Smakster, youv'e made quite a progress...

Do we have few extra caravels???
We have bunch of cannons, I suggest we sent them to across the ocean and sell them in our new city to rush units...
We probably will benefit more from having cavalry and muskets than cannons at this point...
I suggest as soon as Tarkeel builds new city, rush port and then barracks so we can rush units locally, and we can sell some if not all of our cannons for this purpose.
I suspect in next few turns AIs will throw at us everything they have...
So good luck Tarkeel... show them the remake of The Battle of Thermopylae.

There are enough Caravels, to get everything else over in a turn, we could do the Wotan Caravel shuffling.

I had intended to send all the way back, only half the Caravels so that we can hop them, not sure how many I did that to.

Tarkeel,

I'm pretty sure I messed up moving the bulk of our Caravels back, I think I slept them and didn't wake them. So look out for the big stack and start them moving back.

Feel free to play only 5 as those turns are taking a long time. It might be easier to just post when you have done, even if its only 5, or 6.

smackster

I suggest we go to 5 from here, as quite a lot can happen in 10 turns and it's good to get some input. It's not like we're behind the other teams in turns played ;)

I mentioned 6 to include the fighting on your last turn ;)

I suggest we go to 5 from here, as quite a lot can happen in 10 turns and it's good to get some input. It's not like we're behind the other teams in turns played ;)

Agreed, then everyone may get a hand in these final stages. However there is quite a lot of settling that needs to be done. Also I was not settling based on your maps, as it was taking too much time already, I just settled in what appeared to be the best space for culture. Note that if you look at the mini-map it looks like we have little culture gaps, but on the actual map, it is not there, I wonder if this is a bug.

I would expect the AI to have ROP with each other, so we might get some of India's friends joining in the attack. Also there must be a lot more Indian troops somewhere.

edit : The army is in the stack, and there is an elite* Cavalry ready to join it.

Do we want to send a caravel with troops to that American island up north???
Because it might take 10+ turns just to get there... plus we need couple of settlers to settle that island.. That will take 2 caravels

Do we want to send a caravel with troops to that American island up north???
Because it might take 10+ turns just to get there... plus we need couple of settlers to settle that island.. That will take 2 caravels
There is a Caravel already on its way there, another note to Tarkeel to look out for that one, it has nothing in it, was going to load it from our northern troops.

On a related subject watch out for the Japanese stack on the north of our Island, there are two Cavalry near, but the army is far to the east. They have at least 2 Samurai in that stack.

And we probably need to move few more units to the barb continent... I reckong Japanese will keep landin samurais over there...
With their defence values and mountains we should expect moderate losses

We have bunch of cannons, I suggest we sent them to across the ocean and sell them in our new city to rush units...
We probably will benefit more from having cavalry and muskets than cannons at this point...
I suggest as soon as Tarkeel builds new city, rush port and then barracks so we can rush units locally, and we can sell some if not all of our cannons for this purpose.


Good thinking, re. use of Cannons. Maybe not use them to "rush" units with but to disband one in each new city and rush temple immediately (the cost is lower if some shields are already in the build than if you rush from 0 shields), maybe even rush library the turn after when we are extremely close to domination. The number of settlers we are able to send to new continent might be lower than we would like so using cultural expansion there might help us get to domination quicker.

On Muskets, would very much doubt we need any during the final turns of this game. Only build Cav and Settlers now... And maybe a Caravel or two in the north to take the island. and populate Hadrian north. Switch inland cities and cities far from areas of real interest to generate gold instead of building units. Only build units in cities that will be able to produce a cavalry in less than 10 (maybe even 5) turns. They will not be usefull if that is not possible. We are in the last 20 turns of the game now, and the closer we come to the end the more we need gold to rush units just behind the frontline. Joining workers to cities where we rush settler on the new continent is also an option.

Edit: We also need to rush temples for cultural expansion on Hadrians.

Joining workers to cities where we rush settler on the new continent is also an option.

Edit: We also need to rush temples for cultural expansion on Hadrians.

Both points are good, we should send some workers over to the new continent, simply so that we can join to cities and use them to rush settlers. Really there is no value for our workers putting irrigation in a some far off city. I suggest we cease all improvement activities with workers (apart from roads on Hadrians, to help our defence), and either add them to cities or get them over to the other continent. We have more than enough Caravels.

Note that I did rush a couple of temples on Hadrians, the ones that would give us the most culture expansion. We get about +470GPT, so use it wisely, can you get more culture expansion from a rushed settler, than a rushed temple.

50 "max corruption" cities shifted to produce gold will add 50 gold to the gpt stockpile, not something we should disregard. And I guess we should be able to come close to 100 gpt in extra income by doing this on a massive scale. With game end within 20 turns from now we need to "ramp down" production to what we can actually have use for during that period. Since a rushed Cavalry (in a city with at least 1 shield already produced) cost 316 gold we can only rush cavalry in 1 or max two cities next to the front per turn, not taking temple rushing into account. When we hit domination not a single city should produce anything but gold (maybe a few forward cities producing rushed cavalry and settlers could be allowed) ;)

So all cities not able to produce cavalry in a decent number of turns should revert to gold production now. Settlers exempted though. Rushing in cities near New Smackster so we do not need to build barracks on new continent. Cavalry can move 9 tiles over road so after shiphopping across they will not have lost any substantial movement capability anyway. And we only need a maximum of 4 cities to do this with two cities rushing every other turn in pairs if we have the funds else in one city. Settler should be rushed on new continent though if possible due to movement restrictions (3 tiles on road), so send workers there to speed the process.

Finally: Do not pillage tiles on new continent that would hinder us moving on roads. We need the speed to end this game.

50 "max corruption" cities shifted to produce gold will add 50 gold to the gpt stockpile, not something we should disregard.

....stuff deleted.....

Finally: Do not pillage tiles on new continent that would hinder us moving on roads. We need the speed to end this game.
More good ideas, Wotan is now officially the ideas man of the team.

Agree with producing wealth in certain totally corrupt cities. We might want to start it with all those that produce something in the coming turns, plus those that are below size 2, and those that are so far from the front their settler would not get there before the end of the game. Will have to make judgement calls on those that already have some invested shields.

I think we should build a barracks on the new continent, purely for healing our Cavalry, I would image that we'll get a number of red-lined and that barracks will get them back to the front quickly.

We might want to consider pillaging their last iron, saltpetr and horses. Saltpetr the most useful. If we see any on coasts for any of the civs, send a spare Caravel that way.

Remember, that domination is not just a land, but also 66% of total population..
I have no idea how much we have now, Smackster only reports about land we owe.
But if we far from having 66% pop, we probably should let cities (some cities) to grow and not to convert all extra citizens into taxmen therefore preventing population grow... I know we can join workers into cities later to add some population but we don't have that many workers after all, and my concerns only apply if we are far from that magic number of 66%.

Remember, that domination is not just a land, but also 66% of total population..
I have no idea how much we have now, Smackster only reports about land we owe.
But if we far from having 66% pop, we probably should let cities (some cities) to grow and not to convert all extra citizens into taxmen therefore preventing population grow... I know we can join workers into cities later to add some population but we don't have that many workers after all, and my concerns only apply if we are far from that magic number of 66%.
Yes I forget about that as usually its so easy to get over the pop limit. Actually Dianthus' utility does not report that for some reason. The old MapStat program says we require 684 total, and we have 519, therfore on the face of it require 165, but as this is a % of the world pop, we don't really need that much more as the world poplulation total is about to take a dramatic dive.

Just looked back and see that our territory % went from 34.8%->40% over my turns, that an addition of 7%, at that rate we'll need at least 30 more turns (I was pumping them pretty hard). Getting it in less than 20 might be too much of a challenge.

Will have to make judgement calls on those that already have some invested shields.

I think you should look at when the unit produced will finish, if later than say 10 turns from now, either cut the losses and drop the production or finish it by rushing if close enough to front/port of embarcation. All the time remembering to build culture buildings in coastal cities with tiles not yet within our cultural borders....

I think we should build a barracks on the new continent, purely for healing our Cavalry, I would image that we'll get a number of red-lined and that barracks will get them back to the front quickly.

Of course! :blush: Didn't think of that... :blush: Must be done to have them heal fast...

Just looked back and see that our territory % went from 34.8%->40% over my turns, that an addition of 7%, at that rate we'll need at least 30 more turns (I was pumping them pretty hard). Getting it in less than 20 might be too much of a challenge.

That's the name of the game... ;) Just expand our borders now. Rush culture on new continent to allow for less number of settlers for territory gained. Settle, disband a unit and rush temple (+library on next turn when less than 5 turns from finish line... Settlers cost population temples/libraries only gold...

That's the name of the game... ;) Just expand our borders now. Rush culture on new continent to allow for less number of settlers for territory gained. Settle, disband a unit and rush temple (+library on next turn when less than 5 turns from finish line... Settlers cost population temples/libraries only gold...
While there is space available, its still better to rush settlers rather than temples as they are much cheaper, often give more tiles, and the effect is immediate. Once the majority of space is gone, then start rushing the temples.

Now we should be able to calculate how many settlers are needed for our continent, and then the barb continet. Maybe we already have enough on there way, so one job we need to do is make those calculations. From a look at the mini-map, maybe 12-13 settlers for our continent.

I'm swamped in stuff to do around the house, so won't have time to finish this upp till tomorrow I'm afraid. I don't want to play this with less then 100% concentration.

I guess I'll have to make a new dotmap to count how many settlers are needed ;)

Yes, settlers are cheaper in gold but they do take population to build so we either have to get enough workers across to help rushing settlers or move settler quite far for them to be able to settle so my point was that in those circumstances spreading locations and getting culture might be faster even though it will take a city with temple 5 turns to expand, library 4 turns and a combo of them both 3 turns if built wisely (disbanding and paying normal rush 4gps) might even do the 8gps from scratch rush if gold is not an issue.

Edit: @Tarkeel: Good decision, take your time to make the most out of every turn... Good luck and surprise us by finishing the game. :D

Yes, settlers are cheaper in gold but they do take population to build so we either have to get enough workers across to help rushing settlers or move settler quite far for them to be able to settle so my point was that in those circumstances spreading locations and getting culture might be faster even though it will take a city with temple 5 turns to expand, library 4 turns and a combo of them both 3 turns if built wisely (disbanding and paying normal rush 4gps) might even do the 8gps from scratch rush if gold is not an issue.

Yes another good thought. In fact if we spread it out like you suggest then we are given a choice to rush temples, or fill the gaps with others settlers if the temples are not coming round quick enough. So in principle this seems like a good idea, but I find it hard to estimate how well the fighting will go.

Seems to me that it depends how quickly we clear out India. If they go down quickly then we should do what you say and spread out the settlers in the Indian territory and rush temples in those cities. However, if we get bogged down with India then just build the settlers as we create space.

With some planning, the only places temples will be needed is to cover mountain ranges and coast tiles though. Which is why I made that dotmap earlier ;)

Ok, we have a day off, which is really good..
We can do some thinking and watch other teams progress...

Speaking of other teams... Do you know there was some cheating going on...
I've read a spoiler and one of our opponent team captured and used slaves :nono:. Actually, i don't blame them since it's so easy to simply forget about this part of the game and automatically capture a slave. But since it is so easy to do i wonder if we have other teams done so...

@M-B - Please watch those guys, we want our Laurel and preferrably both of them :cool:

Ok, we have a day off, which is really good..
We can do some thinking and watch other teams progress...

Speaking of other teams... Do you know there was some cheating going on...
I've read a spoiler and one of our opponent team captured and used slaves :nono:. Actually, i don't blame them since it's so easy to simply forget about this part of the game and automatically capture a slave. But since it is so easy to do i wonder if we have other teams done so...

@M-B - Please watch those guys, we want our Laurel and preferrably both of them :cool:
OK, so you do know that we are not meant to read their spoilers, here is the text from Ainwood

Warning: Viewing threads!
Note:

The rules state that you MAY NOT view the discussion threads of any team other than your own.

DO NOT jeopardise your teams chances by doing this. You risk disqualifying your entire team.

i know that rule...
it wasn't in the team thread, it was on common Spoiler #1, everyone can read

There -> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=94882

That is why i asked M-B since i am not allowed to do policing..
EDIT: BTW.... M-B also plays for the staff team and lurking around spying - :) . How about that??? :crazyeye:

With some planning, the only places temples will be needed is to cover mountain ranges and coast tiles though. Which is why I made that dotmap earlier ;)
But I think Wotan might have a point on the other continent. Lets say our first six settlers (which are all either there, or will be there next turn) are all spead out requiring culture expansion. When we are just about 5 turns from Dom (we'll have a good idea when that is) we can rush temples in all 5 and grab that extra land. Rushing settlers on the new continent will be limited, so that will give us an extra boost at the end.

i know that rule...
it wasn't in the team thread, it was on common Spoiler #1, everyone can read

There -> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=94882

That is why i asked M-B since i am not allowed to do policing..
EDIT: BTW.... M-B also plays for the staff team and lurking around spying - :) . How about that??? :crazyeye:
Good, I thought you meant the team thread. Actually once we finish this we can view them and that will be great to monitor their progress. We know we can trust M-B, in fact anybody can cheat in this if they want, but I fail to see how it would really help them.

Note that we were not perfect in our variant play, by mistake

True, we made 2 mistakes in this variant game...
Once we forgot to declare war in time, and second time i was afraid of not declaring a war and declared it too early...
Therefore we paid for our 1st mistake with our 2nd. :rolleyes:

I loaded the save to check it out...
It feels like Indians are the weakest civilization on the continent, so we have made a right decision...
Indian capital is close and we can probaby capture it in couple of turns.. Although, I would probably avoid seizing it, It is located on top of the hill and it has pop 12, plus as AI usually does, it would have most defenders... We don't have that many cavalry units to attack Indian Capital..
My advice to Tarkeel not to attack Deli, but rather raize all the cities around... After raising several indian cities, and in case if we don't achieve fast early domination i would try to weaken Japanese and take over some of their land, their cities are located just few tiles north... Those samurais are going to give us more headache than any cavalry would.

Good luck Tarkeel, I will be :coffee: your report tomorrow.

The only problem with not taking Delhi early is the culture it will no doubt command, and the units it will produce. The culture will make moving harder. I think Tarkeel will have to make the judgement call if he can take it. We could always pillage all the connections to Delhi, rendering India useless, and then when it shrinks attack it. We can also settle in that culture to make that easier.

Good Luck Tarkeel.

Tarkeel, was awfully silent today, looks like he is BUSY :)
My home cable internet is down again :sad: , so irregardless whether Tarkeel posts the save file or not I may not be able to play tonight...
(well... there is always hope Time Warner Cable will fix it, but i won't bet on it)

Urgh, I've been trounced in RL.. Barely had time to start looking at the first turn. Want to swap dmanakho? Don't want to hold you guys up

I can wait... We are still weeks ahead of other teams...
If the rest of the folks insist we should be hurrying i will play, otherwise just take your time..(it won't take you another week, will it??? ;) )
i don't want you to miss all the fun having a 1st strike against Indians :ar15: .

Lets just play it by the rules, 72 hours to play, if you can't get to it by the end of tomorrow then just skip. No problem.

smackster

Anyone heard from Tarkeel???
I reckon if he doesn't show up by the end of the day i will play tonight from home

Agreed, just take it when you get home, unless we hear from him that he's playing and then wait.

I'll be on-line all night.

Play 5 or 10 depending on how long it takes.

As we are nearing the end of our game its time to start disucssing what we learned today, or rather in this game. Just like children when they get home from school, it is good to discuss what they learned.

So in this game, I learned two things that I can remember, one that I wont use, and one that I have already used to good effect.

1) That you only get the 50% hill defence bonus if you settle on a hill, why I always thought you had to be next to them I don't know. Still it wont change my city placement plans, as I don't plan on defending much in any game
So what bonus do you get for settling next to a mountain?

2) When infested with barbs, if you have minimal gold, but a +GPT, the barbs will sack your cities and take virutally nothing, then you get your +GPT added to your pot for you to use that turn. Quickest way to get rid of an infestation of barbs is to just let them sack a sacrifice city.

The barbs on Hadrians, could have been cleared quicker if I'd realised quite how that worked earlier. I was concerned that they would take our large +GPT each turn, but they don't.

Playing it now.. Almost finished :)

....So what bonus do you get for settling next to a mountain?

You get zero bonus, i can bet my monthly paycheck on that ;) .
You only getting bonus when you settle on top of something not next to it.


2) When infested with barbs, if you have minimal gold, but a +GPT, the barbs will sack your cities and take virutally nothing, then you get your +GPT added to your pot for you to use that turn. Quickest way to get rid of an infestation of barbs is to just let them sack a sacrifice city.


I had the same thoughts recently... If you cleared your cash pot turn before then it doesn't matter how much +GPT you have, barbs usually atack before your cash is increased. I didn't know that myself


Another thing i learned is how useful horses can be. I never used them much in my games, i will certainly change that.


EDIT: One thing i will never learn - effective worker management. And I think that is mostly because i in many cases i don't care about wasting worker moves but my goal always to get it done faster... I just build extra workers for all those wasted moves when i have 5 workers working on a mountain tile.

(0) 1050 AD
Madras:
5/5 vs 3/3 -> Retreat
5/5 vs 3/3 -> 1/5
5/5 vs 3/3 -> 1/3
5/5 vs 2/3 -> 3/5, razing Madras
Split attack stack in 3, heading for Calcutta, Delhi and Bangalore
Calcutta:
5/5 Leg vs 3/3
Rush temple in New Sirmium
Lose 1 cav on Samurai, but kill 2 samurai and
Found Kothlis, Rodia, Endor
790 tiles to go.

IBT:
Kill 1 Sam, lose 1 Cav.
Lose 2hp elite cav in mountain to barb warrior :(

(1) 1060 AD - 2592
Found Chandrilla, Talus, Selonia, Coruscant
Generate a leader.
Calcutta:
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 3/5
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 2/4
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 2/3, retreat
4/4 vs 2/3 -> 2/3, retreat
4/4 vs 2/3 -> 1/4
5/5 vs 3/3 sword -> 3/5
5/5 vs 1/3 Elephant -> 5/5, burn
Bangalore:
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 2/3
4/4 vs 3/3 pike -> 3/3, retreat
4/4 vs 3/3 pike -> 3/4
4/4 vs 2/3 -> 1/3, death
4/4 vs 2/4 -> 3/4
4/4 vs 3/3 spear -> 3/5, raze.
Delhi:
4/4 vs 4/4 -> 2/4, retreat
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 2/4
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 1/3, death
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 3/5
4/4 vs 2/4 -> 4/5
4/4 vs 2/4 -> 2/4, retreat
4/4 vs 2/4 -> 5/5
5/5 vs 3/3 sword -> 4/5, burn, giving us 9 sacrificies!
Rush temple in Rodia and Kothlis
746 tiles to go

IBT:
Lose 2 cav, 1 musket and 1 leg, kill 1 cav, retreat 1 Samurai and 2 cav.
Aztec cavs hurt

(2) 1070 AD
740 tiles to go
Rush temple in Dagoth Ur and Coruscant
Found Tatooine, Mos Eisley, Nal Hutta
Make army in Coruscant
Kill 5 Cav, 1 Samurai, 2 Sword, 1 Spear, 1 Archer, 1 LB
Raze newly founded Irdus.
715 tiles to go

IBT:
kill 1 LB, 2 samurai, 1 sword, retreat 1 cav, lose 1 musket,

(3) 1080 AD
706 Tiles to go
Found Nar Shadda, Kashyyyk, Hoth, Mon Calamari
Kill 4 spear, 1 elephant, 1 cav, 1 sword
Bombay:
13/13 Army vs 4/4 -> 7/13
4/5 vs 3/3 -> 2/5 and leader
4/5 vs 3/3 -> 1/3, death
Bengal:
5/5 vs 4/4 -> 2/4, retreat
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 1/4
4/4 vs 3/3 -> 2/3, retreat
4/5 vs 2/3 -> 2/3, death
663 Tiles to go

IBT:
Lose 1 cav. India has cav now.
Satsuma completes Bach

(4) 1090 AD
654 tiles to go
Found Gamorr, Abregado-Rae
Kill 1 pike, 2 spear, 1 MW, 2 warrior, 1 cav, 2 LB, lose 2 cav, generating 1 leader.
Raze DEnver
Bombay:
7/13 Army vs 3/3 -> 2/13. That was too close.
5/5 vs 3/3 -> 3/5, burn, generating 7 sacrifices
Hyderabad:
5/5 vs 3/3 -> 2/3, retreat
5/5 vs 2/3 -> 3/5
5/5 vs 3/3 spear -> 5/5
4/5 vs 3/3 spear -> 2/5, raze
Bengal: 4/5 vs 4/4 -> 1/4 death
631 tiles to go

IBT
Lose 1 leg and 2 cav, kill 1 MW. Iroquois also have cav now.
Iroquois start Smith's

(5) 1100 AD
625 to go
Kill 2 musket, 2 LB, 1 cav, 1 knight, 1 pike, 1 sword, lose 1 Cav
Found Byss, Drall
Raze Ganges
603 to go
Rush a bunch of cavs, and leave you with 891 gold. If you follow my new dotmaps, you shouldn't need many temples.

We have several settlers on Hadrian's wall, 1 ready to settle next turn. The cav should clear along the coast, and the boats drop off settlers where needed since they move so slow.
The attack in India has stalled slightly, due to healing and enemy cavs. you should probalby rush some barracks, I left that for you ;)

Save (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm3/Smackster_SG003_AD1100_01.SAV)

EDIT: One thing i will never learn - effective worker management. And I think that is mostly because i in many cases i don't care about wasting worker moves but my goal always to get it done faster... I just build extra workers for all those wasted moves when i have 5 workers working on a mountain tile.
I only worry about that in the early game when it really matters. Generally once I reach a certain point where I'm sure I'm winning, I automate them all, turn on the governor etc.

And the enemy continent:

Most of our workers are very inffective right now, and moving to where they are needed. Might start joining them in soon.

We are going to have lot of fighting....
I predict it will take longer than we originally thought..

We should stop producing any workers, i think we already have more than enough, our core is developed and at this point it doesn't make sense to develop anything else, I would move some workers to Hardian's to put some roads, many workers can be simply joined to the cities and converted to tax collectors.

In just 5 turns we've gone from 42% to 48.5% of land (require 17.5 % more). At that rate we'll finish in 15 more turns, which is at the bottom end of what I thought 20-30 turns from my last one.

There is still 15.4% land unclaimed

So its going well, remember we don't get bonus points for having troops left, but use them wisely but don't worry about losing a few.

Shall we play 5 each from now, what is the team feelings on this. Then we all get a chance to play in the finish of the game.

Yeah, I think 5 is best. That also gives you enough time to focus on what you're doing.

Dmanakho, please check all frontline cities for fortified units.. There are some cannons hiding around.

I will play my 5 turns tonight... I hope you have enough cavalry left for me to attack ;) .
Although, i am used to the situation when all i do during my turns is building up troops for the next player :)

I will play my 5 turns tonight... I hope you have enough cavalry left for me to attack ;) .
Although, i am used to the situation when all i do during my turns is building up troops for the next player :)
I don't think you should only build for the next player. Remember healing troops will heal with a rushed barracks that same turn its rushed. No time to slack off the attacks.

Where is Wotan, looks like he's getting a day off Civ, very unlike him, and DH this will be yours after that, hopefully Saturday in the day for you. Don't go out in the sun, stay in inside, play civ, you know you want to.

smackster

Have not had the time to look at the save yet. Just back from a BBQ at a friends, we are supposed to have some time for R&R, or? ;) When sun and summer finally decend on us I just can't convince my wife Civ is the most important thing in life. Will check it out in the morning...

I'm looking at the save. Here are some suggestions

Rush temple in Seleucia, 24 gold, for 6 tiles - far south main continent

We have lots of Caravels in New Smackster, about half of them I'd move to coastal cities to disband, New Lutetia and New Attetium both look good, building temples the extra sheilds can help to to rush them cheaply.

Nar Shadda looks in real trouble and the cannons with it. Might consider moving them to Byss, and the Cavalry, I'd cut that Saltpetr. Don't be concerned with losing cities if we can do nothing about it, its only 9 tiles that we'll get back in no time.

I'm looking at the save. Here are some suggestions

Rush temple in Seleucia, 24 gold, for 6 tiles - far south main continent

We have lots of Caravels in New Smackster, about half of them I'd move to coastal cities to disband, New Lutetia and New Attetium both look good, building temples the extra sheilds can help to to rush them cheaply.

Nar Shadda looks in real trouble and the cannons with it. Might consider moving them to Byss, and the Cavalry, I'd cut that Saltpetr. Don't be concerned with losing cities if we can do nothing about it, its only 9 tiles that we'll get back in no time.

Sorry Smackster,

You were a little late with your suggetion, i was probably in the middle of my game when you wrote it... It's over by now, I am going to watch Startgate on Sci-fi, once it's over (11pm our time) i will post my report...
But other than cutting salpenter i almost mirrored your recomendation...
Report should be available by 11:30PM EST. (mostly good news, don't need to use those pills tonight ;) )

Ok...

When I looked at the map I realized what Tarkeel meant by “The attack in India has stalled slightly”. I saw bunch of red lined cavalry and fresh troops were no where to be seen. :rolleyes:

So, I started…, right, with getting reinforcements and rushing some infrastructure on the new continent.

First few turns very really lousy, Japs were sending those Samurais, and my Cavalry kept losing one battle after another while attacking them (Oh, I hate those Samurais).
Well… here is the turn log…


Preturn: 1100AD – looked at the map, changed few things here, few things there.

T1: 1110 AD. Pompeii 2 and Antium 2 founded. (I think I founded more cities that turn but forgot to write it down). Rushed some improvements on new continent, some cavalry on old. Had lots of local fighting with Japs, Indians and Co…

T2: 1120 AD Pisae 2 is founded, and again I am not sure whether I had more cities founded that turn… everything else is same as above, plus kept moving reinforcements to the new continent, kept losing fights to Japanese Samurais and kept moving north on both our main continent and Hadrian’s.

T3: 1130 AD: Ravenna 2 is founded, Hispalis 2 is founded. Just read previous turn log, same applies here.

T4 1140 AD: Fun begins!!!! We attack and destroy Iroquois city of Cattaraugus.
(Here we should play national roman anthem) :band: Another Leader rose!!!. Cavalry Army is built. We sacrificed 11 (!!!) Iroquois slaves.
City of Viroranium is founded. Ha!!! Japanese have rifles. 2 Japanese riflemen cross our northern border. I attack them and kill both didn’t lost any unit. (Here I am surprised, I constantly lose to Samurais and now I have easily killed two riflemen. O!! RNG Gods!!!).
I have finally settled on northern American island. City of Lugdunum 2is founded.
Town of Lutetia 2 is founded somewhere else.

T5: 1150 AD: Hip!!! Hip!!! Hurray!!! :clap: Another elite wins and Trajan reports to Caesar. We build another yet cavalry army… (I am confused :confused: , we don’t have many free cavalry units left, and I just can’t keep up loading armies). Now, can you imagine how much AlanH and Co are going to be pissed off. :D
Byzantium 2 is founded. We need to settle just one more city on our main continent to fill it completely.
3 Japanese Samurai showed up, but just one attacked us.. We killed him and luck was on our side this time, I followed with Cavalry counter attack, kill 2 Samurais and 1 rifle with no loss to us.
I failed to raze Houston, it was defended by 4 units and I sent only 3 cavalry’s up there. So, Wotan can do it next turn. I believe Wotan will also be able to fill North American island and very likely Hadrian’s.


Comments: There are few Japs and also Aztecs transport ships lurking around… Nobody ever landed on our soil during my turns, I don’t think it will happen much, since AIs busy fighting us on their own continent. But i would still keep few cavarly units in our core for defence.

Indians, have only two large cities left, we can easily take them and then put dent on either Iroquois or Japanese but it is up to the next player. As a matter of fact during the all 5 turns I played Indians sent only 1 cavalry my way, and may be few more ancient units. Japanese and Aztecs caused most troubles during my turns. We probably should attack those big cities to decrease total world population, and now with 5 (yes, five,.... @other team members: are you lurking around to hear this?? :rolleyes: ) armies at our disposal it should be easier to do.

Oh, more good news… Neither Indians, nor Japanese have salpenter, so no more cavalry from them, and if I understand how AI plays, as soon as they can build riflemen, they will never build those nasty samurais anymore, so I hope I killed everything or almost everything they have. I will feel so much better if Japanese attack us with slow rifles instead of fearless samurais

I sold most of the cannons we had, it helped me to build temple, barracks and walls much cheaper in almost every city we have on new continent.
I also sold few caravels to hurry improvements in seashore cities.
I have fortified units in our border cities. I did it for 2 reasons. First, for some reason, I have a believe that wounded units will only heal if they are fortified, please correct me if I am wrong. Second, healthy units have better defense value when fortified. Wotan, you should not have problems finding those units. There are several settlers on new continents, hidden behind fortified cavalry in field.

There are more settlers in the north part of our continent and on board of ships.

It will be quicker now to rush settlers in those small cities up north and use northern route to move them to Hadrian’s.
Sorry, I razed only one AI city, I just had no chance to do more, all the time I had to move reinforcements, defend existing territory and heal units. But I think I did ok job in expanding our territory. I didn’t do any calculations, but I hope Smackster will run “mapstat” quickly.
I have one city of ours unprotected on Hadrian’s. Let barbarians to suck a city and take their couple of Golds… It’s just faster and cheaper that way.

Oh, and since i've rushed a port on new continent we have another yet luxury connected, quite few cities now celebrate Caesar day now. (not that we are going for score, but doesn't hurt either)
@Wotan – I really had no idea what to do with workers, I even joined few back to the cities, so please don’t get mad at me if you see some doing not what you think they should. :)

@Tarkeel - I apologize, didn't really used your dot-map on new continent, with so much fighting going on, i simply placed cities where it was easier to do really, but it should not be a big deal, we have enough settlers... I know you put your time and sweat designing those maps, and please don't feel like i ignored it. Actually, I studied your maps to learn something new for myself.

@Rest of guys – I hope you don’t mind me creating armies instead of rushing Pentagon. I think (especially in PTW) having 4 armies of 3 is better than 3 armies of 4.

OUR NORTH AND HADRIANS:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/smackster1150northhadrians.JPG
OUR INVASION PROGRESS:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/smackster1150settlers.JPG



Here is our save file with a nice score of 2993 (http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm3/Smackster_SG003_AD1150_01.SAV)

That's all folks
:beer:

Looking good, we are getting there although probably need another 15 turns. Lets try to beat that.

53% land, 11% unclaimed, 449 tiles to limit, only 87 pop so as I said before don't worry about meeting that.

I think we have enough armies, so don't build anymore, and don't build the pentagon. The problem with armies in PTW is that they heal too slowly, 3 turns in a city with a barracks and one Rifleman could red-line an army.

Got it. Will probably not play until tomorrow. This is a socially intense weekend ;)

I even used a leader to rush cathedral in Coruscant :p I simply didn't have enough to fill them, and no need for them really.

Most of our cash now should go to rushing cavs, we don't need much more culture. Maybe leader rush some cavs? :p

I have that Conquest mind where Armies are superpowers...
But even in PTW we can use those armies as our best defending units in border cities.. (well, and attacking of course).

We have +519gpt right now, some of it we will have to use to rush temples on hadrians to claim extra mountain and shore tiles. I rushed few temples over there during my turns, and I reckon it's about the time to do that if we have only around 15 turns to play.

Ok...
I have fortified units in our border cities. I did it for 2 reasons. First, for some reason, I have a believe that wounded units will only heal if they are fortified, please correct me if I am wrong. Second, healthy units have better defense value when fortified. Wotan, you should not have problems finding those units. There are several settlers on new continents, hidden behind fortified cavalry in field.

You don't need to fortify them for them to heal, just hit space bar, y or f and it will work.

I have that Conquest mind where Armies are superpowers...
But even in PTW we can use those armies as our best defending units in border cities.. (well, and attacking of course).

I actually think 3 Cavalry is better than an army in PTW. All three can move and attack, you get three retreat chances, and all three can heal in one turn. In PTW the army has no attack/defence bonus, one retreat, heals 3 times slower.

Of course they went crazy in Conquests. I think they could just have made it heal quicker and that would have been enough

I see new save and Wotan is here :)
He must be writing a report

Turn uploaded, will be back with pics etc. plus discussion on current situation in an hour or two. My turn log:

Highlights: Plenty of Iroquois/Aztec/Japanese activity, had problems even fending them off during my turns let alone keep the initiative. Reactive play rather than proactive. :(

Another "named" Impi: Regent man

Managed to expand one third of the remaining territory so with same speed next two players Smackster should be able to wrap this up in 1275AD.

Turn log

0 – 1150AD preturn
Major overhaul of production in cities, from 519 gpt to 549 gpt as I set production to “opulentia”. Shifted other cities to more short term goals where Legionaries, explorers etc. can help rush temples. Only Cavalry in cities able to produce them in less than 10 turns or in three cities where they might be rushed. Check the number of cities needed on Hadrian’s and made changes in Settler production in the east to reflect this. Only producing Settler in cities within 3 turns of New Smackster in the west. A few settlers built further south along the coast for possible transport to Iroquois territory. Moved half the Caravels to help rush temples.

IBT: 7 Iroquois/Aztec Cavalry and a couple of Japanese Samurais pay us a visit

1 – 1160AD
”American” island cleansed. Elite appears when attacking Japanese Samurai, used it to rush a coliseum. 2 Indian cities raised.

IBT: 1 cavalry lost, one army redlined. Enemies lost 6 Cavalry attacking.

2 – 1170AD
Plenty of counterattacks from Aztec/Iroquois Cavalry.

IBT: 3 Cavalry lost. Several Samurai, Cavalry and Riflemen killed when attacking

3 – 1180AD
Last Indian city in the east raised. India now left with 5 cities in the west, consider the terrain they are in to be too “slowing” for our forces to enter. Iroquois and Japanese territories now focus of our advance. Founded 3 cities within Iroquois culture and will use these for next phase attacks in Iroquois territory.

INT: No losses? Well, maybe one Cavalry but I do not really remember.

4 – 1190AD
Several cities founded. Temples rushed and enemy units killed. The Iroquois, Aztecs and Japanese send about 10 units each turn. 60gpt now.

IBT: Another horde of enemies appear.

5 – 1200AD
Spotted an Impi named Regent man. Raised the last American city. Killed a few enemy Cavalry. Aztec/Iroquois production of Cavalry uncomfortably high. There are 3 horses on the “new” continent, one of them is just between Aesonesium 2 and Niagara Falls. Please pillage it if you have cavalry to do it. I have played very close to the limit of cavalry every turn so have not felt safe sending even a single to that corner of the world. Most of the Cavalry/Settlers in the old world are set to “go-to” New Smackster, hope it was OK to do that since the turns have started to take quite some time without having to worry about moving on that continent.

Control: 292 tiles to go 57.9% = 157 during the last 5 turns so another 10 turns? Plenty of settlers on Hadrian’s north or just off the coast.

Edit: Several stupid decisions during my turns, hung-over is not a good physical condition for optimum civ play. ;) Colloseum built with a leader? Grrr. only 2 culture from it, best option would have been to rush a cavalry instead with that leader.

1200AD! I hope the other teams have as much difficulty with the end game as we have. I have a nagging feeling we are about 200 years too late for a domination win. :(

Our territory is getting bigger :)
@Wotan :goodjob: , and I wish you had more cavalry at your disposal :sad: .

Ok, we are getting closer and closer...
I am suprised how much barbarians are still left in Hadrian's hideouts.
I see there is a settler in place on Hadrians, if next player just settle where it is and leave that town unprotected. That will help to get rid of most of those barbarians much faster.

No units left on north american island, we probably should keep couple of units over there, too easy target for AI and AIs always know about all unprotected cities.

The major goal... I do agree with Wotan, we should switch from Indians to Japanese and American-Indians. Personally, i wish we could raize few Japanese cities since they are the one who bother us most sending riflemen and samurais. (so hard to kill). But since our major forces located down south, we probably should not waste time with Japs but rather keep crushing Iroquoses.

I do hope other teams will have as many troubles as we do. I hope we finish this game before i have to play again.

We shouldn't be suprised at the amount of resistance those civs are putting up. All the usual tricks we would use to slow them are not available to us. Looking back what else would we have done during this stage. We still haven't finished colonising hadrians even, and we are doing that as quickly as we can, aren't we?

I think we got to the other continent just in time, imagine if we'd got there after Rifles were available, as I feared. Looks like we just got there.

We have a number of culture expansions coming in the next 5 turns, I see many places to put settlers for more tile growth, and we just have to tough it out against the other continent. Actually as I count round tiles, I don't see enough at home really, and think we do need a little more on the other continent. Taking the large cities may be tough, so I actually think going to India might be the best bet.

Also if you trace round our continent there are many other places that settlers can be squeezed in, for example between Selonia, and Drall will give us 3 tiles, there is a city producing wealth that could rush a settler, and also Byzantium 2 to the right, a settler will give us 4-5 tiles. Also many more cities that can have temples rushed. Got to look for the best gold/tile ratio.

DeceasedHorse is up, I'm on deck, plan is that we wont need anybody else to play.

Smackster

We still haven't finished colonising hadrians even, and we are doing that as quickly as we can, aren't we?

At Hadrians there are one settler in position right now. On coast and north of last settled position. Another next to japanese city intended to move deep into NE corner, the coast can be settled by one of the settlers still on ships.

We have a number of culture expansions coming in the next 5 turns, I see many places to put settlers for more tile growth, and we just have to tough it out against the other continent. Actually as I count round tiles, I don't see enough at home really, and think we do need a little more on the other continent. Taking the large cities may be tough, so I actually think going to India might be the best bet.

My comment on India was early in my turns, before the "flood" of Iroquois/Aztec Cavalry began and before Muskets turned to Rifles... I guess that by now India might have some appeal again. ;) Taking "Falls" from Iroquois would limit our two southern neighbours to 1 horse, or at least pillage the tile. Also there are some territory available in the NE both within Japanese culture and just outside worth some tiles. Plenty of Settlers within a couple of moves from New Smackster so I guess we have just about all settlers needed already in play, just not in position... :(

I have jacked up gpt to over 600 by turning all "non-productive" cities to wealth so almost 2 Cavalry or 2.5 Temples rushed per turn during my turns.

I see there is a settler in place on Hadrians, if next player just settle where it is and leave that town unprotected. That will help to get rid of most of those barbarians much faster.

No need to leave it unprotected, besides the most northern Settler (next to japanese city) should move for 3-4 turns eastward to gain more tiles as several settlers on ships can handle coastal settlements. Barbarians are melting avay pretty fast and the Cavalry we have committed to this theatre will not be able to go anywhere else during this games final stages so let them kill of any barbarians stupid enough to come locking for trouble.

No units left on north american island, we probably should keep couple of units over there, too easy target for AI and AIs always know about all unprotected cities.

There are so many ships in the north returning Cavalry to the island is a piece of cake if any AI ships should come sailing by our northern shoreline en route to that island. We will have ample warning.

All quiet on the DH front. I'm going out tonight (whatever next) so will wait until I get back and play 5 then if he's not turned up.

smackster

I got it. I will post the report tonight most likely.

Glad you got it, just got back myself and didn't really fancy playing now, as I'd have to be up until 4.00am or something again.

Note that we have not had a single skip in this game, which is really impressive.

smackster

Preturn: No changes.

IBT: The Japenese kill an elite cavalry in Artaxta, losing one riflemen. They also found Suo on Hadrian’s Wall for no real reason. Three Aztec and two Iroquois cavalrymen move out of the fog near Caesaraugusta. The Aztecs land a Jaguar warrior in our core.

Turn 1: Dispatch the silly Jaguar Warrior with a Cavalrymen. Destroy Suo and found a total of two cities on Hadrian’s Wall this turn. Destroy all visible enemy cavalry units, but Wotan Jr. is tragically slain in the battle. Use income to rush a couple of cavalry over in (former) India. The Siege of Niagra Falls begins as our armies begin to pick off riflemen; the slow healing rate of armies means that this may take awhile. Kill three Japenese riflemen threatening our holdings with no casulties.

General Mapstat reports that we hold 59.1% of all territory; we need roughly 250 tiles to win.

IBT: Lose three cavalrymen fighting defensively, kill one Japenese riflemen and one Samurai. Iroquois frigates bombard roads running along Hadrians wall with little success.

Turn 2: Convoy a bunch of settlers and a couple of cavalrymen across Wotan’s Middle Passage. Rush some barracks in fmr. India to speed up the healing process. Defeat two Japenese Riflemen and one longbow. Germanicus, the great navigator, rises from the dead in the midst of heated cavalry battle along the Iroquois front. Use him to rush the Military Academy in Antium; I’m not sure whether or not armies get an additional attack/defensive bonus in PTW or not. Domination is now 60.1%.

IBT: Aztecs drop off a Rifleman and a Longbow in our core. No fewer than nine enemy cavalry ride out of the fog in the south; 4 Aztec and 5 Iroquois.

Turn 3: Warlord RegentMan is defeated in the northern wastes of Hadrian’s wall. With his defeat, the total elimination of the barbarian hordes cannot be long behind. Niagra Falls, uh, falls to one of our cavalry armies and is razed to the ground. One source of horses eliminated, 2 remaining. I think that it is probable that the Aztecs are importing horses from the Iroquois, so if we can take out one more source we can stop the flow of Aztec cavalry permenatly. Defeat the Japenese marines with some difficulty. Defeat almost all of the enemy cavalry currently visible. A lone cavalrymen begins the assault on Kolhapur, as the Indians are left with spearmen defenders now.

IBT: lose a caravel to a Japenese Galleon. Two cavalry armies are lost in a series of catastrophic battles when the Aztecs and the Iroquois launch a massive combined assault on our southern position.
Caesaraugusta almost falls when the army inside is killed. Five enemy cavalrymen remain visible. The Japenese move three riflemen south.

Turn 4: Kill the Japenese riflemen, lose one cavalry. Capture and raze Kolhapur. Continue the war against the Iro/Aztec cavalry horde; take two casulties. Two cities founded this turn. Domination reaches 61.8%, with 163 more tiles needed to win. We may be in serious trouble, however, if the Aztec/Iro cavalry attack again on the IBT in the same strength.

IBT: Caesaraugusta falls. The $##@#$@ Indians are now building cavalry; one company spotted advancing on Ravenna 2. The Japanese land a riflemen/samurai pair near Mos Eisley. There are no defenders in range.

Turn 5: Continue battles with enemy cav. Found Fort Neccessity near the ruins of Niagra falls.
I cannot see any way to save Mos Eisley. Domination threshold is at 62.2%; we need about 150 more tiles to win. Progress has been slow to the constant stream of enemy cavalry and our own lack of strong defenders. We may need to start building cannons for defensive purposes again soon. In hindsight, I should have just used the leader to form an army; however at the moment he popped we had four full armies and not very many spare cavalry. I did not expect to lose two of them; gotten spoild due to Conquests, since I doubt the AI would even have attacked our armies under conquests. Also note that we can run 4-turn research at about 50% science; if we are unable to breake our enemires soon we may need to research to rails and possibly riflemen. Our main difficulty is the same as its always been: Our supply lines are just too damn long, even with move 3 units and Magellans speeding up the process.

No, we cannot start research when we have just 5% left until domination...
We need to rush cavalry as much as we only can, one last jump is all we need, rush cavalry right on the new continent, use all money that we have,
sell all temples/cafedrals in all cities that expanded it's size, they won't shrink back...
We need a one last final push!!!!!

I also do suggest to rush walls in all border cities, that helped me a lot during my turns.. Walls only cost 80 gold.

EDIT: We may want to create a new line of ship hopping south to the original one..
This way we should be able to deliver cavalry closer to the frontline.
We may want to use 2 hope system to do that in one turn. Do we still have enough caravels?

Germanicus, the great navigator, rises from the dead in the midst of heated cavalry battle along the Iroquois front. Use him to rush the Military Academy in Antium; I’m not sure whether or not armies get an additional attack/defensive bonus in PTW or not. Domination is now 60.1%.

No bonuses for Armies in PTW, so they are not very useful. I like to build say one or two armies as they can run through the enemy territory without being attacked (whey they are green), but as I said before, 3 Cavalry is stronger than one Cavalry Army.

Use him to rush the Military Academy in Antium.

Pleae help me out here, I cannot see any reason what so ever of building this??? What is the reason?

No research now please, we are 5 turns from victory I hope? Will check out the save now.

Pleae help me out here, I cannot see any reason what so ever of building this??? What is the reason?


What's done is done and we won't use military academy for sure.
it would be better if built on new continent just for pure cultural purposes.

@Smackster, Please do sell all the temples in all cities that expanded their territory. it will help us with few golds... we nead each and every penny we can collect at this moment.

EDIT: I believe it will take more than 5 turns to win, but if Smackster manages to pull our victory, he will have to provide me with his address... I will send him a beer keg :)

@Smackster, Please do sell all the temples in all cities that expanded their territory. it will help us with few golds... we nead each and every penny we can collect at this moment.

very good idea! (Kicking myself for forgetting this) ;)

I'm on it, selling libraries, temples, etc

These turns may take some time

I won't go to bed tonight until i see you report...
I hope you are not going out second night in a row... ;)

I'll post turn by turn, but I'm afraid I am going out, but playing now. Buts its taking a long time just to sell the infrastructure, I just want enough cash to rush another Cavalry.

Well, this game is not going as well as I had hoped. Not enough cultural expansion in the next few turns to help us reacxh domination. We have 19 settlers at the moment! Stop bulding them, only build them in frontline cities if needed to speed up city placements. We have roughly 75 tiles to gain from cultural expansion on original continent/Hadrians. "Forcing" cities within enemy territory is one way to go. I guess we will not really need so many more enemy cities raised to have enough territory for a win. Need to get a few settlers south for this though. Almost all of them are in Artaxata2.

@DeceasedHorse: I have some constructive critisism re. your city placements. You seem to stop short of the optimum placement with cities. Tile-StealersVille would have gained 3 more tiles from Punjab if placed 1 tile further west.

I mentioned in my report not to use the settler next to the japanese in the northern part of Hadrians to build a city on the coast but to move it into the corner (E/NE) to make full use of the territory and to wait for the settlers on ships off the coast to settle the coastline. You would have had about 20 more tiles covered(almost double that after cultural expansion) Now it will take another 8-9 turns before the location is settled and cultural expanded so it is lost to us. You would also have been able to put one in SE of present location of Sotha Sil.

At the stage we are in this game tile counting is imperative to win ASAP!

And finally, what is a Worker doing clearing a jungle on the new continent???? He will be done in 21 turns!!!! :mad: Those workers need to build roads nothing else and only where we have no poad connections. So the Worker North of Gamorr is also wasted!!! building a road where we already have plenty of roads.

@DeceasedHorse: I have some constructive critisism re. your city placements. You seem to stop short of the optimum placement with cities. Tile-StealersVille would have gained 3 more tiles from Punjab if placed 1 tile further west.

I think Indian culture expanded, that is why its called tile stealer, the settler there goes west, to steal those back, I have to disband tile stealer then settle

I think Indian culture expanded, that is why its called tile stealer, the settler there goes west, to steal those back, I have to disband tile stealer then settle

Nope, I had a settler heading there to settle within indian territory, on the tip of the land. DH settled one short in 1240AD. Maybe he does not know you can settle within another tribes culture, and if so he will now know you can.

BTW, Smackster, if you rush anything make sure you rush units in cities near Mos Eisley as it will fall. I am surprised DH did not do this since they will fall after japan take Mos Eisley. And do the rush in two actions to keep cost down, first a 10 shield unit at 8gps then to the full unit at 4gps for the rest.

Edit: I had a look at worker actions on the old continent. Loads of them on long term projects for some obscure reason. Just cancel those actions and either join cities or... Just do not let them keep clearing jungles in 20 turns or so... It is utter waste!!!!!

Nope, I had a settler heading there to settle within indian territory, on the tip of the land. DH settled one short in 1240AD. Maybe he does not know you can settle within another tribes culture, and if so he will now know you can.

BTW, Smackster, if you rush anything make sure you rush units in cities near Mos Eisley as it will fall. I am surprised DH did not do this since they will fall after japan take Mos Eisley. And do the rush in two actions to keep cost down, first a 10 shield unit at 8gps then to the full unit at 4gps for the rest.

Edit: I had a look at worker actions on the old continent. Loads of them on long term projects for some obscure reason. Just cancel those actions and either join cities or... Just do not let them keep clearing jungles in 20 turns or so... It is utter waste!!!!!
Well I'm there MMing as much as possible but there are limits too my patience.

Ok, Wotan is pissed off again, not a good sign...
I am glad it is not me this time... :mischief:

:joke:

T0 1250AD

Start selling temples and libraries for more cash. Get enough cash for rushing one Cavalry, and we now have +661GPT.

Note that we are about to lose a city on Hadrians to Japan, all the Cavalry are too far away.

IBT We lose 2 cities, one on Hadrians, but also Antium 2 which generates a leader for them. Lucky to keep Ceasergusta as Rifles attack our Cavalry defenders. Iro Cavalry enters the middle of our other continent core, on a hill

T1 1255AD

Take back Antium 2, lose a Cavalry trying to kill the Iro Cavalry on a hill. This is a rare occasion where cannons are really useful as we could wound them all. 2nd Cavalry dies too. 3rd Cavlary dies. Think twice before disbanding cannons next time, easy for me to say now. 4th Cavalry gets him and we kill another leader.

Kill an Indian Cavalry and an Indian Longbow, giving us an elite that is in range of Jaipur although it has a musket.

Our real problem is a lack of Cavalry on the other continent, so I rush some more, and start to send everything over, workers, settlers, even the kitchen sink, they can help to rush things.

There are few places to put our workers, so some are just disbanded in cities for shields. We are way below unit support limits.

IBT Japanese throw the Rifles at New Caseargaea (or whateve its called), I see 4 Rifles and one Longbow go down, but they still send more Rifles and they destroy it. Our armies on the front are just defending it. The Cavalry run past them, and then we can step out, kill the Cavalry and then step back. Right now that is all they can do.

Crap, it does look like we are losing a continent doesn't it... :sad:

We believe in you Smackster, you will do the magic.

@Smackster - It doesn't make much sence to disband worker for shields... It only gives you 2 shields. I would rather join worker to a city and convert him into the taxman for more gold generation.

Crap, it does look like we are losing a continent doesn't it... :sad:

We believe in you Smackster, you will do the magic.

@Smackster - It doesn't make much sence to disband worker for shields... It only gives you 2 shields. I would rather join worker to a city and convert him into the taxman for more gold generation.
Nearly all cities are max size, most workers cannot get anywhere. I've spotted a weakness on the left flank of Japan and trying to exploit it.

Ok, Wotan is pissed off again, not a good sign...
I am glad it is not me this time... :mischief:

:joke:

Nope, not pissed off. I know we are on different levels re. understanding Civ3. And since I hope to play the next SGOTM with the same team, I am anxious to have as much learnt from this game as possible. So we do not repeat simple and avoidable mistakes next time.

Nearly all cities are max size, most workers cannot get anywhere. I've spotted a weakness on the left flank of Japan and trying to exploit it.

Good! Now end this game please. ;) Before the japanese intrusion on Hadrians does too much damage. Can you contain them? Did they raise Mos Easley? or is it possible to retake it? Many tiles lost if not... :(

It may sound like a stupid advice, but walls do help, rush those cheap walls in border cities.

Good! Now end this game please. ;) Before the japanese intrusion on Hadrians does too much damage. Can you contain them? Did they raise Mos Easley? or is it possible to retake it? Many tiles lost if not... :(
No they captured it, I have three Cavalry there now, they have Rifles. Attacking now................two Cavalry die no retreat, the third stays home. We have two more arriving via Caravel, and one rushed. Will attack with four next turn

Well, I am very interested in your continued adventures but it is now midnight here so I am going to bed. Hopefully waking up to a finished game tomorrow... ;)

BTW, a thought, maybe we should postpone posting the final save of the game to avoid "telling" the other variant teams what turn we finish the game? We are so far ahead of them if we post now they have ample opportunity to adjust, to beat us by a turn or two... Do not want to give them too much info if possible.

Well, I am very interested in your continued adventures but it is now midnight here so I am going to bed. Hopefully waking up to a finished game tomorrow... ;)

BTW, a thought, maybe we should postpone posting the final save of the game to avoid "telling" the other variant teams what turn we finish the game? We are so far ahead of them if we post now they have ample opportunity to adjust, to beat us by a turn or two... Do not want to give them too much info if possible.

That would be a good advice, but i am sure we have a lurker or two at most of the times watching our progress directly from the team thread.

Can see what differnce it makes, wont they try to win as fast as they can anyway, like we are.

I'm afraid I wont finish this in 5, we just don't have enough Cavalry to take the space we need. Our initial attack should have been north or south and that would have made a hug e difference. We are essentially fighting a three front war here.

I have to go out so I'll post my log up to 4 turns.

T2 1260AD

Obviously the tiles have not gone up yet, gone down a bit.

3 Cavalry arrive in sight of Mos Eisley but will wait one turn so they all attack at once, it has a rifle and maybe Samurai in there.
Caravel coming round with more.

Only two Cavalry move into range of Jaipur, all I can spare. Can we take it.

On the Japanese front we prepare for a push on left flank through Bizen. Out Cavalry moutain hop through their territory, which has already stopped them attacking on our right front.

In the south, we use our armies and cavlary to kill 4 Cavlary interluders this time without any more loss.

IBTFrom Jaipur a longbow redlines our cavalry, and an elephant is seen approaching across the mountains.
No more attacks, but lots of movement, Our Cavalry on their mountain damages passing longbows. At least 4 more cavalry move past our armies, again ready for them to move out kill the Cavalry and then move back.

144 tiles to go now, this is really slow going.

T3 1265AD

Take a risk and take a bash at Bisen, first Cavalry, kills a regular rifle, and only a damaged rifle remains. The second cavalry and elite dies, the third raizes Bisen, although the culture only move one step. Our Cavalry on mountin sees only Samurai in Nara and attacks killing the Samruai and back to the moutain, although now damaged. Another Samurai is there. Raizing that would really help the culture.

2 Cavalry try to take our city back on Hadrians, they both die without retreat. Rush one more, two more arrive via the sea.

We drop three Cavalry on mountain in Aztec land in hope to split their forces

IBT Forget that, about 7 Cavlary attack our Cavalry on mountain, I see about 4 die and they keep coming until all three are gone. Also more Aztec Cavalry attack our army that is yellow now, and they kill it without loss, luckily the other defender holds, but this should be their target now. More Aztec Cavalry arrive and drive into our territory killing another of our Cavalry. More arrive on the borders.
Sweat is starting to poor from my brow

T4 1270AD

Cavalry attack Jaipur and the first big of RNG luck gives us two wins and Jaipur is raized, culture drops back, settler moves in and settlers on that spot. Cavalry takes out Elephant and Cavlary move in range of Punjab.

Back Mos Eisley attacking from the north now, first Cavalry kill the rifle without loss, second kills the Samurai, and we take it back. Quick check for foreigners, phew none there and we get back our culture.

On the other continent, we don't have troops to defend all our cities so sacrafice Aesonesium 2, the culture loss will only be a tile or two as Fort Neccessity is about to grow. In hindsight, would have been better to defend the opening to Iroqois, and concentrated on Japan. There are just too many Cavalry coming that way.

63.5% 100 tiles to go before the sacrafice

Just 100 tiles...

I hope Tarkeel will manage to get those for us...
Oh, We have a very nervous ending, just like it was in the beggining...
Good job captain Smackster, now you go out and get a beer or two, i am on my way to the fridge to get one for myself.

EDIT: Don't forget to upload a save, i am anxious to look at it.

MORE EDIT: SAVE!!! YOU DID FORGOT THE SAVE!!!!

Just 100 tiles...

MORE EDIT: SAVE!!! YOU DID FORGOT THE SAVE!!!!
I didn't forget the save, I didn't finish, didn't have time for the save.

Now I'm back will finish the last move, post the save, post a map, go to bed.

I had a reasonable last turn, took about one hour to play it and then got a crash before I could finish. Can't redo this, so will have to finish tomorrow. I might be able to do it in the morning, but I'm not sure.

Choice for the team, I can finish one tomorrow, post the autosave in the morning, if Tarkeel can take it right off, or play it to the finish tomorrow night, as I'm sure there only needs to be a few more turns.

smackster

Play it to the finish :) I'm busy enjoying the first really good weather of the summer. It shouldn't be much more then a turn or two at tops :)

If Tarkeel has no objection, just play it to the finish...

....and if you only could provide us with mid-play save.... just to look at how things go

This is the autsave of turn 5 where civ crashed.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/Civ_III_PTW_Autosave_1275_AD.SAV

Its a really hard slog, you'll see a Cavalry about to attack the next Indian city, and two more in range for next turn, with settlers there also, that should lead us into the next two Indian cities and that is my main target for our tile growth.

On the Japanese front I have a few settlers close by to capture some more tiles, but may hold them off until the last moment just as we need a few more tiles. We have extreme problems obviously, just trying to hold them off.

I'm not attempting to head anywhere south. The AI will not attack the army cities, so try to get to Antium 2, and that allows me to pick them off. One of the cities there is about to culture grow in a couple of turns. I'm about to rush a library in the new city on Hadrians that should give us about another 8-9 tiles.

So with the Indian land, culture growth in the south, new cities in the north, Hadrians growth and a couple of other spots here and there, we should be able to do it.

I feel its really easy in hindsight to say how we should have done this to make it quicker, but how were we to know how this would play out. All the usual tricks for war are not available to us, and we were trying too hard to speed victory up. If we'd been more patient and say attacked from the far north or south it would have been quicker, but I only know that now.

As a challenge to ourselves after we finish, we should take the save when the fleet was outside India. Move them north or south, and see how much easier it is when not fighting a three front war.

I will finish tonight for sure.

The AI will not attack the army cities, so try to get to Antium 2, and that allows me to pick them off.

That is what I did as well, unfortunately I did not make this tactic clear enough to DH so he must have moved the army out of the Caesaraugusta on the east coast as it did fall during his turns.

That is what I did as well, unfortunately I did not make this tactic clear enough to DH so he must have moved the army out of the Caesaraugusta on the east coast as it did fall during his turns.
Note that I lost one of the armies this set of turns, I was using them to pick off the Cavalry, but one got too weak (a Cavalry army attacking a Cavalry and lost 6 attacks in a row) so they attacked it and defeated it.

Note that I lost one of the armies this set of turns, I was using them to pick off the Cavalry, but one got too weak (a Cavalry army attacking a Cavalry and lost 6 attacks in a row) so they attacked it and defeated it.

I can't remember ever having an army attacked that was "green", yellow and of course red are constantly attacked in PTW. So using armies to avoid attacks and "channel" enemies towards other targets is as common as using empty cities to lure attackers from important locations.

I can't remember ever having an army attacked that was "green", yellow and of course red are constantly attacked in PTW. So using armies to avoid attacks and "channel" enemies towards other targets is as common as using empty cities to lure attackers from important locations.
Agreed, but I had to use the armies to attack the spare Cavalry, as we just didn't have enough individual Cavalry to attack them, one just got unlucky with the RNG.

That is what I did as well, unfortunately I did not make this tactic clear enough to DH so he must have moved the army out of the Caesaraugusta on the east coast as it did fall during his turns.

The army was in the city when it was killed. Many of our cities on the front lines lacked barracks at the begining of my turn, which made the slow-healing army even more vunerable.

In reagrds to the rest of your advice, I will certainly keep it in mind and try to follow it. This is the first time I've really played civ in a competetive manner outside of PBEM so I am experianced with this style of play. Furthermore, I did not play PTW/Vanilla civ nearly as much as I have played Conquests, so I am still trying to adjust to that as well. That is not to say that I am offended or upset by your criticism; far from it, but I am just pointing out why I keep making the same mistakes in regards to wonder rushing, for example.

I hope captain Smackster finishes game tonight, and 1st thing i do - download other teams saves to compare their progress with ours at the same time frame.
It is allowed to do, isn't it?????

I hope captain Smackster finishes game tonight, and 1st thing i do - download other teams saves to compare their progress with ours at the same time frame.
It is allowed to do, isn't it?????
Yes once we finish you can look at their threads play their games, although I would limit comments as we have spoiler information that they probably don't want to hear and we don't want them to know.

I will finish tonight for sure, although i might be very late. I'm staying up until its over.

The army was in the city when it was killed. Many of our cities on the front lines lacked barracks at the begining of my turn, which made the slow-healing army even more vunerable.

As I stated before, we just lacked the basic Cavalry to make this comfortable. Consider that in a normal game the AI would all have been fighting each other and we would have won this part of the game very easily. I do think we started with enough troops and should have been able to finish by now, but I'm only saying that after playing for this time. An easy way to win this would have been to send the armies to their capital, pillage the tiles and that would have stopped them building any Cavalry. But the method we chose looked like the quickest way to victory, but it just proved harder than we thought. We should not be dissapointed, hopefully we all learned more about waging war in Civ.


In reagrds to the rest of your advice, I will certainly keep it in mind and try to follow it. This is the first time I've really played civ in a competetive manner outside of PBEM so I am experianced with this style of play. Furthermore, I did not play PTW/Vanilla civ nearly as much as I have played Conquests, so I am still trying to adjust to that as well. That is not to say that I am offended or upset by your criticism; far from it, but I am just pointing out why I keep making the same mistakes in regards to wonder rushing, for example.

To be honest I'm nervous about posting a save now, as Wotan will spot all my mistakes too. But seriously (or not) we just have to make the tone of the criticism in a way that is not offensive and we'll all benifit from it. So I'd like the criticism to be in the form of "just wanted to let you know that I intended that Army for defence, and that the AI wont attack it unless its yellow etc" and generally it doesn't need much more than that.

For myself there are certain levels of MM that I will skip as the hours get late, if I get bored and if I don't think it will make much difference. I want this to remain fun for us all, and not become a real chore as these last turns can be, just manipulating workers. Note that I killed a few of our workers that were too far from anywhere useful, maybe if I'd printed the map and searched for an hour I could have found somewhere to put them.

Another reason AIs can build cavalrys in so high quantities - mobilization.
I am sure all AIs at the moment in mobilized state and produce nothing but cavalry and riflemen.

To be honest I'm nervous about posting a save now, as Wotan will spot all my mistakes too.

We all make mistakes. Spotting the mistakes and making them known to the team is what will make us unstoppable in future SGOTM's. It is always more difficult to spot them in your own turns so any input from the other team members is appreciated. I know I have made my share of mistakes in this game. Civ is a complex game and I know I have yet to play a game wo. mistakes. It will probably never happen... Part of the appeal of the game really.

I believe we have played a great game. We had some luck in the early game, especially with the leader creating the Pyramids and in some part the leader giving us the Great Library. After that we were on a "winning path" and anything we did was just things that could possibly give us a deeper insight into the civ3 world. How to play a good/excellent game.

We have all learnt a lot and the next SGOTM will be a real challenge. I will probably continue to be a "pain in the ass" re. areas of possible improvement but that does not exclude the fact that I need to improve my game too. I do, a lot....

We all make mistakes. Spotting the mistakes and making them known to the team is what will make us unstoppable in future SGOTM's.
And I think we have a point to prove in the next SGOTM, as certain teams are attributing our win to an early GL, I would like to prove them wrong in any style of game.

I imagine it may be a while before the next SG, but is every one up for that?

Oh, better leave now, have a certain SG to finish. Wont be until late as I have soccer practise tonight, 4 weeks to go till the season starts.

smackster

1275AD cont. after crash

After the crash I even lost my notes, although I don't think its that complex what i did.

Japan drops a rifle on mountain near our new continent core, protect city with Cavalry and pray

Indian Front

Cavalry attacks Pubjab kills Musket reveals spearman, two more Cavalry move in, next turn if we can defeat that spearman and take the city, we might be able to settle and then attack Chittagong too, and there are two more cities (one Iro) in range, so this looks promising for our extra growth.

Japanese Front

In the north we bombard and weaken a Samurai and a Cavalry finishes him off getting promoted. There are two places where I'd like to put settlers, although I may hold them until close to domination. Japan have Rifles/Longbows in the open and I have enough Cavalry to risk attacking them to create the space.

Cavalry fresh off the boat attacks rifle killing him with elite promotion. Elite Cavalry kills weakend rifle, then vet Cavalry kills Longbow, so far so good. No more Japanese in view
Move Musket up to front, in preperation for second settler.

At last I get some spare workers into the front lines, good for drawing them out :)

Front of death (Iro/Aztec)

Rest one army. Pull Cavalry from Antium 2, kill one Aztec, but two more are defeated (just RNG luck), we kill all but one Cavalry in view. Second army has to finish of a redlined one, which is a shame as I wanted to rest him.

IBT
Wow, unbelievable numbers of Cavalry from the south, I don't know how we'll stop them this turn.

Attack on our city, kills our Cavalry there, could have done with using that one.

Japan Attacks from the north work and kill one of our Cavalry, but Japan is only attacking with Riflemen.

1280AD

Indian Front

Start my work in the west, elite Cavalry attacks Punjab spear, kills him, Punjab is raised. Settler moves in and settles Gordium 2 just beyond Punjab, pushing their culture back but not enough that we can get to Chittagong. The Cavalry move over there regardless, Chittagong just has spear defenders, two full Cavalry in range next turn, and one weak one. There is a settler that can settle on Chittagong next turn if we raze it.

Also we settler Aggripna, but there is a little space for another settler who will be there next turn. Quick MapStat check says we are at 64.3%, or 73 tiles to go.

Southern Monster front

Pull an elite from Indian front, who arrives and attacks an Aztec elite, kills him without loss and gets a leader. Who rushes another Cavalry.
Second Cavalry attack works too, and the front Aztec Cavalry that were in range of our open cities are gone. Now there are still too many in range of Antium 2, not enough defenders, can't use the Army its on the edge of yellow. What to do, what to do, what else look to the sea, do I spy a sail, yes its a sail, not a mirage, the cheer goes up in Antium 2, the fleet has arrived.

As if I had planned this to perfection, a Caravel of Cavalry arrives in Coruscant, the Cavalry unload and they are in range.
We kill some more Cavalry, but are left with four full power Cavalry in range of Antium 2, luckily we have enough to put 5 defenders in there, damaged or not they wont take it. We just need to hang on for a little while longer.

Japanese front

Settle Cyreane 2 on the Japanese front, and another few settlers in place to push them back more. As they are not attacking with either Cavalry or Samurai now, we can handle them. We also kill a couple of lone Riflemen

IBT
Would you believe it, Fort Neccesity about to expand borders, and they bombard it and destroy the temple. Have to rush another. 64.7% and 67 tiles needed.

Attacks around Antium, we lose 2 Cavalry in open and 1 Musket in city, so its safe. The rifleman to the north dies at last.

1285AD

Attacks on Chittagong and two spear are killed and it is raized. Their culture just stops our settler from getting there this turn.

Indian Front

First army responds and kills two Cavalry, Indian city raized
Settler fills a gap in the Indian area, 6 tiles (61 to go)

Southern Front
Army kills two Cavalry and gets home without problem.
5 More Cavalry are killed and only one of ours can't get back behind the walls. At last we seem to have stemmed the flow from the south. Palmyra 2 due to expand borders next turn. Damn Fort Necessity.

Japanese Front

Verona 2 is settled in the center of the border giving us 6 more tiles (55 to go). There is a rifle and two longbow there, which are all dispatched without problem.
On the left a Rifle is killed but for the loss of one Cavalry. With more troops from the sea Cryene now has 6 Cavalry, and they are all in range of Nara size 11 Japanese city. Two settlers are behind the action ready to push ourselves forward.

Settler arrives in the nw of our main continent and grabs two more tiles. (53 to go).

Make some serious infrastructure sales and rush another Cavalry. You'll not find many librabries left.

Keep going Smackter keep going. You promised to finish it off today!!! :king:

IBT
Last Aztec Cavalry kills our Cavalry and then retreats, another one comes through and attacks Antium 2 but dies promoting our Musket to elite. Iro puhs a Rifleman forward but only one Cavalry comes back at us and doesn't attack. They really have run out of their main stacks of Cavalry. End is in sight

1290AD
Fort Neccesity is bombed again, the temple completes and the borders exapand. So you get the culture on the turn it is built. Palmyra also expands and we have a little buffer space. There is still a roaded hill from which they can get to Antium 2 in one turn. With our spare Cavalry I may well just cut that road.

Map Stat pops to the front and says we have 65.7% and need a mere 32 tiles.

Indian Front

On the old site of Chittagong, settler creates Mediolanum 2 and at least 6 more tiles (26 to go)
Only one Cavalry can be spare to move on Kahnawa but I don't think we'll need to take it.

Japanese front

A rifle is in our way to Nara, but a Cavalry takes it out, 5 left. Next one move to Nara and its protected by Samurai, no Rifle!!!, he kills the Samurai and a Pikeman is revealed :), 4 left, next one goes in and Raizes Nara, culture pushed back. Treveri 2 is settled giving us another 8 tiles (18 to go). A rifle prooves stuborn and we lose one Cavalry and two retreats

Southern Front

Cavalry on hill is killed, for one loss, and a third Cavalry cuts the road. Stops them from reaching Antium2 in one turn. Some Cavalry will go to the northern front, but not too many.

IBT
Some movement from Japan, and they pick off a few of our front troops, but for some loss of theirs. We see the first Samurai in ages.
Aztecs and Iro show a few Cavalry, but nothing to worry about.

Expansions give us more tiles, but not win

1295AD
Mapstat says we have 7 tiles to domination. Next turn for sure.

We can't defeat the Iro city north of India, so settle near for 4 tiles.

On the left side of the Japanese front, we have no healed Cavalry, and there is a rifle where I want to settler. So I attack him with injured Cavalry and he dies, settler moves in and we get another 6 tiles. Everything goes to defence as this is the last turn.

On the southern front, last turn I sneaked a settler on the hill I pillaged, although they attacked the Cavalry the lst one survived red-lined so we settle there, and gain four more tiles. Lots of defence is rushed there.

Hit end turn, all I can say is this.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm3-finish_copy.jpg

Firaxis score 7812, 1300AD. I'm going to post it to the upload page, I don't care if the others know when we finished.

Jason score 8856

Great game, well played everyone, no skips, very few errors, and what a tough variant.

smackter

HIP HIP HURRAY!!!!!!!
:band:
:thanx:
We finally :wallbash: :spank: :hammer: :sniper: :ar15: all those stupid AIs.
Yes we did it 3 hundred years later than our chief strategist Wotan predicted, but still i believe we did a fantastic job!!!
You've been a great captain Smackster...
And i hope you will get this team together for the next SG that is due to start mid-september. :goodjob:
And i am going to get a beer and start lurking into other teams threads!!!! :crazyeye:

EDIT: I must add, i truly enjoyed game. And to tell the true, i played COTM3 for last couple of days, and i must admit it is not the same. SGOTM is so much more fun.

MORE EDITS: Anyone has a full list of all named barbarians?? Lets try to figure out what the catch is...
@Mad-Bax: Could you confirm that it is possible to do in PTW and names were not totally messed-up during conversion????

Note
Be very careful if you say anything on any other thread. I looked at the Xteam thread and they were discussing things that we know very well, like how much land to domination, so even a comment will tell them something, something they don't want to know and something we don't want them to know.

Note
Be very careful if you say anything on any other thread. I looked at the Xteam thread and they were discussing things that we know very well, like how much land to domination, so even a comment will tell them something, something they don't want to know and something we don't want them to know.

Nah, I am just having some innocent fun :crazyeye:
...and... write down the number of visits to our thread... Trust me, it will be doubled by tomorrow night by all those sneaky lurkers :) , so there won't be much left to hide

EDIT: I've loaded saves of several teams who progresses most in this game (agewise). Everybody is looking pretty pathetic comparing to us at that age. (well, with exception of X-Team , they achieved the biggest progress, but still way behind us).
Sesn team, I love that one. Guys don't have chivalry, researching invention and there about dozen of AI knights all around their territory... Poor folks are having really hard time. :rolleyes:
Oblivion team is already in modern age by 1160AD, but they own just a little piece of land on home continent and doesn't look like there is going to be much progress any time soon....
Well, i will let you guys to have fun of your own, so far we have good chances to win. At this point we should be keep our eyes on X-Team.
Staff team can become dangerous, but they are so far behind in the game progress, i didn't bother to look how they do.

We have had some difficult times and had fun, and it feels much better now when we know that other teams have their share of fun, just look at the picture.
Rome is in flames and unwelcome guests are all around :)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/smacskterteamhavingfun.JPG

Xteam are talking about doing a Conquest, I wonder how quickly we would have done that from the turn we landed on the other continent if we switched everything to Cavalry building. But they will no doubt be faced with Rifles all the way and lots and lots of AI Cavalry, more than we saw.

Our real bottleneck wasn't production, it was logistics. Our cavalry spent most of the time in transit; we would needed Steam Power to get any signifigant speed boost.

Well, what can I say? Nice game from all of us :)

In hindsight I see one thing that could have sped t up for us: Instead of landing in just one spot, we should have had several beachheads, that would have made us harder to counter attack, but also longer for us to implement... As DH said, lack of rails slowed us down most, and lack of captured workers/cities for frontline healing and roading.

Good score, and a reasonable finish date given the variant, in my eyes atleast :)

Congratulations guys. A spectacular game. Well done. :goodjob:

You certainly set the bar high for the rest of us.

Great game! Well played by everyone. We have had some differences of opinion along the road but nothing that really impaired the game. My prediction re. 1000AD, was obviously too optimistic. I had not taken the fact to heart, that we needed to rebuild the territories we conquered with our own cities. With our Jason at 8800 something I am still convince the score is hurt by this fact, the need to repopulate and the lack of captured workers do prolong the game and I am quite sure Jason is based on a normal game. So the 34 turns we were delayed must be attributed to the variant. ;)

The Conquest VC is probably less impaired by the Variant and with hindsight I guess we should have pursued this instead. Hopefully our luck in the opening stages of the game will be enough to put us in front of the teams going after Conquest.


As DH said, lack of rails slowed us down most, and lack of captured workers/cities for frontline healing and roading.

Rails is really not a tech you go after in a Domination/Conquest game. It is way too far into the future. The game should be over and done with before that, besides the cost to research it is rarely worth doing so. I am myself trying hard to go from Domination with Navigation/MT to Domination after Chivalry only. It is a hard journey but some of the best players in this community are able to so it is feasible. Researching rail would really have slowed us down!

All games however do not play out well with this strategy but they are rather the exception to the normal game. Eg. I am now in a prolonged Gotm33, well into the industrial age, the tech pace in this game is frantic. In 790AD I have all of my territory railroaded.

So, the only thing left now is to pray our game will stay in the lead. And prepare for the next SGOTM, were we will show them this game was no lucky break. We will improve our game next time and be even more focused on the mission. Always asking the question: Do we need this to achieve our goals? Every time we start building something. Right? ;)

Oh, BTW, one thing remains, the named units. Was it possible to extract the letters from the names as intended in PTW?

The difficulty with solving the puzzle using PTW, and particularly when playing the variant is that the barbarian "island" is much more likely to have been settled by the time AI by the time you get there, and so some of the named barbs may have been dead already.

As I said before, I didn't expect the puzzle to be solved, and I didn't really want it solved. The answer is a spoiler for the next game. :) So, I'm not going to help you out. Sorry.

If you list the named barbs you saw then I will tell you whether or not you have any chance of soving it. That's as far as I will go.

@Wotan: I totally agree with you that rails are not something you'd normally go for in a fast domination/conquest game, but nevertheless, movement was our most limiting factor in the end :)

OK, I have been lurking in the other teams and was a bit surprised Dmanakho had not only lurked but dropped so much info on our game in X-teams thread. NOT HAPPY WITH THIS!!! I guess the post from Smackster re. lurking went unread. Please do not post in other teams threads. The game is still open so we should not damage our own chances by helping others. And re. Dmanakho's "paranoia" ;) re anonymous lurkers being froim other teams, if they do it is really their loss, if they get advantages from cheating that is just something that will damage their rep in the future. I hope I am correct in assuming that this is not something that happens.

I've been lurking through a few so far, and must say I'm shocked how few have had a fully operative 4-turn settler factory...

Edit: Fun fact: When I was replaying some turns to get a picture of Northern Pike for M-B, Athens completed the lighthouse... I think we burned it a turn or two before it would have completed. Too bad really, as that would have put off our contacts with other continent till we were ready.

Oh, Come on guys,
All i said in X-Team forum is that we finished game in 1300, everyone can see it in submission form. Have i really revealed to much of info?

Well you said we finished domination, it helps them to know we did that, but hinders them if they too try it I think. So I don't it makes any difference, but we should not say anything apart from the date.

Well you said we finished domination, it helps them to know we did that, but hinders them if they too try it I think. So I don't it makes any difference, but we should not say anything apart from the date.


Oops, did i say that??? Oh sure I did... ok ok ok.. that was a blinder.... :mad:
I guess i was just way too excited we finished our saga....
Smackster, where is that leash you said you will find for me???

Can't find the leash icon so this will have to do

:ar15:

I've been lurking through a few so far, and must say I'm shocked how few have had a fully operative 4-turn settler factory...

Edit: Fun fact: When I was replaying some turns to get a picture of Northern Pike for M-B, Athens completed the lighthouse... I think we burned it a turn or two before it would have completed. Too bad really, as that would have put off our contacts with other continent till we were ready.
Yes that would have helped for sure. I'm looking at other threads where they are only declaring war with some of the other continent around the time we finished. Now it would have been a lot easier to fight India if the Aztecs were not sending their Cavalry hords.

Just looking at some other threads and they seemed to declare war on the last one on our continent very late. This is why

Russia 1750 BC, war declaration due 330BC
America 1500BC, war declaration due 130BC (10 turns from 330BC)
France 1500BC, war declaration due 70AD (10 turns from 130BC)
:mad:

All my fault, but I'll blame you guys for not counting :)

Hey, if we had such a good game this time, i believe next time we will not give them a chance...
But i am afraid Mad-Bax won't let us to play together, he will say our team is too strong.... Didn't he do that in a past with Kuningas team??? i hope it won't happen to us though and we can play together again.

Kuningas had to skip SGOTM3 for RL reasons. Teams were allowed to be formed by 4 players with the fifth allocated by MB in SGOTM3 IIRC. But for every played SGOTM I guess the teams will be more established so I would not be surprised if teams are allowed to stay together if desired soon if not now.

Here is another of my mistakes as leader, failing to understand the victory conditions.

Start off I just thought it was best Jason score for the variant, duh!

Worse then I read it as this:

"The Golden Laurels are awarded to the team with the fastest Sponsored Variant finish
(or the highest variant score in SGOTM 01)."

which just means the earliest date

But now I read this from Mad-Bax in the first page of the staff thread

"The variant award is for the fastest finsish relative to Jason best date. Which victory condition do you think we will pursue?"

Generally you can complete Conquest 200 years (or so) after Domination and get a better Jason score. This means that a team completing a Conquest in 1490 will beat us.

@Smackster: Is it that way or the opposite way (i mean domination ahead of conquest or conquest ahead of domination?)
and if you were wrong in so many cases then should we :spank: you, or would you prefer :suicide: instead? :rolleyes:

@Smackster: Is it that way or the opposite way (i mean domination ahead of conquest or conquest ahead of domination?)
and if you were wrong in so many cases then should we :spank: you, or would you prefer :suicide: instead? :rolleyes:
I'm pretty sure that a 1300AD dom, is equal to a 1500AD conq in terms of Jason bonus, just need to look at a previous GOTM to see

Here are the fastest dates from a certain GOTM, the closer you get the better. And in that GOTM there is 250 years between conq and dom. I often find Conquest so much harder that is why I chose domination. But think it might not have been the best choice in this game.

Conquest 800AD
Cultural 20k 1625AD
Cultural 100k 1430AD
Diplomatic 870AD
Domination 550AD
Space Race 1280AD
Max Score 10365

I've already tendered my resignation to Mad-bax and asked to be banned from the forum for my incompetance, only kidding. At least AlanH will stop calling us lucky when he sees how difficult I made it for us. We probably would have broken 10k Jason score if I had not messed this up.

As discussed above Conquest is probably the easiest VC in this game. Unfortunately Jason does not take the fact we need to raise everything before rebuilding into account so Dom is considered easier than Conq. When in fact it is probably the other way around.

I am sorry I was a bit vague when I tried to discuss this in the early stages of this game. We probably never really "connected" when discussing the VCs and what each of them implied.

@Smackster: We are a team and it was as a team we screwed up. I find it a bit odd though if Jason is not adjusted for the fact that variant players cannot keep "spoils of war".

In your example the difference between Dom/Conq is 25 turns, if it is so in SGOTM too we need the other teams to go beyond 1425AD. Also, getting a Jason above 10k in the variant should be next to impossible, we have a Jason at 88% of this so I guess anyone beating that will really deserve to win. But I do agree with you 10k should have been possible with a better mid-game focus and a slightly more focused end-game. No one is even close to our opening game in my opinion.

Just to make everything clear here and avoid misunderstandings: The Jason score per se is irrelevant but the ratio we have in comparison with a 10k game indicate a well played game with a slight dent in the score due to the variant rules. (I am not sure I understand what I am trying to say but...) ;)

Yes I'm with you, I did forget the 5 yr turns, so I think you have it at 1425AD. Of course in the main page that Mad-Bax wrote it just says the quickest win, nothing to do with type of victory. So based on that they need to win by our date 1300ad, however they win.

Just winning this variant should make us happy. To crush the AI like we did should make us proud.

I don't take any of my mistakes personally, I can't believe I made them, but know to take more care next time. And best of all you all know to double check everything I say :)

I looked back at one of my messages where I said we should think about Dom/Conq when we see how much space we need on the other continent. And play it like a Dom up to that point. Once I say the amount of space needed and the size of that continent, Conq seemed like a mamoth task.

So, somebody has to play our save before we invaded the other continent and see if we can do a conquest. Maybe we can we can play 10 turns each. Just build Cavalry, turn on the governor and automate workers, to speed it up and see what year we can finish.

smackster

Yes I'm with you, I did forget the 5 yr turns, so I think you have it at 1425AD. Of course in the main page that Mad-Bax wrote it just says the quickest win, nothing to do with type of victory. So based on that they need to win by our date 1300ad, however they win.

No, no,no. ;) We had this discussion way back, check post 434 for your reply last time. The win is fastest compared to Jason best date.

Actually, a 20K win might have been the best way to go.. Since that has a very late date anyways, and we have been/would have been getting plenty of leaders to rush wonders. We could have secured our own island, switched to republic, and researched while leader farming, It would have been feasible I think. Ofcourse, you'd have to be a complete looney to try this, but... That's me! :p

No, no,no. ;) We had this discussion way back, check post 434 for your reply last time. The win is fastest compared to Jason best date.
Well I for one completely missed that little detail

I've looked at most of the teams now... And I'm willing to be that the main reason our curve is so fit, is that we had the 4-turn settler factory working full time, and added some more later on. This allowed us to backsettle the coast while fighting defensively, and fill out the newly conquered territories very fast.

Pyramid, don't forget the pyramids,
it helped our population to grow twice as fast comparing to other teams.
I believe noone but us owned pyramid.
Oh, by the way, I thought about out team profile and here is the result:

1. Smackster - captain and fearless team leader
2. Wotan - chief strategist, prime-minister
3. Tarkeel - chief architect, planner, explorer
4. Deceased Horse - army general, warrior
5. Dmanakho - blabber mouth...
:mischief:
Fill free to update team profile ;)

5. Dmanakho - blabber mouth...


I smackster, as team leader of team smackster, for great services rendered to the team, I hearby promote you, Dmanakho to ......

Dmanakho - Chief blabber mouth

Thank you and keep blabbering

:crazyeye: Hehe.

Having more cities that could grow was more important then pyramids I think, atleast in that phase. The important thing is, we kept settling. Most of the other teams just did 6-turn settler factory or shut it down to focus on military.

Oh, and I like your titles ;) Except that I didn't really do much exploring, but.. :)

I still love the Pyramids we have just because everybody else is so jelaous of it. ;)

Just found the Cotm2 results, grats on very nice finishes Wotan and Smackster :)

I must say I'm surprised I ranked as high as I did, I had some horrible rng streaks on the Incas which set me back a few hundred years, but I still wouldn't have been close to yours :)

Check out team Microbe post#232. The have not used the terrain to theri advantage. Letting the enemies move close to Brundisium on mountains. That has cost them according to reports and will continue to cost them. Surprised they have not "herded" the enemies as we did, into our own valley of death. ;)

@Tarkeel, thanks but you should have seen my middle game, I was way too hesitant before eventually going to war. I will try to be more aggressive in COTM3.

COTM2 was easy, i experimented in "no war" period game and it was a piece of cake although i had a low score..
COTM3 sucks big time, Indians are cultural monsters and i can't breath, 2 cities flipped their way. :sad:

@Dmanakho, since cotm3 is not finished maybe we should try to avoid references to it here and stay in the appropriate threads, at least very specific info. I have yet to start playing it, will probably start tomorrow. Just finished gotm33, which was a pain in the ass really. Late to some essential resources and all that...

Barely started Cotm3, going for my first spaceship victory in over a year.. Not out of QSC period yet, but interesting game so far. And yeah, let's keep the spoilers out :)

Cool, I didn't know you guys haven't started yet :blush:
I was trying to keep my info within AA as it is in the spoiler, but again, i apologize.
After all, i am the blubber mouth of this team ;)

I just cecked out x-team. Pity they go after conquest, we would have beaten them easily if they too had opted for domination, they are about 10 turns after us at the moment. Hopefully they will have lots of rifles/cavalry waiting for them on "the other side". They have 58 cav in 1050AD, we had 40 in the first stack Smackster landed in India the same turn. I would like to know how many turns they can go beyond 1300AD and still win with conquest? if it is 25 they have 55 turns to do it in... That is more or less a slamdunk... :( I cannot see how they would fail to do that, unless there is a couple of settlers on ships moving around...

I am following their thread too, obviously it helps them to have an idea of when to finish. I think if somebody had finished dom in 1300ad before us we would have gone for Conquest. This is no excuse, we made the choice for Dom as it seemed at that time the right way to go, I'm not so sure now.

They are also using iron cutting tricks to generate horses->Cavarly, and I never do that but seeing how many Cavalry they now have, I think I'll start doing that. One other factor is that they still have not declared war on Japan yet, we had by this time, partly by mistake of my counting. Yet they have 20 turns before they do that, I think it will take them at least 10 before they even arrive at their first attack point - Aztecs.

I think the other civs got into the IA some time ago, so they may well face Rifles.

They may well beat us simply with the quantity of Cavalry they are building.

smackster

It is salpenter not iron, They cut salpenter to produce horses-Cavalry,
i believe cavalry needs salpenter not iron ..but it doesn't make any difference, I find this trick pretty neat and i think we should use it in future...

One thing that can slow down their conquest, unless they build bunch of cities on another continent, their wounded cavalries won't have place to rest and recover... But again with the number of cavalry they should be able to produce X-Team is quite dangerous...
i don't think they understand "Jason quickest win system" - they target our date to beat. (later edit: actually i am wrong, i've just read their last messages, they do understand)
Another team with a good progress - Tao team. The rest of variant teams is in quite dreadful situation, although it's too early to say anything for at least about two teams - Staff and Akots.

EDIT: Our fast win has nothing to do with their decision to run for conquest victory, I think i saw it in their thread very early in the game when desicion was made.

@Smackter: Don't blame yourself for counting mistakes, I was the one who declared early war i mustn't... I just hope I paid it off by beeing a target of angry Wotan :rolleyes:

MORE EDITS: Speaking of Tao team. I don't like what's going on another continent in Tao's game. It looks like Japanese and Azteks have had war going on for a long time. There are large junks of unsettled territory and lots of ruins.... It must also weaken AIs accross the ocean. Can make Tao's conquest a piece of cake comparing to what we had

It is salpenter not iron, They cut salpenter to produce horses-Cavalry,
i believe cavalry needs salpenter not iron ..but it doesn't make any difference, I find this trick pretty neat and i think we should use it in future...

@Smackter: Don't blame yourself for counting mistakes, I was the one who declared early war i mustn't... I just hope I paid it off by beeing a target of angry Wotan :rolleyes:

Actually Iron, and Satlpetr, as they are building horses, with Iron they would get Knights, with Saltpetr they get Cavalry. But we all know what we mean I think.

I don't blame myself, apart from the fact that it was my fault. :)

I don't think Team Tao can make it, they still haven't done much on Hadrian's Wall, which is horrible terrain for running a battle. They also haven't landed on the second continent yet. I wouldn't worry too much about the AI battles over there, there must have been some for us as well or we would have been swamped in counterattacks on the first turns of landing.

X-team will most likely run into rifles, and for certain cav counter attacks. They are going to have a rough time, and I'm not certain they'll make it.

Team mauer seems to be the only team that can beat us on score, they seem to be about 10 turns ahead of us for domination victory as well (not that it counts other then for other then scoring bonuses)

One area where we really outproduce x-team is gpt's, they are currently generating ~300gpt, while we managed ~500 at the same time and pushed this to 600+ after some MMing. Since they go HM/Cavalry with leo's they are however still ahead in raw spt/gpt to cavalry ratio. 30 shields and 50 gold for a cavalry...

I know for sure the other continent has rifles in the Xteam game, (there are ways of finding out) I think its ok for me to talk about that here right, as I'm not spoiling it for them as they shouldn't be looking here anyway.

It will be a very interesting battle.

Thread Spoiler 2 has been created.
But how will we post anything in that spoiler without giving out sensitive information to our competitors?

Thread Spoiler 2 has been created.
But how will we post anything in that spoiler without giving out sensitive information to our competitors?
They are only meant to read that once they have finished the game.

I'll start typing up some stuff tomorrow. Thinking of doing some minimaps this time, so will take some time :) Was thinking of an animated gif, cycling through the minimap at the turn shifts.

You take your time, I think we have plenty of time at the rate the others are going. Thanks for doing this.

Exploration
We missed out on contacting the other continent on our own, and instead Japan contacted America first. Apart from that, most exploration done after the ancient age was settling in the barbarian filled continent, which we dubbed Hadrian's Wall.

Contacts and declarations
470 AD - DoW Iroquois
650 AD - India is signed against us by America, who immediately sue for peace. Gee, that's nice..
700 AD - DoW Aztecs
**Needs to be fleshed out**

Trading and Research
Feudalism from GL in 270 BC
Monotheism and Engineering?
Japan 270/280 AD: Offer Monarchy and get contact with Iroquois, WM and 20g. Then sell our WM back for all their gold, before declaring war
Gunpowder from GL in 290 AD
Chivalry from GL in 310 AD
Theology from GL in 340 AD
Eductaion from GL in 450 AD
Chemistry self researched in 500 AD
Metallurgy self researched in 600 AD
Aztecs 630 AD: Offer Metallurgy and get Astronomy, WM and 6g.
Military Tradition self reserached in 680 AD
Navigation self reserached in 900 AD

Warfare
The Roman Monarchy is founded in 310 BC, and on the IBT one of our legions defend valiantly against a bowman, triggering a great age of prosperity for our people. Around this time, the main enemy offensive is centered around Byzantium, where we would kill a few enemies with elites every turn. We got a small shock in 210 AD, when Germany actually dispatches a sword army towards us! Some catapults and a horse dispatches it without losses the next turn though.

Greek Front
After some early skirmishes, including burning a Greek city on OUR land, it was time to take the fight to them. Our legions raze Sparta and Pharsalos in 110 BC, followed by the undefended Herakleia in 30 BC. Athens burns in 10 AD, after 2 turns of siege. Argos follows suit in 30 AD, leaving them with 1 city left in the core (which fell in 110 AD), far away from their new palace. Greece was a non-issue after this, and they finally find their Pax Romanum in 280 AD

French Front
Tours was founded on our side of the hills and was razed in 110 BC to make room for our expanded frontline. In 110 AD we took the fight to the French, and sacked Paris. There was a brief lull in the action as we refilled the lands, healed and killed stragglers, but 2 more core cities fell in 290 AD. Orleans falls in 370 AD, followed by Lyons in 380 AD. In 540 AD Marseille is razed, reducing France to a OCC in the middle of Babylon. Hardly a threat, and they exit the game in 630 with the help of a new army.

English Front
The Brits were rather quiet in the start of the game, but around 10 BC they came rolling over the hills in the west with several horses and archers. It was a bit hairy there, but we barely managed to fend them of without losing any worthless border cities. After neglecting them for some time, they finally got some attention in 260 AD when we razed Dover followed by Oxford in 290 AD. Warwick goes in 370 AD followed by York in 390 AD. London is razed in 490 AD after 30 years of intense warfare, including a lost legion army. Hastings follow suit in 530 AD. Nottinhgam puts up a fierce fight, but is finally razed in 630 AD. They are finally shown the door in 730 AD.

Babylon
Babylon didn't manage to do much for the first part of the game, just sending a steady trinkle of leaderfarming victims. In 510 AD we had finally moved up to their territory, and razed Ellippi. Uruk and Nineveh follows suit in 590 AD. Babylon itself is razed in 770 AD, and Ur in 790 AD. Akkad goes in 810 AD, and Babylon finds peace at last.

Russia
Russia was more of a nuissance then a threat, they had only 4 cities, of which 3 were tundra fishing villages. They managed to raze a newly founded city in 510 AD and a filler in 730 AD. We finally pay them back in 840 AD, burning down Yakutsk.
** Need more details **

America
America was the big shot on our continent, with a lot of good cities in fertile land. We destroy their colony of New Orleans in 560 AD, but we didn't start touching their core for a long time. Philly and San Francisco burns in 810 AD, and 3 more the next turn. Washington is burned to the ground in 840 AD. Their core falls easily, and in 950 AD they are reloacted to the small northern island. In 1160 they are cleared from this island as well, and have only one city on Hadrian's left.

Germany
Along with America, Germany was our biggest threat in the homeland. They were big, had good land, and were far away. Most of our losses during the homeland "mop-up" were inflicted by German and American knights. Their first city, Leipzig, burns in 820 AD and Frankfurt in 830 AD.

Hadrian's Wall (aka Barbie Island)
This strange island took us pretty long to colonize due to the terrain, but we started pretty early and always kept it as second priority. America and Germany both had a city here, but the others didn't have time to do much with it.

Japan
As the only civ from the other continent to be able to reach us, they kept landing settler pairs in the northern warzone, and the occasional longbow or other nuisance near the core. A samurai managed to raze a city on Hadrian's wall in 980 AD.

India
India was selected as the target of choice in the New World, and in 1040 AD we land forces at 2 places in the Indian core. They surprise us by not counter attacking, and in 1050 AD we clear the landing zone, razing Madras. The next turned we blitzed and razed Calcutta, Bangalore and Delhi. Bombay burns in 1090 AD, almost swallowing our cav army. We don't bother with the jungle filled peninsula, and continue towards the Iroquois.

Aztecs
The Aztecs managed to land a pretty fearful invasion force in 1010 AD, consisting of 3 Cavs, 2 Impis and a Longbow. They were quickly dispatched by newly built cavs though. After the inital blitz landing, the Aztecs managed to slow us down a great deal with counterattacking cavs.

Iroquois
After taking the easy Indian lands, Cattaraugus is razed in 1140 AD. Fierce counter attacks keep slowing us down, but Niagra Falls burn in 1230 AD.

End Game
After trudging through fierce counter attacks and some rifle defenders, in 1295 we are finally 7 tiles from domination.. Settle a city and get some culture expansion, and the result:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/sgotm3-finish_copy.jpg

Leaders:
210 BC - Sun Tzu
10 BC - Hanging Gardens
290 AD - Forbidden Palace
310 AD - Leonardo's Workshop
370 AD - Army
420 AD - Heroic Epic
440 AD - Sistine Chapel
480 AD (ca) - Army
790 AD - Army
920 AD - Magellan's Voyage
1060 AD - Army
1090 AD - Cathedral
1140 AD - Army
1150 AD - Army
1160 AD - Colisseum
1220 AD - Military Academy
There might be some more in the last turns, as we didn't really know what to do with them and might have failed to mention them.

Wonders
Sun Tzu - Complete in 170 BC
Hanging Gardens - Completed in 30 AD
Great Lighthouse - Built by Japan in 130 AD
Leonardo's Workshop - Complete in 350 AD (Leader)
JS Bach - Builtby Japan in 1090 AD

General Thoughts
Our second city was quickly brought up to speed as a 4-turn settler factory, which we kept churning throughout the entire game. We never stopped settling, even while fighting defensively we settled in the opposite direction, and partly along the frontlines.
We decided to go for a tight built, and had RCP at 3-6-10 around the start location.
The only questionable tactics we used, were some ship-chaining halfway combat settlers, but we never abandoned cities to get far into enemy territory. We did not move the palace or use resource disconnection.

** Insert Mini-map animation here **

----

Please offer any input/additions, as it's hard to write about the military campaigns I only witnessed from the turnlogs :) Especially the coquest of Russia and Germany is lacking, as is the final turns.
A complete contact/DoW list is also missing

Great report for the spoiler Tarkeel :goodjob: !!!

and here is the quote from M-B:

For the record, and because I can read all the threads team Smackster have not been lucky. Over the course of their game their luck has evened out IMO. They played extremely well in fact and fully deserve the result they achieved. They may have made one fatal error however, which now leaves them hanging on the edge of their seats for a while.


What was our fatal error???? :sad:

Going for domination. Having to build all your own settlers, not being able to build any cheap culture and having a best conquest date some 23 turns later than the best domination date made a domination victory a poor choice IMO.

This was absolutley deliberate on my part.

Going for Domination and not the obvious: Conquest. Secondly, the lack of focus we suffered from during the late mid game and end game, when we discussed ways to boost score when it was totally irrelevant. Third: not asking the question; do we need this?, when starting to build something.

Those are the three mistakes we made in order of importance.

Edit: If we had gone for Conquest we would not have needed gold for "culture" rushing so would probably have used the "connect/unconnect" resources to maximize output of Cavalry but since we did go for domination I would not regard this as a mistake (not doing so, that is).

Just checked out X-team, they have just landed (1090AD) on the other continent and found Rifles... Just as Smackster predicted (knew). The cost they had to bear for the first city raised: 6 cavalry... They have about 45 - 50 turns left to beat us though so I guess they will win anyway.

I hadn't actually checked the best dates, and (wrongly) assumes that conquest would have an earlier best date then domination. I also (wrongly) assumed that best dates would take xenophobic into account atleast...

I think X-team still will have a hard time beating us, as it will take clearing the other continent. I predict it will be very close in whatever way though.

Actually, you make a strong point Tarkeel. The best dates drop out of tha calculator automatically by counting the available food on the map, the number of different types of tile etc. and they are used to calculate the win bonuses for a straight game. These dates can't be changed and required the team to decide which victory condition would best suit the variant.

I am rewriting the "draft constitution" for SGOTM and I will emphasize this in there.

I'm having a look at the old spoiler threads, and compare these pics to our game:
http://home.hccnet.nl/g.den.broeder/ribannah/Civilization/gotm/gotm16/GOTM16_2150BC.jpg
http://home.hccnet.nl/g.den.broeder/ribannah/Civilization/gotm/gotm16/GOTM16_1000BC.jpg
http://home.hccnet.nl/g.den.broeder/ribannah/Civilization/gotm/gotm16/GOTM16_350AD.jpg

Notice the severe lack of mountainranges and neighbours? It looks like mad-bax did the old switcheroo on us.

Edit: After looking at the game.. The 2 continents appear to be swapped around, and the civs mixed around, and the current Aztec starting location is the old player location. The middle continent seems to have had some changes as well.

And it amazes me that it has taken soooo long for this to be discovered.

Yes. East and West were swapped and a start position selected to give the same minimap start position is in the original. The local terrain around the start was modified to be similar (but obviously different to anyone who could be bothered to make the comparison) to the original. The barb strip was redone and some sea tiles added, since there was only one "adjoining" sea tile in the original which allowed a lux deal to be broken simply by a barb galley ending its turn on that tile. I didn't think this was fair.

Greece was selected as the first opponent you would meet, simply to scare the hell out of you. Lots of opponents were selected on the start continent because normally in AWE maps are selected to severely limit the rate at which opponents are met. OTOH I made sure that the AI in the north could not reach OCN without a war, which helped everyone out I think. And the reason for the Xenophobic variant was for this reason. The local AI warred very early and lots of workers would hide in the capitals. This would give a huge advantage to vanilla players who could buy up to 10 workers for 250g

I also made it possible to build the iron works in Rome, since A) I wanted people to be scared of palace jumping in future SGOTM games, and B) once steam is reached it should always be possible to win, and therefore I decided this would help keep games within the 10 week target timeframe.

Greece was selected as the first opponent you would meet, simply to scare the hell out of you.

You must have had a good laugh when reading variant team threads re. this. We were as you so aptly put it scared stiff by it ourselves. "The worst possible first contact" IIRC... ;)

I guess I didn't really know the rules of the game and difference on Jason scores between Domination and Conquest...

Khhmm... isn't it my time to get pissed off??? :rolleyes:
I am a newbie, 1st time SGOTM player certainly can be excused. But you are all seasoned players, how could you miss such a fact and make a tragic mistake :mad: :mad: :mad: ARGHHH!!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

Well, actually i am not pissed off, but still i am happy to know that not just newbies but also some pros slip once in a while :lol:

The aztecs never built Impi's, seeing as how they are the Zulu UU. :crazyeye:

Going for domination. Having to build all your own settlers, not being able to build any cheap culture and having a best conquest date some 23 turns later than the best domination date made a domination victory a poor choice IMO.
.
As I posted previously I was playing for score for most of the game, and then when I realised that score didn't count for the golden variant, I read the first page of the maint thread that simply states fastest win (does not mention relative to Jason score). But even after everyone explained these simple facts to me, it still seemed potentially easier to get a dom win, at the point that we attacked the other continent. I thought we only needed 2/3rds of India to do it (which wasn't far off) and thought we had the military to get that quicker than Conquest. I'm sure now I was mistaken.

However, I for one will get pleasure in beating the score of some non-variants, even if Xteam with their O-so-superior tactics and no-luck-at-all :), actually do beat us to the fastest win relative to Jason dates.

Consider that none of us had met before this game, and didn't know each others abilities, I think for SGOTM4, we will eat Xteam for breakfast, lunch and dinner :)

smackster

First of all don't take all the blame... ;) everyone is guilty IMHO...
But we sure did have fun.

and Second,

Consider that none of us had met before this game, and didn't know each others abilities, I think for SGOTM4, we will eat Xteam for breakfast, lunch and dinner :)

smackster

Have you been reading my mind???? :mischief:

I read the first page of the maint thread that simply states fastest win (does not mention relative to Jason score).


Yes I know. It needs changing, and I will do it. There must be a 137 threads (at least) where the correct rule is stated though.

Poor Microbe team..... those guys totally messed up their variant game... :sad:

M-B should hire a lawyer to help him when setting up the game and the rules

Sorry for the double posts...
I am totally lost reading Microbe team thread..
But now it sounds to me that i was correct declaring that war on whoever it was in our game...
Oh, well, may be i am wrong again, but as i said i am lost :blush:

Nope! ;) Microbe still have it wrong... Still rambling about DoW 20 turns after intended DoW turn and what is more surprising keep taking about getting gpt deals for renegotiating peace??? I can't understand how 50+ players in other teams can get it but not this dude? 20 turns after the latest DoW, your DoW was 3 turns after so just 17 turns early... ;)

Microbe went too far....
He is loosing his temper.... he simply forgot it's just a game ov civilization not olympic games.....
Oh, well.... but he is certainly puts his entire team down and they have good players......
Smackster, You are a much better captain, be proud of it :goodjob:

XTeam has reached 1250AD....
They only captured a very small part of Aztecs land....
What was exact year they should reach to lose this game???
At this moment it looks like we still have a good chance to win this game..
Although, i don't like Staff team progress, those guys have a nice start and they may end up being a bigger danger than X-Team is.

Every other team is still out of competition.


EDIT: I think i found the answer on my question.. It's year 1425AD they should reach... well... we will see how it goes...

They (Xteam) do seem to have a lot of work to do still. Although they have generated serious amounts of Cavalry, they may find just the distance going through the AI culture will stop their galiant effort to defeat us. The staff team I'm not sure about yet.

smackster

According to a post in Xteam's thread the Jason best dates for this game are: 920AD for dom and 1150 for conquest. If this is correct they have until 1410AD for a win, 1415AD should be ours (score is used as a tiebreaker, right?)

I agree with Smackster, they might be in for a longer trek than they want. Also, the chance of a settler on a ship cruising the high seas might delay them... I had an unfortunate experience with such a ship a few Gotm's back, it delayed me for more than 10 turns before I finally tracked it down... :(

Well I'm pretty sure they wont be able to finish by that date, but I'll save the team congrats until a little later, when we are sure of it :)

you better hold on with congrats until we see how staff team is doing...
I must warn you, those guys are dangerous

Oh, any comments on the last spoiler? ;) I know several areas are weak, so please come with some suggestions :)

I went trough the spoiler once more....
It looks very good, not sure how much more we want to add to that...
I can't really think about anything, while sitting here in the office at work.
May be just a statement that we could never figure out the barbarian riddle.
Again, it looks very good to me...

Good job Tarkeel!!!! :goodjob:

Sorry for not posting suggestions before, but I have been travelling. What I'd like to see maybe is some more discussion about how we could have improved our date. Discuss the decision to go for Domination and not conquest. Certainly I feel that if we'd just covered the choke point to the south (Iro/Aztec) and concentrated forces on Japan we would have finished earlier.

We probably could also benefit landing on Aztecs land instead of Indias. the same way the X-Team did..
Although it's not a shortest trip across the ocean, but in that case we would have only one front to fight and would not need to stretch our forces in different directions.
Aztecs were the strongest civ who gave as most problems and if we had hit them first crippling their economy we possibly could do a faster win, since, i doubt we would have that many cavalries coming from India and Iroqueses... and japanese would be simple just far away to be a major annoyance....

Looks like Xteam got it by one turn, although we need to wait for Mad-back to count the coins i think.

Very unlucky. Who would have guessed it could be so close. I'll have to come up with a tie breaker I think for future games.

Are you guys going to stay together for the next game?

I hope we stay together...
@M-B: Your old avatar was so much better, i can't even say what's the new one mean
and very unlucky what??? please explain :)

Everybody hates my new avatar :(

I wanna be mean... not cuddly :p

I think I'll have to change back, it just doesn't fit me does it?

I think you are unlucky because you finished the game so early compared to the other teams. It sets a target and allows other teams to form a strategy to duck under that target. Had you played slower, then the other teams would have been too far into their games to change tack quite as much.

@Team....
I think the next game we should use a little new strategy... Even if we finish much earlier we must not upload our save file until our main competitors do..
Although, i still think people lurk and spy on others threads, it's just too easy to do it undetected.

We definitely should use resource disconnect tactic in future. I also used it in current GOTM and with tremendeous success. Too bad i won't be able to submit this game.. I was so stupid. Somehow (well, i had few drinks that night) I loaded classic GOTM save file into conquests and haven't noticed it until i was just few turns until ending the game at 3am in the morning :wallbash:.

I think the tie-breaker should go to the earliest finish (in real time) so that we do get a little bonus for finishing first.

We did suggest for a time, to hold our final post, but I think teams would have worked it out anyway.

I don't mind setting them a target, adds more fun to the competitive element.

I for one will happily play in the next SG with this team, if they will have me.

smackster

.... i still think people lurk and spy on others threads, it's just too easy to do it undetected ...



Not true. The people I have sent snotty e-mails to bear testimony to that, even those that try "invisible mode". :mischief:

@Team....
I think the next game we should use a little new strategy... Even if we finish much earlier we must not upload our save file until our main competitors do..
Although, i still think people lurk and spy on others threads, it's just too easy to do it undetected.

You know that I disagree, I think we should play our best game, and post our final save when we finish. If somebody else finishes first then that gives us a target. For the good of this SG, it adds a competitive element to the game, and increases the enjoyment overall. There is no doubt that we would have beaten Xteam if they hadn't known our finish date, but that does not matter, giving everyone a target added a lot to this SG, IMHO.

Smackster

The game was basically lost when we did not press home a victory after landing on the other continent. Aggressive settler placement would have helped here. Also 7 tiles to go on next to last turn cost us the turn we lost by, had the settler intended for the "northern corner" on Hadrians been sent there and the coastal tiles been left to the settlers on ships off the coast this would have been won at least one turn earlier. OTOH, many a small mistake adds up to this result, but overall we played a great game and I am more impressed with the "small" difference between us and the non-variant leader. Had we continued to play for points we might have beaten them, that would have been something. Better score than the non-variant winner (if they win)

We will just have to win the laurel in the next game... ;)

Another key mistake we made, and its easy for me to say this in hindsight, but its worth looking at.

We should have held the choke point between India and Aztec with an army in a city. Instead we went south of the choke point and had to use all our armies (plus many Cavalry) to hold those cities. With an army at that choke point the Aztec/Iro Cavalry would have had to wander past, now we could have bombarded them with our cannons and killed them with the army. Of course we disbanded our cannons :)

Now the rest of our armies and Cavalry would have wiped out India/Japan in no time.

edit: one day I'll set this up and play it, but I'm so far behind in the current GOTM's, I wonder if I'll ever catch up

You guys played a great game. You also played honourably and didn't use any of the 'exploits' that we did. I put 'exploits' in quotation marks because the tactics we used are exploits as far as I'm concerned but my team mates and the GOTM rules say otherwise.

Basically we took advantage of the remote palace corruption bug. We palace jumped and then only had cities at RCP=6 from the new palace allowing about a dozen cities at RCP of 6 or less to our FP to have rank 1 corruption. That essentially boosted our old core's production. We only partially developed a 2nd core.

We used the resource cutting exploit to disconnect saltpeter and build 30S, 50G cavalry. A leader gave us Leo's so it allowed the cheap upgrading of horsemen. Without Leo's the tactic is not so effective as cash is an issue.

We used the ship chaining exploit to surge our cavs on the other continent to hasten the end.

All that BS and we still only beat you by 1 turn. You certainly won the moral victory in my opinion. This is one SG that I'm certainly not proud of.

Nicely played team smackster.

Adrian

I'd love to play with the team on the next one :) I might have an interesting proposition for us ;)

Another key mistake we made, and its easy for me to say this in hindsight, but its worth looking at.

We should have held the choke point between India and Aztec with an army in a city. Instead we went south of the choke point and had to use all our armies (plus many Cavalry) to hold those cities. With an army at that choke point the Aztec/Iro Cavalry would have had to wander past, now we could have bombarded them with our cannons and killed them with the army. Of course we disbanded our cannons :)

Now the rest of our armies and Cavalry would have wiped out India/Japan in no time.

edit: one day I'll set this up and play it, but I'm so far behind in the current GOTM's, I wonder if I'll ever catch up

I agree with you, this was probably the most costly mistake. Not thinking about this was a bit shortsighted of us. I guess we all thought the game was "over" and lost the touch. We used the enemy unit "channeling" to good effect in the opening phases of the campaigns vs. the northern tribes on our starting continent. Chosing where to fight was essential to the low casualties we sustained then and should have been repeated later in the game...

I'd love to play with the team on the next one :) I might have an interesting proposition for us ;)

Something you want to discuss through PM's? What could that be, we have no clue as to what the game is about yet???

You guys played a great game. You also played honourably and didn't use any of the 'exploits' that we did. I put 'exploits' in quotation marks because the tactics we used are exploits as far as I'm concerned but my team mates and the GOTM rules say otherwise.

Basically we took advantage of the remote palace corruption bug. We palace jumped and then only had cities at RCP=6 from the new palace allowing about a dozen cities at RCP of 6 or less to our FP to have rank 1 corruption. That essentially boosted our old core's production. We only partially developed a 2nd core.
I didn't realise you did that, I just read the thread when you did.

I'm confused as this looks clearly like the use of a banned exploit. It seemed to be justified as there was a cow near that new palace location.

I've re-read the thread on how this exploit is banned and by the exact wording I think you are ok, but the use here is clear intent to make a gain through the the rank corruption exploit, which is clearly banned from my perspective. The palace was relocated to an area and no cities were built within 6 squares, making many cities around the FP rank 1. If this bug did not exist then obviously you would not have done that and to me that is the intent of the ban, forget the exact wording.

Maybe we need a black laurel, for the team with the best use of exploits.

smackster

I didn't realise you did that, I just read the thread when you did.

I'm confused as this looks clearly like the use of a banned exploit. It seemed to be justified as there was a cow near that new palace location.

I've re-read the thread on how this exploit is banned and by the exact wording I think you are ok, but the use here is clear intent to make a gain through the the rank corruption exploit, which is clearly banned from my perspective. The palace was relocated to an area and no cities were built within 6 squares, making many cities around the FP rank 1. If this bug did not exist then obviously you would not have done that and to me that is the intent of the ban, forget the exact wording.

Maybe we need a black laurel, for the team with the best use of exploits.

smackster

As I stated already in our thread, I have a different opinion.
Everybody is exploiting the rank corruption bug, by using RCP at all, or building tight cores around the FP.
Or in normal games by jumping the palace into a loose build AI settlement.
The location of the palace was justified, especially in the variant with us not having the power to produce enough settlers, while still having enough military. It was also the only safe location at this time and not having two cores as early as possible is just bad play in Vanilla/PtW.
I would have liked more cities on the middle continent for our new core, but as the events progressed there was no time for that.
Edit:
I just looked in a save again. We had six cities on our first ring around the capital. Other locations in Greece, which was the only sound place at that time, would have supported much less cities on a tighter first ring (3-4 cities), due to the many mountains around.
This would have resulted also in quite low corruption on the now rank 4-5 instead of rank 1 cities around the FP (BTW we are talking here of 4 cities, which had a profit). At the same time cities farther from the FP would get a little lower corruption. The net result on the FP core would be quite low, but we would have forfeited several good city locations around the new capital.

Right, but RCP is not banned, and exploiting rank corruption is. Don't take this the wrong way, I don't really care about your use of that, and I don't mind about your victory, however close to the edge of exploitation it was :) I'm more interested in our team having a good time, and we certainly did for much of this.

Tactically we had some good play, but also made some major blunders (if only I could count to 20), and didn't even know the scoring system (well that's me, I was playing for Jason score for most of the game). I was actually hoping we could beat the Jason score of the non-variants, and I still think that was within our grasp.

As a team we should be proud of our game.

as for the end result...
I don't care about palace jumps, our core cities did a good job as it was but
if we only knew/used the trick with resource disconnection.... We would definetely 1000% absolutely positive finished this game many many turns earlier.... Personally I never knew about this technique, although so obvious and simple it was never described in War Academy. (at least i never found it)

I think this trick is so powerful it could be (and may be should be) added in the list of banned exploits for the same reason rank corruption is banned.
AI will never use this trick and it gives a human player just too much of advantage over AIs.
M-B should probably rule on this for the next SGOTM.

One thing for sure whether it is banned or not, X-Team won't be able to use all these tricks just by themselves next time. :devil2:

@M-B: Do you think you could pressure other teams to hurry up with this game... It's getting boring and I'd rather not have delays with the next SGOTM. :mischief:

As a team we should be proud of our game.

as for the end result...
I don't care about palace jumps, our core cities did a good job as it was but
if we only knew/used the trick with resource disconnection.... We would definetely 1000% absolutely positive finished this game many many turns earlier.... Personally I never knew about this technique, although so obvious and simple it was never described in War Academy. (at least i never found it)

I'm glad I read your post. I stated in Team Mauer's spoiler that we used this for knight/cav upgrades. Reading your comment made me rethink, and then I finally realised we didn't use it for this. I went back and checked our thread just to make sure. We used this in prep for legions though.
but overall we played a great game and I am more impressed with the "small" difference between us and the non-variant leader.
Indeed it is a small difference, and something definatley to be proud of :goodjob: . I know the variant teams aren't really considering the non variant teams, but I am also proud of our teams finish. Considering we had 4 relative beginners, and 1 deity level. But I think there is no way we could have come close to your score had we opted for the variant. Maybe somebody can invent the "Variant Jason Calculator"!

our core cities did a good job as it was but
if we only knew/used the trick with resource disconnection.... We would definetely 1000% absolutely positive finished this game many many turns earlier....
It was known by our team, I have used it in several GOTM's in the past. I thought about it in this game but believed we needed the gold for culture rushing in new cities rather than upgrading units. Maybe a mistake? but since we went for domination I thought the units we got from normal production would be enough to secure the territory. Had we gone for conquest we would probably have done it too.

I had a look at the Xteam thread after the discussion above. I see no real exploiting done by them, OTOH I have never done a palace jump in any game and will probably never do one since I believe this to be an exploit in "my own book". But it is not considered to be a complete exploit only partially so, if done in a really abusive way. This might be something to reconsider for GOTM's in the future, having levels of allowed abuse might be wrong either the technique is banned or it is allowed. Not as it is now with a vague distance rule. Since there are players that will read and play games from a perspective of what is explicitely disallowed and everything else goes.

As an example, no critisism intended on Xteam who used the argument in their thread, but on the phenomenon created by vague rules. It saddens me deeply when you have such a low opinion of the CFC collective so you have to play the game to the limit of what is not disallowed because you argue that everyone else does it. I surely hope this is not the case and that you are in a minority with this view of everyone bending the rules to the utmost. If not I have surely lost a lot of my entusiasm for CFC and the GOTM's. This vague fingerpointing is, in my book, the worst possible excuse for behaving in a certain way. Blaming others in uncertain terms for having to do something is no excuse just a poor way out of something you really feel is wrong but need to rationalise your way out of. Like an athlete getting caught for using performance enhancing drugs and blaming it on "everyone else use them so I had to..."

I had a look at the Xteam thread after the discussion above. I see no real exploiting done by them, OTOH I have never done a palace jump in any game and will probably never do one since I believe this to be an exploit in "my own book". But it is not considered to be a complete exploit only partially so, if done in a really abusive way. This might be something to reconsider for GOTM's in the future, having levels of allowed abuse might be wrong either the technique is banned or it is allowed. Not as it is now with a vague distance rule. Since there are players that will read and play games from a perspective of what is explicitely disallowed and everything else goes.

I think that the thread for rank corruption argued about this, but as there are some good tactical reasons for the palace jump found that banning that will remove a tactical element from the game. This leads onto my next comment below.


As an example, no critisism intended on Xteam who used the argument in their thread, but on the phenomenon created by vague rules. It saddens me deeply when you have such a low opinion of the CFC collective so you have to play the game to the limit of what is not disallowed because you argue that everyone else does it. I surely hope this is not the case and that you are in a minority with this view of everyone bending the rules to the utmost. If not I have surely lost a lot of my entusiasm for CFC and the GOTM's. This vague fingerpointing is, in my book, the worst possible excuse for behaving in a certain way. Blaming others in uncertain terms for having to do something is no excuse just a poor way out of something you really feel is wrong but need to rationalise your way out of. Like an athlete getting caught for using performance enhancing drugs and blaming it on "everyone else use them so I had to..."
I certainly agree with this part of your post, but the bottom line to me is that we can't get wrapped around winning too much. There is no doubt if we had not posted our score they would not have beaten us, or if they had posted their end date before us, we would have beaten it. If we were ultimately competitive then we'd stop posting the scores and have password linked threads, with digitally certified self destructing saves (now there's an idea), but as I've said many times, this is about enjoying our game, and I think we will regardless.

Maybe our team can create a charter and stick to it.

No, do not misunderstand me now. I do not feel Xteam violated any rules they beat us fairly. The red flag for me was the "everybody else does it, so I have to do it too" argument. That is something that does put me in overdrive. I just hate it in RL as well as in games. That is just another way of saying, "I know it is wrong, but I still do it because..." Is there anything more reprehensible than hiding behind such an argument. I would find a way to sack an employee that used that argument to justify his actions. I know there are companies that condone such behavior but they would probably condone insider trading too. ;)

It was concluded that the only way to avoid the palace rank exploit, was to ban the forbidden palace.

@Trakeel: What was your proposition by the way? The illusive comment you made in your post intrigues me...

No, do not misunderstand me now. I do not feel Xteam violated any rules they beat us fairly. The red flag for me was the "everybody else does it, so I have to do it too" argument. That is something that does put me in overdrive. I just hate it in RL as well as in games. That is just another way of saying, "I know it is wrong, but I still do it because..." Is there anything more reprehensible than hiding behind such an argument. I would find a way to sack an employee that used that argument to justify his actions. I know there are companies that condone such bahavior but they would probably condone insider trading too. ;)
Yes, I see, but everyone else didn't do it :), only they. Well I'm sure we will stay above that kind of attitude.

I agree that that GOTM rules needed to be in such a way as it can't be policed, but really the intent to abuse the corruption exploit is there in their spoiler. It wasn't a mistake, that was the plan.

Anyway, its not problem, lets get over it and move on. Sorry for going on about it.

Wotan: I'll say it when we start the next game ;) I made a vague allusion towards it earlier though.

@Tarkeel, so I have to wade through 36 pages of posts to hopefully find this "vague allusion". Lucky for you you are hundreds of miles from me at the moment... ;)

Hundreds? Are you on vacation then? Not that far across the border you know... ;)

Trondheim here btw

Malmo so quite far actually, I have a couple of friends/former colleagues from Trondheim though... Per-Sverre Svendsen (his family have had a long history in politics AFAIK he used to live on a street w. the same name in T. named after his grandfather?)) and Line Varskog (used to work at Telenor). I have no idea of your age though... Tröndermål, otoh... unable to understand it... ;)

Nah, I speak Bergenish ;) I'm just studying here :)

Well, being from Bergen, the summer we have endured must have been to your liking... ;)

"Bergenish" I didn't even no such a language existed....

So little i know about Scandinavian countries :cry:

well... Astrid Lindgren was my fav writer when i was a boy and "Karlsson-on-the-roof" is the best children book ever :-)

but as for the Norway, I guess, i know too little about this country... :sad:

Bergenish is a dialect, so you haven't missed anything ;) A very special dialect though

This is from team Mauer thread... Looks like they've got an answer to the riddle.

Our 13 letters are correct. Mad-bax says I'm free to share the answer with all of you, so I'll do so by PM. If any of you don't want me to spoil it, DON'T READ THE PM! :nuke:
I hope Team Mauer stays together for the next SGOTM, otherwise I'm scattering the precious knowledge to the four corners of the Earth....

OK guys, the next Gotm is announced, will the team stay together as previously discussed? And if so variant, or not? Does not matter to me so I will go with whatever is decided re. variant or not.

I'm up for it :) Both variant and same team.

Variant and the same team.... I vote for the same captain as well. (only if he reads all the rules thoroughly this time that is, the rest of the boys are too lazy to do it :mischief: )

Oops.... there is a slight problem....

Please note that self-constructed teams are restricted to a maximum of four members to which I may add one or two players for balancing purposes.


There were 5 of us..... We would have either to press MB and let us play or boot one person out... :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad:

We might argue that the team was "Mad-Bax" constructed for Sgotm3, never really self-constructed... We just want him to "construct" the same team again... ;)

So, It's variant again! Great!!!

@Wotan: That's a good argument
I sent a private message to MB asking if we are ok to go based on what Wotan has argued for...
I hope we will hear from Smackster and DH soon, but i am almost sure they would be on the same side

Sorry, double post but it is a good one

This is what M-B said:

Teams that have played previously can stay together. I would only be involved if you wanted to form a new team, or change the makeup of the present team.

You are good to go.

lets wait for the SMackster and DH and then sign in together in the main forum

I'm in for it, but haven't read the announcement yet, so will let you know my thoughts on the variant

Variant is a relaxed 5CC

Lets do the 5CC, should certainly be easier on the city micro management.

I do remember my start on this one, so somebody else can take the lead, well its somebody elses turn anyway.

I think the order should be

Wotan
Dmanakho
Tarkeel
Smackster
DH (if he's going to play, or replacement)

I am okay with playing order.

I've paged DH, so hopefully he shows up in time.

I've never played 5CC, I guess main goal is to grab as much land as possible at the beginning so each city can use max number of tiles possible.

Lets wait for the new threads to be created, Tarkeel promised to tell us about his new killer strategy for this game.

Sorry for double posting but this is bloody brilliant, just couldn't stop laughing loud
http://agentprovocateur.ld.mediawave.co.uk/agent_provocateur/lost_control_high.asx
:)

OK, variant then and I take the first 20. Let's save the strategy discussion for the new thread. Seee you all there... :)

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:


He He. I've been itching to look at team Smackster's thread for a looooong time! Now Peanut has finally finished and I can surf a little. Great job guys!

Good luck, you have a lot of posts to read, and some off-posts :)

Nah, I am just having some innocent fun :crazyeye:
...and... write down the number of visits to our thread... Trust me, it will be doubled by tomorrow night by all those sneaky lurkers :) , so there won't be much left to hide

paranoid? probably just all that time wrapped up in an always war xenophobic variant i guess! ;)

just jokin, mate.

Dmanakho is our in-house paranoid, yep :p

Yes, i am paranoid, beeing in network administration and security business for many years, i've became really paranoid... :lol:

Yes, i am paranoid, beeing in network administration and security business for many years, i've became really paranoid... :lol:
Except when you're giving out info in other team's threads. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :joke:

He He!!
Yes, you are right.... I am not only official team paranoic but also serve as a Chief blabber mouth :D

Sgotm4 thread now active, please report in!