SGOTM 11 - Plastic Ducks

I still think there's no reason to delay lib in Hyde since we gain 25% research bonus in T178, plus that we really don't gain the 3H from the hill tile since whipping earlier will enable the city to grow faster and hence work on the hill tile earlier in the long term.

Click to expand...

Ok

Can we make all cats level3?

Click to expand...

If we want lvl3 cats more than lvl3 maces we can. It would delay the macemen a bit.
If not we can only if we delay OU by 1-2 turns. (Like my original plan) Need to check

Are the 6 galleys ready for the war in T190?
We want 2 or 3 galleys on 4E of Gondar.
3 or 4 galleys 4E of Lal.

Click to expand...

All 6 galleys are not ready T190. (the 5th finishes T189, the 6th only T192 or so (without whip) ready to transport some troops from wheat+cow to the front).
We can have 2 near gondar and 3 for Aksoum by T191 I think. If we want the last we need to find a way (maybe skipping a spy, or somehow whipping a galley in Agra delaying the CH). Getting Galley from Agra after CH would mean it gets to the front ~T193.

Can the workers complete the road network to 2S2W of Lal (1S, 2S, 3S1E and 3S2E of Cal)? If not, better let the 2 workers cancel plantation and start road from T177.

Click to expand...

By that time Lal can easily have expanded borders? As is we get road 1E of Calc into hills on T191
IF Lal borders don't expand, we can shuffle around the Iron-miners to complete roads, I think.

So to sum up, we can have 2cats+2maces (or 3maces+1cat) on 2 galleys 4E of Gondar and 6maces on 3 galleys (or 5maces+1cat) 4E of Lal by T190. That would delay attack on Lal by 1-2 turns if we wait for the final maceman (Or we go in with 1-2cats and 6-7maces T192)

Yeah, whip one from Agra is fine. If Aksum only has no more than 3 units (at most 2 LBs) by the time, then 5 macemans is fine, otherwise, we need 7 macemans to be safe to capture it in 1 turn.

War is the major theme in the next set, let's hear what's the most comfortable for kossin.

Hey here

Maybe you have noticed that Zara's military demo is 149 (ignore the 3 zeros behind). And his units/techs/pops/building at sight is worth 100.



So there is 149-100 = 49 military force in the three cities.
Given that Zara has a coastal cap, I suppose he has 1-2 Galley, that's 2-4 military force

To conclude, you're gonna face exactly 15 military force per city at this point. When the war is launched, it's about 17-18. That's 2 LB + 1 Swordman/Axeman. If anybody has a bit time, you can test how many macemans+cata it needs to take over defense force like this (more exactly, 1 2-level LB, 1 1-level LB, 1 2-level Swordman/Axeman with Walls).

Edit: with the power graph, I don't even think spies are needed in the war (I have impression that somebody proposes of building spies for the war.)

Edit 2: Whipping 3 spies in the plan? 3 spies = 2.5 catapults = -20% of defense per turns. Just proposition, I hope somebody can test out the most hammer-efficient way.

Questions:
1) Since my proposition of sending the chariot to the barbarian city has been ignored, why not ship the chariot back to spy on Zara?

2) I'm unfamiliar with the Emp AI. I'm wondering, if you capture 3 of the 4 cities from Zara, leaving him the border city, is there a possibility that this city defects to us after Delhi's Culture border expands in 57 turns, killing Zara and making us loose the game immediately? (There is no doubt that Capital can defect as well. The city tile is not affected at that point, just the 1S, 1W and 1S1W tiles will belong to Delhi at the moment.)

From my impression, cities can defect like this in lower levels like Emp.

kossin said:

If that is indeed the Fur island, then the cities have been there from t0 and there are 2+ barb workers going about and making improvements+roads meaning a Chariot would die trying to look at the first city.

Second, as I said, I'm almost certain the fur is under the second city... the first city might be natural for all I know.

If anything, we should have one of the 2 desert cities get a spy instead of a HM, that will give us the most info.

Click to expand...

If the chariot can have the chance to see the city, let it die if it's meant to be. That's totally irrelevant compared to the importance of the information it brings.

Now I see if we are actually skipping techs like Engineering/Gunpowder/Chemistry like it seems, we are going to end up with getting Astronomy and Scientific Method sooner than later, that makes a greater loss of letting lots of wonders obsolete.

On the other hand, if GE can not be generated, Chemistry will be important to rush the UN.

PS: why Nationalism is on the list? I checked the posts but didn't find the answer.
PS2: Compass can't possibly be traded in the short future, even on Deity it's the less favorite tech of AI, let alone on Emp (based on the most optimist assumption, Toku and Saladin can have it next, they will however still refuse to trade it for "We don't want to start trading away this technology just yet", like HBR and Construction).

Very nice military analysis dingding!

Addis Ababa
I'm not too worried about flipping Zara's city: Delhi will not put any culture in the city tile before it is Legendary... that's over 500 turns (being generous here, it's more bound to be 700~800) away which isn't going to happen

Nationalism is simply for Taj Mahal. While I agree that we could delay it further back, I think the ultimate limiting factor in this map will be research i.e. when we get Mass Media rather than how we produce U.N.

About the fur:
-we're relying on the chariot a bit for happiness (I know this is a bad excuse)
-I'd still prefer to get the exact picture rather than an approximation. Keep in mind we can always research through Physics and use an Airship to get the correct information.

I suppose we can spare the chariot and avoid building a spy for nothing. I'm just wondering if
...>Military Science>...>Physics is really better than ...>Physics>...>Military Science [or if the mapmaker had some fun and put Mech Infantry there... then we need bigger guns than Grenadiers].

I actually think it very plausible that Mech Infantry are defending it... I mean they purposely defend us from researching Industrialism (Tanks + Ivory obsoleted) so there's bound to be something strong there, no?

BTW, if that is the case then our best shot is probably Artillery. Fighters are a long way in the tech tree. We can support with some Airships to lower their str to 25.6 where even Cannons could do well.

I guess my point is I want to avoid researching Military Science if it won't get us the Fur.

Whipping a spy doesn't cost so much and will give us the best answer we can hope for before Physics... or even reveal that fur is not there and that we need to explore the high seas.

Re: military buildup

Rather than producing Hindu missionaries right now, we can use those whips for making galleys. Varanasi can surely contribute 2 galleys to the war. We can get the missionaries later.

Bribing war
I will try to look into the code for this, but no promises. I've tested a bit with worldbuilder so far but with not much success at deterring Mehmed from attacking. From my testing so far, I think bribing considers the combined power of all included parties, multiplied by a factor (similar to dogpile war).

So the problem becomes: Zara bribes Izzy (high ratio accepted). Zara/Izzy then can bribe Mehmed to war easily with their combined power.

I can't confirm this yet but I think we will have to either get Mehmed to Pleased or gift him techs that Zara can bribe him with. However the gifting of techs means we have to give him Feudalism which can then make him accept Izzy as a vassal bringing us in a war with him.

>>The safest route is to keep him at Pleased while we vassal Zara and Izzy. Which is most easily done by going in NSR for 5 turns, beg 1 gold and revolt back right away. We can get another +3 [which is enough] for fair trade, resources and open borders but I'm not sure how long that would take (or even less if it'd be done by the time we declare the war).

^ Var needs to build spies from the beginning. Hence whip one from Agra is good.

I would not too much worry about Izzy vassal to Meh. She has 7 cities, I don't think she is willing to vassal to someone with only 2 city lost. You can stop after we capture her capital and check carefully whether that's possible. Our power that time might be high enough to stop Meh's courage.

About spies --
1. The most important reason is that they enable us to capture Aksum in the fastest way, each turn of delay will result in more units whipping. The result is that we lose the hammers from whipped citizens and more possible loss of units.
2. The earlier we capture Aksum, the earlier we can ship the units to Gonda and capture it.
3. Spies do not need galleys, which is quite a burden for now.

Code reading isn't my forte - couldn't find the answer. However WB testing pretty much confirms what I said.

0.75 power of Mehmed should be enough but it doesn't deter him from attacking. If the code is anything similar to dogpiling, then

2/3*(Zara+Izzy power (with distance modifiers)) is the threshold for Izzy declaring war.

At that point it's clear that 2/3*(Zara+Izzy+Mehmed power) wouldn't be met either so we need to keep Mehmed Pleased imo, or simply gift some techs (or he may even acquire them by himself).

I agree that a spy is our best bet for the mysterious island. If we don't want to delay the exploring too much, we can plan to build an additionnal galley around Pata/Madras.

The island is far enough : exploring it in one time later is better than exploring it two times, the first providing incomplete information. The second session of exploration (that may be uneeded but may be needed) would come after what is planned currently --> current plan is safer.

@ Nationalism :
I can't see a reason to delay the Taj Mahal once :
- We have Optics (full knowledge of the map)
- We have built the MoM.
- The war has ended (i.e. we have full benefit from a golden age).


Nice to see you're keeping track of things, though, DingDing

Your concern about culture pressure against Zara's last city seems fair to me but the culture mechanics are special when there is a vassal... Not sure it would flip easily. If it started revolting, we even could gift Zara a few garrison units, I suppose.
But... the best bet is to win the game before culture pressure becomes a concern.
Anyways, it would be an elegant way of losing the game

@all

Didn't get time to do much Civ IV today. Looks more promising for tomorrow afternoon. Hope we can aggree on a course of action tomorrow for play tomorrow or monday morning (for me).

@dingding

Good pointers, thanks.

@kossin

At some point Varan can whip a galley (instead of building Monastery f.eks). We're still good getting the galley from Agra, though. Will try both.

@duckweed
I actually ship in spies to Aksoum to gain max bonus (although it may not be directly mentioned in the plan). It shouldn't affect getting troops into position by T190, I don't think.

To be honest, I don't see what is at stake in the remaining micro adjustments (no offense intended).
This set is quite complex and the plan pretty good already.

Maybe adjustments are worth the time invested, maybe...
Wish you the best,
BIC.

(Yeah... I'm an advocate of the theory of the "good enough", or of the decreasing marginal utility of effort, or you can call me lazy, or maybe I'm not clever enough )

The general plan is good, we're just ironing out the last details.

As you may recall, I hinted that I was going away for the summer and would not have Civ access unless I bought a laptop.

Anyway, I am now leaving in 2 days and have not bought a laptop. I do however have borrowed a Notebook and installed Civ on it.

The bad news is that it's SLOW... horrendously slow. I mean... it has a 8MB graphics card!

Anyway, it can run the game but it will take me like 10 minutes per turn to do anything.
This means testing on my part will be very difficult, not only because it will take a lot of time but also because I won't have that much time to play.

I'm still willing to play my sets but 15 turns is too much at once. I can probably do 5 reasonably though while 10 is pushing it. Maybe 5 turns twice is an option but I can't guarantee anything

Other than that, I will still be able to chip in and offer my opinion and look over saves but I guess I'll need to do most of the stuff in my head to save time

@Bugg123

I did not go through every detail in your plan. Mostly I focused on your city builds and major goals. Suggestions were to help to reach the major goals. Honestly I have not run any test lately except my own set.

I will try to describe the war plan in more details and reasons behind, in fact kossin should be the one to do it. War preparation and positioning of units are more important than the war itself.

Aksum
1. 3~4 spies. A very important thing is to let all of them arrive at the same time. Our EPs on Zara is limited. Spies need 2~5 (need to test it out) stationary bonus to revolt it.
2. 3~4 galleys 4E of Lal (1 cat + 5~7 macemans). 1 cat for collateral damage. We need at least 2 more units than the defensive units to be safe to take the city.

Gonda
2~3 galleys 4E of Gonda(2 cats + 2~4 macemans). 2 cats for bombardment of the defense for 2 turns. 2 macemans are not enough to take the city and therefore need to wait the units free from Aksum. 4 is OK to take it.

Lal
2 cats + ~6 macemans. Lal should be where Zara's major forces locate. Therefore, 6 macemans are not enough to take it in 1 turn, but should do in 2 turns. Moreover, the reinforcements are close.

If you still have issues in doubt, just directly list them and call for a vote, this is the most efficient way to move forward.

@kossin
It took me about 20~30 mins to play a turn in the later stage of the AW and deity team SG games. I'm fine to separate your set. I don't think you can go into too much details of the plan. especially the war part.

Duckweed said:

Aksum
1. 3~4 spies. A very important thing is to let all of them arrive at the same time. Our EPs on Zara is limited. Spies need 2~5 (need to test it out) stationary bonus to revolt it.
2. 3~4 galleys 4E of Lal (1 cat + 5~7 macemans). 1 cat for collateral damage. We need at least 2 more units than the defensive units to be safe to take the city.

Gonda
2~3 galleys 4E of Gonda(2 cats + 2~4 macemans). 2 cats for bombardment of the defense for 2 turns. 2 macemans are not enough to take the city and therefore need to wait the units free from Aksum. 4 is OK to take it.

Lal
2 cats + ~6 macemans. Lal should be where Zara's major forces locate. Therefore, 6 macemans are not enough to take it in 1 turn, but should do in 2 turns. Moreover, the reinforcements are close.

If you still have issues in doubt, just directly list them and call for a vote, this is the most efficient way to move forward.

Click to expand...

Yes, that sounds good
Most probably, we won't have all units in position at the end of Bugg's set, though. DoW will be during Kossin's. I guess Bugg's set should just allow that set up to be as easy as possible.
So... sending units to Calcutta is the first step, then loading galleys for Gondar, then loading galleys for Aksum, then waiting for the footmen.

In doubt, I'd load 3 galleys to Gondar and then 3-4 to Aksum rather than 2-3 to Gondar and 4 to Aksum. A galley 4E of Gondar can unload units on the hill by Aksum if necessary (--> giving the flexibility we want).

@Duckweed
Oh, I don't mind long turnsets... it's just that it takes 3 seconds for the screen to refresh the image whenever I move around Not very accustomed to slow civing.

Re war plan
It will be important for Bugg to note how many and what units are in which city. Either screenshot or just a marker over the city. Please also take note of roaming Galleys. We don't want to risk our Galleys against his and will want to send the Trireme near his galleys.

The most important is to capture Aksum right away. Depending on how many troops are sighted there by the Trireme, then we count 2 Maces for each Longbow and 1:1 for other troops. 6 Maces is likely to be enough after a suicide catapult -> 6 Maces, 1 catapult, 1 WIII warrior. Since we're selling ZY some gold and we've given him Aesthetics, there's a good chance he's stupidly building S.Paya in Aksum so there won't be that many units there.
4 Galleys for Aksum

We will need 6 Accuracy bombards to get Gondar's defenses down which does not give us sufficient time to bring in reinforcement, unless we have some unharmed Maces after the attack on Aksum. Either 3 turns with 2 catapults or 2 turns with 3 catapults. The problem becomes that 3 Maces isn't enough to capture it though. We can otherwise have 4 maces 2 catapults:
1st turn bombard, 2nd turn 1 bombards the other suicides then cleanup with 4 maces should be doable.

For Lalibela, I think we might have to wait an extra turn as its borders are likely to expand in the next 10 turns and we won't have spare galleys to move troops, so 2 turns of marching inside his culture will be required. It likely won't have walls by the time we declare war but he can always put some up. 3 catapults and 5~7 maces will be more than enough though. 1 non-Accuracy catapult to suicide on second turn of Bombardment.

Upon Aksum's capture, all Galleys will merge there and get ready to ship to Corboda. From dingding's screenshot, we can see what was there on t156 : 1 sword and 1 Archer.
Troops should be sent there ASAP. I expect it will still only have 20% culture defense so that only 2 Catapults are necessary. 4 Maces should be sufficient as well.

Once Zara's remaining 2 cities are captured, everything converges to Aksum, heals and then ships to Madrid. Hopefully Izzy will have built a shrine by then!
If she is willing to capitulate then, we should consider it to gain time. However Seville or Barcelona are both good prizes, one featuring Dyes and the other having 2 good food resources.
Seville is the better city but Barcelona gives us Dyes which in turn means we'd only require to trade for Silk (no biggie really).

Anyway, we should really capitulate Izzy so if she's not willing to capitulate by that point we may need to raze a city of hers.

To re-capitulate
Troops: [safe side]
Aksum: 4 spies in place [they need to gain some discount for the revolt to work], 4 galleys (WIII warrior, 1 suicide catapult, 6 Maces)
Gondar: 3 galleys (2 Accuracy catapults, 4 Maces)
Lalibela: Rest of troops will walk there. Should have 3+ Catapults and maybe 6 maces
Total: 4 spies, 7 galleys, 6 catapults, 16 maces

Plan of war
T0 DoW, land troops next to Aksum&Gondar - walk troops towards Lalibela
T1 Revolt Aksum, suicide catapult, capture Aksum, Move Galleys to Aksum - Bombard Gondar - walk troops next to Lalibela
T2 Bombard Gondar, suicide 1 catapult, capture Gondar - Bombard Lalibela, suicide 1 catapult, capture Lalibela
T3-T5 heal in Aksum (WIII warrior) - accept capitulation - move troops to capture Corboday as available (2 Accuracy catapults, 4 Maces, 1 of the catapult may be used to suicide on Longbows)

At that point I will probably stop as it will have taken me 2 hours to play the 5 turns

We will need to keep a supply of units, some catapults mainly and maces depending on our losses.

kossin said:

At that point I will probably stop as it will have taken me 2 hours to play the 5 turns

Click to expand...

If you're not away for too long, maybe we can delay your set a bit ?
The game's deadline is the 23rd of august. Not sure what that means, regarding our advancement in the game.

Anyways, don't waste your holidays (maybe civving isn't wasting !!)...

I'm away until August 15th ish so it isn't an option.
It's not a holiday either, I'm going away to work Civ will be welcome.

I'll try the test game on the notebook tonight to see if I can play a bit, otherwise I might have to spend 600~700 $CAN to get a portable rig to play. Don't want to let the team down another tester/player :s

@kossin:

Ok, so we're up to 7 galleys (doable), 6 cats (a bit behind) and 16 maces (also a bit behind). Means if we want to DOW and attack all 3 cities at once we're probably off by a bit.

What I'll do is put galleys where you want them with required troops (2xLB+# of troops for aksoum, if that's less than 6, we need less maces), spies in place and we'll take it from there.

As for Lali troops. I guess it all depends on Zara's troops there. Shouldn't be that many given his power. We can capitulate him only taking 2 cities, really to save time, but if we do want all 3 cities at the same time, we're talking T195-196 for everything, I think. (or T190-191 for Gondar+Aksoum before moving on to spain).

Will look over plan again to accomodate Galleys, and post the, hopefully, final plan based on discussion so far.

As I said, I'm taking safe #s.

By having a few extra units, we save 1 turn of war with Ethiopia per my suggested plan of war.
I think we should really capture Lalibela as well, we'll get 100+ gold from its sacking which in itself is worth quite a bit.