SGOTM 10 - Smurkz

This all sounds pretty good, although I'm surprised you're willing to delay the Moscow settler. Note that since Seaside starts with a forge, the silver will give us an extra happy, so furs+silver would let it get up to 11 pop instead of 10 without any more buildings or units (although another unit would make me happy--see below .)

I'm not sure which is Worker 2, but if you're suggesting bringing back one of the two workers out west, please don't. I'm pretty sure that we need both plus the explorer to properly fogbust. We currently have 10(!) workers; the recently captured one should be able to make it to our territory in a couple turns. Sure, with all the new work needed around St Pete, bring up the worker who's down SE building roads in the forests. I put him there to speed movement around Gandhi's land and also keep him handy to jump on the galley to get to the silver island, and to fogbust that one forest tile in the corner that Gandhi can't see. But since settling will be delayed and he's needed elsewhere, that's fine. That gives you 8 workers to play with in our eastern homeland! Surely you can leave 2 out west.

Going for the market in Moscow sounds good--the extra hammers from pop9 will buy us back some time on settler production, and 8 gpt is big. You're still planning to put the warrior on the galley and fogbust the silver island, yes? Use the galley to make sure it's safe before landing, though. I'm a little concerned that we won't be able to fogbust the coast north of the island when the warrior is on the island. If that's the case, could you stick a worker down there when not urgently needed elsewhere? We don't want to lose our horses or fur city sites.

Regarding unit costs (and hammers), we're going to need units to garrison our new cities, so don't let those mace hammers wither too long in St Pete. We might also need to kill that Lbow 2E of Broberg at some point and/or another unit posted in Seaside (not a bad idea, considering it's going to be a very important city and we don't want to lose it to a surprise barb invasion ) would buy us another happiness point.

Backwards Logic said:

Afterward, I'm seriously giving some thought to putting some turns into the Shwedagon Paya for failure cash. We're industrious and have gold, so we'd get a ton of hammers invested for not a lot of turn cost.

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Darn good idea. It also brings up the question, when do we want to start real researching? After Seaside and/or Moscow have libraries? Our caravel(s) will find new civs, but we'll need Astro to get trade routes, and to have something to trade for techs. I don't have a good feel for when would be a good time, but let's not delay too long.

Did you really mean send the Moscow caravel "west"? Why not east? And don't we want to take a shot at knocking out the barb galley that was nearly our ruin? It's like swatting flies, but it's a start, and we could see how big the barb threat is with a better look at their island(s). Have Broberg build one and send it west to explore, perhaps after killing Gandhi's wounded caravel (that might sit on our seafood). I think we also need to box in Delhi by sea so he can't escape by galley and claim OUR land to his S and SW. I wouldn't be so pessimistic about the circumnav bonus, although it's not a big deal. Exploring is good--we could always use more happiness resources.

I don't know about the engineer. Saving for Mining Inc is a long long way off; settling for hammers (and beakers) now would let us get our infrastructure in place sooner and we all know the benefits of that. And as you pointed out, we have a lot to build. As for never getting another Eng, I don't think it's that bad. All of our cities currently have pure Eng DNA. If we keep one pure (St Pete?) I bet we can pop another by the time we need him. And remember, it's the number of turns with a given specialist that determines the popping probability; if we run just 1 eng for 90 turns and then 1 turn with 10 sci's, we have a 90/91 = 98.9% prob for an Eng, not just 90%. I guess I favor settling in Moscow now. With the forge and Bureau bonus it gives us an extra 5 or 6 hammers, plus beakers (with lots of beaker multiplier buildings soon to come).

I agree with running sci's to start in Seaside; we really need to pop Education ASAP.

On the diplomacy front, I just thought I'd point out that Gandhi is Mao's worst enemy. We should keep and eye on that and keep that in mind.

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Nice.

[Edit: A couple random things to keep in mind. Seaside has Islam so we'll eventually need a missionary to spread Confusion there for the OrgReg bonus. A Great Sci will pop Education, but if we have Astro or Chem plus Printing Press then we'll pop SciMethod. I'm assuming we'll pop a Sci before getting Astro but if not then we'll have to be careful about trading for PP.]

Organized Religion is only good if we're actually in a religion, so a missionary to Seaside isn't needed in this regard. If anything, I'd want missionaries from Seaside to spread Islam to the other cities when we flip to free religion.

And yea, I meant east with the caravel, not west. Going to 100% should/will happen once we have enough beaker multiplier buildings to make it worthwhile. Probably want a library in both Moscow and St. Pete when this happens (Moscow for Bureau bonus and St. Pete with its cottages).

I'm going to finish the mace in St. Pete just so we don't lose the hammers (the trebuchet on the other hand is going to be a total loss) then switch out to other things. And I guess I'll settle the engineer in Moscow this turn. I'm doubtful we pop an engineer, but if Seaside is delayed enough on GP farming then I could see St. Pete producing the next GP and next engineer.

D'uh, right, no state religion. Which is why Mao doesn't hate us. Also, I forgot about the worker by Broberg. Still, that leaves 7 workers for back east.

The Mao hate got me thinking. If somehow we were able to encourage somebody else to take out one or both of Gandhi's cities, that would take the cultural pressure off St Pete and give us room to swoop in and settle, say, near the wheat. It would probably be tough to pull off since the other AI would be offshore, but Gandhi will certainly be weak thanks to us and we might be able to bribe an AI with a juicy tech or two. We could use our units to knock down his cities and set them up for a walkover. Keep an eye out for other AIs landing units on our continent. Maybe that treb would be useful after all to keep the cultural defense around zero. Luck comes to the prepared!

Here's the problem with having AI's doing our dirty work for us:

1) We have to win by conquest, yes? So it'd behoove us to keep the other AI's weak as well.
2) As you pointed out, everyone else is on another continent and since no one has Astro yet that means they'd have to use a bunch of galleys to ferry over troops. Not that it's impossible (in my most recent game Joao sent over 3 galleys on an archipelago map to 'invade' me), but it's highly unlikely. A premeditated attack is one thing (ie: entering WHEOOHN, building units, declaring), but bribing the AI when it's unprepared for an amphibious invasion has high odds to backfire without the intended results.
3) The cost of the bribe: we'd obviously need something to entice the AI to attack Gandhi, and right now at least for the near future that's not looking possible given our state of the economy. We're ways off from Astronomy as it is.
4) If we amp up one AI over another, it just makes that AI that much tougher to knock down later. I'm thinking because of the Aggressive AI being on, we're going to have to bribe AI's out of war so one doesn't become a juggernaut. Smaller civs are easier to conquer.

EDIT: I suppose since there's just the two of us I should lay something out for you to agree on. (well, Niklas too, but he doesn't count )
Moscow: Market -> settler -> settler? Maybe bank or library instead depending on income after silver city is settled.
St. Pete: Mace -> Longbow (for silver site garrison (I know, I know, I'm breaking my rule here, but after the Moscow invasion force I'm not leaving this to chance)). Plus aforementioned worker moves to swap farms to cottages.
Broberg: Longbow -> workboat(s).
Seaside: library -> NE? Workboat?
Probably going to settle the silver city next since cities are near the happy cap. Plus it'd help a ton more with the fogbusting than the horse site would.
Caravel: explore east thoroughly to get the lay of the land.
Galley: load warrior, scout silver island, unload warrior if safe. Explore a little bit, have galley back at capital when settler is ready (actually, it'd be quicker if I walked the settler down south then loaded him).
Engineer: Settle in Moscow. We probably should have discussed this the turn he was produced. We're going to lose some hammers and beakers because of this since we delayed three turns or so. Oh well.

I didn't say it would be easy, just that we should keep it in mind. If Mao is wimpy then helping him to another city won't hurt (and could help us a lot). If he's strong, but we're even stronger and can whack him back down to size, we could encourage him to expend some forces on Gandhi and then turn on him ourselves; classic balance of power, heh heh.

Anyway, the plan. Yeah, looks good. I was going to suggest doing silver city first but then worried about cultural control over the horses if we waited too long. Do whichever you think best, but I'm happy with the island first. Market, settler in Moscow is good; we can talk after that. I am pleased you're going for another St Pete longbow. I'm a little worried about Broberg and keeping Dehli boxed in by sea. He already has a galley so when a settler appears it'll be too late to stop him unless we have a ship already down there. If the Seaside growth schedule permits, try to stick in a caravel or something between the workboats. Library and NE in Seaside, yeah. We did discuss the Eng when he popped (or shortly before) and decided to wait a little. Besides, we had other distractions, such as finding out if it was even worth spending the time deciding what to do with him.

Alright, so I played 1 turn. Our worker we captured is currently under threat from a lone catapult. Three options:

1) Send the worker back to Broberg. It's the safest.
2) Move the worker onto a forest tile, then cover him with a pike. Move the knight to intercept it the following turn. Worker can't be captured, but then the catapult could possibly move back into the capital. I'd like to kill it.
3) Attack the catapult with a pike. Odds are 77.73% in our favor. If we lose, we're obviously short a unit up by Delhi but I don't think it's critical. The good news if we win we likely have another Woody II pike to play with.

I'm one turn away from meeting what appears to be an American civ. I'm guessing yes, but just to confirm we'd like to make contact yes? The only drawback I see is it's another civ that may demand something from us which could hurt us in the diplomatic scheme of things.

There's probably not much harm in meeting the neighbors this early, particularly if we can establish trade relations.

Eh, 78% odds are a little light for my taste, and I'd rather have the worker get east as a sure thing. How useful would the worker be right now as opposed to another 2 or 3 or 4 turns? (I've been trying to get him over there for awhile.) What are the drawbacks if we let the cat live? He can throw it against us later as part of a stack and increase the odds of killing our unit. But our units are pretty beefy and/or have good ground, except for the lone Lbow SSW of Delhi, but Gandhi doesn't seem inclined to move in that direction for some reason. You're 2 for 2 on dicey military maneuvers so do as you wish, but I'm inclined to leave the cat for now. Good luck.

Well, I went for it for three reasons: One, we're hurting economically, so if we lost him it'd help us monetarily. Two, two woody pikes would be nice, and three, if he did lose we have a mace nearby that can take his place. Bombay right now is pretty well locked down as far as units go.

So I went for it. And lost. I should have known, since lately in my offline games the RNG has been mean to me... So I killed off the catapult with the woody II guy and am moving the mace over to take the place of our now deceased pike. And our economy improved by 2 GPT, so not all is lost.

I'd rather have the RNG frown on us here than near Moscow! Did the worker at least make the passage safely? Carry on...

Yea, our worker made it through in one piece.

1545 - Workboat appears in Delhi. We meet Roosevelt and he already has Education. He has only two cities as well. Lands out east don't look promising - barbs have infested it quite nicely.

1550 - Broberg borders take grassland hill. Gandhi's 2 caravels are stacked and moving around together inside his borders. I have no idea what they are up to. Worker appears in Bombay (which means with the recent build in longbow settlers haven't even been started yet). Workboat in Delhi remains in port.

1555 - So much for my Shwedagon Paya idea... It's been built in a far away land - not America, China, or India. Longbow build in Delhi (four total for garrison here). Workboat still in port. Gandhi's ship captains must be high on something, because they sailed around in circles this turn. Mace completes in St. Pete, start . I'm sending him out towards Delhi since it appears Gandhi is stacking his army together.

1560 - Market completes in Moscow, start settler (7 turns). Longbow completes in Broberg, start workboat (3 turns). Longbow gets Guerilla I and moves to grassland hill. Gandhi moves the combat I longbow 1 E. It's no threat to us, and we can't kill it anyway. I adjust unit locations so it can't fortify on the plains hill. Knight has healed back to full health and still has a promo to use. I'll probably save it for either a promo heal or to help with odds should the need arise. Barb update - not only does it not look promising, it looks like it's own civilization - multiple cities with border pops in all. I'm finishing the caravel's moves in ocean to make the threat of galleys attacking it not a possibility. Speaking of Caravel moves - the crews of Gandhi's caravels haven't mutinied yet - they are still sailing around in their borders aimlessly. Workboat remains in port, as does the worker in Bombay. Economy check: We're now breaking even at 40% slider.

1565 - Our Caravel found Roosevelt's capital. Gandhi's caravels apparently have had enough and retreated back to port. We can now see what Gandhi is teching - he's 17 turns away from Education. The unit moves outside Delhi paid off - the combat one longbow retreated back to the capital. The longbow on the hill in our territory however did not. I've moved the worker to begin mining the tile. Silver site update: there's a source of crabs 4 south of the Iron. To clarify, the city in its current settling spot would not be able to work it - move it one south and it would. However, I'm not sure if 1 S is coastal or not. I'll know next turn.

1570 - My last turn for now. Since the lands out east are unsettleable, I think gambling on the circumnavigation bonus is now worth it. Longbow in St. Pete done and it's started moving south for transport. We need to decide what to produce here. Choices: Market, 11 turns; Bank, 15 turns; Library, 7 turns; settler, 19 turns; Confucian Monastery, 5 turns. Also note I have a forest prechopped for use here. Silver site update: The city can't work boat fish and crabs, so the original site is best. For the record, the site I suggested last turn is technically coastal, but it would be blocked in with ice. Delhi update: the longbow moved back 1 W, and a new catapult has been built, but we got maces this time to deal with it. Well, at least our plan of preventing Gandhi from expanding is working...

City Status:

Moscow: Pop 9, Settler in 5
St. Pete: Pop 9, something in ?
Seaside: Pop 4, growth in 2, library in 1. Border pop in 2
Broberg: Pop 5, growth in 2, Workboat in 1.

See attachment for save:

Sounds good. I'll take a look tonight. Even if the alternative silver site is blocked by ice, it still gets the free lighthouse, and Moscow (and other coastal cities later) could build workboats for it. If that would leave the fish SW of the iron for the fur city, it might be worth it. But of course I can't see the save now and may not know what I'm talking about.

Were you planning to build an exploration caravel in Broberg next? With 2 caravels and a galley in Delhi I agree it's not worth trying to box him in. We'll just have to hope we can settle the west before he gets his act together. Maybe he'll keep futilely building longbows and cats to throw at us.

If you move the galley SE then it will unfog the tile SE of the southern silver and the warrior can safely move onto the silver to unfog more land. We could settle W of the southern silver and get 1 crab and 1 fish, leaving the northern fish for the mainland, but the furs city would then have to be sited on the tundra 2N of the iron, which isn't a great spot. I'd probably go for the northern furs if we're going to bother around there.

The floodplains farm W of St Pete is only 53% ours; if that's decreasing then we won't have it for long.

I'd send another worker or two up north to Seaside to help with the workshop and mine. We might be better off having Seaside build a workboat next instead of going directly to NatEpic. Broberg could then do a caravel to head west.

Last, as a stupid idea, it might be worthwhile to swing a boat from Broberg down south to unveil the sea S of the crabs. If there's more seafood it just might be useful to found a specialist city on that icy peninsula to get the crabs and copper, so that a city on the river (with furs) could be better placed.

Cool that we're #1 on the score!

[Edit: Oh yeah, St Pete build... That's a lot of units Gandhi has in those there cities. It probably wouldn't hurt to build another mace to protect Broberg (until it finishes those boats and can get back to land units) and/or reinforce/replace our city blocking units.

If for some reason we did want to settle the southern silver island site, we could gain sea access via a fort.]

I can't move the galley SE - that's an ocean tile. For dot mapping purposes, I'm thinking the silver site goes 1 SE of the Iron, the furs site goes on the tundra hill 1 W of the southernmost furs, and the copper city goes 1 W of the southernmost furs SW of Gandhi. To use the wheat, we'd have to take Delhi and Bombay which is ways off so settling it is not a priority to me (yea yea, bock Gandhi, I hear you. But it won't have any other use to us). Lastly, I'd settle a city 1 E of the cows on the tundra square, saving the sheep for something off shore. Given the generally crummy terrain out there, it'll have 5 tiles for cottaging along with 2 plains hills and cows for production. It won't be a half-bad site.

As for building more units in St. Pete... I think we're fine. Delhi looks like it has a lot of units, but four of them are naval (including the workboat). That leaves 4 longbows and a catapult to our 2 maces and one pike that's already in the area. I honestly think we're fine, especially considering if Broberg is threatened not only will we have ample warning but now we have enough hammers for the city once the mine is done to look after itself. I'm not worried.

Seaside is growing pretty darn quick as it is, and it's getting another boat from Broberg once the borders pop. I think NE is on the agenda next - the sooner we get started on it the sooner it gets done, and the sooner it gets done to sooner it makes sense to switch to CS thus accelerating our research rate sooner.

Broberg I'm thinking finish the workboat then go Caravel -> Longbow. Caravel goes west to explore, and the longbow gets guerilla one and fortifies on the other hill so when coupled with the other longbow Gandhi can't get to Broberg.

Yes, we've been losing the floodplains (not mention a mine too), but that's to be expected when Bombay has the Sistine Chapel at its disposal. The city is already set when we lose it - we're not going to starve, though we will stagnate or lose hammers depending on how we decide to deal with it. I think I'll build a library here. We want it for when we go to 100% anyway, so maybe it'll help stall his culture from overrunning us.

Chances are I'm not going to be able to play tomorrow, but Friday should be alright.

Those sites sound good, although I would like to unfog the coast of the peninsula west of the copper before we settle out west just in case there's more seafood--no rush on that, though. We should build a boat sometime (galley?) to take a look up north; perhaps Mao has left some nice land for us that we should grab before it's gone. Your build plan is OK, although I'm still nervous about units. And how are we going to get that Indian Lbow off our other Broberg hill?

Going to play today?

Yea, I'm going to play in a little bit. As for the longbow... I don't have any plans to get rid of it. Attacking it fortified on a hill doesn't strike me as a solid move. I'm hoping once the one grassland hill is finished he attacks our fortified longbow.

1575 - Roosevelt will trade his dyes for our Iron straight up. I'm considering it for even more happiness though we don't need it right now. Library done in Seaside, National Epic started (20 turns). Workboat done in Broberg, Caravel started (7 turns). Catapult leaves Delhi, Knight moved to intercept. Another catapult appears in Bombay.

1580 - Catapult from Delhi retreats, but the catapult from Bombay moves out. Knight attacks with 99.44% odds and kills it. I use our promo to heal him - I gave him combat II. Seaside Borders pop. Caravels from Delhi move into our territory, likely to take out our workboat that's heading for Seaside. I have only one option: he has to retreat back to Broberg or he will be overtaken. Why? More bad news - the turn Gandhi completed the Sistine Chapel (1425 AD) was also the turn Gandhi circumnavigated the globe His caravels have four movement. Like I said earlier, I was right to be so pessimistic about it... Keep our fingers crossed he doesn't pillage Broberg's clams.

1585 - We luck out and his Caravels retreat back to his waters. Another catapult moves out from Delhi, but I don't want to attack it with the units there. I'll wait to see what it does next turn. The mine in Broberg finishes which shaves a turn off the Caravel completion. The other mine by Seaside is also done and knocks the NE to 14 turns. A longbow and worker load onto our galley to be shipped over to silver island. I chop the library out in St. Pete so it completes next turn.

1590 - The aforementioned catapult moves towards Bombay, and I use the mace at 96.85% odds to kill it. He gains 2 XP, bringing him to five, and he gets Woody I and II. It seems to me like Gandhi wants to move his catapults towards Bombay as opposed to using them for anything else. The library is finished it St. Pete and already it seems to have helped - the threatened tiles are now at 54%. The other thing too we need to keep an eye on is the city itself. It's currently at 83% Russian and 16% Indian. I don't know what the cut-off is, but at some point I think it's possible for our citizens to 'want to join the motherland' - ie Gandhi if the culture gets too high in the city. Longbow and worker offloaded onto silver island.

I've stopped here since I'd like your thoughts on what St. Pete should build. Keep in mind I think we're beyond fine when it comes to units. Gandhi keeps moving his units towards Bombay and we keep killing them (we're 11 XP away from our first GG). He's made no noise towards attacking Broberg - if he was going to I think you'd see the clams pillaged and the catapults moving towards the city, not away from it.

Some possible builds:
Market - 14 turns, at this juncture would give +1 happy and +3.75 gold / turn but this number will go up because in a few turns three cottages become hamlets.
Bank - 18 turns, would give the city + 7.50 Gold / turn, but again number will increase witht he new hamlets
Theatre - 5 turns, +1 happy if we trade Iron to Roosevelt for dyes and +3 culture / turn, 5 req for Globe Theatre. It'd help with the culture war, though I doubt our ability to retake tiles that have already been lost.
Confucian Monastery - 6 turns, +2 culture / turn and +10% beakers when we go 100% science. Enables Confucian Missionaries, but we don't really need them right now.
And for your enjoyment: Mace, 7 turns; Trebuchet, seven turns, Longbow, 5 turns.

As for the rest of the cities: Moscow has a settler out in one turn and will probably build another one. Seaside is building NE, right now it's done it 13 turns but the workshop completes next turn. Broberg finishes a caravel in three turns and I'll probably have it build another to hopefully use to stop Gandhi's Caravel's from going after our workboats.

I think I'd go with the monastery since gold multipliers won't be doing us much good soon. The 10% research boost isn't entirely negligible and the culture can't hurt. Not sure about the dyes/iron trade. We'll soon have silver and +2 and then some furs before long. It would help our relations with Roose but I'd rather not give him more weapons (iron) to expand his civ. Maybe trade the extra furs when we get them.

Those caravels are going to be pests until we get Astro. Maybe we should emphasize growth a bit more in Seaside to take advantage of the seafood while we can? Build a workboat up there and start running scientists sooner to get Astro and a Great Sci sooner? And we really don't want to lose out on the Liberalism race--we need Education as a prereq and for the universities ASAP. Would letting Moscow grow one more pop before starting another settler be useful?

We lost the liberalism race the moment we chose to rex hard early and choke Gandhi. We couldn't do both - expand fast and tech well so we chose the one that would help us to most long-term. I wouldn't hold any hope of getting liberalism. Growing Moscow to pop 10 isn't going to help much - the hammers we'd pick up from a third workshop isn't going to make up for the time it'll take to get to pop 10. I could have it work a cottage, but same deal there as well, only we wouldn't pick any hammers up. Plus with the current tile configuration it'd take 7 turns to get to pop 10. Optimized I could get it to 2, but then the pop doesn't have anything good to work. Although, if I split the difference I could have a library in three turns with growth happening in three turns, and I could probably have another workshop tile up by pop 10 as well... We want the library anyway, so why not? Plus I'd like to see how our economy is doing after the silver site gets settled. I guess the trade-offs of a later settler for a bigger city with a library is worth it.

I wouldn't totally discount the gold multipliers - when the treasury runs out (and it will) we're going to want to replenish the gold fast as to run more 100% turns. I agree with you now that it's probably not worth it since it'll take so long to build the things, but we do want them in the near future. I think at pop 10 or 11 it'd be worthwhile - it could work two mines then which would speed things up drastically. I'll time the city's growth to be in conjunction with the silver getting hooked up.

I considered swapping out NE for a work boat temporarily (three turns build) for the growth since Broberg won't be able to help out until the caravels are negated. In fact, we need chemistry too for frigates (along with astronomy ofc) in order to really take care of the Caravels which I suppose makes the need to tech better more paramount (when isn't teching better a positive...). I think I'll go that route. NE is nice, but with no specs makes it a very expensive building that produces four culture / turn...

How long a delay to the next settler if Moscow built a workboat for silver island? Can you afford another worker for over there, too? Any hope of exploring a bit of China before the next (post-silver) settler? If there is good land up there we won't have long to claim it, whereas we shouldn't have to worry much about someone else landing on our continent.

Silver island needs its borders to pop before it can have a work boat. Next turn there will be two workers over there. Moscow can crank out a WB in one, but it'd take 6 turns to get there. With no mines built on silver island, it's take 6 turns ish to pop its borders, and the city is three turns away from settling. Building the workboat in Moscow would delay the next settler by a turn and it'd end up having to wait for the city's borders to pop anyway. I'm thinking Culture -> WB -> Courthouse (depending on maintenance costs) for the city's first builds.

As for exploring the land to our NW - I don't know. It depends on what Gandhi's caravels do. If they see a galley, they could run it over. If I send the one Caravel out when it finishes in two turns, they'll probably follow it and eventually kill it (I'm going to send it out to see specifically what they do depending on the location of the other Caravels. His Caravels didn't pillage the clams when they were 1 W of the city, so I'd like that to be the farthest they can go with their first move. I'm afraid that if they move any further, they could 'see' the clams and go pillage them, and then possibly move onto Seaside. Not good).