SGOTM 13 - Smurkz

donsig · Feb 10, 2008

I wouldn't buy contacts since someone said earlier they will only lower tech prices by two percent. Shouldn't we be able to find more civs now that we've made landfall? Also, isn't there the chance we'll meet others when contact with us is sold?

So I'd concentrate on buying techs. I'd buy code of laws but hold off purchasing philosophy. We're, what, ten turns from finishing it? And this could be reduced further with some scientists? Perhaps by the time we've finished it we'd have enough to buy republic.

CommandoBob · Feb 10, 2008

I agree with donsig. Let's buy some smarts; we can make friends later. After we scout around some more we may want to buy a contact or two but for now let us trust the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Gojira was what eldar named the galley that was shuffling units to the Big Island. I don't know that I would give that name to a city, however. That could be considered a monsterous-ly huge mistake.

Early Photograph of Gojira

If we do keep the city name of Gojira, how about one named Mothra?

Niklas · Feb 10, 2008

I agree with what's been said. We should certainly not buy contacts, let our contacting galley continue exploring the island. The fact that there are 12 contacts to be had is a bit disconcerting, but not surprising.

I wouldn't buy CoL yet, if we meet others with it it'll drop in price. But we should definitely buy it IMO. Not sure about Philosophy, but I'm leaning towards completing it ourselves. After that we'll save up cash and buy Republic as soon as we can afford it.

A thought that has lodged in my mind for some time - anyone up for a repeat of the Hydrophobic American gambit? We have a bunch of not-yet-improved towns we could gift away, and that could be easily reconquered. Could potentially give us a foot-hold on a larger continent. Not saying we should, but I figured I'd throw out the idea here anyway.

CommandoBob · Feb 10, 2008

Niklas said:
A thought that has lodged in my mind for some time - anyone up for a repeat of the Hydrophobic American gambit? We have a bunch of not-yet-improved towns we could gift away, and that could be easily reconquered. Could potentially give us a foot-hold on a larger continent. Not saying we should, but I figured I'd throw out the idea here anyway.

SGOTM 8, Team Durkz, right?

Niklas · Feb 10, 2008

Quite right so. I thought you were with us then, but it seems my memory serves me wrong, you joined us for the Gandhi-to-space game right? That means only me and zyxy are still here from that game and know what I'm talking about.

The Gambit would be to gift a bunch of towns away, then declare war and take them back the same turn. When the wronged AI has calmed down enough to talk, they are likely to give up a town or two for peace, since we just conquered a large number of their towns.

CommandoBob · Feb 10, 2008

I went back, I think in SGOTM 09 and read part of the Team Durkz thread but did not finish it. This the link to SGOTM8 - Durkz.

WarDance dropped out in 09 due to his daughter's hearing issues (I think).
Methos ~~deserted~~ upgraded to CIV.

Othniel · Feb 10, 2008

@Team: Just so everyone knows, the galley that made contact sunk! It must have gotten just close enough to the Mongol borders to be spotted, and then Genghis must have sold our phone number to Isabella for a modest price. That's why we know both of them. Also, our next galley closest to land still has to survive one more inter-turn. So we are not guaranteed of a scout galley for that new continent just yet.

I completely agree with buying techs. Even if we don't aquire more contacts ourself just yet, there's a good chance other AI civs will buy our contact, plus the aforementioned measly 2% tech price drop for knowing another civ.

By the way, forgot to check last night. Do the Mongols and Isabella have Literature? :mischief:

I like the sound of that gambit, Niklas. A lot. One question: when we gift AI towns, do they automatically get a defender in there? I think not but I'm not sure on my memory.

Niklas · Feb 10, 2008

Othniel said:
@Team: Just so everyone knows, the galley that made contact sunk! It must have gotten just close enough to the Mongol borders to be spotted, and then Genghis must have sold our phone number to Isabella for a modest price. That's why we know both of them. Also, our next galley closest to land still has to survive one more inter-turn. So we are not guaranteed of a scout galley for that new continent just yet.

Ah right, a pity. Though it's really the other way around, the border we got close to is Spain's.

I completely agree with buying techs. Even if we don't aquire more contacts ourself just yet, there's a good chance other AI civs will buy our contact, plus the aforementioned measly 2% tech price drop for knowing another civ.

Yep, that's another good point.

By the way, forgot to check last night. Do the Mongols and Isabella have Literature?

I'm afraid they do.

I like the sound of that gambit, Niklas. A lot. One question: when we gift AI towns, do they automatically get a defender in there? I think not but I'm not sure on my memory.

No they don't, which is why it's so easy. They must be retaken right away though, or we might face rushed defenders. Also, if we want to retain our ROP reputation we need chariots, who could start inside our own borders.

Othniel · Feb 10, 2008

Ah right, a pity. Though it's really the other way around, the border we got close to is Spain's.

It was brown borders, but :dunno:

. Hopefully that galley survives and we'll find out for sure.

Gojira was what eldar named the galley that was shuffling units to the Big Island. I don't know that I would give that name to a city, however. That could be considered a monsterous-ly huge mistake.

I knew I had heard that somewhere. I'm game with keeping the city named Gojira, and with another town named Mothra.

By the way, thanks for uploading that save, Niklas.

My thought at this moment is to hold off on doing anything with trades. We can use scientists to finish off Philo while accumulating more cash. Hopefully in the meantime we can make more contacts to at least lower tech costs a bit. When Philo is done, we can buy CoL and Republic (which will cost a ton).

The other variable is if we want to do this Gift Cities/Retake gambit. Unless we want to wreck our ROP rep--and I think we may find that valuable to keep--we'll need Chariots just like Niklas said. That means we need to start building a few chariots ASAP.

Does anyone really want to buy techs now? Also, are we going forward with this gambit and should I then change some builds to Chariots?

Niklas · Feb 10, 2008

Othniel said:
It was brown borders, but . Hopefully that galley survives and we'll find out for sure.

Weird. CA2 reports that the territory belongs to Spain though.

donsig · Feb 10, 2008

I agree with holding off on buying anything for now. We need to see if our galley at risk will survive. Let's finish poly with geeks and see who else buys contact with us. We might as well hold off on buying code of laws until we think we can also afford republic. That will give us time to make more contacts to lower tech prices and also to stock pile gold.

The gambit sounds interesting but we need to get some chariots made first. How many can we make without support costs? How many cities to we give away for this to work? Who would be our mark be - someone close or far, far away?

Othniel · Feb 10, 2008

What team consensus there is seems to being saying hold off on buying anything for right now. As such I'll hold our cash and hope for more contacts.

@donsig: we have plenty of free unit support left, so that's not an issue.

Overall, I think I'll just continue with our galley builds for the rest of my 7 turns. Most of the galleys won't finish this set anyway, so we can switch to Chariots later on.

I'm going to finish my set tonight because I think we've resolved any major questions. In the meantime, we should keep discussing the exact details of our Gift/Retake gambit if we're going to do it. At first blush, my vote is to go for it.

eldar · Feb 11, 2008

I go away for a few days (COTM45, and a highly entertaining 20K game I started yesterday...) and what happens, the neighbours finally decide to come round.

I'm all for the gift-and-retake gambit, don't see why we shouldn't try it.

Could we gift size-1 cities with nothing in them? IMO the AI gets even more upset and scared of us "powerful" opponents when we raze cities. Of course we'd need settlers handy to replace them so maybe not.

I'd not buy contacts. Now that two of 'em know us, they will probably sell us on to other bidders. Not worth the asking price. We should keep our cash to get techs.

Othniel · Feb 11, 2008

Turn is done.

Summary:
Made contact with 8 civs
We have two scout galleys exploring other continents
Built two more cities: Mothra

and Satsuma
Researched Philo

Some Handoff Notes:
India is offering CoL for 26gpt + 7gp, cheapest deal I could find.

I would have halted my turnset once Philo was researched, but I felt that we didn't have enough money to purchase Republic just yet because the cost for CoL is so steep. So I proceeded with my last two turns, and left the trading up to the next player.

I hired some taxment instead of scientist to give us maximum flexibility. We could hire scientists instead of taxmen to lower CoL cost, but I feel the difference, if any, to be slim.

We have 622gp and are making 44gpt with the taxmen.

On to other matters...

We're nearly done with all worker improvements. The next turnset should just about finish them off. Then we can do worker joins.

We can also do our palace jump very soon from now. Sensei just needs to make 2 more settlers (if we keep that proposed 24 turn timeline). We should prioritize joining workers into Saki so that the FPJ mechanism works correctly.

All the galley builds are up for debate. We really don't need many more galleys, IMO. If we're doing Niklas' gambit, let's change some builds to Chariots. I got horses hooked up. In any case, I think we should start making some harbors on the Big Island.

I'd also like to consider a granary in Akichi. It could make a nice worker factory to boost our pop up quicker.

<Here's>> the save.

Rest of the turnlog:

Spoiler :

And a collage of pics: (big ones spoilered)

Spoiler :

Lovin' all those bright, happy faces.

Spoiler :

Othniel · Feb 11, 2008

eldar said:
I go away for a few days (COTM45, and a highly entertaining 20K game I started yesterday...) and what happens, the neighbours finally decide to come round.

Yep, it's been a busy day in the Smurzk neighborhood!

Also, I'm still curious about the weird differential movement thing I saw. If you move a ship through a coastal city center tile, the tile doesn't count as a normal coastal tile i.e. the ship can move three coastal tiles. Is this normal? I don't have much experience with differential naval movement.

One more thing:
I had to change around Niklas' sequence for managing Sensei's settler factory. I also modified our sequence for the Sushi worker factory.

These sequences are really only relevant for about 10 more turns, but I'll post them anyway.

Settler Factory- Sensei

6) rocks, cow (3f 4s) = 3/10 food, 4/30 shields
7) bg, cow (3f 5s) = 6/10 food, 9/30 shields
8) fish, cow (4f 3+2s) = 10/10 food, 12+2/30 shields
9) fish, rocks, cow (4f 4s) = 4/10 food, 18/30
10) bg, rocks, cow (3f 6s) = 7/10 food, 24/30
11) fish, rocks, cow (4f 4+2s) = 11/10 food, 30/30 shields (settler)

Note: turn 9 has changed from original

Worker Factory- Sushi

6) bg, bg, fish (3f 5s) = 3/10 food, 11/10 shields (worker) (Bg from Nibanme) Nibanme works oyster
7) oysters, fish (4f 1s) = 7/10 food, 1/10 shields
8) bg, oysters (3f 3+2s) = 10/10 food, 6/10 shields
9) bg, bg, oysters (3f 5s) = 3/10 food, 11/10 shields (worker) (Bg from Nibanme) Nibanme starves
10) fish, oysters (4f 1s) = 7/10 food, 1/10 shields
11) bg, oysters (3f 3+2s) = 10/10 food, 6/10 shields

Nibanme has to donate it's BG on occasion to make this work. When that happens, Nibanme starves.

In order to prevent Nibanme from losing pop, I was swapping a warrior back and forth from Sushi to Nibanme e.g. whenever Sushi was size 2 and didn't need the happiness. When I switch the warrior, I had Nibanme work 2 tiles, instead of it's normal specialist, so that it can store up some extra food for when it starves.

zyxy · Feb 11, 2008

Alright, things have changed!

Some loose ideas and facts:

Buying price of CoL is 26 gpt + 7gp = 26*20 + 7 = 527 gold. Research price is 485 gold. So it is getting close, and considering that the AI does not value 1 gpt as 20 gold, perhaps buying is actually cheaper. However, we are still far from the trade front, and feeding the AI with money is not helping us I think. We could research or buy CoL at this point and then start a min run on Republic. But we probably don't want to wait for 50 turns. So buying Republic or a max run seems better.
In the end, I think it is best to hire scientists instead of taxmen (50% more efficient, cannot beat that for the moment), keep sci rate at 0%, and wait to get the remaining contacts or have enough cash to buy Republic before we buy CoL. We also need to get Currency soon.

As far as I recognize them, all the leader heads show that our rivals are in the MA already. They are all republics. Everybody lacks iron, and the Iro also lack horses. We cannot trade maps with anyone, so nobody has Navigation yet.
We cannot trade resources with anyone, so Spain does not have Magnetism yet. For the other civs we first need to see a harbor town, but I think it is reasonably safe to assume that they also do not have Magnetism

Everyone except Egypt, Rome and Portugal can sell contact with Vikings, Americans, Babs, French, Celts, and Carthaginians. This means Egypt, Rome and Portugal either do not have Printing Press, or they do not know these 6 civs. Is there a way to know which is true? If the second option, can we make some deals by buying and selling contacts? Ghandi would sell all contacts for about 580 gold - and probably less if we buy one by one. Or we could wait and hope our rivals will buy contacts with us.

The lightblue civ in the south: could be America?

sercer88 · Feb 11, 2008

lurker's comment: If you get an embassy in the questioned civs capitols, you can see via the F4 screen who knows who.

Niklas · Feb 11, 2008

Well played Othniel! :goodjob:

Current Roster and Schedule

zyxy - UP! (Feb 14)
eldar - On Deck! (Feb 17)
CommandoBob - Warming Up (Feb 20)
Niklas (Feb 24)
donsig (Feb 27)
Othniel (Mar 1)

zyxy, actually Spain would only need Astronomy to trade with us. So they don't even have that, which is at least slightly good news.

I'll be back with more comments later.

Othniel · Feb 11, 2008

sercer88 said:
lurker's comment: If you get an embassy in the questioned civs capitols, you can see via the F4 screen who knows who.

That normally works, but I don't think it'll work for this situation. For instance, if we buy an embassy with Spain, we'll see every civ that they know that we also know. The civs that we don't know, such as America, won't even show up, so we won't be able to see if Spain knows them.

I think we should buy CoL asap. The additional contacts are not lowering the price much. I'd really like to see how close we are to buying Republic from someone, anyone.

Mongols just started Copernicus, so I bet that's a fairly accurate assessment of where the AI civs have researched to.

I'd like to get Currency for markets, but we need Maths as well. As I said before, getting some harbors started would be good. We need to get our pop up on the Big Island. We're jumping the palace soon. With that in mind, I think we should fire all specialists if that town can work a 2fpt tile instead. I think all towns can do that except Nibanme.

EDIT: Perhaps keep Ao and Akichi with specialists too for now so that we don't need lux tax.

sercer88 · Feb 11, 2008

Othniel said:
That normally works, but I don't think it'll work for this situation. For instance, if we buy an embassy with Spain, we'll see every civ that they know that we also know. The civs that we don't know, such as America, won't even show up, so we won't be able to see if Spain knows them.

Ok, I was hesitant to post that, since surely someone here would know that....however, what you're asking is impossible, AFAIK.

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