SGOTM 04 - Geezers

I would say wait a little more. We are the most advanced team anyway. There is no need to rush through it. :)

Tech : After maths I would go for alpha next.

Attached is my suggestion for the iron city. I think we need a fourth city as Nidaros is out of business for a while and we have to build up our military. I would not trust Khan. When he is starting to build up his military we have to have some forces to either keep him from attacking or if he attacks to have sufficient troops to counter him.

Regarding the Pyramids I would say yes to chopping when maths comes in and as soon as we can rush it, do so.
 
Looks like a good spot to me. Sheep, Iron, and Coast, plus classic fat cross placement. Other option is west to get fresh water and/or clams.

Glad to be part of the most enthusiastic and advanced team in the game!
 
OK, I took a look at the save. Stepping back from our tactical situation, I am not feeling good about our strategic position. :(

It seems to me that our master strategy should be to become a science powerhouse. Given the game victory condition, we need to be in a position where we can control the AI’s, e.g. help them or smack them down as appropriate. This will require a tech lead.

Somewhere along the way, I suspect Kahn will need to go. He is too much of a nutcase to leave on our border. Besides, from what we’ve explored, he is sitting on much better land than us. Lots of floodplains for cottages, gold, gems. I’m afraid he is going to run away from us (he already has four more cities than us). In fact, I’m afraid he already has. He has several cottages underway, might be ahead of us on techs.

So, IMHO, the main strategic question is do we race for science right away, or do a detour and whack Kahn first. It looks to me like we have been indecisive on this topic. As a result, we are not setting ourselves up to do either. If we were trying to get a tech advantage, we’d have cottages started, would have beelined to writing, and would have built libraries. If we were looking to whack Kahn early, we’d be building axemen everywhere, probably would have skipped Pyramids altogether.

My guess is the window of opportunity to axe or sword rush Kahn is gone. With his advantage in cities, I don’t think we can bull him over with numbers, for every axe we build, he will make two. We need to look ahead on the tech path for another place to get an advantage via a superior unit (berserkers or knights) before we go after him. Bad news is at our current tech pace, they are a long way away, he might get there first.

My advice:

  • Need to get our science/commerce machine in order. Get cottages going, research alpha after math, followed by Lit.
  • A possible alternative… since we are behind on cottaging, and have lots of food, we might head for CoL and use an SE for a while… take advantage of our pyramids. In the long run, I’d prefer a CE, but we may need to go SE to get the tech jump we need to take on Kahn.
  • If we aren’t going to rush him now, we should make nice with Kahn asap. Start with open borders (this will allow us to get our exploration going again, also assess his military). If we have any resources we can trade to him, do so (maybe our sole pig, we are OK on health). If he adopts a religion, we try to adopt the same one. Last thing we need is him deciding to rush us.
  • I would consider placing the next city 1 N of the iron. Brings in the corn, but more important, allows cottages vs. wasted ocean tiles.
  • I think we might get one more city in, maybe two, before Kahn boxes us. The land to the south has so much jungle, I'd be inclined to let Kahn have it and spend his resources chopping jungle. Maybe a city W,W, SW of the iron to claim the clams. I would be nervous about getting too close to Ghandi's cultural borders... he tends to build wonders and culture, probably will push our borders back. As a result, I think the peninsula with the warrior is lost.

Harbourboy, I agree with markh about holding off the next turnset. I think we need to make sure everyone is on board with a strategy for the next 100 turns or so. Feels to me like we are at a crossroads. Whether we decide to focus on war with Kahn or focus on research full speed ahead, we need to focus. ;)
 
Sorry about the double post. Hope I didn't sound too negative on the last post. I think we've done well tactically, I have no issues with the execution of the turnsets so far. :goodjob:

I believe the biggest challenge in a SG is to maintain strategic focus... its hard to get a team of people onto the same page. However, if each person's view of the mid and long term objectives are a little different, then the team thrashes and loses time.

Since I'm dipping in and out, I probably can't help with tactical decisions, but maybe I can help keep track of the big picture...
 
Khan says 'We have enough on our hands right now'. :eek: Whatever else we decide it looks like we need military soon.

EDIT: IIRC this means Khan has already decided to attack. It's just a question of when. Am I correct in this view ot is there still time to change his mind?

EDIT 2: Perhaps he's decided to attack Ghandhi as he's annoyed with him?
 
I'm glad you posted. I think the biggest mistake I made playing my turnset was trying to go with majority rules on each little thing I did instead of looking for the consensus on the big picture to follow the overall plan. I did a lot of stuff that didn't make sense to me because that's what I thought the team wanted me to do. I wish now I'd waited another day to play if needed to hammer things out better.

I really want to keep this game moving - its been great that everyone has been so involved and we've had turns played pretty much every day. But if we don't slow down the next couple turns I'm afraid we are going nowhere no matter how fast we get there. :)

As far as Khan's UU - true he doesn't need iron he only needs horses which is why I pointed out that he has them. Jungle won't slow his UU down either - they get full movement on any terrain so we NEED to keep him happy a little longer or he will pillage everything we have before we can blink. When I mentioned him in regards to iron basically I just didn't want him to have it and us not to since that would make it very difficult to get him out of our way if we needed to. If we have to wait for our UU then I don't think we have any hope of helping Gandhi do anything - we could be hopelessly backward by then and it would be just a game of survival and hoping we get lucky and Gandhi decides to fly on his own.

My main reason for leaving the workboat down there (which I mentioned) is that I assumed we'd get open borders with Khan as soon as writing came in so that we could explore further. Sam was against open borders but Htadus agreed that whatever open borders we needed to explore we should get. I don't remember if anyone else said anything about that issue. I propose we get open borders right away and also second The-Hawk's suggestion that we try to trade something with Khan to keep him happy with us short term while we get ready to handle him.

Edit: Cross posted with Sam. As far as I know it means we can't change his mind and he's already attacking - we don't know for sure it is us but I think given our power compared to him it most likely is. We need to start building units fast. I rarely build many but maybe in this case some spears would be helpful to protect some places we can't have pillaged?
 
Khan says 'We have enough on our hands right now'. :eek: Whatever else we decide it looks like we need military soon.


Yep, I had noticed that as well, forgot to mention it. That does sound a bit ominous...:shifty: And he has horsies, gotta think he is building Keshiks.

Since the capital is such a strong production center, we might want to spam out some spears when the pyramids complete.

All the more reason for OB with Kahn, send our chariot down to count his military.

/EDIT: LOL, lots of cross posting!
 
City 4 Sites:

Mark's previous post in blue. Thrallia's dotmap spot in light green. Pink spot there if we want less ocean - not a coast city though.



Can we send capital warrior north just to reveal the rest of blue dot fat cross or is that too risky right now? He could get there in three turns then come back.
 
The problem I saw with axe rushing Khan was the distance. He is far away and given the point where we got copper connected he already had his horses connected. For sure he would have had chariots when we approached with our axes and in warlords chariots are 100% against axes. With the three cities we had we would have never had a chance to build enough units to tackle him. That is the reason I want a fourth city asap and then build up our military. After math maybe construction might be another option for cats. I think Khan is still in settling mode and his military will not be that strong. We still have a good chance to get him under control. Especially the barb city he took hurts his economy.
 
Hmm, speaking to Khan I get the cheery message ' Now I have Keshiks, Ho Ho Ho!' .

Our only barracks is in El Do and time to build spears is 8 turns after MMing for hammers. Nidaros is 4 turns if we interrupt the 'mids. Do we give up on the 'mids and start pumping out the military? I believe the AI tends to decide to attack a number of turns in advance so we may well have some time before Khan attacks. This is assuming we're the target of course.

More military will increase maintenance and hence decrease research. The-Hawk has already pointed out that we're lagging both on tech and science so I don't want to hurt that more than necessary.

@mark - I agree that rushing Khan is not really an option at present. It's probably more a question of what we do for defence at the moment.
 
City 4 Sites:

Mark's previous post in blue. Thrallia's dotmap spot in light green. Pink spot there if we want less ocean - not a coast city though.

Fourth option that The-Hawk suggested was 1N of the iron to maximise grassland for cottages. Your pink spot is a grassland hill and may well be better.

Can we send capital warrior north just to reveal the rest of blue dot fat cross or is that too risky right now? He could get there in three turns then come back.

Not quite sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that you want to check that there are no barbs there?
 
If we go with Mark's blue site, we have two coastal tiles still fogged. If we sent the warrior to the spot SE of blue dot it should tell us if there are any resources there. IF there are resources in the water I'd like blue dot. Otherwise I like pink or green better.

Ack on missing The-Hawk's site! Thanks for pointing it out! I tried to update with the extra spot but it makes the whole thing pretty much unreadable. Everyone please keep in mind that site and if we can eliminate one or two of the four I'll make a new map showing what's still under consideration. :)

Edit: Uploading it anyway because I like his site so much better and I don't have time to totally remake it atm.

Looking at it, The-Hawk's site is better then pink in that pink doesn't really get rid of the coastal tiles and yet also isn't a coast city. The only advantage of pink dot is the hill but it probably isn't a good enough advantage to give up four plains tiles for four coastal in a city we can't build a lighthouse.

 
1N of the copper is fine with me if we do not intend to build another city North. I think it does not really matter as we should let Gandhi take all our cities on this continent while we conquer another AI.
 
If we go with Mark's blue site, we have two coastal tiles still fogged. If we sent the warrior to the spot SE of blue dot it should tell us if there are any resources there. IF there are resources in the water I'd like blue dot. Otherwise I like pink or green better.

Ah, understood. I should have realised that's what you meant. I'm fine with either the pink or yellow dot.

EDIT: After looking at yellow dot further I vote for that. Those trees are very tempting. :)
 
I think that Khan has been very deliberately placed to represent a fundamental strategic question for teams in this game. The answer to the Khan Question may well be the most important decision that separates team at this stage. I want to be sure we know what our answer is.

The fact is, he is already representing a major distraction to us, so I am in favour of eliminating him as soon as we can, even if that slows down Gandhi's tech progress a little bit. The main problem is that if we build a big army but then time our attack slightly wrong, we could implode big time and never recover.

I agree with Hawk that we need an overall medium term strategy then we can all base our turn by turn decisions on. For example: "Kill Khan" or "Be a Science Nerd".

Just to confirm, can I assume from the above discussions that we are still not ready for me to play my 20 turns? I would be ready to play in 11 hours time, but I can make that 35 hours time if we need longer to agree on where to from here.
 
I think that Khan has been very deliberately placed to represent a fundamental strategic question for teams in this game. The answer to the Khan Question may well be the most important decision that separates team at this stage. I want to be sure we know what our answer is.

The fact is, he is already representing a major distraction to us, so I am in favour of eliminating him as soon as we can, even if that slows down Gandhi's tech progress a little bit. The main problem is that if we build a big army but then time our attack slightly wrong, we could implode big time and never recover.

I agree with Hawk that we need an overall medium term strategy then we can all base our turn by turn decisions on. For example: "Kill Khan" or "Be a Science Nerd".

Just to confirm, can I assume from the above discussions that we are still not ready for me to play my 20 turns? I would be ready to play in 11 hours time, but I can make that 35 hours time if we need longer to agree on where to from here.

Please don't play just yet. First thing we need to do is getting some intel. The way I see it, we need the OB with him. What does it matter if he is going to attack us or not? We can make him a null factor with the right plan.

First we need to know what he is made of. Can we all agree to get an OB with him? If we do agree, then I would like you (Harbourboy) to make OB save file and post it in the threads, not up load to submittal page. Then we can make an intelligent decision. Since we already have a direct route via sea, would this not allow us to see his cap via the boat, the most defended place. Actually you might have to play a couple of turns. In the interim we can change the settler and Lib to spears.

First lets see about the OB decision.
 
I could certainly attempt the Open Borders fact finding mission, if others agree. I could do that in 10 hours time and post just the results of a couple of moves with the workboat.

I would not be as keen on stopping the settler, as Mark must have had a pretty good reason to start it and the point has been made that our 3 cities are not competitive with Khan's 7. With the chopping that has already been started, the settler will be ready in no time anyway.

I suggest:
- continuing the settler, but agreeing on exactly where to settle him
- going for open borders and seeing what the work boat finds
- posting an interim view of what the workboat finds and then getting more input from team
- probably turning on the wartime economy after that to firstly get into a position where we could safely fend off Khan, then getting into a position to take him out - exact tactics to be determined after recon.
 
sorry for taking so long to post, my internet at home is down for some reason...I'm at a friend's house right now, but wont' be able to post again until Monday.

We do need a 4th city, so as long as it is not Nidaros building the settler, I'm good with it. As far as where to place it, I like my spot most out of the coastal places, and the yellow one most out of the noncoastal ones...I think either one will be a good city, although the coastal one will be better early on, thanks to a number of 3 commerce tiles to start out with.

As for Khan...I'm not sure his comment about having enough on his hands means anything right now. the AI doesn't generally declare war on anyone this early, Aggressive AI isn't turned on, and that may be the default message AIs give. In a recent game, I had three different AI say all game that they ahd enough on their hands, yet never declared war on anyone.

I think that having our cities building units as we build the Pyramids will provide plenty of defense. I also don't think we need to worry about attacking Khan until we get Berserkers...while the AI on Warlords is now better and faster at teching and managing their economy and founding cities, they are actually worse at warring because they no longer have spare cash for upgrading units, nor do they build as many as they used to.
 
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