SGOTM 09 - Smurkz

Niklas is no doubt working on his PPP right now, so I thought I'd respond to Renata's question about which tiles to irrigate to avoid single-point failure. I would chop/farm the tile W of the Athens wine (which is also irrigated). This gives two paths to the Bonanza region, although there is still a single path leading there from Athens. To get a second path all the way, chop/irrigate one of the two tiles (S or SE) below the Athens wine, which will then connect to the southern (Ouzo/lake) irrigation system, which of course provides redundancy for the south, too.

Yes, this means chopping two forests that could otherwise be saved for later (and the one near Athens could have been Lmilled for either Ouzo or Athens) but otherwise a spy could destroy one farm and take out half a dozen or more with it. It wouldn't hurt to post a spy on a critical tile or two until the redundancy is in place. We could then post the spy(ies) in border cities to protect against mischief there.

Sorry guys, at least I've now opened and looked at the game. I like what I see, but I really haven't had any time to do any PPP today.

We need to kill those barb maces obviously. And we could do with a few rifles from somewhere.

I see no reason not to follow Xcal's excellent specialist plan. I'm less worried about espionage though.

Research should be Steam Power followed by quick Banking->Economics once we've traded for Guilds.

Will add more thoughts before I play tomorrow.

Can't believe I forgot to mention the barb maces. I meant to kill them, but wound up exiting before I got that far. That's a sort of important detail, isn't it? Oops.

With regards to a couple of points XCal raised, the spy specialist in Ouzo is a new citizen, yes, but the scientist in Greenland had been there a couple of turns. The new forest preserve only just completed.

I sense that there's little appetite for war. I have doubts that it's worth it, too. But those empty spaces in Europe are calling to me, and there are just some wimpy barbs for neighbors. Perhaps we could build an airport or galleon and send over a few workers, settlers, and rifles to found a couple more cities that would be used primarily as specialist farms. We might not end up getting that many extra GPs, but the extra beakers from running scientists would increase our tech rate, which can't hurt. Or we could run merchants for the gold, perhaps even building Wall Street. We wouldn't have to build much other than a granary and beaker (or gold) multipliers, and we could chop with abandon because we won't need them for production. The point would be to grow them fast and big to get a lot of beakers without too much extra in maintenance. Then, after we've teched all we need, and if we decide our home-continent cities are all we need to build the Spaceship parts (and it seems that we are), we generously give the cities to an AI for some gold. Just something to think about, since we're running a rather unusual game and there are probably some new angles we haven't thought of.

Oh, and note that if the Music Artist is already gone, we should obviously run artists in Panama for now.

Just to note that an Airport alone wouldn't allow us to send settlers to other continents. There has to be a target city for that, one of our own (OB isn't enough), so the first settler has to come via ship.

I figured we could send them to one of Stalin's nearby cities. But by ship may be better anyway. PPP today?

P.S. I've added Orion071's Space Race strategy thread to the Reference section of our Status/Reference thread. It's not too early to start thinking about this.

Trading:
Trade Nationalism to Hammy for Literature, Drama and WM. He is 3 turns from researching it, better he researches something more useful.
Trade for Guilds from Wang in 3 turns, presumably for Nationalism.

Research:
Steam Power (3) -> Banking (1) -> Economics (1) -> Corporation (2) -> Assembly Line.
We should have a lot of overflow from SP, which will be even bigger after Banking, so Economics in 1 should be doable.

Have we counted on the GSpy from Communism for our golden ages? Not sure it's worth the beakers though.


Cities:
Smurkzaki: Lab -> Forge -> Levee -> Airport
Bonanza: Forge -> Paratroopers
Sparta: Market
Athens: Frigate -> WB -> Frigate or Levee
Ouzo: Forge -> Observatory
Greenland: Harbor -> Observatory
Phishing: What's the point of a granary here? I'd build wealth for the rest of the game.
Panama: Odeon -> Library -> NE
BLVille: Granary -> Odeon -> Moai -> Forge -> Levee

MMing:
Phishing doesn't need the extra food from the lake. And Sparta is working an unimproved grass!! Give the Lake to Sparta and put Phishing on coast instead.

Workers:
The Panama/BLVille area needs a ton of attention, as does Ouzo. Emphasize lumbermills and mines in BLVille and Ouzo, both are slotted for production. Panama should get windmills.

Great People:
Settle GScis, save any others. We might not want to wait too long starting our next one.

Military:
Kill the Maces on the cows. We may lose a unit or two in the process, but next turn our Frigate completes to make short work of some galleys before blockading. And Bonanza will start churning out Paratroopers soon.

Did I miss anything?

I think it is almost all

We should think of making a galleon too .....

Good plan. I completely forgot about the Great Spy from Commie-ism. Can you use them for Golden Ages? We have no other use for Communism unless we think the Kremlin will be worthwhile--probably not.

Maybe have Phishing build spies to post in our cities or on key tiles to thwart espionage. We definitely want them for the end game to avoid sabotage of our big builds. We expect the Phishing GP (Merchant) around turn 195; sooner would be better, yes? I'd be tempted to keep the lake food and run an extra merchant half the time to speed things up. As you note, Sparta already has more tiles than it can profitably use (although we should build mines/lumbermills when we can).

Don't forget to trade any unneeded resources for gold.

Paratroopers?! With their drop capability we could take out Hammy in 3 turns! OK, slightly longer, but the effort and hammer cost would be minimal (as long as he doesn't have Rifling) and I think the benefits may very likely be worth it. If we don't have aluminum and he does, then it's a no-brainer. Full speed to Industrialism!

Maybe Sparta should build a frigate. Or two. You know, in case we need to bombard Hammy's coastal cities before dropping the paratroopers.

Played 3 turns up to Steam Power. Stopped here since Wang won't trade Guilds. We really should have made an effort to make that guy Friendly with us, like a mock war with Stalin. Oh well, hindsight and all that.

Comments appreciated. My current plan is to simply go Guilds->Banking->Eco->Corp on our own in 1 turn each.

I really don't understand why Wang is refusing to trade ..... "we don't want to start to trade..." He knows another civ with the tech .....

Anyway we can get Guilds + Banking + Economics in 3 turns @ 100 ( not sure if we can take corp in 1 as well .... ) as niklas said. Probably is the best thing to do.... other option would be going steel, but that risks the GM

The "hands full" status is still the same.... shaka is still gearing to attack someone .

Hammy has the monopoly of music..... would be way cool if he would do Sistine for us before we attack him, no?

If we chopped and farmed the forest SE of Phishing we could run an extra specialist. Yeah, we lose what few hammers we have but it's probably worth it. We need more GPs, gold (to keep the research slider high), and beakers. If Sparta could run 4 or 5 merchants that would be helpful, since we aren't going to get that Music Artist.

The other teams' curves on the Progress page are freaking me out. I think we've pushed the peaceful builder/researcher route as well as possible, so they obviously went more, a lot more, on the warrior path. I wonder what their teching is like? Our rate is not going to significantly increase without more cities and I suspect it's not enough to be competitive, so whom and when are we going to attack? Rifles are a big step up over maces, and paratroopers even more, but the AI are not that far from Rifling so it needs to be soon. Hammy is farther along in techs so I think he's the obvious choice over Joao, at least to start with. What do you all think? Building the Heroic Epic suggests similar thinking among some but there hasn't been any back-and-forth discussion of our plans.

When are we planning to run another Golden Age? My hunch is that shortly before the Moai finish in BLville would be a good time, or maybe a little sooner.

[BTW, AlanH is gently reminding us that the absolute hard drop-dead date to finish is July 27. The goal was to finish a month ahead of that. Let's keep moving, and preferably faster.]

I'm already chop-farming the forest by Phishing.

And Hammy has already completed Sistine for us.

Yes, I think we should take Hammy out using Paratroopers. He won't be useful as trade stooge anymore, so his beakers would be better served in our hands. That said, I'm not freaked out by the graphs of the others. Sure, several will definitely beat us, but I think we're definitely holding our own tech-wise. Let's stay our course - which will surely include war - and not look too much at what others do, eh?

I'll resume playing in not too long, a few hours at most.

Unexpected circumstances kept me from playing today. I will play tomorrow, promise!

CommandoBob is still around, observing and learning, when Civ3 committments aren't sucking my time away (MTDG 2, Demogame Revival and 3 SGs).

Niklas? It's now the day after tomorrow. I hate to be a pain, but we only have about a month left.

Or are you expecting a cosmic ray event to have a excuse for having one more week to play ? Having that in two consecutive SGOTMs would be as good as winning the lottery twice in a row

I know Niklas is swamped right now, so on the chance he can't continue, are you up next XCal? If so, can you start getting a plan together? Looks like Niklas already did most of the hard work.

It would be best to have Niklas continue, but if he can't in the next day or two then unkle should go next since he was skipped. That assumes he isn't too exhausted from his game organizing, though (he said he'd be free again starting June 18). If neither can play soon then, yes, it would be me, and I'll have some chunks of time off and on. We should double check about trading for Guilds, but if still no go then teching should be Guilds, Banking, Economics, Corporation, Electricity, Assembly Line. I suggest skipping Steel for now because BLville can't get to the Ironworks for awhile and we don't need cannon to take out Hammy--the paratroopers are strong enough and can't wait to move cannon around to reduce city defenses. Do Corp before Elec because it gives an extra trade route in each city, which should be worth more than the extra Elec commerce from windmills and watermills. This pretty much agrees with Niklas's existing plan.

Not sure how many paratroopers we need but as many as possible as fast as possible is probably best. We must strike before Hammy gets Rifling--aim for late in this turnset (?). BLville should stick to infrastructure but all the other cities (bar Phishing, Panama, and maybe Greenland) should build paras and maybe another frigate or two. Keep the paras coming after we open the attack but we'll need to switch to pumping out workers at some point to improve the captured cities and be ready to railroad mines, lumbermills, and quarries.

We probably ought to run another Golden Age soon. Thoughts? [Edit: We need Artists to run the 3- and 4-GP Golden Ages. We have 1 now and would only like 1 more, so that we can run more valuble merchants instead (of which we'll need 3 total, to run the 2-, 3-, and 4-GP GAs). To save our Artist for later we should therefore wait until we get a Merchant (from Economics) to start the 2-GP GA. It doesn't have to be right then--the main thing is, don't spend our saved Artist on the next (2-GP) Golden Age; wait for a Merchant.

[Edit: Any cities that might pop a GP should run as many engineers as possible; we can build forges now. Panama should run artists when it doesn't have a big food surplus for growth, i.e., when our workers get behind on farming.]

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I've added up the beakers for our remaining tech needs and if we skip the Space Elevator (Robotics) and go with Computers and not Laser (choice of prereqs for Fiber Optics) then we have 106300 beakers to go. If we average 1200 beaker/turn (including GP bulbing) that's 89 turns, or turn 220. We're making 952 bpt now at 100% research. I think we should be able to do better than 1200 bpt on average if we quickly get Hammy's cities in shape (and run lots of sci's in our GP cities toward the end, etc.), so let's aim for turn 200, plus another few turns to build the last part. Oh, and then we have to wait for the arrival. I think that's ambitious but Niklas probably thinks we can tech faster.