SGOTM 12 - ChokoMisfits

Still a bit unsure of where to place the third city. there are some unknowns to the West so if the chariot uncovers those which was my original idea we would have a better idea but atm don't mind 1w or 1s of the cows. 1S has 3 hills plus can borrow fish from cap and is on freshwater. Less overlap 1w but with our low happy cap atm won't matter for a long while.

Workers we have 3 atm and one shortly but we will need alot this game. So just finished road on cows and the current worker should head to clear fallout for the next city followed by the one just coming from the capital. I would go worker - settler - worker so our third city is built a few turns quicker. We should have a big overflow into the settler as well.

Agree once we have construction in we might have to go for monarchy if we can't trade. Tehn to paper - edu. Ideally we will get a gs from somehere to part bulb edu. There is certainly 6 strong city sites around/available (especially when we get calendar). In this game for me the more cities the better

Also important to see what DG's lands like so would mmove the Southern chariot in that direction. Remember there is a Mao archer running around and we are still some way from our bronze being hooked up.

Agree with trying to play peaceful with Roo/Ghandi and Churchill. Well unless we decide we want some of there cities.

Good Luck McArine with you turnset.

Just a quick point. The faster we speed up the AI tech wise the faster we might be able to get some techs from them which we don't want to learn ourselves. Just need to keep DG, Mao and Stalin backward which shouldn't be to hard. Another reason for giving techs out cheaply to our friends (if we can get any).

Sleepless,

I agree that feeding the AIs techs, in the hope of getting something useful back from them later, can be a good tactic. But it is important that we become/remain more powerful than they are OR have them friendly, preferably both. Actual friendly status in this game is going to be unlikely, unless we can share a religion with an AI or get a sizable favorite civic bonus. The initial permanent -5 is a large barrier to overcome.

Assuming we can get peace:

-3 declared war
-2 nuked
+1 peace
+2 open borders
+2 resource trades
+4 free and fair trade
+1 shared advances

All of this gives at best +5...if there are no other negatives, and if we can get all of these deals for the required turns, and if we can provide so many techs as to get the shared advances, and if there are no additional hidden negatives. Without adding some shared religion or fave civic, we are not going to get anyone to friendly. And maybe not even then, in some cases.

So let's not be too eager to give away too much to the AIs, at least until we are clearly in a position of military superiority.

I did not realize we had a third worker out (have not had a chance to check the latest save). So one worker then settler should be good, and we can fit another worker in a bit later. We need enough military to cover our workers, as well.

I would prefer to avoid giving away HBR -- giving up Math is already quite a lot, plus CoL for Alpha. I am not convinced we will actually be able to get anything from Gandhi until he knows more civs, as we are certainly not going to get him to friendly any time soon if ever. We may be better off just teching Alpha ourselves, and then dealing Math around to all the civs we want better relations with. The biggest problem with waiting to get deals from the AIs is that you can wait a long time, as we Misfits found to our regret in a couple previous SGOTM.

Good luck, McArine!

Gandhi has a hidden +2 diplo modifier so he will be easier to get to a reasonable state but will still be hard to get to Friendly without shared civics (Universal Sufferage - long way off)

Hi guys, I am back now after a very brutal midterm. Let me catch up here.

Turn 1: (inherited) Gifted Mathematics to Gandhi, still worst enemy, but got +1 trade relations.

Turn 2: I accidently revealed one of our chariots to De Gaulle. And found a Chinese archer at the warrior.

Turn 3: Capital: Worker -> Settler. Warrior reveals a british archer, I doubt he'll manage to get away from him.

Turn 4: Warrior survived the archer, but Churchill reveals his SoD. Warrior flees. (see the screenshot, the chinese stack was a settler and an archer)

Turn 5: Gandhi asks for CoL, after much thought, I decide to give it. To get the +diplo. This brings him to Cautious, but still worst enemy.
HbR -> Masonry.
Chuchill pursues the warrior. Our workboat discovers an Offshore platform!!

Turn 6: Masonry-> Construction.
Capital: Settler -> Stable.

Turn 7: Our warrior dies valiantly.

Turn 8: I decide to stop here, I didn't feel we agreed on the location for the next city. So that is for the next player.

Did we get open borders with Gandhi? Can we trade? We've given away our two best trading chips to him it appears for no tangible return (yet). Not sure this is a good idea.

Do we self research Alphabet now we can't get it from Gandhi, to get peace with Churchill??

That English stack is rather disturbing. We need more military, and very soon. Obviously Churchill has metal, and apparently he has been doing little other than building units.

An offshore platform...very interesting. Not that oil is exactly useful to us at this stage of the game. But it makes you wonder what else may be out there....

Chinese settler...not particularly good news. One more poorly placed city for us to conquer or raze, I guess.

I will second Ozbenno in asking about our relations with Gandhi. Will he trade anything now? I am guessing not, unless he has met other AIs so he does not think everything is a monopoly tech. I think we need to research Alpha and see what other peace deals we can make, and maybe trade if we can.

Hope the midterm went well, JH. (Although "brutal" is not the most positive description....)

Ozbenno said:

Did we get open borders with Gandhi? Can we trade? We've given away our two best trading chips to him it appears for no tangible return (yet). Not sure this is a good idea.

Do we self research Alphabet now we can't get it from Gandhi, to get peace with Churchill??

Click to expand...

We can consider that after Construction is completed. Construction should give us a good Power boost that will help with making Peace deals as well as building up our War Machine.

Sun Tzu Wu

haphazard1 said:

I will second Ozbenno in asking about our relations with Gandhi. Will he trade anything now? I am guessing not, unless he has met other AIs so he does not think everything is a monopoly tech. I think we need to research Alpha and see what other peace deals we can make, and maybe trade if we can.

Click to expand...

Gandhi still wont trade anything, as we're his worst enemy. But we went from -5 to -1 visible with him, because of the gift, and his request.
He has met two others now, I don't remember who.

I believe Mighty Dwaarf or ArcadicGamer is up.
If they don't grab it one of the following days, should we not start from the top of the roster?

McArine said:

I believe Mighty Dwaarf or ArcadicGamer is up.
If they don't grab it one of the following days, should we not start from the top of the roster?

Click to expand...

Agreed.

If neither of them grabs the save in the next 24 hours, we will revert to JerichoHill

I will take it.

Just some things to point out. Ghandi is the only AI who won't give a negative if you refuse a request so whilst he still has things we want I wouldn't gift him techs.

Our third city should have been settled last turnset. Now we are looking at a lot more turns as we have to clear the fallout (6 worker turns) and get the workers there to do it. With the deer 1w of the cow looks good now so think that should be our third city.

Although we could easily defend Churchills stack would rather try and get peace so we can get a fourth city up this turn set which means going for Alpha. If we can trade Ghandi for alpha all well and good but we do need it for peace bribing. Agree wouldn't bribe Mao or DG, I think we should look to take their cities as we don't have many of our own.

I think constr can wait till after we have alpha as without phants hooked up its not going to be that good although we would be able to build a couple of catapults/axes to wreck anyones stack coming against us.

I would continue with Construction, start building Catapults in Copper Town and Horse Archers in Capital. When Ivory is connected, we can build War Elephants in all Cities. Ivory is needed for Happiness too.

We need to see what military units De Gaulle has and where they are located. Mao is too far away to be an immediate concern.

After Construction, we can research Alphabet which will allow us to demand Technologies for Peace. We have to get our priorities straight. Any AI Civ that doesn't provide a Technology for Peace gets the boot. OK, only kidding. We do want Peace with Gandhi, Roosevelt and Churchill, since they may peacefully trade Technologies to us. Alphabet will also allow us to build Spies; Spies can steal Technologies with enough Espionage Points.

We can build Courthouses and run Spy specialists and possibly get a Great Spy which can be settled in the Capital or used on an Infiltration mission against one of our opponents. Not sure running Spy Specialists is that great of an option though.

Research Path:

Construction (War Elephants, Catapults) -> Alphabet (Trading, Spies) -> Paper (World Maps) -> Education (Universities -> Oxford University)

We need to keep the focus on Research, while we build up for Total War.

We may divert to Currency for our Economy.

Sun Tzu Wu

Logistics for Settling Cities:

We need to send a Worker or two in ahead of the Settler to remove the Fallout from the selected City founding place. In this SGOTM, we can not settle on Fallout.

We should also remove as much Fallout as possible in the BFC of the planned City position, before the City is settled to avoid reduced Growth or worst, negative Growth!

Third City:

We could settle where the Settler is right now. There are 12 Fallout Tiles in its BFC and thus -6 Unhealthiness and -1 Unhealthiness for Population. Since we have Sailing, we will have all 3 Health Resources plus 3 Health for Difficulty level. We would be at -1 Fpt for unhealthiness which isn't too bad. Quick Fallout cleaning will completely fix the unhealthiness, thus permitting additional Growth.

We need to get at least 2 Workers to the Settler's current location to clear Fallout so it can settle. It will take the 1st Worker 2 turns to get there and the second Worker 3 turns to get there. The other two Workers can continue the route to the Ivory and start clearing the Fallout on the closest Ivory itself (that will incidentally reduce the Fallout in the BFC to 11 and thus Unhealthy down to 11/2 = 5).

Sun Tzu Wu

Ok, I just checked the save, and Gandhi WILL trade with us. He will give us Alphabet + Monarchy in exchange for Civil Service.

I suggest we take this deal right away, switch to Hereditary Rule, and investigate peace options with other AIs. Any thoughts or comments?

How far away is Construction, I would much prefer to give that away for Alphabet than CS, which is on the Liberalism route.

Technology Trading Alternatives:

Ozbenno said:

How far away is Construction, I would much prefer to give that away for Alphabet than CS, which is on the Liberalism route.

Click to expand...

We are just 4 turns from completing Construction.

I don't mind giving Technologies away this early, but Civil Service started a Technology path we should be researching ourselves after we complete Construction:

Paper -> Education

Which brings to mind, can we pop another Great Scientist to bulb part of Education before we complete the part that would be left over from a GS bulb? Without the Philosophical trait, it will be hard and if we generate the Great Person in Capital we might get a Great Prophet instead of a Great Scientist due to do genetic pollution from The Oracle.

We should be getting something like Philosophy from Gandhi for Civil Service.

I'd prefer that the AIs research the Metal Casting -> Machinery -> ... path for us.

Not sure I like trading away Construction either, since we may not want to face enemy Catapults this early. However, since Gandhi is likely far away and and unlikely to trade Construction away until another Civ has Construction and something worth while to trade for it (the last condition will be the toughest to meet, since Gandhi's Technology Monopoly threshold is only 20% which for this Game means one other AI must know Construction, I believe).

Don't really like trading either Construction or Civil Service, since there both Military Technologies.

In the final analysis, we need to get to Rocketry ASAP. This may mean trading away Technologies to trading partners ASAP, as long as we can feed these Technologies to enough AI Civs so at least one, Gandhi, for example considers a new Technology not a Monopoly, because another AI completes the SAME Technology shortly there after. The best way to do this is let the AIs take their preferred Technology path, based on the Technologies they know. We can indirectly sway their Technology path by trading to them key Technologies that may shift their Technology thrust into a direction we prefer. This will only work, if we feed the same Technologies to all our Trading partners.

Technology Providing Diplomatic bonus:

We will eventually get A "Shared Technology" bonus with Roosevelt and Churchill after 10 remembered Technologies we trade to them, but Gandhi requires 20 such Technologies, so we will see with Gandhi at most a +1 "Shared Technology" bonus when we get a +2 "Shared Technology" bonus with our other two Trading Partner Civs (Roosevelt and Churchill) for 2 Sets of 10 Technologies We Provided to Them.

De Gaulle and Mao Zedong are mediocre and poor Technology trading partners respectively, but De Gaulle when provided 10 remembered Techs will generate a +1 Shared Technology Diplomatic bonus whereas Mao Zedong like Gandhi would require 20 provided plus remembered Technologies for a +1 Shared Technology Diplomatic bonus. This assumes that De Gaulle and Mao Zedong have Power ratings that reflect a realistic Military threat to us or a Diplomatic relevance to our true Technology trading Partners, which is extremely unlikely given their true Peace Weights +/- 3 are still somewhat Polar Opposites though Churchill's 3-9 range (6 Base +/- 3) would be closest to De Gaulle (0 Base +/- 3) and Mao Zedong (1 Base +/- 3) near Churchill's low of 3.

Resources Providing Diplomatic bonus:

After we have enough Resources to trade to Gandhi, Roosevelt and Churchill, we will be able to get +1 Provided Resources Diplomatic bonus (50 > Sum of each Resource * # turns provided >= 25) or +2 Provided Resources Diplomatic bonus (Sum of each Resource * # turns provided >= 50). Once the +2 Resources provided bonus is achieved, a single Resource traded to the Civ will ensure it never decays and reverts to a +1 bonus. (I credit haphazard1 for solidifying this knowledge of Resource providing Diplomatic bonus; please refer to his previous explanation if terse explanation above is not clear or sufficiently precise enough). In Game this Diplomatic bonus is referred to as Sharing Resources by the target Civ, but "Providing Resources" to the target Civ is what the Player must do to get the bonus, so i prefer to use that term instead; there may be other phrases that are equally appropriate.

I just checked our Game via F8 Settings Tab to be sure Random Personalities was not set. It was NOT set. I was rather certain it wasn't set, as that would have made all our discussions based on a fixed AI personalities rather pointless and extremely likely to be disastrous. All the same, I'm slightly relieved to NOT see the Random Personalities option selected. The Random Personalities option is rarely used in HOF Game, but I suppose it may have some use in GOTMs, SGOTMs or regular Succession Games (which is why I checked for it in SGOTM-12).

Sun Tzu Wu

I actually like the potential CS for Alpha + Monarchy deal. It is not that bad a deal in terms of beakers (Gandhi getting about 33% more than he gives us), especially for our diplomatic position. And we get two crucial techs immediately: Alpha for learning what the other civs have plus immediate bribing/trading, and Monarchy for more happiness. That is pretty good overall.

Yes, we give Gandhi CS which is not ideal. But I think we will need to plan to hand a lot of favorable deals (or outright gifts) to the AIs to boost the overall tech rate. We will need to focus to make sure we still get through to Liberalism first, but I am confident we can manage that.

What else can we trade to Gandhi to get Alpha and Monarchy? Construction might (or might not) be enough to get just Alpha. We certainly do not get Monarchy that way, and I think we need the happiness.

The main point is that we get Alpha (and Monarchy) immediately and can start bribing/trading. We have already given away Math and CoL to Gandhi -- we can gift (or trade) them to England and America as well to boost our future trading partners. Mao and DeGaulle (and Stalin) should not have anything big enough to get them, even if that makes them widely enough known to theoretically be traded by Gandhi.

I am not sure if we can leave the MC -> Machinery line to the AIs; they tend to be very slow taking that path. And we are going to want to push ahead through Machinery (maces and xbows) and Optics (to open Astro) as a fairly high priority. But we can wait and see on this one -- getting Alpha will let us keep track of what the AIs have, which will help a great deal.