern era. I had leaders enough to move the capital into the heart of former Persian lands, but that would only have SLOWED ME down, because none of those areas had factories, markets, etc.

Using a leader to rush the FP in an ideal site in the middle of AI territory, with an ancient war, can be a great plan. So is building the FP right on top of the capital and moving the capital later. These are warmongering game plans, though. They don't achieve the best results if you end up staying out of wars and building up peacefully.

I'm not suggesting either of those. We haven't gone the ruthless whip-our-civ-into-the-dirt mass-upgrade-to-swords route. If you are running a builder gameplan and trying to stay out of wars until your economy and production improve, you have to make the most of what you have. The AI's have all been locked into heavy warring lately, which means they are all very unit-heavy. We might knock Korea or India off our shore, a couple of villages, then make peace before they can do any real harm, but that's not the same as going over to Korea or marching up into Mongolia and taking over. And those dry shores I'm talking about as reasonable for us to try to take over, wouldn't be worth moving to anyway.

If you're really intent on shooting for two perfect cores, then the FP should be built in Sabratha instead. Either way, we need to choose quickly.


- Sirian

Sirian: I agree that jumping the Palace is a warmongers thingy - but as you well know deity games can go weird paths. I think lee only wanted you all to remember that if you build the FP somewhat close to the capital you can still move your core (which i might consider after my first Cavalry war with Factories built in the 'old core').

That has often prooven good for me, especially the no-flip chance for the new capital. :D

I haven't seen a map, but I'll be weighing options for a hand built FP in our second ring. Most likely the city Sirian built on the fresh water (I forget the name), that way if the mongols do come for us we can have low corruption in our new former mongol holdings.

I will also be looking with displeasure at the AI's in our homeland. Any thoughts about the advantages of a limited war soonish (knights?) and getting our golden age now vs. allowing the evil AI to keep cities in our homeland and waiting for cavs to go to war (then we can choose to take our GA at that time or even wait longer).

Summary: The FP will be good where Sirian started it. Not much happened. Started some marketplaces to take better advantage of our commercial/republic situation. Built some NMs, no horses. Other civs have feudalism, the Persians and Koreans have theology and engineering. We couldn't afford the brokering possibility on my turns. The tech pace is blistering even with all the wars, in part due to our sucessful past brokerings. I did hook up iron just to take advantage of the shield bonus on that hill - we don't need any more warriors anyway.

Report: Preturn - Woah, the mongols could surely take us out if they wanted. Good thing they are polite and have other foes. A quick check reveals a RoP with them too. Click - Persia declares war on the mongols (good). Russia demands literature from us, I decline and Cathy backs down.

410BC - 250 BC: Found Nora in a spot with no 9 square overlap and in postition to use a few plains, set to temple. I notice that there is one flood plain in its territory, cool. Had to increase lux to 30% to keep Leptis Magna at full production. Made a priority of getting wines hooked up ASAP. IT 350BC peace was made between the Germans and Russia, Scand, and the Mongols. Good thing the Mongols are at war with Persia. Germany wants a MA vs. the Indians, I decline. A Korean settler/spear emerges from Paegam. Wines come online and I reduce lux to 20%.

Thoughts: not much to say. The markets in Hippo and Leptis Minor could be swapped to Courthouses if desired. Hippo will be near the FP when it completes however. I sold the map whenever I cleared some new fog with the galley, got 9 gp from Russia for it once. I would advise doing some cashrushing to reduce our treasury. Construction was really just starting during my turns. We won't be ready for war any time soon.

The Save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38_250bc.zip

and a screen shot:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38_250.jpg

It looks like we are doing well so far. Just a couple of thoughts:

- FP placement - Leptis Magna seems fine to me, too. Expecting a leader rush of a Palace or FP is probably wishful thinking. If we are to expand our holdings, southern Mongolia would be a valuable patch of real estate to "acquire." Unfortunately, it may be awhile before we have the muscle to accomplish that. That said, I would discourage us from waging any wars unless necessary. A diplo victory might be our best bet, especially with all of the fighting (and resulting spoiled AI relationships) that has taken place so far. The Mongols are bad boys right now and dumping the Koreans, Indians, and/or Russians out of our vicinity would likely cost us votes in exchange for some ~unproductive turf.

- Iron connection - I agree with Sirian's assessment regarding leaving the Iron unconnected and believe we should pillage the current Iron connection in order to save it from a potentially bad RNG result. The road only adds some (potentially corrupted) trade but doesn't impact the production from the resource.

With some preparation we should be able to take Paegam from Korea. If we get them to declare on us there will be no reputation hit to speak of. Even they will get over it before too long. The main reason for doing this, IMO, would be to start our golden age. I am not advocating this path forward, just making note of it. I agree that it will be quite some time before we could take on the Mongols. We need infrastructure!

Re Iron connection: we have two sources of Iron in our territory and, if you are worried about it, leaving one unconnected should be plenty. If it were just upto me I would hook up both and not feel bad if one dissapeared. Trading Iron can be quite lucrative (once we have the ability). The iron that is connected is in Cadiz (a first ring city), and the additional two trade is very nice. Finally, I believe that once an Iron has been hooked up pillaging the road doesn't do any good.

Guys, I think you'll have to skip me this time around. I have access to a computer, but it is a mac :rolleyes: and get this...it has no floppy drive :confused:, so I can't download the file and then play it on my laptop. I'll be moving into my own room on saturday and should be back to normal internet access then. Sorry!

250 BC - I look at Leptis Magna building the fp without a courthouse. However, after playing with the time to rush the courthouse it doesn't look like it will make much of a difference.

I rush the harbor in Rusicade, as there are 3 potential civs to trade luxuries with via a harbor. In addition, another wines will connect in 1 turn. I switch Leptis Minor to courthouse at 50% corrupt.

:confused: This is deity? The German people are impressed by our cultural achievements?
(I) Germany / India sign a peace treaty.
Germany / Korea sign a peace treaty.

230 BC - I ship Korea our only gems, and get spices and $40 back for the trouble. Every penny helps, and a couple more like this will pay for the harbor rush.
If India would build a port, we could trade them iron - a very profitable resource.

210 BC - I don't understand how, but we can irrigate that flood plain [dance]
Nora will not be a dry city. It looks like the river comes to that point of 3 mountains.

190 BC - Our number 1 priority is to increase revenue to help with the tech race later on. A courthouse in Leptis minor should pay for itself soon enough.
(I) Not as much as I would have liked - courthouse is even in revenue, but the extra shield will help.

170 BC - (I) Persia begins Leo's, the tech continues to move forward.

150 BC - It is barely worth the bother, so I pass on Gems to Mongols for Dyes and $9. I will wait to see if they get some more cash.

110 BC - Russia is really screwed for tech - they just learned literature.
(I) Germany completes the Great Library.

90 BC - The mined hill pays off, and fp now due in 23 turns.

50 BC - GACK - The Mongols aggressively settled by our second wines city. I immediately rush a temple out of paranoia.

Summary - I didn't mention it in my reports, but I did trade maps every turn.

The Vikings still don't have Engineering, but will that last 14 turns?

The bad news - very few civs want our luxuries.
The good news - cash flow has improved a lot.


LKendter
Reagan (currently playing)
Sirian (on deck)
Gothmog
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-50BC.zip

Originally posted by reagan
@All - Who's a Simpsons fan on this team? If there are a few of you, I'll try to occasionally drop a few lines into my turn reports. If not, I won't.

I am a Simpsons fan....lets here some of your lines :)

Got it. I should be able to play and post tonight.

Germany has been at war the whole game. Now that that they are at peace the Diety bonus will kick in for them (re culture). They should have libraries everywhere soon enough.

For a desert to be a flood plane it must be up against a river. There is no way to see it but it must indeed be between the mountains. I only noticed it because the game picked it as the first tile to work for Nora.

Oh and regan, I am no huge Simpsons fan but I did watch it long ago. Feel free to add some humor to your posts. From your earlier attempts I see that your humor is dry and subtle, much like my own.

Turn 0: Reset some cities from marketplaces to aqueducts (including 1.5 ring Sabratha, which was at size 6), as they would hit size 6 around the same time the markets finished and would have several turns of lost growth potential.

Early turns: I conduct WM trading each round. It's amusing that 100% of Russia's treasury is being spent on our map. Popped a Worker from Carthage and mined a couple more tiles to allow two-turn NuMes. Added a lawn to the Palace. Turned Utica into our stable for Horsemen training. We might want to start building Horsemen for a Knight upgrade soon.

Middle turns: The Jerk extorted 54gp+WM. Mongols completed Sistine. Persia cascaded to Sun Tzu and Leo’s. Uh oh! It’s not like they weren’t already crushing everyone in culture and leading the tech charge.

Late turns: The aggressive Mongol city by Hadrum is rubble. I started a Settler there to fill-in if you want, Sirian. If not, swapping to a courthouse would be my suggestion. There is a major Mongol SoD (hopefully) headed towards the German front. During a diplomacy session, Bis (who has been at war pretty much the whole game) confided to me: “I’m a rage-aholic. I just can’t live without rage-ahol.” The SoD should help take care of his problem one way or the other.

Going forward: I saved our money so we can go on a tech buying spree after Engineering is discovered. The backwards Vikes still don’t have it, either. Rushing the Leptis Minor acqueduct might be useful, because it is ready to grow another point but is stuck at 6. Persia is at least to Astronomy now. The NuMes on the roads are headed towards the east in case the Mongols are getting any ideas about attacking us (although, if they do, we are SO screwed). If we train a group of vertically challenged mercenaries, would they be MiniMes? The lumberjacks by Hadrum will be done in three and two turns, respectively, so watch the shield allocation/building choice there.

Have fun, Sirian.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38150AD.zip

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian (currently playing)
Gothmog (on deck)
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

IT 150AD: Rush courthouse at eastern wines. Swap cities with more than 15% corruption to courthouses. Swap some projects to library so we can get 1000yr bonus. If not now, then pretty much never. We have to play from behind either way. It's easier to make up a commerce deficit than a cultural one. A little cultural prowess goes a long way at the diplomatic table, while a complete lack of refinement is only safe if you conduct all your deals at the business end of a sword.

Early: Rush Library in the desert. We're committed to aggressive cultural struggle here, now's the time to make a strong move. I also start some more barracks. Mongol SoDs are so huge, I turn off animation of friendly AI's.

Middle: Carthage, Hippo and L Minor all complete libraries. Utica is also working on a library. I keep the market going at Sabratha, though. Sadly, Vikings learn Engineering two turns before the tech comes in. We're left in the dust. I buy Feudal from India, still no deals possible. I buy Theology, including for some gpt, but Vikings and everyone else but Russia has Education. I go ahead and buy that, too. All three purchases @7th. We're broke and down to ~35gpt income left, not enough for any more tech at this time. Only Persia and Korea have Astronomy. I'll try to get that once the FP completes, and trade it for two or three other techs.

Oh, and Mongolia signed Russia to alliance vs Germany. Will Russia fold to Germany, or do they have enough to hold on and serve as puppet strings for Temujin. Heh.

Late: Mongols start to bring infantry and then Keshiks to the battle. Germany has done better than I expected, with their foolhardy attacking of Mongol SoDs in the mountains. Still, the Mongols got some, too, losing three vet swords in a row to one defending longbow, and their SoD reinforcements have finally petered out. Apparently humans aren't the only ones to see really incredible streaks on the combat rolls. Germany actually held the front stable for eight turns, despite being outgunned, but those Keshiks in the mountains are something fierce to watch. Germany's knights are in trouble in this terrain. Once Keshiks arrived, German lines collapsed almost instantly. Moscow falls before the end of my round.

The FP completed, and the same turn, India and then Mongolia acquired Astronomy. I bought from India @5th for more than we could have afforded prior to the FP, then traded to Germany for Invention and to Scandinavia for Gunpowder. We have two saltpeter in our territory, neither connected, and we are only a couple of techs behind the main pack of AI's, though quite a few behind Persia. One salt is outside anybody's city radius in our territory which the Koreans could culturally wrest from us as a remote possibility. Korea is the second strongest world power now, economically. Germany and Mongols have been fighting for too long and both are slipping.

India still does not have a harbor. If they should ever build one, we might be able to trade them wines and most of our remaining GPT for Navigation or other tech not known by all, and trade that to Vikings and Germans for stuff like Chivalry, etc. I paid big to catch us up to where we could manage multiple trades. I got one for us, but we'll need more such to keep up. Clearly Persia is the main powerhouse, and we cannot let them run away with the game. They could conceivably win by culture as they are more than twice the total of any civ except Korea. They have SunTzu also.

I weaned us off the 20% lux tax and went to paying for luxury imports instead. Saved us a few gpt and gets us into positive trade relations with all the major powers, the better for us to fly under the radar a bit longer.

In other news, Korea is on the warpath. They have moved military units on a sneak-attack beeline into our territory in the east. I think we are the likely target, thanks to pissing them off with cultural pressure at Paegam, but it is possible that they are instead heading for Russia or Mongolia. We NEED their spices for another two turns until our main cathedrals are finished, plus no sense forcing the issue if it turns out they are targetting someone else. They are definitely sneak-attacking SOMEONE, though, so be wary. We're in no position to fight, although we have enough to defend vs any initial sorties, judging by the sorry stack they've sent so far. I pushed infra my whole round, but we have strong cities ready to crank units and quickly, if need be. Carthage is up to 20 spt, that's a catapult in one turn or infantry in two. Utica needs one more mine to produce a nume every two turns. Theveste is a town that got a barracks on my turn, can crank some numes after one more turn. Vet units can now be cashrushed at eastern wines, because I also built a barracks there.

I doubt we want to stick with lone scientist on Printing Press. Democracy or Nationism are the only techs worth waiting 40 turns on at this stage of a deity game -- optional, and also overpriced by the AI's. Then again, you never know, so I went ahead and ran it. The island has to run a specialist, might as well be a scientist just in case.

Paegam's borders also expanded right after I built the library in Nora, so I believe they'd be stronger there now if I hadn't done that. The spear in the desert is a settler pair, though, so if Korea DOES attack us, we can pick up some slaves. In any event, I pushed the pendulum far in the infrastructure direction, it may need to swing back to military now. I was doing all I could to improve our income rate short of completely ignoring culture to speed up more markets. What can't wait, shouldn't wait. If we sat on the tech backburner too much longer, we'd have had to pay for every single tech. We gambled on the engineering and lost by just two turns, but having rushed courthouses and temples earlier has us in better position now anyway.


- Sirian

Snapshot of FP completion:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-fp.jpg

Here's the save file: LK38 - 300AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-300ad.zip)


- Sirian

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing)
Speaker (on deck)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.



This is so much better then LK36 for keeping up with tech. :)

Originally posted by LKendter

This is so much better then LK36 for keeping up with tech. :)

No wonder with twice as many Cities :lol:

OTOH Sharing a Continent with the Mongols who will be soon out of other Victims this could get interesting.

Good Luck

Rowain

'Got it'

I'll be focusing on shoring up our defenses on my turns. If Korea does attack us it shouldn't be too bad (although I can't see what units the do have on our continent). The AI is not famous for efficient battles involving a water passage. Plus we will get our GA and that should help get us over the edge. Also I would love to take Paegam from them. Now that we know there is water on that side of the mountain Paegam is a great 2nd ring city on the far side of the FP. It could be a problem if the mongols smell blood in the water and come for us too (like a big big problem). In fact it might be worth trying to sign them up against Korea (I have no idea if we could afford it), that would give Korea another target in the south (Moscow) and ensure no dogpile.

Note that we also are putting cultural pressure on Korea at Kaesong.

What ever happened to that settler/spear pair that was leaving Paegam on the end of my last turns? (reagan?)

The settler/spear combo founded Paegam immediately after your turn, as reported in my turn report ("Korea settled the cows.").

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I meant the settler spear pair leaving Paegam that I pointed out in my Jan 14th screenshot. Whoops, looking back I guess LK played after me not you. So... (LK?)

That pair dropped off the radar.
I have no idea what happened to it.
I have a feeling it is sitting in CowTown.

From what I can tell, they didn't settle anywhere near our territory. They may have ended up as one of those nomadic AI settler/spear pairs that ceaselessly wander in search of a new home until they are picked-off by the enemy during a war.

So maybe it is the same settler/spear pair that Sirian noted in his report? The fact that it is on the move again should tell us something, I'm just not sure what. Maybe Korea is going after some former Russan Territory.

Unless someone beats them to it, there is a site where the now-razed Mongol city was by our Wines cities.

Preturn: activate warrior fortified on ruins in south east. Send him to be a paper cutout. I look over the granary cities and notice they are allready MMed to build before growth. :thumbsup: I check diplo and everything looks good. Click...

The good news: we can now trade with India; the bad news: someone already sold them Iron :rant: Although there are brokering opportunities we cannot afford them at the moment.

I move some more troops east in case of Korean attack. I also hook up some SP and start some muskets. Russia demands wine, I refuse. Germany wants MA vs. Russia, again I refuse. I could trade wine/SP/108+20gpt to India for Navagation, but Banking is a better barter so I hold off. Next turn the mongols get Chem and Banking so I pull the trigger. Wine/SP/123+15gpt to India for Nav, then Nav to the Vikes for Chiv+16+2gpt+TM. I also sell around our WM and get 12 gold!

Our first musket completes, I start a Knight. The Korean mini SOD leaves our territory to the north, and the Korean spear/settler leaves to the south. :wavey: I swap Nora to a market because I am feeling better about Korea. There is a massive Mongol troop movement through our territory, watch out Germany! Persia starts Smiths.

Woah, the Mongols seem to have changed targets! Watch out Korea, there is a stack next to Kaesong now. Yup, next turn the Mongols declare war (dishonorably) and take Kaesong as well as the spear/settler pair on the ruins and another couple of workers. Germany and Russia come to peace.

We complete our first Knight! My trigger finger veritably burns with desire to declare war on Korea and take back what is rightfully ours (the light blue dot). I demure because this is my last full turn. The Persians, Vikes and Mongols all start Bachs.

Final turn, I left our Knight and a couple of other troops ready to go! There is a horse that can be upgraded in Utica. The mongols will give us 129+2 gpt for a MA vs Korea. I say.. go man go! :saiyan:

Oh yeah, the save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-400ad.zip

Enjoy!

I'm at work and can't view the saved game. However, I would like to register a vote against going to war at this time. We have a good chance of flipping Mooville without a war, although foregoing war for the chance of a good RNG roll is not my intent. I just think we don't gain a whole lot by starting a war at this point relative to upsetting Korea for the rest of the game.

Flipping mooville? I am guessing not. Here's why:
P=[(F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty) - G]/D.
We have 3 of their tiles under our control (T=3), but I am guessing they have more culture than us and will have for the rest of the game. So with a relatively small garrison (G) we will never flip them, because P=0 for G=3*(Cte/Cty) regardless of D (D=distance from respective capitals). The AI is currently pretty good about garrisons.

Now is the time to strike (IMO). We can upgrade our horse, get a MA with the mongols, and declare this turn. Next turn move in and take 'mooville' with our two knights (The Koreans just sent a settler and a couple of spears out of the city and probably don't have more than 2 defenders), thus satisfying our MA. Then we sit for 19 turns and hopefully get some concessions for peace! This would be an honorable war and we wouldn't even have to set off our Golden Age (although now might be a good time, i'm undecided). I am looking hard and not seeing a downside to this, Korea won't be too upset by an honorable war, and we will no longer have any cultural pressure with them. I am guessing we break even on Korean attitude in 500 years and as a bonus the mongols will love us!

Also, we need to get a leg up or we will be whipping boys to the mongols for a long time.

Not to mention that seeing another culture in our original dotmap and rightful homeland pisses me off.

You're right about the culture difference between our two civs. I was foolishly thinking of the Germans' blue on the culture graph, not the blue of the Koreans. :wallbash:

If we do go to war (and I don't strongly object), we should think about taking out all of the Korean cities near our homeland. If memory serves, there are three total. Do we have the firepower to do that? We need to have at least four Knights and a couple of NuMes to go after Mooville. Because of the variance of the RNG, I hate attacking a city with the bare minimum of offensive units. If we trigger our GA taking Mooville, I think the answer will be "yes" to the firepower question before the end of the GA, because we should be able to spit out several Knights during that time. Unless we think we are going to add to our second core of cities (attack the Mongols now? yeah, right) sometime soon, there seems to be little value in waiting to trigger the GA. I presume by now that we have markets and courthouses in our core cities and are in a good position to benefit from the additional trade and production a GA will bring.

What does everyone else think?

Of course the Mongols will pay us. We had an ongoing deal with Korea on my turn. Mongolia would love nothing more than to throw a few coins at us to pay us to dribble away thousands on future tech deals, because our reputation is in the drink. Paegam is nowhere near worth enduring trading penalties long term. I don't object to an attack or an alliance, but I do object to breaking a deal with so little at stake. Let the deal expire first, then decide whether to go to war, or to renew and wait at least another 20 turns.

If Korea had attacked us, then the stain would go to them. If we sign an alliance and declare with a deal active, we'll be unable to use resources or gpt as payment for tech: AI's will all demand cash, or worse, if they do accept gpt it will be at ridiculous prices. That's an even larger penalty on deity than at lower levels, since we're playing from behind. The cost can be more than just "waiting a little longer" to accumulate the cash to pay for techs. Brokering opportunities are usually a now-or-never option. Having credit on hand to make a bigger move can literally mean free techs.

I still think Paegam is worth acquiring, just not at all costs.


- Sirian

I've got the file and would like to wait to play until we can come to some sort of consensus on the potential war. I would be in favor of letting the deal with Korea expire and then getting in on a war against them. In the meantime, we could build (rushbuy?) several more knights, MI, and NuMe (or muskets?). Assuming that we attack and take all the Korean stains on our rightful land in the first turn or two, I would think that we would expect them to start ferrying troops across the water. Perhaps we could then destroy all landed troops with our Knights (on attack) and NuMe/Muskets and then use the GA to get banks in our core and beef up our defenses against future aggression from Mr. Khan or anyone else.

I was not aware of any existing deal with Korea. Knowing that, I absolutely oppose war until the deal expires. We can re-evaluate after the deal expires. By the way, how much time is left on the deal?

I agree with letting the deal expire, it must be allmost done anyway since I went through my turn since it started (it will expire during your turns Speaker). That will give us time to build up enough knights to be absolutely sure. Of course if any Korean troops enter our territory you could ask them to leave, and I am sure they will.

My turns are done and I will post the recap and save tomorrow.

IT 400AD: Survey the empire. Our deal with Korea, spices for 12gpt expires in 5 turns. I upgrade our horseman to a Knight for 80 gold. We are at least 4 techs behind all of the other civs except Germany who is two ahead, but does not have Navigation. ROP deal renewed with the Vikings, but changed from 3gpt to 1gpt plus 17 gold. In 5 turns most of our deals will be expiring and we should be able to catch up in tech. MM of several cities improves income to 9gpt.

Early Turns: Mongol units continue on toward Germany. Theveste finishes marketplace and starts knight. Now up to 27gpt. Trade Otto Navigation, our WM, 20gpt, and 9 gold for Banking. Hippo builds Aqueduct and starts Knight. Cadiz builds Harbor and starts barracks. Mongols have destroyed one German city and the horde moves on. Korea declares war on the Persians. Magna builds Marketplace and starts Barracks. Sabratha builds Courthouse and starts Knight.

Middle Turns: Minor builds Aqueduct and starts Barracks. Germany is now Gracious with us. Two deals with Gandhi expire and we are now making 79gpt. Germany now (somehow) has Music Theory and Economics. India offers the far best price for Chemistry, at 63gpt and 53 gold, as opposed to 72gpt from everyone else. I hold off brokering for one turn to make sure we can afford to renew all of our luxury deals which expire next turn. I pull the trigger on the deal with Gandhi, giving him 53gpt, 137 gold, and our WM for Chemistry, which I then trade to Germany with 22gpt and our WM for Economics and Music Theory. The others have Printing Press (which we finish in 20 turns) and Metallurgy ahead of us, and Persia also has Physics. We have 4 Knights, 2 NuMe, and a Musketman in Nora for the attack on Paegam. I dial up Wang Kon and cancel our spices for 12gpt deal. I declare war honorably. This is very strange. Before I declared war on Korea, Genghis Khan was willing to sign an alliance for 2gpt and Xerxes was willing to sign and pay us 30 gold. After I declared war on Korea by telling Wang Kon first, Genghis Khan upgrades to Gracious and then requires 25gpt for an alliance! Xerxes is also Gracious and requires 20gpt for the alliance. Seeing as that is our entire income, I choose not to do it. I am not sure if this was weedy play on my part, but I was operating under the understanding that an honorable declaration of war required telling the Leader to his face that you were declaring war, with no troops in his land. Am I wrong here and should I have declared war by signing the alliance? If so, I am sorry. Our veteran Kniggit kills their regular Musketman, losing 1 hp. Their second defender is a spearman, so I move two NuMe into their territory with the goal of setting off our GA as we take Paegam. It seems like the AI has a jerk meter, as Xerxes, Genghis, and Ragnar finally cancel our overexpired luxury deals, forcing me to give them some extra gpt to renew. The Mongol horde has changed directions and now heads toward our territory. I am a little concerned. I assume they are heading toward Paegam, but if they sneak attack us, we are in serious trouble. Our NuMe attacks Paegam and wins, setting off our GA (in 460AD). Paegam is now ours, along with 3 Korean slaves. Paegam has 5 resistors, so I garrison it with 2 warriors and a NuMe (do not want to lose any Kniggits in the remote chance of a flip. I reroute three Kniggits to Utica to "protect" us if the Mongols are out for blood. As the GA starts, we are now making 131gpt. India now has Physics and we can get it for 85gpt. I buy in @3rd and then sell it to Genghis Khan for 55gpt, 90 gold, and his WM, to Ragnar with 80 gold and our WM for Metallurgy, and then trade Physics to Otto for Printing Press, 1 gold, and his WM. Our lone scientist starts imagining a government where people govern themselves. Imagine. The Mongols, Persians, and Indians have Military Tradition, and Persia also has Magnetism. Cathy, for some reason, is now annoyed with us. With only 2 cities, she should back off. The Mongol horde heads back out of our territory. Nora builds an Aqueduct and starts a Marketplace. Hadrumetum also builds an Aqueduct and starts a Marketplace. Our Palace gets some new steps. We have now passed Germany on the histograph and are approaching India. India and the Mongols have allied against Germany. Leptis Minor builds a barracks and starts a Marketplace. Cadiz builds Barracks and starts a Musketman. Cirta builds a Marketplace and starts a Barracks. Korea builds Copernicus in Cheju sending the cascade toward Adam Smith and JS Bach. Carthage and Utica both train Musketmen and begin Banks.

Late Turns: I trade Gandhi 65gpt and 216 gold for Magnetism and then trade Magnetism to Ragnar with 8gpt for Military Tradition. We are now at tech parity with everyone, and ahead of Germany by Metallurgy and Magnetism and ahead of Russia by a whole lot. Indian settler/spear pair starts into our territory, probably heading toward the razed German city. I decided not to fill in that space because it would be cultural suicide, with Mongol cities all around, as Moscow has fallen to the Mongol horde. Tech parity does not last long as India and Persia now have Democracy and Theory of Gravity and the Mongols and Vikings both have Democracy. We cannot afford a trade as of now. Hippo builds a Barracks and starts a Musketman. Mongol Cavalry make their first appearance in the field. Stuttgart has been razed. Theory of Gravity is now available for 76gpt and 133 gold, feel free to take it if you want LK. Small bit of weed at the end as I let Paegam slip into disorder as its resistance ends. I avoided starving it, but probably should have hired another entertainer. Then again, I didn't know the resistance would end this turn and put the city into disorder. In any event, it's no big deal.

Conclusion: I have started a bank in Sabratha, but I think that a palace should be started there very soon (probably after the bank finishes) as a prebuild for ToE, which is rapidly approaching. We should also consider starting Universities in our core, either as prebuilds for factories or to start doing our own research sometime in the Industrial Age, and to get some sort of culture in our uncivilized society. Defensively, we are starting to get in decent shape and once we build factories, we should be able to crank out a whole lot of Cavalry. Good Luck to LK.

PS: Remember that we do not have any military alliances, so we can make peace with Korea at any time. I saw no Korean units come our way after we took Paegam and we have no hint of war weariness. As an aside, how did Persia get so powerful, being isolated for so long? Without trading tech advances, how could they have possibly kept up with the furious pace?

Edit: File changed to here: LK38, 500AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38,_500_AD.zip)

Good job, Speaker! If Korea will talk to us, we could make peace and utilize most of the GA on permanent improvements, knowing we can later get a military production GA any time we really need one by mobilizing. (Certainly if Mongols attack). Not that I think we should ignore military -- a bunch of cavalry now would be a good idea, I think -- but the goal was to take over Korea's cities on our shores. As soon as that is met, we can make an exit from the war as long as we haven't signed any alliances.

About the price going UP for an alliance, I said that would happen. The AI will pay extra to get you to ruin your reputation. It's "an incentive" to induce you to break a deal with another civ. Once that other deal is gone, they consider their bargaining position improved and so they pay less. Believe it or not, in real world terms this actually makes sense. (Civ3 making sense? Go figure!)

As for working to avoid starving Paegam... by all means STARVE THEM! Our flip risk is about fivefold. If we get them down to one foreign national, then a garrison of about five or six cheap units will ensure zero or near-zero flip risk. If we make peace and then the city flips back, what have we gained?

No-starvation is the way to go to role play completely honorably, and can make for an interesting variant rule, adding challenges, but if I recall right, there are no variant rules in play for this one. :)

Also, all those libraries I built back around 250AD? Those come into play most of all in converting captured citizens to our kind, and in improving flip odds. That lets us try to hold on to cities, instead of leaving minimum garrisons and expecting to have to recapture if they do flip.\

Finally, the only time we want to sign alliances is if we don't think we can avoid war long term, or if we can give our enemy another target. If the Mongols come for us, if we sign up help, that either means 20 turns of holding out or else a bad rep if we make peace. There are no closer targets, Germany was the only other civ on the continent. If Persia declared, then allies might be more useful. If Mongolia comes, we can instead just hold out for five to seven turns, then we can make peace, which ought to last at least ten turns before they break the deal and re-attack. The more time we buy, the stronger our position gets. On the other hand, if they come for us, we hold them off and they make peace, but they break deal and come again, at THAT point we should consider it an Always War situation, be ready to switch to Monarchy and go all out. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Banks would especially be a good thing for us to try to build during the GA. Just be VERY careful about not overdoing the spending on deals, and leaving us unable to pay our debts when GA bonus commerce disappears. OK?


- Sirian

Most of the deals I made were on the same turn that the GA started, so they expire when it does. Additionally, a 51gpt deal with India expired a few turns into the GA, and I then made the last deal with them. Oh, and Korea will not talk to us yet. As for the lack of starving, I knew we weren't playing by strictly honorable rules, and I usually do starve my captured cities, but for some reason I still chose not to do it. Can I get a light? :smoke:

Chemistry, which I then trade to Germany with 22gpt and our WM for Economics and Music Theory.

:confused: These are both dead end-techs, and we won't get Smith's. What were you looking for with the techs?

In general, Speaker's turn really helped us. Unfortunately, he didn't follow the old sports adage that "the best trades are often the ones you don't make." :smoke:

Are they not necessary to go into the next age? If not, you are right, I should not have traded for them.

No, sir, they're not. The techs with the little "Ghostbusters" circle-slash on them are techs (not necessarily dead-enders) that are not required for advancement. I think having Economics increases the value of Wealth, but we won't likely be taking advantage of that for a great while, if ever.

By the way, I hope you don't think we're picking on you. You advanced us well otherwise during your turn. :goodjob:

edit: changed the term "dead-enders" to "techs" because, of course, some of the techs not required for Age advancement are required for other techs (e.g., Printing Press).

Ah, I see the "Ghostbusters" circle-slash now. Sorry about that guys. Out of curiosity, do you guys always skip MT, Economics, and Printing Press/Democracy (if not a religious civ)? Knowing what I know now, is there any reason to ever research those techs on Deity or even Emperor? By "research," of course, I mean "buy."

Unless there is a good brokering opportunity or I am playing in a rare game where I should be able to build a wonder with them, I pass on MT and Econ while they are expensive. I will, later in the game, give a token few gp for them just to get credit for a successful trade with an AI civ. Printing Press and Democracy, on the other hand, I'll research (lone scientist) or broker, as the case may be. Democracy is extremely useful, especially when one is intending to play peacefully.

With a non-religious civ, I usually switch once to Republic and then stay in it for the rest of the game, especially if it is heated toward the end. If there are major world wars going on that I am staying out of, and the other civs are dropping into communism, I will sometimes then take the anarchy and switch to Democracy. I usually wait until the Industrial Age to trade for PP and Demo however. This is what I like about Succession Games. I never thought of not trading for MT and Econ, but now I will never pay top price for them again.

I will skip optional techs most of the time. Of course, I usually pick them up free or very cheap as side effects of other deals. (If you can get Banking, or get Navigation and Banking, for the same cost, which are you going to choose?)

Music Theory and Free Artistry are completely worthless once the wonders are built. So is Genetics. The AI's will sell these for pennies at that point, so I end up with them. I will skip Printing and Democracy quite often, but I have also built Shakespeare's Theater on deity. Twice. :)

I never skip navigation. Explorers are too valuable. Also, I often get nav long enough before magnetism to make some difference.

Economics is not worth it unless you are going for the wonder or planning to run wealth in your high production cities late game to keep military costs down and speed a launch. I have never used wealth in big cities any other way, and that's the only place the double wealth matters: very big cities.

I have been known to pick Amphibious War, once again, because it's available as a side effect of another deal. If I can get paid in tech, vs paid nothing, when the AI's are going to sell each other the tech anyway, I might as well get paid.

Sanitation is a no-brainer. I almost never get advanced flight, and I never bother with optional techs in the modern era unless diplo or launch are off the table or at the very least not part of my game plan. I only go past genetics to stealth, smart weapons and manufacturing if the game is domination-conquest only.

Chivalry tends to get skipped a lot by me, but again, usually gets cleaned up as leftovers in some broker exchange.

Finally, I have been known to skip Monarchy or Republic. Rare, but it has happened. We'd not have Republic in the Roman Infantry always-war game if not for the great library. We'll never use it, and we won't be bothering with printing and democracy.


- Sirian

500 AD - I immediately start a starvation program in our new Korean town.
I look at the map and see many civs with industrial age looking cities - The good thing is we are just one turn away ourselves. We have multiple with India ended in 4 turns - guess when we will enter the industrial age?

520 AD - The more I think about it, the more the collapse of Germany scares me to death. I give him some of the needed techs to get out of the middle ages.
(I) Korea and the Mongols sign a peace treaty - could make ours harder to get signed.
Persia and the Mongols sign a peace treaty.

530 AD - We sign a peace treaty with Korea, and they give US $8 and $6/turn. :)

540 AD - :cry: India no longer needs Saltpeter. I give India $450, $46/turn and get Theory of Gravity.
The only tech showing for anyone is Nationalism. I would love to rush to rails, but our outstanding gpt payment don't make it possible. Democracy is pretty much in all of the AI hands, so I switch token research to Medicine.

550 AD - OUCH. The Mongols got one of the German cities, and Germany is really looking hurt. I give Germany ToG and pray some rifleman will appear in time to slow down the Mongols.
Persia just got Steam Power - rails should appear soon for other civs.
(I) Magellan's is completed by Korea.
Newton is completed by India.
The cascade completes with Smith's completed by Persia :eek:

560 AD - Two more German cities were razed by the Mongols, this is getting scary.
(I) Add Shakespeare to the list of completed wonders.

580 AD - Those 3 German workers haven't left the capital, Berlin must be under siege.
(I) Persia play the extortion game - scratch $42 - at least he goes polite.
I watch Germany capture the India city on our continent :crazyeye:
Talk about fiddling why Rome burns.

590 AD - Leipzig is captured by the Mongols, the blood pressure goes up by another 10 points.
There are now 5 German workers hiding in Berlin - it is getting tempting to buy the whole lot.
(I) India wants an alliance versus Germany - NO THANKS.
We did something right - the palace expands.

Summary - Hold off any more trades until rails. We really need the extra shields from a rail-net, and it will help when the Mongols attack. Plus we have to be ready for when the GA ends.

The Korean city is size one, and library due in just a few turns.

LKendter
Reagan (currently playing)
Sirian (on deck)
Gothmog
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-600AD.zip

Did you think to grab the workers when handing out techs? Or were they not yet available at that time?

Anyway, yes, when the Mongols get done with Germany, they will select a new target. That could be us. When the current round of whatevers complete (banks?) it will be time to increase units, especially cannon. (Do we have ANY cannon yet?)

- Sirian

The workers mainly appeared after the techs. The first 3 were available just the first turn with the ToG give away. At the point I didn't know how much pressure Germany was under, so I didn't want to cripple them.

I built a block of musketman, and I just started work on first cannon at the end of my my turn. I agree that Reagan want to continue to push cannons, and get at least every one in a front line city.

Turn 0: Reduced luxuries to 0%, hired one taxman in one city (with only loss of one food), MM’d Utica, and voila -- +37gpt extra to play with. Our mighty army of 47 non-Workers is stronger than Germany’s. Yep, Bis is gassed.

Early: India completed Bach’s. Mongols are either coming for us or sending half their army after the Korean city to the east of us. I put up some workers near the city as a roadblock to delay the inevitable. After they finish with Korea, I fear they’ll turn their attention to us. I upgrade our NuMes and Knights. Persia begins Universal Suffrage.

Middle: I focused almost all of our cities on military construction, including Cavs and Cannons. I kept them in the heart of our territory because that’s where the Mongols are sending units at the moment. The Jerk squeezed another 8 gpt out of us for Ivory as did the Vikes for Incense. Mongols renewed our lux trade for only 6 gpt more, which is a major relief. Chittagong is Chitta-gone. Mongols wiped it off the map. They then turned their attention to – drumroll please – withdrawal from our territory. Like a waterspout that dissipates upon hitting the shore, the Mongol hordes are gone for now. I shifted production back to Cannons for the moment.

Late: India has Steam Power now. The end of our GA didn’t hurt too badly, thankfully. Russia joined the fight against Germany. I sold Theology to Russia for 142 gp and a worker. Korea has Steam now. I give India 1500 gp and 64 gpt for it @4th. I then ship it to the Vikes for 60 gp and 39 gpt; to Mongols for Democracy; and to Bis for 8 gp, Free Artistry (ha, ha), and 7 gpt. We have two Coal sources! Only Jerxes has Industrialization. Korea is the only civ without Coal. I sell it to them for 119 gp and 13 gpt. The Mongols and Indians have Industrialization now.

Going forward: Remarkably, Germany lost no cities during my turn. We still have a couple of NuMes and a Knight yet to upgrade. We also have a ton of Warriors, which I generally don’t keep around @ 1 gpt, but figured we should hold on to them while the Mongols were dancing around in our territory. It’s a pain in the rear, but I traded WM every turn for ~14 gpt. Chittagong’s former site is available for settlement if you choose. I turned animations on so I could watch the Mongols’ movement.

Go get ‘em, Sirian.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-700ad.zip

We have two Coal sources! [dance]

Remarkably, Germany lost no cities during my turn. [party]


LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing)
Speaker (on deck)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Change that order to show Sirian currently playing and Gothmog on deck.

[homer voice] DOH [/homer voice]

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian (currently playing)
Gothmog (on deck)
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Hey, another Simpsons fan! [homer voice] WooHoo! [/homer voice]

Actually, not much of one.

But the trademark DOH just seems appropriate.

IT 700AD: Declared war on Russia.


Early: Capture Sevastopol and Yakutsk, including four slaves. Attack a settler, two more slaves. Priority to increasing work force, courthouses in some locations that never got them (??) and constructing a military rail net.

Ha! Here's something I don't see often:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-reg-cav.jpg

How'd we get a regular cav in the first place? :lol: Someone must have taken a hit of [pimp] and zoned out.


Middle: Sign RoP with Mongols so we can cross their territory... heading north!

Capture Minsk.

I stop adding workers as I have about doubled our workforce. Military rail net complete.

Former Indian site in desert settled.

Germany is gettin some. They are about to collapse.

Train one explorer, use it to pillage roads and improvements in neutral terrain south of Yakutsk, harass the Mongols a bit. The Mongols STILL have not expanded borders at their dyes town, nor the town north of East Wines.

Capture Tblisi, losing one cav vs a spear. :( That was our only casualty of the war, though. I tried to fish for leaders, attacking all her scattered archers, but all we managed was one promotion to elite. Sign peace with Catherine, taking two more of her towns in the agreement. She has just two left.

Buy Industrialization from India. Trade that and 127gpt to GERMANY for nationalism. I do not believe they will survive to receive all of our payments, so that should save us some extra. I simply had to take the chance to do it, as now was the only chance to get partial credit toward it from Industrialization. For some odd reason, we're off researching Medicine with lone scientist instead of nationalism. :smoke: No way we can wait another 20ish turns on Medicine, though perhaps also best that we don't wait that long for nationalism, too. We've got to keep up if we're going to snag Evolution, but I do feel better with rifles and the draft on hand. Mongols are still chasing the last German towns, but that will soon come to an end, and then what?

Swap our entire core economy to factory construction.


Late: German homeland is wiped out, the last four cities razed on the same turn! They have two cities left on the north island. Here is hoping those get wiped out sooner rather later, as each turn sooner saves us 127g.

Completed food-boosting rails program. Starting in now on improving hill and mountain tiles in our core. Priority should remain here, IMO, until our best cities are working all rail tiles, as I've taken care of other urgent rail needs already.

Hmm, Scandinavia was odd man out, only one without Industry yet. Next turn, they are in second place with Corporation, Medicine and Espionage. Go figure. (They must have discovered Medicine, bought Industrialization, traded Medicine to Persia for Corp, then played out the rest of their hand). A little too pricey for us @3rd for Corp, though. I wait a turn.

Ah, here we go. Korea has obtained Corp. I buy from Vikings @4th, trade to GERMANY for Medicine @6th (had to throw in a few more gpt, too!) then trade to Mongols @6th for Espionage. Sold Medicine @7th to India for all they could pay.

Upgrade a few key rifles. Our economy is in the drink for the moment, but factories will complete nationwide in middle of next player's round. Some old deals will expire, restoring some of our income, plus we can start building stock exchanges. Still, it's going to be close for us to pull out SciMeth and ToE.

I drafted where painless. Carthage, Utica and Cirta. Other towns remain eligible for peeling once they hit late size 12, which will be soon for several of them.

Electricity was discovered (by Persia, then brokered) on the last turn. This is not the best news. We've got to prepare for SciMeth. I have us in range, but it's going to be close. I urge coal plants at Sabratha, Carthage and Utica, then palace prebuild probably at Sabratha. Carthage could start on Intel Agency, and swap to ToE if needed, while Sabratha then swaps to Intel Agency so as not to waste its shields. Ideally, Sabratha will complete ToE and Utica or Carthage builds Hoover. Utica should do stock exchange after coal plant, IMO, while the others go right to wonders. In any case, these are the three cities for wonder building, and Sabratha can't do Hoover. Going to take some skill for next two players to work through this delicate situation. If we have prebuilds going, we should be OK even if we're slightly late to the tech, but Deity AI's only need 360 shields to build ToE, and some of them will also have factories in place. If this isn't given top priority, we'll miss out. That includes top priority on workers to max rails at these sites.

I trained a galleon and got a second unit out to the island.

I upgraded a few more musket to rifle. (Another priority, to upgrade our muskets).

On the last turn, Scandinavia declared war on India, while Persia in their war vs Korea has captured a town on the Korean mainland. Mongols are heading home crossing our territory, but they still have Germany to target. With RoP in effect, they cross through quickly! We only need them to give us one more round or two, and we will no longer fear them. As it is, we could fight them off now (we've got rails) if we had to do it.

Fun round for me. Good luck to next player.

LK38 - 800AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-800ad.zip)


- Sirian

I went back and grabbed a screenshot.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-800ad.jpg

Oh, and one thing I forgot: Magna did not get its cathedral, so it will riot when it goes to size 12 unless it gets some attention.


- Sirian

Russia is taken out - now that was totally unexpected.

We have a race of what happens first - Mongol war or the factories come on-line. The next turns will be "interesting" to say the least.

=================

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing)
Speaker (on deck)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Since it has been more than 24 hours, should I jump in here and play?

LKendter (on deck)
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (skipped - needs to re-confirm interest)
Speaker (currently playing)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Got it. Will play and post tomorrow.

Hey all, I'm back. Sorry for having to be skipped with no post. Always better to skip than to wait (IMO), after 24 hours, good job managing the game LK! This SG has a really good pace. I had a buisy RL over the holiday weekend and still don't have a service provider at home, I should get one hooked up this week.

Well played to all during my absence. Our position is much more secure on all fronts. I'm not too worried about the new Mongol/former German lands - they will be quite corrupt and mostly useless for the Mongols anyway (unless they somehow build a FP over there and force me to eat my words).

Put me back in after Speaker.

I've been ultra busy the past couple days and will be again tomorrow. Gothmog, why don't you jump in and take your regularly scheduled turn and I'll take the one after you. I don't want to slow the game down (too late).

OK Speaker, I've got it. I may not get to play tonight though, I've got an out of town meeting to attend tomorrow.

Is the 24 got it/48 post it rule intended to oscillate the game between two people? :)

Just a suggestion -- how about if Lee plays a turn and then we re-assess Gothmog's and/or Speaker's availability for the next turn(s)?

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing?)
Speaker (on deck?)

==========================

Nothing kills a game faster then lack of anything happening. Sirian played Jan 19, and it is now Jan 22. We need to get this game back on track.

@Gothmog
If you can't play tonight - please post and we will try again for speaker to play tonight.
I won't keep delaying the game with your can't play Jan 23 comment, as that means 5 days between moves which I won't accept.

@Speaker
When will you be able to play next? Please post an eta for your next possible round.


@All - If neither of the above players can play by soon, I will take the game and play and continue with the normal roster of Reagan after me skipping both. If you can only play a partial turn during the night (Mongol war), then post a partial status.

==================================

I realize that I am coming off as a bit of a hard-ass, but I have finished 35 games in the LK series. That single biggest thing is to keep the players interested, and moves happening - discussions of a key event wanting help - partial turn status (especially late wm games), etc does that.

I almost had a couple of games end due to player turnover, and game inactivity increases that risk.

reagan, I like your sugestion. I don't want to slow this game down by any means. I could have played last night, but tonight is probably a no go. Even if it means skipping my turn, it's fine by me. LK is the man in this one, what he says goes.

edit: whoohoo, simulpost! As I say above, I can't be sure of tonight. IMO, do a skip - Speaker and I can jump in next round. Pace is very important. I could play thursday night.

OK - Gothmog votes for me to play tonight, and keep the game going.

Any comments from speaker? I won't start playing for ~10 hours.

Ok, I'm taking it and I will play right now.

I am half done. I have to go eat dinner, but I will finish when I am done.

It- Nothing to do. Check around and figure out where we stand diplomatically.

Early- Russia and Persia sign an alliance against Korea. The parade of Persian galleons going toward Korea is most impressive. Sevastopol builds walls and starts courthouse. Cadiz builds courthouse and starts Rifleman. Palace expands. Draft Rifleman from Cirta and from Hippo. Carthage builds Factory and starts Coal Plant. Manp'o falls to Persia. Mongols shuffle some troops around but nothing happens. Palace expands again. Persia completes Universal Suffrage. I trade Printing Press to Russia for 65 gold. Every little bit will help us get Electricity. Leptis Magna requires a tax collector to keep the peace.

Middle- Sabratha builds Factory and starts Coal Plant. Leptis Minor requires a tax collector to keep the peace. Theveste mm to build factory in 2, not 3. Germany and Russia sign peace. Leptis Magna finishes Factory and starts stock exchange. Cirta finishes and starts Bank. Still no trade available for Electricity. Korea takes back Manp'o. Persia extorts an extra 4gpt for Ivory. The Vikings extort an extra 6gpt for Incense. Carthage finishes Coal Plant and starts Stock Exchange. Intelligence Agency can be built in 6 turns, and I do not think we will get economics by then. Utica builds Factory and starts Stock Exchange. Theveste builds Factory and starts Bank. Hamdrumetum builds Factory and starts Rifleman. I renegotiate our Gems (plus 7gpt) for Dyes deal with the Mongols, who now only require 32 gold total. We are only making 29 gpt. Persia is making over 600gpt and no one else has much of any cashflow to speak of. Hippo builds Factory and starts Stock Exchange. Sabratha builds Coal Plant and starts Stock Exchange. Palace expands yet again. Cadiz builds Rifleman and starts Marketplace. Rifleman shuffled to Cirta. Persians start ToE in 870AD in Pasargadae, which is a very hilly and mountainous city of size 12. We still do not have enough money to buy Electricity. The imminent Stock Exchanges should help a good deal, but will it be too late? Theveste requires a tax collector to keep the peace, as does Nora.

Late- Germany cancels our RoP for 7gpt deal. Carthage Builds Stock Exchange and starts Rifleman. Still cannot afford any technologies. Gandhi has developed Sanitation, but unfortunately, we cannot afford it at 2nd prices. That would have been a great Brokerage opportunity. The 127gpt deal to Germany is really hurting. Mongols are now at peace with Germany. Sabratha builds Stock Exchange and starts Palace, due in 10 turns (started in 900AD). Paegam finishes temple and starts aqueduct. Cirta builds Bank and starts Rifleman. Persia has now Sanitation, as do the Vikings, even though they have no income and nothing to trade.

Conclusion- With the Mongols not appearing to be threatening, I took a calculated risk in pushing Stock Exchanges in our core because we were/are facing severe cash problems. We are now at 90gpt with 559 saved, and can buy Sanitation for 43gpt and the 559, but I held off because we obviously have bigger fish to fry, and the brokerage opportunity is gone. Carthage and Sabratha both have Stock Exchanges finished, while Utica and Leptis Magna finish theirs in 1 and 2 turns. We have 6 more turns of payments of 127 gold to Germany and 8 more turns of 122 gold to the Vikings. At 72spt, Sabratha will finish ToE (at 600 shields) in 9 turns, with the Palace placeholder lasting for 10 turns. It will be close to get ToE, but I don't know if it will be possible, seeing how strong of a production city Parsagadae is (I did not check how long it would take to finish ToE because it cost 176 gold and our money is too important to throw away right now). If it has a factory and coal plant, forget it. Carthage finishes a Rifleman next turn, but can be changed to Intelligence Agency (finished in 5) if the next player thinks that Electronics will be acquired in 5 turns. Good Luck to the next player. The next 10 turns will be interesting. If we can somehow pull off ToE, I think the game is ours easily. If not, I think we should push Universities everywhere and try to do our own research to get the UN. Space is probably a possibility too as we have several cities that are capable of building the parts.

LK38, 900AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38,_900_AD.zip)

Don't forget we can intentionally slow down the palace a turn or 2 if needed.

I count 2 exchanges built, and 2 i/p - do we have a fifth for wall street?

================================

LKendter (on deck)
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing- IF can play quickly)
Speaker (already played)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Right, I know we can slow the palace down. But can we get Scientific Method before Persia builds ToE? There is a bank that finishes next turn so a stock exchange can follow that, however, will we have 1000 gold any time soon? I can't see how we will (unless we somehow pull ToE).

Hey all, meeting delayed until next week so I'll be home tonight and can play ten. 'I got it'. I'll certainly post in the morning.

Looks like you did what you could on your turns Speaker, well done. I'll try my best to get ToE and Hoover, but no promises. :)
I'll also look into our WallStreet possibilities.

The good and the bad, no ugly.

Preturn: Carthage is producing rifles with a 74 spt output? I don't think so so I swap it to the IA (due in 6). I MM Cirta to increase shield output, with one more RR they will be up above 40 spt and a good spot to build Rifles. Otherwise things look good.

IT: Germany declares war on Persia? Good thing we aren't sending them any goods (just cash). We build another Stock Market and get the WallStreet advice. Xeres tries to plant a spy but we capture him/her. No doubt Xeres will try again!

We can afford Electricity from india now and can still broker for Sanitation so I pull the trigger. 770+115 gpt to India gets Electricity and Electricity goes to Germany for Sanatation +23 gtp (we may never see most of this but oh well). India has RP and SM. I start a min sci gambit towards communism (scientist) as we have lots of tech to buy before we'll get to that one and Police Stations can be useful.

IT after 930 AD Persia builds ToE, so we had no chance there. Persia is running away with Tech and something happens we will have a hard time getting the UN. We could really use a world war. I swap Sabratha to WallStreet.

IT - post 940 AD the Vikes and Persia sign MA vs. Korea. Persia wants a MPP, so I renew our RoP for 3gpt. Yes! :cool: the mongols declare war on Persia.
[dance] :band: [dance]

after 950 AD Korea and Persia come to peace, India and Persia MA vs. Germany, the Vikes and Persia MA vs. the Mongols (I am guessing Persia is spreading around the Techs - they did just break a MA with the Vikes vs. Korea). Vikes and India come to peace.

I sell Chiv to Russia for 120 gold just to be nice. Persia cities in the old german part of our continent are gone, and they are losing to the Mongols in the north too. Global Warming turns a jungle to a grassland near one of our cities!

Infantry start to show up in numbers and all offensives slow. The monglos do Raze Kiev (a Persian city), so I build a settler and move some troops to save our spot. We need RP so I trade Iron, SP, WM, Wine (India no longer wants ours), Horses, and 140gpt to Germany for it (we may get out of some of this gpt as they only have 1 city left - sound familiar?). Then RP+3gpt to Korea for SM+Spices. We have rubber :yeah: + 1 extra. Both are already hooked up, everyone else already has it except Germany and Korea. Persia doesn't know AT (they do know Refining and Steel - maybe more on that path too) so hoover may yet be a possibility.

India and Persia sign an MPP, Russia and India sign an MPP. Mongols and India MA vs. Germany? Then India declares war on the Mongols, and so do the Russians. I start another settler as there may be more poaching possibilites in former Russian holdings. Also when a path opens up to former German lands (due to Razing of Russian and Indian cities standing in our way at the moment). This has all been very good for us, it has slowed the tech pace and has already given us another city - with more to come. Our economy is strong and we almost have 1000 in the bank.

here's the save, take it LK!
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1000ad.zip

ToE lost, but Hoover not yet gone. Perhaps some tech steal attempts are in our future. If we can line everyone up vs Persia... they won't be able to target us, they will suffer mightily without any imports, and Persia tends to avoid communism at all costs, making them an easier target for espionage. (They usually go Monarchy).

I think the min sci is a lost cause. Not sure how to get to Electronics before Persia, but IF they mobilize they won't be able to build it! So the wars are a good thing. Still, it's going to be dicey. However, even if we don't get the UN, all is not lost. None of these AI's have enough friends to win a vote. That means we have time, time either to catch up on tech or to start winning with military. This could be a close game. Should be a fun finish. :)


- Sirian

I think we are in fine shape, now that we have infantry (although none actually in the field yet) and a railnet we can defend ourselves in the short run. Only a declaration by the Mongols soonish is of any worry to me at the moment.

About tech steals, does anyone know for sure who takes the rep hit if someone declares war over a spy? I think it's still the civ who declares, but I am not positive.

I am not sure how we get to Electronics before Persia either but if we can save up enough cash and have a well timed prebuild we could follow them to it (steal or buy) and still get Hoover.

What do you mean by lost cause? Do you think we will buy or trade for communism in the next 40 turns (well 33 or so now), or do you mean we will be starting our own research before then and needing to switch paths? I did consider shutting it off after we got the Spices from Korea as we no longer needed specialists, but it still seemed worth it to me. We do have lots of other techs we will need first (Mot Trans not least among them).

Two quick thoughts:

- Communism research -- If we are almost 25% of the way to researching Communism on min science, is there a reason not to continue it? We won't need it in the next 30 turns, nor are we likely to trade for it because the AI values it pretty highly. If it only costs a buck or two per turn to research it with a scientist in a corrupted city, why not keep going?

- German per turn deals -- I have seen some other threads in the Strategy and Gen. Discussions forums where other players have been tagged with a big reputation hit as a result of making a per-turn deal with a dying civ and not being able to perform the deal after the civ (in our case, Germany) is finally eliminated. Are we not, therefore, making a risky move by making per-turn tech purchases from Germany?

The reputation hit involves hard goods outgoing. Gold Per Turn payments will not cause this. I don't know the sense of it either way, just reporting what happens.

As for the lone scientist, go ahead. Run one out of one of those corrupt cities I took from Russia, though, not any cities of actual importance.

- Sirian

Actually, there is one GPT scenario that really screws you.

In GOTM #14 I signed a GPT alliance with the Zulu to try for help, and when Persia was about to capture some cities I signed a panic peace treaty.

NO ONE except Persia would take GPT for as much of the game as I did complete - 100+ turns since broken alliance.

Thanks for the clarification about the "dying civ rep hit" issue. It is somewhat akin to making large per-turn deals with the AI when it is obvious the civ is hell-bent to make a sneak attack in a turn or two.

Until now, I have been loathe to risk the rep hit by making a per-turn cash deal with a dying civ. This just adds another arrow to my quiver of strategy options for future games!

By the way, does anyone out there consider the sneak attack deal an exploit? Except in some unusual circumstances, a human would rarely, if ever, accept large per-turn payments a turn or two before declaring war. The AI will often gladly do so and then will continue with its war plans, thus effectively giving the human free tech(s). This seems to creep pretty close to the edge of exploiting the AI.

I agree with you Reagan. I am also starting to see trading WM every turn as an exploit. No way a human player would trade his entire income every turn for an unchanging WM, like the AI often does. The AI would never give 1gpt for a WM (besides early in the game or when something major has been discovered), so it is really just a loophole that we are all taking advantage of.

The problem with AI sneak attacks is that this is the only way the AI declares war. They never outright declare.

I'm not talking about refused threats, or having spy activity caught. These are provocations. The AI never declares war without such a provocation except by sneak attack.

This whole aspect of the game is broken. IMHO.

With a broken game element, there is no happy solution. Since the AI is specifically programmed to keep its war plans secret until it has at least one unit in attack position, I consider it fair game. The AI will HAPPILY cheat the Hell out of you if you happen to sign any goods-for-payments deals with it. I got burned by enough of those, in the early days, that I will never be satisfied that I've obtained enough revenge until such time as this broken game element is fixed. While it remains broken, the AI is designed to lie, cheat and steal, in regard to signing deals while it has ALREADY GONE TO WAR WITH YOU, you just don't know it yet because the sneak attack is in progress.

Can this be exploited? Yes, it can. Is this exploitation good for the game? I don't know. I do consider it "fair" to the AI.

Making a deal with a dying civ is similar, and both come with risks.

Look what happened with my German deal. Germany did not die out quickly, as I expected. With just two nothing towns left on an island, I figured the Mongols would unload some ships up there and it would be over quickly. That didn't happen.

We STILL got a good deal on Nationalism. The price from any other trading partner was more than 270gpt. I paid 127gpt plus Industrialization. I made sure not to trade Germany any lux or goods as part of the deal.

There's an equal risk with the "Cheat the Cheater" move of buying tech for gpt from invaders. What if they don't attack? What if some other civ pulls their puppet strings? I have had it happen to me! I've paid big gpt for techs and had to eat the whole deal, because I misread the incoming attack. That doesn't happen often, but it can happen, especially on Pangaea and larger maps, with lots of AI's running hither and thither.

Bottom line for me remains the game balance. Should we let the AI have its sneak attacks with no means to fight back? I don't think so. I LIKE that it sneak attacks, but I DO NOT like that it does nothing else. That's pathetic. If it were less predictable, it would be less exploitable. In the mean time, I can and will play without swindling the cowardly swindler as a tactical option, in any games where the host wants to take it off the table. If it's not off the table, I have no qualms about using it because I don't consider it wrong. The AI is deliberately set up to function in such a slimy way. I say let it reap what it sows.

In my view of game balance, I don't see it as appropriate to remove an option from the player that the AI is programmed to use. That's why I consider it fair to be allowed to scroll ahead to change build orders. (Ever seen four wonders complete ON THE SAME TURN? I have. That's the AI scrolling ahead to swap its wonder to a different one after the one it was building was finished by another civ). This is also why I consider RoP abuse UNfair: the AI doesn't do any mass RoP abuse. It only does single-unit RoP abuse. So citing its single-unit RoP abuse as grounds to line up your entire army in attack position outside its cities is unbalanced and unreasonable.

Well, the AI will sign YOU to deals while it already knows it's coming to attack you. Something here ought to be fixed. Either the AI should refuse your deals (giving away that it is on a sneak attack, but that's another story), or it should RECONSIDER its attack plan after signing such a deal. If it were changes to be less predictable, less single-mindedly stupid, the game would be more fun.

Right now, it's not really fun, or fair, either way. If you don't set up the lying, backstabbing sneak attacker to pay a price for their sliminess, then you let them get away with betraying you. It becomes a cheat or be cheated scenario, with no fair outcome, only someone on top and someone on the bottom, and in that case, I consider fighting back diplomatically to be self-defense. The player should NOT be required to bend over and take it gladly. That is not what "honor" is really about, you know.

It's broken... and I hope someday it will get fixed. Either way they fix it is OK with me. Until then... you know where I stand. :)


As for maps... the AI's trade maps ALL THE TIME. They trade pennies back and forth and keep each other informed. If you get in on the action by trading maps yourself, you pay for your own map info by reselling it to others. The whole thing brings in pennies, only pennies.

The only factor there that CAN be exploited is that there is a minimum 1g cost for any map info at all. So you could explore fog with one movement, sell that one new tile of info (which is rightfully only worth a fraction of one gold) to all the AI's for 1g, move your unit again and bust another tile of fog, sell for 1g to all, repeat and repeat, whereas if you just moved the whole movement at once, and then sold, you'd only get 1g from each total. THAT can be exploitive in situations where every penny counts. You turn .05g map info into 1g cash, over and over, you pull something unfair out of the system, something for nothing. HOWEVER, if you selling a bona fide 1g worth of map info for 1g, I don't see a problem.

Short of that, you're worrying over nothing. The AI's trade their maps every single turn in later turns when they have mature borders and lots of units roaming. (Each time their units pass by each other, is a chance for them to open negotionations, so the more units near other AI units, the more often they offer each other deals).

Map trades are important FOR THE MAP INFORMATION. I guess I'm in the minority in considering current intelligence on the map important. But hey, what do I know? :)


- Sirian

@Gothmog - why did you trade goods to Germany with the known diplomatic screw over possibility?


1000 AD - The one thing that is scares me in the goods to a possible dead civ with Germany.
To make matters worse, we are dependent on a the goods going through a Persian port :(
The next 18 turns will be very scary, as we can't afford to lose our right for gpt trading. To make matters worse, Persia is at war Germany.

The only build change I make is Hippo to infantry. I want to start getting at least one infantry a city, and I don't want to depend too much on upgrades as we need every dime for techs.

I cancel two workers mining by hopelessly corrupt Minsk.

1010 AD - With Russia getting pounded on by the Mongols, I give Cathy education for $9 and a worker. I would rather us have the worker. I wont' repeat my German mistake.
It must have been a while since maps were traded, as I am getting several bucks from each civ. Scandinavia gave me $12.
(I) I did it just in time, as the Mongols have wiped out the Russians.


1040 AD - Look at the picture below :eek:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LAK-251.jpg
Yes, that is the Airport symbol by Persia!
(I) India and Germany sign a peace treaty.

1050 AD - I don't know what suddenly stopped our deal with Germany.
Were are at least partially screwed :mad:
Scandinavia is doubtful for refining at $2121, but would never accept such a deal if we add $1/turn.
We are also screwed with Korea on gpt.
Refining is starting to show up, but India will still take gpt and needs our wines, so I will wait for them to get refining. Plus I would to get it at a lower civ price.
(I) Our Ivory supply now cost $1/turn more.
Our incense supply now cost $1/turn more.
WTH? Now Scandinavia will take gpt for the incense? I guess we are just screwed on buying tech.
The Mongols get the last India city, and I get to watch 2 cavalry armies go bye.
OUCH - I missed one earlier - Cadiz was building a bank, yet it didn't have a factory yet. At 16 shields after corruption, a factory is worth the bother.

1060 AD (I) Persia eliminates the Germans.
WAHOOO - Korea and Mongols ally vs. Persia.
India and Mongols sign a peace treaty.
Our gems deal goes gets $2/turn added to the price.
India declares war on the Mongols :crazyeye:

1070 AD - Persia is in Anarchy, the tech leader is dropping out of Democracy [dance]

1080 AD - GACK, now the Mongols, India and Persia won't take tech for gpt. We are really screwed now.
I seem to remember that tech stealing has a better chance under anarchy. I spend 2972 to attempt a theft and we get caught :cry: We are at war with Persia. Well so much for acquiring steel and using to get it to get refining.
Sorry guys, but I felt this was our best chance.

1090 AD (I) India and Persia sign a trade embargo against us.
Here is a screen I haven't seen to often, and hope not to see again.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LAK-252.jpg

1100 AD - Korea needs rubber, and will give us $32/turn for it.

Summary - If we are going to win this game, there is no question that Persia must take a beating.
I think a war with Persia is almost guaranteed, or they will launch way before us.
The trouble is a Mongol war is probably coming soon.

@All - did I weed out with trying to steal a tech from Persia?


LKendter
Reagan (currently playing)
Sirian (on deck)
Gothmog
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-1100AD.zip

The tech steal was a gamble, but imagine if it had worked! We'd be in much better position. Now... we're not, but still a lot of game left to go.

War with Mongolia can be avoided by signing MPP with them. That means forgoing trades of any kind with any of their enemies, and wouldn't be my first choice, but we surely don't want to tackle both Persia and Mongolia at the same time, so it's worth considering. The Mongols will NOT attack us if we have MPP signed with them and are at war with all their enemies. A military alliance with them vs Persia would be another possibility.

Heck, if we could sign every civ in the world to alliance vs Persia, that might be best of all. Of course, that means honoring the alliance, to be sure to have the option again in future.


How did we end up with a wrecked reputation again? I must have missed the offending deal(s) in the reports.

Anyway, however we got to where we stand now, these are our cards and it's our load to play out the hand. :)


- Sirian

It's appropriate that Sirian's post has card references, because I just finished my poker game tonight and decided to check-in on this SG before crashing into bed. I wish this game were going as well as my poker game went. It appears things aren't so grand in the kingdom of Carthage. :cry:

A wise sage has asked how we could have gotten ourselves into a reputation fiasco. Well, from the archives of a previous leader of Carthage, who shall remain nameless (his initials are G.o.t.h.m.o.g.): "We need RP so I trade Iron, SP, WM, Wine (India no longer wants ours), Horses, and 140gpt to Germany for it (we may get out of some of this gpt as they only have 1 city left - sound familiar?)." Germany's demise meant that we could not uphold our end of the goods-for-tech bargain, thus we get the reputation hit for Persia's extermination of Germany.

There is no confusion about what the AI will and won't accept per-turn deals for. They will likely not give us hard goods (e.g., tech, workers, etc.) for per-turn compensation. They will give us per-turn deals for per-turn deals (e.g., a luxury from them for 20 gpt from us).

We're in a world of hurt. I'll try to keep us from digging deeper in our hole during my turn, which will be played tomorrow when I'm not bleary eyed and still thinking about whether the odds of drawing to a gutshot straight when there are three of the card I need left in the deck vs. the amount of money the pot is offering me justifies a call. :D

If anyone has any thoughts about the direction we should take, please feel free to voice them. We appear to be at a really critical stage in this game, so let's make sure we're all on the same page before we continue. If only we could check-raise semi-bluff Persia with our not-so-great hand and sucker them into folding. :lol:

Well the sad part of that is, little Germany with its two mighty island villages, probably paid us a combined 6gpt or thereabouts for us throwing in those resources in that deal. Resource value is directly proportional to civ size/power.

Well, who wanted a boring "cruise to diplo victory" finish anyway. :lol:

Saddle up, boys! We're going to war! :shotgun: :arrow:


- Sirian

The link to the most recent version of the game is broken (the file name was missing the "_"). Who was it cracking the :whipped: about checking one's links after posting the .zip? Hmmm . . . [dance]. The corrected link appears below.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-1100_AD.zip

:help: :help:
Well I am glad you found it
:blush: :blush:

Hehe, those who live by the whip shall, erm, well you get the idea. :lol:

I too have felt a boomerang lashing from time to time. :whipped: :D

But... for whom exactly are you correcting the link, Reagan? You're the one playing. I don't need a link to LK's result. I need a link to yours. This afternoon would be a handy time for me to slip this in here. Uh... most of tomorrow is busy. ;)


- Sirian

I know some people like to look at the game even if it's not their turn. There are also others who enjoy shadowing games they find interesting. The correction was made for the benefit of all man(and woman)kind, including those folks. :D

I will give a good effort towards completing my turn this afternoon.

I've had too many diplomatic victories of late. Let the warring begin!

Pre-turn: MM several cities to increase growth without slowing production time. We need to remember that the speed of production now is measured in turns and not in shields. In other words, unless we can shave a turn off of a unit’s build time, food is more important than shields. Our humble civ honorably “retired” several of its warrior units, which were costing 1 gpt each while contributing very little to our military power rating. We had all kinds of Teamsters (workers) who were sitting idle (the “idle” part is redundant and the Teamsters-as-workers reference contradictory, I know) in our territory, while there were unimproved tiles and tiles that should shift from mines to irrigation within our borders. In the words of Homer Simpson: “I always wanted to be a Teamster . . . so lazy and surly.” :sleep: I finally said “enough” and imposed martial law, signed an executive order officially declaring such union activities to be seditious, and ordered them off their butts and back to work! :whipped:

Military summary: I decided to see if we can fight our war with Persia without help from anyone. They picked a few spots to bombard at our new city sites and almost immediately took Tblisi, which the Mongols then captured and subsequently lost to Persia. Mongols and Korea signed an MPP, which was almost immediately triggered and resulted in Korea declaring against India. I focused our production on a mix of artillery and infantry, while completing infrastructure improvements in many cities.

Diplomacy summary: With our income at a pretty high level, I decided it sure would be nice to be able to buy tech with gpt. Persia gave us peace and Steel for 390 gpt. I then brokered Steel around to: India for 318gp+101gpt, Korea for 210gp+78gpt, Mongols for 563gp+46gpt, and to the Vikes+710gp for Refining. Net cost for Steel and Refining, at least twenty turns of peace with Persia, and 381gp = 165gpt. We lost our Persian spy on the next turn. When I went to replant him, the Jerk caught us and re-declared war. I assure you that I had no intention of this happening. I thought that he would not re-declare while our peace deal was in effect. On my last turn, after failed attempts on prior turns, we finally re-established a spy in Persia, who promptly stole Atomic Theory from the Jerk. I sold it around for: 98gp+128gpt from Korea, Communism+2gpt+Oil+713gp from Mongolia, 643gp from Vikes, and 36gp+18gpt from India.

Foreign Relations summary: Persia has begun Hoover Dam. Persia and Korea are now at peace. We have RoP agreements, without gpt payments, with all civs but Persia. That has brought everyone to Polite status with us, with the exception of Annoyed Korea. Korea is providing us Spices+5gpt for Coal. I acquired Furs from the Mongols in order to deal with our post-hospitals population growth.

Domestic Summary: I put the native Teamsters to work as citizens/taxpayers in core cities. We have a couple of stragglers on pollution detail and have our foreign “involuntary laborers” completing improvement of tiles in our wonderful land. We are no longer conducting research of any kind. Our GDP is a wonderful 1176gpt and our treasury has 6054gp in it. [dance]

Looking forward: We have sufficient net income to attempt a tech steal every three turns or so. We should consider doing that until we reach tech parity and then beginning our own research. We could then begin a pre-build for the UN and have a real shot at it, not that a diplo victory is too likely (but we can always hope). Unfortunately, we have no domestic Oil. Fortunately, there is some in the Mongol territory east of Rusaddir, which we could pretty easily take if a war broke out with Mongolia. We also have a lot of outdated units that either need to be upgraded or disbanded. The two remaining warriors can be retired next turn. Persia has two cities on our continent, which we could take in order to force peace concessions, if we want.

Our fate passes to your more-than-capable hands, Sirian. :goodjob:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-1200AD.zip

Persia has begun Hoover Dam.
I hope we have a pre-build going somewhere

=================================


LKendter
Reagan
Sirian (currently playing)
Gothmog (on deck)
Speaker

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

We also have a lot of outdated units that either need to be upgraded or disbanded.

I could not disagree more with this assertion. There is a flaw in this thinking. I urged you not to disband any of our units, and you've vetoed that. Out of my hands, but no way any others will be decommissioned on my watch.

Combat is not the only use for units. Units are needed for flip suppression garrisons, for MP duty if we end up back in militaristic government (likely if war is our path to victory), for rapid pacification of resistors in captured cities, and for all sorts of other sundry duties for which obsolete units are suited, such as shore blockades, pillagers, decoys, rail patrol (to keep the line open through our territory or especially friendly allied territory) and more.

Disbanding units does not increase our production capacity to build combat units. The pennies saved at this point on upkeep costs are beyond negligible. It's possible to choke on too many units in some variants, in the middle ages, but that doesn't apply here.

I see this as a strategic mistake. The choice is not between having 20 modern units and 20 obsolete units vs having 40 modern units. The choice is between having 20 and 20 vs 20 and NONE. That latter is clearly weaker, and could be decisively weaker in some situations. If I run into any situation where I need another warm body and none are available, expect me to draft just to get a unit to do something that a disbanded regular warrior could have taken care of.


This is the same thought process by which Lee prefers all vet units. I started there when I started playing Civ3, but I've since learned better. I happily build many regular warriors in the early game and never get rid of any of them, because there is always a use for them, and there is always some benefit to having such extras around.

I finally persuaded Lee to stop balking at nonvet units in the early game. I believe they still grate on his nerves, but moving past such considerations is what has enabled him to play on Deity now.


First our rep goes in the drink, now our extra units are discarded. You guys really want to make this end game challenging, eh? :lol:

And we have a prebuild waiting to snag Hoover? Somehow I'm guessing not. I'll see if I can pop a leader. Not much time, though.


We are "blessed" to be playing in interesting times. :D

OK, I got it.


- Sirian

I do remember saying something along the lines of "Carthage is building a rifleman, but can be switched to Intelligence Agency the next player thinks we will get Economics in the next 6 turns." Implied in this was that Carthage would use the Military Academy, at 6 turns to build, as a prebuild for Hoover. Has the Intelligence Agency been built?

I finally persuaded Lee to stop balking at nonvet units in the early game. I believe they still grate on his nerves, but moving past such considerations is what has enabled him to play on Deity now.

:splat: Me thinkest somebody overrates his influence :splat:
The main influence you had over me was "people = power".
I still get vet units going as soon possible, the only real difference is I concede regular warriors and an occasion regular spearman until I get a chance for barracks.


However, I do agree with you on obsolete units.
I have been know to take cavalry along with my tank stack late in the game. Why? - It never fails that the I will find some spearman, longbow or over out of date units at the bottom on a stack. This lets me keep the tanks on the heavy weight units.


If you really get in a unit shortage, you can leave the center of you empire defended with the junk. The AI considers an easy target as an EMPTY city - why tempt fate? A musket isn't an empty city.

Emergency upgrades - if you have cash heavy like us - upgrade muskets for extra infantry asap.

Junk attackers - I have already sent old swordsman against the ai to either:
1) Kill some junk 1 hp defense units (longbowmen)
2) Steal some workers with warriors, just to avoid risking the good units.


@speaker - I planted a SPY in Persia - intelligence agency was built.

Battlefield medince was not built so that we had a fallback for the shields if we missed on Hoover.

@Sirian -- I re-read all your posts on pages 5-9 and did not see any comments about not disbanding obsolete units. If they were in a post previous to that, I must have missed them or they slipped my mind. I did not make a conscious decision to "veto" any directive you gave. When I inherited the game, I felt we were paying a significant percentage of our GDP in military costs. At the time I disbanded the units, it seemed like an either-or proposition between old and new units. That was especially true because of our apparent need to pay cash (thus having to pinch pennies at every opportunity) for techs. After the tech trading, it is clear that the 9 gpt saved is a drop in the bucket for our economy. That said, I will be beyond shocked if the loss of fewer than ten warriors causes our doom. Our game has problems, but that isn't one of them.

@all -- I did not inherit a pre-build for Hoover and did not start one because I thought we were SOL for any chance to get it, given our situation.

At this point we have to see if Sirian can pull of a miracle for Hoover.

A pre-build the second we had Atomic Theory would have made sense. That is why I didn't start one - we were to far away.

Originally posted by LKendter
A pre-build the second we had Atomic Theory would have made sense. That is why I didn't start one - we were to far away.

Your wish is my command. One pre-build coming up! How can that be, you ask? Well, we <ahem> "acquired" Atomic Theory at the end of my last turn. I, like you, had absolutely no hope that we would be in a position to have a shot at building Hoover. As it is, that thought is probably accurate because Persia started work on it at least four turns before we got AT.

We have exactly three workers and sixteen slaves as I start my round. What is the plan here?

* To become inundated with pollution (because we can't clean it up fast enough)?

* To let Persian bomber fleets off their carriers strip our coastal cities bare (because we can't repair the damage fast enough)?

* To forego construction of fortified positions to better control the battlefield (because what few workers we do have are trying to catch up to the pollution and repair tasks?)

* To forego any use of radar towers (because we don't have workers to spend to build any)?

* To forego military engineers to improve logistics to the front?

* To add more of those invaluable taxmen to our maxed out city populations?

:smoke: [pimp]

Sirian goes hoarse screaming at his monitor! News at eleven. :wallbash: :rant: :saiyan:

And here I was complaining about getting rid of a bunch of old military units. Well the good news is, I drafted many of the workers that got added into the cities, and we don't have the unit shortage problem any more. :p

Full report to follow.


- Sirian

Inherited 1200AD: Well, there is no prebuild. We can forget self-building Hoover. I'll do all I can to pull a leader.

I wake a cav and send him toward the German wastelands. Hmm, the rails stop at our farthest city. If I still had my 30+ workers on hand, I would have this problem corrected THIS TURN and maximize our chances for leaders. If I had even half of them, I'd only lose one turn getting this done. As it is, all sixteen of our slaves are sitting in the mountains, off building roads? Only five needed per mountain, guess the extra six are sightseeing. Our three native workers look like they just cleaned up some pollution last round. There are ZERO workers available for me to do anything, and next turn ten of the slaves will have to build roads so the other six will be able to get out to help. I'll have the equivalent of six workers available, that should let me build rails across... two hills. Well, it's a start.

I draft a round of infantry off the top of every city with maxed out population. I send three out of these out across the roads past the end of the rail line to do some scouting. No sign of Persian forces, but there have to be some in the region. Our ONLY chance for leaders will be to hunt down these vile dogs and give them the beating they deserve. I scout a little farther with one of the cavs. Ah, there's a wounded Persian infantry. Target acquired. Now if only I had had workers in place to build rails to ship some artillery to the front, this unit would be under attack right now on the inherited turn. Well, that's not going to happen. We have all of one elite and can't afford to waste it in a low-odds attack vs a 3hp fortified infantry on a hill.

Now where the deuce am I going to get some !@#$%! workers? Going to have to start with the big cities. Ooh, the capital will only waste some 80ish shields on each round I'm pulling a worker out of there. Well, these are desperate times. I would have started battlefield medicine instead, but the five shields in the box from a disbanded military unit prevent me from selecting any wonders to build here. Heck, if I DID pull a leader I couldn't rush Hoover here anyway until something else is built to clear out those disbanded shields. I could rush it in another river city, though, we have a couple of others. Still, if I was coming in with 700 shields sitting in a palace prebuild in Sabratha, we might have a chance. Oh well.

The Great Heist of ripping off poor Xman to the tune of 360gpt (unintentionally) actually doesn't hurt our rep any worse than the messed up deal with the Germans. Well, sort of. We had been on the road to recovery from that penalty, now we're back in the muck and this time we'll probably stay there. At least we got our money's worth out of this one. Since we're up to our necks in Persian Rage (TM) we might as well make the most of it.

I sign all four other AI's to military alliances vs Persia. This costs in the teens in gpt for the first three, and just pennies for the Mongols. The Persian Army: "First we're going to cut it off. Then we're going to kill it." :lol:

I then top off the tank on all our corrupt colonies building their temples at 1spt. For its own sake, this is a good thing to do if we're going to go for Domination. It's not bad if aiming for conquest, either, as anything that increases your power rating intimidates and/or provokes the AI's. Of course, the main reason is to clear the deck so I can start rushing some workers out of these chump change sites and not have to spend 80 and 90 shields apiece pulling them out of our core cities all round long.

I swap Russadir from aqueduct to courthouse. Courthouse will complete next turn, then I can change to granary, rush that, and THEN pull three or four workers out of this city by the end of the round. Reagan will be happy to know, I'll bring one of the last two warrior units home and DISBAND HIM in this city, to save one turn on the granary rush.

Speaking of which, many of the core cities are now in the middle of projects, so not all can pop workers next turn. And speaking of THAT, Reagan is right about one thing for sure: with this income rate, and no research rivals for Persia, tech steals are the way to go. We have the reserves in the bank right now to make an attempt, so I do it. We succeed! I take Electronics. If only we had a prebuild...

On the presumption that my leader effort is a longshot, I check and find most of our cities already have coal plants? Losing Hoover won't be as painful as it may look, more so in boosting Xman up than in what we will lose out on. I swap the river cities to hydro plants, even ones with coal plants already done. ... Wait. No, check that. Workers first. In fact, Utica is so high in pop, I'm going to pull a settler out of there and try to grab the open hole in the jungle with those two extra gems.

Hmm. I set a taxman to scientist and start min sci on Radio. We may not be able to wait, but Persia IS in communism, as are most of the AI's. (All of them? Didn't check). So who knows.

Remaining cities without power plants shifted to hydro or coal as applicable. Wait. Check that again, no police stations in highly corrupt locations? Sheesh. OK, police stations first. In fact, I'm going to be going into battle, I check for police stations all over our Republic and find none to speak of. Is my entire round going to be spent pulling workers, power plants and police stations out of the core? And no colesseums either, that's not good if we get into weariness situations. At least we have enough troops on hand to get the immediate task of leader fishing accomplished.

Speaking of that, I check our units. Lots of unpromoted rifles while we have 6billion in petty cash around? I mass-upgrade rifles, then discover we don't have barracks in quite a few locations, even some core cities? Hrrmph. I wake up and move most of the rifles. The ones in the ship on the island weren't unloaded? If Persia brought an attack with marines this turn, they'd sink in the harbor while the warriors did the fighting. I wake them. Unfortified, but that beats shipbound.

I could upgrade the muskets, but I hold off. Hrrm, still a Korean national in Paegam. That makes disbanding the weak units even more questionable. You don't take flip risks on deity lightly. Too easy to get burned. Even low probabilities have a way of turning up over enough time. Best to keep the risk to zero whenever possible. I wake a nume out of Hippo and move it down there.

Well, this is going to be a painful round for me. I sure hope there are some Persians around. I feel a real urge to beat up on anything handy. :lol:


1210AD: One carrier's worth of Persian bombers strafe our lands at Minsk, destroying two rail improvements.

As predicted, I make two tiles worth of progress on the rails (toward Germany, ignoring the Minsk problem for now). Persia has produced a settler out of its captured German city and is going to beat us to the gems site! (If I had workers, this would not have happened). I try anyway, sending our settler out along the road, but it doesn't look good.

With all our temples done, I start workers. Not QUITE urgent enough to rush them from scratch, but almost. I'll wait until they have one shield, then rush.

Several core cities complete projects this turn (units, buildings) and are put on worker production detail.

Haha, Persia lacks coal! They don't have a native source, and have been buying from somebody. No longer, with no trade partners left. I check potential buyers for electronics, there are none. Everybody's broke except us.

The Persian infantry has healed and now moved into range of Berlin. So notices our foreward cav scout.


1220AD: Wounded Mongol cav army attacks the Persian unit! NOOOOO! Don't kill it! Oh, whew. Only knocked two hp's off it before the Mongols were down to 1hp themselves and had to retreat.

With two hp's left on the enemy, I don't risk our elite. The vet I use succeeds and promotes.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-elite.jpg

Oops, maybe that WOULD have been a leader if I had used the elite. Maybe. Too late now. I made the right call, mathematically, but if only I would have had workers, to lay the rails to bring up some artillery, I WOULD have used our elite vs the enemy with 1hp left, and might have popped the leader we needed. Oh well.

Now with all our slaves available, plus some workers peeled off our core cities, I manage to get the rails almost to the northeast shore. I find a barbarian camp? Ha! A chance to promote some of our conscripts. One does in fact get promoted.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1220ad.jpg

Yes, this area has seen some combat. :lol: All from the AI's, though, to this point.

I rush workers (sitting at 1 shield in the box) in half a dozen small corrupt cities, starting with Minsk. Also have much of the core set to peel workers this round, though some cities now actually past their turn at it and on to power plants or police stations.

And yes, the Mongols founded where they stood in the jungle, snagging the gems location. I take a runner up position on the hill where the barb camp was, and found our city there, with a coal in range. I wake a bunch of infantry and bring them forward, then upgrade all our muskets to fill in the vaccum in the back lines. I set another settler to production out of a city with a taxman that is about to grow.


1230AD: Persia now attacking Minsk with two carriers full. I must devote some workers or we'll lose the roads and really fall behind. The only good news is that they're also attacking Mongol tiles, so we're not catching the whole brunt.

Oh, and there was a massive pollution breakout, including a mountain tile at the capital. It would have taken almost the entire workforce I started with, to clean up that one tile. Seriously now, Reagan, what were you thinking??? "Rails are done, we don't need workers any more?" :hmm:

Ignoring the pollution for now, I continue on the rails across Germany project, desperate to find more Persian targets.

AHA! A whole transport's full has just landed on a hill tile. Ooh, marines. Guess they have Amphibious Assault after all, we better be careful about our coastal cities.

Well, I have just enough workers on hand, after ignoring everything else, even Minsk, to stretch the supply line to within two tiles of artillery firing range. JUST ENOUGH. Just barely.

Haha! OK, X-man, time to GET SOME.

TAKE THAT! Eat it, you !@#$$@! sons of !@#$!

:rocket:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1230ad-sod1.jpg

Yes! LOOK at all those leader opportunities!

As our cavs ride in, guns firing, swords swinging, I'm screaming at the monitor in glee that I get to KILL SOMETHING, thus venting my frustrations I inherited on this round.

Die. Die. DIE! :beer:


(continued...)

We have exactly three workers and sixteen slaves as I start my round. What is the plan here?
:smoke: This deserved one of these - I had no idea we were that low. I fortified the workers as you never now when the need will arrive and I saw no clear tiles to develop. The only time I ever shrunk the number of workers was in a 5cc conquest game with 5 cities and 100+ slaves from all the razing.
I have been hit with pollution hell of 5 or 6 squares in the same turn - our work forces could not handle that. I don't always see eye to eye with Sirian, but I can't blame Sirian for ranting at all on this one.
I want to join him in ranting.

Communism was gained, but no police stations. I build them even in the capital for the lower war weariness. I have to agree with Sirian - not good.

I read Sirian's report In fact, Utica is so high in pop, I'm going to pull a settler
WTH? I had to settlers available to poach at the right time - I load the game at the end of Reagan turn, and we have no settlers - we merge my 2 settlers back into cities :cry:


This is depressing; we have the highest chance of my first loss in the LK series since the insane 9 of 10 space parts in LK26 when we reached the capital.

I am stopping now before I throw my laptop across the room.

I send in vets vs the infantry and marines, saving our elites to attack the softer targets underneath. Well, heh. Two vets promote with no casualties...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1230ad-sod2.jpg

...while our two elites whiff on pulling leaders. The Persian settlers provide us two more units of slaves. Here they are, the enemy SoD wiped out, but... still no leader. And time is definitely running out.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1230ad-sod3.jpg

I've now got four elites with which to work, though. I leave the Persian ships alone, hoping they will race home and load up, bringing me more targets as soon as possible.

With rail line now sufficiently in place to wage war effectively, I take the core off worker production, and everybody not already done with their power or hydro plants is assigned to them.

We now have the cash for another steal attempt, while leaving the Wall Street principle intact, so I go for it. Success! The only choice is Combustion? They don't have Radio yet? Cool. They do definitely have flight, massprod and amphibious though. No sign of tanks. Looks like they need two techs to complete the current age. We're at least two behind, not counting the optional marines tech.


1240AD: OK, we're now officially Bending Over for the Persian bomber hordes at Minsk. They are also targetting our new city in Germany, which is something I prefer to having them sail up and target our core. Once we can get a dozen fighters into the action, we can end the Persian Bomber menace, and thus have a CHANCE to field a navy against them and even consider making a landing on their continent. That's a little way off, yet, but if anybody (ahem, Lee) wants us to be going for space race instead of domination, they should speak up soon. I'm feeling my oats now, and I hunger to feel the X-man's neck pressing up against the heel of my boot. :lol:

Persia lands a marine and cav with a settler, right next to our military SoD north of Berlin. I scream at the monitor as Temujin attacks them with his cavs. One dies and I celebrate, but the second kills off the Persian marine. NO! That's a leader opportunity lost! No, don't kill the enemy! Sit back and LET ME DO IT FOR YOU! Silly Mongols.

Well... our elite attacks after I bombard, and of course there's no leader. We have two more slaves now though. I can FEEL the clock ticking. This doesn't look good.

I rush another round of workers (with 1 shield in the box) out of our corrupt colony towns. Russadir is building its own workers now, one every other turn. I set one core city just finishing a police station to peel another settler. I take the settler from this round and found on the hill tile where the Persian SoD was wiped out: "Carthago Novo" it's called. Future site of the launching of the Invasion of Persia.

I pull our workforce back to clean pollution. Incredibly enough, after cleaning all of it up in one round (amazing what you can do with enough workers) I can actually dedicate a few to repairs at Minsk. Hmm, we also have stage one war weariness now. Guess all the bombing we're taking, plus my leader-fishing combat, is already up out of the minimum range. Well... Republic is sturdy, but it can't hold up well to a lot of artillery use, which is what our offense consists of for the moment. Getting bombed by about 600 Persian bombers each turn doesn't help either. (Well, OK, maybe it's only about 16. Feels like 600, watching all the animations).


1250AD: NOOOO! The Mongols wiped out the one Persian town in the west corner of the German Cape. Blah. I should have let the pollution simmer and told the Minsk peasants to buzz off, and completed the rail net around the top of Germany first, moved our artillery into range of the Persian town, bombed and gone leader fishing there. Now the chance is lost. If only I had had enough workers to do BOTH tasks, maybe this is where our leader would have popped.

With no Persian landings this turn, and no Persian units left on our continent, I had no combats to fight.

Click Next Turn, BAM. Hoover Dam completed in Persepolis.


1255AD: Well, that's that. I start Sabratha on BatMed. I make plans for power plants in all remaining relevant cities. We're not going to miss Hoover that much, really, as we already have power everywhere, and we'll be VERY SURE to have enough workers on hand for the extra pollution from all these coal plants, right? :D (Right??)

Rush another round of workers out of the corrupt towns. I set up another settler to be produced. No sense letting the Mongols grab the ground we fought and bled to take control of in Germany. (Well, OK, not a lot of bleeding, but still, we earned it. And if we're going for domination, we'll need to control most of the planet).

I prioritize reconstructing improvements at Minsk. It's borders have now expanded (all those temples I rushed on the inherited turn have expanded) and that means EVEN MORE TARGETS for all the Persian bombers. However, this also means more rails to shoot at for them, and they prefer to target rails over roads, even though the roads are harder to repair because you have to waste worker turns moving them into the tile, plus wait for them to get there.

I found a city on the site of the former Persian town, on the far west corner of German lands. I set infantry onto all the hills so that no amphibious landings will be made on hills to give X-man a defense bonus. This also blocks their bombers from attacking the hill tile improvements, which are harder to repair. PLEASE consider why I might station units where I have, before vetoing and randomly moving them around to no specific end.


1260AD: Persian bombers notice our new towns and divert some strength from the Minsk Raping to these new targets. I really really wish I had a squadron of fighters right now. Like, oh what I would do to those darn annoying bombers.

We have enough cash for another steal attempt. I go for it. SUCCESS! I take flight! Yes, oh yes. I'm SO tempted to build some regular fighters and get some action on my round, but I decide to set up the next player instead by building airports first. This should end the bomber problem sooner in the long run, but it is oh so painful to hand off for an assist on this one instead of taking the outside shot myself. :p


Late turns: power plants, police stations (with some weariness on hand, I even had to crank up lux to ten percent), airports. I didn't train units because we didn't have immediate need. I did upgrade our remaining cannon to artillery, though. A little pricey, but I made the decision to do it. At some point, we may still come into conflict with the Mongols. For the moment, they are our fast friends, and we're using our mutual RoP to both our benefits. I even repaired some of HIS tiles, on the road to Minsk, after I had ignored his tiles and had some workers WASTE THEIR MOVEMENT because I didn't see the rail connection had been disrupted in HIS territory. Oops.

Cleaning up pollution ate about a third of my worker turns as it was, and bomber repairs ate another third. I used what free workers I had after these tasks to, ahem, mine over a bunch of low-use irrigations.

I read Reagan's reason for irrigating over some of the mines, and I don't entirely disagree. But he's got several views that make sense "on paper" and don't pan, for various reasons, in practice. The units were one such, now the workers, and now also the irrigation vs mine issue. See, if you need 80 shields to crank a fighter in one turn, and you leave your city with exactly 80 shields to the good, then if (when) pollution hits, it takes you out for the whole turn, effectively wasting a whole fighter. It's good to have SURPLUS on hand. Surplus units for extra duty, surplus workers for those intense periods of strategic need that you can't always see in advance, and surplus shields in cities who have maxed out their tile usage for pollution-countering and for flexibility if you need to change what type of unit you are producing, and crank some new infrastructure or support some alternative war need. There is such a thing as trying to be TOO efficient, overdoing it, and actually being enormously wasteful in the process.

I probably still wouldn't have gotten a leader with all the workers I should have had available, but you never know. More chances at it would have been more chances. Maybe one of the lost chances would have gotten lucky.

On the last turn, Mongols snuck a settler to the last site I targetted for settling, and there weren't any alternate sites I saw worth grabbing, so we now have a SURPLUS settler in the capital. Please, for goodness sake, leave it there if you don't have a need for it. It's only 1gpt maintenance, and if a need for it pops up, if an opportunity opens, it could mean a lot to have resources on hand ready to go, and not have to wait several turns to find a chance to produce them anew. Some opportunities can only be capitalized upon if you're ready to react quickly.

My last act was to sign our four "allies" to trade embargoes vs Persia. If any of them make peace with Persia, I urge resigning them to a new alliance. Even if spaceship is our goal, we really need to keep Persia isolated, in Communism, and on the attack, even we too have to drop to Monarchy at some point. Oh, and Persia is mobilized. So it seems, since their culture has started to DROP. If they are mobilized, they can't start any new culture buildings, and that would include the UN. Despite our complete and total lack of any wonder building, we're in a winning position here, as long we don't fumble the ball or throw an interception.

Here's a shot of the North German Shore at the end of my turn. I did manage to lure one carrier pair into artillery range and send them packing, so the pressure at Minsk has been reduced. There is still heavy Persian bomber activity, though, and our first fighter just came off the assembly line.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1275ad.jpg

Lee, if you don't want a warring finish, now's the time to let us know, as I have moved us wholly in the direction of domination and warmongering as part of my effort to pull a leader this round.


LK38 - 1275AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1275ad.zip)


- Sirian

This is depressing; we have the highest chance of my first loss in the LK series since

Well, it's not all THAT bad, Lee. Really.

Reagan did some good things on his round. The, ah, inadvertant Persian Heist was just one of the boosts. He brokered stolen tech to great effect, and that has fueled more tech stealing, putting us very firmly now in second place. We also had a lot of power already in place, which... while letting Hoover slip was not good, we aren't caught flat-footed by it.

I have completely isolated Persia, diplomatically. Without trade, they are in for trouble. Mano y mano, the AI is not up to the task. Not with us having strong core production and all the other civs weakened, warring amongst themselves, and lined up on our side vs X-man.

Losing is still possible, but if I were playing this solo I'd consider this a position ALREADY WON. It's just a matter of closing the deal now.


Good luck, Gothmog. The game's just getting to the fun part. :lol:


- Sirian

Well reading your report on the empire status and workers was extremely upsetting to say the least.
Finding my settlers on standby for poaching merged into cities made it worst.
Then the whole obsolete units had me in a very bad mood last night about this game. One of the only times I get rid of obsolete units - huge artillery stacks and tanks have arrived. I will disband two or three artillery into a city for an instant culture building even during resistance. Of course, at the point the game it won and I simply need fast culture.

Reading wasting 80 shields to get a worker - not needed military, and other comments that just didn't sit right.

I will concede I overreacted last night on the lost game issue. However, I can't remember the last report that was that depressing for me.

The turn I saw Hoover being built after reading Reagan's comments of Hoover started before we had AT, I would have started a pre-build. Worse case, we switch to Battlefield Medicine (I saved if for that exact reason).

=======================

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing)
Speaker (on deck)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Here's a brief excerpt from testimony before the Sirian Inquisition on Anti-Carthaginian Actions:

Sirian: Why did you disband all of our warriors and merge so many workers into our cities?

Reagan: At the time I inherited rule over Carthage, we were in bad stead with our trading partners and had to pay cash for all of our future technology. Because we are a smallish sized civilization, we needed every penny available to either buy techs or put towards our own future research.

S: But, but . . . we were at WAR, man!

R: Is there a question there? Sorry, my lawyer made me say that. Anyway, although we were technically "at war" with Persia, I saw no benefit to actively pursuing it past the point where Jerxes was willing to discuss peace. Any cities we took from Persia were going to be horribly corrupt, at major risk for revolt back to Persia, and were sitting ducks for a military action before they flipped. I presumed we were going to continue our push towards a non-domination/conquest victory and believed we were in a position to do just that.

S: Shouldn't you have seen that our money woes would end and we'd be able to steal our way to tech parity?

R: Well, sir, my ability to see exactly what will happen in the future is greatly limited (100% limited, to be exact), so I had to react to the situation at hand. The great luck we had with the chain of events towards the end of my reign did, indeed, change things (without injuring our reputaion one iota, by the way -- Persia declared war and voided the deal).

S: What are we going to do for workers now without wasting shields training them?!

R: My assumption was that our corrupt outlying cities could supply workers when they were needed. The cost of rushing the workers should have been less than the gpt saved during the time we weren't using them. I will admit that I should have left us a few more, but that we didn't need as many as I inherited. In my defense, I have never played a game where that many workers were necessary at the end of the game.

S: What about the settlers? Why didn't you use them to settle?

R: The only city sites available were directly south of Persia, were isolated from our homeland, would have been woefully corrupt, would have likely contributed further corruption to our core, and would have been either easy targets for future enemies or would have stretched our defenses thin. The only benefit to them would have been hoping that uranium or aluminum resources were located there and keeping luxuries duplicative of ours away from the other civs. To me, the cost-benefit analysis of those items weighed in favor of not settling.

S: Why didn't we have a pre-build for Hoover?

R: I did not inherit one when the reigns passed to me. Persia started Hoover construction roughly half-way through my rule and, at the time, we were two full techs away, were at war with Persia, and apparently had NO shot at completing it. The fact we acquired AT at the very end of my administration was the only thing that should have made anyone even question why we didn't have a pre-build. If I had started one when Persia began their construction, and we wouldn't have fluked our way into acquiring AT, it appears I would have gotten slapped around for wasting shields on the pre-build because we would have had one very expensive Battlefield Medicine build, which a non-military victory would not likely have required and which a non-military civ could have used as a pre-build for the UN and/or spaceship parts.

S: Where do you propose we go from here, then?

R: As you so eloquently stated, you feel you could win this game from our current position. I agree that you could and believe I could as well. I further believe our team can win from here, too. I think we have the ability to win by a spaceship victory if Perisa remains in a war with the rest of the world. We have an outside chance at a UN victory if Persia is at war with the world when the vote is taken and we build the UN before they do.

S: Do you, too, feel the need to hurl a piece of computer hardware?

R: I did after reading the comments of certain teammates, but I am much better now (despite a night of fitful sleep because I kept thinking about y'all being unahppy with me), thank you. I hope we can all get along well in this and future exploits together.

I'm a little confused why you guys don't think that a Diplomatic Victory is possible. We are polite or gracious with everyone but Xman, who will probably be our opponent. Assuming that we can get the UN with a prebuild, I don't see why we can't win that way. I'm not saying that we should, but I don't know if we should give up on that idea. Also, we can get Radio in 10 turns by doing our own research. Not that we have that urgent a need for it, but I just wanted to point out that we are capable of researching Fission on our own, especially if Persia goes toward Rocketry or Computers first. He will also waste turns with Advanced Flight, I'm sure. We can also trade Combustion around for 44gpt from the Vikings and 93gpt from India, as well as both of their treasuries (around 1100 total). The extra money will help us steal Mass Production faster...

DISCLAIMER:

My foregoing post is intended as a humorous way of explaining, hopefully for the last time, why I did what I did. I am not angry at anyone for mercilessly :whipped: me, nor is the content of my message intended to disparage anyone referenced therein.

We needed several hundred shields ALREADY SITTING in a prebuild, BEFORE Hoover was started, to have any hope at all. This is Deity, remember. AI cost factor = 60%.

The way you do it is to use Palace Prebuild. If you get too close to actually building the palace, you swap the city to the next smaller item, in this case BatMed, wasting shields off the top but preserving 500 of them, then immediately switch BACK to the palace, with 500 shields still in the box. You keep a minimum of 500 shields on hand in this case -- or whatever is your best option on the lower end of the prebuild -- sitting waiting for you to get the tech. Yeah, you might waste shields by mistiming the start, but you ensure yourself the wonder, and how wasteful is it NOT to get the wonder?

You simply must -- must -- be far ahead before they even start it, or they will complete it first. Hoover, that is -- because by then they'll have factories, too. By the time you see them building it, it is already too late. ToE can be different because you can beeline to factories and power plants and have them ready, while the AI does not, and actually outbuild them to it. That's just not going to happen with Hoover if you lose out on ToE.


We could have had Hoover for sure, if handled ideally. We had the opportunity. However, even on Deity, there is margin for error on most maps. When Reagan said that he didn't think the nine obsolete military units he disbanded would be the difference that would cause us to lose... well, he's probably right. Only RBE2 and a few other games, have ever truly been close enough that one such setback could have lost the game. Likewise, having to build power plants in each city is only a setback, not a deal smasher. We're still in position to win, even without Hoover or in fact any wonders at all through the whole game.

On the other hand, the same logic applies to WHY he was doing all these moves. His goal appears to be increased efficiency, and that's a worthy goal. But a few extra gpt from getting rid of units, especially workers, and a few extra food to support higher than the number of tiles a city can work (due to overlap with other cities, or hitting size 20), is likewise NOT going to make a game-breaking difference economically. And where he saw no use or need for these units -- weak military units, surplus settlers and workers -- that might fit OK with his playstyle. It might work out for him (or maybe he's just new to deity?). I hope now he sees the other side of the coin, that there is its own brand of efficiency to having surpluses on hand, especially in an SG where other players may have different ways of doing things and might have uses for resources that you don't yet know about, and therefore you should not be getting rid of things other players took the time to produce or fought with the AI's to control, unless you darn well know exactly what you are doing.

Undoing something that somebody else has done to send the game in a different direction is called "the veto stamp". If you whip out that veto stamp, your results need to work out successfully (often enough) or you'll get some grief about it (in a deity SG, at least), plain and simple. My decision to attack Russia was a veto action. I took us in a different direction there, on my round. The attack worked out OK, so I didn't get grief for it, but if things had gone poorly and I'd left us in a bad position by it, players would have complained. That's the nature of being in the hotseat, steering the ship. You get held responsible for your decisions. :) That includes glory for achievements as well as teasing or criticism for goofs.

What was he smoking? :smoke: I don't know. :lol: I would seriously like to hear the reasoning, though. Especially in regard to pollution, combat rail construction, and radar towers. Reagan, have you ever been in much late-game combat? How do you get by without workers to support the advance of your armed forces?


- Sirian

I am not new to Deity and I understand the concept of a Palace pre-build and the AI cost advantage. Missing out on ToE was a huge contributor to our current situation. A further problem, as I have repeatedly stated, is that there was not a pre-build in place when I inherited the game and it appeared that there was no need for one. It is precisely because of the AI advantage that I, and apparently my predecessor(s), felt a pre-build would be wasted because we didn't appear to have a realistic shot at acquiring the techs necessary to build Hoover first. We could have infinitely cycled shields between a Palace and BM, but it seemed totally wasteful at the time because there was no reason to believe we had a shot. Please, stop ripping on me for that! Is losing Hoover going to be the downfall of Carthage? Heck no. Other power plants are adequate.

I solicited input regarding the approach we should take to the end game but nobody offered any opinions before I was prompted to play my turn. As a result, I kept us on our apparently intended path towards a non-military victory. If you will note, the warring on our part was thrust upon us at the very end of Lee's turn. We never showed any inclination, apart from the brief skirmish with Russia and our GA-triggering quickie fight with Korea, towards military action beyond homeland defense. Thus, I did not "veto" what was apparently our team's vision of our civ's overall path.

All of my Deity victories have come via a peaceful builder (UN, spaceship, or 20K culture) strategy. My military experience at Deity or any other level is admittedly very limited. I have stated that in numerous recent posts in the RBE threads. I am going to attempt to remedy that by participating in a Charis-led oscillating war game in the near future. Because that experience will come too late to help me/us in this game, if we are at war when my turn comes around again, I will gladly pass to someone more militarily experienced than I.

In my opinion, passing on a turn (for reasons other than time) belies the spirit of the SG. We are in this game together, for better or for worse, and there has been no passing because someone is bad at trading, or someone is bad at settling, or someone is bad at anything else. We've gotten this far together, and I think we should finish together. And really, let's drop the whole workers/hoover thing. We missed out and nothing can be gained from further b*tching about it. Everyone knows what to do in the future.

Here's a brief excerpt from testimony before the Sirian Inquisition on Anti-Carthaginian Actions

:lol:


Because we are a smallish sized civilization, we needed every penny available to either buy techs or put towards our own future research.

Actually, no, we didn't need every penny. That's the problem. You paid too much for some of those pennies, only to have 6000 in the bank and 1000+ gpt income at the end of your reign. Only SOME of that is accounted for in the broken deal and the tech broker. Only 300gpt of our 1000 income was coming from you having sold the stolen tech, therefore we still had 700 gpt coming in besides that. You paying 360gpt for tech sounds to me like you bought @2nd, which is weedy in its own right. We definitely did not need every penny.


Any cities we took from Persia were going to be horribly corrupt

This is horribly short sighted. There is a flip side to what we take away from Persia: Persia doesn't have it any more! That isn't taken into account in your assessment. There's more to a race than your own speed. If you throw nails on the road in front of the other guy and he blows a tire and skids into the pits for repairs, you gain ground. Dastardly? To be sure. But this is deity, man. DEE-IH-TEE. :p


I presumed we were going to continue our push towards a non-domination/conquest victory and believed we were in a position to do just that.

What push? We hadn't picked a victory goal yet. There was no agreement on which goal to pursue, and no edict from on high to direct us to pursue a specific goal. Yet you decided to undermine and close out the military option, even as a potential tool to try to slow down our rival who was way WAY ahead and possibly going to run away with the race if left to his own devices. Well, the way to interfere with his progress is... military.



(without injuring our reputaion one iota, by the way -- Persia declared war and voided the deal).

<edit> If Persia ALLOWED you to make a GPT-for-tech deal, that meant our rep was on the repair. They declared? Yes, OK. Maybe you're right. Maybe we didn't get any stain from them here. Or maybe we did, by getting caught spying. The other AI's would not make trusting deals with me on my round, though. So our rep seems to have been re-stained.</edit>


My assumption was that our corrupt outlying cities could supply workers when they were needed. The cost of rushing the workers should have been less than the gpt saved during the time we weren't using them.

The cost of retraining workers may just have been the Hoover Dam, in this case. We'll never know. And there were no 36 turns of upkeep savings to pay for the cash to rush, nor were there any savings from me halting production in our core for two rounds to peel the workers back off the top.

WHAT BENEFIT did we get from merging the workers? You didn't even do it in the coastal towns with less food, that I can see. You did it right in the core.


I will admit that I should have left us a few more, but that we didn't need as many as I inherited.

Poppycock. A possible war with Mongolia is still on the horizon, and still potentially somewhat out of our control. For that reason alone, there was defensive military need for every worker we had and then some. Every last one, on hold and on reserve for potential immediate need. Forts, repairs, radar tower... And when we need them, we'll need them NOW, right away, on surprise notice, not wait four turns to re-peel them out of the cities instead of building units or other must-have projects in the middle of a crisis.

Everything about your move here "looks good on paper". That's because you're not accounting for a whole pack of variables. If you limit your analysis to a narrow range, you can come up with a solution that looks good, but produces poor results.



The only city sites available were directly south of Persia... would have likely contributed further corruption to our core

Sorry, this ain't Civ1 or Civ2. Civ3 doesn't work that way, except under Communism.

It took me a while to figure this one out. Arathorn had to beat it into my poor head until the light came on inside. :crazyeye:


The only benefit to them would have been hoping that uranium or aluminum resources were located there and keeping luxuries duplicative of ours away from the other civs.

This is the fundamental flaw in your whole series of moves here. You only SEE certain benefits, but there are actually more there than you are seeing. Yet anything you don't see a need for gets the axe. :rolleyes:


Persia started Hoover construction roughly half-way through my rule and, at the time, we were two full techs away, were at war with Persia, and apparently had NO shot at completing it.

I would have nabbed Hoover. I could have gotten it. I've explained how, with a running prebuild.

Now we can debate the value of using prebuilds in and of themselves. Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it balanced? I don't know that I like the concept, it definitely does not make sense to the context of the game. However, Firaxis has explained that there were two ways to do this: allow project switching with NO penalties, or impose a penalty on switching projects. Sid Meier has tried it both ways and concluded that the lesser of the two evils is allowing unlimited switching. This lets the AI's "team up" on wonders through the cascade effect. Some of them will absolutely screw themselves in the process, but it doesn't matter as long as ONE of the AI's gets the wonder. You have to beat them ALL to get it for yourself, and that means beating their virtual teamwork. The game is how it is, and this is how they meant it to be, so prebuilding is just part of the strategy.

A proper prebuild would have gotten us this wonder. I absolutely could have beaten them the last 300 shields if I had inherited a waiting prebuild with 500+ in the box.

That's water under the bridge now, and I won't go on about it any more except to disprove any assertions that we were not in position to get this wonder. As Lee pointed out, in position or not, you TRY. You go for it, and if it doesn't pan you let BatMed complete as a runner up item.


The fact we acquired AT at the very end of my administration was the only thing that should have made anyone even question why we didn't have a pre-build.

Bzzt. Wrong again. :whipped:


one very expensive Battlefield Medicine build, which a non-military victory would not likely have required and which a non-military civ could have used as a pre-build for the UN and/or spaceship parts

The fastest way to prebuild the UN in this case, is to make darn sure Persia doesn't get to fission first.

That aside, there would still have been the palace for a prebuild for the UN. If you had wanted to preserve BatMed as a second option to keep the shields at 500 minimum, on hold, for the UN, then yes, you could have wasted most of the shields, turning them into an expensive whatever. However, you deemed it an impossible gamble not worth taking. So by not risking a few hundred shields, we then had to spend a few thousand extra on power plants.


I think we have the ability to win by a spaceship victory if Perisa remains in a war with the rest of the world. We have an outside chance at a UN victory if Persia is at war with the world when the vote is taken and we build the UN before they do.

OK. So the time has come to select a victory goal to pursue. We can shoot for making an early exit with a rapid UN win. That would be the quick way to end it, and yes, if Persia is our voting rival, we could be sure of winning the vote by keeping all our alliances active and them at war with everybody.

HOWEVER, there is the danger of a three-way vote, if the Mongols are tops in territory and Persia tops in population, with us third or lower in each category. That kind of vote, we could well lose. Thus, we may NEED to take over some land just to ensure a winning vote -- if we are going to go for the vote. So EVEN THERE you were smoking some nasty halucinogens to have gotten rid of the workers and settlers.


Lee... what do you want to do with the rest of this game? Sit back and try to coast to the finish line? :sleep: Or get mideival on these AI's who have been pushing us around for far too long now? :hammer: :lol:


- Sirian

We could have infinitely cycled shields between a Palace and BM, but it seemed totally wasteful at the time because there was no reason to believe we had a shot. Please, stop ripping on me for that!

I'm ripping you for trashing our workers and settlers, because you continue to insist it was the right thing to do to get rid of them. You've changed to "OK, I shouldn't have gotten rid of as many as I did, but we still had too many", so I keep ripping.

You're right, not doing a prebuild was a judgement call. I'm not upset about that. I'm notably peeved at not having the workers in place for me to go on the attack. There's absolutely no valid reason for those workers and settlers to have been scuttled.

I, too, made a judgement call, to lock us into a shooting war with Persia to slow them down, and to pursue a leader. It didn't work out as I hoped, and now we have some weariness on hand and have to run lux taxes to overcome it. Pricey, for a leader we didn't get and a wonder we have not built. However, I did also wipe out four Persian settlers, and three transports worth of Persian troops, perhaps enough to get them to mobilize, which is the best possible thing to cut into their massive, game-threatening cultural lead. You might see these moves as wasteful, but are they slowing Persia down more than they are slowing us down? I think so. As far as I can tell, they didn't discover any tech at all on my watch. Ten turns, no new tech? While we stole three techs from them and closed the gap on them?


We have a chance here to WIN this game, militarily. We're in position for it, if we want to go for it. You've never done that on Deity? Fine. I don't think Lee has either. Now's the chance to mix it up. If Lee wants to pass on it, and just get this thing over with, we can do that, too, in reasonably short order, by making sure we get to second place and stay there, for either population or territory, then take the vote and close down the show.

Lee, this is your game, man. You've given Reagan the impression you want to head for UN or space. I don't see that you've made such a choice, but either way, time now to decide. Please.


- Sirian

And really, let's drop the whole workers/Hoover thing. We missed out and nothing can be gained from further b*tching about it.
I agree on this one - I think Sirian and I have both made our points on the workers, junk military and Hoover. SG that loose team spirit increase the risk of losing. However, I will continue the discussion if it come after me.


On how to win the game -
At this point out rep is destroyed. We are still weak in workers.
Honorable fighting is meaningless, so we need to be pure evil :flamedevi:

Domination and war it is - with the Mongols! Why?
1) We need permanent oil source ASAP - can you say Taejon with raze and replace?
We raze Ulananbaatar (size12) and Dalandzagad (replace with city on the dyes to make connection harder to break). This solves our worker problems, and destroys all the dyes for the Mongols. They would never take a trade embargo vs. anyone, so you know they are exporting the dyes. On the first turn we can cripple multiple AI civs when the all switch from luxuries to entertainers :satan:

Our first strike is to take out rubble land, to avoid dealing with two fronts. None of the cities have expanding borders; the flip risk is much lower. Outside of Moscow with deserves to be RAZED.
Not to mention the fact that we take control of the majority of the wine in the world.

If we go this way - DON'T sell the Mongols Combustion - keep them away from tanks as long as possible.


We have a chance here to WIN this game, militarily. We're in position for it, if we want to go for it. You've never done that on Deity? Fine. I don't think Lee has either. Now's the chance to mix it up.
Uh - LK36, German conquest victory - ripped the world to shreds with Panzer stacks.

Another advantage to my luxury plan above - specialist = less cash and slow research!

LKendter
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog (currently playing - still waiting for got it)
Speaker (on deck)

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

Hey all, another weekend without internet access gone bye. I keep meaning to sign one up but haven't gotten to it, I've picked one out and everything! Woe to this former Oakland dweller.

First let me say: 'My bad on the trade to Germany. I am not sure if I knew and forgot or was just hitting the :smoke: too hard, but I was not aware that trades involving stuff were handled differently from gpt (other than if a trade route were eliminated gpt will still get through). I don't get to play much due to my hectic RL (I've played 3 solo PTW games, all diety, I'm now on my 4th + my two current active SG's), so some of these details have escaped me. I accept responsibility for that move, and am glad to have learned something. It actually explains a few things. :p

Second: I don't think this game was ever slipping away. I won most of my civ3 games as a builder, but in PTW I have two conquest and one domination victories - not counting K7. We haven't even reached the time of the huge human advantage - Modern Armor (3 movement is big big big). As long as you get there a few rounds before the AI and have cash for upgrades. That is as big a bonus as getting ToE+Hoover+Tanks 1st (IMHO). And since the AI seems to lose some of its pack mentality wrt techs by that time... you fill in the blanks.

Third: 'I got it'. I will play tonight and post in the morning. I haven't looked at the map, but assume that I will be filling in what I can of former German and Russian holding. Then looking to the North to see what I can do about getting Oil and some more lux. LK - I like the way you think :satan: , resource and lux denial is yet another reason why the AI fares badly in late industrial/early modern war.

Yours: Gothmog (or should I say g.o.t.h.m.o.g. ?)

General Mc Gothmog takes command of the Carthaginian Army. General Mc Gothmog hales from a little province in the south where his father dreamed of striking it rich with a bubbling ooze, oil that is, black gold. Unfortunately, although his father’s land seemed promising, only small amounts of oil were discovered and his father died a young and poor man. Young Gothmog was forced into the armed forces, but he never forgot. Meanwhile, in the land of Taejon, very nearby Gothmog’s hometown, Mongol citizens with similar dreams had indeed struck it rich, and now sold their oil to the Carthaginian people garnering obscene profits. After rising through the ranks of the Carthaginian army, Mc Gothmog vowed he would have that oil for his own. Mc Gothmog positioned himself as a nationalist and used the media to convince the people that the land of Taejon was rightfully theirs. Although the Mongols were old allies, he began a military buildup designed to make his dream a reality. The year was 1275 AD when Mc Gothmog managed to get a puppet president elected to office in a controversial election, yes young H.X. Shrub was president but Mc Gothmog pulled the strings. He knew that the outgoing government had made deals with the evil Mongols and those must be honored, for Mc Gothmog had made some bad mistakes in dealing with the former German people and Mc Gothmog always learned from his mistakes. First he must deal with the Persians, and then the Mongols’ time would come. So it begins…

The Persians were bombing Carthaginian provinces and that must stop. An air force was mobilized that shot down many Persian bombers and bombed many Persian ships, and eventually the terror ended. Mc Gothmog actually managed to turn the tables on the Persians for a bit and send the terror to their lands, killing many cows, but eventually the Persians came up with superior rocket technology that ended this turnabout. An old friend of Mc Gothmog’s has taken power in India (with help from Mc Gothmog), and offers to go to war with the Mongols. Not yet old friend, when the time is right then we shall strike. Now Persia calls up and wants to make peace, although the people are weary of war with the Persians and long to drink Mongol blood Mc Gothmog knows the time is not right. However, he notices that the Persian leader is arrayed in fine new cloths. Mc Gothmog feels envy, and knows that this portends a new era in mobilized combat. Luckily he was prepared. He activates a sleeper cell in Persia and funnels resources to them. His activities are twice rewarded and the Carthaginian army begins construction of the new devices – Tanks. Mc Gothmog starts the now infamous AMTAP policy (as many tanks as possible), and core Carthaginian cities crank out one every turn through mysteriously efficient use of production capacity. The Mongols have no idea about even combustion or electronics and so will be taken completely by surprise. He forbids the import of Mongol furs, claiming they are produced under inhumane circumstances. But has the foresight to increase spending on luxuries for his people. Mc Gothmog chuckles loudly to himself and his large belly jiggles with delight. But then just as his plans are about to come to fruition, Mc Gothmog starts to cough, then to choke, finally he keels over and is found dead many hours later by a custodian. In Mc Gothmog’s private papers an outline of his plans are found. All the Tanks are positioned in Leptis Magma, all deals against Persia are on the cusp of renegotiation, the Persian sleeper cell is positioned to make one more technology grab before peace is finally made, a law has been passed forbidding the import of any Mongol product and all oil reserves are being used on one last batch of Tanks. Although it was Mc Gothmog’s policy to rush workers/explorers/settlers to get a Tank every turn in core Carthaginian cities, Mc Gothmog’s plans point out that that is impossible without an active source of oil. What will come of Mc Gothmog’s plans? Will peace be made with the Persians? Will the Mongols oil be clamed by the Carthaginians? The year is 1325 AD, an election year, and who can tell? But even in death Mc Gothmog is not powerless. He has friends; yes he has friends in very high places.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1325ad.zip

LKendter (on deck)
Will be at war no matter what speaker does.
Reagan
Sirian
Gothmog
Speaker (currently playing)
Building a military to cream the Mongols ASAP - with Persia so strong, this war must be quick. Please get ALL of our Mongol deals to end.

Remember, 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

I am pretty sure all deals can be ended immediately (i.e. before 1330 AD), but I left it to Speaker to be sure. When you make peace with Persia, check the lux slider. We did have a good bit of WW throughout the lands. With our oil now run out I would say war should be declared almost immediately. Be sure to position our troops in former German lands appropriately and use our Tanks judiciously!

Got it. Will play and post either tonight or tomorrow.

My turn is almost finished. I'll post later tonight.

1325 (0) Look at our current deals. 6 turns left in a Dyes and 16gpt for Gems and Saltpeter deal with the Mongols. Also have 10 turns of a trade embargo vs. Persia. Attempt technology steal only to fail, but avoid being caught and stay under cover.

1330 (1) Spy caught and killed. Trade Electronics to Korea for 139gpt and 340 gold, to India for 39gpt and 30 gold, and to Scandinavia for 510 gold. The extra 200 gpt will help in building more military quickly.

1335 (2) Spy caught and killed again. Bomber attempting to bomb Persian Ironclad gets destroyed by Fighter plane. Oops. Artillery blasts down the ironclad and several more in the next few turns who attack.

1340 (3) Spy caught and killed again. I have no luck.

1345 (4) Palace expands. Spy caught and killed again. Persia is in Communism. That explains a lot.

1350 (5) Spy finally planted. He fails to steal a tech but is not caught. Military alliances cancelled.

1355 (6) Goods deal cancelled with Mongolia. Four more turns remain of a Trade Embargo and then we can declare.

IT- Mongol troops move into our territory. Deity ROP Genghis?

1360 (7) I take the opportunity to tell Genghis to remove his troops or declare war. He declares war. Excellent, the stain of breaking the trade embargo is not on us. Tank kills two Cavalry without a scratch (with artillery support) and upgrades to elite. Another Tank takes out two Infantry and upgrades to Elite. Taejon falls without a scratch and the Oil is ours. A tank upgraded to elite on its attack and now rests there. Core switches production to tanks. Kaesong falls and an elite town rests there. One tank dies in Moscow, taking the Infantry to its final HP. Moscow falls. Lose one tank in the taking of Dalandzadgad, which is then razed with a settler founding Calaris in its place. Ulaanbaatar falls with the loss of one tank. I wish we had a few settlers lying around so I could raze and replace. In any event, we now control 3 dyes.

Conclusion- I am handing over the reins now, after only 7 turns, because I have a bunch of school work to do, and that last turn took a long, long time. There are still a bunch of tanks in Leptis Magna that can move this turn if you want to continue the attack, or if you think Ulaanbaatar should have a larger MP. I have never seen a city flip the first turn after it is captured, and a settler will be produced in Nora next turn, so Ulaanbaatar should probably be razed and replaced. There will be enough cash next turn to try another tech steal from Persia, although I don't know how successful it will be. As I think about it, it might be a better idea to just leave the spy there for when they start building their spaceship. I would definitely recommend mobilizing, even if only for a few turns (peace with Persia can end the mobilization). We could really stand to produce a lot more artillery. When I inherited the game, we only had something like 30, and I built a whole bunch in the first few turns, getting us up to 55 now, but some of them are in the former Germany. There is a stack of 17 near the oil and two stacks of 9 near Moscow, a few in cities in that area, and the rest are up north. We should probably try to consolidate the former Germany lands as quickly as possible and get some cultural buildings in there to keep the borders, and then be able to focus all of our attention on the Mongolian homeland. We should probably save our money and use it to rushbuy, rather than throwing it away trying to steal Radio from Persia. Good luck to the next player.

LK38, 1360AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38,_1360_AD.zip)

All right, Oil for the ghost of Mc Gothmog. I have a question here, is is a reputation stain to make peace with a country you have an embargo against? I didn't think it was, but I have been wrong before. IMO, we need to make peace with persia as they have no cities we are likely to capture and we have significant WW due to our persian war. That is what I was trying to say in my earlier posts - all our MA's against Persia were about to expire, leaving only trade embargo's against them. Still, it's great that the Mongols declared against us, the reverse WW will certainly come in handy. Oh, also I have heard that if you fail to plant a spy you will not be able to plant one for the next four turns. IME, this seems true but I don't have a large enough data set to be sure. Good job Speaker - take it to our former friends :hammer:

Making peace doesn't affect embargoes. I will often around turn 19 of an alliance sign embargoes just to keep screwing my enemy. I then make peace after turn 20. The embargoes stay in place, so there is no question on rep stain.

I have my work cut out tonight - I will turn it over with how ever many turns I complete. 10 turns of modern war is very slow.


I do plan to cleanup all the German lands. If nothing else, I should capture a ton of workers, and we need to increase that count badly.

Oh, also I have heard that if you fail to plant a spy you will not be able to plant one for the next four turns.

Well, I failed to plant one in 1345AD and then succeeded in planting one the next turn....

1360 AD (Pre-turn) - I really wish we razed Ulaanbaatar. 11 resistors is a virtually guaranteed flip, yet I can't afford to lose a city as that is the worst cause of war weariness. I hate leaving large stacks of troops in a high flip risk city.

On the diplomacy front, now it is India paying us for rubber - $1/turn more then Korea would pay.
In addition, India will give us $11/turn for Gems - However, that is to low for the happiness he gains - NO SALE.

We need to concentrate on one front, so I sign a peace treaty with Persia - all I can get from him is wm and $15 :(

1) I switch several of the corrupt cities to settlers and rush them - I need the ability to back fill the Germany territory with ZERO flip risk.
2) We have way to many cities with huge amount of resistors to deal with - it won't be popular, but I abandon Moscow to free up troops - I can fill that side of the board back in no time.
3) Nalayah, Leipzig are razed to start the cleanup of former Germany. I simply don't have the troops to deal with this many flip risks.
4) Saynshand is very small, so I will risk keeping it - one resistor should go fast.
5) I desperately need cash to get more tanks in one turn, so I feel Korea flight for $1959.
6) I plant a spy in Mongolia - They have 96 infantry, ZERO tanks, and 19 cavalry.

Time to hit the dreaded enter.
(I) Persia is building the UN :eek:
No real counter-attack by the Mongols except for artillery strikes on a few border squares.

1365 AD - Arvayheer, Berlin, and St. Petersburg are razed.
At size one I will risk capturing Novgorod - it has a Russian citizen!
We control 100% of former Germany.

We formed a few new cities - Tingis, Lol (this name came up on it's own), Rusguniae, and Thaenae. Once the temples are rushed, we will control most of former Germany.
We abandon Ulaanbaatar, and replace it with a Carthage city - Rusuccuru. The city has a very nice bonus of giving the Mongols ZERO dyes.

I do like one thing in the Diplo screen - Persia needs coal.
(I) A decent stack of Mongol units cross the borders. It is time to go unit killing.
We add a new section to the palace.

1370 AD - The results of the Mongol invasion - we lost NOTHING and got a few promotions.
The Mongols lost 4 cavalry, 1 guerilla, and 10 infantry - please Mr. Khan, send some more.
I perform a mass temple rush in former Germany.
Our healthy worker force (thanks to razed cities and a ton of captures in former Germany) begins the job of building a thick rail-net in former Germany - Persia will be a target, and I want it very hard to break the connects to the future invasion staging area.
al-Kaf is formed, to fill in a gap in former Germany.

1375 AD - Mandalgovi is captured along with a couple of workers and a couple of artillery.
I capture Odessa - I hope it still has some Russian citizens - just **7** resistors.
I capture Almarikh - again a ton of resistors, but this city will let me cleanup up 3 cities in the northeast including another source of oil. It breaks the only source of Saltpeter for the Mongols. After I get the city I spot a ton of workers, and set in the cavalry to liberate them.
I take the corner cities of Choybalsan, Tblisi and Tsontsengel.
I hate conscripted troops with a passion, but we are hurting big time for warm bodies to kill resistance ASAP. I draft out of most of the major cities and hope to kill resistance quickly.
(I) - The Mongols want to talk, I wonder why? They will already concede three cities, but I want to knock them down a lot more. In particular, I want to break their hold on wines, the nearby oil, and destroy their size 31 capital city.
The Mongols attack Almarikh with their cavalry army, and I get to watch it die :)

1380 AD - Well it is about time - Lee's Tank is formed, and we get to build our first army. [dance]
It is victorious, so I need to find a city to build military academy and heroic epic.
Ta-Tu is captured for about 30 seconds - Zouchis is built to replace it one square closer to the Mongol capital.
I don't believe it, but Persia managed to raze a Mongol city on our landmass.
(I) Lee's Tank 2 is formed, then the leader is destroyed a couple of battles later :cry:

1385 AD - I am probably going to regret this, but I capture Karakorum. Double strength chapels from Sistine will really help us. A few citizens accept us, so I can begin immediate starvation. The Mongols lose their only source of wines.
(I) Our troops have quell eight resistors WAHOOOOOOOO.

1390 AD - Darhan is captured for a very short while - we can now push the borders in range of Kazan.
Tacape is formed.
War weariness has finally raised its ugly head - unhappy cause includes give peace a chance.
Kazan is captured, and an immediate library is rush to get those furs under our control ASAP - this will help a lot with war weariness.
The Mongols are really screwed - Persia took another city in the far north.
(I) I watch Persia take Ereen - the very city I WAS sending a stack of units at.

1395 AD - A quiet turn of positioning the troop.
(I) India / Korea sign an mpp.

1400 AD - Choyr, Erdenet, and Hovd are captured. The Mongols are totally fizzled.



Summary - We have a ton of cities that can produce a tank sooner by rushing a worker - maybe even an explorer / settler after that. Cadiz with 40 shields before corruption can get a tank in 2 by rushing a settler first.

We started with 34 tanks, and end with

This was a very time consuming set of turns - I was even mm totally corrupt cities to grow at the maximum rate to get another settler faster.

Speaker's artillery SoD really helped kick some Mongol butt.

LKendter
Reagan (currently playing)
Sirian (on deck)
Gothmog
Speaker (loved the artillery SoD)

Remember, up to 10 turns per round from now on - STRICT 24 hours got it, total 48 to complete.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-1400AD.zip

Just to give you an idea how screwed the Mongols are.
Everything north of the yellow line was gained between 1360 AD and 1400 AD.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LAK-255.jpg

Nice work LK. This game is in the bag.

Glad you appreciated the artillery SoD. That's my trademark of sorts (if I had a trademark). It really makes for an unbeatable attack force.

Good set of turns General Lee :soldier: , it will be nice to have some armies if we end up invading Persia. I don't think they will be winning by Diplo, but you can never tell. Looks like Persia is a good tech steal target for us. Great to see the Carthaginian Red finally dominating the map. The Oil is ours, the ghost of Mc Gothmog is pleased indeed... :mwaha:

Re Speaker: the way I read your turns they are consistant with the four turn hypothesis. You failed to plant a spy in 1330 AD. Then you continue to fail for the next 3 turns (thus four turns that you cannot succede - including the initial one). Then you succede on the next turn. I have noticed that when I fail to plant a spy I will never get one in the same turn. It also seems impossible the next couple turns, although I have less personal data to mine here. I have it from reliable sources (on the S&T forum) that it is impossible for 4 turns. Admittedly, this is anecdotal evidence, but let's call it food for thought.

Actually 2 oils are ours - we have a spare if one dries up.

On armies - the military academy is being built.

Yes, two oil... I was refering to all the mongol oil. That is all of it, yes? If not - it's upto you reagan!

Ummmm -- Don't got it. The .zip file is empty, my friend.

Today's the :bday: o' my "female dating companion," which means I'll have other games besides Civ on my mind tonight. :groucho: After you either re-post the save or tell me where I'm going wrong with the current version, I'll reacquaint the Mongols with Carthage's might and post sometime tomorrow. :tank:

Let's try a reload:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-1400A-AD.zip


On the issue of the Mongols - Kill them ALL - I don't want Sistine to flip - we can really use the help.

Pre-turn: Starting GDP of 664gpt increased almost 50% to 954gpt through the “Omnibus Clown-to-Taxman and/or Productive Citizen Retraining Act of 1400” and by decreasing lux to 0% while temporarily hiring an entertainer in one non-core city. Furs came online two turns early by using a Mongol worker to form a colony, which saved some lux $$$. I also added two new Mongol workers to our ranks without leaving any of our units in Mongol territory. Several outlying settler cities were working low/no-shield tiles to no gain, so I MM them to increase growth. That was an un-enjoyable but productive thirty minutes.

1405: Korea and Persia are now at peace. Persia completed the Manhattan Project. India renegotiated our Iron-Dyes deal and can only pay us 6gpt (their entire GDP). Our leader-fishing Cav hit a good RNG roll and spawned GL Hanno, who immediately trained an army! Tabriz and Ulaangam were razed/replaced with only two tank casualties against redlined infantry.

1410: Carthage completed the Military Academy and began production of an army. Someone sabotaged production in Rusicade. Bathshireet, Tsetserleg, and Bayanhongor captured without casualties.

1415: Persia completed the UN. Positioned troops for the next assault.

1420: Captured Baruun-Urt without casualties. Our Spices deal with Korea ended. I chose not to renew it because I didn’t want to restrict us from attacking Korea. If we choose not to go after Korea immediately, this deal would help us get some happiness back, although it appears we’re OK without it for the most part.

1425: Persia and Vikes are at peace. Completed many tile improvements in our new Mongol territory. Repositioned our fighters to try to ward off Persia bombers, if necessary. They are set for air superiority missions. Sold Flight to the Vikes for 43gp +23gpt.

Looking forward: I played five turns, which happened to correspond with the demise of the Mongols and the discovery of Radio. We can go after Persia or Korea next. Korea should be a much easier target, but Persia is clearly our main competition and is a threat to start a space program in the near future. I left the army in Carthage unfilled so it can be transported easier. We clearly did not need it in the fight against Mongolia and it will not be nearly as useful as homeland defense as it would be overseas. I grouped our troops/workers by unit around Carthage, with the healing elites in Carthage. I also left almost all of them with movement points remaining, so Sirian can put them wherever he wishes. I misfired on a go-to command and dropped an infantry in Persian territory, so you’ll get to see Jerxes’ bright, smiling face interturn. I didn't change many of the build orders in corrupted cities, except to suggest construction of harbors near Persia in order to build/rush naval units. We are behind Persia by a ton of techs (at least three from the Modern Era), including Computers (Mech. Infantry). I tried to leader fish as many times as possible but came up dry after my initial success. We have a few elites now, so the fishing should be better in the future. We have a lot of cash and a strong GDP. We have enough for a tech steal attempt (Computers would be pretty sweet) and/or to build-up infrastructure and/or transports on the Persian front. It may be time to start our own research, although it’ll still be slow going (Ecology in 16 w/o a deficit).

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LK38-1425AD.zip

Our main homeland:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/carthage1425.JPG

What a beautiful continent that would be if there weren't four green stains.

If we were to capture Korea, we would probably approach the Domination limit, right (at maximum, we would then have to take a few Viking or Indian cities)? Korea has no rubber. Do I dare surmise that they are protected by nothing but rifles? Can we please take one city, raze and replace with a settler, rush an airport, drop 30 tanks, and clear out Korea in one turn? Just an idea....

On the question of domination - we now control 1010 of the needed 1662 tiles (Yes - beta mapstat seems good).

Taking Persia and cleaning up are culture boundaries would get us close.

I suspect we need to take **two** other civs out to dominate the board.

If we are that close, wouldn't taking out two of Korea, India, and the Vikes (who don't yet have tanks) be easier than taking on Persia (who will soon start cranking out MechInf)? We should be able to wipe them all out before Persia completes its spaceship.

That's what I think too. Taking on Persia is wholly unnecessary. We could sign them to a MPP or alliance to be sure they won't turn on us and then take out the two islands and finish the game.

Mapstat? Boo, hiss! We don' need no steeking mapstat. :lol:

After reading through the team's posts, I opt for the Invade Korea Plan. I open the save, however, and find that we have no navy. None. Nada. Zero. Ain't got any. Couldn't even find an ironclad hiding under the bed. :lol:

Hrmm.

The "airport plan" isn't going to cut it. If we had airports in every core city, maybe, but we don't. An airport in Korea might help, but there is NO WAY that we can take over Korea within a dozen turns using just our seven or eight airports to airlift reinforcements. If this is going to be done, it will be done with transports.

After considering several options, I decide to go with Sverdlovsk (a city I got from Russia in the peace deal after bullying Cathy). That will be the port on our side. Four tiles across to Pusan, but I NEVER EVER (ever) EVER land a modern age invasion in an enemy city. Got to be our settler, forming a new town that will serve as our military base down there. I choose a site halfway between Ulsan and Pusan. Bless whoever left me an empty army. That will be filled with infantry and anchor the landing.

OK, now we actually need ships. Four turns minimum to get enough to land in force, rushing one every turn. Well, actually, rush a harbor on the first turn, but I can rush another transport from a nearby town, plus upgrade our one galleon. That will be five ships. That's 20 units per turn, average. Yeah, OK. Four turns just to string together a cutout navy, blowing large chunks of our budget, then I'm going to have to conquer all of Korea in about six turns? Alrighty then. I'll see what I can do.


Inherited Turn: Plant Spy in Korea. Ooh. They have about a dozen destroyers? Two battleships. A few submarines? Subs? As in under the water? Hrrm. Don't know who said they only have rifles. I'm looking at a fat load of infantry here. OK then.

I rush a battleship out of Paegam, just to get SOME KIND of tin can out there with a gun on it. 700g cost. One ship. Heh, we cannot afford to build a navy this way! I set up our west coast cities to build ships, not going to be much. Persia's couple DOZEN b-ships will only snicker at us. But every great navy starts with the first ship, right? Right. :D

By the way, friendly reminder: need 2/3rds of world population, as well as territory. We might yet have to invade Persia AFTER taking over all three of the other AI's. At least they don't have reams of food and size 35 cities. Still, might be a good idea to pay a little attention to population in captured Mongolia. The more people we grow there, the less likely we'll have to invade the Persian mainland to knock out their best population centers. Population is not based on people, but size. One 30 city is worth a couple of 20's and dozens of 6's. Dozens. Most of our land is recently captured and sparsely populated. Some of Persia's is, too, so that helps, but don't eye up the territory and expect us to be done the moment we're over the line.

On that note, I rush a few granaries, a couple of courthouses, a couple of temples, and set the towns on higher food.

We've got plenty of units. Lots of slaves, enough native workers to make pollution duty easier, big ole SODs of artillery, and quite a SoD of tanks, too. We're light on infantry, which is not good for making beachheads, but I'll pull enough from our protected core to get it done, and prioritize training more on my round.

We're going for Korea, then India, then the Vikings. If our pop is high enough, that may do it. Irrigating our core and driving some of our cities up to 25 or so might be enough, too, as Persia's core only has a certain number of strong cities. I'll also see what I can do about holding on most of Korea's population.


Well, here goes.


- Sirian

I open the save, however, and find that we have no navy.

:confused:
I had one battleship started - it got vetoed?

Note to self: Write detail instructions, I though the first ship was enough of a hint to build a navy.

IT 1425AD: Rushed harbor at Sverdlovsk, also the town to its west. Palace placeholder for Pentagon started in Utica.

1430AD: First two battleships roll off the lines, the one I rushed and one in the SW corner. That city MM'ed to higher shields (40, up from 34) and switched from b-ships @6 to destroyers @3. Numes disbanded in the two south-coast harbor towns, then transports rushed. Our galleon moves toward Sverdlovsk. I join the two battleships together, even though this delays the arrival of one of them.

1435AD: Galleon arrives at Sverdlovsk, is upgraded. Disband an artillery in Sverdlovsk, rush another transport. Move the transport from western town toward Sverdlovsk, due in two. Our b-ships are far behind. They will miss the opening action, while our transports ship out UNESCORTED. I cancel RoP with Korea.

Between: Korea makes a deal with Persia for Radio, then immediately declares war on X-man to cheat him out of his payments! :eek: Apparently, when we did that to poor Xerxes, it was so effective the Koreans had to try it too! :lol:

1440AD: OK, we have three vet transports in port at Sverdlovsk. A fourth, from the western town, will arrive this turn, but cannot participate in any landings made on this turn. I have a choice: go now, a turn early, with three transports, or wait one more turn and go with five. The Korean destroyers (three of em) in the area just moved AWAY from Sverdlovsk.

Dial up X-man, who pays us a small amount to "agree to punish the Koreans". We sign an alliance. War has been declared. OK, folks, here we go.

D-DAY! H-Hour. T-Turn. Turn 0 of the war.

Three transports of troops land on the north shore of the Korean desert. Our army has three vet infantry inside it. There are five other infantry units, one settler, six artillery, the rest elite tanks, all elites. I left the tank army and our newly-produced third (empty) army back at the capital.

After travelling three tiles south to make the dropoff, our transports return two tiles to the north. Yep, they are sitting ducks at sea. Our b-ships aren't due to arrive in the area for another decade or so. :crazyeye:


1445AD: Turn 1 of the war. Korean bombers peel 5hps off our army. Korean destroyers swarm after our transports but are ALL JUST BARELY OUT OF RANGE!

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. We lost no ships! :jump:

Our transports use one move to sail into port, they have four left. Load em up, ship em out. Four moves brings them safely into port at our new beachhead, called Invasion Control Center. The original three are joined by the fourth from the west, making it seven full transport loads of units now on Korean shores. These include two Persian workers for making radar towers, a second and third settler, a pack more of artillery, a couple infantry, our tank army, the rest tanks and more tanks. "Tank you very much, ladies and germs." I rush another transport at Sverdlovsk to give us a fifth hauler, one to use on odd turns while the other four are away. Korea is officially toast, they just don't realize it yet.

Our tanks roll. Pusan captured. Ulsan captured. I fortify infantry to cover our tanks in the field, other infantry in the new cities. All units not needed for defense of other tiles pile into Ulsan for our one free turn of no-risk occupation. That's the plan: massive garrisons on turn one, light thereafter, and if a city flips, always be in position to recapture immediately. Only one flip can occur per round, so when the odds suck, just EXPECT flips, leave light garrisons everywhere, and recapture as needed.

One radar tower goes up. Rush barracks at Invasion Central.

Here's the state of affairs after Turn 1:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1445ad.jpg

Oops, I see I hadn't rushed the fifth transport yet. I did do it before hitting next turn, though.


1450AD: Korean bombers spend all their time trying to disconnect their own oil from my control. They do kill the rail, but fail to take out the roads, and this distraction means no more damage to our army. Korean cavs attack at Ulsan. We fend them off, one infantry promoted to elite!

Pentagon completed in Utica. Utica and Hippo MM'd to produce an infantry per turn, each.

Our tanks roll. Cheju, size 15, captured. A couple of tanks perish, one or two promote, and we pop a leader!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1450ad.jpg

I use the leader to rush the airport at Invasion Central. (Those things are pricey for nonmilitaristic civs!)

Oh look, 14 resisters! :lol: Our SoD moves in to quell. Definitely moving OUT of Ulsan, which is now a prime flip risk. We did pacify over half the resistance there, though, so that was good. Also, those folks are going on a diet: the zero calorie diet.

Our artillery, combining from both sides of the channel, pastes the tar out of Korean ships. Our battleships arrive! We go to sink their wounded battleship only to find it guarded by the Sub From Hell. This sub SINKS our first battleship! The second then sinks the enemy battleship. (I rushed a 700g ship to watch it LOSE TO A SUBMARINE, on the attack even. I don't know whether to weep or guffaw).

Lonely Transport arrives this turn, bringing the empty army and a pack of artillery. The Four Horseships sail home for their next loads.


1455AD: Korean bombers attack our new spices at Cheju, and they are unable to disconnect them completely. Korean Air Force needs to get some glasses for its myopic pilots.

Korean cavs attack at Cheju. They fail. We pacify seven resisters!

Yay! The Four Horseships are back, bringing four more loads of troops, also known as Death, Pestilence, War, and Famine. We now have TWELVE full transports of troops on Korean shores, and the airport is operational, which will allow me to start airlifting in a few more, beyond what the ships carry. (Speaking of famine, Cheju citizens start on the zero calorie diet). I move a settler, with guards, into the hills west of Cheju. Another settler moves with our ENTIRE artillery SoD and most of our tanks (who have to get OUT of Cheju now) into hills east of Cheju, in attack range of Wonsan.


To Be Continued...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1455ad.jpg

I was expecting Cheju or Ulsan to flip, and instead this little pissant village kicks us out! Arg. It had been so small, and such a modest risk, I had already spent cash to rush the library there, intending to let expanded borders from there give me access east to Pyongyang. Welp, that ain't happening now. And I am not throwing away any more cash on this hole in the wall. Going to have to come up with a contingency plan!


1460AD: Korean bombers buzz our resource tiles again. They all miss. Incredible. It occurs to me that I should have moved some fighters into place, but I was so intent on the ground forces I forgot. Then, this round I forget AGAIN and just say screw it, they aren't hitting anything anyway. :lol:

Recapture Pusan. The maddening part is that the flip wiped out my radar tower. (Good thing we have enough workers on hand! I send a worker over in the Lonely Transport -- along with a pack of infantry -- and rebuild the tower).

Our settler west of Cheju settles. This gives us access to Inch'on, which has conveniently reduced itself to size 12 this turn. I load up our empty army with elite tanks and they roll. Inch'on captured!

Our artillery SoD blasts away at Wonsan. I hoped to reduce the pop below 13, get rid of that massive defense bonus, but no dice. On the up side, a lot of hits on the defenders. Our tanks roll. Another one bites the dust. Wonsan razed. Razed. Only Korean city I intend to raze. I want secure cities in the middle of the continent, not some massive Destined To Flip (TM) metropolis.

I saw that LK used the capture-settle-abandon move a few times on his turn. That qualifies as "Throwaway Cities" exploit under RB rules, so I won't use that move myself. Wonsan is razed before I move the settlers forward. The one I had moved into range of Wonsan moves again now, without settling, turning south toward Namp'o. Our last settler moves east into the plains. Both are escorted by infantry and tanks, of course.

Turns out I needed one more settler. Well, I knew that. I thought I had one more, but I didn't? Hrrm. My bad. :smoke: A whole extra turn will be required to complete the conquest, thanks to not having one more settler ready to go. To overcompensate, I rush eight new settlers out of our corrupt towns. Ha! Take that!

Most of the Korean bombers had been based at Wonsan, so there's no more need for fighters now. Not the best way to clean up such a problem, letting them have their way with us until I could raze their base, but I got the important stuff right. Mostly.


1465AD: No sign of Korean bombers. Not much gas left in their tank, either. They sent one cav and two guerillas. (Guerillas? Ouch).

The Four Horseships arrive, bringing eight settlers, a massive sod of vet tanks, a few more artillery, and assorted other units, including four cavalry I see I'm going to need to chase down a Korean radar tower on the east coast. (Got to kill off those towers before we go attacking metropolises). Lone Transport wanders home. I *have* been maxing use of the airport, as well, adding another transport load per turn, so we now have well over a hundred units in Korea.

Settle north of Namp'o, bring up the artillery SoD and bombard the dickens out of them. City loses about four or five pop, plus some buildings, plus a goodly number of hps off defenders. Our tanks roll. You know the story. Ooh, 16 resisters.

I roll eight tanks from Namp'o south into attack range of Hyangsan, a fishing village. Our east settler moves east, into position. If I had not screwed up the logistics, we'd have another settler in the SE moving into position near Pyongsong, but better late than never. I send one that direction now.

Click next turn. Ooh.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1465ad.jpg


1470AD: Dammit. The worst about that is that they wiped out another radar tower! I don't have that many workers in Korea, now running out of the ones gained from razing Wonsan. Oh well, it will be enough to get the job done, and next player can worry about shipping in more workers to clean up all these massive toxic polluted sites the Koreans have left for us.

This should have been the turn I completed the conquest, in six turns as originally predicted. Instead I have to wait for that late settler, so it will take all the way to the end of the round.

I settle east of former Wonsan. I plant two radar towers at the corners, one each in range of Seoul and Pyongyang. Koreans also have towers, one each at these cities. I send in the cavalry! (No, really. The cavalry). "Reagan's Heroes" bravely assault the enemy position on the far side of Pyongyang, taking them down to 1hp before perishing. Our other elite cavs follow up and, BAM, pop another leader!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1470ad-leader.jpg

It takes our entire artillery SoD, down to the last gun on the continent scraped up from radar tower duty, to reduce Seoul to size 12, but I did it.

Our tanks roll. One little, two little, three little Indians.

Should have been four. Korea has one city left, Pyongsong. Our settler moves into range.

Now get this. After all that work to reduce Seoul to size 12, we lose NO UNITS taking out all the full strength enemy troops at metropolis Pyongyang, then turn around and lose five tanks attacking the battered, beaten down troops with less defense bonus at Seoul. Go figure.

Lonely Transport sails home with our leader on board.

Oh, by the way, after that submarine disaster, I rushed a sub out of the city west of Sverdlovsk. Not because I like subs, but I like being able to see enemy subs. You know? Not seeing one cost me 700g worth of prime battleship. Our west coast cities back home have been building ships all round, and we now have a semblence of a navy, most of it near Korea. Persia still laughs at our fleet, but nobody else is chuckling.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1470ad.jpg

Well, can't say this was unexpected. Note that I had settled New Hippo just in case little Hyangsan had flipped. I'd have had to bring over all our cavs from home to cross hills or forest and get in there to attack, but they'd only have gotten rifles for free so it would have been doable.

Instead, this time the logical thing happens: their big city with a wonder in it flipped back on the first eligible turn. Their capital and Pyongyang would be major flip risks, too, but this is the grace period, the one turn after capture they can't flip, and they are not going to get a second turn.


1475AD: No Korean counterattack. Imagine that. :D

Our settler, finally in position near Pyongsong, settles. I bring up our artillery sod, fire a couple shots, then realize I don't need to be doing that, since the city is already below size 13. Our tanks roll. Why Pyongsong before Namp'o? Because the last city of a civ captured will not generate resistors. I figure its better to have no resisters in the larger, Magellan city, so I save its recapture for last.

Finally, as my round comes to a close, I have met the task. Took me three turns to prepare, six to execute, plus one turn for botching logistics. This was a fun round for me. Blitzkrieg!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1475ad.jpg

With the war now ended, just a few loose ends to wrap up...

Oh, did I mention that India turned out to have MPP with Korea? I missed it complete :smoke: and was surprised when they declared against us. Not that it matters. They sent one galleon and clad over into the channel, got shellacked from shore, and limped home. They didn't make it. Persian subs sank them.

We only lost the one battleship, at sea. I moved our transports to meet up with our escorts, which have FINALLY arrived. Next player will be in position to move quickly against India.


We DO have a problem here, though. The UN. Nobody likes us. They just happen to dislike X-man even more. We MUST NOT allow ourselves to end up at war with Scandinavia while he's at peace with Persia. We could lose the game. So what I've done is sign both Persia and Scandinavia to alliances vs India. Once India is gone, we need to get Persia to sign alliance with us against the Vikings, and renew if they cancel, so as to be sure the Vikes will abstain from any voting.

We should make it before Persia can launch. They still lack ecology, but no telling how far down the Space Flight line they may have gone. I don't think it's as much a given that we'll win as some of the others seem to think, though I do still like our chances if we can press on quickly enough. Remember, we also need 2/3rds of the world's population!


Finally, having left Computers alone all round so I could train a bunch more foot infantry, and to be sure not to end up in war with Xerxes while fighting Korea, now I go ahead on my last turn and try to steal tech. Success! I take computers, then rush SETI in Utica (our highest commerce site, thanks to the gems and the river). This will be our first self-built wonder? Good grief. :)

I then upgrade a big wad of our infantry to mechs. This takes our treasury down to the principle, but income is still over 700gpt, and I needed to rush a LOT of various things to be in position to move on Korea in a hurry, starting completely from scratch on the naval front. Good thing their land was so close to ours. We wouldn't have made it if our ships couldn't go port to port on the same turn.

I left half my final turn unplayed. A lot of units have movement left. I stopped after I beat Korea and tidied up a few loose ends. Gothmog can figure out what he wants to do about India, then move the pieces around as he sees fit.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1475ad-korea.jpg




What follows is a schematic showing turn-by-turn events in the Korean War.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-korean-conquest.jpg

White shows moves from 1440AD: Our transports sail out, drop off three loads on white dot, sail back, left vulnerable at sea.

Red shows 1445AD: Founded Control Center, capture nearby cities.

Dark Blue shows 1450AD: Capture Cheju.

Orange shows the movements in 1455AD: Settler goes west, SoD goes east, including newly arrived troops from the third shipment (shown arriving at base) and from the airport.

Between turns, Pusan flipped.

Yellow shows 1460AD: recapturing Pusan, razing Wonsan at the yellow square, settling in the west and the tiles this controlled, giving me access to Inch'on, then the two settlers moving east and SE.

Green shows 1465AD: Settling in range of Namp'o and the tiles this controlled. Capture Namp'o, then send tanks south to the fishing village. East settler keeps moving east through enemy culture zone. Late settler moves SW toward Pyongsang.

Between turns, Inch'on flipped.

Light Blue shows 1470AD: recapture Inch'on. Capture Hyangsan in the south and settle New Hippo nearby. Settle in the east, plant my two towers at the light blue squares near my town, take out their towers at the other two squared, then capture Pyongyang and Seoul. Move late settler into position near Pyongsong in the SW.

Between turns, Namp'o flipped.

Pink shows the final turn, 1475AD: settle to gain access, note the odd shape of the tiles controlled, because I'm so close to Pyongsong. Enough to let my tanks through along the pink line, though. Capture that city, then recapture Namp'o to end the Korean civilization.


LK38 - 1475AD - Zip File (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-1475ad.zip)

That was probably my last round. If so, I enjoyed playing with you all. Good luck with the end game.


- Sirian

'Got it', hopefully will find some time to play tonight - but no promises. May have to be monday night, i'll try to post an update.

Good job on Korea, now that I am used to culture flips they don't impact my play too much. Just assume you will have some flips and every thing works out. The only time it's really a problem is when you fight a limited war with a more cultured enemy. Trying to hold their cities after peace, and actually that makes some sense (who'd've thunk it?).

So it looks like I go for India, then get a MA vs the vikes with Persia.

If we do need to reduce Persian population real quick, would nukes fit that bill? It's nothing I've tried before, but it would make for an interesting ending.

Great turn, Sirian! :goodjob:

"'I open the save, however, and find that we have no navy.'

I had one battleship started - it got vetoed?

Note to self: Write detail instructions, I though the first ship was enough of a hint to build a navy."

Note to Lee's self: The battleship did not get vetoed. Except for a few cities in our interior that were building walls :confused: I did not veto any of your build orders. The battleship was being built in the city whose production was sabatoged (as noted in my report) and, thus, was delayed by a few turns. The naval build orders I inherited consisted of one battleship on the far side of the Korean front and two or three transports in corrupted cities on the Persian front. From that I could not determine whether Persia or Korea was your intended next target.

I'm new to SGs but am learning more from being second-guessed in this game than I could have in any other. One of the primary things I am learning is that passive "hints" about your desires for future play are far less likely to be effective than explicitly stating them in your turn report and/or just doing them.

Given that we had (1) two different options for our next victim (Persia and Korea), (2) a limited budget for rushing/tech steals, and (3) geographically separated potential war fronts, I saved our money and did not rush a navy prior to our team deciding which direction it preferred. If this was :smoke: then I 100% apologize. I thought it would be weedier to rush a navy on the opposite shore from our eventual/at the time unknown attack plan than to delay the rush until our plans were settled.

Well for those of use who do like stinking mapstat

After Sirian successfull round:
We have 1168 of 1662 tiles needed for domination.
We have 527 of 809 needed for population, but that number quickly shifts as you get new cities.

=============================

By Sirian
We should make it before Persia can launch. They still lack ecology, but no telling how far down the Space Flight line they may have gone. I don't think it's as much a given that we'll win as some of the others seem to think, though I do still like our chances if we can press on quickly enough. Remember, we also need 2/3rds of the world's population!

I couldn't agree more - Persia has been way to far ahead with tech, and is still doing good. Our key is to get all those open tiles under our control ASAP. We need to rush every possible temple, even if we have to use the draft and disband stunt to get the shields. Just getting all of the Indian cities with 9 square radius won't win this one.

Go Gothmog - we need another kick some major league butt round.

Because I am not a domination/conquest type of player, I've never used mapstat. Where can I get it? How does it work? Are there any bugs or other reasons one might not want to use it? Is there a limit to how many questions may be asked in one post? :D

Thanks in advance for adding to my small, but growing, amount of combat knowledge/experience.

This thread is located at:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=18243

Well done Sirian. Looks like I may get to play the finishing turns. Gothmog, if you please, leave me several transports near Persia (former Germany border) in case I have to go in there and get to Persepolis before they launch. That would be a horrible last case scenario, but may have to be done.

By the way, peeking around our military advisor screen, I see that we still have one warrior. Do you think he looks around, at the other members of the military who have big guns or drive in tanks, and gets jealous? He is still using an axe, afterall.

@Lee - Thanks for the info! Do you have the PTW test version of mapstat? The version that is publicly available on the linked thread doesn't appear to work with PTW.

From the readme: NOTE: If you fail a spy mission, you will automatically fail any spy mission against that same civilization for next 2-4 turns.

I stand corrected.

I thought it would be weedier to rush a navy on the opposite shore from our eventual/at the time unknown attack plan than to delay the rush until our plans were settled.

It would have been.

We had over 70 tanks when my turn started. Did we need every last one of them? Considering that most of our strong cities are inland, there were only a few sites that could build ships. If they had started earlier (we had combustion since my last round) we could have had a few less tanks, and had a few ships already built. That would have taken more foresight, looking ahead past the Mongols, and it's understandable that that didn't happen, especially in an SG. Still, it was a bit of a shock to have the team talking about invading Korea, then open the game and we don't have a single attack ship. :)

I found a way out of needing the ships, but even there it cost a couple thousand in rushbuys, and I just plain got lucky not to have those first three unescorted transports sent to the bottom of the channel. Who would have predicted that the same turn I would be set to begin the invasion, Korea would decide to attack PERSIA and move its mass of patrol ships out of the channel toward X-man's waiting armadas. They turned around to come back to attack our transports, but it was too late. Having seven loads on Korean shores before I fired the first shot was a better outcome than I could have dreamed of when I laid out my plan.


Oh, and Lee? "527"? Haha, that silly bean counter doesn't know what it's talking about. :lol: Here's the number that counts:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38-mapstat.jpg

I can only presume that 527 is the number of faces we have combined in our cities? Mapstat is good at simple addition, but that's not enough to give an accurate measure. The faces of size 3 and 4 cities are contributing next to nothing to our population total. Those do not "weigh" as much. The first face in any city is worth 1. The second is worth 2. The 20th is worth 20. That ONE UNIT of the twentieth in the 20 city is worth 20 size 1 cities. Adding up 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 21 points for a size 6 city. The 22nd point alone in a size 22 city is worth an entire size 6 city. (There's a little bit of overlap from partial credit for food in the box, which counts as "fractions", but that only further complicates matters by a small amount).

I did manage to preserve all but one of Korea's large cities, so that helps, but just getting rid of India's and Vikings' cities may not be enough. If 527 is the total number of faces, and 2133 is the total number of points, then our "average" point value per face is only 4?!? :eek: That's worse than I thought! :lol: We may have to invade Persia after all unless we get that number up a bit.

I wouldn't put too much faith in that bean counter. Knowing that coastal tiles count toward domination, but not sea tiles, will let you eye how much territory you need. Maybe you can't predict it out to the last tile, but you only need to do that to stop short of the limit to milk the score for the GOTM or similar purposes. And to that end, they rely only on the tile counter. They don't need mapstat's pop counter at all, so they may never have noticed that it's broken. :crazyeye:

Have a look at my Epic Seventeen report on my site and see how far I had to go to get over the hump against opponents who did have size 30 and 35 cities. :whipped:


- Sirian

I played a long preturn and a couple of other turns late last night. I'll finish it up tonight and post either tonight or in the morning.

update: X-man demanded Dyes on my 1st IT, I gave them up. I hate to help Persian WW, but felt I had no choice given that Tanks vs. MI is not my favorite treat. Moved lots of Arti with a settler and infantry army to India - founded a city in a good spot. Transports can move from Korea - drop off troops ready to move the same round - and make it back to Korea in 1 turn. Did some shelling and found that India is quite weak. They will fall quicklly - then it's on to Scandinavian lands.

Oh more questions from Gothmog: How does GNP help you with the 2/3 population if you can't tell what the enemy GNP is? also is there any way to judge an enemy's absolute cultural value?

@Sirian - Well so far Map Stat has predicted victory perfectly for me. I usually hit population above the limit way before I hit the domination list.

@Gothmog - Almost none of the utilities are available for PTW. Apollo will tell you the turn you will win a culture victory, but I don't think that one is available for PTW.

@ALL (with Gothmog emphasis) - Reread Sirian's UN vote comments. If we go to war with Scandinavia, we MUST get Persia fighting them or we will LOSE - period.

We can win the game without Persia mainland, but we really need to start rushing temples in all cities ASAP. We have sufficient tech to win - out problem is tile control. We may even want to look for a corner spot that will be worth settling to can a few more squares ASAP. We can still lose this on, so let us stop any work on technology research / stealing and rush culture like crazy.

Gothmog: you're right. I circled the wrong number. I meant to highlight population. I'm sorry for the confusion. I'll leave that up there for the humor value. :) Sometimes I don't know what I'm talking about either! :lol:

At least that means our average point value per face is not as low as I thought it was for a moment there! If we do seem to clearly have enough land and the win hasn't triggered, try irrigating over mines at our largest cities and melding some of the slaves of dead civs in to pump up populations at size 20+ cities, fastest way to boost pop. Lee's right about filling in any empty corners. I had made a bunch of settlers at one time, because I knew there'd be use for them, and then some.


Lee: I've definitely heard reports of mapstat saying there was enough territory and enough population and a victory still not triggering. It's probably close enough in most cases, though. You clearly like relying on mapstat, so I'll shut up about it now.

I don't know that we'd definitely lose in the situation I warned about. The Vikes might abstain anyway. I just thought it would be prudent to reduce our risks if we can. I also looked at Persian culture: they're on track to win by culture, given the time, but we looked to be safe. They only seemed to have about 70k. That won't be enough for them.


- Sirian

Oh, I should be working but I am still thinking about my turns tonight...

First, I just realized that because we have a MA with Persia and Scandinavia vs. the Indians. We will take a rep hit when they are wiped out. I sent a ship down to the small Indian Island south of our homeland, and there were some Viking troops already landed there. If they lose that island they will be wiped out (once I take their larger homeland near Scandinavia). Will this make getting another MA with Persia a problem? Also, the only ways I can think of to get the Vikes to declare on us is to demand they leave our new Indian territory or do a tech steal (I think they have marines) - but what if they just wont declare? Can we wait 20 turns? (I think not) Will our rep hurt even more if I declare on the Vikes? My thinking is that I declare on the Vikes as a last resort and try to get persia in on it anyway. It doesn't seem likely that the Vikes would vote for Persia, but I don't want to base win/loss on "not likely".

Sirian: Ah, population... yes that makes a lot more sense! :rotfl: - but still we don't know the population of the other civ's right?

Can I assume that you get an absolute culture value for the Persians by adding up the culture for each of our cities and scaling it to the histogram culture value?

Actually, I have no idea if we take a rep hit with the alliance. I think the alliance simply ends as this is nobody left to beat up.

To get the vikes to declare:
1) We don't even have a spy there, do we?
If not, let's hope he gets caught.
2) Sabatoge production in the small cities should still get a war declaration - we don't need that expensive tech steal. I started more then one war with failure to ruin production.

* We already have a stained reputation. In Civ3, there are a couple of degrees of stain, but they are largely academic. Just has to do with whether or not you can ever get back into good graces. There really aren't many degrees of actual penalty.

* We don't need a reputation. (What are we trading for?) We need 2/3rds of pop and land.

* We won't take a rep hit when India is wiped out, at least not from a military alliance. Only embargoes against the dying civ or trading of resources with them causes a hit when a civ is wiped out.

* Getting the Vikes to declare vs us is only useful to slow the onset of weariness. If you capture instead of razing, that slows it more, though. I flat out DECLARED on Korea, without provocation, in forming an alliance with Persia against them. Weariness did not show up until the end of my round, then Korea was gone and so was the weariness.

* If you can get the Vikes to declare by demanding they vacate, or planting a spy, fine. If not, don't hesitate. Declare, then attack. Once you are at war, Persia WILL sign an alliance, but you'll have to pay for it with some gpt.


Good luck.

- Sirian

There's no direct way to get a total of AI population, just as there is no direct way to get a total of their culture or how many tiles you have or how many you need. There is enough information that you could tediously add it all up if you wanted, but then that's what the bean counters were created for. Mapstat will add up all the eligible tiles, which you could do if you sat and manually counted them. Mapstat can see under the fog, though, and who's actually going to sit and count tiles by hand? Effectively, it functions as a trainer, a hack, calculating some information that is available to the player and some that is not, to "count beans" and provide information the game does not directly offer. It counts population, too, just uses the wrong measuring stick.

Enemy culture is not specifically knowable. If you wait until the whole world map is revealed before you open Mapstat, then you aren't directly cheating, per se. If you do it with fog left, though, mapstat sees under the fog, so then it's cheating (IMO). Apollo crosses the line on that one, where Mapstat does not. It checks the variables for enemy culture, among other things, which you as player could only find out about by spending a fat wad of cash to investigate every city on the map.

You can eyeball all these things with a rough estimate. Just look at the map, you can eyeball territory. The key is knowing that all coastal tiles are included in the domination count. Look at F8, you can eyeball culture. Population total is trickier. You have to understand how pop is weighted to large cities, that the small ones barely count. If the AI's are in modern age, with full rails and fertile lands, cities size 25+ and lots of them (especially 30+) then you've got a larger task on your hands. Pre-hospitals, this isn't a factor. It only matters for modern era domination.

This game, Persia's home continent is not very fertile. If we pay any attention at all to preserving captured cities and raising pop in Mongolia, we'll win the moment we have enough tiles.


- Sirian

Well I was just thinking about getting a final MA with Persia. I have heard over in the S&T forum that there is a reputation hit (or at least an attitude hit) involved with having a MA vs. a civ that is wiped out. Haven't experienced it myself though. If there were one, it would likely be in the form of other civ's not wanting to have an MA with you.

My plan is to capture - the war will be short and we will have a decisive advantage. I'll just plan for a couple flips. Actually, the war vs. Vikes will mostly be on the next player's turn.

Edit: I am a big eyeballer
:rotfl:

actually I like to play mostly by feel. I don't anticipate any problems finishing this one.

Preturn: India is at war with everyone? OK, I see that we are to blame for that :evil: . I check production, change a guerilla and a couple tanks to MI. Take Hyangsan off a starvation diet. Rush a temple in Nampo by disbanding a couple of Arti. I decide on an initial force of MI+Inf Army+lots of Arti and do some movements. I am initially surprized that all our MI have already moved, then I remember that Sirian stole Computers during this turn so they were all upgraded during this turn. Well, I position everything so that I can load some MI next turn and offload a settler+tanks+Inf Army as well. OK Gandi your time has come. Click...

The People celebrate the coming of Mc Gothmog II, son of the famous General Mc Gothmog, with a Palace expansion. We are the happiest people in the world, and why not? Persia demands Dyes from us and gets them, my blood boils but I take comfort in the knowlege of our manifest destiny. India doesn't even counter attack my initial Settler+ force, I think Persia and Scandinavia are taking it to them in the east. I found New Sabratha in a nice spot, within Arti range of Lahore, lack of 21 square pressure, 3 squares from Seoul, and pound Lahore with Arti. Whoa, they are lacking strong defense! IT: Persia takes Bangalore. Then I redline all Lahore troops and come in with tanks - I take Lahore with no losses, 14 resistors. Rush racks in New Sabratha. Next up Madras, I move a settler into position with a couple MI. I watch as the vikes lose 7 troops and a cav army trying to take out a Radar Tower near Madras. The Persians build the SS-Docking Bay. I found New Rusciade and Pound Madras, then move in with tank armies. 1 loss, 2 retreats and Madras is ours. This puts us in range of Chittagong, which I auto-raze on the same turn. I found New Oea near the Dyes east of Madras and rush a harbor in New Sabratha. The Dyes come online next turn. IT: the Vikes raze some unnamed Indian city. People love the war! No WW, and another Palace expansion. I decide to take out Delhi without Arti backup due to its large cultural borders and the lack of any real Indian resistance (I do take out two Radar Towers first). Lose 5 tanks, retreat 7 but I kill 3 Inf+7 guerilla+3 cav and take Delhi w/Bachs. I mop up assorted stragglers, and take some Arti and Workers in the countryside. The rest of the indian cities are to the east so I take a RoP with the Vikes to speed things up. Using Vike Railnet I bomb Calcutta down to size 12 and go in. I take it with only one tank lost. IT: I watch Persian and Vike navies pound Japur. Then I go in with my forces and take it, a bad RNG turn means I lose 3 tanks in the process. I decide this is a good place to stop (8 turns) so I clean some things up and save at the beginning of the turn 1515 AD. The Persians did build the SS-Cockpit in the last IT but still dont' have Ecology and so have a way to go for Synthetic Fibers.

We not at war with the Vikes yet. India is now reduced to their little Island South of Carthage, which has two redlined Vike troops on the only available landing spot - so there is still minor flip risk. I already did resistor supression in all former indian holdings. There is still one transport in Seoul for transporting Airlifted troops. The rest are moving North. There are already two transports in a city up North as well (left from Sirians turns). I think we may be at level 1 WW now, but am not positive.

I took good care of our former Mongol and Korean lands and our population/area have felt the benefits. I don't think we will have to go after Persia, but I would wrap up the Vikes with all expidiency just in case.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/FamilySize.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/Pop.jpg

up from 35 million, during my turns!


Here is a Screen Shot of the WarZone.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SShot.jpg

and the Save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/lk38_1515ad.zip

Enjoy.

We should have enough tanks to get the job done. Might be worth it to train a boatload of marines and go take that island.

Looks like you did a good job. Speaker's up? I wonder if he can finish us off? If not, Lee will probably have the last round.


- Sirian

I thought of marines on my first turn but we don't have the tech. I used all available cash on temple rushing so didn't try a tech steal. Now that most rushing is done maybe Speaker could try to plant a spy and steal Amphibious War from the Vike's to try to insite war. Anyway with all our Tanks on that Island a flip back to India wouldn't be too hard to handle - 1 guerilla :lol: . I haven't seen any Vike MI yet.

Ah yes. I forgot that I passed up the radio-for-amphibious deal I had the chance to get from Korea, only to have them buy off Persia then declare vs X-man to cheat him out of his money. (Only seen the AI pull that move in the modern era, btw).

Ah well. Forget I mentioned it. Not worth the money to steal, nor worth giving either of these turkeys the dough in a trade. Just be ready to recapture after any flips.


- Sirian

Got it. Will probabably start playing tonight and finish tomorrow.

Go speaker!

Taking out the Viking should be enough to win - provided that we get enough temples out of our captured cities.