SGOTM 12 - Fifth Element

Ten turns played.

Just preparing for now, but one very interesting event occurred.

First off, De Gaulle got bribed in against Gandhi. Should not matter.
2nd, we did get a GS. We cannot bulb Astro, as Sci Meth takes priority.
I reckon we either make an academy in Novogrod, netting ~25/turn now, increasing as the cottages etc. grow. Or we save it to use in later golden ages.

I managed to get ~650 gold off Churchill in trading drama and compass, which I thought was ok.
Gandhi asked for Philo with one turn left. I gave it for +1 relations.

The surprising part came on T205, halfway in, Roosevelt actually declared on Mao. He took a city on the same turn, and he has taken another a few turns later. We have a caravel monitoring some of the action. Can't tell if Roosevelt is likely to press further, but I doubt it as Mao will have had time to rally some troops now. We saw some horses leave our front, but he still has a stack roaming nearby.
Of course, this means we can probably roll through China more easily, though he obviously has a large amount of PRO longbows. And if we can be fast enough we might catch Roosevelt in a weakened state too.

The army gathered (a stream of units is on the move) is 8 cannon, 7 musket, 7 phant, 4 mace, 1 Xbow, 1 Medic. I think 2 macemen get charge, 1 gets shock, 1 gets cover. Xbow gets shock, muskets gets combat, phants get formation, cannons obviously city raider.
2 Phants+cover mace+1 musket stay behind to deal with offensive moves. rest of the stack attack.

Our Caravel carrying the GM is a couple of turns away from India. Mao only got caravels a few turns ago, so it should be safe to complete the mission if we DOW, he cannot have any that far from home yet.

So when do we DOW? I reckon we strike next turn aiming for Hangzhou first. I uploaded the save if you want to check out the situation. Didn't micro the cities this turn yet, so don't worry about new improvements not worked.

Now, for the tech picture:
15 turns for GE to pop. We just finished NEpic. 2 turns to Steam Power, which will be nice for worker turns.
Now Gandhi decided to be thoroughly unhelpful and went for Chemistry.
So we are going to be pressed to get help on Nationalism/Constitution in time it seems. So I think we can afford to tech Nationalism ourself instead. That also means we can build Taj safely (in Moscow) and get a golden age to switch to Free Market. And also to give us a 2nd chance if the RNG screws us and we miss the GE.
The GA should also help us reach the mining techs a bit faster.

So Finish Steam Power->Nationalism->Railroad, which won't finish within the rest of my set. We probably have to self tech Constitution too. But we can see after the rest of the set.

Some more. It seems like there is a very good site down by the copper+spices. Might be worth pursuing before long. The axeman there will check out the south for more metal first though. No metal spotted on Galleon required islands.

Coal will also be revealed soon, so we might change our minds a bit on the settling.

We got autospread on our furthest city. Stalin got a missionary, but can't expect him to spread it further.

It seems that we're going to get the GE quite early (before we are equipped to get Mining Inc - still need Corporation and Railroad). Nothing to be done about it, I suppose - still need to run max engineers to reduce the chance of the getting a Great Artist from National Epic contamination.

Interesting diplo scene. I like the idea of attacking early. Is it worth whipping a few cannons to accelerate war preparation?

At some point we should consider drafting more units - maybe at the Riflemen sweet spot.

For the tech path, can we tech Railroad first, and then go for Nationalism? Is it possible Gandhi will finish Chemistry and finish Nationalism by then? He'd have to be really teching fast ...

AIs fighting between themselves is always a good new. But, see below, we can be in danger. We need to remove Mao from its present land, so if Roos is particularly lucky and we also help him, we risk Mao can be eliminated.

We still lack the iceball for Mao: we can't afford 10 turns of forced peace. I've told you we need it soon. Same for Chur, unless he already has some "nuclear free"city down in the tundra.

But i think that to max the GAge we must go for Chur when we're almost done with Mao, with the MoM as target.

An Academy at this point in the game will hardly pay for a bulb or for a GAge.
Also the trade mission, unless we gain some 3K gold. We need 2 GPeople for next GAge and 3 if we want a non-Taj one when it's time to build the SS.

The Taj is OK in Moscow, i think, it's already polluted, better keep the IW city clean.

Agreed on research, the constitution path after SP.

P.S. I just realized we have a BOTM gold medal winner in our midst

I'm sure it's only because I forgot to finish BOTM35 myself

Congrats Fluro! A gold medal is great!

I don't play XotM 'cause usually i have bad luck. And even when i think to have a good game to submit, there's usually someone who beats me by few turns.

So, i play 1-2 XotM a year, on average.

BLubmuz said:

AIs fighting between themselves is always a good new. But, see below, we can be in danger. We need to remove Mao from its present land, so if Roos is particularly lucky and we also help him, we risk Mao can be eliminated.

We still lack the iceball for Mao: we can't afford 10 turns of forced peace. I've told you we need it soon. Same for Chur, unless he already has some "nuclear free"city down in the tundra.

But i think that to max the GAge we must go for Chur when we're almost done with Mao, with the MoM as target.

Click to expand...

I feel the need to kill Roosevelt before he sprawls across the map is bigger than the value of MoM for the one GA and we might not even get it in time.

Good point, we need to be careful that Mao isn't eliminated. However, I don't see how we can avoid a 10 turn grace period. If we settle an iceball now, he probably won't take it. And even if he did, do we really want to pay maintenance for a useless city throughout the war?

I think we should proceed with the war, then at a certain point, perhaps with two cities remaining to minimize the risk, take peace, settle and gift iceball, then go after Roosevelt. Then after 10 turns, DOW and take his remaining cities (or let Roos take them first) and leave him like De Gaulle.

Xian is nicely placed as a "Lyons" for our purpose. It will not block our access to Roosevelt.

I'll build the settler in StP after the CH finishes, 7 turns total . It can then sit on a good spot (SS of good spot imo) until the right time to peace+gift.

If all goes wrong, we can always bribe Roosevelt out of the war.

An Academy at this point in the game will hardly pay for a bulb or for a GAge.
Also the trade mission, unless we gain some 3K gold. We need 2 GPeople for next GAge and 3 if we want a non-Taj one when it's time to build the SS.

Click to expand...

The trade mission will greatly speed up mining inc. Particularly now that we are ahead on generating the GE. No way holding him back for a golden age is better.
We should be able to generate enough GP for the next two GP triggered ones with ease.
But let's keep the GS for bulb/GA I agree.

The Taj is OK in Moscow, i think, it's already polluted, better keep the IW city clean.

Click to expand...

At this point (while running engineers in Rostov), Moscow has the best production I expect. I figure getting it faster trumps any contamination concerns.

Thinking about tech path. Steam Power->Nationalism to start, but instead of going to Railroad, we might be better off going constitution->corporation. The advantage being that we can start Wall Street in StP before founding Mining inc (and for the trade routes faster). On the other hand, Railroads are nice to get up, particularly to get troops to the front faster. What do you guys think?

@beestar, cheers! I actually scooped two golds , and the GOTM one feels a lot better than the BOTM, since the BOTM was just me finding the patience to milk properly for once, while none of the usual suspects went for score
Usually I manage to trip the dom limit a century before needed or something.

We need to keep going, so I'll play tomorrow if no-one objects.

Points of discussion:
-DOW and move most of the stack towards Hangzhou right away, keeping some behind to cover our flank.
-Tech path Steam Power->Nationalism (Taj immediately begins in Moscow)->Constitution->Corporation (however far we get)
-GS saved for later use
-Iceball settler for Mao finished in 7 turns in StP, moving it to the marked spot in the last SS.

Future: The first turn of golden age we switch to representation+free market at least. We might want to add free religion (maybe at the end of GA), nationhood (to draft, switch back to Bureau asap)

By the way, next up is Unclethrill, unless the blubster is ready?

Sounds good to me ... crush the Chinese.

Fluroscent said:

We need to keep going, so I'll play tomorrow if no-one objects.

Points of discussion:
-DOW and move most of the stack towards Hangzhou right away, keeping some behind to cover our flank.
-Tech path Steam Power->Nationalism (Taj immediately begins in Moscow)->Constitution->Corporation (however far we get)
-GS saved for later use
-Iceball settler for Mao finished in 7 turns in StP, moving it to the marked spot in the last SS.

Future: The first turn of golden age we switch to representation+free market at least. We might want to add free religion (maybe at the end of GA), nationhood (to draft, switch back to Bureau asap)

By the way, next up is Unclethrill, unless the blubster is ready?

Click to expand...

Blub is ready.

Good plan.
Be careful with Mao, we need him alive (barely). Good Luck!

Just a note for the future: i hope you all remember the nice Russian UB, the Research Institute. After the "mining inc." path, we must follow that path. Just a digression for Rifling - AL (infantry)

Played last 10, lots of stuff to mention.

War and units:

-Couldn't DOW right away due to Chinese caravels potentially killing our Great Merchant. I calculated that they could have come from the other way around easily. So DOW'ed 3 turns in instead after dropping off the GM.

-Two cities captured. 1 unit lost (mace). Knocking on the door of the third city. We are not encountering much resistance, which is not surprising considering he sent his stack against Roosevelt.

-Made OB with Roos when we got mutual military bonus. He has a knight in our territory that needs to be kept in check. Probably an error of judgement, since we don't have an open trade route yet. The knight needs to be expelled before it can threaten the coming iceball city. Sorry about this.

-Chinese caravels roaming so we cannot sail safe, they all have combat I. Our ships are hiding in cities. We lost one caravel.

Builds:

-I just whipped the remaining banks to completion, so we can start Wall Street in StP next turn when Corporation comes in.

-8 turns to Taj Mahal

-5 turns to GE (at 93%)

-Started a settler in Orenburg since we can pop a city there easily. It has it's essential buildings completed anyway. It is also a nice place to build settlers for the bigger island nearby.

-Suggest we build wealth in some cities since our army is already impressive. Of course, we also want all the science multipliers in our cottage cities.

-Suggest we build the cottages remaining for our cottage cities now. Then no more cottages.

-Remember that gold multipliers are soon outdated, so don't build them. Exception grocers in very big cities for health. Wealth is better.

Tech and diplo:

-Roosevelt is close to rifling. At least he can research it. Also close to Democracy.

-Coal is scarse. We don't have any in our territory. We need it for railroads soon. The closest source requires we take an English city. There is also a source on the big island, but it is hard to grab with ship transport at risk.

-Churchill has been WHEOOHRN for a while, so we might be better off turning our attention to him soon, rather than continue north. He is the least advanced of our home continent enemies.

-Probably best to take 2 more chinese cities then (Beijing is nicely placed at a choke point), take peace, gift iceball, hope Roosevelt and Mao keep fighting, turn around and go for Churchill. Then return for China and America with rifles.

-One turn from Corporation as mentioned. We have run 100% for a while, so our gold is running out. New banks make it less costly to run 0% slider though. I think we should go for Railroad so we can get the mining stuff going, then rifling, then ??

Details:

-Lost resource trades to Gandhi when we DOW'ed. Among them wheat that hurt a bit on health. English culture is blocking any chance to get trade routes running. Scratch that. They were avaiable somehow again, so made a last turn trade for wheat+crab+gpt. Probably lose this when we DOW Churchill.

-Begun to hook remaining metal sources. We need workers over on the big island to hook it's metal soon. Also roading hills to prepare railroads.

-We will need more workers soon, since our captured cities have lots of unimproved squares due to fallout, unlike a normal game. And of course since we have railroad soon. Suggest Yaroslavl builds some after regrowing onto the wine. Can also build some in Rostov.

-Moscow grows next turn, be sure to assign the new citizen to scientist, since we are working all the coast. Scientist is better since we have Oxford there. I gave the fish to CI since Moscow does not need it any more.

-Monitor all city growth. The governors really like assigning useless spies now.

Suggest the next set be split at the completion of Taj Mahal (8T from now), so we can discuss civic changes.

Fluroscent said:

Suggest the next set be split at the completion of Taj Mahal (8T from now), so we can discuss civic changes.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Looks like a great TS. Good Job!!

I won't be able to play until next week (12/15) or so. It is exam week. After that, I'm wide open to really concentrate on this.

I've spent almost 20 minutes to look at the save and i have some questions.

First, i see Fluro admit that OB with Roos was a mistake. Sure like Hell, there's the Chinese iceball at risk and even some of our northern cities if the knight goes north. In 5 turns he can be in a very bad position.

I say this because, in case (when) we DoW Roos and the knight is "teleported" north when we don't extend the OB agreement, we have that problem.

I propose to build a pike in CI to try to deal with it.

Chinese war: sure we want to take Shangai. Less sure about Beijing, since Mao will probably concentrate his forces to deal with us and he can be very vulnerable with only 2 cities. Just a matter of time.

After this (Shangai and Bijing maybe) we must go after Chur. I propose to delay the Taj until we have the MoM. London is not so deep in English territory and we can safely delay it, since the only AI with Nationaliam is CGD, who surely can't build it.

The 50% of GAge lenght will compensate few turns of delay in changing civics.

I propose to go for Astro after Corps.

I know we want Mining Inc soon, but we need to sail safely and possibly to avoid AIs settling overseas. So we must have some galleon and some privateer to harras Roos and G before we can start our "righteous crusade" against them.

Just this for now. I wait to see the answers to post a PPP.

Out of curiosity, how much gold we gained from the Trade Mission?

I propose to build a pike in CI to try to deal with it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, need to shadow it in case it is teleported north. Assume you will close borders asap. It may not go north though, and instead explore more south first. We can hope.
If he does teleport north, then we may be forced to bribe Roos out of war with Mao when we settle the iceball.

Chinese war: sure we want to take Shangai. Less sure about Beijing, since Mao will probably concentrate his forces to deal with us and he can be very vulnerable with only 2 cities. Just a matter of time.

Click to expand...

I am fine with either one or both cities. If we delay Taj, then there is more rush to go after Churchill.

After this (Shangai and Bijing maybe) we must go after Chur. I propose to delay the Taj until we have the MoM. London is not so deep in English territory and we can safely delay it, since the only AI with Nationaliam is CGD, who surely can't build it.

The 50% of GAge lenght will compensate few turns of delay in changing civics.

Click to expand...

I can agree with this. But be aware that Churchill probably has a huge stack (been in war-prep mode forever), so progress may be slow initially.

I propose to go for Astro after Corps.

Click to expand...

I don't think this is a good idea. We really don't need to worry too much about islands right now. Railroad will make everything better, with mining spread faster, and railroads+machine guns to make war much easier. We have so many cities to capture on our home continent that Astro is not that urgent. And cleaning up island cities is not a big deal. It's not like the previous time where every city needed a nuke.
A general tech plan could look something like this:
Railroad->Rifling->Astro->Democracy->Assembly Line->(prereqs)->Biology->(prereqs)->Superconductors

Out of curiosity, how much gold we gained from the Trade Mission?

Click to expand...

1800 gold.

Situation on turn 220, 1550 AD.

Rostov (IW+NE city) is 5 turns away from a GE @ 93% (fingers crossed)
Next GPerson will probably arrive from that same city around the end of the GAge.
Corps is 1 turn away @ 100% with 670 in bank - 247/t. and 2 cities producing wealth, giving us a break even of 50-52%

I think that some Missionary is needed to spread our newly conquered cities and the ones we're going to settle.

We have 1 settler on route for the Chinese iceball.
We need 2 more for the big island and 1 for Chur.
Then we have to decide if where to settle. I've seen an island with a coal source E of Khabarovsk, but i don't think it's worth to settle more cities. Maybe the one marked "Tier 3 Sushi", but no more. We have enough cities to conquer.

About iceballs, there's some good site also SW of London.

I think we can safely move our galley in Smolensk. The caravel in Kabarovsk can cover it.

The most urgent is the one for the Coal site, which i see better 1E or 1SE. Less food but more production (copper in BFC).

Next turn the remaining 4 banks needed for WS will complete, so we can immediately start it in StPete.

Draft PPP:
Missionaries: each one of them will worth 3gpt after WS (2gpt at present). Every city not busy with military or important buildings will produce them, along with the settlers. If some WB is needed for the new cities it will be on queue.
Military: CI will produce one knight and a pike, then back with cannons.
New cities (settled or conquered) will produce: Granary, library, CH, Forge. In this order.
At present we have only one city which can build a Levee, Novgorod and i've seen it already in queue. Surely i'll let it there.
War: Shangai will fall in 2 turns: This one we have no moves, next bombard while the cannon stack will arrive, then chrush them.
I think it's better let Beijing to Mao, heal the units and move South.
We have 2 stacks near Chengdu, which can be reinforced by another cannon: we can start the English war in 3 turns from now:
- now - nothing, out of moves
- t.221 move stack S, healed or not the units in Chngdu will join, i let 2 muskets there.
- t.222 start fireworks: Hastings is a good choke point, so no need to keep many troops in Hangzou after its fall.
- t. 224 Hastings falls, unless Chur has a very big stack there.
- t. 225 the stack from Beijing will arrive in Hastings: from there we need 9-11 turns to take London, protective or not.
I suggest to keep all the cities. The only crappy is Oxford and not so much.

This bring us to another point: Moscow can finish the Taj on turn 228. If we delay it to take advantage of the MoM, we must wait until turn 234/236, so 6-8 turns.
This is one the reasons why i'd like to start soon with England. The other is that with Beijing Mao is more safe to be wiped by Roos.

Civics:
Representation is not a great advantage for now: we're running 5 specialists in our cities, plus the 2 from the GLib. We don't have happiness problems and in case some cheap colosseum or theatre will solve them. So, delay it is not a big deal.
I'm not so sure about FR: it gives the 10% of the base commerce, but we need a lot of buildings and some GPerson. So maybe is worth to run OR or Pacifism.
We can run Mercantilism until we have some 3-4 cities with the corp spreaded, then FM.
With G running Merc, we gain only the trade route from FM and with representation free specialists are maybe better.
Slavery, Caste or Serfdom? I'm inclined to Caste, but i would not start a war for it.
We can also run some turn of Nationhood after Rifling, provided we can use it during the GAge.
But this can be debated after the first half, if we agree to delay the Taj.

Research:
I copy/paste what Fluro posted:
Railroad->Rifling->Astro->Democracy->Assembly Line->(prereqs)->Biology->(prereqs)->Superconductors
My comments:
Agreed on Rail-Rifle-Astro
Democracy is worth if we can manage the SoL. Much will depend from Roos: if he goes straight for Demo, he can build it in no time (for us, one day).
So, AL (we have all the prereqs next turn) after Demo or skip Demo (we can see in F4 if Roos has it or not) and maybe pop another GE in the meantime to speed the SoL
then SM (goodbye 2 free sci)-Physics or Biology first? we need both-Electricity or Refrigeration first? we need both - SC (Research Institute)

We need to decide something and probably to refine this. In any case, after the usual procedure, i'll play 10 turns, stop to report and to ask suggestions if needed, then complete.

Comments on PPP:

-I tested the colonial maintenance thing, and it seems it does not occur with vassal states off. So yes, let's settle the two cities on the big island.

-Do you agree on building both the island settlers in Smolensk? As you say, the galley there has a short trip over and can be covered by the caravel. By the way, with this plan, we get peace with Mao soon, so the seas will be safer. There are definitely less English caravels roaming than Chinese, but still best not to move galleys unescorted.

-Also ship some workers from Smolensk while at it, since they are almost done there. Maybe build more workers after two settlers in Smolensk. Smolensk could also build some MPs for the new island cities.

-I like trying for a 2nd GE in Rostov (if we get the first even). SoL is a worthy cause, we have a huge continent full of cities that will get the free spec.

-Don't agree we can wait on Roos to build it (SoL). Even if he gets Demo very soon, it is a huge build and will not be priority for him with wars going on. Don't see it done before we wipe him from the continent.

-If we found Mining Inc within the first part set, then do delay WS for one executive for Moscow, which can then begin spreading it while StP completes WS.

-Not a big deal with missionaries. I DO think we want FR, at least before the GA ends, and if only for shrine gold, I think the value of immediate wealth is much greater.

New cities (settled or conquered) will produce: Granary, library, CH, Forge. In this order.

Click to expand...

Move CH up since it is needed for corp payments. Might even be before Granary somewhere.

War: Shangai will fall in 2 turns: This one we have no moves, next bombard while the cannon stack will arrive, then chrush them.
I think it's better let Beijing to Mao, heal the units and move South.
We have 2 stacks near Chengdu, which can be reinforced by another cannon: we can start the English war in 3 turns from now:
- now - nothing, out of moves
- t.221 move stack S, healed or not the units in Chngdu will join, i let 2 muskets there.
- t.222 start fireworks: Hastings is a good choke point, so no need to keep many troops in Hangzou after its fall.
- t. 224 Hastings falls, unless Chur has a very big stack there.
- t. 225 the stack from Beijing will arrive in Hastings: from there we need 9-11 turns to take London, protective or not.

Click to expand...

Careful here.
I think we need to gather our whole force before DOW Churchill (include the units taking the Chinese city, and all healed up). I expect to see a 30+ unit English stack shortly after DOW, so we CANNOT afford to be caught with less than our full force. Overwhelming numbers never fail to take down advanced units, and the AI is not shy to swarm a half strength stack. We also should avoid getting sieged. If we DOW too soon, he may attack Hangzhou before it gets any culture up to delay. We must attack it with a lot of cannon before it can attack us. It needs to be either on flatland or in a city for us to attack it.
Once the stack is defeated, and unless we lose too much, the English cities will fall fast.

This bring us to another point: Moscow can finish the Taj on turn 228. If we delay it to take advantage of the MoM, we must wait until turn 234/236, so 6-8 turns.
This is one the reasons why i'd like to start soon with England. The other is that with Beijing Mao is more safe to be wiped by Roos.

Click to expand...

I agree, but safety first. Try to complete Taj the turn after capturing London (where MoM is right?). Of course, not in the first part. Put most of the hammers in it now though, so it is free to build mining execs later.

Civics:
-I like a part merc/rep run during the GA, also like pacifism. But at the end, we will surely want FM/FR.
-Slavery is surely best to keep, since we need to whip courthouses in captured cities for a while to spread mining properly. And of course to whip Execs!

One more thing, when we get rails+hook coal, worker priority must be on a rail network so we can move troops+executives quickly through our empire.

I agree on almost everything you wrote in your 2 posts above, Fluro. Also on safety, if you get good reasons to suppose we find a giant stack in "England".

The Corps spreading has no secrets for me, don't worry.

But there's a problem i'd like to arise: if we spread to all our cities, we'll pay a lot on corps maintenance (even with CHs) at the expenses of our research. I think we must spread the Corps in few selected cities, not in all.

The question is: what do we need to build in our less importat cities? Is the benefit of those "corp-aided" quick builds enough to pay off for the corps maintenance?

This is probably the main reason why i'm reluctant to found Sushi.
Mainly if you think we'll stay on slavery. Sushi without Caste is a debt.

This can be debated during and after my whole TS, in any case.

Also on safety, if you get good reasons to suppose we find a giant stack in "England".

Click to expand...

Just that he has been in war prep mode for an extended period of time, and he has quite a large amount of land. Mao was different since he fought Roosevelt first. At this point in the game, the AI can easily show up with monster stacks.

Corps: Mining must be spread as fast as possible to all cities. We just need to leverage the hammers to build wealth, and along with the Wall Street money it will easily make our economy much more powerful.
The lesser cities can easily get their required builds with mining+slavery. And then building wealth they will be hugely profitable.

Required builds are granary, CH, forge, library (because it is so cheap) for now. Factory+Plant later, and science multipliers in cottage cities. This is not much to build at all, so we can always have lots of cities building wealth and we should see 2k+ sustainable beakers soon.

Sushi should be selective, to cities that can use the growth properly.