Level: Deity
Map: Pangea, Normal, 70% Water, others random.
Civilization: Russia
Rivals (EDITED): the Egyptians, Romans, Japanese, French, Indians, Carthaginians, and Spanish (note: none are scientific or expansionist!)
Patch: PTW 1.14f (note: not the latest!)
Victory Conditions: All
Variant rules: We're the Russian Researchers. We aim to outresearch all other civilizations, considering our science to be superior to others. We may not trade for technology from other civilizations unless,

(1) we sell them some of our technology in the exchange, or
(2) we sell them contacts with other civilizations in the exchange, or
(3) we do so in return for peace concessions.

Additionally, we may not do a trade where we buy multiple technologies from them, when we sell only one technology to them, and they don't consider our technology to be as valuable as some of their technologies.

e.g. if we have the Printing Press, and they have Steam Power and Electricity, we may trade them PP + gold for SP, or we may trade them PP + gold for Electricity, but we can't trade them PP + lots of gold for Electricity and Steam Power.

The idea is that we don't buy technology with cash. We research our own technology, and trade it for other technology, perhaps throwing some cash in if our technology is not as valuable, but never making cash the main part of the exchange.

Also, we may not build the Great Library, and if we capture it before we have discovered Education, we must raze the city. We despise such 'leeching', all good civilizations must research technologies themselves, not simply get them off others!

---

Being expansionistic will hopefully give us an early bonus in science and in contacts. Being scientific will put us ahead for the long haul.

None of our rivals are scientific, so this will give us an advantage in research. One of the main aims of the game is to see how possible it is to keep up with and even overtake Deity opponents in research. In the 'good old days', it would have been suicidal, now it might just be feasible.

There are only two spaces left, since some players have already expressed interest. Players must have had at least one Deity win either solo or in a succession game.

The game will go 20 for the first turn, and 10 thereafter. (There is plenty to do early on with an expansionist civilization).

The game may not start immediately; probably in a few days.

Roster:

Sirp
Arizona_Steve
T-Hawk
LKendter
Speaker

Sounds like fun Sirp. If I wasn't going away for 2 weeks soon, I'd definitely have liked to join... Oh well, I'll just have to read about it.

JMB

With LK41 about to finish successfully, I'll put my name down for this one...

ok Arizona_Steve, you're in. That leaves us just one more empty slot :)

-Sirp.

Well I may regret it since I see HIGH loss probability, but I'll take slot #5. We are really going to have to get some libaries ASAP.

I have no intention to upgrade past 1.14 until some of the internation versions come out.

Checking in; I'm here.

I thought this was going to be RBE7? :yeah:

Anyways, this game will require quite a bit of team coordination. On every turn report, the player should mention what we plan to research next, and let the group weigh in with opinions. I can easily envision someone researching Education while not realizing the previous player built 20 horsemen for upgrade to knights. :)

And let's try to make maximum use of our three free technologies. The Monotheism-for-Republic slingshot we used (almost accidentally) in LK41 would be very nice to pull off, not to mention a standard Nationalism Slingshot.

LKendter: Welcome.

I made an executive decision to edit the game settings so we're the only scientific OR expansionist civilization in the game. This way we have the two traits that give us the most knowledge both early on and later.


I thought this was going to be RBE7?


So it was; I forgot about that when creating the game.

Good ideas on team co-ordination T-Hawk. I'm not sure about Republic-for-Monotheism though. Aren't we going to want to get Republic ASAP so we can change into it?

Our starting location:

http://www.kalikokottage.com/civ3/images/SP5-restart.jpeg

EDIT: Argh! I messaged up the game settings. Restarted (may have to reload page to get latest starting image).

I'm playin it now.

What I meant was this: if we find ourselves with a choice between researching Republic and the last required ancient age tech (call it Currency), go for Currency. Then, we'll have a package of Currency and Monotheism available to trade in one shot for Republic. Of course, don't do this if we're extremely behind, or if everyone who has Republic also has Currency and is into the middle ages.

Of course, it's unlikely that the opportunity for such a move will present itself; I'm just mentioning it in case it does. :)

4000BC (1): Looking very closely at the map, I think that's a cattle I can see peaking out from under the shroud, E-SE.

I send the scout to investigate. It is indeed cattle! There's also coast there. This gives me a decision to make: found the capital here, and get the cattle upon expansion, or move the settler two spaces, and get coastal access, fresh water, and the cattle after expansion? I choose to move the settler.

Worker moves onto position to irrigate toward the cattle.

Research set to Iron Working.

3950BC (2): Settler moves onto city site, scout explores north. For the first time ever this early, the worker does nothing! (has to wait until the city is founded before he can start irrigating)

3900BC (3): Moscow founded. Scout ordered. Research maxed, still shows 40 turns for IW, and I'm not too up on tech research costs, but I think that we can get it in significantly less than this.

3850BC (4): Goody hut sighted up north.

3800BC (5): Pop the hut, and we get a free city! In a half-ok location. On fresh water, although I'd have liked to put a city on the other side of the fresh water lake, getting some cattle in range. I'm halfway tempted to settler-abandon the city to do just that, but I restrain myself, instead building a warrior there.

3750BC (6): Blah.

3700BC (7): Our scout meets a French warrior. One that could march straight into undefended St Petersburg if that's what Joanie wants. She just has her starting technologies, as do we, and she'll trade Masonry for both of ours, but won't give Alphabet up.

I decide not to trade. Our technologies are reasonably valuable in this game, considering no-one else has them yet.

3650BC (8): We meet a Roman warrior, who beats us to a goody hut by one turn. Grrrr. He has apparently just made a trade with the French, since they both have Masonry, Warrior Code, and Alphabet now. These techs have just gotten substantially cheaper. We can do a Masonry <---> BW trade, but I hold off on it, since I want to try to make sure we do get IW first.

Moscow builds a scout and is set to build another.

3600BC (9): Our scout in the south meets up with an Indian warrior-settler pair who are REALLY near Moscow. India has Alphabet, Warrior Code, and Ceremonial Burial. Tech brokering opportunity here: I trade Pottery + 5 gold for CB with India. Then send Pottery + CB to France for WC and Masonry. Then Ghandi gives us Alphabet + 15 gold for Masonry. Things are looking smooth on the tech front!

3550BC (10): We run into the Japanese up near Rome. They have the Wheel, and we have BW, Masonry, Alpha, Pottery, and WC. Toku is talking expensive for The Wheel though, he gets Masonry, Alphabet, and WC for it. I figure if we don't do it now, someone else will trade him for it.

We have a horse right next to Moscow. No-one else can afford to give us anything good for The Wheel (15 gold from France was the best offer).

3500BC (11): An Indian warrior approaches Moscow in a way I must admit I don't like the look of.

We pop a deserted goody hut.

3450BC (12): Ok, I'm scared of this Indian warrior. Moscow scout production changed to warrior. He'll arrive next turn, which is the same turn the Indian warrior will arrive next to Moscow - if that's where he's headed. Ghandi's settler also looks set to claim some real fertile land near Moscow.

3400BC (13): India founds a city real close to us, but their warrior turns back. Moscow builds a warrior and is set to build a granary. St Petersburg is changed from warrior to scout.

We meet the Egyptians. They have Mysticism, but are talking expensive prices for it. The game is also up as far as BW goes, several other civs have it now. We trade Cleo Alphabet and The Wheel for Mysticism. Then we send Mysticism and Pottery to Japan for a worker + 10 gold. They had three workers to trade this turn, but that's all I could get off them. (Worker prices are pretty fair these days).

I also send The Wheel to France for 15 gold.

3350BC (14): blah.

3300BC (15): St Petersburg builds a scout. Sent north-east. That's where France is apparently.

3250BC (16): Luxury rate had to be turned up for St Petersburg's sake.

3200BC (17): We sent Mysticism to France in exchange for a worker.

3150BC (18): Moscow grows to size 3. France just got Horseback Riding. We don't have anything to trade them for it.

3100BC (19): A barbarian warrior approaches St Petersburg. We don't have any defenses, and so I decide to whip a spearman.

3050BC (20): St Peters builds a spearman. Set to build a worker.

France are the only ones who have a tech up on us - HBR. We're probably not going to get IW before anyone else. However, brokering has gone well. Next I suggest we go for Mathematics, since it's one of the least-aimed-for techs by the AI.

The Roster:

Sirp <--- Just Played
Arizona_Steve <--- UP NOW
T-Hawk <--- On Deck
LKendter
Speaker

-Sirp.

The Game (http://www.kalikokottage.com/civ3/SP5-3050BC.zip)

(the upload server wasn't working, so this is on my personal webspace, and may be removed later)

Our world:

http://www.kalikokottage.com/civ3/images/SP5-early.jpeg

Does anyone else think that we might have to smack India around a bit at some stage? :)

-Sirp.

Yikes. This is gonna be a tough one, given how little land we're going to be able to grab. And that's a LOT of neighbors! At least our biggest neighbor is always-pathetic Rome; this game might end up looking like the twin of LK41. :)

St. Petersburg is a great help, although it's in what can hardly be called the best location. :) I think the first settler should go 3 tiles N from Moscow; in that spot, it'll have access to the cattle right away, and it will have a second 2-food square via border fill-in with St. Pete, until a worker or two can clear some more squares (is that forest or jungle? I can't tell; that's why I use the Snoopy graphics mods :) ) Irrigating that cattle should be the original worker's next endeavour; Moscow doesn't need more than 4-5 improved tiles while building settlers.

I would've stuck to the minimum research on Iron Working; I'd be astounded if we were able to accumulate the beakers for the tech in less than 40 turns. Techs are way expensive on Deity, and generating a lot of beakers in the early going is very difficult with the unimproved tiles and lux taxes. I'd recommend still switching back to the minimum now.

And that's still a LOT of neighbors! There must be a TON of vacant land somewhere on the map...

Yeah I agree with perhaps switching to the minimum now. I must admit I really don't know what I'm doing with calculating how long a tech is going to take early on Deity.

Indeed it's going to be mighty tough. Large pangea could have made it more of a builder's game, but I wanted something a little more in between. I'm sure we can all hold our own in a fight if it gets tough :)

Now, I have to go read up on this LK41 game you keep talking about :)

-Sirp.

Calculating exact beaker costs from scratch is very difficult, with so many multiplicative factors being applied.

That said, the techs do have a constant price relationship with each other. Often you can look at the time to research another tech and pretty well gauge whether you can get yours within 40 turns. I downloaded the save to have a look. Writing costs slightly more than Iron Working (the ratio is 8 to 6), and we couldn't make Writing in less than 40 at 100% science, so IW won't happen at a more realistic 70%.

Actually, there's also a simpler way. :) I configured Moscow for max commerce (working three water tiles), set the slider to 100%, and now it shows 15 turns at 11 beakers/turn. Therefore, we need ~165 more beakers for the tech; we'd need to average 8-9 beakers per turn to get it sooner than minimum. We're making 5 beakers now, and that won't increase much since most of what Moscow generates will have to go to lux tax. Given all that, I think switching to the minimum should be our choice.

BTW, the savegame has luxuries at 30%; 20% suffices at the moment since St. Pete doesn't need any lux with its MP garrison.

Also, all those workers don't need to be building a road. One worker and one slave can complete a road in two turns; the second slave doesn't help anything. It doesn't matter in this case since the second slave couldn't do anything useful from this point (it can't reach the next project, the horses tile, any sooner if it moves this turn), but just something to keep in mind.

Oh, and the tiles around that cattle are indeed forests, so get a city going there and some workers clearing the forests to build it a granary. (This won't happen within Steve's 10 turns but will on mine.)

- T-hawk the Micromanaging Slavedriver :whipped:

OK, I got it - will play tonight.

I didn't realize you selected Pangea. This is going to make it even tougher to test the research theory. I have found the very early contact greatly accelerates the tech pace. In addition, the odds of first contact slingshot are much less. Take a look at LK38 and see what I gained when I made first contact with Persia. It was a huge haul including republic ~25 turns earlier then I expected.

On the currency vs. republic debate:
We will have to wait to that moment, however first to Monotheism @ monopoly could have large trading value.

I agree the location of St. Petersburg isn't great, however as crammed as we are I will take it. We will be lucky to squeeze 5 cities from this crowed mess. I hope we can at least get the cow between St. Pet and Moscow.

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

Rules question:

I doubt will happen, but can we trade a map for tech?

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

@Sirp - I am curious, why Iron working? The AI tends to go for that tech quickly.

I maybe way off base here but going for IW first should almost guarantee you a trade opprotunity. Being the only civ to have BW at the onset you have the best chances of getting there first and because the AI does value it maybe you can pull in Writing for it. Not being at all familiar with Diety though I am not sure how quickly the AI will move on IW once BW is traded around. If they are about to get it theselve the value may be less then expected.


Good luck,

This will be an interesting variant to watch and learn from ;).

Hotrod

Ah, so this is where LK41 players go when they die :)

I might have joined but should really stagger my SG's better anyway. LK41 and GM1 tracked each other strongly (GM1 will finish this week), and I had a couple of overlapping turns. Plus, I have my first solo AW game going on, am doing pretty well, and am excited to push forward with it after being away. In that game it was useful to research IW at minimum, then when it came in I had the gold to upgrade a few warriors right away (I wasn't making any headway with warriors vs. NM :p ).

LK: Yeah I know Pangea will be tough, but I didn't intend it to be an easy game :)

I guess there could be some argument for having made this more of a 'builder' game with more space, but I went for more of a mixed approach, where we can choose our peace/war approach. It would only take one successful war to give us a decent amount of room though.

The reason I went for IW first was,

- we are the only scientific civilization, thus the only civilization that starts with Bronze Working. My aim was to not trade BW, and thus give us a big-as-possible advantage in researching IW.
- it was the only second-level technology we could research from the start of the game, and I didn't want to research a first-level tech, because as happened, we got all those by trade very quickly.

It was a mistake to try to go the max-science route. We probably won't get it first, but we still may get it soon enough to make some good trades, depending on how much contact the AIs have with each other.

The only concern I have with Monotheism is if we *don't* get it first (i.e. we're so behind by that stage that others have researched it from scratch). In that case we'd be in *real* trouble :)

Ahh... the joys of real life.

We had company round last night, and top of the list of "no no's" is the crime of "being antisocial", that is, playing Civ. I'm sure those of you that have wives or girlfriends will understand.

I have told "her Majesty" that I will be playing Civ tonight :D

(0) 3050BC
Science dropped to 20% to continue research on Iron Working @ minimum science.
Luxuries dropped to 20%
Tech situation:
Egypt - Equal in tech.
Japan - Equal in tech.
India - Lacks The Wheel.
France - Has Horseback Riding.
Rome - Lacks Pottery, The Wheel and Ceremonial Burial.
Our spearman at St Petersburg fends off a barb warrior, and the people expand the palace.

(1) 3000BC
Begin roading the horses, using one native and one slave worker, this should take two turns. The other slave is sent to chop a forest, which will speed up our next settler once the granary is completed.

(2) 2950BC
(3) 2900BC
Our scout pops another goody hut, and gets another free village. Kiev is not in a good location, a free settler would've been far better.
Luxuries to 30% as Moscow gorws to size 4.
Horsie road completes at Moscow.

(4) 2850BC
(5) 2800BC
Moscow builds granary, starts settler.
Japan begins the Oracle.

(6) 2750BC
(7) 2710BC
It looks like the Romans have managed to research pottery.

(8) 2670BC
The French have researched Writing. But what's this? They don't have contact with India?
I note that the rules allow trade of contacts in exchange for techs, however the French have a monopoly on TWO techs, and will not trade either.
I'm forced to wait until either of the techs are passed around.

(9) 2630BC
This is not good. Last turn the French researched Writing, the only new tech that has thus far appeared.
Now take a look at the tech situation.
France - Has Iron Working, Horseback Riding and Writing.
Rome - Has Iron Working, lacks The Wheel and Ceremonial Burial.
India - Has Iron Working, lacks The Wheel - I note that they do have a worker on offer.
Japan - Has Iron Working, Horseback Riding and Writing.
Egypt - Has Iron Working and Writing.
So based on these facts I make the following trades;
Iron working + 25 gold from Rome for The Wheel.
I am unable to trade for Horseback Riding or Writing, as I have no tech to offer up in return.
Minimum science research started on Mathematics, as this is not high on the AI priority list.
Science dropped to 10%.

(10) 2590BC
Two French warriors move next to St Petersburg.

Tech situation is as mentioned in turn 9, although I managed to trade for Iron Working.
I hope for the next player's sake that the French aren't about to sneak-attack us.
For Kiev - might want to give some consideration to settler-abandoning the city and moving it to a better place.

Here's the save: SP5 - 2950BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5-2590BC.zip)

I think I'm next. Got it, should be able to play tomorrow afternoon.

No complaining about free cities! :) Usually, the best thing to do with a badly placed city is to simply keep buliding around it as if it wasn't there. Let the city sit at size 2 or 3 or so and just build workers forever. Feel free to have cities 2 tiles away from Kiev if those are good locations.

Think about it - we can have Kiev grow to size 2, build a settler, and disband; or we can have Kiev grow to size 3, build a settler, and have another city AND Kiev.

Another thought with Keiv:

The fp limit can be a challenge to hit with deity. If Kiev is the extra city to let us build the fp it is well worth it.

Yeah I agree with keeping Kiev. Certainly, what to do with an advanced village is a good kind of problem to have :) I like the concept of advanced villagers - settlers are just too powerful, but an advanced tribe is a good bonus, yet not over-powered.

LK: Sorry, I missed your question before about trading world maps. The idea of trading communications is that we are selling 'information' of a kind, and we value it equivalent to technology, so we're allowed to trade it. The same could be said for world maps, and so yes, we can trade them for technology. However, if we trade communications or world maps for technologies, we may NOT also give gold, luxuries, or resources as part of the deal. (otherwise we could always just buy techs for a hold heap of gold with which we happen to package our WM).

-Sirp.

I believe we should veto Mathematics. At max cost, we aren't going to make it in less than 40 turns, and there's no way the AIs will take that long to research it. I think we need to go to max research on Writing, even though the other civs have it, since we've got to get towards Literature and Republic. Other opinions welcome, of course.

Also, not sure what you mean in that comment, Sirp; do you mean that if we trade comm or maps for tech, we may NOT also give gold/resources? :)

T-Hawk: You don't think there are prospects for trading for Writing? Anyhow your turn, your call.

and yeah there was meant to be a 'not' in there. :)

-Sirp.

What would we trade for Writing? We don't have any other tech, and the only way we can get any anytime soon is from a goody hut, unless somebody somehow acquires a new tech without acquiring one of the ones we know, which isn't likely.

Besides, partially researching Writing does lower the cost to trade for it, if such an opportunity did come up.

Literature and Republic are EVERYTHING for us at this point; we can't make gambles along other lines.

Going to play now. (Apologies to everyone who got the past three "T-hawk has replied to this thread" emails and expected a turn report :) )

Yeah admittedly trading for Writing doesn't seem likely, but what I was thinking was the possibility of trading contacts for it. Anyhow, we're definitely going to have to have better planning on what techs we get. Two turns have yielded two wheel-spinning episodes, first with IW and now with Math.

-Sirp.

Inherited turn:

I wouldn't have assigned that slave to clear forest at Moscow; it should've gone to the tile SW of the horses to start getting a line of irrigation over to the second cow. Well, free labor is free labor.

Diplo check: India lacks The Wheel, and has a worker that they could trade us. Mmmmm.. tough call. Is India going to get a tech that we don't have before they get The Wheel? Unlikely, given that The Wheel is a cheap first-level tech, and all the other techs Gandhi could acquire are second-level or higher. I trade The Wheel + 31 gold to India for his worker.

As I said, I think trading for Writing will be unlikely. Research set to Writing. And luxuries can be lowered to 20%; 80% research shows Writing as due in 36, which will drop.

======

2550 BC: Egads, where can I put this settler? Rome has founded Cumae in the middle of the jungle silks. And there's a French city 3 tiles NW of the spot where I wanted the city three tiles N of Moscow.

2470 BC: I think about this long and hard, but I stick to the original spot 3 tiles N of Moscow to found Minsk. The other location I was considering was one tile west of this spot. Note that in this location, there is no cultural battle with France. No tiles can ever change hands between these two cities, as long as Minsk has one border expansion before the French city has two.

Founding one square to the west would still have two tiles of cultural infringement on Minsk once the French city expanded, while this better spot has only three.

2390 BC: Rome apparently hit a barb camp, and has 33 gold in their treasury. They will pay 29 gold, which is full market value, for Ceremonial Burial. Since they're guaranteed to buy it from somebody else, I make the sale. Rome also lacks Mysticism, but since they can't pay full market price for it, I'll hold out hope they might acquire another tech to trade us for it.

2310 BC: Smolensk founded southeast of Moscow, grabbing us at least one more decent city location.

2150 BC: YES! Rome has Writing but still lacks Mysticism. We have to kick in 27 gold, but we get that critical tech. Okay, so I blew it when I decided to research Writing; but I had no idea this would happen - and if Rome had chosen to buy Mysticism instead of Writing, it wouldn't.

Max research set to Literature; I'm sure nobody will disagree with that. :goodjob:

======

Moscow is on spearman because the forest chop will complete this turn.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR NEXT LEADERS:

Note that Smolensk and Moscow can share that cattle tile. Moscow only needs it on two out of every three turns to maintain its max growth rate; give it to Smolensk on the third of those turns to help that city's growth. Yes, you've gotta micromanage everything to win in this sort of game. :whipped:

The workers are getting irrigation over to Minsk's cow; slowly, but they'll get there. Once Minsk grows to size 3, have it work the forest tiles to delay its growth to 4 until after it completes the granary.

I'm reconsidering my earlier position on Kiev. The city is all but terminally corrupt; there's no way it will pull more than one shield, which is why I'm not building a worker here. (Assign the city to work the gold tiles and observe 6 commerce lost to corruption and only one beaker produced.) The only useful thing Kiev can do for us is to build a settler and claim one of the furs in this area. However, it will take 22 turns to get out that settler without abandoning Kiev. We can do it in TWO turns if you whip the settler then and abandon Kiev. This is a tough, tough call. Will there still be a fur available in 22 turns? I have no idea.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/sp5-2150bc.zip

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/sp5-2150bc.jpg

I want us to settle a city on red dot, which will swipe one of those silks from Rome. That could wait, though, because the AIs will not settle in that area. Our current settler (it's one tile NW of Smolensk right now) should take Smolensk's warrior with it, and run down the coast trying to find anywhere fertile to settle.

Actually, here's what to do with Kiev. Pay attention, because this needs to be executed precisely. Have Kiev swap to a WORKER right now. Two turns from now, it will build that worker. Over the next ten turns, Kiev will accumulate 10 shields and grow back to size 3. AT THAT TIME, which will be 1700 BC, on Lee's turn, merge that worker back into Kiev and whip the settler. That's how we can get a settler in 12 turns without abandoning Kiev, and that should be soon enough to grab one of the furs.

I see it.

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

Moscow only needs it on two out of every three turns to maintain its max growth rate; give it to Smolensk on the third of those turns to help that city's growth.


If they bring out civ 4 some day, I hope the figure out a way to have the computer deal with this tedious mm.
I just went through similar mm in GOTM17 where the stupid game kept wanting us grow and add forest, not grassland. With grassland, settler and 2 growth in 4 turns.

Yeah I agree about MM, LK, but they seem to actually think that MM in Civ is a 'feature'. It'd be very easy for them to make managing the sliders and happiness much easier, but....they choose not to, presumably because they think that MMing should be part of the game.

Good luck on your turn. Looks like this game is going to be difficult, as predicted.

-Sirp.

Oh, Lee's after me? In that case, Speaker will need to do the worker-merge-and-whip-settler thing at Kiev. I raelly want to see that done right. :)

Yeah, LK is after you T-Hawk; I put Speaker last since he's away for a week. Good thinking on the merge-and-whip-settler thing btw. Speaker is the one with the pressure on him to implement it right or else have much wrath rain down on him :)

-Sirp.

I have bad news - the second I attempt to load the game it crashes with and error. This fits write I saw about trying to load a 1.21 game with 1.14.

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

Per Sirp on page 1:
Patch: PTW 1.14f (note: not the latest!)

What do we do now?

Dangit! I played on 1.21. If you want, Sirp, I'll patch back to 1.14 and replay the turns the same way, or as close to the same as I can (good thing I took good notes...)

OK. I was able to patch back to 1.14, reload the save, and recreate all the same moves. The two trades with Rome happened at the same time on the same terms, and all our cities, workers, and our treasury are in exactly the same configuration they were in the other save. The only thing that changed was our westernmost scout seems to have taken a slightly different path, but it's not off by more than one tile from where it was before. Oh, and Kiev is set to a worker. :D

Again, sorry about that, and I'll have to be more careful about patching for this game. (It's easy enough to do; I just forgot.) Good thing this happened early when I could still recreate all the same moves. :)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/sp5-2150bc-patch.zip

Glad we got that sorted out. Hmm....you'd think that Firaxis would put a version number of the save file in a save header, and print out a useful diagnostic if it's a future version number rather than just crashing.

Anyhow, good luck LK!

-Sirp.

2150 BC (pre-turn) - Deity scares me to death with culture flipping; particularly with a civ that I know will build culture. I hate having two of our cities under French pressure already.

2070 BC - France is the first civ to map making. They will give $40 for our map, but I hold off hoping to sell maps to several civs at once.

2030 BC - We lost one of our scouts to a barb horseman. :(
(I) Ms. Cleo threats to send her archer (just 1?), but I still cave in and give her $21.

1990 BC - 3 civs know map making, and the other two are broke. It is time to sell maps.
It goes to Egypt for tm and $21. It goes to Japan for wm and $14. It goes to France for wm and $42.
A second round of trading adds another $16.

1950 BC - I have to up luxuries to 30% that totally frags our research rate to keep St. Petersburg happy.
I hope I haven't committed major :weed: by slow down science. I think with the nature of the variant failing to be first to a tech even once could put us deep in the hole.

1910 BC - GACK - The new road segment I was hoping would help St. Petersburg doesn't let me low the luxury tax.

1870 BC - Odessa is formed next to a flood plains wheat, and a warrior / settler pair from India.
The scary thing about this city is that when the Indian capital expands, we will have culture pressure and we are closer to the Indian capital.

Summary - I stopped one turn early with the settler still needing to move. We can either go for red dot, or try for one of the far away sources of luxuries.

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

Sirp (on deck)
Arizona_Steve
T-Hawk
LKendter
Speaker (currently playing)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5-1790BC.zip

Count the squares again; Odessa won't have pressure from Delhi once Odessa expands borders. I'd definitely whip a library in Odessa as soon as we get Literature.

St. Petersburg is hurting because of corruption - 50% only two cities away from our capital! The road segment that will finish this turn will give it one more commerce and let it pull the one happy face it needs at 20% lux. So we can go to 20% lux next turn, except that Minsk will still be unhappy. Minsk can change to a water tile instead of the forest for a couple turns, or run a scientist for a little bit.

Also, on the current turn, Moscow should take the cattle tile back from Smolensk so Moscow can grow in 2.

As for what to do with the current settler, I have no idea. I notice an iron peeking out on the other landmass up northeast of Paris, if we can somehow scheme our way to Map Making. Other than that, there isn't anywhere for him to go except red dot, unless you think we can run him into the northern tundra and grab one of the luxury sites.

We might have just to settle red dot now, and start building horsemen to take a city or two. We need to get some more land somehow, so let's plan this as a group.

A quick hit at Bombay, followed by peace as soon as we can make it, will pay off the best of any option I can see. We'd need about 7 horses to be sure of taking Bombay and holding it. (Whip walls as soon as we take the city.) The problem, though, is that Odessa and Smolensk will need walls and spears to defend themselves.

A hit-and-hold on Cumae would be easy to execute and gain us the three silks, although the land is useless in terms of trying to build a city.

Hit-and-hold on Tours is one more option, gaining us a city site with cattle and ivory. That's also a war front of only one city, although France's entire military will pouir in through it.

Or we could play in LK41 mode and huddle up in our handful of cities instead of risking war. What does anyone else think?

Oh, and remember three turns from now to merge Kiev's worker and whip the settler. :D

Remember that we do want to hold onto Kiev (the city in the north), and if we make war with France or Rome, this might be non-trivial. India has a city up there as well, but I doubt they have a substantial number of troops there.

So, my preferred target would be Bombay. It's too close to our capital and on too-good land not to have. I think that getting Bombay will give us just enough room to be truly competitive with the AI.

We could stay huddled in our cities, but I think we would fall behind, and end up having to make war to try to get back in the game anyhow.

Oh and yes, I think we should settle the red dot immediately.

-Sirp.

Speaker messaged me before the game and said that he'd be away for a week or so. I'm not sure how far we are into that week now. We'll give him until monday, and if he hasn't posted "I got it" by then, he'll be skipped for this round.

-Sirp.

Monday, Australian time, or Monday, USA time? ;)

Monday whereever Speaker is, which I believe is in the US :p

I wouldn't get to play it until Tuesday Australian time anyhow.

-Sirp.

Thanks for waiting guys. Just got back on Monday morning, around 1 am est. Should be able to play later today.

great Speaker, welcome back! Make sure you read the thread carefully, and do the worker-merge-settler thing properly if you don't want the wrath of T-Hawk coming down on your head :)

-Sirp.

IT- MM Moscow to grow in 2 while Smolensk still grows this turn. Settler heads toward red dot, accompanied by a warrior.

1750BC (1) Smolensk Warrior => Barracks. Since we will not be buying many techs, I think building 10 or so chariots and upgrading them to horsemen for the attack on Bombay might not be a bad idea. Smolensk can build many of these chariots. I trade around our WM to make up the gpt deficit we are running.

1725BC (2) Continue toward Red Dot and trade WM. Worker moves into Kiev and prepares to join the city.

1700BC (3) Kiev becomes a 4 and then a 3. Sevastopol founded on red dot. Starts on temple (vetoable). These workers sure do take a long time to build. It will take a while to connect these silks. France shows up with Code of Laws but lacks Mathematics. I am glad we cannot broker here. Who cares about the silly French Code of Laws? We are 22 turns from being able to write great works. MM Minsk for extra gold as it builds the Granary this turn. Fix Odessa, as the governor has it gaining a shield from a hill but losing it to corruption.

1675BC (4) Kiev Settler => Worker. Minsk Granary => Warrior. We need the MP to lower Luxury Rates. Moscow loans cattle to Smolensk for a turn. Kiev settler heads toward furs. I see no good place nearby for another city, so Moscow switches from settler to a barracks. I hope this wasn't weed, but my hands are tied here. Without a galley, we cannot grab any far away tiles and if we do not strike as soon as we get horseback riding, I don't know when we will be able to--especially without any iron.

1650BC (5) Joanie still has not traded Code of Laws around.

1625BC (6) Minsk Warrior => Warrior. St. Petersburg (locked into Granary) needs one more mp to be happy. I bump science to 80 percent, with luxuries at 20 percent, hiring an entertainer in St. Petersburg. We will lose 1 shield per turn for a few turns until the extra warrior can arrive in St. Petersburg, but we will get Literature 9 turns faster, now due in 12.

1600BC (7) Tblisi founded near the furs. Moscow Barracks => Chariot. Moscow lends Cow to Smolensk for a turn. WM trade to India nets us their WM and some gold, which spawns another round of trading, which gets us Japan's WM and some gold, which spawns another round of trading. A horseman attack on Bombay and maybe Madras will cripple India and give us a great trading partner.

1575BC (8) Minsk Warrior => Temple (vetoable). May be useless to attempt to compete culturally against France here. Could be timed, however, as a prebuild for a library. Odessa Worker => Worker. Indians start Great Library. They are the only civ with Literature, and we will get in in 8 turns, but will it be too late? Moscow grows to size 6 and requires increased luxuries or an entertainer. Upping luxuries will set back our research by two turns and if we lose out on being able to trade Literature, then we will not be in great shape. I hire a scientist under the guise that every beaker counts. I doubt he will make a difference, but who knows?

1550BC (9) Literature jumps to 5 turns, so I find to my chagrin that Japan has it too, having discovered Polytheism and traded it to India. Egypt, France, Rome are still without either, however. I have to move Smolensk from a grassland square to a coast square to keep peace. Getting the silk hooked up will really help.

1525BC (10) Workers move next to Sevastapol to start road to the silks. This will be crucial in allowing us to keep luxuries down. French and Japanese are at war by the way.

1500BC (11) I played an extra turn to even out the year and make up for the fact that Lee played one turn too few.

Conclusion- 3 turns away from Literature and what appears to be massive brokerage opportunities. I will outline who has what in terms of tech:

France- Math, Map Making, Horseback Riding, Code of Laws
Egypt- Math, Map Making, Horseback Riding
India- Math, Map Making, Horseback Riding, Polytheism, Literature
Japan- Math, Map Making, Horseback Riding, Polytheism, Literature
Rome- Math, Map Making, Horseback Riding

No idea why France has not traded Code of Laws, but hopefully we can take advantage when we get Literature. I think our biggest priority is getting horseback riding so we can build horsemen to take Bombay and Madras and bring India to its knees and do a little research of the pointy-stick variaty :hammer:. Hope I didn't anger any of you by hiring specialists so early, but I felt the speed to Literature far outweighed the loss of a few shields or wheat. I think we are in good position here, and with libraries coming soon, we should be able to grab Silks and Ivory quickly and drop luxuries all together and go all toward science, while building up horsemen to prune our neighbors. Since we won't have to worry as much about rep this game, we can go on the offensive a bit. Good luck to the next player.

SP5-1500BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5-1500BC.zip)

Great moves, great micromanagement :goodjob: , and every turn that goes by without us getting attacked is a great relief. :)

Only one quibble - as I outlined in my post, Minsk does not compete culturally with France. No tiles in either city's first or second ring will change hands depending on the cities' cultural scores. Minsk only needs one border expansion to hold off the pressure as best as it ever will, and of course it's better to do that with a cheaper library, as you observe.

Have we had a chance to found any embassies? Might be useful, to see if anybody's at war with anybody else, to help us in choosing a target...

ok I got it.

-Sirp.

We have between 160-180 gold in our treasury (can't remember how it last was), but we should keep a decent amount because we are running science at a deficit and as we build libraries, that deficit will increase.

Looks like I'm going to have some serious civving time in the next couple of days. We're under 3-4 feet of snow here and the office is closed. Don't think I'll be going anywhere before the weekend...

By contrast, it's entering Autumn (aka Fall) here, and I have plenty of things to do :-/

Hopefully I'll be able to do my turn in about 12 hours.

-Sirp.

I somehow read that "entering Autumn" as "entering Antium" and momentarily thought we were prosecuting a very successful war against Rome :crazyeye: :D

IT 1500BC: Turning up luxuries will only lose us 3gpt, and will let us fire the entertainer in Moscow, so I do that.

1 1475BC: Ghandi threatens us for 28 gold. We pay the nice man his money. I establish an embassy with India. Delhi is size 4, building the Pyramids which are due in 26 turns, and is defended by three regular spears. Its only improvement is the palace. India have a source of horses, but no iron.

I also build an embassy in France. Paris is size 7, defended by four regular spears, just has the palace, and is building Pyramids due in 25 turns. The French have iron and horses.

Let's see, what horrible crime has Joanie committed? She is at war with Egypt, Japan, and India.

Trade around our world map for chump change.

2 1450BC: Everyone except France and Egypt now have Literature. Take research down to 10%.

Another round of map trading turns out to be rather profitable. France have settled a city on that island with iron.

3 1425BC: We discover literature, and trade it to France for HBR and 13 gold, and send it to Egypt along with 50 gold for Math.

Ok what to research next? We could go for currency which no-one has, but that's slated to take 30 turns, and though we'll probably get it in 20, I have little doubt that we won't get it first, so I'm thinking we might be better served going for Philosophy, at only 9 turns, it takes us a step closer to Republic, and hopefully we can use it for trading material with France and Egypt, who have fragmented trading, due to the wars going on.

Our chariot is upgraded to a horseman. Moscow switched to a library which is due in 2 turns. Minsk switched from temple to library.

4 1400BC: Smolensk barracks -> horseman. More WM fun.

5 1375BC: Moscow library -> horseman. Egypt just got a monopoly on Construction.

6 1350BC: Rome and India sign an alliance against France. Minsk Library -> Temple. Tblisi warrior -> Worker.

7 1325BC: I establish an embassy with Egypt. Thebes is size 3, building the GL, due in 78 turns, and defended by 3 regular spearmen. They have both iron and horses.

8 1300BC: France and India sign a peace treaty. India has obtained Code of Laws (off France?) and broken France's monopoly. Minsk grows and will have to have a tax collector until its temple is complete. Moscow is going to grow too soon.

9 1275BC: More WM trading.

10 1250BC: Moscow grows, and by working on the sea we can get it to stay out of disorder, but it's only got a 2-food surplus. It is pulling 10 spt though, which is what we really want.

Philosophy is due next turn, and Egypt and France still don't have it, although I'm not sure if we'll get more than map making and some gold for it. I'm really not sure what we should go for after that. The Republic if we can get Code of Laws, but maybe something that some others have already discovered, since that seems to be working ok for us thus far.

Good luck Arizona_Steve!

-Sirp.

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5-1250BC.zip)

If Moscow's pulling 10 shields, use that 10 to build a second MP warrior if it doesn't have one already. If not, keep it set to fastest growth anyway; better a city at size 8 running an entertainer than size 6 and not doing so.

If we want war, we probably want to attack France while they're still busy in the other wars. Or, we could let our neighbors have slowed themselves, and clean up on the brokering. India should probably not be our target at this point; they'll have units left over from the French war and no other opponents to use them against.

How many more ancient techs do we need? Currency, Construction, Philosophy, Code of Laws, and Polytheism? If we can get all those, we get the free medieval tech; if we get it first we can probably sell it at monopoly for Republic. However, don't many of the AIs already have everything except Currency? So it's probably unlikely.

I guess we have to research Republic next (praying that we can trade Philosophy for Code of Laws.) Whether to go for it at maximum or minimum is a tough choice, though. I'd say maximum if it'll be shorter than 40 turns, although don't rely on it to drop any; if it says 40 turns now even at 100% science go for the minimum. (It will be close; Republic costs 3-4x as much as Philosophy, which would've taken 9-10 turns from scratch.)

Interesting times...

First day of spring in Colorado, and after a few days of strange falling white stuff, we end up with this glorious view of the side yard...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5_000.jpg

Needless to say, this morning has been an enormous amount of fun, here's a rare picture of this particular civver digging his way out of his house...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5_001.jpg

...And of course, the crazy ms. Arizona_Steve attempting to enjoy the first day of Spring as best she can...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5_002.jpg

Oh... (and to keep this on-topic) got it...

(0) 1250BC
We seem to have some serious happiness problems here, and I note that our silks remain unconnected. Connecting these will be a priority. There is ivory available too, although there will be a cultural fight for it with the French city of Tours. If we can connect Tblisi and Moscow via harbors, a third luxury, furs will become available.
Check the science slider, and note that Sirp has already dropped it to 40% to get Philosophy this turn.
France requests an alliance against Egypt. I decline.
We get Philosophy. I note that we need Construction, Currency, Code of Laws, Polytheism and MapMaking to get to the Middle Ages.
The Romans complete the Pyramids in Rome.
The Carthaginians complete the Great Lighthouse in Carthage.
Big cascade to the Great Library.

(1) 1225BC
France is the only civ without Philosophy. Everyone has Code of Laws and Map Making.
India and Egypt have Polytheism and Comstruction.
Japan and Rome have Polytheism.
France does have Construction. I smell a trading opportunity.
Science to 0% (15 gold per turn) gets us to "close to a deal" for construction. With some micromanagement for max commerce, I get this up to 19 per turn.
Finally, Philosophy + 25 gold + 18 gold/turn nets us the expensive Construction.
Construction to Rome for Code of Laws.
Construction to Japan for Map Making.
We are now only one tech down, however, this has killed our treasury (currently at 9 gold + 1 gold per turn).
I switch Moscow from Horseman to temple. This will help reduce luxury tax.
The taxman in Minsk is switched to a scientist, and 40 turn research begins on Republic.

(2) 1200BC
(3) 1175BC
(4) 1150BC
(5) 1125BC
Odessa has 1 warrior, which should give us 2 content faces. For some reason it has one happy, one content and two unhappy at size 4 and 30% luxuries. I wonder if it has been whipped in the past. I hire a taxman there until the worker completes. I also send an extra horseman in Smolensk over there as a more permanent solution.
Tblisi finishes it's worker and starts a harbor. This may well be rushed once Republic comes in.

(6) 1100BC
(7) 1075BC
(8) 1050BC
Silks are brought online.

(9) 1025BC
I'm able to reduce luxuries to 20% and start making a small amount of cash again.

(10) 1000BC
Not much.

We are really suffering with happiness and cash-flow. The ivory near Minsk is not guarenteed, Hopefully St Petersburg will get it's temple before Tours does. I did hook up the furs at Tblisi, but it'll be a while before we have a harbor there to take advantage of them.
I hope my buying of Construction wasn't :smoke: - this is the major cause of our cash-flow problems right now. We are currently researching Republic with a lone scientist in Minsk (cheaper I believe than setting science to 10%).

And the save... SP5 - 1000BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5-1000BC.zip)

We gotta get the techs somehow; it's never wrong to buy a tech when you can trade it to get two others. Especially under this variant! I would've done exactly the same thing :goodjob:

I have no problem resorting to selling our map to everybody every turn if that's what we need to avoid bankruptcy.

And yeah, we can't do anything else than minimum research on Republic at this point. Which will surely end up with us a few techs behind by the time we get it. But oh well; there'll be time to catch up later.

Trying for that ivory is a losing battle in most situations, especially against cultural-priority France. But if France is stuck in their several wars, they might delay culture at that city long enough for us to grab the ivory for a while at least. (Later, the AI will rush colosseum and university at that it if necessary to get ahead, which is expenditure of resources that we can't keep up with.)

I'm up, I think? Not sure when I can get to it (one of my computers is refusing to read my PTW disc), but should be able to on my other PC by Sunday night.

Good turn Arizona_Steve. The Roster:

Sirp
Arizona_Steve <-- Just played
T-Hawk <-- UP NOW
LKendter <-- on deck
Speaker

Did I say Sunday night? I meant the wee hours of Saturday morning :)

Inherited turn:

Running 10% science will cost us 3 gpt, but that's better than running a scientist in Minsk. Minsk's citizen reassigned to work forest, which will get that aqueduct done sooner.

Why are three of our cities building temples? Libraries are cheaper and better culture. Smolensk, maybe, because it'll need the happiness, but Sevastopol and St. Pete have no excuse (note that St. Pete can't even exceed size 5 until Republic.) No sense wasting the shields in Sevastopol, but the other two swapped to libraries.

Moscow's working water unnecessarily; it could be working a two-food grassland tile instead. And WHY IN THE WORLD ARE THOSE WORKERS CLEARING JUNGLE at Moscow? The city's working unimproved GRASS for chrissakes! I stop those workers and get them out of there.

Sevastopol's workers are also clearing jungle unnecessarily. The silks are already roaded up, and getting good tiles for Sevastopol online is much faster and more profitably done by clearing forest.

A+ on tech brokering, Steve, but D for micromanagement :smoke:

And, as always, we need more workers. Minsk swapped from aqueduct to a worker and set to max food.

I also sell our world map to everyone to net 10 gold.

========

I don't like building a harbor in Moscow right now; it isn't going to help us until we can cash rush a harbor in Tblisi at the furs. Often, building an early harbor opens up trading routes, but not really here; only France has any harbors built and we're a handful of turns away from either completing a road to or going to war against them.

950 BC: India signs an alliance and declares war on France again. Folks, I think we've got to get our slice of French toast here.

India's also got Currency and is in the middle ages.

Library whipped in St. Pete. Leaving cities stuck at can't-grow sizes isn't good; now a size smaller, the city at least has a food surplus.

875 BC: Several civs have Monarchy now too.

825 BC: India has connected a road to us. We can trade our only Silks for his spare Wines plus 15 gold. That keeps us with the same number of luxuries (one), but makes us 15 gold, which we really do need.

Between turns, I see two French workers enter Tours, and two Egyptian warriors advance up next to Tours.

800 BC: Everybody's got and has revolted to Republic. Doh.

775 BC: Our furs are online via road connection, although of course that will be broken if we go to war against France.

========

This is our chance, folks. Our cash payment to France will expire next turn, and we will have six horsemen available to attack Tours. The city will be autorazed; Minsk will have to build a settler to replace it (if you feel lucky with the five horses, switch Minsk from horseman to settler this turn.) Tours is inexplicably built ON a cattle, so it should be replaced by a city to the north.

How far we can go after that I'm not sure. Orleans may be possible; Paris is probably beyond our abilities. Also keep an eye on Lyons; a French city in the area was already razed by Egypt. If Lyons gets razed, get a settler out from Kiev FAST to reclaim the iron. (In three turns, we can do the worker-merge-and-whip-settler thing there again.)

Smolensk is working the water tile because otherwise we'll go broke (the treasury's at 3 gold, -3/turn.) With the payment to France expiring, we'll have money, though.

Leave Minsk and Smolensk at size 6 for a while; let them build units (and Minsk workers) rather than sinking shields into an aqueduct just yet.

I sent those two workers into Roman territory at Cumae to build a road; that will enable trading with Rome and probably soon with Japan as well.

The forest chop at Minsk will complete in two turns; that will speed the Tours-replacing settler.

Hopefully France will cede a nice juicy technology...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/sp5-750bc.zip

It's in Lee's capable hands...

I want to give you an interesting teaser.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/LAK-283.jpg

Ahh... Worker management has always been one of my weak points. I'll try to do better, however, I'm stuck between two much better (in my opinion) players, so any :smoke: on my part will be that much more obvious...

It's in Lee's capable hands...

I think you may overrate my deity experience, this is only game #5 at this level. On the other hand, I certainly hope I don't earn:

A+ on tech brokering, Steve, but D for micromanagement



750 BC (pre-turn) - St. Petersburg is spending 14 turns to build a regular horseman? I veto in favor of a courthouse, which could turn out to be a place holder for a different building. I simple don't build military in 2 shield cities.

One thing I don't understand is that T-Hawk says attack in one turn, but we have 3 exposed workers next to Tours. I am delaying the attack until I can protect these valuable workers.
(I)

730 BC - Now that we have cash again, I can switch Minsk to max shields and shave 3 turns from the settler due date. That will get even better with the 10 shields from the forest.

710 BC - You can tell this is PTW, as we suddenly can talk to Spain. We give them Construction and wm, and get Polytheism, Contact with Carthage, wm and $17. Carthage is totally backwards, but also broke. They are even worth trading with.
(I) :rolleyes: We get $17 from Spain in order to cave to Egypt an give them $19, wm. :rolleyes:

690 BC - The ivory road is completed, and the workers run away from the border.
(I) Japan establishes and embassy with us - Thank you for saving us some cash. :)

670 BC (I) - Egypt Auto-razed Tours for us.

650 BC (I) - :eek: The Indians are building Sun Tzu.

630 BC - We finally sell our wm to Carthage - they don't pay much, but the knowledge we can sell nets us over $20 and completely up to date maps.
Peace negotiations with France fails, and Russia finds it self at war. The bad piece of news with war vs. France is furs are no longer connected, and luxuries go to 20%. However, I agree with T-Hawk that we have to vulture some cities while we have a chance, and that long term we will come ahead in the deal. This variant really requires a large city base to have a chance.
(I) I can tell I didn't start this game, as the domestic advisor harasses us about missing aqueducts. I tell to never bother me about it again.

610 BC - Sverdlovsk is formed, and we have a city replacing Tours. All I have to do is get Orleans, and build a library. This city will have NO cultural pressure.
Unreal - Carthage discovers Republic before Construction or Polytheism. Of course, we can't get it even with giving him both techs.

590 BC - Orleans is now a RUSSIAN city at the cost of 2 horseman. It comes with a bonus of 3 workers. [dance]
(I) I can believe that *3* resistors ending in just one turn in Orleans. I begin to tax them to death.

550 BC - Ouch, I realize that I waste a few bucks. Science occurs before starvation, so I assign a token scientist and reduce science to 0%.

Summary - Spain hasn't discovered a single new tech during my turns. If they go for Monarchy, then we may be able to do Republic for Currency.
We have a healthy treasury again and the massive wm trading has helped a lot in that area.

In case anybody is wonder why I have a settler on the map - I think France will be eliminated based on what I am seeing! I would love to be able to vulture Paris and get those wines. India is starting to send MI toward France.

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

Sirp (on deck)
Arizona_Steve
T-Hawk
LKendter
Speaker (currently playing)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/SP5-550BC.zip

It's in Lee's capable hands...

I think you may overrate my deity experience, this is only game #5 at this level. On the other hand, I certainly hope I don't earn:

A+ on tech brokering, Steve, but D for micromanagement


Maybe you don't have experience at strategic-level planning on Deity, but I know your micromanagement and tactical warfare skills are top-notch, which is why I say that sort of thing. ;)

Exposed workers - I was thinking that covering them with a spearman would be sufficient, since we our horsemen could've taken out any attackers that appeared. Caution doesn't hurt there, though.

590 BC - Orleans is now a RUSSIAN city at the cost of 2 horseman. It comes with a bonus of 3 workers. [dance]
(I) I can believe that *3* resistors ending in just one turn in Orleans. I begin to tax them to death.

Excellent! I downloaded the save to look, and it's possible this turn to switch to archer, whip, switch to library, and whip again to get the library this turn in Orleans. We're going to starve it anyway, so let's definitely do this. :goodjob: (Speaker's up now?)

We should start thinking about the location for the FP sometime soon.

Sorry guys, I'm gonna have to ask that you skip me. Gotta go to New York for a job interview. I'll be able to play my next turn or you can slot me in later in the rotation. Either way is fine.

ok, Speaker is skipped for this round and I got it.

Sirp <--- UP NOW
Arizona_Steve <--- on deck
T-Hawk
LKendter
Speaker (skipped)

(IT) 550BC: Library in Orleans whipped as T-Hawk suggested. Everything else left as-is.

(1) 530BC: Moscow horse -> horse. Orleans library -> temple. The French are building the Hanging Gardens. Hmmm....meanwhile Indian and Egyptian troops are advancing upon Paris.

I move a horseman stack guarded by a spearman up toward Paris. They will watch the battle from a hill, and if we feel we can snatch Paris, then so be it.

Minsk switched from barracks to aqueduct. I think that by the time it produces any troops, the time for fighting will be done for now, and we'll be looking for peaceful growth.

(2) 510BC: Stack moves in sight of Paris. It is guarded by a regular spearman, with two Egyptian swords in striking distance. Hmm...if we move onto the mountain, we can strike at it in one turn without having to go over river.

(3) 490BC: Japan and Egypt sign a military alliance against France. The Egyptians lose a war chariot and a swordsman against Paris without inflicting any damage at all. A French archer arrives two spaces from Kiev (!!) guarding Napoleon. They pillage the French horses. Smolensk horse -> aqueduct. Odessa worker -> worker. Sevastapol library -> barracks.

I call in reinforcements from Tblisi, leaving it empty, but now we have three warriors vs the approaching archer.

I move our horseman stack onto the mountain outside Paris.

(4) 470BC: Moscow horse -> horse. The French archer/Napoleon pair head toward Avignon. Tsk tsk, the AI could move Napoleon straight into the city, but they always move defended units at the same speed as the escort. No way we are going to let Napoleon survive. I attack and kill him.

(5) 450BC: I move our spearman down next to Paris to make sure our horses have a clear path there. Hopefully the spear won't get attacked. Egyptian troops are camped outside Paris for the moment and the Indians will arrive soon.

The French attacked our warrior who killed Napoleon and kill him.

(6) 430BC: Paris attacked and a spearman is killed. The next one is redlined, but survives. There is another fresh one under that. I wouldn't be surprised if Paris holds until peace. The incoming forces don't look *that* powerful, and it can probably build a spearman every couple of turns.

(7) 410BC: Paris is attacked twice by the Indians, with two spearmen wounded, the French produce a third on their turn, so there are three spears in the city. A French horse comes out of the fog, attacks Kiev and wins, leaving just one warrior defending the city. The Romans complete Sun Tzu's in Veii.

Hmm...time to talk peace with Joanie. She'll give us Currency and a worker for peace. I pursue one more attack against her, trying to better the peace talks.

Finally we make peace, in exchange for Currency, a worker, all her gold (4), and her world map.

The only civs who lack Monotheism are Japan and Carthage, who have Republic and Monarchy but nothing else. We're 5 turns from Republic at min science. I give Hannibal Monotheism + 60 gold for Republic and Gems.

I set research to Theology and hold the revolt. We pull a 4 turn anarchy.

(8) 390BC: Ghandi cancels our wines-for-silks deal, thinking it now fairer if we give him 140 gold as well. I decline, and value my Carthaginian gems.

(9) 370BC: blah.

(10) 350BC: Japan have managed to acquire both Engineering and Monotheism :( I guess they got Engineering and then traded it for Monotheism.

I'm doubtful that we want to research Theology at min, but I set it to that to give us the option since we were going into Anarchy anyhow.

We now have 13 horsemen, which I'm not sure what we want to do with. After 20 turns, we could have another go at France, or we could consider having a go against India (horsemen vs likely pikes will be nasty of course), or we could be peaceful for a while.

Arizona_Steve will get the fun of reconfiguring everything in Republic.

-Sirp.

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/SP5-350BC.zip)

Yay! We did pull the Monotheism-for-Republic slingshot that I wanted! [party] :goodjob:

As for the horsemen: keep 'em till we can upgrade 'em. Do keep settlers at the ready to poach any more razed French cities.

Rome completed Sun Tzu's? Never-builds-any-workers never-has-any-infrastructure Caesar built the first 600-shield wonder? That could only possibly have been a Great Leader for them.

I'd say to go for Theology at max once we get out of anarchy, but Steve can look at the numbers and make the final decision. He'll also probably want to make some deal for Indian wines once we're out of anarchy.

Great turn, once again. :D

Got it... will try to play tonight...

(0) 350BC
I'm probably going to be a little short on my turns summary here. I recently upgraded my video card (from a GF2ti to no less than a Radeon 9700 Pro - I like my Quake & Unreal), and really need to reinstall Windows for maximum effect. I'm sure there's some ex-nVidia artifacts there that are giving me the occasional blue screen of death. Hopefully everything will hold together for my turns here.
We're in Anarchy right now. I check the cities.
Why does size 1 Orleans have a scientist? He's ordered back to work and to breed more Russian nationals there.
Moscow - Entertainer => Taxman.
St Petersburg - Entertainer => Scientist.
Minsk - TWO entertainers can be put back to work.
Smolensk - Entertainer => Taxman.
Luxury tax to 0% - I'll readjust once we come out of Anarchy.
Anarchy ends - Republic selected.

(1) 330BC
There's a very useful settler sitting in Sverdlosk. I'm going to leave him there for the time being, as he's in a good position to snatch land if any French cities are razed (Joanie is currently at war with India, Egypt and Japan).
A couple of workers begin the forest chop (I suspect that their positioning on the forests was a hint from Sirp).
Luxuries to 10% allows me to fire all specialists. I move the lone scientist to Kiev, seeing as this city will not amount to much in the short term, and to keep our main core as productive as possible.
When all is said and done, we're only making 18 gold per turn. Unit costs of 46 gold/turn are holding us back. I leave the lone scientist and stick to minimal research.

(2) 310BC
(3) 290BC
Moscow switched to Marketplace, Luxuries upped to 20% as it grows to 10.
Aquaduct rushed in Minsk.
France and Japan sign a peace treaty. Doean't really affect things as Japan hasn't really participated in the French wars.

(4) 270BC
Aquaduct rushed in Smolensk.

(5) 250BC
(6) 230BC
(7) 210BC
Kiev builds a settler and he fortifies there. Still waiting for France to lose a city.
Orleans is size 2 now, and can support a scientist while still growing.
Paris is now Indian. I was hoping it would be razed.

(8) 190BC
The first Indian war elephant appears. I guess we'll be seeing knights soon.

(9) 170BC
(10) 150BC

Summary: I attempted to get some cash flow going. Moscow has a marketplace, and a couple of others are under construction. This should also have the effect of allowing luxury tax to be reduced.
We're behind at least four techs, as Chivalry has appeared. There is no way of speeding up Theology without a huge deficit, so I left it going via a lone scientist.
Being molested by my G/F while I write this... Had to go back and fix all the spelling errors :D

The save... SP5 - 150BC (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/SP5-150BC.zip)

Sirp
Arizona_Steve <-- Just played
T-Hawk <-- UP NOW
Lkendter <-- on deck
Speaker

-Sirp.

I do got it, just forgot to actually post and say so. :) Will play tonight, in a few hours.

Inherited turn:

Rome has Incense available for sale. We can lower lux tax and recover 11/turn income by paying them 9/turn; sounds good to me.

Wow, Japan got eaten up by Rome. Tokugawa has one city left! It'd be great if he lived long enough to trade us a tech when we get Theology, but that doesn't look likely.

Forbidden Palace - I think Sverdlovsk is the only choice for it. Especially if we get to poach any more French land. The city's not even at one-third corruption, though; it doesn't need a courthouse first. Forbidden Palace ordered up there. I'll direct worker labor to the city's hills.

More micromanagement fixes - Sevastopol not working mined land despite being maxed on food waiting for an aqueduct, Odessa set to grow in 2 turns instead of 6. I guess I'll just have to get used to that if I'm following Steve. :) Also, some military units from neighboring cities are ordered to Sevastopol for anti-flip garrison.

And I see Steve tried again to get that jungle square at Moscow cleared. Well, it isn't total weed this time, but I'd still make it lower priority than several other things. I also wake our workers at Kiev-Tblisi to bring them home; they can do much more good working tiles for real cities than those two losers. (Kiev is a good site to keep building workers, though.)

And St. Pete can be a real city now out of despotism. It can reach four grasslands; with all those irrigated the city can reach size 11 and work four hills, which will be quite productive.

=======

Between turns, Rome declares war on Egypt. :goodjob:

130 BC: LYONS GOT RAZED. Our settler leaps into action!

110 BC: Cumae - Rome's silks city - is now Egyptian!

90 BC: France makes peace with Egypt.

70 BC: Egypt demands 27 gold, paid.

50 BC: Yakutsk founded to replace Lyons, claiming us iron! [party] The three workers that came from Kiev hop onto the iron tile to road it up. (Was THAT ever convenient. :D )

Rome and Japan make peace. Great! Tokugawa might still be around to sell Theology to.

30 BC: We have only one turn left on our peace treaty with France, and Avignon looks mighty tempting. I moved our horsemen up next to there to be ready to attack it, but India beat us to it this turn.

10 BC: Our peace treaty with France expires. I decide to see if we can get anything from renegotiating peace with her... nope. We declare war on France again.

I sign RoP with India (doesn't cost us any money) to get our horsemen up to the last French city in the north faster - our horsemen should get there ahead of any Indian elephants.

30 AD: Our horsemen will get to Rouen one turn too late - there's an Indian MDI and elephant next to the French city. But, unbelievably, Gandhi chooses that moment to make peace!

=======

50 AD: A stack of six horsemen is next to Rouen. Also, I built a galley out of Orleans, and started shipping horsemen over to France's city on Iron Island. A couple turns ago an MDI from the city attacked the Indian spear there and lost.

In two turns, we can attack that city with five horses - it's not on hills, and it has only a regular spear showing. Or we can wait until we can upgrade and ship over a couple swords, if you think that's a better idea, Lee. Or we can take only one of the two French cities, and try to extort a tech from her for peace.

As for our cities, I was building mostly units out of Moscow and Minsk. They can continue to do that for a while. Growth is the name of the game for St. Pete, Smolensk, and Odessa - make sure those three cities keep growing as fast as we can get them to. Sevastopol also, when it finishes that aqueduct. Note that St. Pete still has one unimproved grassland tile - Indian units have been on that tile constantly and I can't get a worker in edgewise.

Minimum research on Theology is continuing (the scientist's in Kiev at the moment); it is quite possible that India, France, or both won't get the tech before we do, and we might just be able to trade it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/sp5-50ad.zip

Originally posted by T-hawk
130 BC: LYONS GOT RAZED. Our settler leaps into action!

50 BC: Yakutsk founded to replace Lyons, claiming us iron!


I am glad my vulture settler worked out. :D
I am really becoming a fan of a settler on standby for an opening. I call iron a great opening.



Oh, I see it for play tonight.

50 AD (pre-turn) - Besancon has Iron, Rouen gains ivory after border expansion. No decision on France, they die.

There is one way I do play different then T-Hawk. I find 2 workers mining by Odessa on separate tiles. I like to stack at least 2 workers together for work on hills.

90 AD - Besancon is captured and we will have a backup iron sources someday. A library is ordered to get the cow on-line.
I find proof that we are further behind in tech, as I spot an Indian longbow.
(I) I have to cave to a Roman demand of tm and $36.

110 AD - The tech situation is even worse, as I spotted an Indian musketmen. Due to Rouen becoming the capital is does not auto-razed, and we capture it. The Fledgling French have been destroyed.

150 AD - We have plenty of cash, but theology is still 13 turns away. I decide to buy an Egyptian worker for $120. I also decide to buy a much more up to date world map for $40.
(I) Egypt and Rome sign a peace treaty. :(

170 AD (I) - Rome completes Leo's workshop.



Summary - Speaker gets the key trading round for Theology. We had better get a lot from that tech. I hope he can research something faster then 40 turns. We need to get out of 40-turn research mode.


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

Sirp (on deck)
Arizona_Steve
T-Hawk
LKendter
Speaker (currently playing)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/SP5-250AD.zip

Workers at Odessa - I too usually stack up workers to get jobs done sooner. I stacked them like mad at Smolensk, building the FP. Note, though, that Odessa already had plenty of good tiles improved - more than it had population. In that case, I'll spread out the workers to get the whole job done more efficiently.

Good call on letting Rouen become the capital and not auto-raze; I wouldn't have thought of that.

After Theology, see if anyone has Printing Press yet. If not, I might suggest making a gamble on that - if we get it first it's probably close to instant tech parity. Or we could simply research Education to get our universities going. At any rate, keep pushing up one branch until we have a shot at getting some tech first (maybe Economics or Music Theory); once we do we can trade it for everything on the other branch.

BTW, I'd like to throw out a pointer to this, which is an interesting thing I figured out about workers:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48829

Got it.

IT- The game looks a lot different than when I last played. I am afraid we may have made a mistake in not at least pruning India a bit. They are looking quite powerful. Rome cancels our Incense for 9gpt deal and now requires 12gpt plus 25 gold to continue the deal.

260AD (1) Shuffle some workers around. Orleans has unimproved squares, while St. Petersburg does not need several desert squares improved right now. MM St. Petersburg to grow faster.

270AD (2) St. Petersburgh Marketplace => Barracks. Minsk Spearman => Cathedral. India has discovered Theology as have Carthage and Spain. We are still 6 turns away and no amount of science will improve that.

280AD (3) Moscow Horseman => Horseman. Egypt now has theology as well. Only Japan and Rome do not.

290AD (4) Rome now has Theology. Japan still does not.

300AD (5) Smolensk Temple => Courthouse. I switch Orleans from a Marketplace to an Aqueduct, which I rush for 148 gold. The FP will finish in 2 turns in Sverdlovsk, so Orleans will be a powerhouse suddenly and it makes 5 food per turn. I rush the Marketplace in Odessa for 92 gold. We are making 72gpt and have nothing to spend it on, although we should go into deficit research soon. I think the marketplace is worth it at this point though, esp for happiness reasons, since Odessa has no happiness building.

310AD (6) Aqueduct and Marketplace built, Marketplace and Courthouse started.

320AD (7) FP finished in Sverdlovsk, aqueduct started. This city still needs a marketplace, temple, granary, etc. Orleans must run a scientist to stay happy. I put Kiev's scientist back to work. Income jumps to 110gpt from 80.

IT- Carthage declares war on Spain. Spain demands our TM and 54 gold. I give in so as to not have to worry about Bescanon and its iron. Gandhi cancels our RoP and requires 50 gold to renew. I decline.

330AD (8) Finish Theology and start on Printing Press. Trade Theology plus 210 gold to Japan for Engineering. Full science (90%) on Printing Press gets it in 6 turns, with a loss of 113 gold per turn. We have 583 in the bank, so it will be close, but I expect we should be able to dial down research with one or two turns left to save money. 80% gets it in 7 turns at a loss of 85gpt, but I decide on full since I think every turn will count. We do not have too many worker jobs left at the moment, so I send a large portion of our workforce to clear jungle around Sevastopol. That city is not really lacking in tiles to be improved, but there's not much else to be done at the moment.

340AD (9) I have been steadily building horsemen out of Moscow at a rate of 3 turns per horseman because it does not need any of the available buildings (maybe a harbor, but not really necessary until it can grow), and at 30 shields per horseman, there is no waste. I am not sure if we are going to be upgrading troops, but it seems like maybe we should plan on it. Feel free to change the plan for Moscow if you want. MM Minsk and Smolensk for some extra cash and beakers this turn.

IT- Ceasar cancels our spices for 11gpt deal and will not reknew it for any amount of gpt (since we are running a deficit, right?) There is nothing I can do, as Moscow goes into disorder. I use scroll ahead to keep peace everywhere else.

350AD (10) Minsk Cathedral => Collosseum as prebuild for University. St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, and Moscow all switched to Colosseums as prebuilds for universities as well. I have left movement for 5 workers near St. Petersburg. Feel free to move them where you will. No one has Printing Press, so we should be able to clean up in 4 turns. Once we get universities in all our cities, we should be able to research quite quickly.

SP5-350AD (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/SP5-350AD.zip)

Good progress. Commenting, as I always do.. :)

Pruning India would've been, and still is, impossible. We've got what, twenty horsemen and spears? Against a Golden Age tidal wave of elephants? With a long border that would require us to defend at least 5-6 cities? :weed: :)

We'll definitely get back up to speed with Printing Press. Even if someone else pulls it out within four turns, it won't get around to everybody, and we should get to grab a ton of techs with it. :goodjob: Next research will have to wait and see what techs we get from PP. If we don't manage to get up to parity, we should probably pick an off-line tech that nobody has yet, like Music Theory. If we do make parity, um, I don't know what to research because I have no idea where parity is right now. :)

Note that St. Pete does need the desert squares irrigated to reach its full potential size before railroads. The last couple growths will be very slow; merging in workers to top it off is probably a good idea.

Spices - yes, you can't pay out gpt when you're running a deficit. I try to keep an eye on ongoing deals via the detals tab in F4, and renegotiate deals during my turn before you get stuck like that on the AI's. You can temporarily lower science to get some income to pay out, then raise it again back into deficit.

I got it...

(IT) 350AD: The tech situation doesn't look so bad to me. Only India is +Education.

I don't see why Smolensk is building a courthouse. It's right on top of the capital and barely has any corruption. I change it to a cathedral: possibly a university prebuild.

(1) 360AD: Our deal for gems with Carthage runs out, and I can't renew it. Moscow stays in civil disorder, St Petersburg goes into disorder too and I scroll-ahead to save the rest. We'll possibly be able to use Printing Press to acquire new luxuries, but we do need one source now. I buy them off Carthage for 16 gpt. This little fiasco is threatening to push Printing Press back a turn. We're -110gpt with 281 gold and it due in 3 turns.

(2) 370AD: Peace in our empire is finally restored. India has started on the Observatory, so I guess they just got Astronomy. Them getting a hold of the Observatory won't be good, they already have enough science output. I sell around our world map, but it can't quite cover our deficit anymore :)

(3) 380AD: Yakutsk library -> walls. Whew, we can just manage to squeeze Printing Press in for next turn.

(4) 390AD: We get Printing Press, and hmm...Egypt, Rome, Spain, and Carthage all got Education this turn. That'll make it much cheaper for us to get. We trade Printing Press with Rome for Education + Spices.

Ghandi only has Astronomy, not Banking. Not surprisingly, we have no hope of wresting Astronomy from him.

I then send Printing Press to Ghandi for 140 gold + 20gpt. Then PP + 80 gold to Carthage for Feudalism.

Everyone is ahead of us Chivalry and Invention. I can't get those techs, but I do trade PP to Spain for 40 gold + 5gpt. (She had more gpt to pay but didn't want to pay it).

Mass switch to universities. Research to Music Theory due in 10 turns at +0 gpt. This will be cut with the completion of universities, and we can run a small deficit as we have 113 gold in our coffers.

(5) 400AD: Sverdlosk Aqueduct -> Marketplace. Smolensk University -> MDI (We need *some* hope of defending ourselves!)

Music Theory down to 8 turns with the university finished.

(6) 410AD: Minsk University -> MDI. Our source of iron near Yakutsk is exhausted! :-/ Now our only source of iron is the unconnected one on the island.

India has Banking.

I decide to push us into a small surplus for a while, so when our universities complete we can go for aggressive deficit research.

(7) 420AD: blim blah blam.

(8) 430AD: St Petersburg University -> Temple

(9) 440AD: Minsk MDI -> Horseman. Smolensk MDI -> Cathedral. Research turned back up a little.

(10) 450AD: Ackkk! India has cavalry! Orleans Marketplace -> University. Yakutsk Walls -> Marketplace. Sevastapol University -> Cathedral. India completes the Sistine Chapel.

India is up at least 8 techs on us. Not good. Pulling ourselves out of this hole is going to be hard. A war between Egypt and India would *probably* be nice right now, although it's possible that India would just overrun Egypt with ease and become even more powerful.

I have set research to max, and is due in 3 turns. The idea is that hopefully the two universities about to complete will allow us to get it in one turn next turn. If they don't, then just cut research lots to make up the cash.

Arizona_Steve is up now. Good luck!

-Sirp.

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/SP5-450AD.zip)

It might have been possible to fight an early war with India while the rest of the world was at war with France. We could have expanded south instead of north. But what's done is done and we're in ok shape for now.

You can check the numbers to see if we can get Music a turn earlier. Set research to 10% and look at the approximate number of beakers required for the tech (something like 100 beakers * 18 turns.) Then look at the beakers we're producing at 90%, add the beakers that will be produced by the universities, and there you go. :)

I'd do all this myself, but I'm currently at my one computer that refuses to read my PTW disc... :mad:

Also do note that we can push research to 100% instead of 90% and hire a couple entertainers, if we need to.

Next research - Economics, if we can get Banking? Or maybe Democracy, which is worth oodles in trade, although the AIs do prioritize it?

T-Hawk: True :)

We *do* already have research at 100% though :)

I'm not sure what to research next. I'm happy with either Democracy or Economics. I'm not sure if Music Theory will be enough to get Banking @Monopoly though. Sheesh Ghandi is so far ahead it's just not funny.

-Sirp.

Hey, my recalcitrant computer finally cooperated. So I peeked at the save myself. We're already at 100% science - my mistake in thinking we were at 90%.

10% science shows 23 turns to the tech at 36 beakers/turn. That means we need between 793 and 828 beakers. 100% science is 353 beakers, to which the two universities will add 18 and 12 from Moscow and Odessa. That isn't enough to get Music Theory in two turns; it'll take three no matter what we do.

Anytime you need some numbers microanalyzed, I'll be there :D

Oh, and MM tip - switch the two northern cities so that Kiev gets the mined gold hills - Tblisi has two mined hills of its own that aren't shared that it could be working instead. Might also want to switch Tblisi's harbor to a library so it doesn't flip inconveniently.

It's been over 48 hours since Sirp played and no word from Arizona Steve. T-Hawk, you want to jump in here?

Sirp (JUST PLAYED)
Arizona_Steve (SKIPPED?)
T-Hawk (UP NOW?)
LKendter (ON DECK?)
Speaker

CivGeneral walks in to the room and Observers the Players

CG: Hmm an interesting ga...

Engener Watto: Eb eb eb, Wait untill the DTDG comes, then Shadow. Some a sita down, my popcorn is getting cold

Indeed it has been a long time since I played. Arizona_Steve is skipped and T-Hawk is up.

-Sirp.

Not tonight, but if we don't hear from Steve by tomorrow evening (US Eastern), I'll go ahead and take it.

CivGeneral: you are a very confusing person... :confused:

Originally posted by T-hawk
CivGeneral: you are a very confusing person... :confused:

Sorry about that, I was finishing doing a Role play thingy at the DG, Wont happen again ;).

Darn you Night time Air ( I am on the East Cost of the USA BTW ;) )

Sorry guys, didn't realize things had moved on so quickly - I was out skiing all weekend, and my computer isn't back up yet. So I'll jump back in on my next turn.

Now that I have patch 1.21f working, would anyone be opposed to switching this game over to that patch? I understand that all the players (except me!) are from the US.

Lkendter, I know you run all your games under 1.14f, but do you mind switching between patches for this game? If you do, then that's no problem, but if no-one minds upgrading then we'll look at doing that.

-Sirp.

I do got it, but I got sidetracked with the Epic 25 reports and analyzing LK44 tonight. Will play tomorrow.

I prefer avoid switching, but if everyone votes yes I will go along with the majority.

ok, if I haven't heard any objections by my next turn, I'll switch it over then. (This is just to make sure we have adequate time to hear objections, not because I think I'm the only person capable of upgrading it :) )

-Sirp.

Switching is ok with me.

Inherited turn (playing on 1.14 but it's fine with me if we change):

I reassign a bunch of horsemen from Moscow to Sevastopol for insurance on the anti-flip garrison. I also wake the galley in Moscow and tell it to go to Orleans; it won't help at home but might be needed in an emergency at Besancon. Actually, I'll have it wait in Minsk for upgrading to caravel, then move it.

Orleans swapped to granary. Kiev assigned to the mined gold tiles as I suggested.

I said St. Pete needed desert irrigated, yes - but it needed TWO irrigated desert squares, not ELEVEN. :crazyeye: Yakutsk needs worker help badly - it's got only one two-food square!

Library rushed in Besancon for $56; it's under third-ring cultural infringement from India's Rheims; cheap flip insurance.

12/turn for Incense from Rome is up for renewal, and if we don't renew it they will and we'll be stuck unable to pay per-turn. I temporarily lower science, make a new deal for 19/turn, and raise it again.

======

Sverdlovsk marketplace -> granary. Minsk set to build spears every turn at exactly 20 shields. Odessa university -> settler (it's nice to have one on standby, and Odessa is already maxed on food and can regrow very quickly.)

St. Augustine says we're the sixth most powerful nation in the world, behind Spain (how??) and ahead of only Japan.

460 AD: As per my analysis, Music Theory can't be reached in one turn right now. Research to 60% and the tech is still due in 2.

Two workers merged into Sevastopol (we've got plenty) instead of waiting 10 turns for each of the last two growths. The rest of the workers start mining the city's land.

470 AD: Spain and Carthage make peace. (They were at war?)

=======

480 AD: AAUGH! We got Music Theory, but everybody else got it this same turn! :mad: :aargh: Except, COMPLETELY inexplicably, India.

Eeek. There is brokering available, if we pay Music Theory plus 126/turn to India for Banking at monopoly price. Then we can resell Banking to four other civs, including a THIRD-level brokerage by getting Astronomy and trading it to Rome for Invention.

I don't know what to do now. I'm going out now for a bit and will finish later; any comments are welcome.

By the way, India is in Democracy government. Nobody else is. That's another tech that they're probably ahead by a monopoly (and it tells us that we can't research that for trade-bait.)

For 126/turn, we can acquire at least five techs: Banking, Astronomy, Invention, Chivalry, and almost certainly Gunpowder. Also possibilities on Chemistry and maybe Physics and Metallurgy. I can't decide if this is A) too much against the spirit of this game, and B) a good idea anyway.

On one hand, it's a very narrow window for brokering that's only available by a stroke of luck. On the other hand, one turn later for somebody else to research Music would have put us at tech parity free and clear.

Gee that sure is an "Aaarghh!"

I don't think that doing the trade is too against the spirit of the variant: we're still selling India a tech in exchange for their tech, we're just throwing in gold as well. If we were buying multiple techs from them for one 'puny' tech + gold, then that'd be against the spirit of the variant. We can, but should we? I'm tending toward saying that we should make the trade, since I think we're running out of opportunities to catch up to India. But still, it'll make India go even faster, and will lock us out of any decent research for a while to come. India will almost certainly be well into the industrial age once the twenty turns is up!

What to do...what to do....really it's your call T-Hawk :)

-Sirp.

Could their be any possiblity of a succesfull 40 turn research at the end? With that type of gpt outlay we will be at 40 turns for the next research project.

Ok. Those uncultured barbaric Indians might know how to fire guns and cannons, but they can't play a trumpet. We'll teach them that. Since we don't know what to do with our money, India says they'll take 126/turn of it to teach us Banking. Now we know how to manage our money, and Step 1 of that is don't give it all to other civs. :)

We take this newfound knowledge to Hannibal, who will teach us how the stars work if we teach him how money works. Because we know how money works, we can get him to pay an extra 40 gold.

We take knowledge of Astronomy over to Caesar, who reciprocates by teaching us the wonders of Invention and throws in an updated world map.

Now Rome, Egypt, and Spain all know how to make these newfangled "gun" contraptions, but don't know where to put their money. Since Egypt and Spain are the most likely to have any further techs, and also have plain cash to trade us for Banking, we choose Rome to give Banking to in exchange for Gunpowder. Rome requires we add in 90 gold.

Everyone also has Chemistry. Spain can pay us full cash price for Banking, while Egypt cannot. So we trade Banking plus 100 gold and 8/turn to Egypt for Chemistry.

Then everyone - even Rome surprisingly - has Metallurgy. Well, we can pay Banking plus 19/turn to Spain for that.

Everyone has Military Tradition, but there isn't anything else we can trade for it. Still, we parleyed Music Theory (and a big cash payment) into six more techs. We didn't get either Chivalry or Military Tradition, though.

India has monopolies on both Democracy and Physics.

Of course, now we can't even run 10% research without going broke. I order a single scientist on Economics, although I rather expect that it won't help anything.

Since now we're going to be running cash for a good while, a bunch of banks are ordered up.

I briefly consider trying for a wonder, but the cascade is still out in full force from Copernicus through Bach's, so we probably wouldn't get anything useful.

======

490 AD: Actually.... who says we can't research? There is a crazy strategy I've been wanting to try out for quite a while, and this is the perfect time.

100% RESEARCH IS ORDERED ON ECONOMICS. This throws us far, far into bankruptcy, at -292 gold per turn. But a civ's treasury can't go negative! We will lose one building and one worker per turn, but we will have some juicy trade-bait in Economics in six turns.

We lose our barracks at Moscow this turn; no big deal. Trading a barracks and a worker for 400 beakers is worthwhile.

500 AD: Granary at Odessa goes poof. Quite an unnecessary building anyway.

510 AD: Smolensk no longer has a barracks.

520 AD: The Ministry of Finance dismantles Smolensk's granary.

530 AD: Orleans loses its granary - whoops, that one actually meant something.

540 AD: The Barracks of St. Petersburg falls down.

Can anyone figure out the pattern to these buildings getting destroyed? I can't...

550 AD: We've got Economics, and we've got it first. :goodjob: :jump: [party]

We trade Economics to Spain for Physics + Chivalry.
Physics to Carthage gets us Military Tradition.

Four techs for the cost of 300 shields worth of buildings. We just got our own personal Theory of Evolution, and a better value too. :)

Eleven total techs acquired on my turn. All in a day's work. :D

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India has a monopoly on Magnetism. For that reason, I hold off on trading Economics to anyone else in hopes that Magnetism gets traded around in some configuration that we could trade Economics for it. Also, Economics to Carthage next turn can get us a renewal of Gems.

Next leader could try another crazy bankruptcy run on Theory of Gravity, or could sit back and accumulate some cash. Do rebuild the barracks, and skim workers off maxed size-12 cities to replace the ones we lost. We're down to only 12 plus slaves, which is enough for now but we'll need more for rails. (And just pray we have coal somewhere. Heh, wouldn't it be a hoot if Besancon had an Iron Works?)

About patching - do we want to try and hold off until we get into the industrial age? We get Nationalism for free if we don't patch, or a random tech if we do.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/sp5-550ad.zip

All I can say is "Wow." That was one masterful turn. They don't call us the Russian Researchers for nothing. We spend so much time studying and experimenting to develop new science that we let our buildings fall self-destruct.

Whoa great turn there! :goodjob: We didn't even lose anything *too* major (losing a marketplace or university in an important city could have been bad)

Yeah I'm happy to hold off on the next patch until we're in the industrial age.

EDIT: Btw, do other civs get mad at you if you are paying them money and run out of cash? I seem to remember that happening to me once a long time ago in a solo Deity game, I was attacked by the Japanese and signed in the Egyptians to help me for lots of cash. However by the time Japan had made short work of my cities, I couldn't afford to pay Egypt, and they were furious with me.

-Sirp.

I see it, though I may not get it until tommorrow. LK42 is due first, and will be time consuming.

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I really don't know how to take the economics move. I won't do this during my turn, as I feel it is an exploit. Getting a tech at at hyper speed for a few buildings seems to take advantage of a game programming weakness.

[delurk]
i dont think that it is an exploit. if i mean, there are some consequences that i think are enough. if the gamemakers wanted the consequences to be more dire, they would have made them that way
[lurk]

@LK: I don't see it as an exploit either. If you make a concious decision to lose one random building and one random unit every turn (and possibly have your reputation chewed up), then I think that's reasonable.

If this started to become common play, so that people relied on doing this, then I think it might become exploitive, but I don't think it's a beneficial enough move for that to happen. I also think it's particularly in the spirit of the Researcher variant to do this, since we're sacrificing everything else for research.

-Sirp.

Whoa great turn there! We didn't even lose anything *too* major (losing a marketplace or university in an important city could have been bad)

This isn't the first time I pulled the bankruptcy move, but it's the largest use I ever made of it. I have never seen anything other than a barracks or granary drop.

Notice that the buildings in every city's zoom window are always listed in the same order, barracks first, then granary, temple, and so on. My best guess is that the game picks a city at random - perhaps weighted by the size of the city - and then dismantles the first building in that city's list.

Yeah I'm happy to hold off on the next patch until we're in the industrial age.

Well, I mean we can take Nationalism guaranteed, or take a chance on likely-more-useful Steam Power or the risk of a Medicine whammy.

EDIT: Btw, do other civs get mad at you if you are paying them money and run out of cash? I seem to remember that happening to me once a long time ago in a solo Deity game, I was attacked by the Japanese and signed in the Egyptians to help me for lots of cash. However by the time Japan had made short work of my cities, I couldn't afford to pay Egypt, and they were furious with me.

I don't think so. Everyone's still at the same level of politeness that they were, I think. Besides, they do still get their money even if we're running ourselves into bankruptcy.

Exploitiveness: It's a tough call. Logically, ALL the buildings and units that we couldn't afford to maintain would be dismantled, so it does defy common sense.

But the game is programmed for a certain level of consequence, and it isn't trivial to lose a building and a worker (I was surprised we kept losing workers, even though we had 19 horses and 21 spears to only 12 workers).

But if it can be determined exactly how it works, it might rise to the level of exploitive. In the Industrial Age, it wouldn't be hard to have multiple cities building and rebuilding barracks and granaries constantly, and a couple of size-6 farms turning out a worker every turn.

And on a large or huge map, it's worse, since there's more and more cities to provide sacrificial barracks and workers, and the quanitity of beakers gained is even higher.

At any rate, it definitely does fit with the spirit of this game to a T, so I figured I'd give it a whirl and see what happens. :)

Notice that the buildings in every city's zoom window are always listed in the same order, barracks first, then granary, temple, and so on. My best guess is that the game picks a city at random - perhaps weighted by the size of the city - and then dismantles the first building in that city's list.


Yeah perhaps; perhaps also the top unit as listed on the military advisor screen is taken? That's why it's always workers perhaps?


I don't think so. Everyone's still at the same level of politeness that they were, I think. Besides, they do still get their money even if we're running ourselves into bankruptcy.


Yeah I know that they still get their money, but nevertheless in my game they went to furious. But, this game was ancient, as in just after Epic 4, so things could have been changed since then, or it could have been another factor causing it. I do think I remember seeing some other people reporting the same thing though.


But the game is programmed for a certain level of consequence, and it isn't trivial to lose a building and a worker (I was surprised we kept losing workers, even though we had 19 horses and 21 spears to only 12 workers).


Indeed it's not. If I were programming the game I'd probably simply disallow the science rate being set to something you can't afford.

However, the game designers made their choice, and I don't see too much wrong with it if they want to make it a valid strategy. It's not *too* illogical though, since if you stop paying maintenance on things, they're going to start breaking down slowly. It's not like everything you stop paying maintenance on is just going to collapse overnight.

-Sirp.

was reading through a lot of SG threads the past few weeks, and was reading this one with great interest until the end.. it's not finished! all the rest i've read were from last year or earlier, what a disappointment :)
high quality play though guys :D

Sirp and T-hawk... I probably shouldn't thread jack here, but I do find the max research to be an exploit. If you sell your barracks, you only get 2 gold for them. If you sell a granary, you get 7 gold. But if you go about the max research strategy, you granary gets transformed into much, much more gold. This is why I think this "strategy" is an exploit. If the losses were more commensurate with the gain, it wouldn't be as much of an exploit and more of an "acceptable" technique.

For some reason, this strategy seems similar to another exploit that was discussed awhile ago, but I can't seem to come up with the example. Anyways, enough preaching...

JMB