SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

I hate to do this, but I really must drop out of the game. My time available to commit to the game has been dwindling steadily until now I have absolutely none. I've had a great time with you all and I wish I could continue.

I wish you the best, and good luck getting Ghandi launched.

Wardance

@WD: No problem, we've already managed the official end of the game, we're just mopping up now. I hope things work out for you and your family. I also hope you're not bailing out on us all together. Stick around and throw on the odd comment here and there, just don't play any turns, like Methos. Would that work for you?

I haven't been able to play tonight after all, but I'll take some time to play early tomorrow.

I agree with zyxy that something must be done. Gifting the Carthage area is one thing, but it will also give Gandhi a higher free support level for troops. I'll try to set that up, but I would not mind disbanding a lot of units, after all they're just sitting there. I doubt we can get down to average against India, but I will do my best without compromising national security.

I agree we can pair down the military. I tried to get the walls to minimum strength and stack the "useless" units in stacks of like type. Feel free to disband in place or use them for sheilds where needed.

Let's start with the Carthage area and see what develops. I'm not quite ready to concede the whole continent. I was looking to see how many cities we'd need to keep to protect the resources and it's just about half when you start trying to protect the horses.

My wife's family owns a home in Florida (Siesta Key near Sarasota on the Gulf Coast). We go there for a week every year around this time. It's nice, relaxing, and except for the five plane tickets, pretty cheap.

Hold the fort you three. I expect at least one turnset to be played before I return!

Hey WD, sorry to see you go. Hope to be seeing you around here and there. Perhaps for the next SGOTM?


On disbanding troops: Formula's used by the mil advisor are given here and here. I don't know whether they have anything to do with the powergraph. Some conclusions:

- MI count as less powerful than MA (attack ratings count higher than defense ratings, so 3 MI = 2 MA IIRC). For our purposes they are about the same, so I would keep MI, disband most MA - just keep a few for emergency. Perhaps we can even get away with manning the moat with infantry or rambo's (maybe Niklas can test this).
- Armies count as the troops in them, so we can keep empties around and build new empty ones at no power increase, but I think we should get rid of most of the filled armies. In particular, the moats do not need armies.
- It is not clear to me whether air and navy units count, but if they do, then let's get rid of all airplanes and carriers, as they are not so useful. Also get rid of excess ships, in particular of aegis/battleships.
- arty counts as well, but not for a lot. It probably matters little and we can keep around some.

Played 5, will try to play some more tonight. If I can't do that then I will upload.

Summary:

• Carthage area is nearly ready for hand-over. All towns have the required buildings, we just need to up them in size as well.
• Guerillas are no good at defending the moats, Gandhi will attack even though they are fortified inside a fortress. MInfs is the way to go.
• India keeps getting more pollution, so the withdrawal was a bit premature. New cleaning crews are on their way in.
• I've halved our number of MAs so far, intend to cut a bit more.

Save attached for inspection.

No more time, so I'll have to hand it over.

>>The Save<<

Preflight:
Time to set up the Carthage area. Switch Carthage, Zala, Point and Holdem to settlers.
Switch all towns building MAs to other stuff. Prioritize Recycling Centers and Airports.

Change the units in the walls to consist of MInfs and Infs. Won't disband any units on Smurkz just yet, I will disband them in the new towns in the Carthage area.

The massive MA wall along the Tadpole coast seems pretty useless, I disband a lot of units in towns for production speedups.

Do an experiment on Ostrich, leaving a single inf near a moat.

IBT: India and Spain sign MPP. So much for using Spain as a proxy. No attacks on the Inf.

1792 AD (1):
New pollution in India, near the border luckily. Send in 12 workers covered by army.

Settle the four new towns in the Carthage area, rush aqueducts/barracks.

Work the moats. The sole infantry was left untouched, next turn I'll try a guerilla.

IBT: Hannibal wants Free Artistry and 10 gp for peace.

1794 AD (2):
Last indian pollution is cleared. Extract all units that can be extracted.
Work moats. Disband a bunch of MAs, now down to 84.

Rush courts/walls in the new towns.

IBT: Guerillas didn't do the job at all. Two were killed on Ostrich, despite the moat being open. MInfs it is then.

1796 AD (3):
Reclaim the moat on Ostrich and replace all guerilla with MAs again.

Rush civil defense/police stations in new towns.

IBT: Ottos and Spain sign MPP.
America wants peace. Don't see any reason to.
SafeGemPassage wants to join us. Nah.

1798 AD (4):
Gah, two new polluted tiles in India.

Rush airport/marketplace in new towns.

IBT: Even more Indian pollution...

1800 AD (5): Save game, need to do some other stuff.

Handoff notes:

• The Carthage area should be ready to be handed off to India now. All crucial buildings are in, we just need to increase the population a bit in the towns that are to be captured. I guess a settler each from Carthage and Zala would do the trick, that would also even out the tile balance between the towns a bit. If we want to, we also have time to rush banks/SEs in the two new towns if we like, it will take Gandhi a few turns to get up there.
• Guerillas in the moats don't work, Gandhi attacks them. The Inf seems to work, but we don't have the option of building those any more so it will have to be MInfs. I've started building some more of them on Tadpole and Smurkz for airlifting to Ostrich, and there are a few that have just been lifted. The idea is to replace the MAs in the wall there and disband the latter.
• Gandhi doesn't seem to want to play the moat game to the fullest any more, he leaves more and more units on "the wrong side", and in the save that I hand off one unit didn't even heed the warning of being bombarded down to red. Don't miss that rifleman! Unless of course we feel the time has come to give up Holdem and the rest of Carthaginia.
• There's new pollution in India that popped up after I extracted our worker crews. The crews are heading in again - there are three transports near Kastle, Capulco and Kalmurkz respectively. In the one near Kalmurkz I managed to screw up at the extraction and put the MA in the transport instead of the last worker. That one got a special MInf escort back into Meh. I suggest you do the same for the way back out again. There is also a single MA in Meh that should go guard the crew near Meh, and the army near Holdem should guard the stack near Kastle.

Roster:

• Niklas - Just Played
• zyxy - UP!
• ControlFreak - away until April 18th
• CommandoBob - On Deck
• WarDance - ghosting
• Methos - ghosting

It seems I'll have a lot more time to play the coming week, so I might ask to hop in after zyxy again and play the rest of my turns.

Niklas said:

No more time, so I'll have to hand it over.

It seems I'll have a lot more time to play the coming week, so I might ask to hop in after zyxy again and play the rest of my turns.

Click to expand...

I won't be able to play until Wednesday at the earliest, so feel free to hop in. This Tuesday is a Primary Runoff Election Day. The polls are open 7am to 7pm, but since I am an Election Judge my hours are more like 6am to 8pm or so. Monday evening will be prep work, Tuesday is taken, so Wednesday would be the first chance I could devote any time to it.

WarDance said:

I hate to do this, but I really must drop out of the game. My time available to commit to the game has been dwindling steadily until now I have absolutely none. I've had a great time with you all and I wish I could continue.

I wish you the best, and good luck getting Ghandi launched.

Wardance

Click to expand...

You want to leave now, just when things get boring?

That's a Texan for you; if it ain't difficult he ain't interested.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Ok, got it. I may not be able to play until tomorrow evening though.

Long term plan:
- Get Ghandi to build spaceship parts.
- Avoid building too many space ship parts ourselves.
- Avoid domination victories.

This turnset:

- Reduce our own armed forces drastically. Scrap all airforces (including cruise missiles), carriers, battleships and aegis cruisers. Drastically reduce number of MA and destroyers. Do we still need those pirate ships? If not, scrap them as well. Will test whether paratroopers will hold the moat.

- Withdraw from Ca-Za strip per CF's plan. Best choice for proxy seem to be the Ottomans, as they have no trade relations with India, and the weakest diplo relations (only peace and RoP, but no MPP). Spain and America have MPP with India, and Carthage has trade (Alu!) with India. Main problem with using Otto's as proxy is that they have MPP with Spain, so this would start Indian-Spanish War.

- Clear pollution on Tadpole.

I agree with your plan, but I have a few comments:

If we want to keep up the pollution clearing in India, it might be a good idea to keep a few fighters around for recon in order to find those polluted tiles. We could scrap the carriers though, the fighters could easily be stationed at Meh. You could count how many would actually be needed, and keep no more than that.

An Indian-Spanish war is nothing to worry about. Just means we'll have another choice at a proxy if need be. As long as we don't make Carthage declare on India we're safe.

I think it might be a good idea to get the gift towns up to size 8 if possible, that would make the aqueduct automatically survive the capture. But with the cramped space this might not be feasible.

@zyxy: What news? Played any last night?

Nope. Playing now.

Turn 0, 1800AD: I will let India take over Ca-Za. Reduce our armed forces, but it goes slowly. The interturn takes forever as our armies take away massive amounts of hitpoints from passing Indians.

Turn 1, 1802AD: We make peace with Ottomans. We have to pay him our WM and 18 gold. Osman cancel his embargoes against us. We sign an alliance with Otto's vs India, paying 24 gpt. We gift Hold'em to Otto's. Form a paratrooper army with 1 unit and put it in the moat.
IT: India takes Hold'em and Spain declares on India. Para army is not attacked!

Turn 2, 1804AD: Smurkzland to Otto's. IT Indians take it, and do not attack para's.

Turn 3, 1806AD: Smurkzakla and Falun to Otto's.
IT: India takes them, and shows up with an elephant. India now attacks our para. India landed a party on tadpole that I completely forgot and takes washington. Will take it back next turn.

Turn 4, 1808AD: retake Washington. gift Hinterlands. Make a 2nd para army.
IT: Otto's & Spain embargo us. India takes Hinterlands. Indian elephant can reach Carthage and razes it . Couldn't be helped really... India also launches a mayor attack on Smurkzlund and manages to take it. I don't understand this, there are still empty target cities... our 2nd para army is attacked and killed this turn, as well as an MI escorting a cleanup crew (it survives).

Turn 5, 1810AD: retake Smurkzlund. I'll stop here. Not only am I making too many mistakes, but I also find this rather boring to be honest. We're just waiting for India to build a spaceship...

Handoff notes:
- Still no spaceship.
- we're still strong compared to India.
- Perhaps we'll want to refound Carthage?
- Para's are not strong enough to discourage attacks, so we'll need mech infs instead.
- The left gate on Smurkz is currently open. But watch out, India has a war elephant. So a 2 tile moat will be needed...

The save

Alright, got it. Seems I'm in for a bit of a mess.

And those sneaky Indians, go attack an innocent mayor like that!
On the up side, they should be in their GA now, which might mean some SS parts?

Since everyone (except possibly CF ) seems to find the game rather boring at this point, I'm simply going to play as many turns as I can find the time for, until CB announces that he is ready to take over. I assume none of you will protest this descision...

Didn't get to play any today after all, so I'll do a sweep tomorrow before CB gets out of bed.

As noted earlier, I'll keep playing until CB says 'boo'.

Niklas said:

Since everyone (except possibly CF ) seems to find the game rather boring at this point, I'm simply going to play as many turns as I can find the time for, until CB announces that he is ready to take over. I assume none of you will protest this descision...

Click to expand...

I don't think there will be a problem with that .

EDIT: >>The Save<<

Initial Sanity Check:

• Domination: We are 73 tiles from the domination limit, so no sweat.
• MMing: Cabana is at negative fpt, the culprit is Longevity. Will build a settler. Texas Horses is at negative fpt, the case of a previously polluted tile not reclaimed. Also needs a harbor.
• Cleanup: One visible polluted tile in India, near HotB. Will send in SD1.
• Warfare: None of our towns can be reached in one turn by a dumbo, so we're safe this turn. Moats will be established once the Indians have the lands that they should have.
• Intelligence: Investigation of Delhi gives that they are not in their GA. I suppose this is due to the fact that there were no troops in Carthage, so their dumbo still hasn't won any battle. Time to play bait-and-seek. Delhi is building BM btw, ETA 33 turns. At the end of my last turnset, 5 turns ago, they were building a hospital with ETA 7 turns, at size 12. Now the hospital is finished, they've been building a number of turns on BM, and Delhi is size 7. Damn that Gandhi and his whip...
  Decide to investigate a few more towns to get an overview.
  • Indiana is building a library (5 turns), has no factory.
  • Albu has a factory and is building guerilla at 22 spt, requires a clown to keep the remaining 5 citizens content.
  • New Heim is building guerilla at 18 spt, needs 5 clowns and harbors a slew of workers. Wonder why.
  • Grad is building guerilla at 22 spt, no clowns.
  I get the picture. Gandhi's building capacity is not that bad after all, if he would only use it for something better. But at least Delhi and Indiana are not building guerilla, which gives some hope at least.
  Decide to investigate Smurkzland as well, only 3 resistors! Turncoats ... but actually good news, I guess that's why it wasn't razed. Too bad it lost the harbor, that means it will shrink significantly.
• Diplomacy: Osman is our only "friend", and will be used for proxying. The only MPP in place is between Spain and Ottos, and has already triggered Spain to declare on Gandhi.

Preflight:
Nick a few ironclads to make them run for home.
Extract the workers near Olive, send in SD1 near HotB.

Rush the police station in Point, it will be captured on the next IBT.
We need a few more MInfs to cover important tiles. Switch some towns from wealth.
Make sure to cover all paras with other units on Ostrich, don't want to face a prison break.

The strategic situation near former Carthage is interesting:

I want that dumbo to win a fight in some way, and I have an MidInf to lure him with. So, kill off the guerilla nearby, using an elite MA, and get a leader, Erik Bloodaxe!

Wee! Have no use for him, so I'll stash him away for later use. Army maybe? Steal back the workers that came from Carthage. Put our bait unfortified on flat land, covering 12 slaves, within reach of the dumbo only. Sure hope that will be enough.

Rush a settler in Zilks with the possible intent to resettle Carthage.

IBT: Carthage and India sign MA vs Spain.
Dumbo kills MidInf, woohoo!

Someone in the Indian War Council must have smoked something unhealthy. Instead of making use of the nice moats, they throw countless guerilla to their death against our 2-MInf army in Lund. I lost count of how many they were, but the army survived with 2hp left.
Seems he pulled all guerilla back and marched on Point with all the rifles...


1812 AD (1):
Investigations of Delhi confirms that India is now in their GA.

That means that from now on I will consequently kill off any dumbo I encounter.
Albu is now up to 36 spt. Wonder why the wonder-crazed AI doesn't start the Iron Works?

Kill the dumbo, reinforce Lund and Zilks. Use the GL to make another army, fill with some MInfs in Lund. Give Point to Osman.

IBT: India captures Point, and starts using the moat again. Hope it holds.

1814 AD (2):
Move troops into position, work the moats. Extract SD1 after a job well done.
Kill a Carthaginian guerilla and get yet another GL.

Sigh. Decide to rush the Manhattan Project.

Not. Put him away since I don't know what to do with him. But I scared you, didn't I?

Here goes, hoping that the moats will work properly.

IBT: Moats work as planned, except for a bunch of pillagers. No big deal.

1816 AD (3):
Not much to do. Stop building MInfs, disband paras and MAs, and why do we have tanks??

IBT: Ottos and America sign MPP. Good thing we're in no more need of a proxy.

1818 AD (4):
Things have started to become more or less automated. I do

• Move the gate keepers.
• Clear any pollution, restore towns.
• Nick Indian ironclads.
• Press end turn.

IBT: No less than 3 polluted tiles, one on each major continent.

1820 AD (5):
Decide to steal Gandhi's plans. Then check the towns that are not shown as building units:

• Delhi: BM, ETA 20 turns.
• New Heim: Guerilla.
• HotB: Guerilla
• River: Library, ETA 3 turns
• SafePassage: Library, ETA 11 turns
• Ville: Library, ETA 2 turns (44 spt, nice)

The reason some don't show up as building troops is that they contain too many troops, so the F3 listing doesn't show the one being built.

Walk the walk.

IBT: 3 guerillas attack Lund with a 4-MInf army. :shakehead:
Otto Galleon headed north, set a destroyer on his tail. Don't want war just now.
Something weird: The Indian galleon/ironclad pair move south of The Vest, and it shows 5 or 6 unit stripes! But once they've stopped moving, it's back down to 2. Glitch showing the units in the galleon?

1822 AD (6):
Nothing out of the ordinary.

IBT: Spain and India sign peace.

1824 AD (7):
Pollution near Heim, SD1 is on their way. Airdrop two infantry on the wrong tile.
Settle Smurkzanger on Ostrich, covering the last stretch of open land. That should put an end to semi-hostile landings.
Check in on Ville, they follow up the library with arty.

IBT: America and Spain sign MA vs Carthage.
Airdropped Infs are attacked, no hp lost but it shows they won't do. Move in a MA instead.

1826 AD (8):
New pollution near Deer. Move in EPA1 crew.

IBT: Ottos and America sign embargo against us.
More pollution near Delphia. Good thing we have many worker crews in the area.

1828 AD (9):
zzzz

1830 AD (10):
Clear some pollution for India. Pollution popped up near Zilks, and workers need to take a hike to get there.

I'll stop here and upload, let CB have some fun. Won't bother posting the roster, with just the three of us it's not that hard to figure out who's on deck.

However, we've been moving fairly slowly as of late. So, from now on the game is free. Someone is always up, but if that person says he can't play until day X, then it's up for grabs for anyone who has the time and inclination to play before that. Like I did before CB. And like I might do if CB says he can't play today either...

Handoff notes:

• See my list above for what happens during the turns. Not much else to say.
• Ware the Otto galleon up near Bursa. Don't know where he's headed.
• Two of three cleaning crews have finished their business. The extraction transports are near Delphia, up by Canal, and down near Nan.
• The gate keeper armies are fortified. Don't miss them.
• There's a worker crew trying to walk past Indian troops near Point, covered by a MInf. They're intended for cleaning work near Zilks.

Niklas said:

However, we've been moving fairly slowly as of late. So, from now on the game is free. Someone is always up, but if that person says he can't play until day X, then it's up for grabs for anyone who has the time and inclination to play before that. Like I did before CB. And like I might do if CB says he can't play today either...

Click to expand...

It looks like I will be busy today (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday). Friday is too far off to tell.

Well, I haven't had any more time, and the whole easter weekend will be family time for me. I can't really use the whip, since there are so few of us. So, anyone who feels that they have the time, please pick up the game and play. We need to bring this boat to shore.

Whew! The weekend is finally over, Elections are done, Easter Church Services have come and gone and the printer has everything for our 30 yr high school class reunion that is this weekend.

Even Mrs. CommandoBob is happy.

Can't play tonight, plan to play tomorrow.