SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

We'd have to move a second island city 1NE of the corn, but yeah, I was thinking we could use the (eventual) happiness resource.

Any objection to me switching back to Slavery for 5 turns? We have a bigger need to whip than run specialists at the moment.

ChrisShaffer · Apr 15, 2012

I trust your judgement on the civics switch. It's nice that we are spiritual.

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

ChrisShaffer said:
I trust your judgement on the civics switch. It's nice that we are spiritual.

Indeed. And thanks. I will be back shortly after I rush our remaining (eastern) forces in the general direction of Satsuma (which we can't actually see yet, but from the looks of the terrain, might be the perfect city to gift back to Toku after we infect with Hindusim).

Oh, and Elizagawa has built the Sistine Chapel in London... :crazyeye:

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

OK - I advanced to the next turn, and I am pausing here for 2 reasons:

1. We are the worst enemy of Shakagawa, who adopted Vassalage (i.e. has Feudalism), and (Edit: Hatty) has the following stack near our border:

Spoiler :

2. Another pause condition, Hammy is starting to send cats our way. Only one, so far, though:

Spoiler :

I have not moved our settler or switched civics yet.

I will upload the save so you can all take a look. (Edit: Save uploaded)

ChrisShaffer · Apr 15, 2012

Wow, that'a a nice stack. Six catapults (gulp).

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

ChrisShaffer said:
Wow, that'a a nice stack. Six catapults (gulp).

In a glass-half-full kind of world, one might think that she was annoyed that Toku had switched religions, and saw Tokyo (which was Toku's until last turn) as easy pickings since we were dismantling the Japanese empire.

On the other hand we might be in kind of a sticky situation. Maybe we should try extracting peace from Toku now, and then maybe gift Tokyo back to him? I think I could have a Hindu missionary there in a couple of turns.

Xcalibrator · Apr 15, 2012

Oh crap. Cats and lots of chariots against our axes would not be good. :eek:

Do not play any more! We need to think about things veeery carefully. Tomorrow.

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

Xcalibrator said:
Oh crap. Cats and lots of chariots against our axes would not be good. Do not play any more! We need to think about things veeery carefully. Tomorrow.

Totally agreed. Which is why I stopped.

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

Upload log:

Spoiler :

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

Autolog:

Spoiler :

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

And my turn report:

Turn 130: Send GG to Bollywood. Switch build in Bollywood to Hindu monastery. FW sent to road cows. Switch Pata from marble to bananas. Switch Holy Cow and Drona to finish cats. Move archer from Osaka to Kyoto.

IBT: Finish CS, start Sailing. Tokugawa converts to Islam.

Turn 131: Move stack into Kyoto. Move cat from Holy Cow toward Vijay, move cat from Drona toward Kyoto. Cows connected. FW move to cottage in Delhi, and quarry marble in Pata. 2 pop whip granary in Pata, overflow into cat. . 2 pop whip Christian temple in Holy cow (we had 3 unhappy citizens), overflow into cat.

IBT: CoL stolen by enemy infiltrators (Toku or Hatty), a spy was captured near Vijay. Hatty adopts Bureaucracy. Finish Sailing.

Turn 132: Start Paper, move research slider to 0% (0 gpt). Switch build and whip galley in Delhi. Switch civics to Bureaucracy, CS, and OR (now at +6 gpt at 0% research). Run an artist in Osaka. Move a mini-stack (4 cats, 5 axes, and an archer) 2NE out of Kyoto into Japanese territory (still can’t see a city). A horse archer, 2 axes, and a spear from Hammy are 2 tiles from Vijay. Switch build in Vijay to finish spear next turn. Move WB to crabs in Pata.

IBT: Hammy will negotiate peace but he wants Vijay as a condition, I don’t bother to pause for team feedback and tell the foul beast to return to the depths from wence he came. Babylonian HA pillages Vijay’s wheat farm.

Turn 133: Finish granary in Bombay, start Hindu temple. Finish cat in Pata, moves toward Vijay, start Hindu temple. Move FW onto the galley in Delhi, settler will be done next turn. Fishing boat works crabs in Pata. I can see Tokyo. It is defended by 2 axes, a sword, and an archer.
IBT: Babylonian HA pillages cottage 1N of Vijay.

Turn 134: Finish colosseum in Bollywood, start Hindu missionary. Finished settler in Delhi, start FW. Finish Christian temple in Holy Cow, start cat. Move the rest of the stack out of Kyoto. Initial stack start bombarding Kyoto. Galley with settler and worker moves out of Delhi.

IBT: The Sistine Chapel built in a far away land (in London)

Turn 135: Move stack across river to attack Tokyo next turn. We can see Hatsegawa’s border to the NE of Tokyo.

IBT: Stumbled upon a spy near Drona.

Turn 136: Finish Hindu missionary in Bollywood, moves to Osaka, start another. Kyoto comes out of revolt, run an artist. Finish bombarding Tokyo. We attack and capture Kyoto, but lost 2 axes with >80% odds. Hammy’s stack appears to be retreating back toward Nippur. Disembark settler and worker on island 1W of sheep.

Current conditions:

Tokyo:

Spoiler :

Kyoto:

Spoiler :

Osaka:

Spoiler :

Pataliputra:

Spoiler :

Holy Cow:

Spoiler :

Vijay:

Spoiler :

Bombay:

Spoiler :

Delhi:

Spoiler :

Drona:

Spoiler :

Bollywood:

Spoiler :

Relations:

Spoiler :

Info:

Spoiler :

Techs:

Spoiler :

Victory Conditions:

Spoiler :

AP Members:

Spoiler :

Demographics:

Spoiler :

Deckhand · Apr 15, 2012

Holy Cow has an artist that should be selling his paintings.
Need to run some merchants to save our economy.

Perhaps send army east to finish off Toku? Gift that city (Satsuma?) to Haty for peace? Hatty looks nasty. She can take Tokyo in two turns and I don't know why she wouldn't.
Do we want Toku gone or is it better to keep Egypt smaller?
We are at a point where I might stop playing. :eek:

Egypt & Babylon and Zululand :OHMY:

I'm guessing we would need to sail all around to get to England.
Infecting all ten civ's will be difficult. Finding the isle civ could be impossible. We will have closed borders everywhere. Killing England will be very hard. My glass is half empty.

There is a fog graphic glitch in my game, NE of Bombay in the middle of England -occasional flash of light - like a volcano or active mine. Which wonder or improvement does this? I see it when I scroll the map over to it. I think that is the location of London.

Spoiler :

Five weeks until the deadline.

Trystero · Apr 15, 2012

Deckhand said:
Holy Cow has an artist that should be selling his paintings.

Holy Cow should not be running an artist. Stupid governor. I didn't notice that.

Need to run some merchants to save our economy.

Yes, but we should have enough cash to run a deficit for a few turns. I still think we need to whip in Kyoto and the temple in Vijay.

Perhaps send army east to finish off Toku? Gift that city (Satsuma?) to Haty for peace? Hatty looks nasty. She can take Tokyo in two turns and I don't know why she wouldn't.

To be clear, we aren't at war with Hatty yet. I think if we sent our army to the east, there would be nothing between Hatty and us. We might be forced to consider making peace with Toku now, and gifting Tokyo to Hatty if she declares.

And Hammy still wants Vijay for peace.

Do we want Toku gone or is it better to keep Egypt smaller?
We are at a point where I might stop playing. Egypt & Babylon and Zululand :OHMY:

Yeah, exactly.

Deckhand · Apr 16, 2012

Deckhand said:
There is a fog graphic glitch in my game, NE of Bombay in the middle of England -occasional flash of light - like a volcano or active mine. Which wonder or improvement does this? I see it when I scroll the map over to it. I think that is the location of London.

Tried taking screen shots. This is the best. You can see where it is on the map. Bright light, followed by dimmer that I captured.

EDIT: added second picture, what secret project are the English doing in the fjord?

EDIT2: True, we aren't at war with Egypt. Yet.
That stack doesn't look like it is just on "maneuvers". And serious wishful thinking to believe we aren't the target. Good news is our stack can still move away. Don't go anywhere where we could be attacked immediately.

vra379971 · Apr 16, 2012

My thought is that the Egyptian warriors are indeed on maneuvers.

That said, don't think it matters in this case. We cannot hold Tokyo without major losses, so if she attacks, she attacks. We are better off leaving the city empty and retreating to Kyoto. Both our military, and limiting pillaging of a nice cottage city would like that. In the meantime, we see about macemen. Then longbows. Then castles. Basically, settle in for a very lengthy multi-era siege in north and south. The rest of the country will build up the economy, and a city raider based counterstrike force.

kcd_swede · Apr 16, 2012

This is indeed an interesting game. I think any victory will be tough even if we don't try to cut corners to do it fastest. :eek:

OK... first question: when did Hatsegawa go into WHEOOHRN? If just recently, we could still have some time. I doubt it though, I'd expect a DOW IBT or the stack moves to neutral territory next to Tokyo and DOWs us the following turn.

A military problem like this is best addressed with diplomacy. And militarily there is no point trying to defend cities that we will lose anyhow.

Here is an idea: lets get peace with Hammy. He wants VJ, but I am pretty sure he'd take a tech instead. Its probably worth it... he won't be able to trade it away, at least.

Lets assume that we cannot hold Tokyo. That makes it trade bait, but it also makes it imperitive to infect it with Hindu before we give it over to someone. More importantly, it means we REALLY need to PILLAGE IT TO THE GROUND. Great source of income, and we don't want all those improvements working against us anyhow.

Toku is only offering peace for peace. Looks like we lost too many units in the battles, I guess, or else we don't threaten one of his cities at the moment. Or perhaps the war with Hammy gives him hope. If we make peace with hammy for a tech (CoL?), perhaps we can get a tech from Toku (but I doubt it).

Kyoto is much more defensible than Tokyo, but I doubt it can hold up to that Egyptian stack that is coming. Infect Kyoto as well. Eventually Toku will close borders with Hatty (unless they are getting 'common war foe' bonus).

I think we could use one of these soon:

2. Trade Embargo against X
Prerequisite: One Full Member must be trading with X, and X must be a Non-Member.
If passed, all Members now have Closed Borders with X and all trade agreements with X not made within the last 10 turns are cancelled.

3. Force Peace on X
Prerequisite: Civ X must be a Full Member and at war with a Member.
If passed, a 10 turn Cease Fire is implemented among all Members.

I think resolution #2 would be active if we get Toku a Hindu city and are gifting an excess resource to Hatty. We could then force closed borders, if Toku has a hindu city. So we could conceivably infect Tokyo (while pillaging it), then gift it to Toku (make peace first, this way we get the +diplo for liberating a city). Then since it is zero turns till the next vote, and we are civ X (full member trading with non-member Hatty), then we, Toku, and Shaka would all get closed borders with Hatty and negative modifier for 'you stopped trading'. However, I am unsure if 10 turns must pass before our gift stops giving, and if that prevents the resolution for 10 turns.

Of course, resolution #3 is probably the one to aim for. All that requires is that we give a hindu city to Toku, or Hammy... or let Hatty take an infected Tokyo. Then we are Civ X and we are at war with someone who has hindu. Unless they defy, we get peace (10t) with Shaka and whoever else who has Hindu.

If we really have cajones, we can DOW shaka, get the resolution, and have peace with all hindu members. But Shaka would probably defy in that scenario, and... well... at the moment it would only get us peace with Shaka if it passed. :crazyeye:

Anyhow.... Either of these resolutions will buy us some time.

What do we do with the time? Settle the north Island city to infect and gift to Hammy? Settle something else to gift to someone else?

Crank up the espionage to (a) protect us from more AI missions, and (b) to steal our way to near tech parity (since getting big enough to become a tech whore is not going to happen), and (c) convert people to hindu or out of Theo/free relig as needed for religious VC. Meanwhile use the AP to the max to aid diplomacy. Find vacant sites to settle and gift as needed.

I have a feeling we are going to get a backdoor win, or we will lose. But in any case, we ought to play to our strengths (the AP) to buy us time in the short-term and jam the AI-AI diplomacy in the longterm.

I think converting (by esp or trade) Toku to Hindu will be useful. That way we can force open borders with everyone who has Hindu, to aid exploration and spreading.

4. Open Borders
Prerequisite: The Resident or a Full Member currently does not have an Open Border treaty with one or more Full Members.
If passed, all Members now have Open Borders with each other.

Anybody else see some cheese here that might be useful?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=319452

Also, we should get machinery so that we can build Maces... its about time for that. And its one the way to Optics. I doubt we can get a GE to bulb it, though. Anyone know if a GM bulb can be managed?

Good job Trystero! :goodjob:

Who is up next? We can figure that out while we figure out what to do.

Trystero · Apr 16, 2012

kcd_swede said:
This is indeed an interesting game. I think any victory will be tough even if we don't try to cut corners to do it fastest.

OK... first question: when did Hatsegawa go into WHEOOHRN? If just recently, we could still have some time. I doubt it though, I'd expect a DOW IBT or the stack moves to neutral territory next to Tokyo and DOWs us the following turn.

From my screenshots, Hatty was WHEOOHRN since at least turn 130. I have saves from the previous turns, so I can check after work tonight, but it's been at least 6 turns. She shares a border with Toku, and his declining power might have made him a target.

More thoughts later, but I came to the same conclusion about abandoning Tokyo. Kyoto is very defensible, but we need IW for military and Currency for our economy soon.

Xcalibrator · Apr 16, 2012

All this religio-diplo-subterfuge makes my head spin so I hope someone else can keep it straight. A Great Merchant will bulb Alphabet, or Metal Casting after that. Paper comes after that, then Monarchy. Machinery might come after that, but things get hazy with all the possibilities. It sure would be nice to be able to extort at least one tech out of Toku--darned annoying that his mood has changed so quickly.

I should have a decent chunk of time tonight or tomorrow during the day (gotta stay with the kids tomorrow for school vacation) to look things over. I should have useful things to say about MM and builds but I'm foundering on grand strategy. A pity we didn't take SH's suggestions on spreading religion to Toku seriously enough to get some missionaries ready faster; I don't know that we'll have the opportunity again for quite awhile, since it doesn't look like we can drag out the war much longer. Life isn't fair! :cry:

Dang, I'd really like to know if the other teams are facing these... challenges.

Hatty will never decide to DoW at Pleased--any way to know when/if she was ever Cautious with Toku? Regardless, I think we have to assume she's going to attack us.

vra379971 · Apr 16, 2012

This is sorta moving out of my level. By all means, to those who wish to exploit the AP...godspeed.

In anycase...Sankore and some ESP will make us fly in tech, and that's a given. So, my question then is this - can we retreat to Kyoto, build a horde of city defense promoted archers to defend the northern and eastern 'gates', tech up till our horde is unstoppable, and go forth?

Xcalibrator · Apr 16, 2012

I don't think even Sankore will make us fly, and the cost of tech stealing has gone up a lot--600 something now against Toku and anybody else where that's an option. BTW, take a look at the Demo screen Trys posted. What the heck does somebody having -50 gpt for Exports-Imports mean? Has somebody founded a corporation? This game is seriously frakked up!

After having looked at the save a bit, here are some observations. All of our trade routes are for 1 gpt, so settling on the island is a definite plus--instant 2 gpt for all cities. I prefer where the settler is now because we can immediately start pasturing the sheep without waiting for a border pop. The whale won't help until we have Optics and is also rather vulnerable to pillaging--I'd rather not sacrifice an immediate benefit for that. I'm also not sure we want to switch to Slavery just yet. We have 4 culture in Kyoto and will get another 4 with an artist this turn. Likewise our island city will get 4 cpt with an artist under Caste. Kyoto will starve, but eh, it'll starve even if we whip a temple. I'd also switch to walls this turn just to put a hammer toward those to prepare for a 1-pop whip.

It's very likely that Hatty will DoW us, very soon if not next turn. But, her stack (1 axe, 2 swords, 6 cats, 5 war chariots) is on a tile without a road; she can only hit us next turn with those 5 war chariots. On the other hand, both of our stacks are also on roadless tiles. We have an archer and spear in Tokyo, and we can move in our eastern stack (with some cats and axes) this turn. Our best units (highly promoted axes and the supermedic) will survive if attacked. We can also move our other stack 1W to get on a road. They'll be safe there and can retreat next turn. Or...[Edit: We do the same movements this turn but instead of retreating after that,] if Hatty attacks us [with her chariots IBT] and [at the same time moves the rest of] her stack next to Kyoto we could counterattack with all our units. Her war chariots get no bonus versus axes when we attack them, and we'll have some cats that could be used to soften her up. I'm not saying we should plan on this but given where our units are now we don't have much of a choice where they go, so we have this option whether we want it or not. I guess we could also move them toward Toku's last city but that seems rather foolhardy. If Hatty attack us and we choose not to counterattack we'd fall back to Kyoto and defend. I'd be tempted not to take peace from Toku until we've captured Kagoshima so that we can infect it and then give it back.

In terms of Hindu infections, we have 1 completed and unmoved missionary in Bolly. He'd take this turn and 4 more to infect Tokyo; this turn plus 3 more to infect Kyoto.

SGOTM 15 - Unusual Suspects

Deity

Board gamer

Deity

Deity

Board gamer

Deity

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Procrastination at its finest

Deity

Procrastination at its finest

Attachments

Deity

Jag är Viking!½

Deity

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Deity

Ultraviolet Catastrophe

Similar threads