SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

Actually I did get it for Christmas. I've played it for all of about 2 hours at most. It's really a completely different experience. I'm not sure I like it, but I haven't given up on it either. Civ3 still has me hooked.

Thanks, Methos for letting us know what's going on. It's much better to hear it from you than to have you just drop out without a word. I feel guilty about doing that to the demo game team I was on. Hopefully you can check in now and again to help us out.

Methos, you will be missed. And welcome.

Live Long and Prosper. And come back.

I was curious about the chances of whatever city we give to India flipping back to us before India got any units into it. So I downloaded FlipCalc and looked at Oy Deer and Indianaposmurkz in 750 AD.

Oy Deer! Distances
Oy Deer! to Delhi:
NW-SE: 4
NE-SW: 0
CivAssist shows a distance of 4.

Oy Deer! to Zentral:
NW-SE: 21
NE-SW: 20
CivAssist shows a distance of 31.

Indianaposmurkz Distances
Indianaposmurkz to Delhi:
NW-SE: 3
NE-SW: 2
CivAssist shows a distance of 4.

Indianaposmurkz to Zentral:
NW-SE: 15
NE-SW: 17
CivAssist shows a distance of 24.

Indian Culture 250 AD: 259 +0 cpt
(50 turns x 2cpt) 100 (hoping for the best)
Indian Culture 750 AD: 359

Smurkz Culture 250 AD: 0647 + 37 cpt
(50 turns x 37cpt) 1850
Smurkz Culture 750 AD: 2497

I examined two cases, when the city was at a size 6 and at size 1, that is 6 and 1 non-resisting foreigners in the city, no tiles under Smurkz influence and no garrisoned units.

And for both cities, the answer is the same:
Size 6
Chance to flip on this turn: 0.52%
Chance to flip in 10 turns: 5.10%
Min. garrison to stop flip: 42

Size 1
Chance to flip on this turn: 0.09%
Chance to flip in 10 turns: 0.87%
Min. garrison to stop flip: 7

If India's culture does not grow over the next 50 turns (according to Mapstat, India's culutre is not growing in 250 AD), then the numbers look like this.

Size 1
Chance to flip on this turn: 0.12%
Chance to flip in 10 turns: 1.20%
Min. garrison to stop flip: 10

So the flip chance is small and we can make it smaller by reducing the city to size 1 before we give it away.

Which leads to this statement and question:
I know we can refuse a city when it flips to us, but I never have. What happens to a city that flips to us and we refuse the flip?

My son brought his computer home for Christmas and he showed me what he has done in the download demo game. In the midst of my turns he offered to let me play Civ4, but I refused. And now he is gone back to school in Kentucky.

My wife does not refer to Civ4 as another compuer game; she refers to it as another computer mistress. And she is very happy it will not run on our machine.

As for refusing a city flip, it's my understanding that there are no repurcussions. I have read somewhere that accepting a flip can cause that civ to dislike you a little but I'm not sure. If a flip DOES happen, we MUST refuse it as we can only gift a city one time.

Regarding Civ4, it barely runs on my machine. The video is terribly choppy and the animations kinda slow. It's playable but I'd bet that if I got very far into a game all the units would really slow it down to a painful crawl. Playing C3C on a huge map gets really slow for me even, especially in the IA and beyond. For some reason PTW doesn't get like that for me.

Methos, sorry to see you go. Thanks for being honest and speaking up. It would have been worse to take the game and then never play your turns. Please feel free to contribute whenever!

As for me, I will try to play but I'm not making any promises until Monday. If someone can play their turns before then to keep it going feel free. I'll check in ~eight hours from this post. If no one posts a got it, I'll post a got it and start working on it. My turnlog might not be available till Monday and that might only be 5 turns depending on how easy it goes and how much time the wife permits.

Anyway, you have eight hours to post your insights. What I have as my to do list is:

Research: Invention, (Trade for Mono), Theology and start Education.
Military: Land and take Entremont. I'm planning on taking an extra turn to land on the Mountain and attack from the hills. Then I will be working my way to Augustodurum, with an advanced scout heading to cutoff America's iron.
Infrastructure: Libraries and Markets in most towns. Uni prebuilds in the top 5 cities. Barracks/Units everywhere else until we have enough of a force to wipe out America quickly. I need to get some new galleys staged for a Western assault as well as resetting the Eastern assault.
Micromanagement: I'm still shooting for growth where possible. If warweariness starts, I'll start reducing the pop with workers. I will be trying to advance the shield potential in Missismurki and Sages as first priority.
Settlements: I need some advice here. We are going to be getting a lot of abandonment settlers. Where do the new towns need to go? Should I head them toward the prison areas in preparation for gifting?

I was not going to help Spain research at all so that they will be weaker when we try to take them out.

Sounds good CF.

I probably won't be able to play until (after) the 6th. You may recall that I was writing on a research paper during the later stages of SGOTM 8. The good news is that the paper was accepted for publication , but the downside is that a significant list of points to clarify came with the acceptance. The printing-ready copy should be in on Jan 6th, so that's what I'm spending my time on (not much holidays for me ). I'm trying to join the discussion as much as possible still, but if you think I'm a bit less wordy than usual you know the cause...

So, zyxy won't be back until the 5th, which means it suits me fine to play my turns after him no matter what. Either you take your time with the turns, you have until thursday. Or (preferrable) you play until monday or tuesday, then WD steps in and plays a set before the weekend.

ControlFreak said:

I'm planning on taking an extra turn to land on the Mountain and attack from the hills. Then I will be working my way to Augustodurum, with an advanced scout heading to cutoff America's iron.

Click to expand...

Agree with this, however note that America has another potential source between Boston and Seattle down south. Both towns must expand their borders to get it inside their borders though.

ControlFreak said:

Settlements: I need some advice here. We are going to be getting a lot of abandonment settlers. Where do the new towns need to go? Should I head them toward the prison areas in preparation for gifting?

Click to expand...

We are still missing two of the towns at RCP 10 from Zentral, namely the one on the cape N Carthage and the one 2NE of Edrine. We also have the atoll around India to settle, and there are empty holes near Kastle (which I fear that Carthage will try to take advantage of with that galley).
But perhaps the most important issue is to get settlers over to the new continent. Only a few of the alien towns there are useful, we need to settle quite a few ourselves.

Random insights
You may want to buy America's World or Territory map to save on galley turns exploring down south. Then that galley could be headed Smurkzward. It would be one less galley to build.

I think that all the cities we plan to abandon will make settlers in your turns. These would be fine for prison cities, but the time does not seem right to build them. Perhaps when we send the second wave of units to America we could have a galley of settlers.

I know you like workers, but Albu and Deer could be switched from worker to settler for the Smurkz cities Niklas mentioned around Zentral. Neither one is a settler pump, however.

We have 39 workers and 27 slaves.

OK, I'll take it now. I'll keep you posted on my progress as time permits.

Thanks for your input CB. I agree that the galley should head for home. I'll trade for maps just about every turn.

Thanks Niklas for the list of city sites. I don't think I'll be generating nine settler this turn but we'll see.

And yes CB, I WORKERS. (I need a bumper sticker.)

Five turns in, I'll continue Monday. Please feel free to comment.

Save is here

Where do the settlers go now? It's a long walk to the atoll mountains.

EDIT Turnlog:
Preflight: 250AD

Start with CivAssist2 and report wasted food, wasted production. Micromanage the nine towns.

• Ismurkz left alone since any food savings would hinder production.
• New Smurkzheim steals a forest from Deer and BG from Adelphia, giving up the lambs since it's surplus food. It will MM next turn also to return the BG to Adelphia with the perfect shields to finish the library.
• Olive switched from duct to Medi and set to 0fpt, 7spt to finish the Medi. Freeing a BG for River. River uses it instead of the FP to save a turn on the market.
• Adelphia then steals sheild tiles from House of Beard who works the lakes (It's just prebuilding a uni anyway.)
• Vladivosmukz uses forest instead of plains and steals forest from Ismurkz who will gain some mined plains in the near future. (Vlad has no workers.)
• Albusmurkz shifts FPs around so that it gets 3, Smurkzcapulco gets 1 and Food gets 1. This allows growth in 1, worker should finish with the sheilds from growth.
• Kalmurkz set to work two jungle,river dyes, saving wasted shields by gaining commerce.
• Missismurki grows and builds in 1 so MM for commerce using all river tiles.
• Smurkzacabana steals all the FPs to grow in 1 as well as build it's library. Smurkz-am-zee is temporarily at 0fpt but will get teh FP back next turn and is already 1 pop away from max anyway. Switch to Market per Niklas.
  Additional per Niklas and my posts:
• Zentral set to 13spt, grow in 2.
• Karakorum settler in 2 (sorry Niklas) by stealing iron hill from Missismurki.
• Leptis Minor settler in 3 using incense mine.
• Sages switches to Great Wall to protect it from inadvertent forests.
• Trom switched to galley.
• Sabratha switched to galley. We we trying to abandon this town? It was on settler at 0fpt, size 1.

Last minute additions, Edrine set to grow in 5 turns. And switches to worker wasting a turn of production. I will rush another worker as well then set to settler to abandon, gaining a free pop point at size 1. Abandoning this town doesn't help until LMinor is gone in 3 turns.

OyDeer is left on worker because it cant make enough shields for settler until Heim stops needing the forests. It's set to 0fpt using all the coastal tiles.

The list of cities working unimproved tiles is too long to address now and will be checked when I have control over workers.

Sorting by production, I have 2 cities making Medis. 4 making galleys. Everything else is building workers, settlers, library or market except for HotB's Uni prebuild. I make the decision to slow down our infrastructure in order to get some more units ready for the war on the Americans.

• Vlad switches to barracks. It's going to be wasting food for a while but once the duct was built, it was going to need a market. I'll let Ismurkz grow first since it really needs more pop to make a decent shield output. Plus Ismurkz is past the shields for a barrack and even a Medi so no use switching now.
• Adelphia can't use the market without an aquaduct and it already has a barracks so I switch to Medi finishing in exactly 2 turns.
• San Ansmurkzio has an empty bin on market. It has a lot of forests and not much food bonus so I set it to barracks. It can use the forests at size 6 or 7 to keep it at a happy level. Once the units we need are built, it can get it's market quickly by chopping the forests.
• Smurkzland switches from library to galley. A lib will do no good here until the jungle is chopped and/or a harbor built.
• Smurkzala switches to barracks due in 1. The library would only be for boundary fighting with Theveste. If someone is afraid of this, they'll have to switch it back to library.
• Victoria switches to barracks due in 1. At the rate it was building a library, Missismurki would have expanded a second time to make the lambs available.

That's six more unit building cities now but three of them are very low outputs. Horses might be cheap enough or else we can disconnect iron and build a few veteran warriors.

Trades:
Buy American WM for 5g.
Sell our WM to Spain for 9gpt and 29g! (We must already have their WM because they add it for free.) They have 11 more gpt.
We own most of the worlds gold so no more trades.

IBT Ottomans move spear Archer to their borders. Carthage moves galley toward Mountain atoll. Guess they might have a settler aboard. Barb horsemen approach wounded sword. With the change of age, there's probably a bunch of horsemen on the unwatched mountains.

Edrine worker>settler. Victoria barracks>horse. Kalmurkz worker>worker. Albusmurkz worker>2-turn worker factory. Missismurki market>colosseum(uni). Vladivosmurkz barracks>medi. Smurkzala barracks>horse.

Turn 1: 260AD

Rename the palace core with the prefix #1. Rename the FP core with the prefix !1. That way I can sort by name and get the primary cities on top regardless of their shield production.

New worker is sent to start mine on HotB plain. The forest workers will finish next turn and be able to help. Worker on Forest in Adelphia can't help the road this turn so he chops. Worker in Adelphia moves to forest and will help with the road next turn. Scouts head to the western mountain atoll to see if they can help prevent the carthage landing.
Rename KatrinaDefiler to WesternAssault1 and do some Ocean exploring.
Horses and Sword near Bursa move to block the Ottomans from moving next to an unguarded city.
SettlerOfKazan moves towards the southern road. Still not sure where he's going.
Swords move into Victoria that can now upgrade the veteran.
Workers near Canal move towards jungle dyes as a group of six. New worker from Kalmurkz finishes the mine by River so that the worker can move to road the jungle dyes North of it and connect Cape.
Sword/horse move onto Mountains, closer to Deer.
WesternPathFinder renamed to WesternAssault2 and head to explore the tundra before work his way toward Kastle.
Galleys approach Entremont. The first spots a healthy spanish spear who has pillaged two of the wool tiles. I opt to take the quick route and land the troops next to Entremont figuring that if the Celts could counter attack, the spear would have been wounded by now. Second galley sees archer and horseman on the iron hill. I'm definitely choosing the fast route now as one turn may lose the city to the spanish. We unload on the plains wool.

Cabana gives up it's FP to Am-Zee who can now work mined plains and forest again, still grow in 1.
Sages has grown and now uses a plains and forest for 0 growth. I will start adding workers when the finish roading the forests.
San Ansmurkio uses two more forests for 0fpt but will finish barrack in 1. Vladivosmurkz MM to 10spt for Medis in 4.

IBTCarthage drops off a spear/settler. Guess they're going to found the ring for India. Two barb horses die on our sword, no HP lost or gained. Karakorum settler>settler. New Smurkheim Library>Settler. San Ansmurkio barrack>Medi, set to 1fpt,10spt. Adelphia Medi>horse, set to 6spt wasting food until workers can help it. Olive Medi>horse at 8spt.

Spain starts the great wall.

Turn 2: 270AD

Heim gets the lambs back so Adelphia isn't wasting food. Adelphia set to use the fish and makes 8spt for horses.

Attack Entremont (Us vs Them)
VSword L Spear (3/5)
VSword (4/4) W RSpear
VSword (1/4) W RSpear
(3/5 Spear reappears)
EHorse (3/5) W 3/5 Spear (no leader)
ESword W Archer (no leader) Entremont ours>barracks.

Augustodurum has fallen to Spain as well so I don't know what choice I have about settling for peace. I send a horsemen toward Veralumium to check the status.

Lots of worker moves. Galleys head for crossing point.

MM some build in 1 cities for food or commerce. Switch Missismurki to Sun Tsu as a prebuild for Leo's instead of Uni. Invention in 1 at 50% with 100gpt.

IBTEntremont quells 2 resistors and riots. Deer worker>worker. Food Library>Market. Leptis Minor abandoned for a settler. Albus worker>worker reset the factory. Zentral library>col (Uni prebuild).

Save and quit after over 3 hours.

Turn 3: 280AD

Settler (mongol) finally decides to become an Atoll city and heads south.

Move a warrior and Horse to Grad to prevent flipping.

LMinor Settler heads to forest N of Carthage.

Galleys from EasternAssault wait the remainder of their turns to be able to cross next turn.

Cabana set to grow in 1 finishing market with growth sheilds.

Kalmurkz steals sheilds from River who steals shields from Food so that worker finishes in 1, Market unaffected.

Grad has an extra sheild so I give it's BG to Adelphia for horse in 2.

Trade Monarchy and Republic to Ottomans for Mono. Science can stay at 50% for Theo in 4.

[IBT]America kicks us out on the first turn in their territory. Spains units move toward 2 remaining celt towns. Barbs head to Carthage's new town Oea. Entremont resistance ends.

Arismurkz lib>barracks. Indianaposmurkz lib>barracks. Kalmurkz worker>worker.

Turn 4: 290AD

Workers work. Galleys head for home ports. Horses see large groups of american and spanish archers/spears on their way toward Celt lands. We're too late I think. These really are building turns.

Spicy Smurkz founded NE of Edrine.

I rush the settlers in Edrine and Karakorum so I can be done with the razing.

Entremont was still unhappy and rioted. I set to starve with taxmen and switch to worker. WM is still too valuable to America to sell. WM to Spain for WM and 12 of their 16g.

[IBT]Karakorum and Edrine abandoned for settlers. Adelphia horse>horse. I'm not building Berserks yet because I think the GA is better triggered against Spain. Nan medi>horse. Albu worker>worker reset. Vlad medi>horse.

Turn 5: 300AD

Workers work. Horses make it to Verulumium and there's three american horses. At least 1 spanish archer outside Richbourough.

[Ibt] Celts put up a good defense and kill spainish archer and american horse.

Turn 6: 310AD

Another 1-2 hours in, I have to save here. No moves made.

In five turns you went from working 188 tiles to working 208, for an increase of 20 tiles. Of the 188 you started with, 173 were fully improved. Of the 208 you ended with, 199 are fully improved, for an increase of 26 worked, fully improved tiles.

Shazam!

Rename as you please. I rename so I can keep track of the units and not overlook one. Sometimes I try to be cute (KatrinaDefier, CabanaMiner, SettlerOfKazan) and other times not. If a better name comes along by all means use it.

I see we do have more prison island options south of America. I think I see Alcatraz and Devil's Island.

If the Celts survive five more turns and accept peace with us, but Spain is still frisky, will we have a city/prison ready to gift them to keep them around?

Agree with the previous speaker: Shazam! You truly are the worker master.

The renaming is pure genious . Why not rename the second rings with #/! 2 as well?

CB's point is valid, we need a prison for the Celts asap. We can't let them go down, we'll have to break the MA if necessary.
There is one possible spot S-SE of Missi that we could settle and gift away. With enough cultural pressure in Missi and Victoria (and Cabana), that town would get two additional desert tiles and one hills, tiles that we could do without unless they contain vital resources, and that town would be forever doomed to be at size 1. But if we were to use it for the Celts, that would require a fast library in Victoria (unless we can do without another hills).

Be back tomorrow and check some more.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Nice work, CF! Man, typing while "under the influence" is tough. My New Year's party was a minor success, but at least I had fun. I think the others did too, but I don't really care!@

Happy New Year To All!

Typing with a hangover is just as tough. Champagne taste great but man...what a headache it leaves behind. This was easier before three little girls get you up at 7AM.

Happy New Year to you all too!

As far as my 1/2 turn, thanks for your encouragement about the workers. I don't have time to detail the worker moves but basically, I'm just following my previous treatise.

The S-SE prison sounds like a good idea and would give me something to do with our foreign settler. I don't think the Celts are going to last more than two turns so I plan to do the gift soon.

Play tomorrow....

(Three year old wanted to add a smilie. Why do they like the king so much? )

Niklas said:

There is one possible spot S-SE of Missi that we could settle and gift away. With enough cultural pressure in Missi and Victoria (and Cabana), that town would get two additional desert tiles and one hills, tiles that we could do without unless they contain vital resources, and that town would be forever doomed to be at size 1. But if we were to use it for the Celts, that would require a fast library in Victoria (unless we can do without another hills).

Click to expand...

I looked into this and it would seem that Missismurki would lose the FP Wheat. That's not an option.

No, Missi would retain the FP wheat. It would be at distance 1 (1.5 == 1) from both towns, and Missi would have more culture. Victoria really needs that library though, otherwise the southern of the sheep will go to the prison town. Didn't see that yesterday.

EDIT: Oh, and don't forget that Celts have Gergovia at the N coast as well.

Well, I stayed up last night to finish it. Some interesting happenings, I'm not sure if they're good or bad.

The save is >>HERE<<

Turn 6: 310AD
In my time away, I realize that the galleys are nearly back and I don't have much to load in them. Some swords can't be upgraded because there is no barracks. I shuffle troops to try to rectify.

Smurkz Point founded on the forest N of Carthage and left on warrior.

Spend 300g rushing library in Victoria and worker in Entremont.

Now that the inner cities are razed, Atroid is somewhat productive. It steals a BG from canal to speed the galley.

I get a ROP with Spain to quickly reach Gergovia. Buy American WM for 2g. Sell WM to Spain for 3g.

IBT
America takes Celt city, two left.

Theo>Education, Oracle expires.

Entremont worker>barracks. Heim settler>settler. San Ansmurkio Medi>horse. Deer worker>worker. Arismurkz Barrack>Horse. River market>Medi. Victoria lib>horse. Albus worker>worker reset.

Turn 7: 320AD

Two eastern galleys loaded and sent toward crossing. Third waits for medi enroute.

SingSing founded as a Celtic prison, set to wealth as I will be gifting it in 4 turns max.

I just now realize that Spain already has Feudalism (learned it at 290 at the earliest). I was playing around with gpt and accidentally give her Engineering for 34g and 10gpt. Oh well, hopefully she'll get invention then instead of Chivalry. Mopping up longbows is easier than knights.

Two horses climb the two mountains south of Richbourgh to protect it from the american forces.

Buy American WM for 1g.

IBTSpain and America move troops but no visible attacks.

Adelphia horse>horse. Ismurkz duct>market. Indianaposmurkz barrack>horse. Vladivosmurkz horse>horse.

Turn 8: 330AD
Mostly worker actions. Galley explores western sea while waiting for troops.

IBTSpain signs peace with Celts! They land a bunch of troops near Richbourgh.

Sabrartha galley(chopped)>warrior. Olive horse>horse. Kalmurkz worker>library. Albus worker>worker reset. Tromsmurkz galley>galley.

Turn 9: 340AD
I seem to have corrected my error. Galleys are in position to load and there should be enough troops to fill them. The new Trom galley will get a settler and Medi and head to a prison island.

IBT Spain declares on America! They take Veralumium. America counters and wins battles but does not retake the city. They kill a spear in Richbourgh.

San Ansmurkio horse>market. Deer worker>worker. Nansmurket horse>berserk. River horse>berserk. Atroid galley>library. Amzee lib>worker. Zala horse>horse.

Galleys find another island south of the crossing area. Three western and 5 eastern boats are filled. New galley from Atroid is passing through canal. It should pick up the two horsemen headed there.

Cancel alliance with America. Attack Richbourgh. Horse redlines but wins. Second horse wins and we take the city! At this point, Celts are down to one town. I think we can stay at war with them until some Spainish/American troops show up at Gergovia. Then settle for peace and gift them the prison town. The longer we wait, the more culture Victoria can raise.

At this point, I think that we should finish the Great Library. That should make Spain and America cascade to the Sun Tsu and the Great Wall respectively. Our troops should be in place to capture San Fransisco before they finish the wall which means that Spain will have the wall when we attack them.

There are four wonder builds going on but only one is what it's supposed to be: Leos. The rest are prebuilds: Sage should switch to Cops when we know Astronomy, The others should switch to Universities.

More later as time permits.

Interesting developments on the war front! Well played.

Indeed, well played!

The developments on the war front is interesting indeed. I'm not quite sure what to make of them, but I'm leaning towards that they are beneficial to our cause. If two fight, the third always wins.

Too bad about Engineering. Not that I mind giving it to Spain, but the price was appallingly low . Isabella still has some 39 gpt to share, perhaps we should make another trade?


Some more down-to-earth comments:

Leo's in Missi? I thought we were more keen on Sistine? Sure Leo's is good to have, but I doubt we'll have much use for it. After all there'll be next to no fighting once we've subdued America and Spain, some 50 turns from now?

We can have Edu in 1 at 40% research with some MMing for commerce. Not sure if it's worth it though, we'd lose some production in some towns for one turn (like Missi and CftS).


I'm not quite sure what to do with the roster now. zyxy will be back in two (three?) days, and could use some time to get back in the game. I won't be able to play for some time yet either. Of WD and CB, CB played last, so WD what do you say, want to play a set?