SGOTM 10 - Smurkz

Science : 0%
Espionage : 0%
Culture : 0%
Gold : 100%

Treasury 252, +13 gpt
Astronomy 3008 to go

Civics
Government: Heridatry Rule
Legal: Bureaucracy
Labor: Serfdom
Economy: Mercantilism
Religion: Paganism

Great People
Great Engineer in Moscow in 29.

Cities

1. Moscow (2) settler in 1, zero growth
2. St. Petersburg (3) warrior in 2, grows in 7

Long Term Goals
Nukes, baby, nukes!

Mid Term Goals
Five cities fairly quickly.

Short Term Goals
City 3 gets settled soon, on the plains between the Cows and Iron to the north of Delhi. Once the settler is built in Moscow, it will take 8 turns to walk to its new home, but the city can built on the 8th turn.
Declare on Gandhi soonish, before he builds a camp on Ivory.

Moscow settler -> settler (?)
St. Petersburg Warrior -> Warrior/Barracks/Archer/Longbow (?)

Are the worker tasks from Post #105 still valid?

Check post 150 for the more recent spreadsheet. The city sheet needs to be tweaked to reflect my slight goof up and we need to double check what exactly we want to do with the workers, specifically workers 2 and 3 which have been dedicated to improving St. Pete. I may or may not get time this weekend to fix it, which in turn gives us time for some discussion. The question from before still needs to be answered: do we hook up the RS ivory now like the spreadsheet calls for with the risk being Bombay popping a Great Artist in the near future or do they do something else, namely building a farm to help with growth. St. Pete also needs its builds sorted out. We need another warrior for sure now, but afterward do we build a barracks or start making units to go on the offensive? My guess is the extra promo the barracks gives will come in handy, but we may end up a bit short on units if Gandhi gets around to improving his ivory sooner rather than later. Moscow definitely needs to grow before building a settler and the sheet calls for a barracks which due to chop overflow and our build bonus for having the aggressive trait gets it done in one turn. After that I believe it makes units for the foreseeable future working the tiles outlined in the sheet for maximum growth. Workers 1, 4, and 5 improve around Moscow while this growth phase takes place. When I have time I'll play through a few scenarios and see if I can improve anything, namely unit production and worker actions. I'd like it if others could do the same providing they have some free time they're willing to kill. I know for a fact at some point the worker actions begin to get a bit sloppy and can be optimized further.

Well, I won't be able to post anything until at the earliest Tuesday because my ISP is apparently down until then. All of my posting is currently being done at a friend's house where I'm not going to have access to the save or my spreadsheets. Therefore nothing will get updated until my internet at home is back.

I thought I might have some time on Saturday to examine the worker moves, but life happened.

Early Saturday morning my wife was complaining of chest pains and we suspected a heart attack (she had several symptoms). Turns out instead to be acid-reflux (probably) but not a heart attack. Well, now we know, but with continued chest pains (over an hour) you don't take chances. Got there at 5:40 am; got home at 3.50 pm.

Saturday evening was a high school reunion planned through Facebook and I was one of the planners. My wife stayed home to rest. It was a local event; 5 minutes driving time. I left at 4:30 pm and got home at 1:30 am.

I had 4 sodas, so I've been running on caffine for awhile, but I am ready to crash.

So, maybe, I might be able to look at the worker turns in the next day or so.

Well, that was quite a day. Best wishes to you and your wife, CB. Try to take it easy for awhile, OK?

Hi guys. I'm really sorry, but I can't handle this game right now, and I think it's better I just say so than leave you hanging indefinitely. Best of luck, and hope you can manage to keep going. Is it possible to add players still at this point? I don't know if I could find anyone interested who isn't already playing, but I could try.

Less hanginess is appreciated. Does "right now" leave open the possibility that things might get better, say, by November? Nah, I didn't think so. But as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to jump back in at any time, and I hope you do.

Things are not going exactly textbook on this game, are they? Most people have at least given one warning that they were going to be busy for awhile, but I am getting rather worried that so little has been heard from them for so long. I am truly intending to help with planning and playing once October rolls around but I'm really kinda falling apart at the moment. Rolo, unkle, zyxy, how are things looking with you guys?

City Builds
Moscow builds a barracks after the settler. This is what is planned in the spreadsheets and makes sense to me. After the barracks, we make Longbows for a while. Maybe send one with our new settler as escort.

St. Petersburg is not so clear cut. Warrior completes in 2, heads to Moscow, and then we either make units or barracks. I think barracks would be the better choice, especially if Moscow builds units while the barracks is being built.

Worker Moves
Workers 2 and 3 are assigned to St. Peteys; 1, 4 and 5 to Moscow.

Worker 2 is N-NW of St. Peteys (plains, Ivory, road).
Worker 3 is 1N of St. Peteys (forest, road).
On the spreadsheet they begin to build a Camp on the improved Ivory 1SW of where Worker 2 is next turn, but Backwards Logic wasn't so sure about that. He feared that Gandhi's culture would capture that tile and our work goes to help someone else. I agree; we don't want Gandhi to be strong. We could just skip ahead to the following task, which is building a farm 1NW of St. Petersburg, but I'm not sure how that impacts building barracks and units in St. Petey's.

Worker 4 is N-NE of St. Petersburg (grassland).
Workers 1 and 5 are 1S of Moscow, making a Farm (grassland, Corn).

I think I can follow the plan for these workers with any problem.

We continue to learn Astronomy slowly.

When I try to load this game, it tells me I need to have the mod BUFFY installed, and then it restarts the game to do that. Is that right?

CommandoBob said:

When I try to load this game, it tells me I need to have the mod BUFFY installed, and then it restarts the game to do that. Is that right?

Click to expand...

Yes. Good to have have you back in the saddle. Your plan sounds good to me. Depending on when you think it would be a good time to grab a worker, it might be good to slot in a pikeman build somewhere (since melees can get Woodsman promos, unlike Lbows), although BL managed to steal a worker or two with just a warrior. But then again, I haven't look at the save and have no idea what things look like, so do what you think is best.

I've got a Turn in the Civ III Multi-Team Demo Game II to play (3 hours or so) and my mom is spending the night tomorrow night (Wednesday), so I won't be able to play until Thursday.

This gives us plenty of time to fine tune what we can do. I'm sure that BL will have some improvements to his spreadsheets by then!

Hopefully my 'net back home will be back up (still posting from friend's house...) and I'll be able to put together and upload a new sheet. No guarantees though - it's totally out of my hands whether or not it starts working again...

As for escorting the settler over to its settling location: That won't be necessary, as we won't be at war until after the settler has made it over and we already have a unit in place to act as the city garrison. Plus escorting him over would take longer and thus the city wouldn't be up and running as soon.

The timing for nabbing a worker(s) for me was when he started improving the ivory in his territory. We definitely don't want him to get elephants. Once he got on the tile I just captured the workers with whatever was on hand as to prevent him from hooking it up. If we have pikes great, if not our longbows on hand will suffice.

01/18 1375 AD
[IBT]
Moscow settler -> barracks in 1.

02/19 1380 AD
[IBT]
Moscow barracks -> Longbow in 4.
St. Petersburg Warrior 9 -> barracks in 5.

03/20 1385 AD
[IBT]
Gandhi's FastWorkers begin to road the forest 2E of Delhi.

04/21 1390 AD
[IBT]

05/22 1395 AD
[IBT]
Rice is connected to Moscow.

06/23 1400 AD
[IBT]
And the save is >>HERE<<.

I've posted the save for several reasons. One, to double check what I've done so far and see how close we are to Backwards Logic's spreadsheet.

Second, on the Worker Task spreadsheet, what is P Gold for Workers 1 and 3 on Turn 25? At the moment, I wasn't going to connect the Iron, so that we could make units faster (gut call; I could be wrong) and thus skipped ahead a couple of turns in their task list. I cannot figure out what or where P Gold is.

Note too, that we did not build a Camp on the 2nd Ivory.

Third, Gandhi is improving his Ivory and our Longbow still has movement left to capture his workers this turn. That means war. I wanted other eyeballs on the game before we did that.

I don't consider this a handoff, but I am asking for help.

Good news: Net is back. I'll take a look at things either tonight (doubtful) or at the latest tomorrow at midday and comment. And for reference the P Gold is the plains hill gold, not the grassland hill gold. And he started roading the ivory and not building a camp on it yet? If that's correct we still have some time before we have to declare.

Still making comments without looking at the save... Looking ahead to when we capture some workers, I'm paranoid about Gandhi (or someone else) grabbing that northern fish site before us. If there's not a pressing need for other actions, maybe send one worker to build a road to that site. It would save a LOT of movement turns for the eventual settler.

I just looked at the save.

I'll post some comments when I have a much cooler head. I'm not thrilled. When you put in countless hours to try and optimize this sheet and to see stupid things like an unimproved grassland tile being worked instead of an improved RS grassland farm it just sets me off. I'm sorry if I'm being harsh, but damn the game's not even close to what it should be. I know you're new at Civ IV and that's okay, but god if there's anything that seems out of whack stop and post just a bit sooner. Please don't take it personally, just look at it from my point of view and try to understand where I'm coming from. And where the hell in the spreadsheet does it say to work the rice instead of corn. When would it ever be better to have 5 food coming in instead of 6 food at pop 2?

I'm going to see what I can do to salvage what's here. There's a few short term pros here, but the long term cons are going to hurt big time.

Speaking as someone who really needs to reduce his stress level... I don't think that under the present circumstances (only 3 "active" players, slow start, etc.) it's worth sweating the details as hard for this game. I can't, in any case, and without me you're down to 2 players. I appreciate the time and thought you've put into the game, BL, and it's particularly important at the start, but the spreadsheet plan would likely have been trashed anyway by an unexpected Gandhi move, and we don't know exactly when we'll want to declare war, which will certainly affect things. An updated spreadsheet plan would be appreciated, but a prose general plan would probably suffice, so each player can lay out a somewhat more detailed pre-play plan. I haven't played any SGOTMs where squeezing out every advantage has mattered, and I doubt I ever will. A good start is important, but I think the big picture is more important. Our big picture is to expand fast while putting even more emphasis on limiting Gandhi to 2 cities. If we keep focused on that for the next 20 or 30 turns I think we'll be fine. Soon we'll have to decide whether or not to expand overseas, but not yet. The intense early studies on where to settle gave us a good start. Let's just play and try to have fun.

I was tired and should not have played last night, but I thought I had enough of my wits about me to avoid mistakes like this, especially if I didn't try to rush through the turns. I was wrong.

St. Petersburg can still grow this turn, though if we are expecting war with Gandhi, then building the barracks would seem to be more important than growing. Nevertheless, we did not work the Ivory on the last turn.

In Moscow, while I admit to being confused with Corn and Cows, it still seems that we grow this IBT, which is in line with the spreadsheet. And we complete a Longbow two turns faster than if we did work the Corn and not the Cows. So I must be missing something here. Please enlighten me.

Good news, it's not as bad as I initially feared.

St. Pete can and will still grow this turn though it could have done it much sooner. I was stressing as much vertical growth in the spreadsheet during peace time while we can. The bigger the pop, the more tiles it can work and thus the more hammers it can bring in which is why Moscow worked the highest food tile possible. It's all about the overflow - if you look on the sheet Moscow goes through a massive pop spike in a few turns. Because it does not have as much food in the bin as it should have, this is no longer as optimal (it loses a turn getting to pop 5 and thus one less turn of working the grassland gold mine. Pop 6 is the same, but pop 7 loses another turn) and thus hurts us in both hammers and commerce. And we only gain one turn on the longbow production - I'd rather have the higher pop sooner.

When we declare Gandhi will spam longbows. It's paramount we keep the pressure on him and to do so we need high pop cities working improved tiles to keep churning units out and later settlers once Gandhi is properly choked. Low pop cities that work hammer producing tiles are nice short-term, but we still have time as I mentioned before the war starts. I wanted to get as much growth in as possible during this time frame so the cities can produce units fast.

We have to sort out our new city which gets settled next turn in between the cows and iron. We'll need to pop borders to get the clams, but my tests have shown that if we go culture -> workboat -> worker we end up one turn short of growing to pop three in time to get the worker out a bit faster. When I can I'll run through a few other scenarios, namely worker first to see if we can get this city online faster.