SGOTM 14 - Kakumeika

Impressive closing Kakumeika!

I am surprised you managed to co-ordinate everything so well. I didn't think you were going to kill the wiz in time, but you did.

Incredible display of diplo mechanics!

Thank you neilmeister for your extremely positive comments on our Team's performance in SGOTM-14.

I just want to add that it was a total team effort. Every member contributed something critical to the success of our game. Is was the first time this team ever worked together and some of our team member's first ever SGTOM. We've done quite well considering that the team was formed just after the SGTOM-14 announcement.

Thank you fellow Kakumeika (革命家) team members:

mabraham
Tachywaxon
Walter_Wolf
Kaitzilla
frogdude
bcool
shulec

It was a great experience playing SGOTM-14 with you all!

Kakumeika will be even harder to beat in SGTOM-15. That's a promise.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
OSS took a big hit in their war campaign.

I hit <Enter> and two catastrophes befell us, one after the other.

1. Genghis the Crumb DoWed. Our gpt went from +19gpt to -57gpt. :mad:

2. Ragnar won the Apostolic elections. :mad:

So we need to handle both asap. I'll try to figure out exactly what war success we need against Liz to accelerate her willingness to talk.

Bbp, maybe you could check the AP info on how soon a vote will come up. What we need to do is cease fire the turn before the vote, then re-declare the turn of the vote (or something like that). Rinse and repeat. Because the AP is Buddhist and we have 6 cities, including Washingtion, with buddhism, so we can NOT afford the -5:mad: for refusing to abide by a resolution.

The latter shouldn't be too hard to manage, but the former will hurt their already-rocky economy quite hard. (They're conquering East, and now that North has DOWed them they have no trade routes to West and South...)
 
Hehe, a lot of people are watching One Short Straw right now these next 7 days. We will just have to see how it goes!



Performing such a large war across vast distances while flirting with strikes is quite dangerous in my experience. If you lose control of it while down -100gpt or -200gpt, some of the units disbanded will be important ones and you reach a point where you can't conquer or pillage anymore.

Plastic Ducks managed it somehow, which takes immense skill in my estimation. Lincoln isn't exactly a powerhouse.



I will continue looking through the threads of the fast winning warmongers to see if I can find anything that will help us with war in the future. They seem to have very deep knowledge of game mechanics.
 
I will continue looking through the threads of the fast winning warmongers to see if I can find anything that will help us with war in the future. They seem to have very deep knowledge of game mechanics.

Yeah, I've been training myself on the general approach of PD on some hub maps against single AIs. While things are not comparable (land, AI pairs) I've been getting better fast if I limit my thinking to fast conquest and not permit "well, this wonder will be awesome in a long game" to affect my thinking.
 
Yeah, I've been training myself on the general approach of PD on some hub maps against single AIs. While things are not comparable (land, AI pairs) I've been getting better fast if I limit my thinking to fast conquest and not permit "well, this wonder will be awesome in a long game" to affect my thinking.

Does it mean next SGTOM, we go almost 100% chance for war if the conditions permit?
Yes, war is often about take on one side and lose the other. Perfect war only happens on lowest levels or ultra ideal spots. The earlier the war, the riskier of bigger losses.
 
Does it mean next SGTOM, we go almost 100% chance for war if the conditions permit?
Yes, war is often about take on one side and lose the other. Perfect war only happens on lowest levels or ultra ideal spots. The earlier the war, the riskier of bigger losses.


Everyone seemed to go war but us :lol:


We did really well against Asoka, but I'm not sure how well we could do in total war. Are you guys comfortable running a war at -100gpt when most of our cities are already building wealth? Starting a war way earlier than you are comfortable with? That is the kind of razor's edge needed to win the fastest military conquest.

Also, we put up way more posts than anyone else while only managing 10 cities. If we conquer the world in a huge campaign next SGOTM, the server might break. :p
 
We did really well against Asoka, but I'm not sure how well we could do in total war.

Sure. That was a sweet fake Asoka bashing, but at this stage, to my definition, it is a late war. As you said experience is needed to know what is the exact moment to trigger the war and those deity players have it extensively.
As an example of what I've read, Duckweed taking a city with more sieges than units mean by experience to him no unit will attack the attackers..(us). So many AI behaviours that are difficult to discern, but gamebreaking. My war knowledge is quite limited to early (BCs) times and it is diminishing through time. I don't ever recall playing a modern war since ages. :eek:

If we conquer the world in a huge campaign next SGOTM, the server might break. :p

I think we won't be there to assist this as our heads would implode way before becoming black holes of information...:D Oh wait information don't have mass...derp!
 
Ouch, Pheonix Rising lost their Isengarde to barbs on T90 in their game. It is post #995 in their thread.

They had quite the romp with Curaissers in their game later on :). 211 built and about 1/3rd of them died.
 
Yeah, I've been training myself on the general approach of PD on some hub maps against single AIs. While things are not comparable (land, AI pairs) I've been getting better fast if I limit my thinking to fast conquest and not permit "well, this wonder will be awesome in a long game" to affect my thinking.

Please read the Plastic Ducks previous SGOTM threads as well as their SGOTM-14 thread.

In SGOTM-14 PD also rushed early and were successful. However, allowing units to go on strike while pursuing a Conquest Victory and not razing more cities is unthinkable. They claim to have lost 15t due their economy crashing and units going on strike. It indicates a lack of economic planning. On the other hand, for Domination Victory, units will occasional go on strike, because one wants to keep as many captured cities to reach Domination as soon as possible. The economy can be crashing and units may be striking when a an early Domination Victory is achieved, but that is ok at the moment of victory or shortly before such that it doesn't delay the win.

Next time, try not to be so dismissive when an experienced players suggest that the Grand Strategy include an early rush. SGOTM-14 was a total early rush game that all other teams seemed to recognize. We probably would have recognized it as well were it not for the very early loss of Toto. The Horse and Copper site near the hub and the Ivory where all clues that an early rush was viable. The clincher was Iron on the plot to settle the initial settler. Early Iron Working would have rewarded a team with Swordsman when the AI where still fielding Archers and not even yet looking for Copper (researching Bronze Working).

Next time, more attention needs to put into the Grand Strategy, before we get carried away with the ultimate micromanagement. Micromanagement is simply Tactics and Logistics. Strategy without Tactics results in a Slow, but Eventual Victory, but Tactics without Strategy is the noise that comes with Defeat. Of course I'm not dismissing micromanagement which is critical when applied to the correct Strategy and more importantly Grand Strategy. I'm just saying that the Grand Strategy and the Strategies used are far more important.

We will do much better in the next SGOTM.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
They claim to have lost 15t due their economy crashing and units going on strike.

No, we don't.
See here :
Spoiler :
Moreover, we also underestimated the economical situation, we had spent some turns on preventing us from bankruptcy!:lol:
then here :
Spoiler :
On topic,
@Gumbolt, to be precise, Duckweed didn't blame *all* the 15 turns "delay" on our finish date on the crashing economy, he just pointed out that :
1/ Our war lasted for 15 more turns than it could have
2/ We spent "some turns" (his quote, #1585) solving the economy.

I agree with him.

In fact, the inexperience mistakes in troop management of Deity and myself, as well as the bad RNG luck on kossin and Snaaty, probably had more impact on our "late" :)mischief:) finish date.

If I had to guess a number, I'd say that solving the economy cost us ~5 turns max, definitely not 15.
What one has to consider is that not crushing the economy would mean either :
- not conquering cities as fast as we did = slower war pace = more resistance from the AIs,
- razing more of those cities = less troops for next war.
- less unit maintenance = harder to maintain 2-3 front and actually take the cities
and finally there:
Spoiler :
The battles outside Tiflis. I did not notice the existence of Tiflis and misjudged that the moglolian stack was heading for the canal city OS, so I suggested kossin to march our stack toward Besh. Unfortunately the moglolian stack attack our stack and caused heavy casualty. Although we could suffer less loss if the RNG is not that unfavorable, this loss could be avoided if I made the right judgment.
for examples of other factors that were involved on the 15 turns delay in our war and at least as important as the economic adjustments.
My emphasis in all 3 of them.

Besides, we only ever lost 1 unit to strike, and that was not because the economic situation had overwhelmed us, it was deliberate from our part because we thought we would still have a free turn. If we had known better, we wouldn't have let the economy crash this one time (all it took was building wealth in some more cities).


However, allowing units to go on strike while pursuing a Conquest Victory and not razing more cities is unthinkable
I also have to disagree on this.

The fact that the economic situation almost went out of hand is not a problem of Grand strategy, it is to be blamed on the players.

The fact that the strategy seemed more efficient in SGOTM 12 and 13 is mainly dued to the fact that Duckweed and kossin played most of the war in those, while here Deity and myself cost a lot of turns dued to our inexperience of such large scale war.

Actually, almost all cities that we kept were able to whip a CH the turn they went out of revolt, then contribute 3-5 units close to the fronts. This last point is crucial, because moving troops all the way from homeland or even Indian or English land took forever and required a lot of stationary galleons, so being able to whip half of our troops from former enemy cities was mandatory.

Consider for instance that in our game, the bottleneck for victory was killing OZ, not conquering cities. I sent 26 units to OZ (kinda overkill, I only needed 13 in the end). 20 of those units were whipped from Mali and Aztec cities..... Our experienced units that came from further away were stuck in Indian and Aztec land. Hadn't we kept most of these cities, I would have been unable to kill OZ in time.
 
It sure took me a while but I crawled through your thread.

Well played Diplo game on a map we pretty much thought would be insane to get this victory condition!

Manipulating the AP for diplo bonuses via holy war might be touchy in some peoples' book but it's just using the game's mechanics imo. Next, people will complain about gifting cities :lol:
 
It sure took me a while but I crawled through your thread.

Well played Diplo game on a map we pretty much thought would be insane to get this victory condition!

Manipulating the AP for diplo bonuses via holy war might be touchy in some peoples' book but it's just using the game's mechanics imo. Next, people will complain about gifting cities :lol:

Yeah, and there's nothing exploitative about galleon chaining... :lol:
 
It sure took me a while but I crawled through your thread.

Well played Diplo game on a map we pretty much thought would be insane to get this victory condition!

Thanks.

You did have the advantage of a Toto that survived two more risky combats than ours who choked in our "back yard". It took a long time before we realized we were on a (modified) wheel map and much longer than it should have to find the Horse and Copper site near the hub of our spoke.

I should have read your entire game thread as well, before criticizing as I did above briefly in a post on different topic. Thanks Bebekija for correcting me on where the 15 turns lost came from (only 5 turns from economic collapse and units striking).

Manipulating the AP for diplo bonuses via holy war might be touchy in some peoples' book but it's just using the game's mechanics imo. Next, people will complain about gifting cities :lol:

Does The Apostolic Palace resolution against heathens actually produce larger "mutual military struggle bonuses" than a normal war where the AI Civs are simply bribed to attack a universally hated AI or AI Team? How is being compelled to join a war by a TAP resolution really any different from bribing AIs to join the war? We could have simply bribed one member of the two teams we wanted to join the war. The Holy War was a way to kill two birds with one stone, but it did require two TAP religion missionaries to spread the TAP religion to "our" future AI allies, so it wasn't a totally free lunch either.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Does The Apostolic Palace resolution against heathens actually produce larger "mutual military struggle bonuses" than a normal war where the AI Civs are simply bribed to attack a universally hated AI or AI Team? How is being compelled to join a war by a TAP resolution really any different from bribing AIs to join the war? We could have simply bribed one member of the two teams we wanted to join the war. The Holy War was a way to kill two birds with one stone, but it did require two TAP religion missionaries to spread the TAP religion to "our" future AI allies, so it wasn't a totally free lunch either.

Sometimes you get to force war between two teams that you wouldn't be able to with basic diplomacy and at basically no cost... since you can "control" who gets the votes by judicious missionary spreading and city gifting. (I have not checked if this was the case here)

Usually civvers seem to consider that bribing war should cost a significant investment of beakers(tech)/gold whereas the AP is a "freebie" every X turns.

I don't recall the mechanics controlling when AIs will Defy vs. vote No so I won't dive into the concept more.
 
I am amazed that anyone managed a diplo win at all.
With teams and random AI, you cannot handicap diplo any better IMO. So you would obviously need every trick in the diplo book to win.
 
I'm wondering if the Apostolic Palace wasn't a net loss for us in the end.
  • With West and North suing for peace unexpectedly (East didn't have techs to bribe them out) in the end we probably got "+1 mutual military struggle" across the board, when we had more than +8 on each ally AI anyway. We ended up gifting tech to get West back in the war. We still had to risk "-1 DOW our friend" to open the holy war vote, but got saved by East DOWing us.
  • Neither West or North sent anything like a stack, so the holy war didn't help us there.
  • If we'd known Ragnar's stack had to be targetting us, then we'd have had a simpler time managing the war.
  • We built four monasteries and a pile of missionaries in a vain attempt to convert the AIs, but only Liz (who hadn't founded a religion) was prepared to stay in Taoism, and she spread it to her own cities. We built zero temples having started about three of them. So our use of religious hammers was doubtful at best. We could have done the same things with one monastery and about four missionaries and sped up the other victory conditions a turn or two.
  • We should have had some temporary +2 diplo with Liz for voting for not returning our gift city to ourselves:)lol:), but we didn't take that option when it was available.
We did get some value from not allowing the AIs to build the AP and annoy our war - but we also gave up the option of flipping an AP build by West or North to Taoism just as it finished to give us a free ride (we could have had city vision on both of them to see where it was building).
 
Costs of TAP Resolutions:

Usually civvers seem to consider that bribing war should cost a significant investment of beakers(tech)/gold whereas the AP is a "freebie" every X turns.

Only the TAP Resident can decide which TAP resolutions (when appropriate to the game situation) can be put to a vote. You have to win an election to get there and only the following Civs are eligible:

1) The Civ that built The Apostolic Palace at a significant cost in Hammers (Quick: 266, Normal 400, Epic 600 & Marathon 1200)
2) Another Civ with the largest TAP religion population of those Civs that have the TAP religion as their state religion.

Either way is a significant cost for what will likely be a one time TAP vote. Hardly "free" by any definition. Building TAP is the only reasonably reliable way of gaining TAP Resident Election eligibility. The Hammer expense of TAP is equal to 4 settlers at each of the four speeds. Again, I say TAP resolutions aren't free, especially when the strategy calls for only one. This doesn't even get into the expense of TAP religion monasteries or using Organized Religion and TAP religion missionaries, etc. which abraham goes into some detail about in his previous post on why The Apostolic Palace was actually too expensive for the purpose it served us.

Rules and Exploits:

What does "Usually civvers seem" mean?

If a game mechanic is in the game and not officially banned by the GOTM, HoF or any other official organization's rules as appropriate, said mechanic is legal to use.

I don't allow any particular Civ player or informal group of Civ players to say that I can't use his/their "exploit" du Jour, especially not after the fact. Whether or not any particular game mechanic can be used is solely determined by the organization/individual that is officiating the game and only within the limits of their organization's own rules for said competitions.

Due to the impracticality of machine checking games for banned exploits (they can never do it), I prefer official rules that ban no "exploits". Just making clear my personal views on the subject of exploits. I do _not_ want to debate the issue with anyone; if you don't agree, then please let us simply agree to disagree on the issue of exploits.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Manipulating the AP for diplo bonuses via holy war might be touchy in some peoples' book but it's just using the game's mechanics imo. Next, people will complain about gifting cities :lol:

I am glad to hear that there are people that will likely be upset about the use of the AP. I never would have imagined that this would be something frowned upon. Frankly that sounds silly to me. Since you mention it, I did see on SGOTM participant that made comments about it. I can't help thinking it is a matter of sour grapes. I am sure that if we did not finish in earlier than their team, it wouldn't be a concern. To me, their sour grapes are as sweet as molasses.;)
 
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