SGOTM 07 - Smurkz

I'm pretty sure we can continue to build missionaries after Scientific Method -- can anyone confirm?

How much of a negative does Cathy get against someone she's declared war on? I know I've seen backstabbers like Qin remain pleased with me from start to finish of a war he started, even while he refused to talk.

JC had better open borders soon, grr.

It's really too bad about Murky Waters. Well done by them, though.

I'll have more to say later.

Renata said:

I'm pretty sure we can continue to build missionaries after Scientific Method -- can anyone confirm?

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I'm pretty sure this is not the case, but I can't confirm or deny it right now.

How much of a negative does Cathy get against someone she's declared war on? I know I've seen backstabbers like Qin remain pleased with me from start to finish of a war he started, even while he refused to talk.

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If she declares on someone, she gets no negative for that, it's the declared upon that gets a -3 "You declared war on us" towards her. However, the +1 Peace is nullified, as is the +2 OB, and possibly the +2 BR as well (at least it starts ticking down). And while being at war, they each have at least -3 (increasing with 1 per 8 turns) "This war spoils our relationship" with each other. So effectively, if we theoretically could get Cathy to declare on Saladin on the last turn before the vote, she would have at least -6 towards him compared to what she had just before.

JC had better open borders soon, grr.

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Indeed, this is the biggest worry we have at the moment.

It's really too bad about Murky Waters. Well done by them, though.

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Definitely. if/when you guys read this.

Is there any way to cut our time down? Do a little bulbing or taking the shortest path possible (and suriving of course)?

We could possibly cut our time down to turn 184. That would be cutting it with respect to some relations growing on time though, and JC would most likely be lost to us (due to not opening borders in time). It would also require us skipping Chemistry, and chopping all our forests at the end (or getting a GE).

All in all, we're not going to beat MW. But we are still most likely going to beat everyone else, with the possible exception of CRC who are an unknown. OSS and GK still have a theoretical chance, but their graphs indicate nothing of the kind. So with that in mind, I'd probably rather go for the safer win in 192, and not take the risk of delaying beyond that if not everything works out.

My plan would be to
- End all wars, as described above. In particular don't let Cathy take Memphis.
- Research Chemistry in 4 turns.
- Build another Missionary just in case.
- Make sure JC gets Liberalism and has the chance to switch to FR.
- Continue to be active on the trade front.

I'd check back in and hand off when the 4 turns are up. Please comment, I won't play until we're agreed on this.

Why does JC need Liberalism/FR?

Sorry, I should have explained better, but I wanted to get to bed...

If JC goes to FR, it would let Washington of the worst enemy hook. We will need to give Washington a few techs more in order to get him to +1 ST. That's my reasoning.

Only thing is you're counting a -2 Heathens with Cathy into the equation for him on the previous page. Removing that doesn't seem to affect the conclusion, though, so that's ok. Everything else on your list sounds good to me.

Right, no, he's unlikely to vote for Cathy regardless. The tricky part is to get him to vote at all.

I'll play the four turns shortly.

Sorry I've been away - still planning my upcoming move across the country in ten days.

I agree with Niklas that we should go for the safe win on turn 192.

Also good job Niklas averting the war with KK, and good job Murky Waters on finishing so quickly!

Good to hear from you Chris, hope you can get back for real before we finish the game.

Still haven't played, will do soon.

We are now at war.

Played two more turns, save is attached.

Things aren't hopeless. I don't know why Kublai declared on us despite being at war with JC already, but at least he sent most of his troops away. What he has in our vicinity now is a bunch of pillagers, which of course is bad in itself.

I propose that we immediately go to all-out production and get a Caravel out in one turn, to protect our Crabs. Losing them would be BAD. I also think we should consider signing Asoka in.

On the plus side, we're now in a shared war where we didn't need to declare ourselves. Kublai is obviously a lost cause completely now, so we should try to take him out. He's pretty backwards, and Caesar already has Musketmen to bring to bear on him.

Here's a shot of the invading force:



That's two longbows on the iron, and one galley and one caravel off shore.

Does anyone know if we get the option to build a warrior if we lose our metals? Or are we forced to muskets due to having gunpowder?

Something I brought up to Niklas via IM is until we are confident with how things are going, maybe we should play a single turn each day. That way we can discuss it and then play a turn and then back to discussion again.

Here's my suggestion for defense:


We currently have one Warrior and one Maceman (4 xp) in our capitol, as well as one Catapult (4 xp) in Indian territory, 4 tiles east of the invading spear stack.

Turn 0:
Mace promotes to Combat 1, and whacks the top spear on the silver. Before the upgrade he has 98.6% chance to win, and he will end his turn on the Deer for both his own and the resource's protection.
The Catapult moves onto the Deer as well, to cover.
The Warrior upgrades to a Maceman.
We set production to Caravel, at 66 hpt it's due in one turn.

IBT:
We expect one of the Longbows to pillage the Iron, and the other to move onto the Sheep. The Galley likely pillages the Fish, and the Caravel likely goes to pillage the Whale (though we can hope he's stupid and uses the Caravel for the Fish, since the Galley can't go to the Whales). We don't know what the spear stack will do.

Turn 1:
Our Maceman on the Deer should now have 5 xp and can promote to something to heal, either Combat 2 or Cover depending on what the Spear stack does.
One of our Maces moves to whack the Longbow on the Sheep, the odds should be around 65% for the fresh warrior-cum-mace.
The newly built Caravel moves to fortify on the Crabs. Production is set to build a new one.

IBT:
No idea yet, too vague, too much depends on what happens.

Turn 2:
We have Chemistry. Upgrade both Maces (if they live) to Grenadiers. The new Caravel attacks one of the ships, likely the galley. If the Iron wasn't pillaged, we can upgrade the other Caravel to a Frigate.

After a quick war council over IM with me, Renata and Methos, I went ahead and played one more turn, here's what's happened so far and some new thoughts.



Turn 0:
Mace promotes to Combat 1, and whacks the top spear on the silver, 99.1% chance. He wins, but only at 2.4/8 strength. Obviously he risks being killed, and nothing threatens Beijing currently. Thus the catapult moves to cover him, but that's not enough, the Warrior also moves to the Deer to cover him before upgrading to Maceman. Beijing is empty, but not threatened, nor unhappy of course.
Production set to Caravel, ETA 1 turn.

IBT:
As expected, one of the Longbows to pillages the Iron, and the other to move onto the Sheep. The Galley pillages the Fish, but the Caravel moves to the same tile and leaves the Whales be. But most encouraging is that the Spear+Cat+wounded Sword stack on the silver decides to run for the hills, i.e. back into Lizzy's territory.

Turn 1:
Since we desperately need the Sheep, there's little to discuss, I must whack that longbow. The unpromoted Warrior-cum-Maceman has ~74% chance, and wins at 1.2/8. He then moves to the hill, away from the longbow on the iron.

So here's the current situation:



The question to me now is, should we try to kill that Longbow on the iron right away (he's C1), so we can rebuild the mine as fast as possible? We can promote the 2.4 Mace with Cover, does anyone know how much he heals? Or we could give him Combat 2, which is better in the long run. We could then sacrifice the Catapult on the Longbow, and finish him off with the Mace.

The alternative is to promote now, heal for a turn, and next turn promote the other Mace as well so we have more alternatives. We'd likely lose some food on that since the LB will probably move to the Sheep.

Regarding production, we can build warriors now that we have no metal! And not much else (well, muskets of course). We can do 54 hpt, or we could press it up to 60 hpt at the expense of some research and food. The latter would give us a second Caravel, since the naval scene seems like the biggest problem right now. Or we could build a galley (50), and hope that's enough to dissuade them.

Thoughts, comments?

Darn, it all went to h*ll pretty quickly.

I vote for a caravel and kill the longbow this turn.

ChrisShaffer said:

Darn, it all went to h*ll pretty quickly.

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For Kublai, yes...

Actually, we're not that badly off. We might delay our Mass Media by a turn or so, but that won't affect the win date. We can trade for our missing seafood resources next turn when trades are renegotiable, and... whoa, if we trade for those resources now while we're missing them, it means we can trade our own sources away! Wow, that's 2 (or 3) extra resources for us to trade away! Why didn't we think of that before?

This war had better be a single occurence though... (or at least Saladin had better stay away until our iron is reconnected and we have a few Frigates).