SGOTM 10 - Smurkz

What if I play on to Turn 33 (1450 AD)? Seems like a good year to end.

Spreadsheet Plans
Moscow will make one Pike and start another Pike.
St. Petersburg will finish two Pikes.
Broberg-grad will almost finish its worker.

Worker 1 will finish one mine in 1420 AD, move and finish another one in 1445 AD.
Worker 2 will finish roading the Corn, move and chop a forest.
Worker 3 and 5 will tag-team with mines and roads and one farm.
Worker 4 will chop and mine, and maybe start a farm.

Non Spreadsheet Plans
Slaves01 and 02 will road the hill they stand on, move 1SE, road that hill and then move onto Horses to road it.

Longbow inside India will move and pillage the roads that connect Bombay to Delhi.
Longbow 10 will attempt to capture Worker on the Bombay Cow. If we do capture Slave03, I'm thinking about having him road to Broberg-grad or to our next city site, whereever that is.

Longbows will then move to deny Gandhi high-production tiles.

Pike replace Longbows for resource denial? Or just deny more resources?

Other Items
We don't start our next settler until 1455 AD (Turn 34) in Moscow.

I might be able to get this done Friday evening.

Putting together an updated spreadsheet now. I will have it posted in a few hours.

Turn 33 sounds fine to me.

Things of note:
Moscow's sheet is unchanged, but I've posted it anyway to keep things easy:

St. Pete: Updated to show the late chop. Watch for the micro on turn 32.

Broberg: No change. Not worth posting as all it does is build the worker for your turnset.

Worker moves: Some of these have changed considerably so give it a good look over.


Another thing: I'm not 100% if it will work out, but I think I have a plan to capture the third worker that's currently working the cows. My test save is a little funky when it comes to Gandhi's worker moves so it's possible the worker may not be there in the real thing. Nevertheless it involves the longbow that was just built in Moscow that's now in St. Pete.

1420(turn 27): Nothing, press enter (this is how the save is)
1425(turn 28): Slave 01 and 02 Road the hill they stand on. Longbow moves one south onto the hill and ends turn here despite it still having movement left.
1430(turn 29): Slave 01 and 02 move 1 S and Road the tile. Longbow then moves 1 S, 1 SW to capture the worker.

Once CB is done with his turnset we'll have to briefly discuss what we want our workers to do. For the first time ever they'll be pretty close to running out of things to do. They can road randomly, improve tiles randomly, or hopefully we can come up with something a bit more productive. At some point St. Pete could be transformed into a commerce city with all of the grassland that's available, but 6 tiles of 3 hammers and enough food to work it all it's pretty good production wise as well. The other thing too is we'll have to discuss what to do with our Engineer that will pop on turn 47. There may be a wonder or two left that we could rush, we could settle him, we could save him for mining inc, or use him for a golden age.

[1420 AD IBT]
Continuing on until 1450 AD.
Download the save and away we go....

Hmm. Gandhi will make peace. We won't.

Catapult attacks our Longbow, catapult dies.


11/28 1425 AD
[IBT]
St. Petersburg Pike -> Pike.


12/29 1430 AD
[IBT]


13/30 1435 AD
[IBT]
Moscow Pike -> Pike.


14/31 1440 AD
[IBT]


15/32 1445 AD
[IBT]
Alexandar Graham Bell (GE) born in a faraway land.
Ling Lu (GA) born in a faraway land.


16/33 1450 AD
[IBT]
And the save is >>HERE<<.

India 1450 AD



We have three units inside India's borders, two Longbow and 1 Pike.

Around Delhi we have a Longbow ready to pillage Cows.
East of Delhi is a Pike ready to do whatever.
SouthEast of Bombay we have a Longbow that can either move 1NW and pillage (I only pillaged the Plantation, not the road) or attack and perhaps grab another slave.

Broberg-grad has lost a tile to Indian culture.

Russia 1450 AD



We gained three slaves over these turns and now have 8 workers.

We have lost no units to Gandhi in this war.

Confusician has spread to Broberg-grad.

Worker 1 and 3 are in the same tile (2W of Moscow, mined and roaded hill).
Slave01 and Slave02 are together (1NW of St.Petersburg, roaded farm).
Worker 4 and Slave03 are also buddied-up (2N of St.Petersburg, ready to mine and road).
Worker 2 and 5 are working solo.
Worker 2 is 1S-1SE of St.Petersburg, ready to chop that forest.
Worker 5 is 1S-1SW of Moscow, working on a cottage.

North of our Iron is an Indian Explorer. Pike 12 is keeping it at bay.

Horses are roaded.

Looked at the save. Things look okay, with the exception of the slave 01 and 02 worker moves and the worker one and three moves. They aren't what they are supposed to be. The two slaves are okay since the horses won't be needed until later, but the worker one move is a problem. I had it timed so seafood city would have a workboat chopped out the turn the settler was completed and the city subsequently founded. Now with the extra road built the numbers are now skewed. I see there's another worker there to help out, but now I have to go back through and figure out what the two should do to keep the timing the same. It doesn't impact the overall game, it's just more work for me to keep things optimal for our new city.

I wouldn't worry too much about the explorer to our north. He can't attack anything, he can't pillage anything, the only thing he can do (and I'm not even certain on this) is block Moscow or St. Pete from working the tile he's standing on for a turn.

I'm happy Confu spread to Broberg-grad. Because of this we won't have to 'waste' three turns of building culture to get the borders to spread. Instead, we could put those hammers towards a Caravel or two and use one to blockade Delhi.

Next turn Moscow starts settler production. After the first settler is complete we need to decide what Moscow should do. More settlers for our expansion or infrastructure buildings? I'm leaning towards settler spam.

St. Pete also needs a direction. With the units we currently have plus those in production it looks like we can stifle Gandhi pretty well. Do we shift the hammers to more infrastructure buildings, specifically culture buildings, get some specialists running, or build garrison units to pad our happy cap? Our seafood city is going to need a lot of them, especially if we choose to not build the Globe Theater here.

Speaking of national wonders, we should start some discussion on this. National Epic goes in the seafood site, but what should be the second? Oxford to multiply the scientist's beaker output (requires Edu, 5 Universities), or Globe Theater (just needs 5 theatres and it costs less to build)? We should probably figure out what gives us more beakers - Globe to eliminate happy cap for more specs and act as a draft city if necessary or Oxford to multiply the spec's output further. Globe would get up and running faster, but I'm wondering if the long-term Oxford bonus would outperform the short-term drastic increase in the number of specs allowed.

The final thing to look at is a civic swap, specifically Serfdom to CS. We have 8 workers and three cities, something Niklas would drool over ( ), so the power of serfdom is no longer really needed. The cities we have are pretty well improved and won't be able to work too many more improved tiles before happiness caps are met. I also think with the revolt to CS we should stick a workshop or two around Moscow to help with the settler production. With CS, plains workshops become four hammer tiles that get multiplied through bureaucracy and the forge. We'd need another pop to work them, but after the first settler is out we could build a cheap MP unit for the seafood city to allow some growth before building another settler.

XC, are you taking over? If so let me know and I'll put together something for a spreadsheet. The only majorly crucial thing is the founding of our next city and the subsequent workboat chop out so that's what I'll focus on. As I mentioned before we have the discussion to take care of what our three cities do.

Backwards Logic said:

I wouldn't worry too much about the explorer to our north. He can't attack anything, he can't pillage anything, the only thing he can do (and I'm not even certain on this) is block Moscow or St. Pete from working the tile he's standing on for a turn.

Click to expand...

Nope, not even that. He's harmless.

We have 8 workers and three cities, something Niklas would drool over ( )

Click to expand...

Good set, CB, and excellent planning, BL. We're in nice shape, and yes, it's time for me to play. Regarding blockading with caravels, I don't believe they can pillage and I'm doubtful about blockading. I think they can deny tiles, though. The other thing is that Gandhi can build them, too, and our defensive odds aren't great. I'm leaning more toward building caravels and galleys for exploring/expanding (along with required workboats, of course).

Yeah, I favor settler spam, too, at least in Moscow. We need to box in Gandhi and get our cities going. We also need to explore, meet other civs, and grab land, including that icy silver island. Once we've prevented Gandhi from settling anywhere we can extort peace. How long do "we" (i.e., BL) think it will take for us to settle everywhere required? WW may become a problem, and perhaps we'll need to build trebs so we can kill a potential Gandhi SoD before he hits us, which will affect our decision on what St Pete builds.

Yeah, switch to Caste System once we can make use of the extra specs. We probably don't want to burn a Great Person for a Golden Age so I guess we'll just have to waste a turn in revolt.

Globe vs Oxford? I'm guessing Globe would be better in Fishytown, but let's strategically procrastinate on that decision.

Xcalibrator said:

WW may become a problem, and perhaps we'll need to build trebs so we can kill a potential Gandhi SoD before he hits us, which will affect our decision on what St Pete builds.

Click to expand...

If you aren't attacking cities, why build trebs over cats?

I've installed BUFFY and successfully opened the save! One thing that hit me right away is that there's an awful lot of fogged land, especially out west. If we moved our southern explorer 1W then he'd unfog that one tundra tile--is he there to help unfog the island? I'd send him way out west where there's good land. Can we spare a warrior from St Pete to replace him in the SE? And then shift a longbow or pike out west once Moscow completes its build? Maybe build something else cheap like another explorer or a spy? I'm really worried about barb cities popping up and taking our land. Heck, maybe even send out a worker or two if it's safe--they can always build roads.

Should we send a worker to Broburg? It's going to take awhile for the worker Broburg is building to get everything done (iron, cows, hills, roads...). That will eventually leave Bburg with too many workers, but we can ship out one or both later if they can't get out by land (because of closed borders).

[Xpost with Niklas: We will be attacking cities, since that's where Gandhi will be hiding with his eventual big army. We can't wait for him to come after us because we don't know where he's going and protecting all our cities and land will take too many units. We need to hit him in his cities before his units move out. Yeah, we'll lose a couple trebs but that's cheaper than building multiple big defensive forces all around him. We won't actually capture any cities, just knock him down to 1 unit and gain some XPs.]

Do we have a current dot map for our current map?

Dot map? For proposed city sites, or....? In any case, I got nuthin and probably won't have time to do much before Wed night.

Do you guys share my paranoia over foggy land? A barb city could really ruin your whole day. We'll soon have 9 workers and can probably spare a few or several to build roads and fog bust. We need one for Broberg, one to road up to Fishytown in advance of the settler, and one or two for Moscow and St Pete, leaving maybe 5 or 6 free. How about if we send our explorer out west and have workers follow behind building roads as they fogbust? That'll also make it faster for military units (or spies or explorers) to move up after they're built and take over fogbusting duties from the workers. The explorer can move 2 spaces regardless of terrain so if we move him carefully he shouldn't get squashed by unfriendlies.

Sorry people, for the lousy feedback in the last times.... like the japanese would say "and many things happened" . I *think* I can start giving this game a lot more attention now Just don't expect any informed commentary until I'm up to date

r_rolo1 said:

I *think* I can start giving this game a lot more attention now Just don't expect any informed commentary until I'm up to date

Click to expand...

Yaayy! Glad to have you back, Rolo! I think we're in pretty good shape at the moment. My main worries are that barb cities will pop up where we don't want them, and that we will build too many or too few units to adequately contain Gandhi while we're grabbing as much land as quickly as possible.

26 more hours and my last big deadline will have passed. After that I might even take a little time off.

No input since last weekend? Well, I'm finally free enough to do some playing so here's what I propose for the next 10 or so turns (though I'll stop after 5 or so for discussion).

Keep research at 0%, stick with Serfdom for now to help with road building.

Broburg finish worker, build galley (if no Gandhi caravel nearby), local workboat, caravel, then start cranking out workboats. Have the worker build a pasture and road, then hook up the iron mine iron, pasture cows, build roads. (What's the plan for city defense? Do we need another unit around there? I'm assuming we're OK for now.)

Follow the Post 203 spreadsheet for Moscow (thru turn 37), which is to finish the pike and then build a settler. Have one worker build a road to the northern plains hill so the settler can travel and settle in one turn. Any suggestions on the city name? We already have an archer up there for city garrison. (We can safely treat Gandhi's explorer as if he isn't there, right?)

St Pete: Follow the spreadsheet, which is to build a pike (with chop aid) and then a longbow. Grow some more. Maybe build a knight or two when horses are hooked up.

Longbow SW of Dehli: Pillage cows and road. Should I fortify there, or move 1E (to directly S of Dehli in the forest), or maybe 1S to the forest there? I think the most important thing is to prevent Gandhi from sending out a settling party, because we don't have the strength to attack him. From what I recall BL (?) saying before, if we keep unit posted right next to his city he won't move out a settler, so I'd say we should move our LB to the forest for better defense. [Yes, station 1S of Dehli after pillaging.]

Longbow SW of Bombay in grass hill forest: Keep him there until relieved? Then send him a couple tiles SW to unfog until the workers arrive.

Workers: From above, keep one (new) worker by Brobug, one roading north of Moscow, and one around St Pete to chop, etc. Gradually send the rest south toward the horse area to build roads S and then W into the fogged area S and W of Gandhi, following the explorer who will carefully move 1 tile at a time (unless he can see it's safe) to the foggy west. I've asked a couple times about this but haven't gotten a response. I think we need to do it, lest our Gandhi-containment strategy be for nought because barbs claim the land. It's not the most efficient use of our workers, but we have a lot of them and not many of other units, which are anyway needed to keep Gandhi hiding in his cities. OK?

We should probably decide where to settle after the fish city, so that we can build advance roads in the right places. I'm not sure what to do about the SE but was thinking maybe the desert tile that has the clams, crabs, and horses in its BFC. That would let us work both desert hills, but it has some overlap with St Pete. 1S of that would waste a forest and lose the clams but give us a grass hill and less overlap with St Pete. We should probably stick in another city SW of there to pick up the furs and spread our cultural boundaries so no one else can settle there, but it's not a good site and I doubt we'd be able to wrest control of Bombay's cows. We could get one of the southern fish in the BFC in a couple locations, but I don't like the required placement and would rather leave both fish to support a city on the silver/iron island, which I would also like to unfog ASAP so barbs don't claim it. With our free forges, that silver is worth 2 happiness, and that island city would have good food and decent production.

Out west I don't know what to do but it'll be awhile before we have settlers for there. Let's just concentrate on keeping out the barbs for now.

Sorry for being sketchy on the plan. Is it good enough to let me play a few turns tonight?

I'm cautious, too, so fog busting to prevent barbs sounds good to me.

Yea, go ahead and fogbust the barbs. As for the workers, might as well have them road randomly. The only thing crucial is the timing of the chop of the forest outside of Moscow (the one that would be 1E of the seafood city). If there's 2 workers on the tile, you'd start the chop when Moscow has one turn left on the settler. If there's only 1 worker, you'd start the chop with Moscow having two turns left on the settler. Cancel the chop the turn before completing so the hammers don't accidentally go towards Moscow. Also make sure the plains hill is roaded as well so the settler can settle same turn.

As for any micro for the cities, I'd focus St. Pete on food to get it growing closer to our happy cap. I think we're good on units for now, though another longbow or two to use as a garrison would be prudent if you wanted to use the warrior for fogbusting down south. Whatever you do though don't leave the city un-garrisoned - it'll become unhappy for sure.

Next city site: the clams, crabs, and horses site was what I was thinking next. After that, I was seriously considering the silver site then a furs site. The silver site doesn't need both fish since it only has the Iron and Silver to work, so a furs city that works the other fish would be beneficial.

Broberg builds. I wouldn't have it spit out workboats like you say. The seafood site doesn't need that food until CS, and it can't grow too fast due to happiness issues. I'd rather build a galley to use to starve Delhi then a workboat for its clams (borders should pop by then), then Caravel to go explore a meet new contacts. After that then it can spit out workboats. The worker micro here is Iron first for the hammers, then pasture, then roads. Mine, waste the turn moving, pasture, then road the tiles before mining the grassland hill. We don't need any of them hooked up to the trade network so getting roads up asap is not important.

As more of a just in-case scenario, I'd give some thought to building a pair of Knights somewhere, so in the off chance Gandhi does get a settler out we can wipe him out. Though as I said before as long as there's a unit south on Delhi and two next to Bombay his settler routes should be cut off.

OK, post 215 edited accordingly. On the Fishtown chop, you're just want the hammers to go there rather than to Moscow, right (because we'll get a lot more from proximity)? Is there a rush to get them ASAP in Fishtown? If speed isn't vital, it might be better in terms of total hammers to mine that tile instead. BTW, what do we want to build there first? Eh, that's 9 turns off and we'll have time to think.

Regarding "two [units] next to Bombay" to cut off settler escape, where should they be? Shall I road the desert hill N of the ivory? What are we planning to do with the forest to its east? Save for now, or chop with abandon?

Those chopped hammers go towards a workboat in seafood city. So we definitely want them as soon as the city is settled so it can grow faster. Save the forests outside St. Pete for now, there may be a time when we'll want the hammers for something more pressing. On the flip side, I don't see the harm in chopping out a knight or two. We definitely don't want any settlers to escape, so it might make sense to use those hammers towards some escort killers if one were to escape. As for the desert tile, if you think it'll help and we have the worker moves to spare I don't see why not. I'd probably even road up the tiles around where the horse city is going to be built, including the desert tile it'll get settled on.

Oh, and keep an eye on Bombay for a settler being built. Every test run I've gone through has had a settler being produced sometime in the near future, so it's imperative Bombay is blocked off and isolated from other roads.

One unit to block Bombay goes on the hill to its SW, ideally a longbow. A pike on the cows should take care of anything moving to the southeast. Once we have those cities settled the pike can be moved to something more pressing. For Delhi, I'd probably put the blocker somewhere to the south but not adjacent to the city. I've found that once Gandhi builds enough longbows (and he will...), he likes to suicide them into the unit once he thinks he can defeat it. And since I forgot to mention it in the previous post, I think Broberg will be fine with the one longbow for defense. It'd take a pretty significant force of longbows for Gandhi to take the city, so I think we'll be fine with just the one for the near future. I suppose St. Pete could make another one at some point if you felt it would help, but I don't think it's critical at this juncture.

I forgot to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do when first setting up BUFFY (uh, edit something or other to have saves every turn, add HOF to Options menu... I'll have to find that info again) so I don't have a turn log, but here's what happened. (It's OK )

33 (1450): Notre Dame built somewhere
35 (1460): Met Mao to our north, offshore of future Fishtown.
36 (1465): Chop by St Pete completes, Confusion spreads to Moscow.
37 (1470): Attacked one of Gandhi's explorers with a pike at 96.4% odds and he's now at 6 XP, healing by the ivory. He still has only the Combat1 promo. Shall I send him anywhere particular after he heals in 2 turns?

After the Broberg worker was finished (yes, he's mining the iron first) I started on a trireme instead of a galley since Gandhi has a galley in Delhi. I'm working the cows and iron instead of coast and iron to get the trireme faster. OK?

Our explorer and two workers are fogbusting out west. We just spotted a barb axeman. St Pete just completed a pike after the chop and is starting a longbow, but... shall I have St Pete build gold for a turn to save the 26 overflow hammers for a knight? I can have the horses hooked up next turn. He'd be able to take out the barb no sweat, unlike any other units we have, and then we'd have him to harass Gandhi.