SGOTM2 Germany - Staff Team

[mad-bax]

SGOTM2 Game Thread

Welcome to your game thread for SGOTM2-Germany

Here is the start position.


Each team has their own save file. Please download and play from the correct save. If you use the wrong save the server will not accept your submission. Also, please make sure that the software version is correct. PM me immediately if it is not.

You can download your save file >>HERE<<.

The Roster
ainwood
Karasu
Space
Zagnut

[ainwood]

OK - I'll play in the morning (One NZ team in the Super 12 final, now got to go and see if we can make it an all-kiwi affair by beating the Brumbies in Canberra )

In the interim: Any suggestions? Was going to settle on-the-spot, start a warrior to explore with, mine the bonus grassland to the Northwest and probably start research on pottery at maximum. Any complaints?

[a space oddity]

You could consider moving the worker on the mountain for a better look of the environment, maybe south or south-east is a better spot if the coast in the north turns out to be salty.

[zagnut]

I favor settling on the start position and not first sending the Worker to the mountain. When you found the Berlin it will reveal the surrounding area and the Worker will not waste a turn on the mountain. She could go straight to the bonus grassland next to the river and start working.

[ainwood]

Start game:

Turn 1: (4000 BC)
Compromise: Move worker to BG to check out terrain before founding Berlin. Find a wheat! Will get it on a culture expansion in current starting location. Decide to found on location. Berlin founding reveals game in area to east-south-east -> will also get that on culture expansion Start building warrior (5 turns) and researching will be Pottery in 14 turns (to get a granary).

Turn 2. (3950 BC)
Start mining BG.

Turn 3: (3900 BC)
<snooze>

Turn 3: (3850 BC)
<snooze>

Turn 4: (3800 BC)
<snooze>

Turn 5: (3750 BC)
Warrior completed. Pottery is in 9 turns, so consider starting a barracks as a pre-build, but decide on another warrior. Move warrior to mountain => water is a small lake. Presume it is fresh-water...

Turn 6: (3700 BC)
Warrior moves to mountain next to lake. Reveals a lot of plains to north west

Turn 7: (3650 BC)
Mining finished. Production moved to this BG from other BG. Warrior will be complete in 2, growth in 3 and culture expansion in 3. Start road. Warrior follows mountain range north => spies ivory on the plains!

Turn 8: (3600 BC).
Warrior north sees edge of rive on plains.

Turn 9: (3550 BC)
Warrior complete. Barracks can be built in 7, and pottery is due in seven. Will be some change when road is built and city grows. Decide to go for barracks as pre-build for granary. Northern warrior spies large lake / coast. Warrior from Berlin sent south-east (heading towards other mountains)

Turn 10: (3500 BC)
Berlin expands, revealing spices in the jungle. Road complete. Pottery now in 3, barracks in 4. Move worker to wheat. Northern warrior confirms that he can see the sea (although all that he can see is the bottom of the deep blue sea). Southern warrior is mountain-bound south.

Turn 11 (3450 BC)
Nothing much. More exploration but nothing of note found.

Turn 12 (3400 BC)
Pottery due next turn. Southern warrior reveals edge of jungle.

Turn 13 (3350 BC)
Discover pottery and change to the wheel. Change Berlin to granary (10 turns).

Turn 14 (3300 BC)
Northern warrior is cutting-back inland. Finds what in grassland. Southern warrior finds nice river valley.

Turn 15 (3250 BC)
Wheat irrigated. Have option of working game or wheat. Work it out, and decide that two turns on game then two on wheat will be best. Start roading wheat.

Turn 16 (3200 BC)
Southern warrior climbs mountain and find Catherine! She has one more tech than us (Ceremonial burial) but won't trade (we have nothing to offer )
Northern warrior finds another coast / large lake.

Turn 17 (3150 BC)
Between turns, spy english scout on mountains west of Berlin. Liz has alphabet, but not warrior code. Will give us all her gold (10) for warrior code. I decline.
Switch Berlin to work on wheat. Northern warrior confirms coast to be a lake. Southern warrior cuts east.

Turn 18 (3100 BC)
Road finished on wheat, cuts wheel research time to 17 turns. Worker moves to other BG to start mining. Berlin will expand next turn.

Turn 19 (3050 BC)
Berlin grows to size 3. Adjust luxuries to control happiness, although this pushes wheel out to 16 turns. Granary will be complete in two turns.

Turn 20 (3000 BC)
Not much!

Berlin: Granary complete next turn. Currently size-3, with 3 food and producing 3 excess food / turn. Producing 6 shields per turn, and will complete granary in one. SUggest next prioirty is a warrior for happiness control, then look to set up a settler factory?

England has a second city.

Edit: Save is Here

[a space oddity]

Great, max score sofar. Nice to see a settler factory is possible. Karasu: you're up here as well. Figures, it's the Karasu principle: when up in 1 game, you're up everywhere.

[Karasu]

I have got it ("got it" alone was less than 10 characters )

[ainwood]

Yes, but have you played it!

[Karasu]

Yes I have!
Ehm... sorry for holding it. Not too long, though

--- Here it is ---

The turnlog is fairly straightforward.

- I built a Worker, then a Settler while the warriors kept on exploring. I delayed the Settler to be ready on turn 10 to avoid Berlin to drop to pop 1: the Settler is now there with his movement left.



Our surroundings only look promising to the NW at the moment. Our most obvious pick for the second city is towards the Ivory.
I would also consider settling a city on the Spice along the river, to get a bit closer to Russia and secure a second luxury. Both locations are at RCP distance of 4.
Should we stick to this?

- The two workers completed mine+road on the BG and immediately went chopping the forest on the game tile: We are getting the 10 shields in 2 turns. I think they should be used to speed up a second settler; Berlin can then build a warrior or two -for MP and local exploration- while its pop grows back and the game is irrigated.

- At that point, I was assuming that Berlin would be our settler factory while the other core cities would mainly build Barracks/units and workers (I was also assuming that we don't want England and Russia on *our* continent :devil2: )
It was probably a bit early for me to start dotmapping, but...

- No trading chances appeared, nor did I make any new contacts.
I kept researching at 0 / -1 gpt adjusting the lux rate with Berlin's pop. The Wheel is due in 6 or 7 turns -btw, that was a very neat choice. Neither England nor Germany should have it, and we will most probably be able to reach parity.
At that point, what tech path should we follow? Maths and Republic or the Monarchy path?

Ops. I had another screenshot:

[ainwood]

Looks good!

Btw: We're averaging 17 views of this thread per post!

[Karasu]

Originally Posted by ainwood

Btw: We're averaging 17 views of this thread per post!

Well... I came back a few times to edit my post, but not seventeen I think...
Anyway, it must mean that our team is very popular Go staff!!!


EDIT: for the record

Ainwood
Karasu
Space - UP
Zagnut - on deck, hoping Space won't finish the SGOTM this round

[ainwood]

Well, I was thinking about this.

Karasu mentioned RCP at distance 4. I was thinking that around Berlin is fairly crappy land at the moment (jungle) => it won't really become that productive until the industrial age / middle age when we can really throw some workers at it. Therefore, I don't think we should set Berlin up as the center of our empire.

Looking to the North / North east, there is a lot of space, and we haven't run into any AIs yet. If we get up there really fast, we might be able to set that as the center. Berlin then becomes a city on the ring, not at the centre of it. We can still settle up by the ivory at distance 4 or five, but use the second city as the center, going for an FP there (or even a palace jump) when we near the OCN.

If people like this idea, then do we go for a ring at RCP 4, or at RCP 5???

[a space oddity]

Got it.

I'll setlle near the Ivory first, RCP of 4 sounds good to me, but it does depend a bit on our goal. Are we going for the UN capture option? In that case we'll see the modern age and RCP 4 is better than 3. But if we'll just run for domination or conquest 3 is probably better also because of the large amount of mountains in our core.

The victory condition aim will also help to choose between Monarchy or Republic. Monarchy is more usful when we expect much warring, although the mil. police needed in bigger cities is a pain.

[ainwood]

@Space: Is that to be near the ivory, but on the lake? (Save us an aquaduct later?) Given that its all plains, we should probably get that worker up there soon as well (and hook up the ivory).

I like the RCP 4 idea better.

[a space oddity]

Yeah, on the lake was the plan, I like cities that can grow without an aquaduct too.
The Ivory is a bit better than the jungle ridden Spices IMVHO.

Any specific reason why you'd rather have the ring at distance 4?

[ainwood]

I think 3 limits production later on. There appears to be a lot of space up north, so I don't see why we need an ICS-type close build, so four seems about right (unless you want to go to 5!)

[a space oddity]

I didn't spot your earlier post Ainwood. I had to leave my post for a while and you seem to have posted in that time. My post doesn't make much sense now. It's one of those days that I better not post at all..., but while I'm here, I agree the land up north does look better. The only downside to moving to distance 5 is that we'll have the second city later and the settlers streaming from Berlin will all have to travel bigger distances. I'd say let's do the RCP at 4, and let the second city be the center of the ring.
Karasu does have a point though about settling south too to block the Russians. They always tend to take a lot of land. But if we manage the Spice city I think all that jungle will be a natural barrier for the Russian settlers until they run out of room.
Maybe they will settle somewhere in the middle and we'll know where the rubber will pop-up.

What's people's opinion of tech routes?

[a space oddity]

pre-turn
Move the settler NW, NW, NW.

IT
Zzz

2510BC - turn 1
Move settler N, next turn it'll settle between the Ivory and the lake.
Move Adam SW, revealing what seems to be the westcoast of the landmass.
Move Bart SE on a mountain, revealing no goodies.
Diplo check reveals no news, citizens are happy no growth to be expect next turn, so... press enter.

IT
Zzz

2470BC - turn 2
The chop is done. We can get a new settler in 3, but Berlin will drop to size 1. I MM to let Berlin work the newly created 3f tile.
The workers start irrigating.
Found Leipzig, it starts a warrior. We can now shave off a turn on research of the Wheel, it'll be ready in 3.
Adam moves east, Bart SE.

IT
A barb passes by. We have no defenders, hmm, interesting, it will no doubt head for our workers. It'll be there in eight turns, our warrior is ready in 9. They'll have to do a little dance.

2430BC - turn 3
Berlin grows, and needs 10% lux. The Whel still in 2 and we're making a profit +2gpt.
Adam E, Bart S, he too finds sea coast.

IT
The Barb Warrior fortifies.

2390BC - turn 4
The Workers are ready and we've reach the magic number, settler in 1, growth in 1.
Adam SE, Bart E.
One worker starts a road, the other moves SW.
England now has Masonry too.

IT
The barb warrior moves off.
The Wheel completes, start IW. (Will check later if we can get Alphabet and start Writing instead.
Berlin settler -> Warrior

2350BC - turn 5
Move settler south, worker on the same tile to start the road later.
There's a Horse in the wonderful northern lands, not a hard choice now.
Adam SE, Bart sees a Horse too, moves NE.
Sell The Wheel to England for Alphabet, CB and 31g (all the money they have).
Sell The Wheel to Russia for Masonry and 1g.
What to research next? I finally choose Math (at min). We now have 40g in the kitty and making 6gpt.

question
The settler moving to the Spices should settle on a second ring position from Leipzig, but neither 7 or 8 will be on the river. How strict are we going to make the rings?

[ainwood]

Don't see any reason why we can't make the first cities at distance RCP4, then the next ring at 9.

[a space oddity]

Since there were no other remarks I played the rest of the turns:

The save

2310BC - turn 6/
Adam S, Bart N
Settler S

IT
Zzz

2270BC - turn 7
Settler S
Adam S, Bart N
Berlin grows to size 3, lux slider to 10%

IT
Berlin Warrior -> Warrior

2230BC - turn 8
Hamburg founded on the Spice, starts Warrior.
Adam S, Bart N, Colin NW, NW, NW
No news on the diplo front, the English have another city.

IT
Zzz

2190BC - turn 9
Adam SW, Bart NW, Colin N
Switched Berlins production to settler. The next citizen can work a grass tile next to the river to get the timing right (I hope )

IT
Zzz

2150BC - turn 10
Adam SW, Bart NW, Colin N

So, Berlin will grow next turn, make sure that the new citizen does work the grass tile, I don't think the governer will do so automatically. Remember also that Leipzig will be the center of the rings, not Berlin.
Here's a picture of our lands: