Wow!!! Wow!!!
We are going to be unstoppable and now with SunTzu we will sure beat them all.
I wonder how much AI economies have slowed down because of the total war that is going on... I hope it won't take them too long to research chivalry.

Great set of turns Smackster :beer:
Although we have shifted the turns in game....
I wonder if it will cause problems with M-B and his histograms based on the turns when game was uploaded, we will be shifted comparing to everybody else...
Tarkeel you will have to play 9 turns, or if you decide to "cheat" ;) also, i will have to fix the situation. I guess everybody wants to play full set of 10 turns...

Looked at the graphs... I wonder if we are better team or what :mischief:
Not just a scorewise but it looks like other teams with few exceptions are just too slow in this game...
I have suspicions they are just carefully reading our forum and making decisions based on what we did :crazyeye:

Although we have shifted the turns in game....
I wonder if it will cause problems with M-B and his histograms based on the turns when game was uploaded, we will be shifted comparing to everybody else...
Tarkeel you will have to play 9 turns, or if you decide to "cheat" ;) also, i will have to fix the situation. I guess everybody wants to play full set of 10 turns...
No I did get it back on track, 150BC is the 120th turn. But the graph system can work with odd numbers, in fact if you show the results in tabular format you see how it displays them. In these SG's teams are always getting the turns out of synch.

Edit : When I was playing the game, I counted the first turn before hitting end turn, and I should not have. That's why I got confused.

Oh my, aren't we looking fit :) I will play it when I get home from work, so there's plenty of time for suggestions. Lookslike what smackster said though, just play it. I think we all have a fair idea of where to go from here :hammer:

I think smackster did a very good thing with putting every second euro/american based player in the roster, and that's why we are so far ahead (turnwise).

@Smackster: Well played. Sun Tzu's was a bonus. :)

I guess we now enter a phase with future settlers following our conquering armies to settle vacated lands. One settler in S heading for the former site of LIverpool, right? I have made a RCP10 map for discussion (Blue dot is final RCP6 location) Edit one tundra city missing from RCP10 at tundra NW of Game:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-RCP10.JPG

and also a suggestion for a FP location and RCP4/8 in "french lands", when we eventually move into this area we need to agree on where to start founding our cities so they do not interfer with our fp placement:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-RCP48.JPG

Hi guys, maybe this example is overkill, you might all be aware of this technique but if not have a look at this:

Just had a look at the latest save and found a situation that we can use as an example of when to shortrush something to save shields. Pisae is due to build a Settler in 3 turns. It produces 9 shields per turn and have produced 9 so far. 21 to go, but producing 9 per turn makes that 36 produced when Settler is built. Unfortunately the story does not end there, two workers are currently clearing the forest next to Pisae and they will finish in 3 turns too. So total number of shields produced in Pisae will be 46! for a 30 shield unit... However there is a way around this. Shift the citizen working the tile N of Pisae to the coastal forest.Now Pisae produce 10 spt, it does eat 1 fpt more than it produces at the moment but that is a minor problem. Now the situation in Pisae will have Pisae at 19 shields after this turn and 29 after next turn and finally 39 to build it in three turns and, the shields gained from the forest clearing will add to this. We need to get Pisae to finish in two turns so the shields from the forest clearing goes to the next thing produced. This is done by changing Pisae to produce a Worker now, 1 shield short at 9 now. rush it by paying 4 gold and switch back to a Settler. and Voilá, the Settler will be finished in 2 turns. The forest will clear in 3 and the shields from that will go to the next thing built there.

Shortrushing is also great for getting more out of cities wo losing the shileds it produce on the turn you rush something. eg. A city w. 10 shields building something that cost 30 shields. After first production when at 10 shields shortrush a 20 shield unit and switch back to the 30 shield unit, shaving a turn off each unit producted.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Pisae.JPG

The dotmaps are looking good, but beyond RCP10 I think we should just focus on filling in land, and space cities to cover the most ground, and go all out irrigation/growth.

I agree with you that RCP10 is the limit for planned city placement. However, in the north we need to plan the area where we intend to place our FP so new cities are "preplaced" to conform with the intended FP site.

Yeah, I totally agree, I just forgot to put "in the south/East" in my post there. We should have some plans for cities though ;) Just focus on grabbing as much land as possible with each city

I got bored at work today so wrote up a spoiler on the ancient ages. Please let me know if you want some changes (additions/removals) and especially if something is wrong!

---

Ancient Age Spoiler for Team Smackster:

Opening moves:
We settled on the spot, and went for an ultra early food strategy, sending the worker straight to the game to chop it. We built two warriors for scouting while chopping, turning the forest into an early barracks before starting a settler. This turned out to work very well since Veii didn't really need a granary, as our second city was formed N-NW of the game, and would be a 4 turn settler factory once the third city would make the second game available.

Exploration and contacs
The first warrior scouted northwards, stopping just past the floodplain before heading counter-clockwise.
The second warrior scouted SE, and in 3200 BC made a frightening discovery:
Alert alert, Alert alert, enemy sighted, enemy sighted. To the south east, Greek Phalanx, oh dear, run away, run away.
He hightailed home incase Alexander decided to just waltz into Veii. The hoplite folloed us all the way home before heading off into the mountains. Alex finally popped by for coffe before 2710 BC, and sold us Bronze Working before being told he would be the next acquisition in our empire. He wouldn't comply, so we declared on him. Scouting continued south along the western coast, before being put on hold since we didn't want more contacts and had sufficent map to plan cities.

Before 1950 BC England and America appears in F4, guess someone told them where we live. Before 1750 BC we get more company, as Russia, Germany and Babylon appear in F4. France also appeared somewhere in there, but none of them have contacted us yet though.

In 1710 we make our first contacts: Germany first, followed by England and Russia. Babylon contacted us before this with a trade, but there was some confusion if this was proper contact, so war wasn't declared untill the next player spotted the mistake. It probably didn't change much though, as Babylon never managed to become a threat, and only sent the occasional bowman at us.

Scouting was resumed again in 1350 BC, and we have a look towards the north and find French borders.

Settling and Expansion
We decided early on to go with 2 main RCP rings, at 3 and 6. This way we managed to take full advantage of the rivers.

-- I intend to put in a map here with city foundings numbered --

Research and Trading
We started by researching pottery at max, followed by Bronze Working. BW never completed, since it was traded for before 2710 BC from Greece for Pottery and 3g. Continued on to Iron Working at max, which came in 1950 BC. The entire roman culture rejoiced at the fact we had plenty iron to build our might legionnaries. The wheel was the next tech up for research at max, coming in 1670 BC. Maths was ordered as the next project.

Before 1725 BC Hammurabi offers us Masonry and Ceremonial Burial if we'll just cough up Iron Working and 7 gold, which we decide is a worthy trade.

In 1500 BC England sell us Writing for WM, 23 gold and 5 gpt, Russia give us Philosophy for 6gpt and WM, Swap Philosophy for Mysticism with America, and philosophy with HBR from Germany.

In 1275 BC 3 civs have math, so we buy from France for 63g, 1gpt and wm, and sell it to Germany and England for a total of 90 gold. We buy literature from France in 1125 BC for WM+90g.

In 800 BC we buy Polytheism from America at monopoly (13gpt and 284g), and sell to the rest of the world. We start Monarchy at max.

After getting the Great Library (see below), we finished Monarchy then cut of research. At the start of 530 BC Republic pops from the great library, followed by Curreny and Construction in 450 BC, and that's it for research in this age ;)

In 530 BC we finally trade for a world map.

Warfare
Alexanders first raiding party showed up in 2430 BC, consisting of 3 warriors. They attack our defending archer, which defeats 2 and gets promoted, and the third dies attacking the defending warrior. Things looked shaky there, but we pulled through. Immediately after a hoplite appears as well, but that is killed by our elite archer while on grass. It isn't untill 1600 or so that the next "attack" comes, in form of a lone archer. Our elite archer attacks it, and Trajan rises to our cause!
Trajan draws up plans to construct several marvelous limestone triangles which will somehow cause our cities to grow twice as fast, as well as provide us with a border expansion. Trajan supervises construction, but perishes in a tragic gigantic limestone cube accident.
The greeks come at us again with some archers around 1450, but it's too little too late. From here on out there is a steady trinkle of Greek units (and others as well) over the mountains, but no serious threats.

We decided to hold of the GA till we could switch to Monarchy, so we built mainy horses for leaderfishing.

Before 690 BC, England allied France against us and we got an early enemy. In 570 BC an elite horse kills the last defending spear in Termopylae, getting us a leader as well. Great Library rushed in the replacement city.

In 330 BC we declare war on the last civ known to us, Russia. England had established an embassy with us, and we used this to sign England vs America for gpt, one turn before declaring premature war on England. We decided that our trading rep wasn't worth much in this game, so might as well get some use from it.

Wonders
Pyramids rushed in Antium in 1575 BC.
Great Library rushed in Syracuse in 550 BC

Conclusion and General Points
I personally love the way that all ancient age buildings, terraind and resources have latin names, gives a much better feeling for the game. Nice work on the latinized player references in city names (Gonzominium?)

Those mountain ranges in the northeast and east posed some initial problems, both in blocking cities and letting enemy units walk close in protected squares.

We haven't really seen any barbs, so no idea on how that barb puzzle is supposed to work.

Superb spoiler... and I also do like those quotes from Smackster and DH....

Suggestion #1. Keep pillaging greeks until they have no roads left...
I think they have iron in one of their eastern cities, that probably should be pillaged too, or if you get enough forces just kill'em all :ar15:

All we need to do is pillage the roads directly connected to Athens. That means they get no resources or luxuries anywhere, as they need to be connected to the capital. Leave the rest as we can use them later.

smackster

I agree with Smackster, pillage as little as possible for effect since we are moving in to occupy the territory later. Every road, mine and irrigation we can use is Worker actions saved...

Hi guys, maybe this example is overkill, you might all be aware of this technique but if not have a look at this:
............short rush example deleted......

I thinks it fine to do short rushing if you have time. But would not make it a requirement for any of the team as it does add more time to the set of turns. For example my turns took nearly 3 hours last night and I didn't spend any time planning things like short rushes and didn't have to do any diplomacy.

Great writeup, here are a couple of suggestions.


Before 1950 BC England and America appears in F4, guess someone told them where we live. Before 1750 BC we get more company, as Russia, Germany and Babylon appear in F4. France also appeared somewhere in there, but none of them have contacted us yet though.

In 1710 we make our first contacts: Germany first, followed by England and Russia. There was some confusion here, as Babylon contacted us before this with a trade but war wasn't declared untill the next player spotted the mistake.
I'd like to add two points to this section
1) I'd like us to say that after Babylon contacted us, we intentially contacted all the others, so that we could maximise trading during that period
2) Maybe put a comment in that we don't think our mistake on declaring war changed anything, all Babylon did was send a new Bowmen every 10 turns, each of which was easily dispatch


Warfare
Alexanders first raiding party showed up in 2430 BC, consisting of 3 warriors. They attack our defending archer, which defeats 2 and gets promoted, and the third dies attacking the defending warrior. Things looked shaky there, but we pulled through. Immediately after a hoplite appears as well, but that is killed by our elite archer while on grass. It isn't untill 1600 or so that the next "attack" comes, in form of a lone archer. Our elite archer attacks it, and Trajan rises to our cause!

Maybe want to mention there that he built the Pyramids.


In 330 BC we declare war on the last civ known to us, Russia.

Might want to mention that America established an embassy with us, and we got them to declare on England, who then got Russia to fight also. As we had to pay ~30GPT to America for the alliance, we declared war on them early (about 30 turns or so) to get our gold back. We accepted the trashed rep at that point as we were due to be at war with all soon.

What do we do If we get new MGL in next few turns??
Save it for buture FP build or just go ahead and create a legion army??

GL's: If we can build Leo's when the GL arrives, build it. Else use it for an army, would prefer to have the army built w. Knights if possible though. FP is so far in the future I guess we will have at least one additional GL appear before it is time for it. We need to take out the frogs first...

Other wonders we could benefit from during MA: Bach's, Smith's (maybe) and Magellan's.

Harder to see the use of: Sistine (we will probably not build any Cathedrals), Newton's and Copernicus (to late in the age, we should be at, or close to domination by then).

Edit: Re. Tarkeel's question below. HG might be OK too. Can't remember when it goes obsolete though? FP when we are in position to place it where we want it. Remember, this is PTW! )There were some comments about playing mostly Coquests from someone in the beginning.)

Quick question: FP, Hanging Gardens, Leo or army? :hammer: :whipped: groucho

HG lasts till Steam Power.
We are still some way from FP site, as I've had to focus on counterattacks in the beginning here. Athens is burning though ;)

Quick question: FP, Hanging Gardens, Leo or army? :hammer: :whipped: groucho
I like HG, but we could build that in 20 turns. No point building the FP before we get the FP lands. Leo's is nice but we can probably generate enough cash not to need it. Army would allow us to get the HE, although I'm convinced that doesn't work (well I never seem to get leaders after I build it).

There is the great lighthouse I think, or did that go.

I would skip hanging gardens...
Sistine chapel, I do agree we probably won't build a single cafedral in this game...
Leo might be useful, and yes we will have enough cash for knight upgrades, but who knows if we will have a need to upgrade to cavalry, we very well might.
And since we will research all late MA techs on our own we won't have much cash at that point... Well.. it was just a thought...
Great lighthouse is a good addition, i was already thinking about having a suicide galler run, but then may be we should wait for our GL to last longer...
not sure if it is really going to work in this game but if we contact AIs on another continent later in MA we will be able to get free education and all more advanced tech for free just because.... I did that before and it works..

Although i do have a feeling that this game will be over before we advance in industrial age.

I'm not bothering to report unit builds, there's simply too many of them

(0) 150 BC
Antium is overproducing, so switch a tile to Lutetia
Short rush in Pisae
DO lots of other MMing
Change Veii and Pompeii to Forum (Market)
Switch Neapolis to settler and shortrush via archer
Change Viroconium to worker and rush

Tech check:
Even with Greece, England, Babylon, Germany and America
Up all 3 MA techs + Monarchy on France
Up Monotheism and Feudalism on Russia
In other words: High probability that all 3 techs are bein researched, and all except France and Russia can build pikes.

(1) 130 BC
Viroconium: Worker->Library (We need culture here since it's an outmost ring city)
We kill 3 settler/spear pairs, too bad we can't use these slaves.
Prepare forces to strike Sparta next turn
Set Lutetia to worker

IBT:
English approach in west, Babylon in the north, and Greece in East. Joy!

(2) 110 BC
Found Caesaragusta in desert
Rush a horse in Neocaledonium to cover our exposed south
Siege of Sparta:
4/4 Leg vs 3/3 Hoplite -> 3/4 Leg, razing it
That was a lot easier then expected..
Siege of Pharsalos:
5/5 Horse vs 3/3 Hoplite -> 1/3 Hop :(
5/5 Horse vs 3/3 Hoplite -> 5/5 Horse
5/5 Horse vs 1/3 Hoplite -> 1/5 Horse, razing it
Siege of Tours
4/4 Leg vs 4/4 Spear -> 2/4 Leg, razing it

IBT:
Babylonian SoD at Byzantium
More English arrive in the west

(3) 90 BC
Bombard and wound some of the Babylonian SOD
Rest and move troops
Put an entertainer in Gonzo, that city needs roads!

IBT:
Babylonian SoD retreats/regroups going for Caesaraugust
Yet more english arrive in the west

(4) 70 BC
Lose 2 legs on an archer in mountain :(
Found Palmyra

IBT:
English keep pouring in from the West..

(5) 50 BC
We kill a lot of English invaders

(6) 30BC
Kill the last of this English invaders
We raze the undefended (!) Herakleia
We're set to sack Athens next round.

IBT:
Jeebuz! Hordes of angry Brits come rolling over the mountain
Invention pops from GL

(7) 10 BC
Veii: Forum->Legion
Pompeii: Forum->Legion
Lugdunum: Horse->Forum
Ravenna switched to Forum
Found Jerusalem
Germanicus appears as we slaughter a german spear, but I fatfinger him onto a hill.
Siege of Athens:
4/4 leg vs 4/4 Hoplite -> 2/4 Hop
4/4 Horse vs 3/3 Hop -> 1/3 Hop
4/4 Leg vs 3/3 Hop -> 5/4 Leg
4/4 Leg vs 2/4 Hop -> 1/4 Leg
3/4 Leg vs 4/4 Archer -> 1/4 Leg
Leaving 1 hoplite at 1 hp, ut another can enter next turn.

(8) 10 AD
Found Caesarea
Germanicus suddenly discovers some terraced gardens in Jerusalem, by tumbling off them. Splat.
Change Ravenna to a settler
Siege of Athens continues:
4/4 Leg vs 3/3 Hop -> 2/3 Hop
4/5 Leg vs 2/3 Hop -> 4/5 Hop, burning down Athens

(9) 30 AD
Found Tarentum
Found Nicomedia in Athen's old spot
Turn lux down to 30%
Siege of Argos:
4/4 Horse vs 3/3 Hop -> 4/4 Horse
4/4 Horse vs 3/3 Hop -> 4/5 Horse, razing it for 6 (!) sacrifical slaves

Some notes:
-We should use some of our cash to rush libraries and markets, we'll need to do our own research again soon.
-Send settlers east to fill in the Greek lands, they are gassed. We also need workers to cut a road over those mountains. I've started near Syracuse
-We have a nice stack near Tarentum, burn Paris!
-The landmass to the east looks like a thin barren strip, you can see the coast behind some of thouse mountains. It's literally swarming with barbarians, and I've spotted 2 named impis so far: Northern Pike and Grahamian.
-The Babylonian forces at Byzantium isn't much of a threat. They approcah, get bombed, and retreat.
-Beware the Hoplite near Hispalis
-We have a ton of Elites. It's almost unlucky that I didn't get a second leader in the end..

Firaxis: 555, Jason 272 (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm3/Smackster_SG003_AD0050_01.SAV)

Cool!!! :goodjob:
i will play tonight.... we have around 8 hours for the suggestions and recomendations...
I believe we will be getting another leader soon, and if i don't get it Wotan certainly will.
Tarkeel have few quite good ones. If i can i will burn Paris.
Too bad AIs went for invention instead of chivalry, I reckon it will take another 10+ turns before we get chivalry with all the total wars on our continent..
You mentioned those barbarians, I wonder whether that is where we need to solve the puzzle of the game....
I am at work for another 4 hours so i am not going to be able to look at the map until later...

Nice turns, there was some serious city razing going on there.

I have not looked at the save, but suggest we don't build too many Markets/Libraries, only build them in cities that can a) build them quick, b) give us real value for them. So the Markets should only be build in the biggest cities (actually wont even help us before we get the extra luxuries hooked up), and libraries only if we absolutely need culture expansion (although a settler is cheaper), or in our best commerce producers only.

The bottom line is keep pumping out horses, just because we seem to have a lot in the field does not mean we should slow down building them.

Also keep pumping, settlers/workers.

Edit : Can somebody post a map for those of us at work

Well done, Tarkeel! :D
I guess the Greeks will be gone by the time I get to play. And I will play tomorrow. I have to pop in at the office for a moment tomorrow but that will not in any way disrupt the more important issue of doing my turns. ;) I do enjoy this game, nothing much to enjoy outside, raining again today. Yesterday was the only day of sunshine we have had this july. At least my wife found it pleasing as she turned the big 4-0 on the only sunny day. She was adamant it was due to her birthday too. ;)

@Dmanakho: Fill out previously greek lands, be aware of potential RCP10 sites and sites for future rings around FP if you move north. I have posted a few maps with potential sites above.

We won't need marketplaces until later in the game when population grows way above 6, we have at least 4lux to benefit from markets and we need money to research ourselves.
There are 2 additional lux on greek territories we will be able to connect in not very far future and that would be probably a good turning point to start building markets.
I can suggest rather if we want to build markets now do it one at a time, that is only one city at a time builds marketplace, once it's built another can start... This way we will make progress with infrastructure, but it won't bug down our unit production much.

EDIT: As for the libraries...... Hmm.... we will need them at some point.... I guess....probably....may be....not sure....well.... i certainly won't start building a single library in our core cities during my turns

I agree with the one at a time build idea, for Markets/Libraries in core cities.

I assume that we need Navigation to get to the other continent, we wont get that from the GL, so will need to get back to research at some point. So although we don't need any libraries now, we want to have them in place at the point that we start researching again. But I'd still only build them in a select few cities, that have very high commerce and maybe not for a while.

Marketplaces do at least give us a gold boost now, and in those very large cities (we have some size 7 already) when we hook up the luxes we'll get more happiness.

I do think that getting our FP site up and running is better value overall.

We won't need marketplaces until later in the game when population grows way above 6, we have at least 4lux to benefit from markets and we need money to research ourselves.

Actually although its true that we don't need the marketplace (with 4 lux) to keep the city content, those extra happy faces adds a lot to the score. So its worth building them in those size 8+ cities to keep all 8 happy.

Only some of the largest cities have/are building markets. Only border cities are building libraries now, and that is to grab more land.

Greece will probably survive to you Wotan, they have 3 cities left in the north part of their empire. The southern area is just about cleansed though.

@Wotan: Weather has been rather bad this side of the mountains as well, but has been some sun here today atleast.

RE: Navigation/The Great Lighthouse.
Like I said, it has been my experiance, at least in the more recent GOTM's that i've actually played in, that it is usually not neccessary to build the Great Lighthouse or get navigation in order to get contact with othe continents because of how the maps are edited. I do not know if this is the case in the earlier GOTM's like the one this is based on.

I agree that we need marketplaces, both for score purposes and to generate sufficent cash. We will also need to start doing our own research at some point, whether it is to get up to Navigation or to nab military tradition, making libraries a worthwhile investement, especially in core cities. I do not think that we will be able to kill off everyone on our continent before someone researches education and obsoletes the Great Library, so the chances of us doing a GL slingshot arn't that great.

All well thought ideas... and yes we will need libraries...
but i think we will need marketplaces sooner than we need libraries..
I suggest starting market places one (may be two a little later) at at time in core cities, then do libraries next round.
We also can do short-rushing markers and libraries since we have a nice cash flow coming in.

RE: Navigation/The Great Lighthouse.
Like I said, it has been my experiance, at least in the more recent GOTM's that i've actually played in, that it is usually not neccessary to build the Great Lighthouse or get navigation in order to get contact with othe continents because of how the maps are edited. I do not know if this is the case in the earlier GOTM's like the one this is based on.

Agreed that we can probably get the contacts without it, but I think we probably need Navigation for an invasion of what appears to be another continent, with 3 contacts on it. I'm just guessing that we need to get to that continent for a domination win.

All well thought ideas... and yes we will need libraries...
but i think we will need marketplaces sooner than we need libraries..

Yes, we don't need libraries until we start to research again, which is likely to be some time from now. So just before Education is researched, it would be nice if a couple of libraries are built. Now when will that be?

Oh, and just to defend my idea of prolonging GL life...
We may want to intentionally not to search contact with those 3 AIs on another continent. They will contact us eventially probably by the time they have all late MA techs. Since we will probably try to use lower branch to get MT, we won't have many of upper techs. We will get them all for free even those past education when AIs from the other side contact us themselves..
I used this trick in few of my games.
It all of course dependes how soon we annihilate our continent, if it happens before we research MT we can simply start our own research towards navigation, so it won't change much. All we will miss is the knowledge of the rest of the world, which we don't really need at this point. It will rather hurt us simply because we will have to declare war on the 1st AI from other side immmediately and then that other AI will probably just sign MA against us...
Plus, if we anihhilate our continent before we find another one, those guys overseas won't know nothing about our trashed reputation and we will be able trash it one more time with profit :mischief:

EDIT: This is a special game... Remember like at the very beginning we tried to avoid contacts with AIs... i think we should do the same at this point and try to postpone contact with Ais on other side of the world

Now when will that be?

I doub't it will happen soon.. We are getting stronger with every turn and AIs getting weaker, their research will be slowing down more and more so.....
it may take some time

There... here we go.... I am sorry.... I am really sorry... :sad:

And no, I was not defeated, and we haven't lost a single city, but I must give my personal apology to DH and rest of the team. My previous message didn't make any sense and was based on the wrong assumptions... I will run ahead of my story, but I must say I was really pissed of when on my 10th turn while checking F4 screen I realized that Lincoln had made contact with civilizations abroad, and all this time I kept my galleys in our own waters without research... As a result, we still don't have chivalry and I am wondering if those unknown and now well known to our enemy tribes know secrets of chivalry... We must send our galleys immediately to find those lands, although we did lost 9 turns.... :mad: Well, since you guys are too far from here I will be kicking my butt myself.

But here goes my story... I wasn't doing much but playing the game, had to fight battles in two different directions. Our northern frontier was the busy one and occupied most of my time. Our southern neighbor Alex used mountains to sneak attack with archers from time to time and we had to keep forces to dodge those attacks while taking out Greek cities.

T1: 70AD. Our then most northern cities of Jerusalem and Caesaraugusta completed building city walls to protect our citizens against evil enemy forces. We didn’t see much going on, our horse killed lone Bab’s swordsman. Did some MMing, checked F4, dispatched units and workers around.

T2: 90AD. Boring, Boring, Boring… Moving units around again, killed couple of Babs, another Greek horse…

T3 110AD. Babs bowman and French Swordsman attacked our Horses, well… they both died. Our brave soldiers will see another sunrise. Palace splash… it’s getting better… we could really live there, five of us… well we would need some women though….yes, that’s what we would need.
Oh, where was I…..Seleucia was founded in tundra, just filling up spaces I guess, there is a game nearby, so some food will be provided to citizen. Artaxata is founded; I believe will become a part of future FP cities ring.
Now the fun part, Caesar was falling asleep when his generals reported troops are ready to storm a great city of Paris, home of French queen Joan. Caesar commanded to attack… Our brave troops burned Paris to the ground. We have no single loss… To celebrate this even we sacrificed French slaves in ritual bonfire. Caesar wasn’t happy though, our generals didn’t bring us the most desired gift – head of Joan the French.
Caesar was going to quit for the day when a courier brought news… Our troops surrounded Greek city of Delphi…. Just kill them all said Caesar and asked to bring him some Tylenol… He had a head-ache.
Guess what we raised Delphi and had another sacrificial bonfire… Our troops didn’t lose a single unit… But it was just a beginning of much bigger and fiercer wars.
While falling asleep Caesar could not figure out why all the tribes in known world seem to dislike him… He could not stop thinking about it and was only able to fall asleep when sun showed up on the horizon and next day arrived.

T4: 130 AD. Germans wanted audience but Caesar had such a bad night and headache still bothered him, He simply ignored German leader, plus nobody in Roman Empire seemed to understand German dialect… It all sounded like Bar-Bar-Bar to Caesar… therefore we will call them all Barbarians decided on.
Some unknown courier brought news that some unknown tribe that calls itself Japanese have built Light House...
Another person came and said that our golden ages are over…. Too bad... our income fell to 31GPT. And the usual news… we killed eng. Spear, we killed Gr. Archer. We lost a legion to a lone but lucky Gr. Archer… We killed Gr. Hoplite.

T5: 150AD. We kill 3 English troops. We seem to have lost luck hunting Gr. Archers… We lost another 4hp legion to 2hp archer. What do we see here – an American spearman... We haven’t seen Lincoln troops approaching our land yet. Well…. He has no place here, dispatched horse and killed American.

T6: 170AD. We founded new city with I can’t pronounce its name – Aurelianorum. This will become our new northern frontier. Here we shall keep many troops to protect our land. And just west from this city we founded another yet city with funny name – Hippo Regrus… I switched both cities to build city walls just in case. One day they will become parts of FP cities ring. Sending another settler to the new spot next to the English city of Dover… Ah, those English, they didn’t bother as much, but I think it will be soon when we have to deal with them…

T7: 190 AD. Just usual news: We retreat after Fr. Swordsman attacks our horse. Bab’s bowman attacks our horse and dies. Greek arch attacks our legion and also dies. Leg kills English spear and sacrifices enslaved settler.
City of Nicopolis is founded on former Greek Soil. It will be a source of our next luxury.
Bad news: we lost a legion to English spear. We killed that spear with second unit. F4 is clear, I wonder if chivalry will ever be invented. Our troops are ready to attack new French capital – Lyons.

T8: 210AD Wow!!! I mean Wow!!! German army arrived…
Full blown German sword army…. Just 4 tiles north-east from Aurelianorum
Crap, I guess I will have to postpone trip to Joanie… Collected few more troops in Aurelianorum. Waiting….. Nothing goes on our southern frontier…

T9: 230AD Londinium founded… If it is Roman for London then I have placed it really smart… right between Dover and Oxford… We will use this as an outpost to start clearing lands from English barbarians.
We raised Greek city of Corinth. Alex has only 2 cities left at this time and for Caesar time came to deal with German Armies… Our generals realized that Germans brought not just army but 5 more units and some American allies, but little did they know about how mighty our catapults are… 4 catapults stroked German army and destroyed half of it… Our brave horses prepared to attack next…. Veteran horse attacks first, and Caesar can’t believe his own eyes, German army falls dead….
Caesar heard stories and legends about parallel universe called conquests and listened to many stories about how mighty armies are in that parallel world. He never saw an army himself, but he is certainly not afraid of them anymore. The rest of our horses easily killed all allied units that Germans and Americans brought. We are preparing to attack English city Dover and we keep collecting forces to attack Greek city Mycenae. Those hoplites are tough and city is located on top of hill, makes our soldiers more vulnerable to Greek defenders.

T10. 250AD Crap, Crap, Crap American and English galleys landed troops near our City of Neocaledonium. I will have to postpone attacking Dover but rather dispatch some troops to defend empty Neocaledonium. Catapults attack first, we shave 1hp from American sword but we do no damage to English longbow.
We attack, American is dead, but English elite bow kills our veteran legion and we only take 1hp of that guy. Our last spare legion attacks and we kill English bowman.
Many many German troops came from north-west, currently they are all located 2 tiles west from Aurelianorum, I had a horse outside city borders from the previous turn so I saw them coming. I moved horse back into city can’t see Germans there, but they have 7 units, including swords, archers and pikes… plus there are 2 Americans… I am sure they will show up next turn. We have quite few troops and catapults in Aurelianorum and I have short rushed city walls just in case. I looked at F4 and the rest of the story you guys have read at the very beginning… Now we need to move galleys west to find those tribes and hope that they have chivalry… I was hoping we will be able to postpone this meeting and pretend we have a good reputation and manners, but I guess we will be at war with another yet world soon.


I guess Greeks will be gone in next few turns and we won’t have those over-stretched frontlines anymore… We will need to build more settlers to fill in the gaps down south.
All cities that I built that can only produce 1 shield due to corruption I switched to courthouses… since it takes long time to build either courthouse or library feel free to change my orders at any time… I just didn’t see much sense of what else to build in those cities at a moment. I made a mistake sending 3 workers up north to mine after they put road to the new city… That city is corrupted so I just wasted turns and 3 workers… They should be done next turn I believe and we can send them to put road to Londinium. I guess we lost too many turns already not researching chivalry, and now I am not sure whether it is worth to research it or just fight with what we have and keep waiting. At the moment Horsemen do okay job, but we yet to see a city defended by pikemen. (Well, we kind of saw Greeks with hoplites already…). It just would be so much faster with knights….

It's almost 11pm and i want to sleep.... well i still have to download save and maps... will do in the next post below.

We have 656 Points at the end of my turn and here is link to save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm3/Smackster_SG003_AD0250_01.SAV)

That’s all folks!!! :beer:

OUR NORTH:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster250-North.JPG


OUR SOUTH:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster250-South.JPG

Good progress, don't worry about the contacts, you might as well send the galleys home, there is a very good chance they will buy our contact before you can get there. In my experience a continent with few civs (I think there are three left) will not be ahead in tech, so its unlikely they would have Chivalry, and if they did America would trade for it and we'd soon get it anyway.

I do wish we'd started on Chivalry eariler, I almost think we should start to research it but out of our GA it will take 14 turns at -29GPT. I think we just have to wait it out and there is nothing we can do about it.

Some points I note looking at the save

1) We need to build some more settlers to fill out the SE, that will really help our score and is what the other teams will be doing, they will catch our score unless we keep spreading

2)In any city that is not growing (and there are at least 6 now) work out why its not growing, and either fix it (build aquaduct/irrigate), or build a settler/worker, otherwise we are wasting growth potential. Lugdunum is a classic example, full food box, size 6 not growing, build a worker/settler and in one turn it will be back to size 6/5.
Personally I feel we have a little too many mines, if we were micromanagers we'd count the shields and get them on boundaries (5/10) for each city, but as we are not then just build a little more irrigation. More irrigation = more growth = more settler = more people = higher score, without effecting the military too much of course.

3) Try not to build culture buildings just for growth, build a settler and grow the culture expansion through settling. I assume that is why for example Viroconium is building a library, as its only size 3, and not growing. I'd change that to a harbor and let it grow.
The exception to this is any city on the coast, that can only get more land (or rather coast/sea) through culture expansion.

4) Keep building horses, we seem to be building a little too many Legions. Don't worry about losing them, just keep pumping them out.

5) Next leader for the FP, that we really need now.

edit : 6) One last thing, try not to sleep any troops in either cities or open at the end of your turn, as its hard for the other player to find them. For example Nicopolis

The Roster

smackster
Tarkeel
dmanahko (just played)
Wotan (playing)
DeceasedHorse (next up)

Contacts

Next contact we get, diplomacy first, and then declare war.

I suggest we also get all the contacts at that point so that we at least have a few more turns of trading again.

Got it! Will play today, just off to the office first for a quick checkup of events there.

@Smackster: Re. your six points, we are as always in total agreement. Will of course do so. As to the point w. non-aqueduct cities (and future non-hospital cities) always build a Worker/Settler when it approaches size 6/12 to keep it "growing".

Another thing, all cities outside RCP10 should be fully irrigated. Those will be corrupt anyways, and should only build aqueduct and market imho. Apart from that I mostly agree with you smackster, except that some cities need culutre since there won't be any on the outside of them, Viroconium is one of those IIRC.

Try to shave workers of the largest cities, we need as many as we can get, even if it's just for joining into other cities.

@Dmanakho: Don't kick yourself for those contacts, kick me. I should have sent that galley west instead of north. Did you spot any other named barbs on the eastern island?

Hi guys, I have stopped playing at 280AD. We are now at war with Japan and have been contacted by all remaining tribes. I emptied out their coffers. As Samckster suspected they are behind our continent in tech. The contact order is Japan-India-Iroquois-Aztecs. Any ideas re. treatment of Astecs and maybe Iroquois since they are the farthest from being at war with us? All are furious with us now. Will hold off from continuing the game for a few hours to let our "eastcoasters" get a chance to express an opinion when out of bed.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-allcontacts.JPG

How far behind in tech are they. Not sure that gifting them to the present will help get Chivalry. Better to keep them behind. Hope for embassy.

Its a big continent

Edit : why do you think the AI hasnt mapped the right side

Do you guys think we should start researchin??? It looks like AIs switched their economies to producing units and don't have much money to trough on research... May be we should start researching towards gunpowder->MT and then eventially we will get free chivalry from AIs...
I am taking all the constructive critisism. Will do better job next time..
Lugdunum just stopped growing while building a horse and Nicopolis has 3 or 4 1hp horses fortified for recovering. I did build quite few workers i believe and some settlers too. As a matter of fact at this point we might benefit from having another settler factory.

As for the other continent goes... I think we should try keep tech parity between AIs on other continent and not letting one AI be ahead of others, this will help us to keep their land within the same borders and there won't be one who takes over an entire continent before we get there.
@Tarkeel: No i haven't noticed any named barbarians... to tell you the truth i didn't look much for them. That's my another miss.

Neapolis was working as a second settler facotry during my turns, and should be able to do so even out of GA as long as it has a mined hill to work on growth. It needs to get 3 shields on growth because of corruption (I think).

Too bad we thrashed alliance rep, we sure could use to start some wars on the other continent. Might actually be worth to declare on all or most of them to get them in war footing.

For research, we're probably going to need navigation, will see if there is a way to ship hop over. You are allowed to ship hop if you use the unit's move for it without it being exploit, and I'm not 100% sure if ship chaining is considered exploit here? This is still far in the future though. We should maybe try to land a settler and some defense in the middle area, there was one good spot there atleast.

They have to establish embassies with us for alliances, and I doubt that will happen so no real loss.

Ship hopping is ok, and if we can see a way, might be cheaper than research to Navigation. Then again not sure how many useful coast cities we have.

I have some more thoughts I'll post in an hour

I had a settler or two out of Neapolis too, it is just not as fast as Anteum.
I think i have settled 6 new cities during my turns but 4 of those went north, and we still don't have nearly enough settlers to settle emtpy southern lands.

Forgot the embassy thing :( Just ignore my ramblings, but still would be nice to get wars started over there..

Neapolis should be able to do a size 5-7 factory, just remember it probably needs a hill for growth if going for 6-6-7-7 production

OK, back home now.

The tribes on the other continent was: Japan, India and Aztecs into MA, Iroquois still in AA.

Will not gift them to parity.

@Smackster: Your thoughts? An hour has passed since your last post. ;) Will wait for them before starting the game again.

I harvested Workers/Settlers from non-growing cities in the first turn(s). Shifted all Legionaries to Horsemen. Will build Horsemen everywhere, unless: a. city is about to stop growing. b. on seashore. Building marketplaces in one city at the time and only in core. Since we have Barracks everywhere I am shortrushing Catapults when cities have produced 1 shield and switch to Horsemen. If and when Chivalry appears we will have plenty of horsemen finishing off within a few turns to upgrade.

Is it 40 gold for Knight upgrades? How about this, keep our Gold at 800, start researching Chivalry. There is a good chance they will research it before us, but I thought that 30 turns before.

I'm sure it was a mistake not to start researching Chivalry in our GA, we could have got it in 10, I guess I'm not used to playing game where I let the AI research Chivalry, I nearly always get it myself.

The AI always gets Gunpowder and I'll say there is a chance somebody will get that soon.

@Smackster: Your thoughts? An hour has passed since your last post. ;) Will wait for them before starting the game again.

As the last post, I'm pissed about Chivalry, clearly now we should have researched it. I think we should cut our losses and research it. Just as long as we have a good cash base for upgrades. I counted 28 horses last night, upgrading 20 will be a good start.

edit: so we may have to stop rushing for a while

OK, at 40% science Chivalry will take 22 turns, shorter than that and we will take a net loss in gold. Chivalry is just below 1000 beakers. I am pretty sure the AI will have it by then, Germany, Japan and Aztecs are all Militaristic and should go after it. At least as far as I can remember from past games. I could put a single specialist on the job.

It will get better once we have few libraries running.....
We will have to make a decision; This is very very likely if we start researching Chivalry and it takes around 20 turns AI will beat us and we will lose money... I still say lets go to Gunpowder-chemistry towards MT...
we will get some upper techs up to education from AIs and because tech research is so slow we will be way ahead by the time we have MT.
and i guess we will have to revert our decision on postponing building libraries but rather start doing it now.

22 turns, ok forget it.

We just have to keep fighting with horses, and hope the AI gets it

edit: If i'd just put the single specialist on it way back then we'd be about to get it, damn that.

How about starting research on other techs????
we will be waiting until infinity for AI to advance to education

Thing is that the AI always seems to get Gunpowder in my games. I think in the next 20 turns we'll see both Gunpowder and Chivalry turning up. Once they do then we can start research.

ok, this sounds like a plan, so meanwhile we probably should build few libraries to be ready by the time we start research...

ok, this sounds like a plan, so meanwhile we probably should build few libraries to be ready by the time we start research...

One at a time, start with the biggest commerce producing city. Only build the next when that has finished. Getting the FP is also very important, Wotan, where is that leader, we are expecting.

OK, will play now. No research...

Sometimes leaders are hard to harvest... I was hoping to get a leader during my turns, and I did have lots of fighting with elites, but leader didn't come..
I hope Wotan will have better RNG luck.

Just had to give you a sneak preview of my turns. This is absolutely fabulous: BTW, You can see the area and the way I use Legions on mountains and an Empty Byzantium to herd enemies into the open. The same grassland tile was the last stand of a German stack a few turns back. Leonardo's is at the drawing board.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-sweets.JPG

I think Leo's

Cool!!! Build Leo!! You are are so lucky, Didn't i tell you to play lottery more often

I haven't looked at the save, but would Lighthouse help in getting to the second continent? Leo's is also very handy :)

Damn, we're running out of wonders to rush here... :eek:

Just remember there was a price to pay... I must have killed at least 6 or 7 Elite Horses before I got the second leader.

Re. Leo's, I have upgraded the first 7 Knights at a cost of 80 gold each. 19 still in our army = 1520 gold. With Leo's = 760 gold. I will build leo's...

Japanese already built lighthouse during my turns..
i think that is how they met with americans

EDIT: Who needs elite horses. I can clearly see we have knights now.. So all elite horses are expandable for the leaders hunt

Ah yeah, I wondered about that.. I really should have a look at the save, things are developing very fast it seems. Leo is also a very good investment, especially as it never expires. Money saved on upgrading is more rushed settlers ;)

So we have Chivalry, at last

How is the tech pace going???
I was just thinking... it took AIs somewhat around 30 turns to get Chivalry, since Gunpowder is more expensive and AIs situation worsens it might take them even longer to get to the gunpowder..
Are you still thinking to wait until they get it 1st?

When Invention was researched sometime ago, the AI have a choice of Chivalry, Gunpowder and Theology. I would say that there are a few of them near Gunpowder already. The moment we get that start to research.

By looking at the last minimap posted, I'm expecting tech pace on our continent to be glacial.. Only American and England seme to have enough cities to research much of Anything. Russia, Germany and Babylon are all very small, and France is being gobbles up by us.

With Leo's giving us enough cash to upgrade the knights, how about we start research to MT now. Its worth the risk if Gunpowder comes in early. The main reason for the cash is upgrades and we probably have enough to do most.

Although we need to get Navigation eventually I don't think there is any rush needed to do that. There is so much land to settler here first.

Wait a second, DON'T WE HAVE A GUNPOWDER ALREADY??
Look at that map on the mountain right beneath Hippo city white dot looks suspicioucly like a salpenter.

Yes we must have it, I assume that came in at the same time, phew. That makes the decision easy, start to research. Our decision not to research was not so bad after all.

So start to research to MT

Hip! Hip! Hurray!!!
I think it was a Wotan's prank just to kid with us....
He was sitting there and laughing when nobody could notice salpenter right in the middle of the screen...
Admit it Wotan, you were laughing at us


EDIT: Wonderwise I think we should shoot for the Bachs.... Just to get our score high.... I am not sure how fast next leader will come though...

MORE EDITS: On unrelated note, we have almost twice as many messages posted as nearest competitor...

Wotan has posted the score, and I think we are going to sneak ahead of -Oblivion-, it would be a coup to beat the non-variant teams. I can't quite believe we can do it considering our disadvantages, but if we keep pumping the settlers while clearing out the AI I think we might be able to do it.

Priority for settlers now must be the rank 1 sites around the FP.

I've had a look at the graphs.. Beware of team Ankka and Ivan sneaking up, they are still behind in age though, and not playing variant.

Of the variant teams, I'm most afraid of team microbe as they are very strong, and have almost matched our curve (only dropping of 1 or 2 points on their last save)

Sorry it took some time for me to get the turn log posted. For a moment I thought it was lost is "MS Cyberspace" but fortunately a fairly late autosave in Word was available when I restarted the frozen MS Word.

@Dmanakho: Not intended as a pun, just forgot to mention the fact that we had Gunpowder. I was so taken by the second leader appearing at the perfect moment.

As usual first a map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-350AD.JPG

Turn log

0 – 250AD preturn
Shifting production to Horsemen, Settlers and Workers in many cities..

IBT: One 3hp Legionary dies from an attack by a 2hp Archer. A stack w. 6 German Swordsmen/Archers moves on Aurelianorum.

1 – 260AD
Dover raised wo. Losses. Greek city near us was a different story though. 4 Horsemen died, not a single retreat when trying to soften the defenders.

IBT: Galley lost to Barb.Galley. Japanese Galley show up just off coast at former site of Dover.

2 – 270AD
Plenty of skirmishes, no decisive actions though. Eburacum founded.

IBT: Japan contacts us, I offer Monarchy and they give contact w. Iroquois, WM and 20 gold for it. They still have 71 gold so I offer WM and they will give 70 gold for it, I take it and then we are at war! India is next in line to contact us, I offer Monarchy and get their gold and WM for it. Then Iroquois contact us, they are hopelessly behind and I only take their WM for WM and 1 gold. And finally Aztecs, who trade WM for WM.

3 – 280AD
Greece is no more! Killed a few trespassing English and Babylonian Archers.

INT: Gunpowder from GL.

4 – 290AD
Oxford raised. Chartres raised. Next French city raised. And BTW, a Leader appeared if you are interested. Will move him towards FP site. Lost 2 Horsemen, and umpteen redlined. Hopefully not too many new enemies will appear IBT. Rushed a Settler in the N for FP site.

IBT: Babylonian Settler/Spearman landed near former French E coast settlements. The German SoD (2 Archers/2Sword) finally herded into an open tile. Russian Archer appear, as do a new English Archer.

5 – 300AD
German SoD killed, Lost 2 Horsemen. 2 English Archers, Russian Archer and American Swordsman killed. Arretium founded.

IBT: Chivalry from GL. American stack w. Sword, Pike, Spear and Settler drop in for a chat.

6 – 310AD
7Knights/19Horsemen; 80 gold each. 9 Settlers en route. Gordion founded, FP rushed. Two attacks later another leader appears. Cyrene founded.

IBT: American Longbow attack attack and kill Pike over river into forest wo hp loss. Babylonian Settler found Eridu.

7 – 320AD
9 Settlers en route. Gordion founded, FP rushed. Two attacks later another leader appears. Cyrene founded.

IBT: Japanese Settler/Warrior land in S. Else little of importance.

8 – 330AD
Tyrus founded. Verona founded. Leonardo’s rushed.

IBT: 3 British Longbowmen attack Knights in a forest, all three knights die… Theology from GL.

9 – 340AD
Made an example of the three British Longbowmen, all killed but no Leader appeared (3 Elite Horsemen attacked…). Eridu raised. Corfinium founded. Another 5 Elite attacks but no leaders….

IBT: Barbarian Impi named Haphazard, another barb Impi attack German city so have no idea if it is a “special” unit. Japanese city of Hakodate founded.

10 – 550BC
Hakodate raised. Mediolanum founded. Treveri founded. Verona founded. Did not move any units into position to attack any new targets. So stacks of Knights in Gordion, Hippo R. etc.

A number of Settlers on the roads of our empire. Two of them near their destinations see Map. A few others just moving in the general direction of new lands. I have put a few suggestions on the map (forgot a RCP10 city between Agrippina and Corfinium at hills NW of a luxury). Also please note that “Gordion” are building at RCP4/8.

Score: 772

Isn't it all about Jason score while graph shows Firaxis...
and since jason score is not a linear function of Firaxis we can't really say who will end up 1st...
Often people with less Firaxis points are still ahead in the final graph because of Jason scoring system

If I have understood the rules for the golden laurel it is based only on finishing turn. Fastest victory wins. If so only domination is really possible. and we need to expand every coastal city when we get nearer the domination limit. I have intentionally placed Leo's to cover a number of mountains where we will not build a city(s).

To get the best Jason score, we simply need to finish as early as possible. But while we are doing that, maximising our firaxis score should ensure we get the best Jason score.

Earliest dom victory is certainly the best way to do this.

Coastal squares count towards the dom count, and sea squares count towards score, but not dom

@Dmanakho: Jason curve will have the same shape as Firaxis, since it's basically just a remolding to what the max scoring of the map would be, to allow comparisons between different maps. Noe the victory bonus is different, and is dependent on type (unlike Firaxis). So for max Jason it's all about getting big fast, and getting an early victory for your type. I think we're going for domination here, since that usually has a later best-date. We could also try conquesting the other continent to pieces though.

@Wotan: I think we discussed parts of your turns to death already, but once again, great work! I can't believe we've had 6 leaders so far, and we are HUGE!

@Dmanakho: Jason curve will have the same shape as Firaxis, since it's basically just a remolding to what the max scoring of the map would be, to allow comparisons between different maps. Noe the victory bonus is different, and is dependent on type (unlike Firaxis). So for max Jason it's all about getting big fast, and getting an early victory for your type. I think we're going for domination here, since that usually has a later best-date. We could also try conquesting the other continent to pieces though.

Once we completely destroy the civs on our continent, we can make a decision as to Conquest or Domination. We can base this on how far we are from dom, what technology the AI has over there, and how many Cavalry units we have.

I usually find its quite tough for me to get a better conquest score than dom, and usually it take longer. So domination is probably the best bet.

Have we started to clear some of those barbs yet. That would be an easy way to get more land. We need to start doing that. Maybe start sending legions over there, should wipe out those warriors.

Only use veterans against barbs though, they are free training! Agree on dom though, as we'll want that land for score if nothing else.

(forgot a RCP10 city between Agrippina and Corfinium at hills NW of a luxury). Also please note that “Gordion” are building at RCP4/8.

What does that mean, the cities round the FP need to be the same rank as the cities round the palace right?

We need to hire some spies to check what other teams are doing...

@M-B please pretend you didn't see this message

Only use veterans against barbs though, they are free training! Agree on dom though, as we'll want that land for score if nothing else.
Ship vets over, and when they upgrade, ship them back until the barbs are gone

No, the ranks are different. Actually, FP rank is based on # cities closer to the palace then the city is to the FP.. So say that you have the palace in a far away city, and the city closest to the palace is also the city second furthest (after palace) away from FP, then all your cities have rank 1 corruption. This is one of the biggest bugs in Vanilla/PTW, and is the reason for the revamped FP in C3C (well, one big reason atleast).

What does that mean, the cities round the FP need to be the same rank as the cities round the palace right?

Mindblock on my part apparently, darn, I hope this has not screwed the game up for us. The original Capital is RCP3/6/10 and the FP RCP4/8. I cannot remember how RCP's around the two palaces correlates to each other... If it is as you say the present situation is not good. Pity we did not discuss this more thoroughly when I posted the suggested rings for our FP.

No, the ranks are different. Actually, FP rank is based on # cities closer to the palace then the city is to the FP.. So say that you have the palace in a far away city, and the city closest to the palace is also the city second furthest (after palace) away from FP, then all your cities have rank 1 corruption. This is one of the biggest bugs in Vanilla/PTW, and is the reason for the revamped FP in C3C (well, one big reason atleast).
Yes, and I think that means that our cities round the FP, need to be no more than 3 squares away to get rank 1. I understand about the rank corruption bug, but our palace is not in a far away location.

Mindblock on my part apparently, darn, I hope this has not screwed the game up for us. The original Capital is RCP3/6/10 and the FP RCP4/8. I cannot remember how RCP's around the two palaces correlates to each other... If it is as you say the present situation is not good. Pity we did not discuss this more thoroughly when I posted the suggested rings for our FP.
If it was the other way round we would be ok. How many cities do we have round the FP, might consider moving some, I need to look. Or we just accept a little more corruption.

It's not the end of the world though :) I say settle at 4, gives those cities more room to grow in. We need some large powerhourses as well as many small producers. We should probably look at abandoning some fillers in the core sometime in the future, when we start to get infrastructure in. Probably won't happen for a lil while though, but we should keep it in mind.

Is Gordium the FP? I don't see many cities round it, apart from French etc. So just start to settle at 3 any more that are settled.

I'm fairly sure that we are not going to grow those cities to large, as we'll win a long time before that.

The Roster

smackster (next up)
Tarkeel
dmanahko
Wotan (just played)
DeceasedHorse (playing)

I'm on it.

I'm on it.
Great, this team is moving so fast, its quite amazing.

I can't give much more advise, wont be able to get to the save until much later, but hopefully enough has already been given :)

Thunderfall emailed me and said we are allowed to use this thread again, the server congestion problem we were causing yesterday has been solved :)

All quiet on the smackster thread, players taking a well earned rest after a few days of frantic activity. Ready to get stuck in again soon.

smackster

I didn't even know thread was down..
i thought DH makes a strategic pause to let other teams get a little closer...
Someone can say it's bad to be ahead of everybody else, those guys are watching us and therefore fixing their games to catch us.
But graphs looks good so far, looks like only the teams who don't play variant are ahead... and it is really marginal..
Good Job Team!!!
i'd say i wouldn't mind to get together for next SGOTM again, well... that is... if you wanna keep such a lousy player as myself :rolleyes:

*lol* I hope you're just joking about that congestion? On the other hand, it might be true.. :blush:

@Dmanakho: I still say look out for team microbe... View the graph with just us and them and you'll see.

I didn't even know thread was down..
i thought DH makes a strategic pause to let other teams get a little closer...
Someone can say it's bad to be ahead of everybody else, those guys are watching us and therefore fixing their games to catch us.
But graphs looks good so far, looks like only the teams who don't play variant are ahead... and it is really marginal..
Good Job Team!!!
i'd say i wouldn't mind to get together for next SGOTM again, well... that is... if you wanna keep such a lousy player as myself :rolleyes:
Well we were all talking the other day that we felt you were improving, so who knows that by the end of the game you might be good enough to join us again. I'm joking, just like I was joking about the thread being down. Its just funny how many posts we had yesterday, I was exhausted at the end of the day. Actually I need to put some serious time into GOTM33 tonight

Hi guys, I have felt some withdrawal effects from the silence. ;) Well, seriously I am very happy with the effort put into this game by the whole team. The commitment is fantastic and I would love to continue this cooperation. A huge part of the reason we are so far into the game is the geographical spread in the team. To go to bed after either reading about Tarkeel's endeavours or having played my own turns and wake up to a report from one of you guys in the states. And I guess several of us are having time off from work too.

Re. the game, I am afraid DH will not have as many opportunities to get leaders as I had since the upgrading to Knights takes several of the Elite Horsemen out of commission. Unfortunately not a single Knight attack resulted in promotions during my turns.

I too started playing Gotm33 today. Almost through QSC and it is an interesting game...

Quick question: When is our next declaration of war due?

Not before my turns

Contacts

Japan - War declared 270AD
Iroqois - War declaration due 470AD
India - War declaration due 670AD
Aztec - War declaration due 870AD

I think that does it

I just had couple of thoughts regarding to the next leader and science progress..
After I opened saved file it appears we have all free techs that GL can give us with exception of Education... (looks like we have theology in addition to gunpowder)
No doubt AIs researching Education at the moment and some x+ turns from now they will get it and after that probably will start researching towards Bachs...
Since we probably won't be researching anything else until we get MT, it would be beneficial to watch Ais tech progress and as soon as they get Bachs tech buy it from either Indians or Aztecs, although Aztecs seem to be quite dumb in this game.
Well, anyways, what i wanted to say we need to get abilities to build Bachs sooner than later, since i believe we will get another leader if not during DH turns then within next cycle. I am sure Wotan will be able to fish 1 or 2 for us.. Bach will really give as a great boost in score.

City of Aurelianorum can become a perfect settler factory. It is next to FP, and it has alredy irrigated areas, if we irrigatge couple of more tiles, it will be just perfect. It might also benefit having market place here if it won't become a settler factory, since population will grow high very fast.

Our friend Hamurabi has gems and at this point it is really close to our borders... I'd say make him the next target.. Having 5 luxuries will also help quite a lot, especially in large cities with markets... So probably we can make it our next short term priority...

I believe we will be attacked by AI knights quite soon... it would be nice to defend our border cities with muskets, pikemen and legions will be quite useless against knight attacks. Even if we counter attack first muskets can be used to hide wounded knights in case we can not return them back to the city. Unfortunately muskets cost almost as much as knights.

Do we want to build any courthouses at all???? Just a question... in a short term it's waist of turns, in a long term they can save lots of shields and gold.

well... i guess i wasn't posting anything in such a long time and now i think I have a new medical condition called verbal diarrhea.

I doubt courthouses will pay off in this game really. Maybe if we have some downtime while waiting for crossing to other continent, but I don't think that's very likely. Agree that we need Bach's though, but I think we have to research it. Remember that research cost also drops when others know it.

@Tarkeel. Looks like microbe team is falling behind us... It's 1000BC for them and there is a gap between us... little one, but i hope they passed their despot GA already or in the middle of it. We should be watching staff team though... It looks like their curve is exact copy of ours so far... well... everybody knows :mischief: M-B helps them...

Just got to look at the save, make sure we are researching Chemistry, its set to Printing Press right now.

edit: Now we can see it clearly, that barb space to the east needs settling. Its going to take a serious amount of settlers to do it. So I suggest we step up the settler production another level. Any corrupt size 3 city build a settler, for example Nicodemia and Cesarea.

edit:edit: One more thing. Usually I get my FP in an AI area by capturing cities, so doesn't usually need much work. In this game as we have to build it up from scratch, what does the team think about dropping a couple of workers or a settler in each rank one FP city. Just to give them an extra growth boost.

As the sheilds and commerce from those are so valuable it may be worth it.

Preturn: Everything looking good; switch a few builds around so towns producing one net spt won’t be stuck building a knight for the next 70 turns. Swap a few others to build pikes/Legions for MP purposes.

IBT: Our galley watches as Heidelburg is sacked by a barbarian Impi-if that was one of the named ones, I think we will have trouble solving the puzzle. Suicidal settler pairs continue their incursions up north. Silly AI.


NOTE: Please do not fortify units in border cities that are in no danger of being attacked-I didn’t notice several units until it was almost to late.

Turn 1: Saltpeter gets connect on the IBT as pikemen are no longer buildable. Kill off a couple settler pairs and wandering enemy archers, netting a couple of promotions. Knights advance on Orleans. Three more Horses upgraded to Knights. Found Sirmium. Legions and Catapults advance on Warwick (English) which has only spearmen defenders.

IBT: The Babs ask for peace, so I take the opportunity to see if they’ve learned any new techs; they have not. The Japenese land a settler pair on the Tundra south of Verona.

Turn 2: Orleans falls to our horde of knights, with one casuality and one promotion to Elite. The French refugees are accidentally squished by a bus. Or something. Elite Legionaire attacks Warwick, killing the spear and generating:

Octavian!

Well, since the only wonder available is the rather useless (to us) Sistine’s, I decide I might as well build an army so we can finally get the heroic epic built. Warwick is razed by follow-up attacks, also capturing 4 English workers hiding inside. Unfortunatly, our future slaves all have congenital heart defects and keel over when we try and get them to work. Pity, that. Rush a settler in Lutetia to plug the gap. Seven Knights move into attack position next to the current French capital, Lyons.

Turn 3 (380 AD): Load a couple of Legions into the army, go looking for someone to whack so we can build the Epic. Lyons puts up more of a fight than Orleans did, but falls to our hordes just the same.

IBT: American Knights show up, and one manages to redline a veteran legionaire covering a wounded knight before dying. England continues to throw Longbows at us.

Turn 4: Found Augustadorum. Japenese found Ise on our Tundra. Knights begin their advance on York,
Capturing a few more sacrifices, err, honored guests in the process. Legion army advances on Newcastle with artillery support.

IBT: English Musket escorting a settler spotted.

Turn 5: Start research on Chemistry @ 70% now that all our horsies are upgraded. Due in 15 @ +7 gpt.
Spend the treasury rushing various libraries and markets. Knights raze York to the ground.

IBT: English counter-attack forces advancing on Newcastle, killing one knight but promoting another to elite. Frenchies land a sword next to the capital.

Turn 6 (410 AD): Additional Library construction has lowered Gunpowder research ETA to 12 turns. Raze Ise to the ground and replace it with Trapezus. I forgot that armies don’t heal faster in PTW, so the legion army still isn’t ready for deployment.

IBT: Clueless settler pairs continue their suicidal march forward.

Turn 7 (420 AD…hehehe): While whacking settler pairs, on of our knights does this thing, which is kinda good I hear:

I suppose I’ll use him to rush the Heroic Epic if our lazy 2-legionaire army every beats someone.

IBT: The English attack with far more longbows than I thought they had left, killing two knights and retreating a few others.

Turn 8: The Vermillion Legion (legion army) finishes off the defenders of Newcastle, then razes the city. Rush the Heroic Epic in Artraxa. Found Bagacum (now that is just obscene) in what I hope is the correct location re: the FP. One of our Horsemen attacks yet another American settler pair, with this result:

Trajan rises from the dead to lead us! Ok, now this is getting a little silly; I doubt I will ever generate a leader again, having used up all my mojo for this set of turns. We don’t even have anything to use Trajan for right now. Note that this occurred before the Heroic Epic was even finished…

Turn 9 (440 AD): Trajan rushes the Sistine Chapel in Gordion, just for the heck of it. Extra happiness never hurts anyway, right? In retrospect, I probably should have just rushed a marketplace or something, but hopefully rushing Sistine’s will make the AI flush hundreds of shields down the drain. Soldiers march on to the next English conquest: London. Note: Diplomacy check reveals that Education will likely pop from the library next turn.

IBT: Our galley is sunk by a Japenese warship. Education renders the Great Library obsolete.

Turn 10: Found Lauricum. Units shuffle around.

Summary: Our rate of expansion is only being slowed down by the distance our settlers can travel in a turn. England’s army is shattered and we are grinding them down to dust. France has a couple of cities left. A couple of legions are up in Babylonian territory on pillaging missions, with the rest of our offensive army hanging around the area directly south of the mountain range that seperates Babylonian territory from former French lands, leader fishing on the non-stop settler pairs keep on coming. The open space our slash and burn campaign has cleared up has created an irresistable lure for the AI. The AI is really shooting itself in the foot; not only does it lose the shields invested in a settler, but it is also costing them a significant part of their population.

Score is 930 or so.

Wow, we are going leader crazy, three in 10 turns. Everything sounds great from your turns, I will play tonight for sure, and tonight right be right now.

smackster

Great job on leaderfarming. And there I was worrying the switch to Knights would lessen your chances... A few points re. the game:

1. Why did you build the army w. Legionaries? I would have guessed Knights to be the obvious choice.

2. The placement of the HE and Sistine's? Why place them in those cities. Both cities have full support re. "cultural" borders, while a closeby city like Aurelianorum have mountains in SE that requires cultural buildings for expansion. Also placement in choice locations on coastline would help but might be more dangerous to enemy landings.

3. Use of Workers. We need to shift workers north especially if we have to rebuild pillaged infrastructure. The only tile improvements that should be done around cities farther than 2nd ring should be irrigation for growth and roads, but roads just to give us connected cities. Corruption makes it a waste to put time and effort into such improvements. Planting forests is a known technique for "rushing" shields in faraway cities but as an example Cyrene will not need a Temple for expansion, another city on the coast and temples in coastal cities will fill the area with "our cultural borders". The worker at Seleucia will have planted/chopped the forest in 18 turns, since Seleucia finishes Temple in 22 turns this is also a waste and ties up a Worker for 18 turns too. Mining a hill at Nicomedia is also a waste as is the road built NE from Arretium, E from A. is another thing since that would connect with roadnetwork on the shoreline.

4. Mining Grassland in RCP planned areas. Should stop and be replaced with irrigation. I noticed a few such problemspots at Palmyra and Pisae. At Palmyra I had sent workers from the area of Gonzonium irrigating S but they have now reverted to mining!

5. Settlers!!! We need them and plenty of them. A few cities are building aqueducts? I would have guessed we'd continue shaving settlers from them when they approached size 6. Also our Settler factory at Antium is producing a Knight and at size 7????? I find this odd, especially since DH himself commented on the lack of Settlers being our limiting factor?

It didn't take long before we lost our Legion army, but luckily the army on turn 3 that is a Knight army doesn't care and is slowly slicing up the earth. I never liked London, and its no more in this game (not really, I always like the real London).

Hi guys, I guess we can officially declare we have survived the expansion phase and the "mid game" alarums and excursions. So we need to focus on the endgame phase now. Now to get to domination as quick as possible. For that we need two things, settlers and settlers... ;) With Knights added for offensive actions. And Galleys for transport. We can manage with Galleys if we "ship hop" between eg. "England-India". We will lose a few Galleys in the ocean tile they end up in but no troops.

I am not sure the decision to go for MT (and Navigation i guess) was the correct road to take in this game but since it is made we play it that way. MT will cost us about 30 turns of research, right? At present we are making about 170 gpt, translated into Knights that is roughly 25 Knights! Not to mention cost for libraries we build in the process. BTW, on another issue, building libraries for cultural expansion purposes should be switched to Temples (80 shields vs. 60 shields) and since Libraries will not give any beakers in those cities anyway I cannot see the reason to build them.

We need to discuss settlements in the Eastern "barbarian" territories. To get to domination I believe this territory to be a key issue to address.

We are (including expansion into domination counted tiles) at 650 tiles now. About as many are available on our home continent in enemy territory. After that we will need another 900 or so tiles to reach domination. I wounder how many of those tiles are available in barbarian lands?

This game do have another complication, the population limit for domination. Maybe we need to target choice locations on the other continent to lower total population?

I would also like to put down a target date for domination: 1000AD.

Rushing sistine to break the AI cascades is a must imho, the next set of wonders should be safe for us now. I was a bit stumped on the legion army myself, why use str3 attackers when you have str4, with retreat?

Workers: First priority is roadwork to the front, secondly getting the FP area productive, and third irrigation all outside RCP10. We're going to have to rush some aquaducts in these cities though.

Crosspost edit: Agree that we need settlers, settlers and more settlers. We need to start setting up an advance force to land, I figure we need 15 galleys: 5 for first hop, 10 for waiting in the middle. They should ship a settler, 4 muskets and 5 knights (just a suggestion), and set up a beachhead. I think we need to get caravels though, navigation will do us more good then cavs here.

Rushing sistine to break the AI cascades is a must imho, the next set of wonders should be safe for us now.

I am not sure we will ever be in a position to build any wonders. The game should be over by then. Maybe Magellan's but that is a big maybe. Now the AI's have ceased to throw shields into Sistine's with only one of them getting the benefit from it. So on the whole I guess we lose out on having Sistine's... :(

Workers: First priority is roadwork to the front, secondly getting the FP area productive, and third irrigation all outside RCP10. We're going to have to rush some aquaducts in these cities though.

No Aqueducts please, they cost 100 shields (1.5 Knights). Better shave a Settler/Worker off them when they reach 6 and build a new city/start working the lands. Also part of the reason I tried to plan for cities to be built on rivers/fresh water, to avoid building them.

What's done is done... Having legions army is not as good as Knight army, but hey.... we are not in position to complain.... we had zillions leaders already we couldn't even dream about when we just started this game...
I do agree on tile irrigation. Many grassland tiles in our core cities should be redone from mines toirrigation and leftover hills should be mined to increase population -production.
All tiles around corrupted cities should be irrigated to increase population and we should build temple-> marketplaces in those cities to increase happiness and score.
Another wonder we must target to build - Bachs.... it will increase happiness therefore our score...
If there were any medals to the team with most wonders built i am sure we have won that title already. This game probably should be played in concuests to limits our abilities to rush wonders, but then if we had a conqest army for each leader we generated we would have won by now...

I think we still can build couple of aqueducts in some of the core cities, but not too many, we probably have only 4 cities or so worth building aqueducts in.

Don't pillage roads on mountains with gems, this will be our land soon and we don't want to spend extra 10 turns building roads and connecting extra lux.

DH, You have had a great warfare campaign and you should be promoted to the rank of whatever top general rank was in Caesar army :king:. Good job on crushing english.

And also as of today we are officialy on the top of the score graph with a nice lead.

EDIT: Antium switched from settler factory and building a knight. I think we should keep that town as a settler factory at all the times, unless there was a decision not to do it and i missed it.

MORE EDITS: I believe Smackster finished playing his set of turns, and had a long long night, He must be still in bed recovering from nightly battles.... Can't wait for his write up... Looks like he made another army, I wonder what else has happened.

You can find it here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=94882)

Let's post ours... It's written, edited and approved :goodjob:

Spoiler posted :) Do you believe I had to dig back 6 pages to find it? :blush:

Another wonder we must target to build - Bachs.... it will increase happiness therefore our score...

OK, forgot about Bach's, might be possible but do we want to divert resources to research the tech?

Re. score... Only if we are going for both laurels (gold and green) do score come into the picture. The variant (gold) laurel is for fastest victory, nothing to do with score according to game announcement.

I think we still can build couple of aqueducts in some of the core cities

Why, we need so many settlers letting them grow beyond 6 is really not worth it. Besides at RCP3/6 the room to grow beyond 6 is rather limited, we will not really see many large cities. And since we have plenty of cities at rivers/fresh water we can channel the available tiles to let them grow instaed of building expensive aqueducts in the few that would need them..

@Wotan... You do have a point, but if you open the save you will see there are many cities building aqueducts at a time.. If Smackster hasn't changed production order many of the aqueducts should be completed by the end of his turns, if not we need to have a team vote on this...

EDIT:
@Wotan... I wouldn't specifically divert resources on Bach, but may be rather have AI reseach that technology 1st so it becomes cheaper for us, and may be after we get MT research bachs tech in 4 turns or so...
I hope we get leader in time to ruch Bachs... AI on our continent have to weak infrastructure to build it in time before us and AI on other continent are technologically behind, so I wouldn't worry much about somebody building bachs before us.. We can also think about prebuilding it.. and if we manage to get a leader to rush Bach, we can use that prebuild for maggelans, or smiths. As a matter of fact, i think if nobody else does it before my turn, i will start prebuild during my turns, we have many cities and if one prebuilds wonder we won't lose much.

@Tarkeel: With us been such blabber mouths I am surprised you had to dig only 6 pages back :rolleyes:

What I am concerned about is if we lose focus in the game. Speed is everything in the variant game. Everything we do should be put to the question of what we chose not to do by each build order. When building an aqueduct we turn down 1.5 Knights or 3.33 Settlers. The question need to be asked: Do we really need that aqueduct? I can only come to the answer: NO!

The same question should have been put when we decided to go for MT. Do we really need it to finish the game at the cost incured? At 25+ Knights (rushed) I am doubtful.

We are winning this game, there is no doubt about that. But we need to focus on getting us there in as few turns as possible. Else we might end up with a great score but too many turns played for the gold laurel and too low a score compared to the non-variant teams.

We can also think about prebuilding it.. and if we manage to get a leader to rush Bach, we can use that prebuild for maggelans, or smiths. As a matter of fact, i think if nobody else does it before my turn, i will start prebuild during my turns, we have many cities and if one prebuilds wonder we won't lose much.

Please don't prebuild any wonders. The shields are better used for Settlers/Knights. How would Bach get us to end the game faster? 8.67 Knights or 20 Settlers would and that is the cost of Bach, right? 600 shields?

And resources for Smiths? First of all it will come into play much too late in the game and secondly it will drain resources from our mission objective: To finish the game ASAP. Wonders: Only by GL rushing, please.

@Wotan, yes you are probably right about aqueducts. Technology wise... well.. i am not sure....... if we stop researching and put all the money on rushing knight... well... that is one way to go... will it be fastest way to win??? I don't know.. lets see what the rest of the team thinks....

I don't think we use workers correctly, we have workers mining hill near totally corrupted cities on former greek lands... This is total waist of labor and turns. All workers need to do the - irrigage BG...
Everyone probably know this trick, but just in case it is worth repeating it...
Lets say you have a grassland plains tile you can't irrigate due to lack of fresh water.
What you need to do is irrigate those tiles near the fresh water, all the tiles next to the irrigates ones WILL BECOME IRRIGATABLE (spell???) even if they don't have direct access to the lake or river by themselve. You can chain those tile and eventially irrigate each and every tile. That is what we should do to get population hike in corrupted cities, with temples and aqueducts rushed. I know i know... I am missing the point that it doesn't matter for fastest win. But hey, who said we can't hit both Golden and Green Laurels...
Anyways, my point is do not road hills or mountains around totally corrupted cities.

How would Bach get us to end the game faster?

Now it won't get us to the end of the game faster... But again who said we can't get both laurels.... So far we are primary candidates to win green laurel and Bach will alow us to increase those chances. Yes, you probably right, i didn't put much thought and by the time smiths and any other post Bachs wonder come in picture game will be over.


EDIT: Let's wait for the smackster to show up and have a team meeting... At this time we should have a clear picture on what to do next, and every team member should follow this common goal... At this point it looks like everyone is going in different directions and it won't help for the fastest win... So lets gather together to talk a little before continuing the game. What do you say team?

Wonder prebuilds are absolutely useless to us.. Slack me still haven't had a look at that crossing, but can someone post a screenie of it? I don't think we need to research much more, money should go to rushing boars and start ferrying to barb island atleast.

We can't really stop research or can we?
I'd rather have bigger vessels than galleys moving troops across that ocean.

@Wotan: Please don't prebuild any wonders. - I won't, I've got the point

RE: Legion Army-I didn't have any knights handy, and the city they were in was not roaded, making getting enough knights over quickly more difficult. I guess I am still stuck in 'conquests' mode-I thought that the Legion army would have two moves, for example. My bad.

What I meant was that the MOVEMENT RATE of our settlers was what was slowing our expansion down-we had plenty available, but they were just spending most of their time en route; there was no lack of settlers.

RE: Chemistry-Cavalry are pretty much the last word when it comes to warfare until tanks, as I'm sure you are aware. They will take less casulties versus musketmen and the additional move enables them to reach the front that much faster and move through enemy territory quickly.

There is an old proverb about someone unable to choose between two things and by trying to keep both end up losing both. I do not want us to be that someone ;) Let's focus on Variant game VC, and if we do get both then Kudos to us. I would hate to see us milking the game for a few extra turns and lose out on both VC's.

BTW, one of the areas where I feel my own gaming have developed most is to have a better focus during the end game. I used to research too many techs, or develop cities to much. But playing Gotm's and especially by following the threads and to read up on what the best players did got me to the point where I disiplined myself into always asking the question. Do I need this to get to my VC? And to focus, focus, focus. I still wander off in games but they are more well played than a year ago. :)

but can someone post a screenie of it?

I believe Smackster will show up any time now with new save and new screen...
He is still probably sleeping, it's 1pm on east coast here. :)

@Wotan: Yep, lets focus to made Golden Laurel our primary goal, and make some improvements to achive higher score at the same time, while not hurting the primary goal. (like increasing pop in totally corrupted cities, for example, it doesn't hurt as since all we need to do - irrigate tiles, but score is getting higher... and we will have tons of totally corrupted cities). BTW, There is an old russian proverb: if you hurry to catch two rabbits you won't catch any. So please no milking, just straight to the victory :).

@Dmanakho. Yes we need pop in perimeter cities too. Domination is also a question of pop ratio not territory alone. And, I hope you forgive me if I am strongminded on some issues. And... It has nothing to do with the fact that I already have a Green Laurel. Promise groucho

@Wotan: Forgive you?? for what??? I wouldn't enjoy being in this team if we we not straight forward with each other... I think this is what helps as to be ahead of other teams at the present moment.
:beer: Please, do stop by for a beer or two when you visit US ;)

I'm nearly finished, believe it or not I was up until 4.00am playing those turns. But got too tired before the end and slept, the ninth turn is taking ages, well that and all the phone calls I'm getting.

450 AD cont.

So I start with a little MMing, nothing much really but the kind of thing you do at the start, and not at the end.

IBT 2 American Knight (when did the American ever have Knights) attacks near Babylong kils our wandering legion. All other attacks fail, and we look very strong.

T1 460AD
4 Knights outside London go in, but are defeated, and lose 3 Knights. This is one of those times that you feel you should not have attacked, but you just have to accept it and keep going. I liked the odds and if I had taken it then it would have helped our reserves pooring forward to get to the next city quicker. Its a judgement call, if I'd waited two more turns, I would have had 10 Knights there, but we can't wait 2 turns for each city.

Next attack with an elite Knight on a lone longbow, just read the caption.

IBT
America come again with more Knights, they must be from a Hollywood movie or something, that recent Arthur movie springs to mind, and they behave the same way and are generally slaughtered. England produce a horseman through the Roman channel.

T2 470AD

We start by sorting out the English horse, and get a Knight upgrade for our efforts.

Our troops gather around london, our army moves into place, we will wait this time.

Although Ashur is size 9 with Muskets, our Knights go in regardless, the first retreats, the second (elite) wins and for a moment I'm convinced the drive wurs, and ...but no he just wins, the Musket is gone and a pike is spotted. The pike lasts no time and Ashur is reduced to dust, with 5 workers to boot.

Dianthus MapStat, tells me that England and America have Chemistry.

Its the turn of Iroqois, like we will miss them as a trading partner. They have 1 gold, but wont give it to us for anything, we threaten, and the say
"Rejected. What are you gonna about it, huh? Go ahead punk, make my day" We do, we declare war, they will learn.

IBT Couple of Knight responses, but only one loss

T3 480AD
As DH says, can't get the settlers to the open spaces quick enough. Just keep them coming and we'll be ok

Catapult bombardment of London results in nothing. Knight attacks, kills Musket. Legion army goes in but dies. Two horses kill two Muskets (yes really) but nothing else can reach and London stays English, but not for long. We will have them speaking latin before the end of the century, but then again, we wont, they will all be elliminated.

IBT Only one Knight attack, lots of shuffling, but I don't think they have much defence to offer now, they, who are they? they are the barbarians, like everyone else in this game.

T4 490AD

So we look at london, only Longbows for defence, i told them that would not do, what can I say, I bombard it anyway as our attackers are weakened. Two Knight attacks and London, and the Oracle, would have been ours, if I hadn't razed it to the ground.

Just in case the Babylonians were thinking about building Knights we cut their horses

IBT I don't know there seemed to be more attacks this turn, but I pulled the headphones out of my PC and missed most of it, I'm sure we are ok.

T5 500AD

Chemistry, Metalargy in 11

The army attacks, Pestilance finds himself part of it and get upgraded to elite.

IBT Huge battle around New Antium (FP rank 1) and we survive the English and German attacks. Just then Russia turn up and raze it.
Wow, luckily we are calm, we will take them one at a time, Russia will rue this day (BTW we only settled it last turn).

T6 510AD
Our Knight army arrives outside Ellipi (Babylon) but all I see are Muskets, what can i do, we attack, Musket dies, Army is yellow, a bowman shows up, what can we do, we attack, the Army is red lined, but we win, Eliipi is razed.

T7 520AD
Hastings is pounded from multiple fronts, but Muskets defend, they all die,but we can't dislodge the pikes

IBT Our Knight army on a mountain is hit hard, down to one hit, a Knight attacks dies, a longbow attacks and dies, and we survice, very very lucky

T8 530AD

Here we go again, lots of catapult attacks, that result in a waste of time. So the Knights go in again on Hastings. The Musket dies. Then we attack the spearman, our last elite horse kills it, and Hastings is ours, but no, we don't like the wallpaper, and its razed and the workers with it.

T9 540AD
Catapults work this time and red-line the defence in Marseille, the first Knight finishes it and France are reduced to one city in the middle of Bablyon territory.

T10 550AD
Another english city razed, can't remember which one now

Nice round score 1111

We have 7 settlers racing to position, 22 settlers in production, and about 3 galleys in production. Although still building a number of Knights, we have 17 Knights and they are clearing the ground quicker than we can fill it with settlers, which is why I turned up the settler production a notch

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm3-550ad.jpg

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm3/Smackster_SG003_AD0550_01.SAV

Great, great turns.....
So do we have a team discussion to discuss strategy for the game ending before we continue?
I wonder if Wotan and Tarkeel are stil awake. Unfortuinatelly I have to attend a b-day party and won't be available later today...
Anyways, we are looking quite good...

Oh, it's only 20:30 over here :) I can't believe how big we've gotten! I got it, hope to finish it by tomorrow.

Looking good, Smackster. Havn't looked at the save yet. Guests have arrive for a BBQ tonite so will probably be regarded as antisocial if I fire up Civ now. Will have a look later tonite (probably not sober) or tomorrow morning (wo hangover hopefully) ;)

I just ran Mapstat again.

England and America have Astronomy. Hopefully India or Aztecs will get it so we should keep looking for that and see if we can get it in a trade. The sooner we get both MT and Navigation, the sooner we can start to gather cash again and rush things. I did build a library in Gordium and a Uni in Veii. Although at the time I started the Uni it seemed like it was worth it, but it looks like we might be close enough to ending research now that we should not build anymore Libraries or Uni's.

We have 18.6% of the land, and counting up all the unclaimed land, and land on our Continent gets us to 62%. Assuming there is a little unclaimed on the other continent, this tells me we don't need much land over there. When we do get over there, expect to be suprised by how many troops the AI has, so we need to pick a spot where we can land and get a good beachhead.

Yeah, fighting on the other continent will be a totally different experience. They haven't used their troops, so they have probably built up huge stores. That's another bonus with the variant really, you avoid the SoDs.

The most northerly Aztec city looks a good place, lots of moutains we can land on. In fact as soon as we can send Muskets over to a completely different area of land, and the AI will start to send all their troops over there, then we our main invasion force arrives it will be easier.

Anyway, get MT first as that will help to clear this continent, then get Navigation and then stop researching and rush everything. As soon as we get galleys on the east, start invading the barb land, hopefully most of them will have gone to that German city in the north.

I completely forgot about settler factories in my turns, I just built settlers or Knights everywhere that I could. We don't need too many more workers I think, although its nice to irrigate all the land, better to spend time on settlers right now.

One more thing about the ratio of Settlers / Knights that we are producing. Feel free to change some of the settlers near the front to Knights if we start to get a bit low on troops and are beginning to fill the land up.

edit: For example two of the cities around the FP (Gordiumn) are producing settlers and can easily be switched.

Have had a look at the save now and would like to give a few comments.

It was a pity you did not save the shields invested into aqueduct builds. The RCP3/6 combined with so many of the cities on rivers/fresh water give us enough locations to expand beyond 6. Not all of them need to, nor should go beyond 6. Viroconium is currently building an aqueduct. Please make use of the shields in a different way, forum would at least give us gold... The two water tiles it works now could be used by Ravenna to expand it further (an aqueduct was built there :() And the other Aqueduct city: Lugdunum, how large could that grow for the cost? Especially with all of it's surrounding cities not needing aqueducts for expansion past 6 and in two cases growing slowly/barely at 3 and 4??? Let's cut our losses now, two aqueducts built so far is only 3 knights. ;)

Founding cities behind shoreline cities, since we will build culture in shoreline cities to have coastal tiles within our cultural borders building cities to fill out cultural borders in those areas is not needed. Eg. Rome and New Cumae. The area would have come under our cultural borders when the coastal cities expanded. Please take this into account when founding cities in the north.

FP RCP, I know I miscalculated the rings for Gordion, but as I understood it we would take a larger corruption but stick to RCP4/8 there. But, New Hispalis is at 7 and New Viroconium at 6?

Wotan, could you post a map with your blue/red dots marking new FP city rings....
This way everyone would now where to place new city...
And those that are 6 and 7 distances probably could be and maybe even should be disbanded, since they haven't any improvements yet.

(0) 550 AD
Swap Aesonesium to settler, Lauriacum to Temple

Check our local opponents: France is gassed and shoul fall during my turns, Babylon is down to 4 cities, but 2 are large. England should also fall. Russia appears to have drawn the shortest straw in expansion, and has only 4 cities, 3 of them tundra fishing villages. America is the monster. Germany is decent sized as well.

Looking at the crossing, there are no safe crossings before navigation. I'm slapping my head for not rushing lighthouse.

IBT:
German knight counters and kills one of ours at Uruk

(1) 560 AD
I'm not bothering to list unit builds, just swaps and buildings
Gordion: Bibilotheca->Forum
Switch Aurelianorum to Bibliotheca
Destroy New Orleans

IBT:
Lose a knight and 2 cats since germany and babylon have RoP
Japan land a settler+horse

(2) 570 AD
Veii: Uni->Musket
Aesonesium: Settler->Knight
Found New Lutetia. Since our rings around FP are blown away anyways, I found New Lugdunum at distance 5, to fill in max land.
Recapture cats
Adjust research to 60%, still due in 3
Bombard Uruk and Nottingham

IBT:
Kill counterattacking american and russian knight

(3) 580 AD - 1173
Bomb Uruk and kill a musket
Bomb Nottingham, injuring 1 unit :(
Found New Byzantium, distance 8 and good filler position
Kill2 muskets in Nineveh
Redline 3 Knight on Nottingham, hold off till more bombardment

(4) 590 AD - 1191
Viroconium - Aqueduct->Knight
Bombard (8 cats only knock of 1 hp) and raze Uruk
Bombard Nottingham, destroy barracks
Kill some invading Americans
Raze Nineveh
Aztecs have Astronomy and PP,

IBT:
3 American Knights approach
Aztecs start Copernicus
Lose A knight to German counter-knight
Redlined Leg kills Bab counter-knight

(5) 600 AD - 1216
Metallurgy comes in, start MT at 80%, due in 8.
Bombard Nottingham, destroy market and kill 1 pop
Found New Brundisium
Knight dies trying to kill german counter-knight, lose another on american knight.
England, America and Aztec have Astronomy, and since our rep is broken we have to pay with cash or techs. I'm reluctant to sell them Metallurgy

IBT:
American knight defeated at New Lugdunum
German knight kills redlined leg in mountain

(6) 610 AD - 1237
Bombard Nottingham
Bomard Avignon
Found New Syracuse

IBT
Lose 1 and kill 2 knights in American counter

(7) 620 AD - 1259
Neapolis: Knight->Settler
Lutetia: Settler->Worker
Bombard Nottingham, it has atleast 4 muskets.
Bombard Avignon

IBT:
German Knights approach.

(8) 630 AD - 1281
Bombard Avignon, without denting the pike. Army razes it anyways. France finally gets it Pax Romanum.
Bombard Nottingham, Retreat 1 Knight, kill 4 musket, lose 1 knight, before finally razing it for 151g
Found New Gonzomonium
Land a Legion in Barbland.
Move forces to prepare for counter next turn.
Hmm, Aztecs will no longer give both PP and Astronomy for Metallurgy, which means they are researching it. Sell them Metallurgy for Astronomy and WM and 6g

IBT:
Kill 1, lose 2 and redline 1 knight in counters
Japan start Copernicus

(9) 640 AD - 1303
Found New Lunacantorium

IBT
America and India sign alliance against us! Immediately after, America wants peace...
Kill 1 and lose 2 knights on counter

(10) 650 AD - 1327
Gordium: Forum->Knight
The Aztecs have gpt available, and ship them condimentum for 12gpt
Upgrade some cats.
Raze Brighto, and found new neocaledonium. Found New Aesonesium on barb island

Summary:
Didn't make too much progress, got bogged down on some cities. Half our cats are upgraded, the other half will be upgraded next turn. This should help us a lot. We also have some reinforcements close to the front now. Here are some pics on how I intend to fill the northern area:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SG03-Smackster-North.jpg
And how the English land should be settled: We have some settlers ready

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/SG03-Smackster-West2.jpg

Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm3/Smackster_SG003_AD0650_01.SAV)

Edit: Rings around FP can be much laxer, distance 4 and 5 will have same corruption.

Looking at the crossing, there are no safe crossings before navigation. I'm slapping my head for not rushing lighthouse.

Not that important in my opinion. We can ship hop, only risk losing Edit:Caravels all troops would be safe. I have in the past looked for the safe passage and gone for Navigation. But not anymore, if you read Kuningas end report on Gotm32(?) you know what I mean, where he crossed the ocean shiphopping w. galleys and ending the game ultrafast by avoiding anything not needed.

@Dmanakho: A map was posted a while back but I guess just filling in the gaps is what we are currently doing. You could check distance if you want before settling as we tried to go for RCP4/8 around the FP.

Edit: Rings around FP can be much laxer, distance 4 and 5 will have same corruption.

Why? Please explain, I do not know/understand why they would have the same?

Switch Aurelianorum to Bibliotheca

Why this affection for libraries at this stage of the game??? We will not research that many turn into the future!!! After Navigation we will produce gold not beakers. I would understand building forums in cities producing a lot commerce, but not libraries since their worth expires in less than 20 turns.

Dmanakho asked for a discussion on how we should progress in this game. As it is now everyone plays solo without discussion. IMNSHO, we are making a lot of bad judgement calls now. One example: I would have liked a discussion on the pros and cons re. Aqueduct before building them. They have so far cost us about 10 Knights and to what benefit? To go beyond size 6 each of those cities cannibalize on cities wo need of aqueducts! I have written post after post re. this but with absolutely no reaction either in game or verbally.

@Wotan: True, it can still be switched.

Cities around FP get rank from cities closer to palace then they are to FP.. as such it's only the RCP rings around palace that really affect them.

Galleys aren't safe, they still have only speed 4. But we can shipchain, but that takes a lot of ships... As opposed to researching one more tech.

Cities around FP get rank from cities closer to palace then they are to FP.. as such it's only the RCP rings around palace that really affect them.

Thanks, this is still somewhat of a grey area for me.

Galleys aren't safe, they still have only speed 4. But we can shipchain, but that takes a lot of ships... As opposed to researching one more tech.

As I added above, I just recently learned not to wait for it to be safe. Bare necessities! That is the name of the game if you want the laurels. How do you think players like Kuningas finish their games so fast? ;) I played on Team Kuningas in Sgotm2, and learnt a lot.

Well... I've got the save, i will postpone on playing though...
it's only 12:10PM GMT-5
I will be waiting for more posts here. It is true, everyone was playinng solo games and I do not feel like we have a team strategy at a moment. I do agree we most of what Wotan has said.

Here are my suggestions and then i'd like everybody else to contribute on the topics to vote... Once we establish the plan we will proceed accordingly

1. Aqueducts - quit building them
2. Libraries, Universities - quit building them
3. Courthouses - never built yet and never will.
4. Marketplaces - we do need those to generate income, we also may need to rush those in corrupted cities if we have 6+ pop in those...ok.... we probably won't need if we play to finish this game ASAP.
5. Research, What do we do after MT researched. It takes only 6-7 turns to research navigation, should we go to navigation and stop there??? or should we also research banking so we can have extra income for rushing units?
6. In case if we decide to stop researching right after MT, how do we take over the other continent... I still feel like it's worth researching navigation than having extra ships, plus a chance of sinking our units, on a big picture we will probably have a wash in terms of money and resourses spent.
7. We are doing quite good scorewise comparing the other teams, but it doesn't mean we are ahead of them. One or more teams with lower score can be much closer to victory than we are... i think we have somewhat lost a little of momentum. By year of 650AD, i'd much rather have our continent under control of roman armies...


I think we are doing quite well, but again, at the beggining of the game we had a team plan, we don't have one now...
So the sooner we come up with game plane the better we will do.

Navigation - yes, imho
Banking - No. The gold poured into researching won't be recovered by banks I think.

Strategic goals:
-Cripple Germany
-Sweep up England and Babylon
-Conquer rest of homeland
-Settle Barb Island
-Build up boats for invasion of other continent

IMHO, we should keep couple of knights to protect shoreline in our mainland. I am afraid that Japanese will land couple of samurai and will be able to do much damage capturing our main production cities before we can do anything about it.
Our shore is so stretched and it is simply not protected. there are few japanese galleys wondering around and who knows what they have on board.

Since Tarkeel managed to buy Astronomy we only need Navigation to be "safe" traversing oceans. I agree we go for it before firing all scientists.

Goals in Tarkeel's and Dmanakho's posts are the right decisions for us now, so I agree to pursue them. I guess settling the barbarian lands will take us to domination faster than conquering same amount of land on other continent so I agree we step up process of sending Settlers there.

So, as I understand it we have a majority for this plan now... Just kidding, getting Smackster's and DeceasedHorse's input/commitment is important so we do not miss out on any ideas or opportunities.

Yes, we need to post some knights along the shore to protect from landings. THere are a lot of boats going by...

Another goal I forgot to add, but which is harder: Cripple america. Mos of our losses were inflicted by America and Germany, and they are the only large civs left on our continent.

I looked at the save, we don't have enough units for the massive invasion on America or Germany... I will be probably able to do something to cripple one or the other, but certainly not both. We will get MT in 3 turns, so i hope i am going to be able to upgrade some of the knights into cavalry for better results.

I didn't mean go for both, and I don't think America is a feasible target for some time still. They have Babylon as a buffer.

Strange that nobody has Music Theory yet though.

Dmanakho, remember to declare war on our last trading partner :)

FP RCP, I know I miscalculated the rings for Gordion, but as I understood it we would take a larger corruption but stick to RCP4/8 there. But, New Hispalis is at 7 and New Viroconium at 6?
You don't have to stick to the exact ring locations around the FP, better to get the best site location in my opinion. Around the palace you have to stick ridgedly to the RCP locations to get the ranks sorted out.

I will try to remember to declare war
I think one of the reasons AIs didn't go for Bach was us rushing Sistine chapel. AIs were denied to do chain wonder building at the point and went for other techs.
and BTW question... do we want to spend extra 4-5 cycles researching towards Bachs??? I believe we can do it... I do expect Wotan to bring us a new leader, he is really good at that, and it would be nice to be able to rush bach at that time..
Any arguments for or against that????
EDIT: Or we can fire our scientists after navigation ,and then if it happens that we get a leader, just keep it waiting for another 4-5 turns while we bring some scientists back to research bachs... I don't mind not been able to get any leader for 4-6 turns as a price for Bach cafedral

Oh cool smakster is here.. so team has gathered with exception of DH..
Smackster please look at all todays posts and vote on all idea before i proceed with my turns...
remember, you as a captain can veto everything :) . or can you??? :mischief:

To get more team coordination we need to slow the turns down, what do you guys want to do, slow down and talk or to continue playing. Even though some decisions are probably not the best, maybe we learned more by making those decisions, and I honestly don't think it makes much difference.

I'm just loading up the save, but before I do I think that we should slow down attacks, wait for MT, upgrade our Knights and then proceed. Also before we invade the other continent we should cover the barb island, that is a huge section that needs to be filled and will be much easier than that other continent.

Oh cool smakster is here.. so team has gathered with exception of DH..
Smackster please look at all todays posts and vote on all idea before i proceed with my turns...
remember, you as a captain can veto everything :) . or can you??? :mischief:
I can certainly veto it, but will you take any notice. :rolleyes:

Kill of some more civs before researching it atleast, that will cut costs. With the amount of luxuries we have now, I don't think we need Bach's really.. When you found that city in the NW, we should have 6 online.

I don't mind slowing down, we are ages ahead of all other teams with exception of oblivion team... we don't really want to finish a game and then wait another 2+ weeks for other guys, or do we???

None of the teams posted a spoiler on AA. I'd rather slow down for discussion between each set of turns. I also like to read other team spoilers to check their progress...

I suspect everyone read our spoiler, became afraid of us and now adjusting their plays to ours. :rolleyes:

I don't mind slowing it down, but I feel we have had good discussion between turns so far. Just don't feel rushed to finish, and pause midway if you have any questions :)

do we want to spend extra 4-5 cycles researching towards Bachs??? I believe we can do it... Any arguments for or against that????

Sort of for and against. ;) I would not research it unless

a: all/most other tribes have it so it is inexpensive to research
b: we get a leader and (a) is in effect,

we do not want to use resources for a sidetrack like Bach unless it is dead cheep.

Next leader should probably be used for a musket army anyways.. Will make the landing a bit less painful.

Even though some decisions are probably not the best, maybe we learned more by making those decisions, and I honestly don't think it makes much difference.

I do agree with you, probably a minor impact on the game but, the great thing about SG's is shortening the learning curve (or do you flatten it? hope you understand what I am trying to say?) for the team members. We are after all only debating the finer points of civ3, trying to squeeze as much out of every resource available.

I think that we should slow down attacks, wait for MT, upgrade our Knights and then proceed. Also before we invade the other continent we should cover the barb island, that is a huge section that needs to be filled and will be much easier than that other continent.

YES, on both issues. With so few Knights in service there is no need to push the attack at this stage. Also, agree fully on settling barbarian lands ASAP. Settle it and rush temples since a lot of the territory is coastal and mountains. When we have it mapped we need to plan city placement to get as much out of every settler/temple we place/build.

You don't have to stick to the exact ring locations around the FP, better to get the best site location in my opinion. Around the palace you have to stick ridgedly to the RCP locations to get the ranks sorted out.

I had it explained to me by Tarkeel, FP administration is one area I am not really good at. So the only thing that is important for a city around the FP is it's position visavi the rings around your palace? And that is why the rings should be narrower/same as rings around palace. Right?

Next leader should probably be used for a musket army anyways.. Will make the landing a bit less painful.

We will be using Caravels so no more than 2 units loaded into each army if we want to be able to transport it. And I would prefer the units to be Cavalry when we have them.

@Wotan: Re: rings: Yep. I think we should have one musket army to bear the brunt of the counter attack, but cav armies are also good. Just remember that a cav army would be top defender in the stack.

I had it explained to me by Tarkeel, FP administration is one area I am not really good at. So the only thing that is important for a city around the FP is it's position visavi the rings around your palace? And that is why the rings should be narrower/same as rings around palace. Right?
Yes.

Now having looked at the save we should hold off attacks for the three turns it will take to get MT. I would suggest we then turn off research until we have upgraded all our Knights.

edit: At 10 gold per upgrade with 19 Knights, we can continue to research. I still think we have a number of turns before we need to invade the other continent, as we should clear and populate the barbs first. Looks like culture expansion will be needed, so we'll have to rush temples over there. Its difficult to anticipate how long it will take to do that, so worth sending some advanced Muskets over to the other continent, just to let them waste some troops attacking them.

There are pros and cons on whether it's better to have cav army vs. musket army. And since we will have hard time making a consensus on this question, i'd say whoever gets next leader gets to decide what army to use it for. ;) It sounds fair enough for me.

as for the short term tactics...
I am not going to launch any serious attacks until we get MT and upgraded knights. (another boring set of turns i am going to have :sad: ).
After that I will bring research to minimum to generate enough cash for upgrades. We won't need navigation in next 20+ turns still fighting on our home land.
I will try to move as many settlers/legions/pikes/muskets on barb lands as it will sound reasonable.
That should keep me busy for my turns.

Yep. I think we should have one musket army to bear the brunt of the counter attack, but cav armies are also good. Just remember that a cav army would be top defender in the stack.

Why a defensive army? It is when attacing you want the extra hp's to keep the attack going not when defending. Two muskets do the same job as an army with two muskets in it. The offensive army otoh will probably kill anything it goes up against by sheer number of hp's

At 10 gold per upgrade with 19 Knights, we can continue to research.

Research what? Nothing after Navigation I hope. Any gold not used for upgrades will definitely be used for rushing culture buildings (temples) and rushing/shortrushing Cavalry/Caravels/Settlers. We have no need for any techs after Navigation but do need every unit we can muster. A cavalry is 80 shields, right? That is 316 gold for the costliest rush (rushing at 1 shield) and possibly available to us every second turn or more.

Edit: did not see what continue research refered to, but was obviously just to an earlier suggestion to turn off research while upgrading Knights, sorry for having opened my mouth before connecting my brain ;)

Tarkeel, in your spoiler, you didn't mention us building another wonder Hanging gardens...
I forgot we even had it until i stumble into it while i was checking cities before my 1st turn...

HG was technically built during the Middle Ages though, so it's outside the scope of the spoiler imho.

Oh, I guess i lost track of time...

Have had a look at the save and would like to suggest shifting Veii to Knight. Also wonder why we still have three Horsemen? They are Elite but would be better as Knights/Cavalry than hope for easy targets for horsemen to leaderfarm from. Especially the wounded hm since upgrading heals all wounds.

Regarding Music Theory: If we can get it, we may as well go for it, provided research time is sufficently short. Losing out on 4-6 turns of extra rushing is rather trivial compared to the boost Bach's would give our score, although I must say that I have minimal (more like next to none if we are talking about PTW-style RCP) ICS experiance; with six luxuries under our control, we may not get as much benefit from Bach's as we would if our cities were larger. If research time is signifcant, just run a one scientist min-research run on the tech in one of our ultra-corrupt cities. This keeps our options open with minimal commitment on our behalf.

We do not have enough troops to begin wars against a fresh opponent at this moment, in my opinion, so waiting to research navigation before we launch our assault would definitly be worth it. Furthermore, the fewer shields we have to waste building transport ships, the more shields can go towards building cavalry or whatever; in any case we still haven't occupied our own landmass entirely so its pretty much a moot point anyway. We should also rush Magellan's if given the opportunity, for obvious reasons.

Just a reminder:

India - War declaration due 670AD
Aztec - War declaration due 870AD

Musical theory cost just over 1200 beakers = 4 Cavalry not that much at first glance but I would still shun it. Why?

First of all, because we play variant time is the key not score. Since we are way ahead of the other teams we cannot judge when they will end their games and not focusing on ending the game ASAP might cost us more than we would like. If we are officially going after both laurels then some milking might be appropriate but we are at a severe disadvantage vs. teams not AW. So the green laurel is probably an unlikely result for us. As will the golden laurel be if we do not focus. Score is of NO importance so why pursue it???

From Mad-bax announcement: The Gold Laurel will be awarded to the team that win by the victory condition of their choice in the fewest turns relative to the Jason best date for that condition.

The only caveat here is how Jason handle a unique game as this. Will it affect the different VC's or not. Diplo is obviously out but Conquest or Domination? Would either be easier than the other under variant game rules?

Secondly, I would rather have a cavalry army on the other continent than Bach's given the choice. Magellans otoh would be nice since there is one spot on our continent with 8 tiles across to the other continent (city-city)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/shiphopping.JPG

Ok. I played my turns…
I must admit so far it was most difficult set of turns I had…
Americans and Germans kept bugging me a lot and I had to defend our borders from all different sides. Russians sent quite few knights our way as well.

But I probably should stop complaining and start my story...

Before I started, I changed building order in some of the corrupted cities, switching them to settlers instead of temples… I figured we need temples just to get extra coastal lines for dom. Victory. But it won’t happen soon, so settlers are higher priority at the moment, when we close to domination we will simply rush temples there.

T1: 660 AD – Did pretty much nothing, but moving units around lots of MM and dodged few skirmishes.

T2: 670 AD – Again lots of skirmishes against us. Town of Smackster was founded giving us our 6th luxury. Same year towns of Tarkeel and Dmanakho were founded.
Went to F4 to declare war… Oh my!!! We are already at war with India… I figured I should declare war against Aztecs, but I wasn’t able to do it... We had 3 more years in peace agreement and it was simply impossible to break it in F4 interface... I also noticed we sold them some of our lux for 18gpt… I guess it will be wasted in 3 turns from now.

T3: 680 AD – We have MT, I dropped research rate to 10% to get some cash coming. Town of Wotan is founded. Lots of local skirmishes… (It looked like they have an incredible rate of producing those knights, attacks follow one after another). Several AIs are building Bach’s.

T4: 690 AD – Oh, close call, English landed a knight right in the middle of our core ring.
I was just lucky I had cavalry built the very same turn. Ok, reminder to me to keep couple of cavalry units back home at all times. (and it was a good decision later Russians also landed knight in the middle of our core cities... Please keep those 2 cavalry units back home at all times)
Rest of the AIs are building Bach’s.

T5: 700 AD – All these turns I kept moving settlers and some available units to barbs land. just a one boring turn...
DOW against Aztecs


T6: 710 AD – Towns of DeceasedHorse, SGOTM33 and Mad-Bax founded… Well, yes I decided to give new towns some original names, don’t like those New Whatever style names…

T7: 720 AD Failed to take Canterbury, last English city, simply don’t have enough units. German skirmish again.

T8: 730 AD: English no more… But I lost Dmanakho to Russian knights, it was raised.

T9: 740 AD: Captured and raised Russian city Tbilisi. Founded Dmanakho again on its place.

T10: 750 AD: Did nothing… We have few cavalry units up north… SURPRISE!!!! Americans and Germans have MT plus they have physics and frankly I am surprised how they manage to keep their tech pace with so few cities and keep sending knights our way every single turn. I believe in just few turns we will face American and German Cavalry.

At the present moment we have many settlers on barbarian land… I miscalculated and we need more units there to clean it… Looks like Americans and Germans already started quite successful colonization of barb continent.

I wasted much gold because I was forced to rush several musketeers in newly founded cities, but even that didn’t help me to protect that brand new city I’ve managed to lose…
I hope in next n-turns we will rebuild our forces to finally clean our continent from Americans and Germans. I don’t remember seeing a single Babylonian unit although they have borders with us.
As far as tech pace goes, We will have Navigation in 33 turns at 10% right now, but if we decide to increase tech we will be able to discover Navigation in just 5 turns. Bach’s can be discovered in 4 turns but I would not switch to Bach until we have Navigation otherwise we will loose quite few beacons.

At the end we have Firaxis score: 1591, Jason score: 778 -> save file (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm3/Smackster_SG003_AD0750_01.SAV)

That’s all folks!!!!

The Cavalry look well positioned now to make a dent in America and Germany. I know it can be tough sometimes, but if we keep hammering them then they will weaken. I guess if you have to rush Muskets to protect the cities then we got them too close to the front. Also I feel that I slowed the production of Knights down too much in my game, it seemed as I had it that we needed many more settlers, which we do, but slowing down the Knights was not right.

I suggest all production is stopped apart from Settlers, Cavalry and Caravels from now. I also think maybe we should hold off on Navigation for a while, build some cash to help rush/short rush the above. It will take some turns to get the Caravels in place, and assuming the AI researches Navigation then they will make it easier for us. I'm not really suprised at the tech pace, as usually there would be even more fighting than there is.

Right now I'm sure we'll face Riflemen on the other continent. But we may not need too much land over there, so its easily within our grasp for a quick finish.

smackster

The Roster

smackster
Tarkeel
dmanahko (just played)
Wotan (playing)
DeceasedHorse (next up)

First of all, because we play variant time is the key not score. Since we are way ahead of the other teams we cannot judge when they will end their games and not focusing on ending the game ASAP might cost us more than we would like. If we are officially going after both laurels then some milking might be appropriate but we are at a severe disadvantage vs. teams not AW. So the green laurel is probably an unlikely result for us. As will the golden laurel be if we do not focus. Score is of NO importance so why pursue it???

From Mad-bax announcement: The Gold Laurel will be awarded to the team that win by the victory condition of their choice in the fewest turns relative to the Jason best date for that condition.

Best way to get a good Jason score is to finish early, conquest or domination. If we can get some points on the way then that is fine. But I agree from now we should really pursue the fastest finish.


The only caveat here is how Jason handle a unique game as this. Will it affect the different VC's or not. Diplo is obviously out but Conquest or Domination? Would either be easier than the other under variant game rules?

The variant will not affect Jason score. In this game we simply have to win quickly by domination, conquest is really out as we'll be fighting Riflemen with Cavalry.


Secondly, I would rather have a cavalry army on the other continent than Bach's given the choice. Magellans otoh would be nice since there is one spot on our continent with 8 tiles across to the other continent (city-city)

Guess it would help to wipe out those Rifles we'll face.

Also, conquest has an earlier best-date for Jason scoring then domination, as it takes less to jus walz over with knights and not leave anything behind to defend.

Got it.

The variant will not affect Jason score. In this game we simply have to win quickly by domination, conquest is really out as we'll be fighting Riflemen with Cavalry.

We have been playing towards domination for most of the game so conquest is out of the question for us. My "ramblings" was more to do with worries about what the other teams might be up to. If they are going dom. too or conq.? And what effect Jason's best "date" would have in this game with AW as a requisite, if any?

I feel happy the discussions/ideas on ways to increase score can be dispatched to where they belong. In the dustbin. Whatever the size of the score achieved it will boost our egos only, not our potential for victory. ;)

Edit: Dmanakho!!!! Why did you not read Tarkeel's turn report or stop playing when you found out India was at war with us??????? :mad: If you read his report you will see that India joined America against us in 650AD. So next war, the war agaist Aztecs was not due until 850!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: If you had stopped playing and put the question to the team this would have been avoided. When in doubt or something major occurs DO STOP AND SEEK ADVICE! As I did after a few turns in my last volley.... And maybe Tarkeel should have made a bigger issue, War headlines ;) of it, not bury it in the text. JK!

Actually, as I understand Mad-bax's posting, India declaring on us that way would push the Aztec DoW up the line.

@Dmanakho: You can always declare war in the normal diplomacy screen instead of cancelling peace...

Oops... my bad... I was pretty sure that declarations of wars are one-sided... That is when we declare war we wait another 20 turns until next one, but if someone declares war on us it doesn't matter, we still have to declare a war within 20 turns since we declared war on somebody... Am i beeing wrong??
I am sorry.... :sad:

EDIT: I mean the only reason i didn't stop the game to ask a question, because i was so sure about this part in rules... If i had a doubt i would definetely stop and ask.

I found it in the rules:
If the civ that declares IS the next one on the list then it is handled in the same way as if you decided to declare on that civ early.


So, you would have had 20 turns from when India declared on us. Not a biggie though.

I found it in the rules:
So, you would have had 20 turns from when India declared on us. Not a biggie though.
Agreed that is the way I read it. But even though I've read this a few times, I had to read it again for it to be clear. This variant is certainly more complex than its meant to be.

I can't see any of this making much difference to the end result.

I agree it is not a huge problem with the early war, but it was not just a few turns early it was 17 turns early and it was more the issue of not stopping to get input when something important occurs in the game. But, I have begun playing now and the first turn into it Aztecs and a whole bunch of other tribes have Music Theory, so would have been able to buy it if a Leader turns up. Also, 18gpt, is not much per se but if we add up all bad decisions taken without team input we have squandered quite a few Knights/Cavalry along the road.

@Wotan... I am not ignorant, the only reason i didn't pause the game i was sure i knew what i was doing. If i had any doubt i would stop to ask.
You have the rights to be mad at the wrong decision i made. but not at the fact i didn't stop the game. :blush:

I agree it is not a huge problem with the early war, but it was not just a few turns early it was 17 turns early and it was more the issue of not stopping to get input when something important occurs in the game. But, I have begun playing now and the first turn into it Aztecs and a whole bunch of other tribes have Music Theory, so would have been able to buy it if a Leader turns up. Also, 18gpt, is not much per se but if we add up all bad decisions taken without team input we have squandered quite a few Knights/Cavalry along the road.
OK, time to cool it on the bad decision stuff, no finger pointing anymore. You made the point, he apologised, and its finished. Even if we lose by a point be happy that we played our best game.

Maybe I should not be team leader (trust me I did not volunteer), but I really don't care about winning. I've really enjoyed this game and the communication we have all had and feel that we have all learned from it, and that is all that matters. Sure if we can get a joint Gold/Green laurel, I'll take it.

I posted this earlier but want to say it again.

From now, only build settlers, cavalry or caravels (the exceptions are, workers where the city is too small and not connected, or temples on the barb island as that's the only way to get the moutains in our culture). Therefore no libraries, no marketplaces, no Muskets (if you want to build a Musket army, there are plenty around).

What about Muskets for defence of the core you say, well one Cavalry can do that for about 3 cities. What about Muskets for defence of the front line you say, well we have plenty sitting around, move them to the front. What about Marketplaces in a city that needs some more happiness, use entertainers.

This is the rule, and can only be changed for a specific city if the team agrees.

I assume that Wotan is up, then?

RE: Prizes/Laurals/all that crap:
I have been playing under false assumptions for much of the game, hence my numerous comments on maximizing score. I should have payed more attention to the overall goal, which was finishing as soon as possible, rather than jacking up our score.

Smackster is correct in that this a rather complex variant, especially given how quickly we've been going through the game. It is hard to keep track of contact dates, declarations dates, ecetera, especially combined with the somewhat ambigous wording of the initial variant rules and Civ's own turn structure.

I assume that Wotan is up, then?
RE: Prizes/Laurals/all that crap:
I have been playing under false assumptions for much of the game, hence my numerous comments on maximizing score. I should have payed more attention to the overall goal, which was finishing as soon as possible, rather than jacking up our score.

To be honest so was I, but its always better for your Jason score to get a quick finish, so hopefully I didn't derail us too much in any of the score making decisions I made (I moved the slider 10% to the right for a few turns, for example).

Anyway, hopefully now we are all on the same page. Finishing early. Domination still has to be the best bet as we are sure to face Rifles now. So we still have to expand as quickly as possible. Then we'll get the best score still as we grab all the land.

edit: Wotan did post his "I got it" and said he was playing

Before posting my report I would like to say that I am not mad (really) at anyone. I just want us to play the best game possible and in doing so also learn more about civ3 and how to play it well. There are many areas where I am at a loss and I appreciate any help in overcoming those. There are still areas where we as a team can improve too, not only in keeping focus on the game but how to use units to the best of their capacity.

One area in particular I have noticed is Worker management. Since it takes a W. 3 turns to road a tile moving more than 1 into the tile is a waste og Worker actions unless you are in a hurry and have to have the road up quick in which case you move 3 into the tile. The difference being that if you use 1 the total cost is 1 to move into the tile and 3 turn to work it for a total cost of 4 "Worker actions-WA" done in 4 turns. If you move 2 it will cost 6 WA in 3 turns, and 3 is 6WA in 2 turns. The same goes for irrigation, mining etc. Make sure you use the appropriate number of workers for the job in question. Normally the cheapest way is to move but 1 into an unroaded tile and road it. After that it is just a question of the number of turns you want it ready in as irrigated or mined. As you do not pay a turn to move into the tile if there is a road and you have MPs left.

Sometimes you can have two workers chopping a forest, when that is done after 5 turns, set one of them to road the other to irrigate and the road will be ready the turn before the irrigation. This way you save at least 1WA. Or move 1 Worker into the forest on turn 1 and two on turn 2, then the forest will be cleared in 4 turns 3x3 + 1x1 WA = 10 and then you can have all three road it for an instant road if needed.

First a mini map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-850.JPG

Turn log

0 – 750AD preturn
Annoyed with Worker allocations, but will address this in a separate post. One shortrushed Cavalry. Having 10% on science is a bit of a waste when going for 40 turns so put a scientist in a corrupt city and set science to 0%

IBT: German knight and two Iroquois Horse land near our Barb lands city. No other serious actions.

1 – 760AD
Raised Babylonian city near “Wotan”. Failed to take Babylon. Another issue, would prefer if players refrain from setting units to “go to” that keeps it on those orders when handing over to the next player. Last time such orders took me by surprise two Galleys moved next to a pile of Barb.Galleys resulting in the loss of both our Galleys… This time plenty of units moved during this turn, nothing major but among the moves I actually looked at two Workers moved into the same grassland! :(

IBT: One Cavalry killed, but took an American Knight with him. Iroquois Horse attack barb. German Knight attack and is retreated.

2 – 770AD
Babylon raised, 7 Workers put to the sword. Shortrushed a few Cavalry. New Palmyra founded.

IBT: Nothing really happening, a few Knights/Cavalry attack our Forward Ops but no losses incurred.

3 – 780AD
Preparations for attack on Ur.

Check this out if you have not done so in the past:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-Urattack.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-urattack2.JPG

INT: 1 Cavalry lost.

4 – 790AD
New Jerusalem founded. Ur raised, last attack gave a Leader. Moving to repeat performace at Akkad, SF, Philly and Windy City.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-Urattack3.JPG

IBT: Japan land settler plus 3 units near New Aesonesium. 1 American Cavalry attack and it failed. Russian Knight landed next to Ravenna.

5 – 800AD
All but 1 Japanese Pike killed. Russian knight dispatched by new Cavalry from Veii. In position to attack Philly next turn. New Caesarea founded. Cavalry Army formed, just 2 cavalry loaded into it, please do not load a third until it has been transported to the other continent!!! Caravels transport capacity = 3!

IBT: One Musket killed by American Cavalry, A few attacks from Barbarians but no additional losses.

6 – 810AD
New Tarentum founded within Akkad’s territory. Akkad raised and Babylon is gone…
Philly is gone. SF gone.

IBT: Skirmishing by Barbarians. One Japanese Samurai bravely lands next to Ravenna.

7 – 820AD
Japanese Samurai dispatched. Leipzig burned. 3 American cities burned, forgot to write down their names…

IBT: Japan builds Copernicus.

8 – 830AD
Sverdlovsk burned. And Frankfurt.

IBT: Lost one Cavalry to American Cavalry. Barbarian skirmishers.

9 – 840AD
Washington is no more… Nor is Yakutsk.

IBT: Lost another Cavalry to a German Knight. Barbarian skirmishers.

10 – 850AD
Hamburg raised. Some Alarums and Excursions

A number of Settlers near their destinations see Maps. A few others just moving in the general direction of new lands. New York should fall next turn as should München. The turn after units near Boston will have healed so it can be raised. Have rushed/shortrushed Cavalry each turn. Also rushed a couple of temples and a few Settlers. No MMing done this turn. No organised opposition on our continent. Suggest a shift to research Navigation within a couple of turns to prepare for “Overlord”. And to stop researching altogether after it is finished. We need to start preparing for that campaign, my suggestion is to use NEW SMACKSTER as port of embarkation since it is closest to other continent and with a port as in my map a few posts back can be serviced with two caravels per “move” from port to port (if we have Magellans, not impossible to get a leader during DH’s turns?)

So DH, all yours, finish off the continent now so Smackster can focus on the invasion and populating the barbarian lands.

And again, I am absolutely not disappointed with the teams performance. I would love to continue this cooperation in SGOTM4. That is if you want my stubbornness and nagging on the team. ;)

Score: 1871

Suggested placement tiles for Settlers:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-North.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-south.JPG

Just a little clarification to avoid confusion:

The Cavalry army is intentionally at two Cavalry loaded into it. If a third was to be loaded into the army, the army would be unable to be loaded onto a Caravel for transport to the other continent. When safely across the ocean please laod a third Cavalry into it...

Great turns, I thought they would go down quickly once we got Cavalry. So lets get Navigation ASAP, and start the mobilization towards the other continent before they do get those dreaded Rifles.

Thanks, Cavalry is my favourite unit in the game, they are so versatile. I fully agree with you re. production, Cavalry will do an exellent job defending our turf as well as conquering the enemies lands. Unfortunately I seldom have them until very late in games nowadays if at all, at least if going after Dom/Conq. (On the other hand I cannot remember a game where I have built as many Muskets as we have in this game, normally less than a handful for very specific tasks.)

All production set to either: Cavalry, Settler, Workers Caravels (need several to shift to that on the west coast) and Temples in coastal cities to expand over all coastal tiles. We need temples too for cultural expansion because every tile is important. Else I agree with your suggestions.

Before posting my report I would like to say that I am not mad (really) at anyone. I just want us to play the best game possible and in doing so also learn more about civ3 and how to play it well. There are many areas where I am at a loss and I appreciate any help in overcoming those. There are still areas where we as a team can improve too, not only in keeping focus on the game but how to use units to the best of their capacity.

And for this reason we should try to keep together as a team for SGOTM4, now that we all know each other more, its actually easier to criticise and to take that criticism from one another.

And we all know now that when Wotan goes on a rant that he's just trying to help us :) I'll just make sure in the next game that your turns don't follow mine :p

I do certainly appreciate the time and effort you have spent on the maps and the level of criticism.

And we all know now that when Wotan goes on a rant that he's just trying to help us :)

Ah, you have understood what in RL my fellow colleagues at work have eventually learnt too. That my barking is very much worse than my biting. ;)

Many a new employee have had nightmares for a while until they understand what a benevolent manager I really am... :lol:

Should I feel like a disgrantled employee right now then???

and if i may ask a question...
Since we are going to stop all research and build only military units..
Do we want to consider switching to mobilization at some point???
I am not sure if you can build settlers during mobilization and it will not help to expand territory by building temples... But just a thought...


Great turns Wotan!!! :goodjob: ... I don't think Germany and America will have something to say ever...

And...yes... worker management is something i have been trying to learn for a long time already, but i am afraid i will never be good at that...
Well, at least i didn't fortify all the units i have inside cities by the end of my turns. :rolleyes:

Had another look at the save from 850AD, the continent should be ours in 4 or max 5 turns so maybe shift to get Navigation sooner than just prior to Smacksters turns. Also need to rush Caravels on west coast for an earlier invasion. Still suggest going after India first due to geographical reasons. Shortest distance across the ocean!

Edit @Dmanakho, the opposite, we are having fun on this team so enjoy it, and that is an order. :D

Temples for cultural expansion will give us so many tiles we cannot do without them, just look at the coastlines on our home continent and in particular on the barbarian continent.

Edit2: I guess that was my last turns played in this game. Should end at the latest during Tarkeel's turns. The Xenophobe bit do add a few turns in the end as we need to build cities on the new continent to get past the domination limit. But building them 4 tiles apart should give us maximum gain wo need of cultural expansion on the other continent else disband a unit in each newly found city and rush a library for fastest possible expansion.

Also, we may need to kill of some extra enemy cities to fulfill the population requirement for domination.

RE: City Locations.. Did you see my filler map for the North Wotan? I'll fill in the rest of it.. It's based on max coverage without culture really.

RE: Mobilization: No way will we research Nationalism ;) Rails would have been nice to get the settlers to boats in 1 turn, but not worth it.

RE: Population: Not a problem. Just join in some of those loose workers and any spare settlers ;)

RE: City Locations.. Did you see my filler map for the North Wotan? I'll fill in the rest of it.. It's based on max coverage without culture really.

Yes, unfortunately I used a few Settlers to "jump" closer to enemy cities in preparation for attacks so I made an amended suggestion for the area in question to take those cities into account . Sorry about that, Tarkeel. ;)

Back to the drawing board then :P Will make a fill-in for the rest of our continent.

And some small border cities:

If needed, there is still room to found plenty of coastal cities to claim coast squares, but I feel that is a waste of settlers...

Great work, Tarkeel. Not many of those cities need temples to fill out coastal tiles.

Just a thought: We might want to consider landing on several sites along the barbarian coastline? If every settler is to go through the current port of entry we will have a long wait before the lands are filled with our culture. I forgot to take this into account during my turns so I continued to land Settlers in the south. Maybe rush a few Caravels along the coast and just sail across. The German island in the north should also be settled...

And some small border cities:

If needed, there is still room to found plenty of coastal cities to claim coast squares, but I feel that is a waste of settlers...
Based on what MapStat is telling me we should fill in every land and coastal square on our continent and the barb continent. Those tiles will be a lot easier to grab than the tiles on the other continent.

However right now we should fill in all the main gaps, and grab the last few coastal squares as we near domination. Also we need to rush the temples on the barb island at least 5 turns before we think we can reach domination, with that expansion.

Please feel free to move the ships serving as transports in the S northward and to take a few settler with them for settlements farther north on the barb stretch of land. I should have done that myself. :( At least one of the ships (caravel) is currently halfway between landmasses acting in a shiphopping role. Please wake it and move it north if you want to.

We have 29.1% of land, there is still 23.2% unclaimed, America, Germany and Russia have 9.8%, which is 62.1%. It means we may only need about 5% of land from the other continent

Here are my suggestions after looking at the save

We have 36 Cavalry in play which look more than enough to finish off our continent.
But we only have 2 Caravel, and 1 galley, all on the east side. Therefore we should research Navigation as quickly as possible and use all rushes to get more Caravels in the west.

I think 10 Caravels is enough for the first main wave of attackers.

However I would like to see a Caravel or 2 sent from the south (with Muskets) to the south simply to draw attacks that way, before the main troops arrive (in the North). Obviously land on Mountains.

To the south Viriconium could complete one this turn. Neocaiedonium in 7 without rush.

To the north most cities are totally corrupt and we'll have to rush for lots of cash, New Hispalis looks the best at 2 shields. I'd switch all west coast ships to Caravels until we have enough.
Remember New Smackster is the main attack point.

We can research Navigation in 4, with +57 GPT, so lets do that.

I note all our cannons are sleeping in front line cities. Might as well send them to the west now. They can arrive in our second wave of troops

I note all our cannons are sleeping in front line cities. Might as well send them to the west now. They can arrive in our second wave of troops

When Cavalry comes into play Artillery cannot keep up with the speed of the attacking forces so are helplessly left behind. They are however just a few turns from New Smackster so might get into action in the West. However, With 10 Caravels I would rather ship 30 Cavalry than 20 Cav and 10 Artillery. So I fear the Artillery will be late coming to the next front line as well.

I fully agree with Smackster re. plans for the next phase. With one addition. I touched on this in a followup to my turn report. We need a few more landing sites on barbarian lands. Else we will have to wait until eternity and then some more before they are fully settled. Maybe even lift a few of the settlers we have landed in the extreme south and put them ashore farther north.

Artillery is best used with some infantry to cover it, and move to the tough cities while the cavs clean up the easy ones. Then the cavs can come to a properly pruned city.

And yes, we need to land several places along Hadrian's Wall (barb frontier).

Artillery is best used with some infantry to cover it, and move to the tough cities while the cavs clean up the easy ones. Then the cavs can come to a properly pruned city.

I guess I normally just use enough Cavalry to eventually take those tough resistance nests. Time is usually more important than a few cavalry not retreating when redlined, the rest is redlined and back in action in two or three turns. Moving Artillery within an enemy culture is a tedious and time consuming task. Can be speeded by putting down new cities close to the target though but still timeconsuming. This game should be over in at the most 30 turns, we will probably not have time for "softening targets" if we are to keep to that time table.

And yes, we need to land several places along Hadrian's Wall (barb frontier).

Good name :) Let's make it official so everyone know what we talk about when referring to it. Sounds so much better than "barbarian lands" etc.

Just to clarify, when I said build 10 Caravels, I meant build 10 then send them across, but don't stop building them, and don't stop sending troops across. Hopefully that first wave is enough, but we really don't know how many troops they will have over there.

Sure the cannons are likely not even to get to the front, but move them into position anyway, and only if there are spare seats in the second/third wave, should they be sent over.

smackster

Good name :) Let's make it official so everyone know what we talk about when referring to it. Sounds so much better than "barbarian lands" etc.
Any ideas on the puzzle? So there appear to be some barbs that have our team names? For some reason the other continent did not land on it? It does appear to block sea access? I have no idea?

You are in a position to solve the puzzle. I don't really want you to solve it though, so I made it harder then GOTM16. Then there were two of each identically named unit, so that if one got killed by charging out of the fog before you could read its name, there would be a second chance.

The only clues I will give is that there are a number of non-standard barb units, each of which has a name with a single capitalised letter within it. Mostly this is the first letter, but not always. If you solve it, it won't mean much to you until you see the SGOTM4 game announcement. Then the penny will drop, and you will have a weeks worth of foreknowledge between the announcement and the start of the game, which you can use as you will. Do not allow the answer into the public domain.

In vanilla civ it seems that the AI will not try to settle a barb infested island until the human does. I am not sure if this behaviour applies to PTW. It may be that a few of the necessary pieces of the puzzle are already dead. In this case it will just provide more of a challenge. ;)

Looks like we might have missed some, as Germany did in fact settle on the Island first. But none of the other continent went there?

So team we need to note the first capital letter of each unique name we see.

Haven't Americans also landed on barbs, sorry, Hadrian's wall continent??
If so then between them and germans they probably managed to kill one or more barbarians with unique names....
it would be pity if we don't get to resolve the puzzle, but not a big deal after all

Apart from a few (3?) units with CFC members names, Northern Pike etc. I must admit I just checked if any of the Impis had similar names. But not if any of them had just a single letter capitalized. Will startup the saves I have left and check them for names...

All of the named units are named after people who have played a previous SGOTM. The names are not signifacant except for the first letter. There are a couple however that have a different letter capitalised. I am sure I checked all the names in the bic b4 converting to bix. Northern Pike should have been spelled Northern pike. So now you have me worried that the way the names were presented in the vanilla version did not survive translation to PTW, and I can't check until Friday. :mad: (at myself).

A picture of Northern Pike, just to help you out here Mad-Bax. So how will you help us now ;) The other Impi I have in my notes is Grahamiam. Maybe the player's origin is the clue here? or that they won a game with the tribe in question. Or maybe???

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Smackster-Irregulars.JPG

@mad-bax: I just went back to the save I found them, and had a look:

Edit: Bah, beaten by Wotan. I think clue lies in which letters are capitalised, shuffle them together for a clue word...

So far we have 'N' and 'G', I'm sure we saw one other, I think we need to start looking at saves.

I'm guessing that we're supposed to come up with either a tribe name or variant.. How does England sound? Or Mongols? Maybe the Germans? For variant, there's always fast moving, or the various X City Challenge, but I don't think it's a xCC

Preturn: Science to 70%, Navigation in four. Preparations for Operation: Overlord commences in several coastal cities as several caravels are ordered up.

IBT: Lose a Cavalry to a German Knight. Barbarians attack our soldiers but inflict little meaningful damage.

Turn 1: Wake up Artillery Command in Wotan and send all cannons east to New Smackster. Many new cities founded on the barbarian continent; I won’t bother to list each one unless they are in signifgant in some manner. New York falls. Munich falls.

Turn 2: Boston falls, and the American capital jumps to Miami. No luck on leaders so far. Attacks on Moscow fail miserably. Berlin is at our mercy; I leave it alive another turn in order to leader-fish some more.

Turn 3: Berlin falls, but not before costing us two cavalrymen, and we don’t even pop a leader. Capital jumps to Kongisberg, the last German city on our continent. Cavalry move up to attack Miami.

IBT: Otto ask for peace, so I take the opportunity to see what techs he has. Looks like he’s almost to the Industial age at this point.

Turn 4: Navigation comes in, science set to Music Theory and slider set to zero. Kill Atlanta’s defenders with the exception of a single longbow, as there are two fresh Elite Cavalry who can leader fish next turn. Konigsberg has only one pikemen defending it, and the city is captured and razed to the ground. Germans are down to one city. Our first Caravel sets sail from New Ravenna to open up the equitorial sections of Barb Death Island for colonization. Plus, the cavalrymen on board can go and whack Heidelberg.

Russian Cossack defeat one of our cavalrymen in the Siege of Moscow. Didn’t even know they had any; too bad as these are the PTW defense 4 Cossacks.

Settling on the southern part of the Island of Death has been slow lately; a rather large number of barbs showed up from somewhere. It almost seems like an age-change uprising, but that does not seem to be the case as it doesn’t look like anyone has entered the industrial age quite yet.

Turn 5: Raze Atlanta; still no luck with the leaders. I knew I used up all my mojo on my last set of turns…
Raze Moscow, finally killing that stinking elite Cossack. Spot an Impi Barbarian by the name of Alweth on Death Island.

Turn 6: Raze Sevastpol. Japenese amphibious invaders destroyed. During the attack on Kiev, after like my 30th elite victory, GERMANICUS arrizes to lead us!
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/GERMANICUS!.JPG

The Great Navigator will rush Magellan’s next turn. Oh, and Kiev gets razed to the ground. Capture and raze Miami.

IBT: Spot an Impi by the name of Capt, Buttkick.

Turn 7: Rush Magellan’s in Mournhold (random city with unexpanded borders up in the north. Capture and raze Smolensk, finishing the Ruskies off for good. Capture and raze Detroit, the last enemy settlement on our starting continent. American capital jumps to Houstan, located on a small Newfoundland-esque island a little ways off shore. Will leave a few cavalrymen behind to patrol the wasteland while the majority of our units will begin to assemble in New Smackster for Operation: Sudden Death-The Roman invasion of the second continent.

IBT: The Cavalry garrison of one of our settlements on Death Island is slain, then a bunch of barbarians sack the city, carrying off some small change in gold.

Turn 8: Units moved around, a few new cities founded.

IBT: Japanese land a lone archer in our core. Military advisor pops up and reports of a massive barbarian uprising near one of our cities on Hadrian’s Wall; looks like our foes have reached the Industrial Age.

Turn 9: Soldiers continue moving. Kill the Japanese archer. I think I must have screwed up on the turn count, as I am fairly sure that this should be turn ten. I will therefore stop here.

Summary: Our home continent is now ours. Most of the southern third of Death Island/Hadrian’s wall has been settled, and we have three more settlers in boats waiting for a chance to land. I didn’t build sufficent caravels up in the north, but the next player should have no troubles rushing several more and launching Operation: Sudden Death. The only factor slowing down our settlement of the wastelands is the speed of our settlers now.

Turn 9: Soldiers continue moving. Kill the Japanese archer. I think I must have screwed up on the turn count, as I am fairly sure that this should be turn ten. I will therefore stop here.

If you could put the year in each turn then we can help to determine this. It may be that you crossed a turn barrier and we are now on 5/yr per turn, which would confuse


Summary: Our home continent is now ours. Most of the southern third of Death Island/Hadrian’s wall has been settled, and we have three more settlers in boats waiting for a chance to land. I didn’t build sufficent caravels up in the north, but the next player should have no troubles rushing several more and launching Operation: Sudden Death. The only factor slowing down our settlement of the wastelands is the speed of our settlers now.
That is great well played, I think overall Magellens is good as moving our ships is probably one thing that will slow us down. This really does show how quickly you can finish off the enemy once you have Cavalry, even if they do too.

It would be good if somebody can post the military screen (with unit counts) so I can see what we have. I'll look at MapStat once the save is up.

I'll play late tonight, when I get back from Soccer Practise (yes I do go out sometimes, and do other things apart from civ, but not too much :) )

Wonderful news, DH! Especially love the news we have Magellans. Now we can have a 8 move transport lane between two cities from New Smackster and to the "indian" land with 2 Caravels and ship hopping... I posted a map of this as an exaple, now we can actually have it... :)

Found another Impi named: Haphazard in my notes...

Wonderful news, DH! Especially love the news we have Magellans. Now we can have a 8 move transport lane between two cities from New Smackster and to the "indian" land with 2 Caravels and ship hopping... I posted a map of this as an exaple, now we can actually have it... :)

Found another Impi named: Haphazard in my notes...
N, G, H, but is Capt. Buttkick, C or B?

I think the first wave will go straight over, although it depends how quickly I can build the Caravels. I assume we'll be short of Caravels, and will only do the ship hopping once we get short of troops, and so can get the reserves over quicker.

I'll also send those two Caravels, to southern Inida, to take away some of the heat.

@DH: it looks like you haven't uploaded the save file yet...
And congrats with building Maggelans, it will really help us....
You've been a great warrior as usually :goodjob:

Whoops, forgot that I had already posted before uploading. Sorry about that, had to take the dog to the vet, which is somewhat difficult because he doesn't seem to understand concepts like momentum and inertia when riding in the car.

I am certain that I played 10 turns. I immediatly switched to research on Navigation @4, then completed six turns of minimum research on Music Theory. I probably just got mixed up on one of the later turns when all I was trying to shuffle are army over to the east without using too many Go-To commands and pissing off Wotan ;)

edit/and here is some more pictures.

Speaking of turn increments, I would like us to consider switching to five turn sets. Turns take a long, long time, although on the other hand we are relatively close to victory and I probably won't be up again so I suppose it doesn't matter in the end. :crazyeye:

edit2/ Regarding worker efficieny: I'm not sure that I agree with Wotan on this. While using, for example, 2 workers to build a road does waste worker turns, it also gets the road built a turn earlier. While it is clearly preferable to use the most efficent number of workers for the task (Using the same example, 3 workers when building roads as pre-replacable parts non-industrious civilization) slowing the construction of tile improvements merely to maximize the efficeny of what is ultimately an abstract concept does not seem to be always a positive thing. I am not saying that workers should be used in groups that are clearly ineffecient for a task, like sending a group of three to irrigate a square, only that I would rather, in most cases, get one plains tile irrigated in two turns rather than have two tiles irrigated in four. Unless the city has multiple bonus tiles (settler factory) it simply will not be needing the second tile immediatly, whereas the extra food point is immediatly useful.

I am somewhat suprised that we have so few workers relative to the number of cities we have, but again this likely to my inexperiance with ICS strategies. The variant rules are also a large factor in our worker count, to be sure; since we cannot capture cities we have been building settlers non-stop, so population units that normally could have been workers, and the enormous amounts of slaves we have captured are not useable.

Go-to commands are fine as long as they don't extend beyond your turn ;)

Rename is also very handy to tell what an explorer/ship/other special unit is supposed to be doing.

I am certain that I played 10 turns. I immediatly switched to research on Navigation @4, then completed six turns of minimum research on Music Theory. I probably just got mixed up on one of the later turns when all I was trying to shuffle are army over to the east without using too many Go-To commands and pissing off Wotan ;)

If you could put the year with each turn number then there should be no confusion.


Speaking of turn increments, I would like us to consider switching to five turn sets. Turns take a long, long time, although on the other hand we are relatively close to victory and I probably won't be up again so I suppose it doesn't matter in the end. :crazyeye:

I think at this stage each player can make their own decision. If 5 turns takes too long a time, then stop and post the save here, for the next player. I think its good for the team to review the situation at this stage to maximise our end. I will start to play tonight and see how it goes, I'll play 10 if its not too bad, otherwise 5.


I am somewhat suprised that we have so few workers relative to the number of cities we have, but again this likely to my inexperiance with ICS strategies. The variant rules are also a large factor in our worker count, to be sure; since we cannot capture cities we have been building settlers non-stop, so population units that normally could have been workers, and the enormous amounts of slaves we have captured are not useable.
We had enough workers to make our cores look good, and beyond that building extra workers is probably a waste. As you say in a normal game with slaves we would have a lot of free extras. I think that is the difference. Certainly makes this stage go quicker when you don't have so many.

MapStat says
Rome 34.8% of land with 24.9% unclaimed, America/Germany 2%. India for example have 8%, so we may need a little over half their land.

It will be hard to claim all tiles on barbs island because of all those mountains...
But on the other hand we can get extra sea tiles between our main continent and barbs land since many of them fall under our area of influence with temples built.

Go-To commands and pissing off Wotan

just when they continue into next players turns and you end up watching units move into exposed situations wo the ability to do anything about it... ;)

I would rather, in most cases, get one plains tile irrigated in two turns rather than have two tiles irrigated in four.
It is always a question of how many Workers you have available and what you need to do. If you are low on workers I assume you try to make the most of them, if they are plenty you can be more lax with how you use them. Also, you have to consider the importance of each worker task when allocating them. I was just trying to express an opinion on how to maximize the output of worker actions. Not micro manage them. But when 5 workers are mining a mine in a mountain it does look like you have misused them, (or 3 irrigate a tile) ;) And, if the tile has a road in it the question of using 1, 2 or 4 to irrigate it is just a question of how fast you need it...

Impi named Alweth in DH's 950AD save.

Edit: saw a reference to it in DH's report too.

If PTW have not disrupted Mad-Bax intentions we have N, G, H, A and C or B. So I guess this is not what it is supposed to be. PTW might have corrected spelling so capital letters only appear at the beginning of a word. It might be we need to wait for MB's input before analyzing this further.

It will be hard to claim all tiles on barbs island because of all those mountains...
But on the other hand we can get extra sea tiles between our main continent and barbs land since many of them fall under our area of influence with temples built.
Only coastal squares count towards domination, not sea squares.

I've met Alweth and he has 6 horsemen and 8 warriors with him, and now they are coming out way.

T0 950AD
Turn slider down to 0%, hire some entertainers/taxmen, we get another 40GPT, seems worth it.

IBT Alweth and his stack of troops come our way. Barbs sack a city, but take only 1 Gold.

T1 960AD
Rush 6 Caravels, and we already have about 25 Cavalry at New Smackster. The armada will go soon for sure. Also build the southern fleet to attack there first. Rushed one Settler. Still needs stacks of these, and need them to go India obviously. So will start to rush more of them.
Fleet of two Japanese arrive near our core, we put 3 Cavalry in place ready for them.

IBT Alweth troops attack but they are beaten back

T2 970AD
Continue to move troops to the front. Rush some more Caravels, nearer to New Smackster, rush some settlers.

IBT Japs drop a Samurai on hadrians within reach of one of our cities, nothing I can do it will go, rushing Cavarly over there. Will push some more workers over there so we can road it and defend it.

T3 980AD
Move troops to defend our city but its no good, it will go.

IBT Samurai trashes our city, but dies on his second attack on our legion. Clearly we have to protect Hadrains well.

T4 990AD
Ankka, is seen.
Nearly have the Armada in place. Well at least the first wave.

IBT America drop a Cavarly off on Hadrians, but we dispatch it with our Cavalry. 2 Jap Caravels near the channel, we have 5 Cavalry waiting now.

T5 1000AD
12 Caravels in place and full next turn. The southern 2 Caravels set off.

IBT Aztecs drop off 3 Cavalry, 2 Impi and a Longbow in our core. Luckily we can call on 6 Cavalry in that core and kill all but the longbow. It appears they will keep coming at our palace core, so we'll leave the Cavalry in and around that area.

T6 1010AD
Will hold the Caravels for one more turn, waiting for settlers.

T7 1020AD
Armada on its way, I think 15 Caravels full of Army, Cavarly, Muskets, Settlers

IBT This time Japan drop four Samurai on a mountain next to our city on Hadrians. We have Cavalry there, but its probably better to abandon the city and draw them out into the open.

T8 1030AD
Arrive outside Madras, and wait. Want to land both north and south forces on the same turn. Draw attacks both ways. We have to abandon Marching Mountains, pull the Cavalry back and will let the Japs come to us

IBT3 Samurai move close to our city on Hadrians, we have one shot with two Cavalry and a Longbow

T9 1040AD
Main force arrives outside Madras, unloads on mountain. Madras has a Galley, luckily no Rifle. The news gets better, the southern group arrive outside Calcutta which also has a Musket, but Hyderbad only spearmen.
40 troops in the northern group, 6 in southern. I think Tarkeel is going to have a fun set of turns.

Cavalry attack the Samurai on Hadrians. One dies, one kills, the longbow dies. Two Cavalry left in city, 2 Samurai left damaged. It will be a close one. More coming but can't get there in time.

Japan build a city on our continent, and we raze it.

Aztecs drop another load in our core and we kill them.

IBT We brace for the massive Indian retaliation, we see an Elephant move, damn forgot about them, it attacks, we are lucky it retreats with only one damage on our Musket. We brace for more, we spy a worker move, then its onto the next civ. Is that it????????????????

Japan drops another stack to the north of our continent, the army may be in range, a few Cavalry in the area.

On hadrians, the Samurai attack and both die, phew.

T10 1050AD

Unconventional but I'll not play this turn, its 2.00am and I have to sleep sometime. In a way its better for Tarkeel to run with the full attack.

So over to Tarkeel.

Sorry for the wide one, too late to reduce, 40 in that stack.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/pic_10.jpg

42% of land now, 18.6% unclaimed, 1.1% America.

Its slow going getting settlers to the front, but have been rushing them as soon as I can, even joining workers to size 2 cities so they can generate another settler.

No Omaha beach then but more like "Utah resistance", well done Smackster. We are ashore and there to stay. I guess the fact we have to raise every city we take prolongs the game more than I took into account when setting a target for game end at 1000AD. I am not certain Jason will take this into account after all. Maybe Conquest would have been possible to get a better "end ratio" vs. Jason than going after Domination. There might be a "hidden" handicap in the raise/rebuild feature of this game that gives Jason a disadvantage to those teams aiming at dom. Still we are pretty close to dom, possibly closer than conquest anyway. So maybe Dmanakho will be the one to end this game and not Tarkeel.

BTW, put down the first city on the new continent at the tile just SE of Madras. Then we have the best possible troop transport distance between New Smackster and the new continent.

I see it, might just play 5-6 though. Will see when I start playing later tonight. Have quite a lot to do over the next few days, but I want to lead the charge ;)

Oh, how I wish we'd had time to get rails :bonk:

Smackster, looks like you had some notepad lineshift problems in your turnlog.. Might want to go over and clean it.