SGOTM 15 - Xteam

Sorry CP, i just realised i misread your suggestion to pillage in Memphis and pillaged two cottages near tokyo instead.

Thanks for your and htadus' feedback on the military situation. I'm torn right now and would probably flip a coin if it wasn't an SGotM.

Regarding selling machinery, i hoped to get a hold of some money if someone is getting a bit of failgold from a constructed wonder. I really don't like giving away machinery for just a few gold to everybody and speed up the time our enemies get maces but i agree that it's probably necessary.
Agree on settling the GG and dehli seems to be the best place.

Could play a set in the next 24h, after that somebody else should pick it up to keep us on pace.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting.

Did a beach haka, to the RNG Gods, for you this morning.

We just captured Thebes with significant losses (we lost all cats in the stack, but only a couple of units ) and need a peace treaty.




What do we want from Hatshe?

She has Aesth, Compass, Currency, Med, 150g and Satsuma to offer and would give us Aesth, Currency, Med, 90g and Satsuma for peace.

I'd really want to get currency, all the gold and compass, Aesth is nice to get but not essential.
Med is still bad and i don't want satsuma if we can get a nice tech like compass instead.

If everybody is fine with that i would make a deal, then finish my set, get you up-to-date on what happened and upload to central.

Lets do 10 turn of recovery and press the issue again with Trebs and 3 movement units.

We do want Aesthetic since it is on the way to Lit = HE.

Hard to give advice without a save to look at.

Temporary Save:

OK having looked at the save, i say we take heliopolis before any peace deal. Hats is hurting it seem. So lets take the SoZ city. The CG3 archer and the axe are the only difficult defenders in there. I do not mind scrificing a sword or 3 for that city.

Would love to have Heliopolis. You do realize it is on a hill? With 2 CG2 Archers and a Shock Axe? The city has 9 pop and she is in Slavery? Think we'll lose more than a few Swords...

edit - agree that Hatse is hurtin'

edit2 - also agree that it would be nice to get Currency, Compass and Aesthetics, if she'll give us all three? Do not particularly want Satsuma, do we?

Thanks for the save.

Undecided said:

We just captured Thebes with significant losses (we lost all cats in the stack, but only a couple of units ) and need a peace treaty. Concur, and best this turn, or the HAs in Helio could retake Thebes and (I think) instantly ramp up the culture, making recapture potentially costly, even uncertain. Good intel from spy makes it clear that Helio isn't going to fall without seige weapons.

Spoiler :

What do we want from Hatshe?

She has Aesth, Compass, Currency, Med, 150g and Satsuma to offer and would give us Aesth, Currency, Med, 90g and Satsuma for peace.

I'd really want to get currency, all the gold and compass, Aesth is nice to get but not essential. Concur. We certainly want Aesth because it leads to Lit and we have the marble to take advantage of it (may even want to chop for gold), but Compass is worth about 150 more gold, can be traded to Eliz for lots of gold right now, and will eventually allow us to utilize our new GS for Optics (and finally some understanding of the map). Of course, first try to get them both.

Med is still bad and i don't want satsuma if we can get a nice tech like compass instead. Yes, even if we can't get something else. Don't we want Egypt to end up with Satsuma?

If everybody is fine with that i would make a deal, then finish my set, get you up-to-date on what happened and upload to central.

Click to expand...

Fine here.

Some topics for discussion:

Not sure we want to stay in OR.

Nearest Bab city (forgot the name) has ten pop and probably would yield a great deal of gold upon capture. We have units nearby that are just costing maintenance. Perhaps we should reinforce them (thinking mainly swords with at least one pike) and attack Bab several turns from now. The Bab city just visible to the NW looks valuable too, a possible GP farm. Might make sense to plan to try to take that as well and then negotiate for peace.

Depending on how our economy looks after getting Currency and possible gold from Compass trade, might want to take a GA soon.

We need a plan to get multiple seige weapons on the eastern front quickly.

Forests south of Bombay and near Satsuma need to be chopped while they are still in our culture.

Fine here as well.

Would love Heliopolis, but I think the cost would be too high (possibly losing Thebes) and we need currency desperately and Aesthetics would be also great. Don't need any more cities from here for peace right now - Satsuma is not worth its maintenance right now. If you can get compass that would be good, but not before currency and aesthetics. Of course as much gold as possible.

Cactus Pete said:

..possible gold from Compass trade

Click to expand...

Doesn't: "No Tech Brokering" prevent this?

zamint3 said:

Doesn't: "No Tech Brokering" prevent this?

Click to expand...

Correct. We couldn't trade compass away if we didn't study it ourselves...

But it would still be nice to get hold of compass!

We made peace with Hatshe for Currency, Aesth, Compass and 150 gold. Apparently she values satsuma very high
Our financial situation looks way better now.

I clicked end turn after that so that we don't have two saves on the same turn and ended my set. New save is uploaded at central.

Summary:

Military:

Decided to attack the Cat-stack in the forest. Wanted to keep the stack healthy to be able to push forward as fast as possible and not endanger the garrison in memphis as we had no knowledge on the north and don't want to risk a surprise attack. Also didn't want to risk our only spear by attacking the WE over a river. Moved most of the garrison out of Pi-R NE to look for cities and pillage targets. WE and CB+WC near memphis change direction next turn and head towards Pi-R on open terrain and get killed on the following turns. The units out of Pi-R encounter a small stack of hatshe (2 units iirc) and kill them then moving towards the iron-mine to pillage. Mainstack moves on the pigs-tile and bombards the next two turns until the reinforcements join them on the same tile. Hatshe is reinforcing the city like crazy, whipping every turn and manages to get a small stack inside the city without me being able to stop them.
The 2-turn bombardment only takes the cities cultural defenses down to 60% and we are one turn before our money runs out so i see no reason to not attack the city. We lose all cats but manage to capture the city with two units left to move. It comes with an academy, granary, market and 2 settled GGs.

Empire:

Sold machinery to two AIs for ~150g. Got +4 diplo modifier, bringing us to cautios with two enemies. Made the switch to OR and whipped/chopped 3 missionaries in the cities that got no barracks to get rid of the increasing war weariness. Spread it without problems to Tokyo, Memphis and took one with the army to Thebes. The last one currently built in tokyo could be used for Kago or Satsuma or we keep him for Helio. Should probably switch out of OR again it's costing 8gpt right now. Built mostly trebs in the remaining cities.

Hammu, who is becoming a powerhouse (just researched CS and has GLH and GLib in babyon) declared on Toku and Eliza is back in war-mode.

Research is set on CoL to get courthouses asap.
Got our Scientist in Vija.

Pictures:



Overview:



I'll be out of town until Monday.

Put the turnlog in a file, otherwise it would occupy 2,5 posts.

Hopefully it's accessible without any problems.

That Capac/Mansa partnership will make any victory difficult. Can anyone imagine letting them live another few centuries then trying to invade...?

Can we re-open the victory type discussion again? What are our options from here?

It does not matter how powerful the duo become as long as they stay at 20% of the land area which they have been pretty much since we met them.

Too bad about the loss of cats, but capture of that city was parmount so it was truly a gain. Good job.

Nice work Undecided!

Got some pointy stick techs and acquired some nice real estate.

Roster:
Mad Professor - UP
The-Hawk - On Deck
Htadus
Cactus Pete
zamint3
leif
Undecided -

Got to go have a look at the save.

@Hawk - if you are still on the road and unable to plan time to play, please let me know and I'll swap you.

leif erikson said:

Roster:
Mad Professor - UP

Click to expand...

Noted.

I'm a bit tied up for the next 24 hours or so. Hopefully then I'll have an a hour two to gaze closely at the save and begin to think about where next. Then in about 48 hours I should be able to put in some more serious time. Hopefully that's not a problem? There are perhaps a couple of discussions we might have...

Just been looking at graphs. There's a yellow power graph that looks nearly fatal there... I wonder if they are the ones that asked about the consequences of converting away from hinduism...?

Good catch on the no trading of traded-for techs, Z . . . especially for a ski bum.

Nice turn set, Undecided.

This is a challenging game.