SGOTM 05 - Geezers

@Harbourboy
Not sure if this meets the bill, but here's:

a) The situation around Kufah as we prepare to push Sally off our land
View attachment 159317

b) The area around Corinth where we've been razing small cities and leaving a dead space to be filled
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c) The demographics (for what it's worth)
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Thanks for doing that AgedOne. Hopefully that's what Harbourboy meant.

That's more than what I expected.

Also, I need to flag now that I am going to be away from my PC from 11 September through to 4 October. I might be able to log into the internet occasionally during that period, but I will not be able to play.

I got it, but could not have a look at it yesterday due to some family business. Will do that this evening.

Harbourboy said:

Also, I need to flag now that I am going to be away from my PC from 11 September through to 4 October.

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Sorry to hear that Harbourboy. Work related or is this time off for good behaviour?

markh said:

I got it, but could not have a look at it yesterday due to some family business. Will do that this evening.

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AgedOne seems to have overlooked his last turn so you could play an axtra turn if you want.

I do not think we need a courthouse in Karakorum, so I put a collosseum there
Courthouses are set for Corinth and Athens

IBT : Qin attacks a galley and loses

Taoism is founded in Medina and Sally immediately converts

1) 950AD : a barb archer steps on a hill near Phoenician and reveals a sword, 4 axes and an archer in that city

IBT : nothing

2) 965AD : just moving units

IBT : nothing

3) 980AD : not much

IBT : our research drops to 0

4) 995AD : just now I remember that we have calender , so I move two workers to get dyes connected for some happyness
mm to get research back to 10% at least

IBT : Sally asks for peace demanding horseback riding, I decline

5) 1010AD : move units towards Basra

IBT : nothing

6) 1025AD : a sword and a Keshik are now beside Basra to attack next turn
Toku does not make a move with his forces in Phoenician, so I move 3 Keshiks towards Kagoshima to have a look what is up there

IBT : nothing

7) 1040AD : Basra is razed by the Keshik for 94 gold
Toku has an archer and a spear in Kagoshima

up science to 30%

IBT : nothing

8) 1055AD : just moving units

IBT : Qin drops 4 HAs at Corinth and a caravel is near

9) 1070AD : pull back all possible forces to Corinth

IBT : 3 Chinese HA die attacking Corinth, the fourth HA moves into the forest at Corinth

10) 1085AD : dyes are connected

Sally just built a chariot in the remaining city on our island. At Corinth there is still one HA. It will pillage the iron obviously, but I would let him do so as we do not need it badly at the moment. We have two workers there to reconnect it quickly. The Keshiks are on the way back and can kill that HA. Maybe an axe could do the job next turn when the HA comes out of the forest.

Sam_Yeager said:

AgedOne seems to have overlooked his last turn so you could play an axtra turn if you want.

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Oops! It had been a long day.

markh said:

I do not think we need a courthouse in Karakorum, so I put a collosseum there
Courthouses are set for Corinth and Athens

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I was thinking long-term (although it may be rather woolly thinking also). Are we still considering moving the capital over to lush island? If we are, then we'll need a FP back on our homeland (which might not be in Karakorum) and so courthouses in lots of cities first.

Posting so I can keep track of when I'm next.

Roster:

Sam
drhirsch - skipped due to virus hunting
Harbourboy - skip from 11 Sep to 4 October
AgedOne
markh - Just played
The-Hawk - UP
Pariah - on deck

Good progress mark.

I think we need to get courthouses in Athens, Corinth & Old Sarai soonest. Currently they're costing us 23 . To that end I think Old Sarai should work the mine and Athens should work the copper mine instead of the horses. This doesn't cost us any and should mean we can them sooner. This should help research in the not too distant future.

I suggest we move our two promoted galleys to the northern most sea tile in our culture by Corinth. That will force Qin to offload his stacks a bit further away. With luck Qin will suicide some galleys against them. The other galley should pick up the spear from silver island and drop off one of the axes from Athens instead.

We're about to drop to fourth in power, below Toku, so I think it might be worth building one or two more military to keep third spot. Maybe spears for the forests by Corinth?

EDIT: We could do with some more galleys as well.

Be carefuly about the waters around Corinth as Qin had a caravel there. He used it to cover his loaded galleys. Maybe now he sent it to circumnavigate the world, but he will build new ones. I would keep our galleys in a stack, so incase he attacks the stack we could kill it next turn as I think even promoted galleys do not have that big chances against caravels.

I forgot to change the tiles for more hammers after razing Basra. Before that each gold coin counted. Furthermore the Dyes at Karakorum just came online to give us even more gold. Next should be the Dyes at Ning Hsia to give that city more commerce.

I hope we can make peace with some AIs once we have alphabet to offer them a cheap tech in the peace deal to reduce the war weariness. It would be good to get into trading. If we have to research all the way through ourselves i fear we will get behind and we will face a situation like in the last game where we lost momentum and attacking AIs will be difficult. I also feel we need a specialist farm. Corinth comes to my mind to pop some scientists for bulbing some techs. A temple there after the courthouse and engage a priest to pop that prophet sooner.

markh said:

Be carefuly about the waters around Corinth as Qin had a caravel there.

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Rats. Just reinforces the need for more galleys. I noticed that barbs kept researchng Calendar even after we switched to another tech. After Alphabet perhaps it may be worth briefly starting another tech and then switching to our desired one afterwards.

markh said:

I also feel we need a specialist farm. Corinth comes to my mind to pop some scientists for bulbing some techs. A temple there after the courthouse and engage a priest to pop that prophet sooner.

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I think we want Corinth to be pumping out missionaries for . Now that we have calendar we can't build obelisks to expand borders so religion will be the cheapest way to do this since libs take quite a while to build.

What about using Karakorum as a GP farm in the short term? Since we're maximising cottages there at present instead of production this might be suitable.

Can we afford to settle Silver city yet for more ?

As far as next tech goes we have a number of choices. Monarchy would be good as would heading for Optics. Metal casting for forges to get out our military faster would also be good. However I think we need to keep up on military technology so I think we should head for maces.

Turning Corinth into a specialist farm does not mean we cannot continue building missionaries there. Another option we have by training christian missionaries in Athens and spread christianity. However it is still some way to go. I would build a temple in Corinth before any missionaries, so we can hire a priest to speed up the prophet training to build a shrine in either Corinth or Athens.

The silver city can come after some courts are finished. Would be a little risky to found it now.

Metal Casting would be good as forges give another with gold, silver and gems. We have gold and soon silver, so 2 more and Metal Casting we will need for any further military techs anyway. With forges we can assign engineers for more hammers. Especially in our hammerless core it would help a bit.

AgedOne said:

I was thinking long-term (although it may be rather woolly thinking also). Are we still considering moving the capital over to lush island? If we are, then we'll need a FP back on our homeland (which might not be in Karakorum) and so courthouses in lots of cities first.

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Probably you are right. I cannot remember ever building a courthouse in the capital, so that will be the reason it appeared strange to me.

markh said:

Turning Corinth into a specialist farm does not mean we cannot continue building missionaries there. Another option we have by training christian missionaries in Athens and spread christianity...

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We have to decide for sure which faith we want as state religion in the long term. I'm inclined toward Christianity: the holy city is more secure, being on an island, and its higher current production rate will speed the missionary output.

markh said:

Turning Corinth into a specialist farm does not mean we cannot continue building missionaries there. Another option we have by training christian missionaries in Athens and spread christianity.

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My worry about Corinth is that Qin and some of the other AI will keep pillaging the food. Especially if Qin has caravels to go with his HAs.

Pariah said:

I'm inclined toward Christianity: the holy city is more secure, being on an island, and its higher current production rate will speed the missionary output.

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All good points. However Corinth already has a monastery. As I said earlier I don't think it is in our interests to adopt a state religion at present as it will annoy Cyrus even more. Once we can make use of some of the religious civics then that may be a different matter.

@Geezers

Just trying to pick all of our brains.

How do you think the game is going? If you were playing this in a game of your own, then how would you see it panning out from now on?

From my own experiences, this is a fairly familiar position to find myself in: we have despatched our first rival, have damaged somebody else and established a base on a foreign land. We are quite powerful militarily right now, but are having problems supporting our empire, and are in danger of losing the tech race and therefore the military edge.
I find this quite a crucial time.
If we can sort out our economy / happiness etc then we can reach a point where we can pour out units and dominate the enemies. If we can't do that fast enough, we start fighting an uphill battle.

Especially considering that we are in a competition where the prize goes to the fastest finish, are we looking good? What would happen in your own games from this kind of situation through to the finish?

Good Question, AgedOne.

The thing about these SGOTMs is that usually nobody has been in these situations. That is the main goal of these games as this attracts the crowd. Here we are teamed with barbs and at war with all AIs from the start. In a normal sp game I choose my victims and make peace or destroy the enemy at my will. Here it is totally different. We do not have that much of a choice.

I think we are doing ok. Maybe we started to go to take cities too early, but all in all the game is not very fast. Even some AIs still do not have alphabet, so the overall tech pace is not too fast and there is still land to settle in 1085AD which I rarely observe in sp games. I am quite concerned about Cyrus. He has good lands and might end up as a runaway like Hannibal in our last game and there is not much we can do about now.

Sam_Yeager said:

The-Hawk - UP

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THis is my official "got it" post. I'll hold off playing until tomorrow morning, lots of good discussion going.

AgedOne said:

Are we still considering moving the capital over to lush island?

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I thought so before, but I'm not so sure now. Corinth isn't a good prod city, so a capital move would need to wait until we expand to a better location. However, once we start to expand, we shouldn't stop until we have Dom. Hence building units in our captured lush island cities might be more important than wasting 30-40 turns for a capital move.

Sam_Yeager said:

I think we need to get courthouses in Athens, Corinth & Old Sarai soonest. Currently they're costing us 23 . To that end I think Old Sarai should work the mine and Athens should work the copper mine instead of the horses.

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yessir

markh said:

I hope we can make peace with some AIs once we have alphabet to offer them a cheap tech in the peace deal to reduce the war weariness. It would be good to get into trading.

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I agree... peace with as many AI's as possible, even if we give up a tech. We are much better off fighting individual AI's at the time we choose.

markh said:

I also feel we need a specialist farm.

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Sam_Yeager said:

My worry about Corinth is that Qin and some of the other AI will keep pillaging the food. Especially if Qin has caravels to go with his HAs...

...As far as next tech goes we have a number of choices. Monarchy would be good as would heading for Optics. Metal casting for forges to get out our military faster would also be good. However I think we need to keep up on military technology so I think we should head for maces.

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I don't think we need a GS farm, in fact I see no value in a GS at all. I think the next GS tech is Philo, I don't see any need for Philo. We should be beelining to one more military advancement (maces or knights) then ending this game. Also, I agree with Sam, it might be hard to keep Corinth's food connected. Given both Maces and Knights need metal and machinery, they would be my next two techs. At that point, I have to think it would be best to go for CS to get maces, although heading down the knight path (given we already have Kheshiks) would be tempting.

Sam_Yeager said:

However Corinth already has a monastery. As I said earlier I don't think it is in our interests to adopt a state religion at present as it will annoy Cyrus even more.

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Yes, I think Confusianism, just to save the time on building a christian monestary.

I think the value in state religion is also the smiley. Once we spam confusianism to some cities, if we can make peace with Cyrus, we should switch religion for the smileys. It will make Cyrus angry (hence waiting until we have peace), but it won't be long until we are thumping him anyhow.

AgedOne said:

How do you think the game is going? If you were playing this in a game of your own, then how would you see it panning out from now on?

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I think we are doing pretty well. In hindsight, we might have waited until we had CoL to go after Alex.

If I were playing my own game, I'd be thinking about spamming Kheshiks and trying to finish this quickly by running a deficit economy. However, we might be a little too weak for this (it will take too long to build units and move them to lush island). Hence, a safer path would be to grab a few Togu cities so we can get some production sites on lush island and then take a breath while we tech to maces. With maces, we conquer the world.

PS. In hindsight, I wish we kept the togu 2-gold city. It would be a shame if Cyrus grabs the spot. If Togu resettles, then we are OK (we'll keep it next time )

The-Hawk said:

Sam_Yeager said:

I think we need to get courthouses in Athens, Corinth & Old Sarai soonest. Currently they're costing us 23 . To that end I think Old Sarai should work the mine and Athens should work the copper mine instead of the horses.

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yessir

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Not often that I get that sort of respect.

The-Hawk said:

I agree... peace with as many AI's as possible, even if we give up a tech. We are much better off fighting individual AI's at the time we choose.

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So what are we going to do about Sally? Do we replace Basra to block Sally? I note that he doesn't know any of the other AI yet which probably means his research is lagging slightly.

The-Hawk said:

I don't think we need a GS farm, in fact I see no value in a GS at all. I think the next GS tech is Philo, I don't see any need for Philo. We should be beelining to one more military advancement (maces or knights) then ending this game. Also, I agree with Sam, it might be hard to keep Corinth's food connected.

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I don't see the point of a GP farm as just producing GS's for lightbulbing. It's more a case of running GS specialists to improve research (3 per turn) and settling the GS's we get for further .

AgedOne said:

@Geezers

Just trying to pick all of our brains.

How do you think the game is going?

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I think we're starting to fall behind the curve a bit. From the progress charts it looks like we're about fourth in score and culture and third in power. A lot of this is due to the lack of to fund research and more military.

The next question is what to do about this. We already have one dye connected which helped raise the pop cap. I think we should connect the bananas by Karakorum before connecting the rest of the dyes for another . A higher pop cap should let us work more cottages.

In conjunction with that we have three main enemies to worry about:

• Sally - More of a nuisance than a threat at present but it does mean we have to tie up military at home.
• Qin - With his current tactics and choice of military he's also a nuisance although somewhat more than Sally. He's also second in power so he may well start sending bigger and stronger stacks. Again it means that we need to tie up military to defend against him.
• Toku - He's just below us in power although that's somewhat misleading as the power graph attaches a lot of weight to walls of which he has a few. Because of Sally and Qin we don't have too much spare military to send against Toku. Maybe three keshiks, an axe and a couple of cats.

Because we can't afford additional cities until we get some CHs built it looks like we need to raze in the short term. I would leave Toku's cities in the north for the time being until we're ready to keep them as we don't want Cyrus getting any more territory. That leaves Kagoshima as the next target. Perhaps after that we could see how the pillaging economy works.

As for the other AI we're at peace with Izzy but still at war with Cyrus & Asoka. Not really much we can do about Cyrus & Asoka at present. Thankfully it looks like Cyrus is currently happy to ignore us. How long this will last is another matter.

EDIT: I agree on heading for MC next. It's nice to see that it's already a quarter researched for us.

EDIT 2: Kyoto looks like a nice spot for a future capital.