SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

Bye Niklas. Have a great time!

I posted at My Turn 3 since that seems to be a common save point for the other teams. It will allow us to do comparisons.

I'll save you all the detailed reading of my MM (I didn't take notes. )

The highlights (besides what I posted above) are:

• India has been throwing lots of Guerilla's at Meh. Its army has been able to hold off any attack, helped by the artillery free shot. The last turn saw only 2 and 4 the turn before so I think they are running out of steam.
• India has twice attacked my Recon destroyers with Ironclads. Indian boats did some damage but sank. We have no good place to heal boats so I may just leave the wounded ones out there and send reinforcements.
• Spain drove a frigate/galley pair almost all the way to M-O despite my Privateer attacks. We lost three boats before sinking the Frigate. The galley was easy pickings after that.
• The Ottomans have a lot of gold but no one else has any. If I can get any deal at all from the other civs, I will sell Sanitation to everyone.
• StarWars is complete.
• I'm using Manhattan's project (don't panic) and Battleships as prebuilds for Offshore Platforms.

Depending on time, I will finish another 5 or 10. Eitherway, I think we should shoot for the dates that the other teams submitted on so we can compare.

In Other News
When pressured with the recent media attention, a spokesperson from the Hallismurkzton Corporation indicated that the company's presence was being restructured. Units stationed there have been disbanded in an effort to secure the airport. Questions about the Oil holdings have all but disappeared. On a side note, it was determined that the local Peace Corp group overseeing proper treatment of Indian detainees has been reported missing. When questioned, the local garrison denied any knowledge of their whereabouts but did indicate that the cost of constructing Civil Defense were lower in the absence of the Peace Corps.

zyxy said:

And if Ghandi manages to clean up that mountain, perhaps even less .

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This was discussed towards the beginning of the game, but I can't remember the answer. Can we, even during war time, have our workers clean the pollution for him?

Hey! It's Methos!

Re: cleaning up Ghandi's pollution, I don't know if we tested that. I think we just tested chopping forest and clearing jungle, roading and railing.

As far as getting Ghandi to build Apollo in another town, I think there is only one way to do that... crush Delhi. Doing that would require us research amphibious warfare, build a bunch of marines, load them on transports, take over one of the towns on the ring so the transports could get through, bombard the 14+ defenders in Delhi (did you happen to get an exact count CF?) and then take the town. India's capital would then move to the mainland... Indianaposmurkz probably. We can do it but I don't think it's worth it. It would probably take 10-15 turns to pull it off and by then India would only have 15 turns left on Apollo. If we do it and India decides to build Apollo in another town it might be 15 turns or more to build which would put us about where we are now. It's also possible that by the time we pulled it off Carthage may decide they don't like India after all and pull the plug on the aluminum deal. Or Ghandi may decide to build it in a town wher it would take even longer. Lots and lots of "what if's". On the other hand if we are bold enough to move the capital and try to get Ghandi to do it somewhere else, we gotta do it now.

EDIT: I've been thinking of a way to help Ghandi clear the pollution on that mountain and have a puzzle for you: if Ghandi captured a bunch of workers would he disband them or keep them? I think if he were able to get them safely away from our combat units he would keep them, but there's no way to know for sure. Another puzzle: if the AI captures slaves of ours do we get WW? There are a couple of tiles NE of Smurkastle that are in no one's territory (at least they weren't at 1535 AD). If we pull back the defensive units and put a stack of slaves on one of those tiles Ghandi could capture them and move them back into his territory and put them to work. Some of them would probably go to that polluted mountain, though some would probably go to the two unroaded mountains I see down there. The other option is to take our own workers down there heavily guarded and try to clear it for him, but we would get WW from that and we don't know if we can even clear pollution in enemy territory.

Bye Niklas, enjoy the vacation!

Hey Methos, how's it going?

IIRC there are Indian workers on that tile, so we cannot move onto the tile. WD's suggestion to gift some workers is a good one I think. I don't know about WW effects, but we'll probably hit the max on that pretty soon anyway. (And it shouldn't be a problem really, as there is almost nothing we need to do - just wait).

I agree to let India finish Apollo in Delhi. They are almost halfway, and who knows when they would start over again. In hindsight, perhaps we should've crushed Delhi earlier, who knows.

Press conference in the Smurkz Palace.
Hubba Redbeard, Independent News Agency: Mr. Vice-President ControlFreak, is it true that the Hallismurkzton company won a contract worth 16 trillion gold pieces to develop a space defense weapon, generally known under the codename Star Wars - The Smurkz Strikes Back? And is it true that you have secret plans to use this weapon to shoot down an Indian Space Ship? And does the President know about these plans?

Looking at the submissions page... CDZ's last posted save is 2049 AD!! I sure hope they got Ghandi to launch. That would suck to have played that far and see India not do it. Their graph is fairly comparable to ours. Ghandi better have at least built Apollo for them.

I think it says alot about our team that despite having two Texans, we are the most cultured civ.

I think it is from the great British influence of Hyacinth, Rose, and Daisy ("Keeping Up Appearances"), Tom and Barbara Good ( "The Good Life" ), Lionel and Jean Hardcastle ( "As Time Goes By" ), George and Janet Sunday ( "My Hero" ) and of course, because "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" (a bunch of Brits whose theme music is a march written by the American John Philip Sousa entitled "The Liberty Bell").

If Ghandi were to build The Internet





it should trigger a Golden Age.

zyxy said:

Press conference in the Smurkz Palace.
Hubba Redbeard, Independent News Agency: Mr. Vice-President ControlFreak, is it true that the Hallismurkzton company won a contract worth 16 trillion gold pieces to develop a space defense weapon, generally known under the codename Star Wars - The Smurkz Strikes Back? And is it true that you have secret plans to use this weapon to shoot down an Indian Space Ship? And does the President know about these plans?

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"Officially, the SW-SSB was developed in an effort to extend our antiterrorism efforts to provide global coverage. Hallismurkton had nothing to do with it and I am no longer involved with that corporation anyway. While it is true that the project cost 16 trillion gold pieces, its value will not be assessed until we've had the opportunity to properly test its capability. With that in mind, I would like you to help me keep up the ruse, at least to the Indians, that the breifcase filled with "confidential documents" actually does contain plans for a viable space craft and not merely a target test craft.

As for the President's involvement, ask yourself this...you don't think he actually knew where Malaysia was before we booked his tickets do you? We have every intention of concluding this matter before his return.

And before any of you ask, my hunting partner Methos is recovering and starting to be able to return to his normal duties of lurker posting. I fully stand behind my decision to withhold the information that I shot him. I wanted to provide him the best opportunity for recovery."

CommandoBob said:

I think it says alot about our team that despite having two Texans, we are the most cultured civ.

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Since the game isn't all that exciting at the moment, I'm glad you all can fill the time with humor.

@WarDance - I think building the Apollo will trigger their GA too. Any wonderbuild checks to see if you have the required traits covered. Bachs (Religious) and Magellans (Commercial) should do it for India. It will be a long time before they build the Internet since they need to get Miniaturization.

I have an all day meeting today so I'm not sure how far I'll get. If you're all OK with waiting until Thursday when CB is available, then I'll take my time until then. If you want to keep it moving, Wardance feel free to post a got it and play ten turns to 1650AD. With Niklas gone, it will get back to me soon enough.

Apollo project is a small wonder though. Doesn't it have to be a great wonder for a golden age?

I'm not sure if building a small wonder triggers the check for GAs. I was thinking it did but it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong.

I managed to get 9 turns in yesterday. I will finish the tenth and try to clean it up a little. Things have gotten interesting on the diplomatic front. It seems our unilateral actions have drawn the ire of the rest of the world.

Should be ready for CB's return tomorrow.

ControlFreak said:

I managed to get 9 turns in yesterday. I will finish the tenth and try to clean it up a little. Things have gotten interesting on the diplomatic front. It seems our unilateral actions have drawn the ire of the rest of the world.

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Good thing we got all the city gifting out of the way when we did.

>>THE SAVE<<

1550 Set to disband Alpharetta and Cosa Nostra. Trade Sanitation for Ottoman cash. Get some gpt from spain and a worker from Carthage. Can reduce Sci to 50% keeping 3 turn research.

IBT Carthage MAs with India against us. . Cosa and Alpha are abandoned.

1555 Get Spy in Carthage and Steal their plans. Alum2 has only one unit so I ship some artillery over there just to bomb the rails around the town. 2/4 hit. Popcicle has 2 rifles so the Elite MA goes fishing but doesn't catch anything. Leave remaing rifle alone. Artillery and cruisemissle the rifle in TheVest to death. Then realize if I had hit the harbor the aluminum deal would be broken. Use remaining artillery and one destroyer to pillage all the tiles except the silks so they can still trade to India. Use one MA to move in, kill one of the two remaining Numids ( ) and then pull out of their territory. That's all the damage I can safely do to them. We can NOT settle for peace with them for 20 turns or we'll break their rep with India.

IBT Indian Ironclad approaches our destroyer but stops short. I'll leave him be.

1560 Settle Linkoping on Ostrich. Finish bombarding the Carthage tile left in Alum2. Some temples started on Tad to help get WLTKD. Colleseums started on Smurkz for the same reason.

IBT Miniaturization>Genetics, stay at 50% Sci for 7 turn tech. Big Picture to change my Battleship/Thruster/Manhattan prebuilds to Offshore Platforms.

1565 Army built, loaded with Mas and marched towards Meh.

IBT Indian Ironclad takes our carrier to 1hp before dying.

1570 Shift boats to cover wounded carrier. Rush some culture on Tad. Settle another Ostrich city. We're in the 30tile range of dom so I'll stop settling and keep and eye out.

IBT Indian Galleon appears near Mo

1575 Send transport towards Meh as possible extraction point for MI army. The MA army takes the defense of Meh, the MI army covers the horses since that was seldom attacked.

IBT America and India embargo us. Lots of guerilla attack but the MA army holds.

1580 Realize I forgot to prebuild for Cure for Cancer so I start a palace now and drop research to 10 turns (2 turns before Palace expires).

IBT Indian galleon, escorted by Ironclad heads toward popcicle

1585 Keep tabs on the Indian boat with one of the fighters. Swap carrier and destroyer at popcicle so the destroyer can intercept them if needed.

IBT Indians continue attacking the MA army so we're not gaining anymore WW. Our WW should go down over time.

1590 Finally remember to start Pentagon.

IBT Indian boats are on the limits of my fighters range. Have to pick it up with the destroyer.

1595 With the additional space gained by culture, I'm able to shift a lot of citizens around. I think we should be able to get most of the !1 cities to size 12. It seems like Upstate New York is the only one I can't have all twelve citizens working tiles.

IBT Ottomans join the Indians via Military Alliance so we're at war with Indians, Carthage and Ottomans.

1600 Mostly cleanup. I lost the Indian boats. Just to be on the safe side, I've moved some units onto the islands so they can't land troops there. I forgot to use the worker on popcicle to occupy the remaining space so I suspect the Indian boat is headed there. The Indians are near the south pole below the destroyer E of Popcicle. The should reappear in a turn or two.

Note for CB

• Do NOT Settle for peace with Ottomans or Carthage while their MA is in place with India. We don't want to ruin their rep.
• You asked about MM before, this turnset would have been a great one to learn from. I'm sorry I didn't have more time or I would have documented what I did. Basically, we started with twice as many citizens as workable tiles on Tadpole. With their newly founded FP, they all want to be productive but are limited by the science farm mentality. First think I had to do was make some room. I built culture buildings in the coastal towns. I decided that we'd still be too crowded so I abandoned three towns. From that point forward, I looked at the core towns to see who was still crowded into forced specialists and tried to steal tiles from neighboring towns. Since the inner towns have lower corruption, you always want the center towns to have the first pick of shield/commerce tiles. Stealing tiles would force specialists in nearby towns. Those towns would then try to steal tiles from farther out towns. Etc. I got most of this done for the !1 disk. Buffalo didn't expand yet so it got crowded to the point of starvation. It should expand in 2 turns so just let it lose the 4food until expansion and then the governor should put the citizens on the coastal tiles.
• I was able to sink an Ottoman Galleon but I did not want to risk destroying them by attacking their only city. I tried to plant a spy but he was caught and killed so don't try again for 4? turns.
• I forgot to prebuild the Cure for Cancer so I slowed research way down. We now have over 30K gold so you might want to steal the Indian plans to find out what's in the galleon at the southpole. Either way, I think it would be to our advantage to let them take one of the southern cities on Tad. It can only help us, because it would give us the option of letting them have thier own supply of uranium. Make sure whatever town they get has a harbor and an airport to maximize the chances of them having one or the other on the takeover. I think this can still be done by proxy using Spain.
• The pentagon is our other ongoing project. This will let us add another MA to the army in Meh. I've already transported one there for that purpose. I've been sending MA to Missi to load into the armys being generated there. The other towns building units would be best to build the same unit over and over (most efficient shield use).

I've got to go back to training (3 days worth ). I should have time to post a little tonight or tomorrow after you've had a chance to look at the save and ask questions.

Sounds good, CF.

I was wondering if you tried letting Ghandi have some extra workers or if you know if the pollution is clear from Delhi yet? A fighter based in Mehrangahr could recon that mountian tile. Or we could investigate Delhi again.

Good idea to lose those towns that were all crowded together.

I did not gift any workers because the AI has a problem assigning multiple workers to a particular tile. In general, if there are multiple things to work on, they only assign 2 workers to a tile. In the dehli case, they already had 4 workers on it. I didn't think they would add any more workers to the stack because there are a lot of other pollution squares. It wasn't cleared yet.

Nice going!

Just look at how our poor towns have lost population under that genocidal maniac and his curry cronies, whipping our people to death and drafting them in his evil armies just like that. We'll kick him off the planet for his atrocities!

I don't really have any more comments. Basically there's nothing for us to do but wait. Agree with the idea to steal plans and check what's in that boat, if only just for fun. It cannot be a settler though, F3 shows that India has no settlers atm.

Also just for fun, please check on Delhi. The mountain has been cleaned, perhaps the build is sped up?

Oops, forgot this...
Roster:

• ControlFreak - Just Played
• CommandoBob - UP!
• WarDance - On Deck!
• zyxy
• Niklas - skip until March 21st
• Methos - ghosting

The whipping of our ex-towns is sad, but at least they're not our citizens dying. (Mostly celts who are extinct anyway. )

I figured we'd have a lot more "just for fun" expenses, that's why I didn't rush much and grew our treasury to 30K.

A couple more notes for CB:

• The Fighters were named for the tile they target to recon. You can play with it a little if necessary. The philosophy is to have full vision of all the coast around any AI town so we can monitor boat traffic. When a boat hasn't moved in a turn, it's area of visiblity is one tile farther in every direction so try not to move the boats unless they need to follow something or need to go heal. The fighters will expose a 5x5 square, so try to click on tiles that are 2 tiles from the edge of our current visible area. (Think of where you would settle a town if you didn't want any flip potential.)
• The workers on Tad are mining the tiles in any !1 or !2 disk town that has hit the max size 12 and still has surplus food. There have been 1-2 tiles of polution per turn on Tad as well.
• The workers on Smurkz have been pretty busy clearing pollution. There's been 2-4 tiles worth each turn but luckily mostly on the plains/grassland tiles.
• Entremont can build a privateer every turn so I was using it to replace the depleted Wolfpacks sunk by Spain. I think 4 per town would not be excessive so Entremont could stay on privateers for a long while.
• Most of the new units have been going to tad. I built a mini wall around Alum2. It could use a few more MI. I've been using the Infantry to disband to speed the rushed settlers abandoning the towns.
• There may be a size 1 town SW of Washington that still needs to be abandoned. (I don't remember if I finished that mini project or not. )
• I noticed that we have <2050 year date for BOTH 20K victory and 100K victory. Once we determine our few remaining research projects, we should sell EVERY LIBRARY AND UNIVERSITY! We may have to abandon Sages as well if the game goes past 1900AD. In retrospect, it's probably not a good candidate for the pentagon, but it was the fastest place to build it and it's only 1cpt extra.
• Don't forget to keep an eye on the territory. We're at 30tiles now. I settled the perimeter of Ostrich just to be able to see any landings. But with our boat/recon coverage noone but India should get that far without us knowing. So you can abandon any city there if desired.

Have fun! (You are back aren't you... )

The Meta Game
I think it's interesting when teams started losing territory and also how much territory they lost. Looks like klarius gave up the whole continent. If India switches to Communism in their game, that may be a mistake.

I our game, we could have completely avoided WW for us by making our first army with MA instead of MI. Now that I've switched it, I don't think we are incurring any WW. If the studies are correct, we should start getting happier each turn.

Long term

1. Send India to the stars.
2. Stay under the Domination Limit, now 23 tiles away (per MapStat).

Short term

• Take a peak at Delhi to keep track of the Indian Apollo program, to drool and gloat. Post screen shot before playing turns.
  
• In IBT, examine all towns to see which may have a cultural expansion this turnset and determine how that expansion will affect our tile count.
  
• Examine some small border towns with an eye to disbanding them to stay under the Domination Limit.
  
• Learn Genetics in 6 turns, then nothing? If nothing, sell ALL libraries and universities to avoid a humiliating cultural victory. We know all we want to know. (Per CivAssistII, at our current rate, we take a 100K CV in 1964. A Single City 20K VC is due for City for the Sages in 2177. Our culture per turn is 463.)
  
• Once we learn Genetics, Ismurkz changes from Palace to Cure for Cancer.
  
• Finish the Pentagon. Once the Pentagon is built, add an MA to the army in Mehrangahr.
  
• Keep building MAs, MIs and Armies.
  
• Keep an active eye on all AI coastal cities. Only India can sail the high seas and settle strange new lands.
  
• Entremont is our primary privateer maker, cranking one per turn. Need about 4 per AI coastal city. Need to replace losses.
  
• No peace with Carthage this turnset. (Carthage MAed with India 9 turns ago, between 1550 and 1555).
  
• No peace with the Ottomans this turnset. (They MAed with India 1 turn ago, between 1595 and 1600).
  
• Some more MI to the wall around Alum2.
  
• If we see Indian Elephants, let some unit allow India to begin her Golden Age.
  
• Keep pollution in check on Tadpole and Smurkz.
  
• Somewhere we are working a total of 6 unrailed, partially improved tiles. Need to find them and correct this. We have 3 sWorkers and 102 slaves to correct this.
  
• Swap tiles as needed (explained in notes in Post #1152).
  
• Rename ‘Oslo’ to something Smurkzish, like ‘Gandhi-Go-Bye-Bye’.
  

Look good, some minor comments:

- keep researching after genetics. Let's just get all techs. There's no need to sell libs etc just now, it's > 100 turns to 100K, so this can wait.
- mapstat will alert you to culture expansions that increase tile count.

CommandoBob said:

Examine some small border towns with an eye to disbanding them to stay under the Domination Limit.

Click to expand...

I would prefer to leave India some space on Ostrich or Tad so we can have them take over the uranium resources when need be. Any island that doesn't have resources that India will need (Lux, Aluminum, Uranium, possibly Rubber) should not allowed to be settled/captured. They are in communism. Adding a really corrupt town drops the production in ALL of their core towns. If the galleon is carrying troops (which zyxy indicated it must), convince them to land on Tadpole or Ostrich and then surround them to imprison them. If the need arises to have India capture Uranium for example, lead the imprisoned soldiers by the nose to the Uranium town and then gift it to Spain. (They won't need Uranium on your turn, but you may end up setting up the detention center for captured soldiers.)

CommandoBob said:

Learn Genetics in 6 turns, then nothing? If nothing, sell ALL libraries and universities to avoid a humiliating cultural victory. We know all we want to know.

Click to expand...

I'm in the middle of the road on this. I would like to keep going to get Free Artistry for Shakespeare, not that we need it, but because we could. It would be slightly helpful in one of the big metropolises. It would be a disadvantage to building it in Sages though because Sages is already a 20K threat.

After that, I see no reason for Robotics as we're already building fluff stuff in most towns and don't need the production increase of manufacturing centers. We're not growing towns much so Longevity isn't needed. Marines and helicopters both have their advantages but I'm not sure how much they're needed.

I am afraid that India is going to go way past 1900AD which means we're going to have to fight the 100K culture limit. Selling the libs/unis/labs will slow the culture increase but it will not stop it. We need to keep the temples/cathedrals for happiness which means we're only going to reduce our rate of increase but we will still keep increasing. I'd rather start selling off culture before it's critical to make sure we can delay the 100K limit beyond 2050AD.

I have no problem keeping Sages until it's near the 20K limit and then disbanding it if need be.

To summarize, I guess I'd be happy selling now, or researching any/all of [Democracy/Free Artistry, Amphibious, Advanced Flight] and then selling.

CommandoBob said:

Somewhere we are working a total of 6 unrailed, partially improved tiles. Need to find them and correct this. We have 3 sWorkers and 102 slaves to correct this.

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I saw that on my turnset, but when checking determined they must be tiles on islands without a harbor and therefore no access to iron/coal. I thought we decided to keep M-O island without a harbor so that if it ever flipped to the Ottoman's they wouldn't be able to trade for Carthage's aluminum, so I stopped worrying about the unrailed/unimproved tiles.

CommandoBob said:

Rename ‘Oslo’ to something Smurkzish, like ‘Gandhi-Go-Bye-Bye’.

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Yes I founded quite a few towns and just used the default names. If you feel so inclined, please rename them.

Conclusion
I liked your plan and would be fine with no changes. The above are more comments from the peanut gallery than directives to change your strategy.

OMT, if you can find a way to get India to stop throwing themselves upon our invinsible army, please do. I didn't experiment with alterately giving them a path to unprotected Hold'em and then the next turn giving them a path to uprotected Canal. That might make them move back and forth without ever attacking. But they would still incur WW by being in our territory. The best thing would be a demilitarized zone south of Holdem and canal that had no roads and wasn't in our territory. Then as they move back and forth, they'd fall into the "moat" of no roads and stop short of our territory. Then the next turn they'd turn around and jump in the other moat.

OTOH it may not matter since they're in Communism. Do the citizens get unhappy due to WW in communism?

I did a little checking for my alternating Moat Idea:

If we pillage the pink dot so that there is no rail and no road, then we can safely leave the Red Dot and Holdem itself uncovered, while heavily defending the two purple dots. India will have to dump it's guerilla's into the pink dot on their way toward Holdem. The next turn we move a stack back onto the red dot. The Guerillas should then move back onto the India roadways to head toward Meh or Canal. No attacks made, no WW for us or for them. Also, since noone dies, India can invest shields in something more useful than replacing their cannon fodder. The really nice thing about the Holdem side is that India doesn't even get WW from the pillaging because it's not in their territory.

On the canal side, we can do something similar, but it requires pillaging two tiles and both of them are in indian territory. The result is a roadless moat (pink dots) and a single gate tile (red dot).


A couple of other things I found while relooking at the save:

• Nevermind about the size 1 town in the south of Tad. I already finished that project and covered up my abandonment with worker improvements. (There used to be a town NW of Oily.)
• Theres a settler in Richbourgh that should probably be used to increase the population in one of the towns building an aquaduct.
• There are still some stacks of workers on Tad that are fortified, and some towns still needing mines instead of irrigation. You could wake the stacks for that. There is also a stack of workers on Ostrich that has nothing to do. You could move them to smurkz via Transfer or to Tad via Jean.

(None of these things need to be added to your strategy, I just am trying to pass on as much info as possible.)