Game Announcement (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1321697#post1321697)

Victory Condition - Conquest

Here is the >>save<< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4PTW-4000BC.SAV)

Final Scores- Courtesy of Space

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/mb4final.jpg

Jason Scores
Roster PTW - 6198 in 1788AD
Roster A - 7594 in 1715AD
Roster B - 7840 in 1585AD

This game is now completed.

Checking In

Reporting for duty sir!

I am posting the game early so I can go out and get drunk as a skunk tomorrow. The save is in the first post in this thread.

That's an interesting start! I'd move my worker NW before settling, but there doesn't appear to be a great starting tile screaming to be settled. I'd be interested in what some of the more experienced team members think.

Got it.

I won't be able to play it before tomorrow, anyway.

Here is the start position

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/start_pos_copy.jpg

I suggest we move the worker north onto the mountain to take a look from there and if nothing obvious reveals itself move the settler west onto the hill. I really would like to settle near the river, so those two moves give us the best view around the river.

Smackster

So, here we go to try and rewrite history... Let us see if this time Nobunaga manages to survive long enough to defeat Ieyasu and subdue all of Japan under the rule of the Oda lineage!

I was half expecting the Ashigaru footman to be our UU in the form of a high-defense AA unit, but seeing a 4.2.1 Kensai Oda instead of the Swordsman makes me wonder...

We are -of course- Militaristic and Religious.


Turn 1 - 4000 BC
Since the river and the single bonus tile within sight are west, I move the worker on the hill due west.

The move reveals this

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-4000BC.jpg

Founding in place would get the river, Lambs and Goats after the first border expansion, but very poor food or shield yield for the first 10 turns.

Having decided to move the settler, the choice is between W and NW.

NW would immediately get the Lambs; it would take six more turns to have it irrigated, which would 'only' result in reaching pop 2 one turn earlier. On the other hand, settling there would loose the nice 2.2.0 Goats, which is almost like a Bonus Grasslands without having to wait for it to be mined.

In addition, it doesn't look like we can easily squeeze more cities to the South and West, so that settling the hill would better cover the available tiles and leave more room for close settlements to the East and North.

With no obvious settler factory in sight (at least for me), the starting short-term plan is:
- The settler will found our capital 1W of starting position
- The worker will work the lambs and the two bonus grasslands
- Our research will pursue Terra Cotta at max speed (not trusting on a super-early encounter with an expansionistic civ).


Turn 2 - 3950 BC
Azuchi founded: Warrior
Worker N
Researching Terra Cotta at 100%


Turn 3 - 3900 BC
Worker on Lambs.


Turn 4 - 3850 BC
Worker Irrigates


Turn 7 - 3700 BC
Azuchi: Warrior - warrior
Warrior moves E


Turn 8 - 3650 BC
Worker builds road
Warrior NE (on mountain).


Turn 9 - 3600 BC
Warrior N


Turn 10 - 3550 BC
Warrior N. Coast spotted


Turn 11 - 3500 BC
Warrior N
Worker W


Turn 12 - 3450 BC
Azuchi: warrior - warrior
Warrior 2 will go South, then east.
Worker mines
Warrior 1 W - he will go west. I am not recording their moves any longer unless they show something spectacular.
We spend the next three turns with lux at 10%.


Turn 15 - 3300 BC
Azuchi: warrior - Temple (prebuild for Granary)
Warrior 1 SW
Warrior 2 S
Warrior 3 stays at home for MP. Switch Lux back to 0%, we are making 1 gpt now.


Turn 18 - 3150 BC
Worker builds Road


Turn 19 - 3100 BC
We discover Terra Cotta. Assuming that we are going to meet someone sooner or later, I start on Taoist Mysticism.

Move warriors -just as said, we meet...

...Tokugawa himself. He knows Bronze Culture and The Wheel, and lacks Terra Cotta and Martial Arts. They have two cities.

He won't give us The Wheel, of course; he would share with us Bronze Culture + 7 gp for Terra Cotta and Martial Arts. Hhmmm. Let's wait to see if we can meet anyone else.

Azuchi at pop 3, increase luxury to 10% to avoid riots.


This is our world in 3050 BC

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/SGGOTM24_3050BC.jpg


The key to Oda's realm (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-3050BC.zip)

Karasu: Can you post your Firaxis score at the end of the 3000BC turn please? Thanks

Sir Bugsy: If Karasu played the right number of turns you are up, otherwise he owes your team a turn. ;)

Ops, I forgot the score.

I played to the end of 3050 BC, when our Firaxis score is the astounding number of SEVENTYNINE

OK Bugsy, you get 11 turns. Can you post the score at the end of the 3000BC save so you are in line with the other teams please?

Thanks.

Opps! Didn't spot the link to this thread until today.

Checking in, and on deck. I see I hand off to Smackster *again* in this game. That seems a little hard on him!

Let's go, SirBugsy :hammer:

Alan, I can change that if you'd like. He could hand off to you .

No leave it as it is, I'm used to cleaning up the mess Alan leaves :)

But seriously as I'm usually in the US, our time zones work such that we often can play the same day

Just to show you what it means to be a good team... Are we all set for some sock-thrashing? ;)

Sock-thrashing? I'm not familiar with that term.

By the way I've "got it" and will play today. Hopefully in time for Alan to play in the UK.

Having UK,US, UK,US should help us move the game along quickly.

Goals:
Maximize capitol for settlers.
Exploration

Looks like a good start from Karasu, and I would have probably played it the same way, but I wonder what the team thinks about actually building a settler first before the granary. The thinking is that you get less benifit from the early granary as in this game the first city doesn't have that much food. The second site can be built 4 squares near the cows to the SE, which might be a better settler factory. Doint this from the little picture so my eyes might be tricking me.

So my question is should one always build the granary first, or is there a type of map where building a settler first makes sense.

Smackster

It's not my problem, so it's Smackster's call ;)

Re settler or granary first - Just some thoughts to keep the discussion going ...

I haven't done the sums, but, as our first city is going to be a shield centre and the cattle are the only food bonus in sight, we are likely to be building settlers in city #2. So my guts tell me we'd do better to build a settler asap so that we can get the second city up fast, and then put a granary there. And maybe Cracker's given us some more bonuses under the remaining fog in the east.

Meanwhile it may be worth considering an early cheap barracks in the capital.

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
Sock-thrashing? I'm not familiar with that term.
Karasu is referring to a triumphalist comment I made in our SG23 thread that we had "thrashed the socks off" the PTW team. I guess it's another example of our divided use of a common language.

OK - it sounds like the team would like the following:

1. Capitol: Allow Granary to complete(6 turns), then settler

or are you saying

2. Shift Capitol immediately to settler then barracks
2nd city: Granary first

Next question:

If the answer is number two, (which I think is what smackster is saying) where to settle
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/SGGOTM24_3050BC_dot_map.jpg

I'm thinking either green dot or blue dot, depending on what I find under the fog. The only bad thing I see is no immediate fresh water in that area.

Well, I did hesitate a lot before opting for the Granary. In fact, it is always a difficult trade-off, all the more when there are no clear good or bad spots around.

What one trades here is the turns passed with a single, pop-3 city against the ones spent with two pop-1 cities (or a similar situation). We will get a better production and a faster settler output later on -in this case I went for the Granary just because of the relatively low food potential of the area: the idea is that a Granary may be even more necessary to ensure faster pop recovery, since we will have to rely on Azuchi for quite a while.

The absence of an obvious settler factory location also made me think of something like a 'distributed' factory among two - three cities, that will alternate in the production of settlers, units and workers.

So, there is a logic behind this choice, but it may well prove less than optimal... You certainly raised a very interesting point, Smackster.

So, switching from Granary to Settler is still an option (just check whether we would loose too many shields), I would avoid going for a Barracks right now, though.

Regarding the Cow, I think Smackster is referring to the one 4 NW of our capital. No fresh water either, but closer and in the general direction of the Tokugawa.

CivGeneral reporting in :)

OK it really helps if one opens the game up and looks at the save.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A_-_3050_Dot_map_2.jpg

Here's the area NW of our capitol.

I think smackster is right. I will change the granary to a settler...due next turn. Then barracks.
I'm thinking about settling at the red dot for the following reasons:

1. five BG's in our immediate 11 tile area. (the mined tile the worker is on is a BG also) so at pop 5 we can have 11spt before corruption.
2. The cow will give 3 fpt when irrigated (that's a lot of work to get water there)

I think the best we could do is a six-turn settler factory, building spear, settler.

Please team I need your thoughts.

Edit - Karasu and I cross posted. We would be right at 30 shields next turn in our capitol, but at pop 1.

Pre-flight checks (0) 3050 BC – Karasu was right Tokugawa is a snot. For the knowledge we have, he’ll give a pittance. For the knowledge he has, he wants everything we have, including all our gpt.

After much pondering, reading Karasu’s post, more pondering and several calculations. I make the following command decision – I leave the granary as it is for the following reasons:
1. If I switch to a settler, the pop will drop to one, and any subsequent build will be hampered by the lack of population.
2. The granary will be good to have in the capitol no matter what we’re building there.
3. At pop 4, we will be able to build a settler in four turns (8 spt, 3 extra fpt). In 10 turns we would be at pop 3 with a granary and a settler as opposed to being at two pop 1 cities with no improvements.

Soooo, I hit enter and Tokogawa’s warrior is heading directly at our city.

(1) 3000 BC – Move worker onto BG to mine then road. Southern warrior climbs a hill and sees the coast. No change on the diplomatic front. Firaxis score – 81

(2) – 2950 BC – Worker => mine. Explore. Diplo- nada.

(3) – 2900 BC – Western warrior has the northern boundary of Toku’s lands. Diplo-no change.

(4) – 2850 BC – Explore. Diplo check - :sleep:

(5) – 2800 BC – MM Azuchi to grow in 2 turns and build the granary next turn. I didn’t figure this into my calculations, but it still works. Dip check – Yeah, he’s still a dip, but now he has Martial Arts.

IBT – Azuchi: Granary => Settler

(6) – 2750 BC – Cut into Toku’s lands to get to the other side. Dip check – nothing.

IBT – Get asked to leave.

(7) – 2710 BC – Azuchi grows. MM to grow in 4 and produce settler in 4. Lux to 20%, budget is break even.

IBT – See a Tokugawa settler pair run off to the NW of their capitol.

(8) – 2670 BC – Mine completes. Settler in now due in 2 ,grow in 3. MM again to do both in 3, gaining 1 gpt.

IBT – Toku city is founded north of our warrior.

(9) – 2630 BC – Explore.

(10) -2590 BC – Our western warrior has the coastline complete with squids.

IBT – Azuchi: Settler => Rax (obviously vetoable)

(11) – 2550 BC – Move work and settler towards new city site. – Firaxis score- 95

Here's a picture of our world
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A_-_2550_BC.jpg

Daimyo's Swords of Power (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A,_2550_BC.SAV)

First, I hope I didn't mess the team up too badly. I tried to make the best judgments possible. I think with a barracks and a granary in the first two cities we can have two six-turn settler factories.

In spite of all the mountains, I think there are some decent city sites. One to the west along the river, a couple south in those mountain valleys like by the goats, SE by the cow, SSE by the lambs. I think this is very do-able. Hopefully we'll get some more contact soon.

Note: while I know what the big picture is map-wise. I tried to make decisions with our warriors that I would normally make. i.e. I followed the mountain chain to gain the widest possible view instead of bee-lining towards a location I remembered.

In hindsight, I should have tried to trade Tokugawa Martial Arts before he got it, but when he keeps offering 10G and that's all he has, it is hard to judge when it was going to come in for him. Hopefully, that wasn't too :smoke: of a move.

OK. I've got it. I've only loaded it as a sanity check, as I needed to ensure that my software was modded correctly, and I was concerned that the save file is not zipped. I recommend we zip the .SAV for upload in future if possible, as that gives us a protective checksum to avoid creating and perpetuating a corrupted file.

Doesn't look too great, does it! I'll have a good look around and try to play my ten before midnight GMT. I'll come back shortly if I need a team huddle before I start.

[EDIT] I cross-posted with Sir Bugsy. I didn't even start gotm24, so I have never seen this map, and it's all a mystery to me. Just a warning that I don't even have to pretend!

I'll zip my saves in the future... Good luck Alan

One quick question now I've had a small explore of the current state:

The cattle I thought you were talking about in the south east is in the same expanded city radius as a wine tile further east. Those two tiles with irrigation would produce five food per turn, and as there is also fresh water next to the wine, there's irrigation. There's one visible bonus grass, and with any luck there may also be additional shields under the fog to create a four turn factory.

Even if the shields aren't there, wasn't this a better bet than the one we are looking at currently? Or are you guys working on prior knowledge?

PS we'd need a temple, but they are cheap.

I didn't have prior knowledge of our local area. The only knowledge I have is of the general layout of where everyone is. I stopped playing the GOTM during the early IA when I was hopelessly behind in tech. When it comes time to send out a galley, I will ask you where to send it and then go in that direction. I feel that me making a decision like that would be cheating.

If you can find a good location for a settler factory, I'd go for it. What might be lost in the turns getting there will be gotten back with quicker settler production. The site to the north will only ever get 3 extra food in despotism.

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
1. five BG's in our immediate 11 tile area. (the mined tile the worker is on is a BG also) so at pop 5 we can have 11spt before corruption.
2. The cow will give 3 fpt when irrigated (that's a lot of work to get water there)
Since water doesn't flow over hills, we'll lose one of those shields for an irrigated tile, unless we clear two forest tiles and irrigate in from the west.

If I settle where we stand now the irrigation is easier, and we get up and running faster. Any comments?

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
I didn't have prior knowledge of our local area. The only knowledge I have is of the general layout of where everyone is. I stopped playing the GOTM during the early IA when I was hopelessly behind in tech. When it comes time to send out a galley, I will ask you where to send it and then go in that direction. I feel that me making a decision like that would be cheating. Sorry, it wasn't meant as a criticism, I only wanted to make sure you all know my state of total ignorance :)

If you can find a good location for a settler factory, I'd go for it. What might be lost in the turns getting there will be gotten back with quicker settler production. The site to the north will only ever get 3 extra food in despotism. I don't think I want to march over there now. I was thinking it might be a good place for our next settler to go, and it may affect what we decide to do with the two cities we have now.

Alan - I didn't take it as a criticism, plus I have a pretty tough skin, so criticize all you want. These things are a learning experience for me. :D

I like your idea of settling our new settler in place. I initially didn’t want to settle on the BG, but I guess that really doesn’t matter in this case. We have enough BG’s and between the hill and the BG, we’ll still lose a shield. Plus it will gain us the worker turns having to irrigate then mine.

Bugs

Way back 10 messages ago, my original thought was that we should not change the granary as we are too far along, just wanted to know how everyone would decide to do this, as I am never sure now. Would be interesting for somebody to play the first set of turns, and build the settler first to see how quickly we can get the first few cities built that way. Actually we probably need to wait a while (so as not to spoil anything) as that would only be a true test to see how quickly the second city granary and its first settler could be done if we build a settler before a granary in the first city.

I did play the whole of GOTM 24 but they way I played it I didn't even look at Japan, and didn't even know where Oda was, I may let you know about that after we finish.

I have no comments on the last moves as I have no time to look at it.

As I'm in the UK right now, can't follow Alan's moves (can when in the US) so will have to look at this tomorrow, but I'm already thinking about an extended lunch hour with Civ. Might be light on the report so that I can get the moves done. Otherwise I'm in Norway Wednesday and don't even know if I have the right modem connection (I don't usually travel like this, but its fun keeping up with the game while I do), what I do know is that I only have a light coat so glad its not December.

Smackster

AlanH: You are UP

I will post a table of comparative scores in the forst post of the thread. Be a little patient though please.

Turn 0 2550 BC State of the Nation

Azachi has a granary and is building a barracks. It has lots of flexibility for varying shield and food production, and at pop 3 it is working fully improved tiles. We are researching Taoist Mysticism, playing to our religious head start, with slider at 2.6.2 for high speed. ETA is 17 turns. We have a settler in the north ready to build near the cattle. We have three regular warriors - a West explorer, an East explorer and an MP in Azachi.

I decided that if we are going to research fast we'd better go for it fully. Slider to 1.8.1, -1 gpt, Mysticism in 12 turns. Confirm ther are no deals available with Tokugawa, our only contact.

I decided to build where the settler is now standing, as this makes irrigation of the cattle tile easier. It's a bonus grass tile, but we'd lose the bonus anyway in order to connect the cow to water. Then it dawned on me: We have a four-turn settler farm. If this next city works the wheat plus the cattle it gets five fpt, and the bonus grass plus the wheat and cattle will supply enough shields.

Hit next turn.

IBT: A Tokugawa warrior moves onto the mountain south of West Warrior.

Turn 1 2510 BC

29 gold, Mysticism in 11 turns.

West warrior: Moves SE to hill as mountain is blocked. Sees dyes.
East Warrior moves NW.
Worker moves East to irrigate plains tile to get water to cattle.
Build Nagoya, start warrior.
With the slider at 1.8.1, we now break even with Mysticism in 10 turns.

IBT: Tokugawa warrior moves north off moountain.

Turn 2 2470 BC

29 gold, Mysticism in 9 turns.

West Warrior moves SW to mountain, sees wheat.
East Warrior moves N, sees two wool on hills.
Worker starts irrigating plains.
MM Azachi and Nagoya to produce more gold without sacrificing turns to complete.
Slider to 0.9.1, -1 gpt, Mysticism in 7 turns.
No change in Tokugawa's attitude.

Turn 3 2430 BC

28 gold, Mysticism in 6 turns.
West Warrior moves S off mountain.
East Warrior moves NW to mountain, sees more wool, a river and coast.
No change in Tokugawa's attitude.

IBT: Azuchi completes Barracks, starts Warrior. Pop grows to 4.

Turn 4 2390 BC
27 gold, Mysticism in 5 turns.
East Warrior moves N on mountain, sees barb camp on hills across the valley.
I've just realised there's a green border visible SE of current position. Must have missed it before, will head that way, avoiding the barbs.
West Warrior moves S to wheat and river.
Slider to 0.8.2 for Azachi's increased pop.
MM the two cities to juggle for maximum gold, minimum waste of food and shields.
Mysticism now 6 turns, -2 gpt.

Turn 5 2350 BC

25 gold, Mysticism in 5 turns.

Barb camp in the east now has two warriors.
East Warrior doubles back south to investigate green border.
West Warrior moves south, sees more wheat. What a beautiful river site.

IBT: A barb warrior heads south out of camp in the east.
Warriors completed in both cities. Worker completes irrigation.

Turn 6 2310 BC

23 gold, Mysticism in 4 turns.

Worker starts road on plains tile.
New warrior fortifies in Nagoya as MP ready for growth.
New Vet Warrior heads SE to explore the local fog.
East Warrior S, playing cat annd mouse with the barb to try to get into a good defensive location.
Set Azachi to build a Settler, Nagoya starts a warrior, to be reviewed.

IBT: Azuchi grows to pop 5, Nagoya grows to pop 2.

Turn 7 2270 BC

21 gold, Mysticism in 3 turns.

East Warrior SE. West Warrior S. Vet Warrior SE.
Tokugawa now has another city.

Turn 8 2230 BC

19 gold, Mysticism in 2 turns.

East Warrior E into forest next to barb. Defensive bonus should be OK
West Warrior S, sees a red border.
Vet Warrior SE to mountain, sees more bonus grass between the cattle and the wines. This could be another good site.
Contact with Kuroda, the civ with teh green border. East Warrior must have been spotted approaching. Kuroda has 10 gold, Wheel and Bronze, and doesn't need anything. However, the second source reduces Tokugawa's prices and he will swap Bronze for Terracotta. It's a deal.
Switch Nagoya to Granary.
Slider to 0.7.3 to keep Azuchi happy. Mysticism is still due in 2 turns.

Note to self: I'm seeing messy diplo messages. Must check if I have the right diplomacy.txt file when I've finished this sequence.

IBT: Barb attacks East Warrior in forest and dies. Inflicts zero damage.

Turn 9 2190 BC

17 gold. Mysticism next turn.

East Warrior moves NE to hills to confirm green border.
Vet Warrior E.
West Warrior moves SW to mountain, sees an empty city.
Contact with Takeda. He's annoyed, has 10 gold and 3 cities, Wheel and Iron Working.
He wants Burial and Terracotta.
Check around for deals. Tokugara has Iron Working and Wheel as well, but Kurode only has Wheel. Let's deal!

Takeda gives Iron Working plus 10 gold for Terracotta plus Burial.
Karoda gives Wheel plus 10 gold for Iron Working.

We have iron near to Nagoya and horses and iron in the southern hills.

Adjust slider to 2.5.3 for minimum science to complete Mysticism, break even.

IBT: Mysticism complete. Start Shamanism at 10%, 50 turns.
Settler completed in Azachi, start Flagged Footman (for review by Smackster)

Turn 10 2150 BC

East Warrior N. Weat Warrior SE. Vet Warrior E. Sees a river, this site looks good. Settler moves SE towards this location.

Firaxis score at end of turn 2150 BC is 112.

We are up Taoist Mysticism on all three known civs, and only one has any cash left. I think it's going to be all right. I've not committed any money on the next research project yet, so that's an open choice. The others will not even get started on Shamanism for a while, so we can keep our lead with that, or we could go for Bajutsu, or ....

Bansai, Smackster!

The zipped save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-2150BC.SAV.zip).

Here's a screenshot. I've marked a possible second settler/high productivity location with a yellow dot. With a temple to expand it, it will grab the wine, the cattle and the iron. There's iron and horss where I've marked them, and I've put pink dots at possible city locations. Four are at 3-3.5 RCP distance to match Nagoya, the other two are options to snag the horses.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A_2150BC.gif

Smackster is UP.

Good, Alan! :goodjob: Great idea with settling over there. It's the small detail that nobody saw...

I realised tonight that we had the potential settler factory, and rushed throught the thread this morning with some anticipation.
I think I had been waylaid by the inconscious reluctance at settling on Bonus Grasslands... Another good lesson!

Still, I think SirBugsy made the right choice to stick to the Granary. Much as I was torn between that and the early Settler, I think that we are in a good position to use Azuchi as Worker - Military factory (plus the odd Settler) for a more efficient expansion.

Also, good trading round -even though that's now customary of us... :D
Regarding technology, I think we should consider our GA timing and war plans.
If the Kensai Oda is really our UU, we may want to slow down the tech pace somewhat and start setting up for a late-AA massive attack on our neighbours using these guys.
The GA would speed us through the early Middle Ages... straight to Cavalry?

I would settle the tile 2SE+1E of Azuchi (south of your pink), as it is still on the way to the yellow and can immediately use the Goats on the mountain.
I'd settle the western pink site next, to deny Tokugawa the horses and establish our borders along the river.

Another couple of floating comments: The Lighthouse. It's a Continents map, right? And we want to kill them all...
And the Forbidden Palace. If we don't get a Great Leader to get it in somebody else's ideally-located capital, it may be worth starting to build it not far from Azuchi. From a superficial look, the area between Azuchi and the yellow spot doesn't seem too bad.

EDIT: Oh, yes. Workers!

Too much work, there is a good chance I can't play tonight, and as I might not tomorrow I should probably skip.

No lets be decisive, I Skip this round. Probably best to completely skip me until after Alan's next turn.

Smackster

Gengis Khan, in case MB is late on line, it looks like you're UP.

Originally posted by Karasu
Still, I think SirBugsy made the right choice to stick to the Granary. Much as I was torn between that and the early Settler, I think that we are in a good position to use Azuchi as Worker - Military factory (plus the odd Settler) for a more efficient expansion.I agree. I have to quell my impatience. I tend to see those AI power curves shooting off as they build cities galore, and worry too much about trying to keep up. I'm still learning that a slower burn to start with can build the platform for a swift catch-up later, and once you are on a faster growth curve you just have to dominate.

Also, good trading round -even though that's now customary of us... :DI really look forward to these ever since I got into Moonsinger's training session.
Regarding technology, I think we should consider our GA timing and war plans.
If the Kensai Oda is really our UU, we may want to slow down the tech pace somewhat and start setting up for a late-AA massive attack on our neighbours using these guys.
The GA would speed us through the early Middle Ages... straight to Cavalry?
The Kensai Oda has four point offence, so it will be dominant until Chivalry, when I'd much rather be using Knights. To exploit it, we should expect to go to war early and take out our immediate neighbours. Though the distances I've seen so far are a bit daunting for a foot slogger. Your final point about workers is important. We are going to need roads to get to our targets fast.
I would settle the tile 2SE+1E of Azuchi (south of your pink), as it is still on the way to the yellow and can immediately use the Goats on the mountain.
I'd settle the western pink site next, to deny Tokugawa the horses and establish our borders along the river.I think moving that city south reduces the number of inner ring cities by one. We are limited to five by the mountains ot the west, an your move would reduce it to four. I figured that city would use the flat lands, and leave the goats for the mountain city. I agree about the high priority for the western horses city. It also gives us a coastal city. I don't know whether that is the strategically important coast yet, of course, but if we want a lighthouse we need to be on the coast, and the river means we don't have to wait for an aqueduct. I hate building wonders in a city limited to pop 6.
Another couple of floating comments: The Lighthouse. It's a Continents map, right? And we want to kill them all...
And the Forbidden Palace. If we don't get a Great Leader to get it in somebody else's ideally-located capital, it may be worth starting to build it not far from Azuchi. From a superficial look, the area between Azuchi and the yellow spot doesn't seem too bad.What about the yellow spot itself? It's far enough away from Azachi that we could have two good corruption-free cores. If we prebuild it early in the development of our empire it will have relatively low corruption. It's on a river with lots of food, so it'll grow like gang busters, and it has lots of shields. Build it, produce a granary [EDIT: and a temple!], build a couple of workers and then let it rip on a prebuild while we improve its terrain and build more cities out of Nagoya to get to the magic number for the Forbidden Palace.
EDIT: Oh, yes. Workers! Oh, yes!

Thanks for your nice comments regarding my granary decision.

Given the pace that Tokugawa is explanding, I think grabbing the western horses should be either priority #1 or #2 in settling. I would go for the site 1SE of the horse tile... still on the coast, on the river, and gains two land tiles with shield production. With some improvement, we could build the lighthouse there. If the lighthouse is one of our goals, we should make that priority number one.

I think yellow dot should be number two. That will be a great location.

Alan - figuring out the 4-turn settler factory was terrific. Good job thinking outside the box.

Since we're discussing early combat, I would pick on Tokugawa since he is so close and he has "huge tracts of land"

Yes, GK is UP.

Isn't it quiet! Has everyone abandoned ship?

How long should we wait for Gengis?

GK is skipped (24 got it rule).

CivGeneral is UP.

Will someone please PM GK and CivGeneral as neither of these players have contributed to this thread since the game started.

If you get short of players I can twist a couple of arms.

I'll do it and report back on apparent "men overboard" situation.

[Edit: Messages dispatched. Return of carrier pidgeons awaited.]

Sorry guys, school/work has been dragging down my online time for the last 4-5 days.:(

I'll humbly step aside & let the next player play, I don't want to hold anyone up.

Again, sorry it won't happen again.

For anyone who's interested, and qualified for the 1st spoiler in gotm 25 there's a very interesting sequence of posts on the issue of Settler or Granary first, by none other than SirPleb.

Basically, he argues that you should build a settler first if you can settle a new city that can produce at least as much fpt as your settler producing city does currently. This follows from an approximation that a granary would double the fpt of the settler farm, but would take longer to produce than a settler. If a settler can create a city that produces the equivalent of this doubling effect earlier than you can buld a granary then you should build him first, because food is king in the early game.

On that basis SirPleb would say that we should have built our settler first, as our first city's granary doubles 4 fpt, and our second city can reach 4 fpt using the cattle.

I can't fault the logic, and SirPleb's QSC result indicates he knows what he's talking about, and I think it rationalises the way my guts were feeling earlier. I'd be very interested to see your reactions to this.

This is in no way a criticism of the way any of us have played so far, but I suspect SirPleb's thinking will set another new standard for the gotm community, a bit like RCP, the palace jump, and so on.

We now see a third city site that can reach 5fpt. However, our current settler farm can now deliver settlers faster than our second city could until we have only 2fpt cities left to build. So we should continue to pump settlers from Azachi until city#2 gets up to speed, and build a granary there before swapping settler production over.

Sorry for not looking at this suner. College was getting hectic for signing up for classes for the Spring semester :)

Ive Got it

BTW, before I forget. I would like to show you my advanced skip thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1344904#post1344904).

From December 17th till the 27th, I will have Finals in College and I wont have time inbetween the listed dates to play the save since Ill be busy studying and taking the exam. :)

With everyone being skipped, my turn will come sooner than expected. Yet, probably too late for me to be able to play: I'm going to home #1 tomorrow, and I probably won't be able to connect to the web.
Then, as you already know, I'm off to holidays until Dec 8th... :D

So, good luck with this game!
I will surely have a lot to read when I come back, and please sign me up in advance for SG GOTM25!

@Alan - I saw SirPleb's write up, unfortunately after I had played. Once again he has broken new ground in this game, and raised the bar even higher. In hindsight, we could have done better, but I still think we're in good shape. Just when I think I understand an important aspect of the game, SirPleb (as usual) rearranges the known universe.

Ok, there seemes to be something wrong with the link with the save in it. Can someone please repost the save? :)

In another SG, zurichuk reported that the Upload server was having difficulty. I just tried to download it and got a "could not load page" message. We might need to have Alan e-mail it to you.

Just noticed ... I put an underscore in the url instead of a hyphen. I've edited the link. Sorry! :blush: Shows how many people have taken time to look a the save!

Hmm, Ive tried that and it did not worked. THen I tried to look in the upload foulder and I have discovered that the Uploads are down :(.

Try here (http://www.ahart.demon.co.uk/files/MB4A-2150BC.zip)

[Edit] I just tried, and uploads5 lists the file, 10 November at 21:58

CivGeneral: Do you have the save?
If not I'll e-mail it to you directly.

Originally posted by mad-bax
CivGeneral: Do you have the save?
If not I'll e-mail it to you directly.
There are two working links already provided for the save, and they have been available for 16 hours:

Here on Uploads5 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-2150BC.SAV.zip)

and

here on my personal web space (http://www.ahart.demon.co.uk/files/MB4A-2150BC.zip)

Thanks, Ill try to eather post it tonight or tommorow.

Gah, I am having problems with my Laptop and I am afraid that I cannot play the save. Please skip me and pass it to the next persion.

My troubles can be found in the Computer sections.

We're not doing very well, are we! Four days since I played our last turn, and Karasu has jumped ship as well, so I guess Sir Bugsy is next UP unless we have any fresh blood?

This happens in SG's Alan, don't be too alarmed. I will try to get a replacement for Karasu, and to be fair I knew he was going on holiday for three weeks, which will mean he will be skipped twice.

The other skips are unfortunate, bu unlikely to be repeated unless the General can't get his laptop working.

Sir Bugsy, you are UP

Originally posted by mad-bax
This happens in SG's Alan, don't be too alarmed.
I'm not alarmed, and a few hours were down to me and my broken link. I hope you're right about it being a bad patch, though with the US holiday season coming up I suspect we may get some more disruption.

Thanks for the interesting graph in post #1. Any clues about how PTW were able to get 10% ahead in the first 20 turns?

Go get 'em, 'Bugsy :ninja:

To limit the amount of spoiler information I pick up I am browsing the threads with pictures turned off, and I am making a point of not reading the turnlogs, though obviously I do pick up some information. So believe it or not I have very little idea, though it is apparent that Ted Jacksons first turn had a lot to do with it.

Still, it is the rate of change of score that is important, and this team seems competetive.

I've got it. I'll play and post over the next 24 hours.

I'm back at home, so I can play the next turn if you want.

Smackster

@Smackster: Hope your trip went well. Where in Norway did you go? I made a few business trips in and around Oslo a million years ago.

That looks like a good idea, as SirBugsy is over the 48 hour deadline after his got it nd you haven't played a round yet. We'd better wait for MB to make it official, though.

smackster: I find it best if the rotation is kept fixed. If you play next then Alan would be effectively skipped. You are up after him anyway.

mad-bax,

Yes makes sense to keep me where I am, I didn't realise we hadn't played a turn since I skipped?

Alan,

I was in Oslo, didn't see much of it, just airport, taxi, hotel and office.

Smackster

@MB: Well, that's *why* I figured Smackster could play next. I was the last player, and Smackster is now available. If Sir Bugsy skips we are in just the same position as we were in before Smackster posted his skip, only it's six days later. I wouldn't feel as if I'd been skipped, as no one else will have played any more turns than me.

But I'll go along with the referee's decision :). When will you decide to skip Sir Bugsy?

I just sent my Laptop to the Campus help desk. Hopefully the Computer Tech People can replace the keyboard with a new one.

I could play the save on my Desktop, but its too much of a headache to uninstall DYP mod. I usualy play on my laptop since it has the virgin vanillia civ3 instaled

Yikes!

Theoretically Bugsy has until 08.33 GMT tomorrow (Tuesday) to post his turnlog. Whether or not he does I suggest smackster plays from tomorrow. He will either play from the new save provided by Bugsy or from your last save.

I don't know what else I can do. :(

First time I’ve played an SG where I wasn’t sure where the team was headed.

Pre-flight – 2150 BC – Starting score – 112
I decide that completing the granary in Nagoya is our first priority. I trade the mined BG to gain an extra shield and the granary will complete in 13 turns.

Diplo check – Not a lot of cash available out there. We’re Up Taoist Myst on everyone.

Science – Shamanism due in 50 turns? Cracker must have modified this game some more.

1. 2110 BC – It appears that Alan was intending to place the settler over by the eastern cow and wines. I’ll set that up.

2. 2070 BC – Azuchi has grown. Lux needs to go to 30% to keep the world happy.

IBT – Our warrior exploring in the east fights off a barb attack with no loss or promotion.

3. 2030 BC - :sleep:

IBT - Azuchi: Footman=>worker

4. 1990 BC – Head our footman to the west for the next city site.
Still nothing new on the diplomatic front.
MM our cities so that the capitol grows in two with the worker.

5. 1950 BC – Nagoya has grown to pop 3. MM so that it grows one turn after the granary completes.

IBT – Azuchi: Worker=> Settler (due in 4)

6. 1910 BC – Found Ise to the east between the cow, the wine, and the iron. Start temple. (obviously veto-able)
Eastern warrior runs out of dirt on a peninsula and will have to backtrack. No one can accuse me of knowing the lay of the land over here. :hmm:
Use the new worker to connect the dyes so we can save some money.
Diplo- Tokugawa now has Taoist Myst, and the same 10G that they started with. Must be running at 100% science. The other two have 0G and 25G respectively.

7. 1870 BC – The cow is now irrigated and roaded. Worker heads off to mine a BG on the river.

8. 1830 BC – Kuroda now has Masonry which they will sell to us in exchange for Taoist Myst and 35G. Tokugawa has 10G, but since the AI gives each other a break on techs, they probably will get Taoist Myst from them. I execute the deal.

9. 1790 BC – Takeda now have Bajutsu (HBR). We trade them Taoist Myst and Masonry for Bajutsu & 8G. We sell Kuroda Bajutsu for 35G. Sell Tokugawa Bajutsu for 35G. We’re up Masonry on Tokugawa. And at parity with the others.

IBT – Azuchi: settler=>footman
Tokugawa is building the Oracle.

10. 1750 BC – Score is 128.

After action report: The settler is in Nagoya. My intention was to settle over by the horse to the west. The footman is just standing on the hill because the view is nicer up there. I think the tile one north of the footman would be a good city site. I think that was discussed earlier.

The warrior to the east is backtracking since I ran out of dirt north of there.

Hopefully this won’t turn into the Bugsy and Alan SG.
>save< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-1750_BC.zip)

I'm ready to play again, so there will be at least three of us.

Alan, you should play this turn now, and if you can do it today, then I can play my turn tonight, and we'll get ourselves moving a little.

Smackster

Thanks for your turns Sir Bugsy. Sorry I ever doubted you'd come through :eek:. My guess is Tokugawa got Mysticism from a hut. It seems unlikely they'd research a second level tech when there's still a first level one to get.

What do you need to know about the team's goals? The ultimate objective is Conquest with a big Jason score, if I recall correctly, so that means as early as possible. Right now we need to know everyone we can meet, and get a productive core going asap. We don't really know what our UU is, but suspect it's the Oda, which we can build now. We need to get to Mapmaking as soon as possible to find the rest of our targets, and given that no one we've met has Alphabet, that's going to be interesting. Let's hope someone's researching it - if my hunch about Tokugawa is right then he'll have it soon.

I've got it and loaded it. Looks like you played it a couple of days ago, Bugs. Seems you have the same ptoblem as me - the write-up is a bigger task than playing at this stage.

If anyone wants to comment on tactics before I play, I'll do my own pre-flight checks, then log in back here in a couple of hours. Then I'll play and post before midnight GMT. If Smackster plays tonight as well, then we'll be back to hoping for Gengis to wake up, and then for CivGeneral's keyboard to make a miraculous recovery.

I played it late Saturday night. My intention was to post it on Sunday morning. Unfortunately RL raised its ugly head and I had to spend most of Sunday with my in-laws and didn't get to post it until this morning.

Sorry if my inital comment of where the team was heading was misunderstood. I knew the long term goal, I just wasn't sure of any short term goals the team may have had. I just went on the assumption that in the short term we want to build a strong economy with enough of a military presence to not be picked on too much.

We really haven't discussed any overall strategy on how we're going to conquer the world.

If our UU is available right now it isn't going to be very useful or at least not very useful for long. We should probably only build enough to trigger our GA when we want it.

I'd say we should set a short term goal of preparing to go to war in approximately 50 turns and go at Tokugawa. He seems to be expanding quite rapidly. The make up of Task Force Tokugawa (TFT) is up for discussion as is everything else.

OK, I've had a look around.

I prefer to settle one tile NW of the Footman's current position, as that's at the same RCP distance (7) as Ise (7.5). It has fewer sea tiles in its expanded radius, and it's also nearer to Tokugawa :D

The temple in Ise is fine. as most of the things we went there for are in its expanded radius. I may rush it at 19 shields to go, and then build a worker asap to get some irrigation going. The population hits should be offset by the improved food production, and the temple offsets the rush unhappiness.

We can't build Kensai Oda until we hook up the iron, but I'd rather have Oda than Footmen when we get the pointy sticks out, so until we get horses hooked up I suggest we build warriors for upgrade. They are 10 shields cheaper/quicker than footmen, and an Oda has the same defense as a footman, plus 4 attack. I've just been suffering at the hands of Oda in gotm25, so I have a lot of respect for them - I've lost two units for every Oda I've killed. They'll dominate the landscape until knights arrive, so I'd say TFT should be mostly Oda with some horses to pillage and clean up.

I have excellent news. I have just recived my laptop back from the repair shop. Now I am back in action :D.

Alan - Thanks for the Kensai Oda update. I never faced any units from Japan in the short time I played GOTM 24 and in GOTM 25 I've yet to go to war against Tokugawa. (Although just about everyone else :devil2: )

I think your plan for TFT is very sound.

The reason I was looking at the tile N v. NW was two fold:

1. To have a river defensive bonus when it came down to war, should we have the misfortune of being attacked.

2. To have that city on the same side of the river as the rest of our civ in case we needed to get units back to the civ quickly.

Going for the RCP location certainly makes sense.

Point taken about the defensive bonus and movement issues. I guess "defense" and "retreat" are not concepts I have had much experience of in Civ3. :rolleyes:

Again one of the very cool things about SGs. I am usually in the defensive mode early in a game and like to place my cities to take advantage of defensive bonuses such as hills and rivers. I have recently been shown some of the advantages of the offemsive approach by Gengis and gormdragan.

The exchange of ideas is always good. We are going to make decisions that the entire team may not agree with. I feel that as long as someone thinks through a decision and explains their reasons, rather than "well it felt right" or "I had a hunch" it is easier for the team to accept it.

If I come to a decision that I feel could be a game breaker, I always ask for an option, but in general I find playing a set of turns that I can present to the team as the best possible situation that could be played is a challenge and fun to play.

Turn 0 1750 BC Preflight

Switch Azachi from footman to warrior (2 turns), growth next turn. We can build warriors for 10 shields each, and will be able to upgrade them to Kensai Oda when we hook up the iron. Oda have 4.2.1 stats and will dominate until Chivalry.

MM Nagoya for granary and growth next turn.

Confirm no deals available, slider is 7.1.2

Hit next turn.

IBT: Tokugawa demands Masonry. We are not strong enough to defy him, so give in .. through gritted teeth. Until next time, Lord Ieyasu!
Nagoya grows to pop 4, completes granary -> warrior (2 turns) while pop grows

Turn 1 1725 BC

Settler W, Footman S for a miniature exploration while he waits for settler.
Warriors explore, no change in diplo screens.
Slider 6.1.3 to keep Nagoya happy.

IBT: Azachi warrior -> warrior (2 turns)

Turn 2 1700 BC

Warrior W from Azachi. We need to clear the fog SW, S.
Settler SW. Footman NW. Diplo - all quiet.

IBT: Dyes road complete. Nagoya warrior -> warrior

Turn 3 1675 BC

Worker to SW of Azachi to start road towards Ise. Settler SW, Footman SW
Slider 7.1.2 now we have dyes, 8 gpt. Diplo no change.

IBT: Azachi warrior ->warrior (2 turns). Worker completes mine east of Nagoya.

Turn 4 1650 BC

Settler to city site. Warrior S from Azachi. Worker starts road E of Nagoya. Worker starts road SE of Azuchi. Diplo peaceful.

IBT: Nagoya warrior -> settler. Now at pop 5. 4 turn settler farm operational.

Turn 5 1625 BC

Build Koromo -> worker.
Footman to mountain, sees cattle north of Koromo.

IBT: Azachi warrior and pop 4. Starts worker.

Turn 6 1600 BC

Warrior stays in Azachi.

IBT: Roads completed. Kuroda have settled close to Ide.

Turn 7 1575 BC

North worker moves to bonus river tile. SE worker moves towards Ide.
Warrior from Azachi to Nagoya as extra MP for pop 6.
Temple in Ide is now 19 shields to completion. Pop rush it.
Kuroda has Alphabet at monopoly price. We'll wait.

IBT: Azachi worker -> warrior (2 turns). Ise temple -> worker (10 turns)

Turn 8 1550 BC

Tokugawa now has Alphabet as well (did he extort that as well?). 3rd civ price is now about 130 gold. Takeda doesn't have it, and has 42 gold.
We need to know when Calligraphy is in play, and the price isn't likely to reduce much. Decide to buy Alphabet from Kuroda for 64 gold + 3 gpt and sell it to Takeda for 42 gold.

IBT: Nagoya settler -> settler.

Turn 9 1525 BC

Nagoya is at pop 4! WTF? It has a full food box, and has produced a settler. It looks like the food was calculated out of step with the settler. We'll waste a turn of food production now, and the farm will be out of sync!
Settler heads towards city site 2 tiles SE of Azachi on my last dot map.
Slider to 9.1.0 because of pop reductions.

IBT: Barb horse appears in S.
Azachi warrior -> warrior

Turn 10 1500 BC

Settler moves SE from Azachi. Warrior threatened by barb horse fortifies on mountain. Slider to 8.1.1. MM Nagoya back to low shield production to get it back in sync.

Firaxis score 151.

Post mortem:

Not much to say, really. We need to keep pumping out warriors for upgrade and settlers. We can hook up iron near Nagoya, and we can build a city or two to bring it inside our cultural border.

Current headcount: 11 warriors, 3 workers, 1 footman, 1 settler en route.

Over to you, Honorable Smackster!

The zipped save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-1500BC.SAV.zip).

[Edit] Here's a screenshot/dot map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-1500BC.gif

Good job getting the settler factory going Alan
Originally posted by AlanH
MM Nagoya for granary and growth next turn.
I was afraid that with the granary completing the same time that the city grew that we wouldn't have a full granary. I guess I got this wrong. Glad someone on this team knows what they're doing :D

IBT: Tokugawa demands Masonry. We are not strong enough to defy him, so give in .. through gritted teeth. Until next time, Lord Ieyasu!
One more reason to get that %&*#$ out :mad:

IBT: Roads completed. Kuruda have settled close to Ide.
Looks like the AI are standing in line to become our targets :D :devil2:
:goodjob: trading for Alphabet

smackster: you are up already. :)

I got it, about to play right now

Originally posted by smackster
I got it, about to play right now

I'll send a virtual search party out to look for Gengis Khan and warn him he's up soon.

1500BC

My first look at this map since the start. Looks like an easy 4 turn SF, although with not a lot of room for growth, so that early war will be essential. Will continue to pump out settlers and warriors. I'll look for something interesting to do!!!!!

Nothing to change everything looks ok.

ET

IBT Barb horse dies attacking Tokugowa warrior and upgrades him. Takeda building Pyramids, which is nice of them.

T1: 1475BC
Settlers continues SE (funny but I would call that east, but I know where we want to settle him). Warriors continue to open the fog.
Nothing to trade, nothing to MM.

IBT Kuroda archer appears in our territory near Ise. Not much we can do if he attacks. Worker completes road in the middle of nowhere, but I realise this is Alan telling us where to place our cities, thanks Al.

T2: 1450BC
Warrior built in Azuchi, send him east for now to see off the archer, not that it would get there in time.
Not sure if we intended Azuchi for just warriors, but I decide to push out one settler, we do have a granary you know.

IBT Archer moves back east, phew.

T3: 1425BC
Settler built in Nagoya sending him sw to settle on the hill. Warriors find two barb huts, and will bravely move in for kill.
Slider back to 0%

IBT Kuroda Archers moving to barb huts

T4: 1400BC
Our warrior dies on barb hut in mountain.
Slider back to 10%

IBT Tokugawa asks us to move our warrior having a quick spy on their territory

T5: 1375BC
Warrior kills barb hut and gives us 25 gold.
Have to switch slider to 30% for Koruma, footman is back there in two.

IBT ZZZZzzz

T6: 1350BC
Ise Worker->Worker
Ogaki Warrior->Barracks (10 turns for temple, something strange there)

IBT zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZ

T7: 1325BC
Nagoya and Azuchi build Settlers, Azuchi back to warrior
Takeda have Shamanism, but wont give it up, even when I threaten them (only joking)
Slider back to 0%

T8: 1300BC
Yokachi built
Warrior spies a little island to the south

T9: 1275BC
Azuchi Warrior->Settler, obviously the next person can do what they like here
Suddenly our friends all have Calligraphy and Shaminism. Find that two of them know Mori but Takeda does not. We can buy it for 188 gold. Its expensive but I'll go for it on the chance that this will help us now.
They want 116 gold for Mori contact, decide to take that too. The Calligraphy turn only lasts one turn, normally you can get a lot for it. I think this was maybe too expensive and I'm sorry for spending all our gold but I took the chance.
Mori have very little but give us 16 gold for Alphabet. Takeda give us 57 gold for contact with Mori.

T10: 1250BC
Suzuka built
Slider set to 20%. Nothing to trade, they want too much for Shaminism.

Summary

8 Cities, 13 warriors, 4 workers, and 1 footman. 90 gold, 20 turns to Shaminism. 194 firaxis points.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/1250BC_copy.jpg

.zip (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-1250BC.zip)

@Smackster: Good job getting three more settlers built and installed in your ten. We are now up to the same strength as our rivals. BTW, I notice your new cities are all as placed on my dot map. I went for an RCP with rings at 3-3.5 and 7-7.5, but there's been very little discussion, so please feel free to find better places.

A difficult call on the Calligraphy trading turn, but with such a small group of contacts it was never going to be very profitable. For such a small group, the AI tech rate is still fast and furious - I guess the others are doing better from barb huts than we are.

Having slept on it I realise what went wrong with the Nagoya settler factory during my turns. It's not built on a river, so it can't grow to pop 7. I'm sure I've seen posts elsewhere that claim you can still run it from 5 to grow to 7, and back to 5 in 4 turns because the pop 7 never really happens. Well, I think I proved that's wrong. After my first Nagoya settler was produced I had a full food box and pop 4 instead of empty and pop 5. So it tried to grow to pop 7, failed, stuck with a full food box and then produced a settler to fall back to pop 4.

So to get a settler every four turns we need to run Nagoya from pop 4 to pop 6, and back to 4. We can produce 6 shields per turn at pop 4 and 8 shields per turn at pop 5, with 2 bonus shields from a forest at the first pop increase to make 30 total, remembering to MM it back to 5 fpt at each pop growth.

It's too quiet around here, so here are a few points for discussion ...

The next major trading round is Mapmaking. We need to build our treasury up again for that, and go all out on exploration to make our map as complete and valuable as possible. Trespass across rival territories to build it up further. You can get two turns into rival territory before you get kicked out. If you choose your path carefully you can get kicked out to the other side of the civ and you are off on further fog clearance.

We also ought to consider whether to cut our losses and switch research targets now that two others already have Shamanism. We've spent 50 or 60 gold on it so far, but we'll never get it back now. I'm not sure where we could go instead - maybe we just switch off research and build our treasury. We really only need Mapmaking to get some overseas exploration going, and I'm sure that's going to turn up on the diplo tables soon. We should keep our tech trading to a minimum to slow the pace, and focus on building Task Force Tokugawa (TFT).

Warriors + iron + gold = Kensai Oda

We are building a nice stockpile of warriors for upgrade for TFT. If we build a city plus temple on the northern promontory site on my dot map we'll have the iron in our borders [edited - we need the temple]. We can then road that easier than the southern iron in the mountains. We need to have maybe 20 warriors in barracks ready to upgrade to Oda, then we can shake our pointy sticks at the Purple People Eater. Note that 20 warror upgrades will cost 800 gold!

How about declaring war on Takeda and getting an alliance with Tokugawa? We need to distract these guys, and we probably won't be ready to take on Tokugawa for another 20 turns. Takeda is too far away to give us much trouble, and Tokugawa is in between. At the end of the 20 turns we'll have choices about how we play it. I don't know whether 90 gold will buy an embassy and an alliance right now, but we could buy the embassy anyway and get a view of Tokugawa's capital, then we'll get a feel for what an alliance would cost. Of course, if he's already at war we might even be able to *sell* an alliance.

C'mon CivGeneral and Gengis, this is a team effort, so let's have some ideas?

I don't think we have enough to get the alliance (unless they are already at war), but lets get the embassy and then think about it. Unless we are sure we can get the alliance I would not do this now, especially as there would be a chance of an alliance the other way.

I think 20 turns is a good target for TFT. In order to get our 800G do we want to try lone-scientist?

There are three nice river valleys to the south that would be nice for settling. I think getting at least one city on the southern coast should be a short term goal.

In order to get a MA with Takeda against Tokugawa, we're going to need to have something juicy to dangle in front of him. Unless of course Tokugawa has ticked him off too. I doubt we'll have a trade route by then, hopefully, we'll have some contacts that we can give them.

Alan - thanks for figuring out what was going on with Nagoya. I looked at your save and couldn't figure it out. :hmm: Not having the water supply is the ticket.

Although I have already PM'd him...
Gengis Khan you are UP.

Gengis Khan is skipped.
CivGeneral: you are UP

Noooo!! Sorry guys my computer time has been severly limited over the last week, so my Civ & forum time has been cut to a bare minimum.

Once again I apologise.:(

Come on guys, what is going on. I can understand not having the time to play the moves as it can take a couple of hours to do it properly but I don't understand why you can't post a 'skip' or 'I got it' message.

Smackster

If CivGeneral doesn't pick this up, then the only suggestion I can make is that we kill this game and the three of you that are playing move onto the other vanilla roster. I would then retire and just administrate. I'd be happy to do this as other SG's I'm in are dragging on and I am playing too much really.

Let me know what you think.

I'm up for whatever the majority wants. How does the other team feel about it?

I'd like to keep playing even if I'm the only one left (although I might just play through if I was :) )

Madbax we can certainly self manage the next up/on deck if that helps your time, but I would like to see the comparitive scores that you are posting.

Ive Got it,

Originally posted by mad-bax
If CivGeneral doesn't pick this up, then the only suggestion I can make is that we kill this game and the three of you that are playing move onto the other vanilla roster. I would then retire and just administrate. I'd be happy to do this as other SG's I'm in are dragging on and I am playing too much really.

Let me know what you think.

I'd be prepared to continue with the game, as long as we can clearly identify who's playing and who isn't. As Smackster said, if someone can't take their turn we need to know before the event, not after a 24 or 72 hour time-out in total silence. Four of us played the first round, and four of us will have played the second, assuming CivGeneral's keyboard holds out now. At the rate we are going, Karasu will be back in the frame before we finish, giving us an extra player.

If we can maintain four active players each time around the roster, with fewer total silences, then I think it will work OK. If there are only going to be three of us then MB's idea of merging the 1.29 teams is an option for me as long as the other team agrees.

I'm playing as well, although I know the first 2 rounds didn't really show it. I've had some work related problems the last couple weeks & should be back into the swing of things very shortly. All the SGs I'm in have been somewhat lacking in the normal feedback & detail I put into them, but that is soon to change.:D

We certainly want you to play Gengis, and we want CivGeneral too, but we don't want the long silences, starts getting creepy. I start hearing voices, etc.

OK, we'll leave it as it is. I'm going to allow another player on your roster though just to keep the numbers up.

The new player is Teknoice who hasn't played GOTM before but is comfortable with Emperor/Deity level games. I have to help him get the scenario in place and I'll slot him in the roster when he's set.

Sorry to force this on you but if three teams are going to continue then I think they must all be viable long term.

You can direct any comments, questions or emotional outbursts in the usual manner. ;)

Originally posted by smackster
We certainly want you to play Gengis, and we want CivGeneral too, but we don't want the long silences, starts getting creepy. I start hearing voices, etc.
Me too! Glad to hear you'll be getting into it with us.

Teknoice has been added to the roster. I have placed him after CivGeneral just to give the rest of the team a breather.

His installation is OK and he can run the original GOTM save.

He should check in and introduce himself anytime soon. :)

Don't mind if I do mad-bax :D

hiya folks!

Welcome Teknoice :wavey:

Hi Teknoice, welcome aboard :wavey:

Tap, tap, anyone there, is the forum down, is Civ dead, is my computer still working, is CivGeneral still playing this SG?

I think Teknoice you are up, if you don't take it I'll play the whole game in one session and publish the final save here.

Smackster

While I sympathise with your feelings of frustration, I think that would be a little unfair on the one or two others who have played and discussed this game enthusiastically. I'll be quite happy to run with it as a team of four, with you, Teknoice and Sir Bugsy, since we seem to have two members who are determined to slow the tech pace by simply not playing.

Hey, I heard that!! I didn't go anywhere, there's just nothing to post about until CG takes his turn. I'm patiently waiting my turn, like everyone else. I'll then get a chance to prove my worth to the team; ask anyone who's ever been in a SG with me, I'm a valuble & contributing member to all off them.

And NO I'm not determined to bring this SG down from the inside by not playing, or anything like that. I recomend laying off the over-dramatic pills AlanH, SGs last over 2 months and if you stress out everytime a day goes by without a post you'll give yourself an ulcer long before it's over.

k i'm going to take it right now.

OK CivGeneral is skipped.

Teknoice, you are up. I hope you are up to speed :)

Genghis and CivGeneral. While I can understand the need to skip from time to time, (and I've had to do so myself once or twice). Neither of you have het played a turn in this SG.

My primary responsiblity is to the people who are playing the game and by not playing your turns and holding the game up you are both spoiling it for the rest of the team.

If either of you skip again I will have to drop you from the game.
Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Pre fight checks:


Kuroda on the right
Tokugawa on the left

everyone offering Shamanism for 9 gpt and 90 gold..
Shamanism discovered in 20 turns.

I hold off the deal.

Nagaoya is in threat of revolting but settler is next turn so
no worries.

Yokkachi needs another irrgated square, growth in 8.

4 workers.. need more.

ok let's go!

IBT: AI continues to explore
Domestic Advisor says our people want an FP..

1 - 1225 BC
Nagoya builds settler -> settler
Move new settler to expand above Koromo
Move E warrior back to Ise
Continue to use 3 S warriors to scout

2 - 1200 BC
not much moving warriors around

3 - 1175 BC
Ogaki builds barracks -> worker
Yokkachi builds warrior -> barracks
Move worker to build road on Wines near Ise

4 - 1150 BC
Azuchi builds Settler -> Flagged Footman (Azuchi is at 2 po I want
the city to grow)
Ise builds worker -> barracks
Move new Ise worker to build road to cattle
Move worker between Ogaki and Azuchi down south to build road to
Suzuka
Move new Azuchi settler to expand above Ise
Move worker to continue to build road toward Koromo
Southern warrior scout finds barbarian camp (eager to take it out)

5 - 1125 BC
Nagoya builds Settler -> Settler
Koromo builds warrior -> worker
Suzuka builds warrior -> barracks

Kuroda is building Oracle
Move new Nagoya Settler to settle below Koromo
Warrior takes out barb camp 25 gold :)

6 - 1100 BC
Ogaki builds Worker -> Flagged Footman
Move new worker to irrigate plains near Ogaki
Move worker to mine grassland near Azuchi

7 - 1075 BC
worker mines wines near Ise
worker irrigates near ogaki
worker mines near Azuchi
New City: Moriyama-ku -> builds barracks (settler escorted by
southern scout warrior)

8 - 1050 BC
IBT: Takeda offers contact with Chosogabe for 60 gold, I accept.
Azuchi builds Flagged Footman -> Settler
Chosogabe are building the Oracle
Worker irrigates near Suzuka
Found new city: Kita-Ku -> warrior

9 - 1025 BC
Nagoya builds settler -> settler
Move new Nagoya settler to settle below Handa
worker builds to final road tile between Nagoya and Koromo

10 - 1000 BC
Koromo builds worker -> temple
Tokugawan completes Oracle
Mori is building the Pyramids
Kuroda is building the Pyramids
Takeda is building Colossus
Move new Koromo worker to Horse tile
New city found: Kasugai -> Temple (I did this cause we are close to
the Tokugawa border)
Moving souther scout warriors back home, there isn't much else to
explore.


End game notes:
Lux is at 0, Science is at 10%. We have all the lux resources
in the areaso as long as our cities don't goto 6 (I think) we don't have to
raise the bar.

We are getting bigger, we can continue to expand south or build up.
Shamanism in 10 turns

OUR SCORE: 242


Here is our civ:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A1000BC.JPG

The save:
click me (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-1000BC.SAV)

Sir Bugsy - you are up

Sound turns, Technoice. :thumbsup:

I notice the cities are still matching my dot map - I hope somone has checked that it's reasonable :rolleyes:.

I'm still not sure about building footmen. I prefer not to let the ai near my cities, so I try to build offence, not defence, in the early game, and in this game that means warriors for upgrade to Kensai Oda when we hook the iron. We can train two warriors for every footman, and they work just as well if you need MPs.

We need to think about the FP. We can either build it in one of our core cities ready to rebuild the palace when we get a leader, or we can build it far enough away from Azuchi to form a second core. I tend to favour the first option, but it does rely on the luck of the leader RNG. Ise is a candidate for the second option. It has good terrain, and as long as we don't build any more cities closer than 7 from Azuchi it will remain at relatively low corruption. What do you guys prefer?

@Gengis: I apologise if my comment seemed over the top, but we are not talking about the odd day. We started 13 days ago, and 10 of those days have been waiting time during which we heard nothing from you or CG. I really don't mind if you decide to skip, but just tell us rather than leave us to wonder .... please? In return I promise I'll try to lay off the pills ;)

I've got it. It is presently 11:37 AM Pacific time. I will try to play and post within the next 36 hours.

I've only built on flagged footman in the capitol.

@Sir Bugsy: you can change that flagged footman that is being built to a warrior, it'll be completed in one turn with no wasted shields so *do it before you hit enter*

Good turn Teknoice, and good score advancement. I see 11 cities at QSC 1000BC, which is a good start. Can't say much more as my wife is hassling me to go out and buy some food :(

Yes indeed! I just surfaced from an intensive session with the Mongols and caught up with MB's graph. Smackster and Tecknoice have brought us right back onto the ptw team's tracks. Great job both of you. :king: :king:

I'm still battling Mongols, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever finish that one. And for some time wondering if we'll ever finish this one :)

don't give me too much credit guys, it was bound to happen we just needed more people to play. We have a good settler factory going now and all I was doing was using it ;)

Originally posted by smackster
I'm still battling Mongols, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever finish that one.
I'm glad it's not just me! Hard work, or what!? Every turn I have to check F1 and diplo - I'm running 30 to 60 minutes per turn. :eek:.

Originally posted by AlanH

I'm glad it's not just me! Hard work, or what!? Every turn I have to check F1 and diplo - I'm running 30 to 60 minutes per turn. :eek:.

I've gone well past that now, in these long games I reach a point where I turn the Governor on, automate workers, turn off the graphics and only do diplomacy occasionally, in an attempt to make the turns go a little quicker.

Even worse I keep reading spoilers of those that found it easy.

Hehe! I'm still hoping I'll finish before I have to read the second spoiler and find out which date BC SirPleb conquered the world!

Pre-flight – 1000 BC – Diplo check – Shamanism is out there but a bit steep.
Switch Kasugai from Temple to worker. We only have 7 workers, we need more.
Switch Azuchi from settler to footman. At pop 3 it will take too long to recover pop.
Switch Kita-ku from warrior to worker for same reason.

IBT – Tokugawa founds a city where our settler was probably headed.

1. 975 BC – Tokugawa has Map Making and will sell it to us for our entire bank account and our economy for the next 20 turns. No thanks. Fakeda and Kuroda will give us the same deal for it: our WM and 184G. Let’s see what we can do.
Execute the Kuroda deal.
Sell MM to Mori for their WM and 98G.
Chosogabe give WM & 5G for our WM.
Tokugawa give WM & 47G for our WM

IBT – Azuchi: Footman=> Settler
Handa: Barracks=> Warrior
Yokkachi: Barracks=> Temple
Suzuka: Barracks=> Warrior

2. 950 BC – Tokugawa and Kuroda want an arm and a leg for Shamanism. Takeda will give it to us for WM & 90G. I go for that. Start min science on math.

IBT – Nagoya: Settler=settler

3. 925 BC – Make 9G trading our WM around. Not much else.

IBT – I think Tokugawa is at war with someone to our east. They g=have a lot of l=military units heading that way.
Baekjen complete Colossus.

4. 900 BC – No a lot.

IBT – Ogaki: Footman=> Warrior
Handa: Warrior=> Warrior
Suzuka: Warrior=> Warrior

5. 875 BC – Start gathering up our veteran warriors to prepare for Operation Tokugawa. I will stage the warriors in two locations for a north and south task force.
IBT – A Tokugawa horseman rides up next to Kasugai. We may be a war sooner than we thought.
Ise: Barracks=> Warrior

6. 850 BC – Tokugawa now has Math. :( And will sell it for WM & 148G. And that’s the deal we can get from Chosogabe. Takeda, Kuroda and Mori will sell it for WM & 149G. Since Chosogabe is broke we give them the deal. We start a gambit on Currency.
Bump lux to 10% for Nagoya for one turn.

IBT – Azuchi: Settler=>Footman
Nagoya: Settler=> Settler

7. 825 BC – Lux back to 0%. Found Ichinomiya in the southern river valley. This breaks up Alan’s dot map, but it is on the river, takes advantage of two sheep, a horse and will have seven river tiles upon expansion. Start worker.

Now Confucianism is out there. Of course everyone has it. The best deal is WM & 118G from Tokugawa and Chosogabe. I think I’ll hold off on that one for a bit.

IBT – Ogaki: Warrior=> Warrior
Handa: Warrior=> Warrior
Suzuka: Warrior=> Warrior
Kita-ku: Worker=> Barracks


8. 800 BC – I bite and establish an embassy with Tokugawa for 33G. They’re running 80% science. Have horses and a dye hooked up. Pop 6 with a clown. Grow in 1, horse due in 1. Garrison of three spears. The only improvement is the Oracle. They’re not at war…yet.

9. 775 BC - :sleep:

IBT – Ise: Warrior=> Warrior
Kasugai: Worker=> Barracks
Han builds the Pyramids. Mori builds the Lighthouse. Korea builds the Library.

10. 750 BC – Bump lux to 10% for 1 turn.
Score: 302

The settler to the northwest of Nagoya is on location (Alan’s yellow dot), as is the settler directly south of Suzuka (purple dot). The settler SE of Ichinomiya should go on the hill one tile SE. That will grab some rocks, an olive, and 7 river tiles.

There are two warrior forces being built up, SW and NW. However, there are a bunch of Tokugawa units in our lands that will need to be taken care of when we go to war.
<SAVE> (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-750_BC.zip)

Alan: You are UP

I've got it.

BTW, when I say "Got it" I mean I've downloaded the save and opened it and looked around a bit. That's to avoid any possible delay when I come to play, hopefully later today, and in time for Smackster to play today as well, if he wants.

Looks good. We have 22 warriors, and a healthy cash flow. Good work on getting the worker count up as well. And hey, I just looked at MB's graph. We've gone into the lead! :thumbsup:.

Let's hope Tokugawa's horses give us time to get our Kensai Oda together. The AI only seems to get warlike when they run out of room for new cities, so I'm hoping we have some more time. In this terrain I think the horses will be at a distinct disadvantage and should be easy meat, though a little tough to chew :D.

Our culture is not strong yet, but now we are starting to build further out and further apart we'll maybe build a few cheap temples and that will change. Not that we need it much, apart from for flip prevention.

I'm a bit surprised we didn't get the full continent map during the Mapmaking turn. I guess we want to ship over to the new world asap now we are about to settle on the south coast. We can see it already, and there may be some good trading opportunities if we can get there fast.

Any thoughts on Forbidden Palace strategy yet? Anyone?

For spectators and anyone who can't load it up, here's the F3 summary:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A_750BC.gif

That Map Making round was bugging me. Our map is 60 gold less valuable than anyone else's because we don't have Takeda's piece. So before I played the next ten turns, I loaded up the 1000 BC save to see what the problem was, hoping to learn something and to share it with the team. And I did, and I am.

Sir Bugsy's sequence gave us Map Making and a world map for 34 gold, but our map is undervalued by about 60 gold. Here's an alternative trading sequence, using an approach I evolved during Moonsinger's trade training exercise:

First we can build up our world map as far as possible by buying relatively cheap territory maps from the guys with Map Making:
Sell WM to Takeda for 65 + TM
Sell WM to Tokugawa for 24 + TM

Kuroda has no cash, so buy his map and Map Making:
Buy MM + TM from Kuroda for WM + 204.

Now we can sell our enhanced map to build it further and raise more cash:
Sell WM to Chosabe for 5 + WM
Sell WM to Mori for 99 + WM
Sell WM to Tokugawa for 45 + WM
Sell WM to Kuroda for 10 + WM

At this point we have Map Making and the same map as Sir Bugsy, except we are 44 up instead of 34 down.

Takeda still wants big money for his WM, and we know no one else knows it because we have swapped with them. So buy and resell it, as it will get traded anyway, leaving us behind:

Buy WM from Takeda for 112 + WM
Sell WM to Kuroda for 37
Sell WM to Mori for 11
Sell WM to Tokugawa for 28

Net result is we have a full world map plus Map Making at a cost of 12 gold. It's more complicated and time consuming, but key trading events like this only happen a few times in the game, and are worth agonising over.

The key lessons from this exercise are (1) maximise the value of your own map before you buy others and (2) make sure you get everyone's world map during this critical turn, as you will have to buy it sometime, but you will never be able to resell it later.

@Sir Bugsy: I hope this is helpful. I'm not criticising, and I might well have done the same deals as you, but 20:20 hindsight is a wonderful luxury ;)

@Teknoice: I am told it's best to zip the save file if you can before uploading, as it then has a check sum that protects it against corruption end to end. If the file suffers a subtle corruption during the transfers we might not notice it for a while, by which time it's too late to go back. Corruption seems unlikely to me, given that we are using reliable TCP/IP protocols and modern servers, but I'm just going on advice I've seen from more experienced players than me.

Now I'll get on with my ten ...

Alan,

That is a great look at how to maximise trade value from world maps.

The one thing I would have done differently on Sir Bugsy's turn is that I would not have bought Mathematics. Reason one is that we need to save the cash for the Oda upgrade, but also I just don't like to buy techs for cash at the early stages unless we have a strategic reason to do it. We don't really need that yet, and it would get cheaper as other techs are discovered. Also we shouldn't worry about being behind in techs at this stage.

Just my 2 cents, right or wrong.

BTW I should be able to play my turn tonight, so Genkis Khan please get ready as you will be up tomorrow.

Smackster

Smackster: I'm sure you know that Alan hasn't finished his turn yet. I am just pre-empting you playing from the wrong save.

Mad-Bax,

Alan and I always play same day, he said he would finish tonight (UK time), so I can get it (US time) and play it same day (assuming that nothing external gets in the way of either of us). So Gengis will be up tomorrow (or probably late tonight).

Smackster

Alan, Thanks for the primer on trading. :blush: I need to get better at it and your advice will help me. I'll go back and replay it.

The reason I went for Math was to get to a tech that the AI usually don't research for a while, namely currency. At 50-turn research, this may be very difficult and may prove to be a :smoke: move. However, if we actually do get a monopoly on a tech it could be huge for us. I thought it was worth the money to put us in position for a gambit. However, this is probably another thing I need to improve in my game play.

Bugs

Have we worked out why we are getting 50 turn research paths yet?

You are right that if we get it at a Monopoly then it would be a big benefit, but usually we wont. Actually I can't even remember what level this game is at? On Diety we would surely get beaten to it.

My general rules for tech on the higher levels in the Ancient age, are to research on minimum, only buy Writing and MM, and research down a path that I think I'll get a monopoly on, and sometimes push the research button if if makes a big difference (say Monarchy in 24).
Time will tell if we can get Currency.

Nothing I ever say is a critisicm, just observations, trying to start discussions and improve all our games. This is the last time I say this.

Smackster

I accept all comments and criticism. That is the way I learn. So long as no one is flaming on me, I will listen to, review, study, and try to learn from all comments. I accept that my game isn't at the level of other players and one of the ways I can improve is through constructive criticism. Again thank you Alan for an excellent instructional post. If I get some time in the next three days (doubtful, work is a bear at the moment) I plan on going over it trade by trade. If not, Thanksgiving morning will find me playing MB4A at year 1000 BC.... again. :)

Ahhh! Just came up for air after playing the moves.

Preflight
Surprised to see no irrigation on the food bonuses at Ise. Food bonuses = population, and population makes everything else at this stage. I'll let he workers do what they're doing then mess up someone's work!
MM to improve gold output and reduce Azuchi's shield waste a tad.

Trading check - well I've already mentioned the problem with the world map deficit.

Next turn
Tokugawa declares war on Mori.
Azuchi Footman -> Warrior
Nagoya Settler -> Settler
Ogaki Warrior -> Warrior
Handa Warrior -> Warrior
Suzuka Warrior -> Warrior

Wow! That's what I call productivity. Nice one, Bugsy.

Turn 1: 730BC
Build Komaki near the southern horses -> Warrior (5 turns)
Build Hikone on the north cape -> Barracks (MM to 10 turns)
Slider back to 9.1.0, MM cities to 33 gpt.

Diplo. Another look around, and the map situation is not so bad after all. I buy Mori's WM for our WM plus 7 gold. Chosogabe also offers a WM swap with little differential, so these guys still don't know Takeda's secret spaces. Deals are still possible. Mori has cash, and both have Confucianism.

So I buy Takeda's WM plus a worker for 84 gold + WM to use as a stake. Mori has 40 gold and will give it for our WM. Check that this is a reasonable price by comparing his price for Confucianism with and without WM. The price difference is 47 gold, so 40 cash is not too bad. Sell WP to Mori for 40 gold,and then buy Confucianism from Chosogabe for 68 + WM.

Bottom line: For 112 gold we get a worker (worth about 28 gold on today's slave exchange) plus the balance of the world map (worth about 70 gold according to the guys who had it to sell) plus Confucianism. Not a bad day at the office :rolleyes:

Takeda still wants our first born and all our concubines for Civil Service. Let's try a little mild extortion. I check the power curve and sell peace treaties to Kuroda (99 gold + WM) and Chosogabe (72 + WM - all he has). We don't want 20 turns of peace with Tokugawa, and I'm not too sure whether we have a power advantage over Takeda.

There's a barb camp on the south coast. Must try to get down there for some cash.

IBT
Tokugawa moves on through, going east for his appointment with Mori. Kuroda archer attacks and presumably kills an invisible barb on the southern mountains.
Yokkachi completes Temple, starts Warrior.

Turn 2: 710BC
Build the next city on the south coast. The name generator has reached the end of its list already, so we get New Azuchi. OK, let's make some of our own. This one's called Sir Bugsy, and starts building a Junk for a little offshore cruising, maybe some water skiing if we can find a sloping bit.

Diplo check: Takeda is clearly suffering from barbs, He sells another worker for 27 gold + WM.

IBT
Azuchi Warrior -> Warrior
Ise Warrior -> Warrior

Turn 3: 690BC
Switch Komaki to Barracks, as we are producing Warriors fast and furious and we don't need regulars. Keep on MM'ing.

IBT
Handa Warrior -> Warrior
Suzuka Warrior -> Forbidden Palace. Feel free to discuss and disagree.
Moriyama-ku Barracks -> Warrior

Turn 4: 670BC
Moving Warriors out to the two holding positions at Handa (TFT South) and Koromo (TFT North).
MM for max gold, max food, min waste.

IBT
Azuchi Warrior -> Worker
Nagoya Settler -> Settler
Kuromo Temple -> Warrior
Ogaki Warrior -> Warrior

Turn 5: 650BC
Sorry Sir Bugsy - start irrigating the wine at Ise.
Change Handa to Worker.

IBT
Ise Warrior -> Warrior
Yokkachi expands. The northern iron is ours. The guest workers are building the road.

Turn 6: 630BC
Move Settler and Warriors. Have to work around a continuous stream of Tokugawa horses passing through. Sell our WM around for 10 gold.

IBT
Red lined squid seen off the north coast. Someone had a ship once!
Azachi Worker -> Warrior
Handa Worker -> Warrior
Yokkachi Warrior -> Worker
Ichinomiya Worker -> Worker

Turn 7: 610BC
A couple of Warriors are checking out the south coast. Kuruda archers take out the barb came before I can reach it. I'm going to post a warrior on the southern headland to watch for contacts across the narrows. I decide to post a second MP in Nagoya, as it's too risky trying to move temps in and out as the pop rises and falls, with the Tokugawa horses tramping through our streets and getting in the way.

I consider briefly trying to tech broker Civil Service, which is still an monopoly for Takeda - he must have popped a hut for that. However, thre's only about 300 available, and he wants over 500 for it over time.

IBT
Koromo Warrior -> Warrior
Ogaki Warrior -> Warrior

Turn 8: 590BC
Build our next city - Smackster, in the west. That will become a new forward base for TFT South, so it starts on a Barracks for running repairs. I've moved a couple of Warriors there as garrison to show we mean business. I've also added second guards in Ise and the other eastern city.

IBT
Azuchi Warrior -> Horseman - I think a little diversity might be a good thing. We have a lot of Warriors for upgrade to Kensai Oda now, and as we approach the end of the Ancient Era and look forward to the age of Chivalry, we are going to need some swift horses to cover those plains to the west.
Nagoya Settler -> Settler
Ise Warrior -> Warrior
Koromo expands

Turn 9: 570BC
Tokugawa has razed a Mori city east of our borders.
The power curve now indicates we can make a painless extraction of 40 gold from Takeda for a peace treaty. So I do :D

IBT
Handa Warrior -> Warrior

Turn 10: 550BC
Build Karasu. It's a bit close to Ichinomiya, but they share mountains, and there's plenty for everyone on the Ise plain.

Firaxis score is 378
We have iron hooked up next turn, a couple of dozen Warriors demanding iron swords and armour waiting in our forward positions, and we have over 600 gold in the treasury. Smackster San will have the honour to lead us into the field of battle. The nation's eyes are upon you. I suspect we could persuade Takeda to join the fight and split Tokugawa's forces east and west.

Remember that if we go to war with the Kensai we'll probably trigger a Golden Age. Pity we didn't go hell for leather for Monarchy, but there you go.

Here's the save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-0550BC.SAV.zip), and here's a couple of screen shots to keep you all amused.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-0550BC_F3.gif

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-0550BC_Map.gif

Originally posted by smackster
Have we worked out why we are getting 50 turn research paths yet?

I think that's probably Cracker's way of telling us to either research at max or not at all. I think it also takes away the issue of one turn start delay followed by two 40 turn research projects just missing the QSC date.

smackster: you are UP, as you know.

Genghis, could you please let me know if your installation runs OK?

If you are having any trouble I know of a guy who might be able to help you out ;)

Just for accuracy... cracker upped the minimum turns/tech to 50 as one of several measures to slow research. I requested a game with a slow tech pace purely to get value out of all the effort that had gone into these units, but which I didn't see in the GOTM proper.

I quite like it.

Very cool. I get a seaport named after me! :D Every sailor's dream.

I've now learned two things today from you Alan... the peace treaty negotiations. I've read about them, but that's the first time I've seen them used.

We could probably get the Mori to pay us for a MA against Tokugawa.

Now smackster gets to have some serious fun. Gengis, this will right up your alley.

Bugs

Earlier Alan asked about FP strategy. I like your selection of Suzuka for the FP. As we fill in the southern coast with cities, it will be a very productive core. We can later build a palace in Tokugawa or Takeda lands with a leader.

Bugs

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
I've now learned two things today from you Alan... the peace treaty negotiations. I've read about them, but that's the first time I've seen them used.
I learnt about them in Moonsinger's trade training thread, and I've used them myself since. That thread was awesome, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It should be in the Strategy Articles forum, but instead it's slipped way down the GOTM forum index. Here is a link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54088) if you haven't seen it before and want to get the real low-down on how it can be done. Moonsinger presented a Civ3 v1.29 game save at a point of intercontinental contact when Map Making arrives on the scene, and the exercise is to get the best trade result out of that single turn. Try it yourself first, then read the rest of the thread. Read it and weep!

We used peace renegotiations particularly vigorously during SG23, and Smackster pointed out that they are still possible even if you are already in other 20 turn deals with the civ, just as long as you didn't tie peace in with the trade or diplo deal, and providing that you actually agree to a deal, of course!
We could probably get the Mori to pay us for a MA against Tokugawa.Good thinking!
Now smackster gets to have some serious fun. Gengis, this will right up your alley.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it rolls forward from here. Let's hope Gengis gets his system in gear.

I have got it, I have not looked at it yet. For various reasons I'm in a hotel on a dial up, I have my PTW CD in the drive and its taped up and I have no spare tape (I'll risk it in a minute), and my son managed to trip with a pencil in his mouth cutting the top of his mouth. So I'm only just getting to it, so much for playing same day as Alan, if I don't finish tonight, I will for sure on the way to work tomorrow (stop in a layby or something).

All for the love of Civ.

I really have the save now, loaded up, the technology is working.

I am 100% sure that we will have our first war here. Too bad about the GA, but not waiting for Monarchy. Will get our friends to the west to help, for whatever we need to give them.

Wish me luck.

Might not post until the morning, but will surely finish this tonight.

Smackster

Whoohoo! Have you seen mad-bax's latest graph update? We have lift-off!

I expect you've played already, Smackster, but good luck anyway. As we have a lot of Tokugawa's horsemen over in the east, and scattered all over the map, we should be having a turkey shoot.

Are you OK to play next, Gengis?

Part 1 : Before the storm

550BC

Just clicking end turn, nothing to trade or do

IBT See a big green junk to the SE

T1 530BC

Ogaki warrior->horseman
Koromo warrior->flagged footman, judging from its location next to Toku, decide we might need the defence
Moriama warrior->warrior

Iron hooked up.

Takeda will give us a worker for 30Gold, why so cheap? I went looking to generate more cash but can't resist buying workers at those prices.

Don't get any cash, with 621 gold we can upgrade 15 warriors, as Toku have troops all over our land, we want to take them out probably next turn. So will upgrade in locations that appear to be where their troops will be next turn, plus at least two squads to attack their lands

IBT Toku sending more troops into our area, will make the war declaration tricky.

T2 510BC

Ise worker -> worker (why not just keep pumping them out)
Yokachi warrior->horsemen

Realise that we don't have an embassy with Takeda, so do buy that for 50 gold. Decide to wait on the attack, for at least one more turn, don't like the Toku troop positions (too many on mountains).
Notice that Currency is in play with Takeda and Toku, but don't want to pay 20GPT for it thankyou. We could trade broker for it with Choso for Civil Service, but its too risky that we wouldn't even get that. I want to keep the 40 GPT for now, as we can upgrade one per turn and will surely need it soon.

IBT Toku and Takeda sign an alliance against Mori, the bullies, so much for our alliance though.

T3 490BC

Handa warrior->footman (not sure if we'll complete this, building in case I need to rush defence)
Kasagi warrior->footman (same as above)

The T's both have contact with Shimazu, will trade for 25 Gold and 5 GPT. Decide to trade for it with Chosog (who also know the contact), just in case Shima have say Monarchy.

They don't but they do have Civil Service and don't have lots of stuff we do have so its trading time.
First get 50 Gold for Shima contact from Koroda. Shima give us Civil Service + 5 gold for Maths and Myst, their WM + 30 for our WM. They are on an island to the NE.
Takeda give us 20 for our new WM, Koroda 50, Chosu 21, Toku 20.

So we gave up 25 + 5GPT = 125, we got Civil Service + 186 + new World map.

We now have 227 gold, time for some more upgrades. I will surely wait until next turn for the attack.

That's it, pretty boring turn really :)

With Toku all over our land, I move our troops into place, to get them to move off mountains, into open space

IBT with the manipulations shown I pretty much get the Toku to go where I want for a good attack on them

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/490BC_copy.jpg

I have made the attacks but haven't quite finished, will publish as soon as I can

Double post, my mouse is dodgy

Part 2 : The Storm Begins

T4 470BC

Azuchi horseman->horseman
Nagoya settler->settler
Blew the happiness in Suzuka and it revolted, I moved a warrior to stop Toku getting the mountains after I had checked happiness, did recheck but didn't do it right.
Oh well its only building the FP.

Now have 7 Toku within our territory in kill range, none on mountains. Will attack this turn. GA or not, Monarchy not in sight.
We have 20 Kensai, and their military is weak, with the first move kill, it should be easy. Will have to think about allies later.

GA it is, first win and an elite upgrade. Regular warrior kills a horse, and another upgrade. Great graphics, third win, third upgrade elite No.2.
5th win, third elite upgrade. It had to happen, one Kensai dies attacking an archer on a hill. Got six of their seven. Moving on one of their cities with 6 Oda.
Can get Takeda alliance for 40GPT, too steep. Just have to hope they don't ally with Toku.

Tweak slider 10%, this is because of moving the troops around to push Toku into the positions I wanted.

IBT Toku send a Junk NE, watch out for that. No counter attacks

T5 450BC

ISE worker->worker

Oda kills archer, Oda killed attacking archer on mountain, elite Oda kills the archer.
Oda attacks Lida, kills footman upgrades to elite (4 elites now). Oda dies on footman, Oda kills archer another upgrade to elite (5 elite now)
Lida taken, one resistor

Mori have Contsruction, but want 44 GPT, plus everything else we have. I wont do this, although I know they'll get lots for this from others.

Slider back to 0%

IBT More Toku horses appear, I think we can take them

T6 430BC

Korudo footman->horseman
Ogaki horseman->horseman
Handa footman->horseman

Couple more kills. Consolidating troops. With 5 elites we have a good base for a leader. Don't want to rush the attack. The next cities are far enough away that we would be attacked by horses in open, so need to build our forces before the next push.

IBT Lost an Oda to counter attacks, he took a horse with him

T7 410BC

Nagoya Settler->Temple (we can get it in 4, and its grown too low in pop, sorry not been manipulating properly, too excited about fighting)
Couple more kills for Oda

IBT See Toku archer to our east, have to move quick to send him off. The Greens move a Settler into our area (I have to keep looking up their names)

T8 390BC

Azuchi horse->horse
Kita-Ku barracks->worker

Still playing 15 kills, to 3 losses, one city taken.

Looking good, my first turn will come during a GA, nice!

I'm gonna finish the loads tonight after work, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Gengis good to see that you are here, I'm going to finish those last two moves now. This is a fun one, with lots of fighting, however it is getting to a precarious position. Not sure how more resistance Toku will put up, but those long stretches of open space to their capital is worrisome, as they may have more horses coming. I may just inch the troops forward and let you make the next push.

Should see another post soon I hope.

Smackster

Great bit of Generalship there smackster!
These turns should move us further ahead in the competition.

Don't forget to keep settling lands.

Part 3 : Barb interference

[B]T8 390BC continued

Oda kills archer, Oda attacks Mishima to the south kills footman (at least one left), Oda kills archer on mountain. Now it is clear that the attack on Hamam must come via Shimoda to the SE. This allows the attacks to come through moutains/hills and not expose our troops too much.

IBT Toku has one archer one warrior to the NE, sending Oda to help

T9 370BC

Yokachi horse->horse

Barbarian uprisings. Will send Oda to help there too, good job we have lots of them.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/barbuprising_copy.jpg

Built New Azuchi
Mishima auto-razed, two footmen killed, another elite upgrade. Horse kills archer on hill. Horse kills archer on hill. Rushed barracks in smackster.
3 Oda next to Shimona, will attack next turn.

IBT Takeda offer alliance against Mori, reject it for now

T10 350BC

Ogaki horse->horse
Handa horse->horse
Smackster Barracks->temple (feel free to change this)

All the barb horses move on Ichinowa, might have to let them take it. Nothing to lose there really.

Shimoda taken, but lost two Oda, horse get its with elite upgrade, but archer is left and may take it back
Archer killed NE, another elite upgrade. Just a warrior left NE now, so watch out for him.
Still have cash left for another upgrade this turn.

Here are the front lines.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/frontlines350bc_copy.jpg

Things to look out for, the 16 horses cannot get to Ichinowa this turn, and there are some Oda defences next to it. There is no doubt if you take the warrior out of Ichi, and spend all our cash then we will lose nothing there. But I think there is a chance for a few Oda attacks, its your choice. The troops are gathering for the push in the Toku capital so its up to you.

I suggest a slow attack to get the elite wins in. There must be around 7 elite Oda now, with one elite horse so there is a chance we will get a leader soon.

I have not looked at the diplomacy screen this turn. We still lack currency and construction, and it may be time to start researching them we can actually get Currency in 5 turns, and we have upgraded most of the warriors now.

.zip (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/MB4A-0350BC.zip)

Score 470 Still second from last on score, but I'm sure not for long

Smackster

Sir Bugsy,

Yes the Settlers were still being pumped out, but its a long way for them to get to any space now, and one met Toku troops to the NE (he ran away). Our settler factory is building a quick temple as it got down to 3 pop, Gengis can certainly change this, but I think its nice to get a little culture and was only four turns. I settled one town in this turn, and I think we have two settlers on route.

very cool smackster. A great set of turns.

I say give our money to someone, move our units out of the town and let the barbs have their way. It is not worth losing units to them.

@Smackster: Well done! War's hard work, isn't it!

Firaxis score is now 470 at 350 BC.

@Bugsy: Don't forget this is a conquest objective. We should build new cities to deny space for AI expansion, of course, but we don't need territory for its own sake. Our current task should be to make maximum use of our Kensai Oda to delete civs before we reach Chivalry, when they will cease to give us an advantage. Having said that, I left a settler heading south intending to occupy some space on the south coast. Interesting that New Azuchi finished up as far north as it can be!

Educate me, please ... I am obviously missing a trick here. Why do you guys build footmen? An Oda has the same defence as a footman, looks just as pretty, and can attack as well. It seems to me it may even be worth unhooking a city or two and churning out warriors every turn for upgrade instead. As Smackster says, we are making enough gold to upgrade one per turn. Footmen need 20 shields and can't go out and conquer the world.

Re. the barbs, we have 50-ish gold. That will buy an embassy, which we'll need anyway sometime. The city they'll hit will probably not yield a lot of cash even if we still have some left, as I think it is taken in proportion to the population.

Speaking of embassies, maybe we should get some action going out east? Declare war on Chosogabe and get Mori in on it as our proxy ... or vice versa?

[EDIT]Looking at the power curve Takeda (the red one) is our biggest rival at the moment. We need to get him into the fight to slow him down. We can reduce the cost of an alliance vs. Tokugawa by allying with him vs. Mori (orange). Mori is too far away to give us much trouble, and we can maybe get Chosogabe (yellow) or Kuroda (green) involved to keep him off our backs.

Originally posted by AlanH
Having said that, I left a settler heading south intending to occupy some space on the south coast. Interesting that New Azuchi finished up as far north as it can be!


I don't really remember what happened to him, and with limited time I couldn't go and look at your post in detail so I just played with what I saw, so I didn't know where he was heading. That New Azuchi settler was about the third settler I think. I'll need to look at it again

Originally posted by AlanH
Educate me, please ... I am obviously missing a trick here. Why do you guys build footmen? An Oda has the same defence as a footman, looks just as pretty, and can attack as well. It seems to me it may even be worth unhooking a city or two and churning out warriors every turn for upgrade instead. As Smackster says, we are making enough gold to upgrade one per turn. Footmen need 20 shields and can't go out and conquer the world.
[/B]

Front line defence. When I take a new city I'm not going to leave it undefended, and I don't want to waste an Oda defending it, so I build a footman to defend it. Also that footman will one day become Musket, Rifleman, Infantry, for the same purpose. Once the frontline moves, I'll move the footmen with it.

Originally posted by AlanH

[EDIT]Looking at the power curve Takeda (the red one) is our biggest rival at the moment. We need to get him into the fight to slow him down. We can reduce the cost of an alliance vs. Tokugawa by allying with him vs. Mori (orange). Mori is too far away to give us much trouble, and we can maybe get Chosogabe (yellow) or Kuroda (green) involved to keep him off our backs.

Yes we should take that Mori alliance with Takeda. Remember Toku and Takeda are allied still and he would break that for 40GPT previously. If we ally with Takeda against Mori, then how much would you spend for a Takeda alliance against Toku? Say 20GPT? Not sure how much we could get it for, but how much should we accept.

Buy embassy *smacks forehead* Yes, that is a much better use of our money.

I think I built two footmen for the defense. That was in the pre-Kensai period and I felt it was a good idea at the time. In hindsight that probably wasn't the best build choice. So I learn my first thing from Alan today. I think by the end of this game. Alan will have raised my playing up several notches. :goodjob:

Originally posted by smackster


Yes we should take that Mori alliance with Takeda. Remember Toku and Takeda are allied still and he would break that for 40GPT previously. If we ally with Takeda against Mori, then how much would you spend for a Takeda alliance against Toku? Say 20GPT? Not sure how much we could get it for, but how much should we accept.
I checked before I edited the post ;) He will ally with us against Tokugawa for 14 gpt if we also ally with him against Mori. That will really cramp his style because, as you say, he will kill his rep as well as getting in deep with Tokugawa.

About the footmen. If you look at my last picture we have an Oda defending Lima, we should send the footman round to defend it so that the Oda can join the attack. That is a good use of a footman. To the south you will see a footman on a mountain, who is actually protecting two Oda (weakened) from that archer. Clearly we dont want many footmen, but there is certainly a place for them in any game.

Smackster

Originally posted by AlanH

I checked before I edited the post ;) He will ally with us against Tokugawa for 14 gpt if we also ally with him against Mori. That will really cramp his style because, as you say, he will kill his rep as well as getting in deep with Tokugawa.

Wow that is something I learned today, how much one alliance will effect another. We should take that then. Depending on how quickly we both take out Toku, we should consider just continuing on to defeat Takeda.

That will take a long time to finish them both off, so not sure about what we should do with the Greens (still can't remember who that is, Karuda?). I was trying to build a road over to them so we could trade (before the barbs came, and I think we could get there in less than 10 still.

If we ally against the greens (mori?) we should try to pull the oranges (Chosogabe?) in to give the greens a two front war. That might cost some $$$, but keep the greens occupied for a while. A two front war might be hard to deal with at the moment.

Originally posted by smackster
That New Azuchi settler was about the third settler I think. I'll need to look at it again He was the only one that built a city. There are two others - one's threatening to carve a hole in Kuroda's cultural border in the east and the other is in the southern mountains. Maybe he's waiting for the barbs to do their thing and leave.

Front line defence. When I take a new city I'm not going to leave it undefended, and I don't want to waste an Oda defending it, so I build a footman to defend it.But it's not a "waste" if he cost fewer shields and some cash, and can provide greater battle flexibility.

Also that footman will one day become Musket, Rifleman, Infantry, for the same purpose. Once the frontline moves, I'll move the footmen with it.We should be finished before rifles are around. Once muskets are available the front line moves too fast for them to keep up, so they finish up doing MP work in my games. A knight is almost as good a defender if you need one. I'm seriously trying to give up ever building specialist defenders.

I'm sure the Green are not Mori, as I can see Toku troops in their area not being attacked. I think the Mori are the orange or yellow as Mori are weak like those two. I think maybe the Green is Chosogabe.

The problem with only playing 10 turns a week apart, with funny names for Civs, can't keep them straight.

Originally posted by smackster
I'm sure the Green are not Mori, as I can see Toku troops in their area not being attacked. I think the Mori are the orange or yellow as Mori are weak like those two. I think maybe the Green is Chosogabe.

The problem with only playing 10 turns a week apart, with funny names for Civs, can't keep them straight.

Isn't that the truth :D

Well whoever Mori are, we need to bring another civ in to fight them while we take care of Tokugawa (I know that one :D the purple guys)

Hard to prove it makes a difference either way. I don't see much wrong with a few defenders, and I'm sure we already have enough to go around.

I even colour coded my previous post to make it easier:

Takeda = Red
Mori = Orange
Koruda = Green
Chosogabe = Yellow
Tokugawa = Purple
Shimatsu = Grey

We should avoid getting into a fight with Koruda while we have unfinished business in the west. Chosugabe and Mori and Shimastu are all far enough away that we can pick proxy fights with them reasonably safely.

Thanks for the colour code Alan.

I think getting Koruda (green) to fight our proxy war would be a good idea, while Takeda (red) and the mighty Oda (us) carve up Tokugawa (purple).

Got it!

I'm up in another SG so I most likely won't get to this one till late tonight or tomorrow. I'll at least finish up the downloads & open up the save tonight to make sure theres no problems.

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
Thanks for the colour code Alan.

I think getting Koruda (green) to fight our proxy war would be a good idea, while Takeda (red) and the mighty Oda (us) carve up Tokugawa (purple).

I think that is a plan too, Gengis you should see what Koruda want to join the fun against Mori. At least that way they might have to actually fight somebody. I'm thinking Koruda are behind in tech so should be easy to get them into that.

Just remember, we don't want to help the AI tech pace at all. I don't recommend any tech brokering if we can avoid it for the time being. We have a big advantage while there are no pikes or knights around. Once they appear our Oda will slow down.

At least three civs Toku, Takeda and Chosog are already in the Middle Ages, which means that Koruda will be there soon too. Lets see what they want for an alliance. However, I may have got this wrong, remember I couldn't even remember who was who while I was playing.

Also what should we research next, we really need to get out of Despotism, so Monarchy or Republic?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, I nearly forgot. Those renegotiated peace deals are about to expire, so we should sign them up again to get us some more cash.

Originally posted by smackster
Also what should we research next, we really need to get out of Despotism, so Monarchy or Republic? Monarchy!!! I don't see peace happening in this Civ-Lifetime.

Being religious, we can jump back and forth as we need to. Let's collect the government techs and play it by ear.

Yes we should research Monarchy next, in fact we should have had this discussion about 2 weeks ago, or did we and I didn't see it.

We should only switch to Republic at the point that we find our Cavalry cannot win the day for us. I think our plan should be that we build enough Cavlary to Conquer the world, before Riflemen appear.

Smackster

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
Being religious, we can jump back and forth as we need to. Let's collect the government techs and play it by ear.
1. Each switch still costs you a turn of Anarchy, and that loss of time and productivity can take a long while to pay back.

2. Republic will only pay for a big army for any length of time if we build market places and concentrate efforts on happiness projects. And extra cash it generates will be reduced by the higher lux slider.

I recommend we don't even trade for Republic, and certainly don't waste any research beakers on it. Sure, if it comes as a freebie then take it, but there's more important stuff to spend our cash and beakers on.

My €0.02 :)

Originally posted by AlanH
My €0.02 :)

I thought you Brits didn't want to have anything to do with the Euro? ;)

I thought you were sticking with your reliable pence and pound, the heaviest coins in the world :D

We can't get rid of the pound (and this is the best excuse I've heard yet ;)) because it would also get rid of my mate's kid's favourite joke :

kid: Do you want ten pounds?
idiot: Why yes, of course!
kid: Here you are then [starts pounding idiot on the arm]

I'm sorry to admit I've been the idiot more than once, you just can't help saying yes!

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy


I thought you Brits didn't want to have anything to do with the Euro? ;)

I thought you were sticking with your reliable pence and pound, the heaviest coins in the world :D
You're right about our determination to stick with the pound and penny, but I think you're out of date about their weight. I just wasn't confident that you guys would understand £0.02, or tuppence, and I think €0.02 is still a bit smaller than $0.02.

We also refuse to give up irony, in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that it's a foreign language to Americans. :)

Alan,
I think we Yanks understand irony when it is spoken in American. However, when it is spoken in English it often goes right over our heads. Having visited your lovely country many times, I am always struck by the vast differences in the way we share a "common" tongue. Same goes for the language spoken by our Down Under cousins.

Britian reduced the weight of her coins? I just remember walking around with a pocketful of coins and I seemed to walk with a list. I remember trying to trade in 20P coins (schillings?) to get some pound coins to try and reduce the weight.

Bugs

Edit - Have you seen the score graph? Looks like we're going to be in a dogfight with the PTW team.

Have a look here (http://www.24carat.co.uk/coinspecs2000.html). The pictures are pretty close to full size on my monitor and it gives weights and diameters (in gms and mms, though ;) ).

It's difficult to read precise trend differences from MB's graph. I'd say we are probably on a faster mean trajectory than PTW, given that we only settled one city during Smackster's turn but still made the same increase in score as them, and population and area are the dominant factors in score at this stage.

I got everything downloaded & it was working fine, unfortunatly my girlfriend decided since I have no family in the area she would show up out of the blue & decide Thanksgiving would be a great time to meet her parents. I got a couple turns into the game, but don't have time to finish it before I get dragged off. Hell, she's tugging on my coat as I post this now.:lol:

I will be back Sunday AM, if you guys can skip me or slot me a turn or two back in the rotation I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks & sorry for the inconvience!

Another 48 hours ... No, wait, I promised to lay off the pills :rolleyes:

CivGeneral's turn now.

In the absence of an update by mad-bax on the first page or here I have PM'd CivGeneral. I'll also state it explicitly:

CivGeneral: You are UP.

[EDIT] I guess the silence around here could have something to do with the recently reported turkey shoot, which means that our 'Merkin team members will need an extra 24 hours at least before they are sober enough to play again, or even to post "Got it".

Originally posted by smackster
Oh, oh, oh, oh, I nearly forgot. Those renegotiated peace deals are about to expire, so we should sign them up again to get us some more cash. ... but only the ones with civs we don't want to declare war on. It's important to get the tech pace slowed down to prolong the active life of our UU, and some proxy wars are a good way to do it.

Teknoice: You are UP.

Guys, the roster has been amended. Temporarily you are down to four players, but Karasu is back from his holiday next week. When he gets back I intend to ask him when he wants to play, and slot him into the roster accordingly.

Hope this is OK by you.

No problem here with a four player roster rising to five. I have no plans that are likely to get in the way, so I should normally be able to play and post all my turns within 24-48 hours as and when they come up.

Happy Thanksgiving

We've actually been playing with 4, so no problem here either.

Hey Smack. I see you haven't submitted your GOTM25 yet. Only two days to go, get those hordes in gear!

2 days to go, 300 tiles to go, 3 turns from Tanks, I think I'll finish, but this is my worst GOTM for ages. Sneaked attacked four times now at th e worst possible moment. I'll tell you the funny part in a PM.

I'm away for the weekend, so you guys are going to have to fend for yourselves for a couple of days.

I have PM'd Teknoice, and I guess that you will have to decide how long to give him to pick up.

Thanks for the warning, mad-bax. Have a good weekend.

As Teknoice has been AWOL for over 30 hours I propose we skip him and put Sir Bugsy in the hot seat. What say you, guys?

OK then, I'm in the hot seat. Seems like every Saturday night I get to play this SG. I have it posted by Sunday evening Pacific Coast Time at the latest. My band has a gig for a church group tomorrow PM, so I'll try to get it done by then.

OK. Sir Bugsy is UP

I'll take that last message as a Got It.

Pre-flight – 350 BC – First I open an embassy with Kuroda for 39G. Kyoto is running 70% science, has wine, fur, and dyes hooked up. No strategic resources.

Next, get MA with Takeda against Tokugawa for MA against Mori, 13gpt, 10g and WM.

Then I trade Kuroda for MA against Mori, currency & 5G 1gpt.

We start construction with our lone scientist, due in 50 turns, but I doubt we’ll get there. Construction is already out there.

Check our cities, do a few MM changes. Hit enter.

IBT – Chosogabe want to swap TM’s. We’ll do that.
A Tokugawa archer tries to retake Shimoda, but our horseman kills him.

The barb SOD is at the gates of Ichinomiya
Azuchi: Horse=> horse
Nagoya: Temple=>Kensai
Moriyama: Kensai=> Kensai
Hikone: Footman=>Temple
Karasu: Barracks=>Kensai
The people love us. We get some cool steps and a nice lawn for our cave. Probably the coolest cave in all of Nippon..

Turn 1 – 330 BC – In order to get rid of our cash, I open an embassy with Chosogabe for 53G. That leaves 9G for the barbs. Chosogabe have furs, ivory, horses, and iron hooked. They’re running 30% science. Their city is in serious need of some MMing as their capitol is only producing 2spt with pop 5. :smoke:

5/5 kensai kills 3/3 Tokugawa warrior (-2hp)
Have to hire a tax collector in Kita-ku and Suzuka. Kita is switch to a temple.

IBT – Tokugawa moves a footman over towards Shimoda.
The barbs carry away our 9G, then pillage our work on Kensai Oda about ten times.
Shimoda riots as the resistance ends.

Turn 2 – 310 BC – Much maneuvering.

IBT – A Tokugawa archer attacks our horse and dies.
Shimoda flips back to Tokugawa :cringe:
Kasugai: Footman=>Temple (we need some culture)

Turn 3. 290 BC – The going price for Construction is 17gpt & 100G.
More Manuevering. The siege of Tokugawa’s capitol begins next turn.

IBT – An archer from the capitol attacks our stack. The elite Kensai on top wins with loss.
Azuchi: Horse=> Horse
Nagoya: Kensai=> Settler
Ise: Kensai=> Kensai
Koromo: Horse=> Horse
Ogaki: Horse=> Horse
Handa: Horse=> Horse

Turn 4. 270 BC – Siege of Hamamatsu: 4/4 Kensai is killed by 4/4 Footman (redlined)
4/4 Kensai kills 4/4 Footman (-2hp)
4/4 Kensai killed by 3/3 Footman (-2hp & promotes)
5/5 Kensai kills 3/3 Footman (-1hp)
5/5 Kensai kills 2/4 Footman (-1hp)
5/5 Kensai kills 1/4 Footman (no loss) Hamamatsu and The Oracle are ours. Three resisters. Capitol jumps to Kofu which should helps us keep Shimoda next time.

IBT – Mori are sending a footman our way to pillage.
Yokkachi: Horse=> Kensai

Turn 5. 250 BC – On the eastern front: 5/5 Kensai kills 5/5 Tokugawa warrior (-1hp)
Found Alanville.
Dispatch the barb camp that spawned the barb SOD.

Siege of Kumano: 4/4 Horse killed by 3/3 Footman (-1hp)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 Footman (no loss and promotes)
4/4 Kensai kills 2/3 Footman (-1hp) and Kumano is ours.
3 resisters.
Maneuvering for the Second Siege of Shimoda.
Upgrade two warriors to Kensai

IBT – Tokugawa wants peace. He’ll give Construction and a city for it. Oh, sorry, we have a deal with Takeda, you’ll have to talk to him first. He said to talk to us. Take a hike!
A Tokugawa archer retreats a horse of ours.
Komaki: Horse=> Kensai

Turn 6. 230 BC Siege of Shimoda: 4/4 Horse retreats from 3/3 Footman (-1hp)
4/4 horse kills 2/3 Footman. Shimoda is ours again.
Found Gengisgawa (Gengis’ River)

IBT – Nagoya: Settler=>Settler

Turn 7. 210 BC 4/4 Kensai is killed by 4/4 Mori Footman. Move Kensai out of Moriyama-ku and hire a clown.
We’re going to have our wines disconnected next IBT so I bump up lux to 20%
I buy Construction from Chosogabe for 7gpt and 269g. Start researching Feudal Warlords. So in this year of 210 BC, we enter the Middle Ages.
Our lack of culture is making it harder to subdue resisters. In the future, unless there is a wonder in the city, I’m going to start razing.

IBT – The Mori Footman heads for our undefended city and doesn’t pillage our wines.
Azuchi: Horse=> Settler
Ogaki: Horse=> Kensai
Handa: Horse=> Kensai
Koreans build the Great Wall.

Turn 8. 190 BC – 3/3 Kensai kills 3/3 Footman (-1hp & promotes)
Our 3/3 Kensai kills the 2/4 Mori footman and promotes.
Maneuvering for the next attack.
Knock lux back down to 20%

IBT – A Kensai is killed by a Tokugawa horse. Our footman kills an archer.
We finally subdue three citizens. One each in Shimoda, Hamamatsu, and Kumano.
Ise: Kensai=> Kensai
New Azuchi: Warrior=> Temple

Turn 9. 170 BC – 5/5 Kensai kills 2/3 Murderous Horse (-1hp)
Siege of Ina: 4/4 Horse kills 3/3 Footman (redlined)
5/5 Kensai killed by 3/3 Footman (-1hp)
5/5 Kensai kills 2/3 Footman (-1hp)
4/4 Horse kills 3/3 Archer (-1hp) Ina is ours. Of course we have a resister.

Literature is now available.

IBT – Outside of Hamamatsu our elite Kensai kills a horse.
Resistance in Hamamatsu ends and of course the city riots. The entire city is forced to put on clown suits until they can act like mature adults.
Nagoya: Settler=> Barracks
Moriyama-ku: Kensai=> Kensai
Restisatnce in Ina ends.

Turn 10 – 150 BC – Manuevering.
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 Archer.
Tokugawa is getting more desperate. He’ll give us all his techs, 2 workers and 2 cities. Of course we can’t make peace yet.

After action report: There is a settler heading west. I didn’t have a plan for him, probably in the area east of Hamamatsu.
There is a settler just south of smackster. I was going to settle him at the “X,” but that’s the next player’s call (Alan?)

I would imagine that at least the three southern Tokugawa cities could be taken in the next 10 turns. That would leave them with just the three northern cities on the peninsula.

We still have 11 warriors that can be upgraded..

Score – 573 We’re now third from the bottom and climbing. Tokugawa is still leading, but the lead is shrinking. Not having fast units slows things down a lot. The Kensai kick butt, however they are slow. The Horses are nice, but the 2 attack isn’t great. When we get Samurai, we will be able to kick some serious butt.

>>SAVE<< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/MB4A-150BC.zip)

Well done Bugs.

As I can't update mad-bax's first post, here is the roster status. I'll post an update each time we play until MB gets back in the saddle.

Karasu (Returns 5th December)
Sir Bugsy
AlanH UP
smackster On Deck
Teknoice

I've D/Ld and loaded the save, so I've Got It. As it's after midnight, I'll probably play tomorrow morning GMT and post by the time Smackster is up and about in Boston. I hope he's recovered from perfidious Keltoi in GOTM25.

One small point, Sir Bugsy. When I'm subduing captured cities I set all the non-resisting citizens to taxmen rather than clowns, and if the pop is large I set the build to a worker. That way you get useful tax revenue, you ethnically cleanse the city, and you can further reduce the foreign population by exporting a useful worker.

I think we need to switch research to Monarcy as we are probably losing a lot being a despot still.

I will be ready to play tonight, which puts Teknoice up again :)

Sorry for the delay. I've not finished yet, but:

I think we need to switch research to Monarcy as we are probably losing a lot being a despot still.
Funny you should mention that:

I started this morning, and the preflight took a lot longer than usual. I renegotiated peace with Chosogabe, Takeda and Kuroda and sold an alliance to Chosogabe against Mori (we are already at war with Mori anyway), and I managed to squeeze Monarchy out of the deals at a net negative cash flow of about 8 gpt. I immediately revolted, having decided that even a few more turns of Golden Age in Monarchy would probably pay for the one-turn switch and some of the cost of the Monarchy deals.

Pre- and post-revolution tuning also took some time. I didn't want to lose any population, so I had to MM some cities to keep from starving, and I pulled in a few gold pieces from taxmen during the revolt.

I then played three turns of war, took a couple more of Tokugawa's cities, tuned for minimum lux/maximum productivity, and we are now running at 60+ gpt. Each new city we take knocks a few more gpt off our bills as we are running over 20 more units than our current city count will support for free. I have seven more turns to go. We are about to complete the Forbidden Palace and launch our first junk, and we should be able to minimise Tokugawa during these moves.

My worst deal was to renegotiate peace with Takeda. :smoke: I didn't even get a lot out of him - 1 gpt! I knew he had 7 gpt available, and I was hoping to minimise the impact of buying Monarchy. Once you have committed to a peace renegotiation, of course, you are stuck with what you can get :(

So we may be in a position where we'll be done with Tokugawa in ten more turns, and ready to wade into Takeda, but we would break our treaty if we do. Of course, we could just decide to do it anyway ;)

I had other business this afternoon and now it's dinner time, so I am going to finish my moves and post around 10:00 pm GMT / 5:00 pm EST. Hope that's OK with you Smackster.

Alan,

Well, its 5.04PM EST and now I'm concerned as you have missed your dealine :)

On the theme of deal neogitation, I find it hard to tell if the original deal I proposed (in any game) is best. For example if you were getting 3GPT for a peace deal, when that expires you can often just keep it running at 3GPT forever. If you try to change it you will get nothing.

In another game I was playing I exchanged Incense for Spices + 3GPT from my friend. When it expired they would only give me Incense for Spices, but if I go back and play from that point when the friend comes up with the renogotiation then I can keep it at 3GPT forever. If I try to renogotiation then I get nothing from it.

I think for the size of your land area makes a difference, so as we grow then our resources have less value (in the eyes of the AI).

Smackster

[EDIT] Save now on Uploads6 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/MB4A-0050AD.SAV.zip).

Quick summary as you want to get on with it:

We've taken out all but Tokugawa's last two cities. I recommend we take out the current capital and then get Feudal Warlords and the kitchen sink out of him for peace, leave him on that little spit of land and build around him.

We have a couple of cities with taxmen as they have grown bigger and are getting restless. I think that's still more cost effective than raising the lux slider to 20%.

There are settlers in place or close on the south coast to eat up some land. we wre beaten to one prime site by Kuroda, but there's room between him and Takeda. Nagoya is on a holiday from settler production while its pop builds again. You may want to MM it and Azuchi.

I think we are OK. Our Firaxis score is 694 and we just hit the top of the table. We need to start thinking about our next target - probably Takeda, but we need to gather some troops into position. Our adviser is telling us we are outnumbered, and of course they'll have pikes in some cities soon. We have about 10 turns of peace treaty left, if that means anything to the ROP rapist from SG23 ;)

Got it.

I will play tonight, but wont be able to post until Monday.

BTW I think I first broke a peace alliance in SG23, but don't recall doing an actual ROP rape and there is a difference of course.

Roster:

Karasu (Returns 5th December)
Sir Bugsy
AlanH
smackster UP
Teknoice ON DECK

I'll PM Teknoice to warn him he's up next, as we haven't heard from him for a while.

Originally posted by smackster
BTW I think I first broke a peace alliance in SG23, but don't recall doing an actual ROP rape and there is a difference of course.
I know, but you really, really wanted to, didn't you!

Just a warning:

I learnt the hard way in GOTM25 that if you have a single deal that includes an alliance and a peace treaty then if you break the alliance, for example by destroying the enemy, then you are automatically at war with your previous ally. It's obvious really, but I'm a bit slow on the uptake. It happened to me at least twice in GOTM25, once with two allies at the same time. The first I knew that something had happened was when my allies stopped returning my calls. No declaration, no drama, just a new red line on the F4 screen. You are deemed to have declared war by breaking the combined deal.

The relevance here is that I bundled a peace treaty plus an alliance vs. Mori to extract a large gpt deal from Chosogabe ten turns ago. I should probably have done two separate deals. As it is, if we were to destroy Mori or make peace with them within ten more turns then we would be at war with Chosogabe. We would also lose the gpt income, of course.

It always seems that if you have an alliance then destroying the enemy is ok, but from what you are saying the combined deals are risky. I got that "war without declaration" in our GOTM 23 when I broke our first deal, I think its a CIV3 bug, as I don't ever see that in PTW.

@mad-bax: Thanks for updating the graph in your first post.
Please note that your roster is incorrect. Either it is still as it was before your weekend break, or it anticipates the status after Smackster plays today.

Smackster is UP and Teknoice is On Deck.
I have PM'd Teknoice to warn him that he will be up soon.

@The team: The graph indicates we can leave the others eating our dust. Let's keep up the good work. :goodjob:

I've corrected the first post. Note: Karasu will be away 'till the 8th, not the 5th as previously stated. Sorry for the confusion.

Alan, I shall enjoy watching you eat your words. ;) :D

I am curious if I can retrurn to my spot in this SG. Sorry for not telling you about my AWOL sessions. Pleasse do accept me back :).

If it is not possible for me to return, I understand :(. Please make sure to include me in the next GOTM SG.

Smackster-san back in charge of the Oda

50AD

Looking the map position, decide that Takeda should be our next victim. I do not intend to break any treaties yet so my 10 turns will simply be preperation for that attack. See that we can end the Alliance with Karuda against Mori, so stop that (we were paying them 1GPT), as this will give us flexibility to attack them, I'll asses the wars as we go on an may sign up another if there are not enough going on. Will continue with Alans plan to get Fuedal Warlords of Tokugawa when they are down to one city, don't like the culture flip chance but our culture does appear to be catching them so will take the risk, we will starve any Toku citizens that we see.

Get embassy with Shimazu to see if they will join in some war, they will fight Mori for Monarchy and 5 gold. My theory is they will get that soon anyway even if it does help them, and I want them to start fighting. Now I work out who Mori is I see that they have a city not far from us, so decide to take that too (when I meet them I find they are a colourful orange). Can get ROP with Karuda to help our passage, that will help their passage over our land for their Settler, but I'm really not worried about that, we'll take it back after Takeda have gone, if they start to run too many through our land we'll head them off. On a related subject I see nearly 30 Takeda troops trying to get to Tokugawa, this presents an opportunity to herd them with our troops so that when we decide to attack them all 30 are in range for attack, which should make them a much easier target and give us some leader opportunities. I'll take some photo's of my herding, I did this in GOTM 25 and had a turn where I killed about 20 Koreans that I had stuck in my land. The tricky part would be if they declared war on us, but we'll keep that in mind and be careful.

Did some warrior upgrades, sorry are we saving for something, Knights maybe.

IBT Sorry did I say 30 Takeda, call it 35 now.

T1 70AD

Karasu horse->horse

New Nagoya built, ->warrior

Our Junk moves towards the Island that we see in the fog, I'm playing this like I don't know where the other land mass is, just going for what looks logical.

4 workers complete southern road over to Kofu, but now I need them to help me do a bit of sheep herding.

IBT Add an Archer army to those 35 Takeda troops, the net is closing, will hold of the last attack on Toku so make sure we close it, trick is not to block of the root to the Toku cities pr they would start to go home.

T2 90AD

Azuchi horse->temple, why well its only 4 turns as the temples are so cheap in this game, and we really are struggling on culture so I think the trade off is worth it
Suzuka horse->horse

The Takeda Army has two archers and a warrior !!!!!!!!!!!

Built Clacton-on-Sea strangely enough on the sea to the south.
Built AlanHwick, not exactly sure where this guy is going, only just noticed him, seems ok to build him where he is

Buy worker from Takeda

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/90_copy.jpg

IBT The Takeda herding plan is not working as they have a steady line of troops going both directions, just cant cut it off, they get up to 10 in a straigh line, can't find the end.

T3 110AD

Yokachi horse->horse

Kill our first Mori and horse upgrades to elite. I love their colour and the animation on them

T4 130AD

komaki horse->horse
hikone oda->oda
smackster temple->horse

Cut off Takeda but with one of our troops in their area, will it stick?

T5 150AD

Nagoya settler->horse
Ichi horse->horse
Handa horse->horse

Now we have trapped the Takeda troops, 42 troops and 3 in an army all sealed off until we decide to kill them. If they attack us then it wont be nice, but we do have a lot of troops in the area.

We take Yokaichi, declare peace with Toku, get Feudal Warlords, Republic and Literacy. We move our troop from in front of their last city and allow Takeda to wipe them out with their stacks, while we herd them into bigger groups. I love it when plan works out.

We now have tech parity researching Monothism with a scientist. Would really like to get Knights sooner than this, but assume that others will research this much sooner either way so we can trade for it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/they_cant_get_out_copy1.jpg

IBT Kofu flips to Toku with only one citizen, damn, damn, damn, this really messes up our herding plan, no doubt Takeda will attack that if they can, damn, damn, damn

T6 170AD

Ise horse->horse
Koroma horse->horse
Ogaki horse->horse
Suzuka horse->horse
Komano barracks->horse

Can still cut off 27 of the Takeda troops, but the others can take Kofu and I can't stop them then I wont be able to block them

IBT Toku are destroyed, just one turn, one turn and the plan would have been perfect.

T7 190AD

Looks like we might still be able to block off all their troops around Kofu too.

T8 210AD

Nothing much going on

T9 230AD

New Ise built

T10 250AD

Somebody discovered the other Continent and all have their contacts. Both Monothism and Engineering (at least) are available. Not all have both, so we should be able to buy contacts and probably trade for both of them. As its turn 10 I'm not doing any of it so there are many questions left unanswered, this turn is key for us.
The peace with Takeda is over, so we can attack them after this, not quite sure I would do it yet, maybe wait two more turns to get the troops in place.

When war is declared watch out for our workers in their land, and our junk skimming the Takeda land. There is a few of our troops on the way to Mori, who can now see a stack of Mori Oda.

Also noticed this turn that the 25GPT negotiated with Karuda for peace and tech (or whatever it was) is still active and we need to renegotiate to get rid of the 25gpt so we should do that.

The next few turns should be fun.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/250ad_copy.jpg

Score 832

.zip (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/MB4A-0250AD.zip)

P.S. Two things I forgot to do, 1) to send a troop down to the Takeda iron, still worth sending it now and its next to free space, will take a while to get there Sorry. 2) When I cut off Takeda they stopped moving so they are not quite positioned right, its actually easy to herd them where you want them to go, just give them an outlet somewhere (somewhere you can block off before they get there), and they will all move that way, then you block off the exit.

I recommend attacking them soon, I didn't count our troops but we do have a lot and of their 45 troops at least 40 are defence 1, so it should be mincemeat, and leader time.

P.P.S Might be worth asking Takeda to leave our territory as they may declare war, they would just get pushed further into our net.

Smackster

Excellent work, Smackster. :thumbsup: You didn't get to do too much fighting, but your preparations look superb.

The gaudy wheel of fortune slows to a crawl, stops, then lurches once more and the fickle finger of fate points to ...

Teknoice. You are UP.

Roster:

Karasu (Returns 8th December)
Sir Bugsy ON DECK
AlanH
Smackster
Teknoice UP

Teknoice, you should also investigate Kofu, should be cheap and it will tell you how many troops they have hauled up there, could be quite a few.

CivGeneral.

The three reliable players on the roster (Bugsy, Alan and smackster) can PM me. If they all respond and unanimously ask for you to be put back on the roster then that is what will happen. If the decision is not unanimous then the roster will remain unchanged. I'm not abdicating responsibility, I just feel that these team members deserve to have what they want.

Nobody died and made me God.

Alan, I shall enjoy watching you eat your words

Happy to do so, as and when. Flying pigs? What flying pigs? :p

Alan and smackster that was terrific!! I would have never guessed that Tokugawa would be gone in 16 turns. I suppose having Takeda helping out certainly helped.

My preference would be to continue warring to the south. Perhaps we can convince Takeda to declare on us by asking him to leave our lands or renegotiating peace.

Once again we can bring Kuroda in to help us.

One note of warning when including an MA in a peace treaty: before you kill the last city of a civ or make peace you need to renegotiate the peace treaty. Otherwise, you are right back at war and often in a very bad position.

Agreed, in general we should try to avoid resources, alliances, and luxuries in peace deals, just avoid anything that can be broken by other means. Once you break one deal you are done for the rest of the game. Currently we can still buy tech for GPT, and it would be nice to keep that until we are sure we want to break our reputation. ROP does not seem to be affected by other deal breaks.

smackster, it's not our rep I'm worried about. In my first attempt at a GOTM....Spain (20?) I made peace with civ "A" and included a MA in it against civ "B" (sorry, I can't remember the civs, this was in June). When I destroyed the last city of Civ B, I was suddenly back at war with civ A. They had troops throughout my lands and promptly cut the number of cities that were Spanish in half. (I never did finish that game :( )

I have since learned that you have to renegotiate the peace treaty before capturing the last city to avoid this from happening.

Bugs

[Edit] - P.S. @ mad-bax, will we be able to read the other threads up to a certain point like CF arranged for the SG23 games?

I think that is a good idea. I will post page numbers in the first post which will indicate where the graph ends fro each team... if you see what I mean.

I see no reason why you can't read up to that point. Won't be tonight though.

Sir Bugsy,

Double risk then of tying MA to a peace renegotiation.

Of course you should always watch the AI as they wander through your land. Having been sneaked attacked 4 times in the GOTM25 I know all about that one. And I did eventually win it, albeit about 1000 years after I would have liked.

Smackster

I was sneak attacked four times also, Egypt, Kelts, Han, Tokugawa. I wonder if cracker can pre-program that kind of stuff?

Sorry for the off-topic.

I also watch the AI, and try to not have unguarded cities nearby that might tempt them. Unless I want to tempt them :mwaha:

I don't think this is too off topic, I think its relevant to this game. For instance our border with Karuda is probably safe because of all the mountains which would slow them down. But I tend to think there is a fair amount of randomness in sneak attacks, sometimes the AI just does it when it makes no sense, but other times like in that game of the month where I had too many undguarded cities near my neighbour who proceeded to take them.

Sir Bugsy I think you should play it now, I checked an Teknoice hasn't posted on any thread for over a week and we are over the 24 hours got it time now.

I have PM'd and emailed Teknoice over the last couple of days with no response. :( Having made the effort to download the entire mod and install it I am surprised he has disappeared.

So, as smackster suggests, Bugsy is UP

I have opened the other two game threads for you to look at. In the first post I have published page numbers that you can safely read to. When I get time I'll replace the plain text with links.

OK then I've got it. I'm up in two other games, so this one may not be completed for 24-36 hours.

The pre-flight alone just took my entire lunch hour plus the 45 minutes it took to peel me away from the screen.

Pre-flight – 250 AD - Conduct an investigation of Kofu for 14G. The garrison consists of 4 footmen and 3 archers. Takeda must have most of their force in former Tokugawa lands. Great move smackster keeping them under wraps. Including the garrison, their forces consist of one archer/warrior army, 30 archers, 9 footmen. We have 41 different troops in the immediate area. I will try and maneuver.

We still have an alliance against the Mori with Shimazu for another 10 turns.

Rush a temple in Shimoda (40G), Ina (28G), and Hamamatsu (24G) to fill in our lands a bit.

Japan has contact with the mainland so let’s see what we can do.

Shimazu is the cheapest by far. They will sell me contact with Baejke for WM & 22G, so we execute that trade.

Baejke is annoyed, broke, and they don’t have Feudal Warlords. For Feudal Warlords and our WM they will give their WM and contact with the other three civs.

The Gogury are annoyed, and have Monotheism.

The Han are cautious, have Mono and Engineering.

The Koreans are also annoyed and are tech equals with Han.

I can make a two-fer here. After talking with each civ, I determine that the Han will give us the best deal for Engineering at 16 gpt and 392g. I then go and sell our WM around to the others to make some more cash… 11G. Oh, boy. :cringe: Han’s price is now 15gpt and 410G. One gpt must be worth 18G of up front cash. Execute that trade.

Korea, Kuroda, and the Han also have Invention.

We trade the Gogury Engineering for Montheism and their WM.

We learn that Takeda, Korea, Kuroda, and the Han have Samurai Code. I wonder how far up the lower tech path the other civs are?

We take a look at the Korean peninsula and it doesn’t appear that there have been any wars yet.

I start a 50 turn gambit on Son Buddhism. Not that this will work. 50 turns is a long time.


So here is a question for the team before I even start my turns. How does everyone feel about going to war with Takeda, now that we know they might have Samurai? Do I take advantage of their poor military position? (thanks to smackster) In one or two turns I could have enough units in position to take out a large portion of their military. I would also try and disconnect their horses early and take it to them. Or..... do we play conservatively and build up our own forces… samurai? We could probably trade for it soon.

We need to really stay on top of the science picture or else we will rapidly fall behind.

Bugs

I don't think we have any choice, need to strike as soon as you think you can destroy the trapped troops. There is at least two cities that can be taken straight off. If they come with Knights I'm sure they wont have many of them. Can you see where their horses are? I know they have one iron not too far (damn it as I meant to send an Oda down to it).

We have to think that the trapped troops are nearly their entire offensive force, so it will take them ages to build a worthwhile Knight force and if we get stuck I'm sure they'll give us peace. Don't sign any alliances against them.

Wait a mo', do they have horses, I think they might not?

Smackster

I think we need to get a war going with Takeda as soon as possible. We must ensure we have the first strike, then our forces should decimate their visible troops. I can't remember whether we have any outstanding peace deal with them. If so I don't think we should break any deals to do it, but if we can get our troops ready, then ask him to leave and get him to declare as suggested by Smackster, then we should.

It's not worth spending anything on research. If we have a citizen that would achieve nothing otherwise then we might as well make him a scientist and plod along at 50 turn rate. Thanks to your trades, we now know plenty of civs to outsource research to, and if we save our pennies and trade wisely we can keep up. I'd go along the Invention/Gunpowder/Chemistry/Mil Tradition route myself, since that's where we need to go to maintain military offensive superiority, but it's a bit academic.

Remember we'll also need a strong navy at some point. Once we have unified our island we need to go after the other local ones and then move right along to the further ones. Just to give ourselves a challenging target - how about trying for world conquest before 1000 AD?

We are safe on deals now, so we can attack them. I think the peace deal is up, so check it now in case they try to renegotiate, if they do then you might have to declare it then.

I checked the deals before I started and we don't have any with Takeda. I didn't check for horses, but that will be the first order of business.

Getting them to declare is the best option. I think it is altogether possible they will declare on us.

I think with Alan's challenge, we will be at war for most of the rest of this game. Since we are just about to build our first naval vessel, it may be a while before we have a navy.

Bugs

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
I checked the deals before I started and we don't have any with Takeda. I didn't check for horses, but that will be the first order of business.

Getting them to declare is the best option. I think it is altogether possible they will declare on us. Is there much advantage to having them make the declaration if there are no treaties to break? War happiness is the only one I can think of. Do we get war happiness from a declaration in Monarchy? Whatever we do we must control the timing. It would be bad karma if they declared at our end of turn and then had a whole turn to beat up our forces.


I think with Alan's challenge, we will be at war for most of the rest of this game. I never saw it any other way, whatever the end date we actually achieve. We have a Conquest goal, and we are in competition with the other teams. We can't conquer by being cuddly. Our UU gives us an edge now, and we know how to use Knights and Cavalry better than the AI when we get them. Why hang about?

Since we are just about to build our first naval vessel, it may be a while before we have a navy.Our first junk has been cruising around for about 15 turns. We need to build some more over the next fifty turns to take the fight across the seas, but our first priority has to be to deal with the locals on our own island in short order. Takeda, then Kuroda, then Mori. Next come the ones that are only a coastal tile away - Chosogabe and Shimazu.

[EDIT] Ships may actually be a powerful early addition to our forces even during the local wars. We can get quite fast sea movement for our foot troops and even for horses where the alternative is mountain ranges or jungles. And the geography of our local world puts a lot of cities close to the coastline. I haven't seen what squid activity we would have to contend with, though. I only saw one red lined beast during my last stint.

Originally posted by AlanH
Is there much advantage to having them make the declaration if there are no treaties to break? War happiness is the only one I can think of. Do we get war happiness from a declaration in Monarchy? Whatever we do we must control the timing. It would be bad karma if they declared at our end of turn and then had a whole turn to beat up our forces.

I'll ensure the timing is correct.

Our first junk has been cruising around for about 15 turns. We need to build some more over the next fifty turns to take the fight across the seas, but our first priority has to be to deal with the locals on our own island in short order.
:blush: I guess I didn't study the map enough. I saw the troops down by Mori lands, but I didn't see the junk.

I believe that Samurai replaces the knight for us, and that is our UU.

I saw some discussion in the other threads about the UU and I'm confused. Since we have already triggered the Golden Age, I guess the Kensei Oda must have been a UU for us. Why do you think we will have Samurai as well? Great if we do - at 4.4.2 it convinces me even more that I'll turn off any defensive builds I inherit ;)

I'll know soon enough and will pass it along. You are right about the Kensai Oda being our UU, and we did already have our GA. What a lousy memory I have. If we do get Samurai, that will be wonderful, but knights will be great too.

I did kick that GA off, now that does seem like a long time ago, actually it was a long time ago

Here is a partial posting:

Pre-flight (con’t) – Takeda has horses hooked up to one city, but that city is not connected to the capitol. So after preparing for this most of the afternoon, I finally press enter.

IBT – Takeda demands that we leave his territory. He also wants to renew our peace treaty. I ensure nothing is attached to it so it will last until war is redeclared. Everyone wants to talk about peace treaties. We must have renegotiate deals selected.
Hamamatsu: Temple=> Barracks
Azuchi: Horse=> Horse
Shimoda: Temple=> Barracks
Ise: Horse=> Market
Moriyama: Kensai=>Kensai
Sir Bugsy: Junk=>Temple
Ina: Temple=> Barracks

1. 260 AD – Much Maneuvering. MM some cities, fire some clowns, hire some tax men. We run no science at all.

IBT – Koromo: Horse=>Horse
Ogaki: Horse=> Horse
Komaki: Horse=> Horse

2. 270 AD – More Maneuvering.

IBT – A barb galley sinks our brand new junk :(
Nagoya: Horse=> Horse
Handa: Horse=> Horse
Yokkachi: Horse=> Horse
Ichinomiya: Horse=> Horse

3. 280 AD – Let the battle begin. First I demand that Takeda leaves, which moves all but two units off of hills. Next I declare war.
The battle of the Tokogawa plains:
4/4 horse kills 3/3 footman (redlined)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 footman (-2hp & promotes)
Capture a worker outside Hino
4/4 horse killed by 3/3 archer (-1hp & promotes)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/4 Archer (-1hp)
4/4 Kensai killed by 3/3 footman (-1hp)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 footman (-1hp)
5/5 Kensai kills 2/3 Footman (-2hp)
4/4 horse kills 2/3 footman (-2hp)
4/4 horse kills 4/4 archer (redlined)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 archer (no loss)
Capture another slave outside Owase
4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 footman (no loss)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 footman (-1hp)
4/4 horse kills 2/3 footman (-1hp)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 archer (no loss & promotes)
4/4 horse kills 4/4 archer (-1hp)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 warrior (no loss & promotes)
4/4 horse retreats from 9/9 archer/warrior army (-1hp)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 footman (no loss)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 footman (-1hp)
3/3 Kensai kills 3/3 archer (no loss & promotes)
4/4 Horse kills 7/9 warrior/archer army (redlined)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 archer (-2hp & promotes)
4/4 horse killed by 3/3 archer (-1hp & promotes)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 archer (no loss & promotes)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 archer (-1hp)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 archer (-1hp)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 archer on hill (no loss)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 archer on hill (-1hp)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 footman (no loss)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 archer (-2hp & promotes)
5/5 horse kills 3/3 archer (-2hp)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 archer (no loss & promotes)
5/5 Kensai kills 3/3 Archer (-1hp)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 Archer (-1hp)
4/4 horse kills 3/4 archer (no loss)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 archer (no loss)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 archer (-1hp)
4/4 horse killed by 3/3 archer (redlined & promotes)
4/4 horse kills 2/4 archer (-1hp)
That didn’t work out as well as I thought it would. There are still 9 Takeda archers left standing.
30 wins, 7 retreats, 4 losses

Takeda horse tile outside Saitama is pillaged. The most we can see from Takeda is one knight produced in Saitama. Unless someone sells them horses. I don’t think that is possible since any trades routes, including sea routes have to go through us.

End of turn three. That took four hours. I’ll post what I have so far and continue playing.

11 promotions can't argue with that, I assume that you can finish the rest off next turn.

I'll have to look into that renegotiate deal thing, I don't know if it is related to the check box to always renegotiate a deal.

You know that our peace deal rep is now trashed so we wont get any more peace deal renegotiations for cash. But that is ok we needed to go to war, and with all those promotions we are sure to get a leader soon.

I don't think we could have hoped for a better start. Good work so far.

I know it will distract from current business, but it occurs to me we need to know the state of war and peace on the other island. If they are at peace we need to provoke a war. If they are already warring then we may be able to sell alliances to keep them at it.

Hey, Sir Bugsy, you've had it for over two days now. Any further progress? :confused:

Sorry it took so long...

3. 280 AD (con’t) :cringe: :mad: :wallbash: :aargh: OK, I have to apologize to the team because I have royally ruined our rep. I just tried to trade Han for Samurai Code. Before the war started he would give it to us for 27 got and 48G. Now he’ll “Never agree to that” even if I give all our gold and gpt. I went back and looked at the auto save and in active deals we had 18 turns on a peace treaty with Takeda. Now I thought when I agreed to peace with Takeda during the first IBT, it said this is good until war is redeclared. Obviously there is something I don’t understand about peace treaties.

IBT – Three horses retreat from archers, we lose one horse, two kensai, and they lose three archers.
Suzuka: Horse=>Horse
Yaizu riots because their luxes were cut off. :smoke:
Hikone: Kensai=>Horse

4. 290 AD – Siege of Hino: 4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 footman (redlined)
3/3 Kensai kills 3/3 footman (no loss & promotes)
Hino, pop 1 is autorazed and we collect 0 gold.

Battle of the Tokugawa plains (part II):
4/4 horse kills 2/4 archer (no loss & promotes)
5/5 Kensai kills 3/3 Archer (-2hp)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 archer (-2hp & promotes. I love the little bow they do when they promote :) )
3/4 horse retreats from 2/4 archer (no loss)
3/4 horse kills 2/4 archer (no loss)
4/4 horse kills 2/3 archer (-1hp)
5/5 Kensai kills 3/4 archer (no loss)

Takeda now has two archers left in the open.

Now that we have a trade route to Kuroda, and in order to get more cash flow I sell Dyes to Kuroda for 7gpt.

IBT – Lose a red-lined horse to an archer. Another horse retreats. Watch a Yellow Kensai capture an orange city.
Azuchi: Horse=> horse

5. 300 AD – Battle of the Tokugawa Plains (part III):
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 archer (no loss & promotes)
5/5 Kensai kills 3/3 Archer
Maneuver for the siege of Kofu next turn.

Against Mori units:
4/4 horse killed by 5/5 Kensai (-2hp)
4/4 horse killed by 4/4 Kensai (redlined)

IBT – An archer attacks out of Kofu and dies to one of our elite Kensai.
Nagoya: Horse=> Aqueduct

6. 310 AD – Siege of Kofu: 4/4 horse killed by 3/3 footman (redlined & promotes)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 footman (-2hp & promotes)
5/5 Kensai kills 2/4 footman (redlined) Kofu is liberated.

Outside Saitama: 3/3 horse kills 3/3 archer (-1hp & promotes)

Maneuvering for the next two cities.

IBT – Mori and Chosogabe sign a peace treaty.
Alanville: Horse=> Horse
Karasu: Horse=> settler
The people build some cool pillars in front of our cave. We have the coolest cave in all of Nippon.

7. 320 AD – Maneuvering.

Against Mori units:
4/4 Kensai kills 2/4 Kensai (-2hp)
5/5 Kensai kills 3/3 Kensai (-3hp)

Takeda have Samurai Spearmen (pikes) in some cities.

IBT – No counterattacks
Koromo: Horse=>Horse
Ogaki: Horse=> Horse
Handa: Horse=> Horse
Yokkachi: Horse=Horse
Gengisgawa: Junk=>Temple
Suzuka: Horse=> Horse

8. 330 AD – Siege of Owase: 4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 footman (no loss)
4/4 horse kills 3/3 footman (-1hp & promotes)
3/3 horse retreats from 3/3 footman (no loss)
3/3 Kensai killed by 3/3 footman (no loss)
4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 footman (-1hp & promotes) Owase is ours. 3 resisters.

We capture a catapult.

Outside of Owase: 5/5 Horse kills 2/3 Samurai Spearman (-2hp)

Siege of Sagamihara: 4/4 Horse killed 3/3 Sam Spear (no loss)
4/4 horse killed by 3/3 Sam Spear (-1hp & promotes)
4/4 horse kills 3/4 Sam Spear (redlined)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/3 footman (-1hp)

We can now get Samurai code in a peace treaty with Takeda.
The best we can do on a regular deal is “getting close” with all our cash, 379G. I am SO sorry I have messed this up for our team. If you guys want to put me on permanent skip I would certainly understand.

IBT – Takeda wants to talk. You’ll just give us Samurai Code…no cities. Take a hire.
Azuchi: Horse=> horse
Kasugai: Horse=> Horse
Smackster: horse=> horse

9. 340 AD – Siege of Sagamihara (part II):
4/4 horse killed by 3/3 footman (redlined & promoted)
5/5 horse retreats from 2/4 footman (no loss)
5/5 horse killed by 2/4 footman (redlined & promoted)
4/4 horse killed by 2/5 footman (no loss)
4/4 horse finally kills 2/5 footman (no loss & promoted)
Sagamihara is ours. Two slaves. Two catapults. 4 resisters. Except for the resisters, it looks like it did when I used to visit in the early 90’s.

In the open: 4/4 horse killed by 3/3 Sam spear (redlined)
4/4 horse kills 1/3 Sam spear (-1hp)

Siege of Saitana: 4/4 Kensai kills 3/3 footman (no loss & promotes)
5/5 Kensai kills 3/3 footman (-3hp) Saitana is ours. 2 resisters. 3 slaves.

I can finally get Samurai Code. Both Han and Korea will sell it for 425G, I go with Korea since thay have less money.

IBT – A horse retreats from an archer counter attack. An archer kills a horse.
Chosagabe and Han sign an MA against the Gogury. I wonder how much Chosagabe got for joining the phony war.
The first good news this set of turns. Kuroda builds Sun Tzu in Bizen. The first town over from us. :devil2:

10. 350 AD – Outside Sagamihara: 4/4 horse kills 3/3 Sam spear (-2hp & promotes)
5/5 horse kills 3/4 archer (-1hp)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/4 Kensai (-1hp)
4/4 horse kills 2/4 Kensai (no loss)

Siege of Chiba: 4/4 horse killed by 4/4 sam spear (-1hp)
4/4 horse killed by 3/3 Sam spear (-1hp)
4/4 horse retreats from 3/4 sam spear (-1hp)
4/4 horse kills 2/3 sam spear (-1hp & promotes)
5/5 horse retreats from 2/4 sam spear (no loss)
5/5 horse kills 2/4 sam spear (redlined)
Chiba falls. 2 resisters.

Outside Chiba: 4/4 horse kills 4/4 Kensai (redlined) One slave captured.

Found Atsugi.

3/4 Kensai kills 3/3 Sam spear guard a settler (redlined) two slaves.

Score – 980

After Action Report: Well militarily the turns went well; however, they will be forever stained by our ruined reputation. I suppose the best plan would be pointy stick research. Takeda will already give us techs for peace. I’d wait until he is down to one or two cities. Knights will start being produced soon (I haven’t upgraded any yet.) Takeda will lose his iron source in the next city or two. The counter attacks have been few, and I think smackster’s showdown at the OK corral idea worked out very well. We are completely healed from that, and now just have wounded from continuing battles.

We need revenue producing building in a big way. I’ve been automatically selecting temples in our new cities, but in hindsight markets would be much more beneficial.

The leader generation will improve soon. I had 12 elite victories, and promoted 17 units to elite, so the leader drought should break soon.

I have to figure out how I could have started that war without breaking our rep. :(

Have fun with the war Alan,

Bugs
>>SAVE<< (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/MB4A-350AD.zip)

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
Now I thought when I agreed to peace with Takeda during the first IBT, it said this is good until war is redeclared. Obviously there is something I don’t understand about peace treaties.
Thanks for coming through, Bugsy. That must have been a heavy session for you.

I always assumed that a peace treaty lasted for 20 turns, regardless of that "until redeclared" bit. When I saw your comment I assumed it was my misunderstanding, otherwise I'd have said something then. Never mind, we can live without a crummy rep. I'm much less concerned about these things these days. I think the last two or three games have really flipped me from a builder to a warmonger.

I suppose the best plan would be pointy stick research. Takeda will already give us techs for peace. I’d wait until he is down to one or two cities. That's the way to do it. And we can just wade straight in again if we want, as we have no rep to worry about

We need revenue producing building in a big way. I’ve been automatically selecting temples in our new cities, but in hindsight markets would be much more beneficial.I'll review build orders before I get going. Cash in the bank is probably going to be the key for us.

The leader generation will improve soon. I had 12 elite victories, and promoted 17 units to elite, so the leader drought should break soon.Great preparation. :thumbsup:

I have to figure out how I could have started that war without breaking our rep. :(This was the risk in letting Takeda time the peace renewal. We probably could have realised it was coming up for renewal during the previous turn and declared then. But it was only a matter of time. Who needs per turn deals anyway?


Have fun with the war Alan,
Got it. Loaded, and ready to go this evening. If Smackster is still awake he might get to finish off the Takeda tonight.

I'll wait up for it, so will play tonight, it will be back to Bugsy in the AM :-)

I think the only way to keep the rep was to not accept the peace renegotation. But we would have then been at war on their turn and they would have attacked us with their 47 troops. I think we had to take the deal and break it. I really don't understand why sometime the renegotiate and sometime they don't I'll try to experiment on this.

At this time, having already broken rep with Takeda, I don't think that peace, then war makes it much worse than it already is. So you might as well take peace now, take the tech, and go back to war same turn.

Certainly with rep broken our chance for sneak attack from the east is higher so keep the border protection up there.

Good news about Sun Tzu we should build forces to take that as soon as we think we have enough.

Smackster

Alan,
Thanks for the support. Yes, that was a long set of turns. The first turn with the huge battle took quite a while. I tried to make sure I could attack as many enemy units and not leave someone just out of reach. The rest of the turns took so long, because I was so sick for having ruined our rep, I was trying really hard to execute the game as best as I could. Then double checking.

Bugs

During my first quick look around I see we shall need Marines to finish this off! There's a one-tile island city occupied by Shimazu. I think that puts paid to my 1000AD/medieval target, unless we can teach cavalry to jump ship.

We don't get berserkers, do we? ;)

An option with one tile cities is to ask for them in a peace treaty. If you have someone on the ropes, they will usually give you little cities like that. You need to make sure that their capitol doesn't jump to the island.

Bombard it down to size one first, then they will give it up easily, we must not forget this when we go to fight them

@Sir Bugsy and Smackster: Good thinking. That will be possible once we have naval bombard capability - Magnetism/Frigates. I've not tried for conquest before, so these tricks are new to me. I've noticed a couple mor one tile islands about. At least two of them are occupied now and no doubt there will be more before we finish, so grabbing them in peace deals has to be a high priority for an early finish.

I''ve started doing the preflight diplo rounds. My objectives are:

1. To get a small dogpile going on the other continent against Han as he is our main competitor. I haven't bought an embassy over there yet - they are a bit expensive - but it looks as if Gogury are already at war with them judging from the power curve, so I need to get Baekje and Korea into a fight.

2. Grab some cash to fund embassies plus upgrades for our gallant horsemen. I've renegotiated peace with Shimazu, plus the alliance we had with them against Mori, to extract their cash and a world map. We can't get up-front cash or tech out of Chosogabe, but he is at war with Gogury and we sell an alliance with him against Gogury for 20 gpt. Gogury are on the way out by the look of F8, and there's no way we are going to have physical contact between the two continents within the next 20 turns, so it will all be academic as far as we are concerned.

3. Carry on fighting. The next couple of turns will be healing and positioning. As there are a couple of big towns next - pop 7, pop 10 - I'll try to ensure we have a full-scale force ready before I hit them. I don't know whether I'll be able to get any knights into play during the next round of sieges - depends on how many peace deals I can sell for lump sums. If not I want to use Kensei Oda as much as possible. Although they are powerful now, they are "relatively" expendable as we can't upgrade them, whereas our horses ar going to stand us in good stead right through to cavalry.

4. We don't really need Invention for its own sake yet, unless someone thinks we need to build longbows. I'll only sacrifice cash or a false peace deal to get Invention as and when I need to use a leader for Leonardo's. I figure Leo's is priority #1 for a leader, given our need to turn horses into knights, with a new palace as priority #2.

Comments are welcome as long as they arrive soon .... ;)

I agree that Leo's would be huge for us. Cash flow will be very important, and the savings will be significant.

I suppose we will need to time a war with Kuroda. Bizen has Sun Tzu's and it is right on the frontier. We take Bizen then we can sell our barracks for some cash.

I would think the prepositioning of units to go to war on the eastern front could happen with about 3-4 Takeda cities left. Sue for peace when you can get techs and most or all of their remaining cities. Then go after Kuroda.

The Takeda war will have the widest front until we get to the Korean peninsula, so after this the turns probably won't take as long.

Bugs

If I recall correctly during GOTM25 I only got 2 gold for each Barracks I sold, so I doubt that will do us much good - maybe fund one upgrade. The huge benefit from Sun Tzu is to be able to heal and upgrade units in any city on the continent.

Korean peninsula? :confused:

Alan,

Are you playing now, as we are both on-line, why not type your report for each turn directly into Quick Reply then we can see it turn by turn.

Do you have timbuktu (I'm joking I know you don't) but that would allow us to watch your moves live. Maybe we could start selling tickets for our moves. :)

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