Enders Game 1: The Training Game Competition - Team 1

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by Grimjack
Thanks for your participation ControlFreak. I have certainly learned a lot about micromanagement from reading your comments and seeing the results. Being priomarily a tactics wargamer, this was/is an area where I need a lot of improvement.

And thank you for showing me a glimpse of how easy and decisive war can be. I think as a natural born builder, I tend to want to build too many units and put them in the precise positions and by then the AI has built a hundred pikes, a cheating wall, a barracks and has grown to size 12. You're set up had me facing two or three at the most spears against the Celts. Much nicer. I really must try to get after it earlier. Or find a way for you to set me up for war in my solo games.

Good luck speaker, not that you need it. I'm guessing this is what the diety players call the grind-it-out phase?

 

[ControlFreak]

BTW,

Speaker you have your work cut out for you:

I'm not as good at setting up as Grimjack. Cossacks are spread all over and some are still healing.

 

[Speaker]

Yup, I've taken a look at mapstat. We should be able to claim about 125-150 tiles from border expansions in the former Ottoman and Celtic lands. The population will be no problem since we have 106 workers to merge once we rush hospitals. I suspect we will need to take out England and rush libraries and that will bring us awfully close to the limit.

 

[Speaker]

@Grimjack: You are ready for Deity, as shown by this incredible turn and your great Epic30 showing. I recommend you finish that game if you haven't read any spoilers. If you have, I think you should start another Deity game and beat it.

The Good

*Your pre-war analysis was impeccable. Your warring was incredible. Eliminating the Ottomans that quickly was Deity-level play.
*Not leaving Cossack garrisons in flip-risk cities. Much better to station light and then retake the city if need be.
*Good tech moves and prebuilds.

The Bad
*Should have started libraries in the captured lands. The faster we claim those tiles, the faster we win.

The Ugly
*Bye-bye Ottomans! It was nice knowing you.

 

[Speaker]

@ControlFreak: Pretty good, but still much to work on.

The Good
*Good plan for Moscow. The bigger the better. yOU truly are a master of micromanagement. T-Hawk would be proud.
*RoP with Egypt to easily attack the Celts.
*Excellent warmaking.
*WLTKD management. I must admit that this is something I never do. Does it make a big difference? Please enlighten me.
*Cossack in 2 turn MM.

The Bad
*Coal deal to Greece? I see a reason not to trade them coal: why not slow them down? We don't need the 380 gold that bad do we?
*Attacking the Celts before England. Now England will have riflemen and our task will be much tougher. The Celts were a pushover and could not hurt us. Learn to take advantage of a tech lead against a strong foe.
*Why not start libraries in all of the Ottoman cities? Doe we need courthouses? And why not rush them? We can afford it.
*Science can be reduced for a turn.
*Why not rush the factory in Yakutsk? We can afford it.
*No rail connection to England? How am I supposed to attack?

The Ugly
*Bye-bye Celts!

 

[ControlFreak]

Originally posted by Speaker
@ControlFreak: Pretty good, but still much to work on.

The Good
*Good plan for Moscow. The bigger the better. yOU truly are a master of micromanagement. T-Hawk would be proud.
*RoP with Egypt to easily attack the Celts.
*Excellent warmaking.
*WLTKD management. I must admit that this is something I never do. Does it make a big difference? Please enlighten me.

That was a first for me but after reading alexman's discussion of corruption I realized that WLTCD is like having a courthouse. In our game a courthouse improved every city it was built in. The WLTCD acts in addition to the courthouse. The towns that would benefit most from WLTCD are the ones with a lot of corrupt shields. IIRC, doing this got three or four more of the coliseums due the turn after industrialization.

*Cossack in 2 turn MM.

The Bad
*Coal deal to Greece? I see a reason not to trade them coal: why not slow them down? We don't need the 380 gold that bad do we?

I see. Its not always get what you can out of the AI. Sometimes its what you don't give them, especially when coal allows for rails.

*Attacking the Celts before England. Now England will have riflemen and our task will be much tougher. The Celts were a pushover and could not hurt us. Learn to take advantage of a tech lead against a strong foe.

I thought that england had rifles already. That's why I chickened out on them. That and grimjack had set me up with all the cossacks in Celt range. I did not complete the rail net early enough to move them back. I'm realizing the importance of hitting the AI earlier than they expect. Now I must take that to a new level and hit the strongest when we're capable of hitting them.

*Why not start libraries in all of the Ottoman cities? Doe we need courthouses? And why not rush them? We can afford it.

I either rush too much or not enough. I need to work on my prioritization. Obviously for Domination, border expantion is key.

*Science can be reduced for a turn.

What do you mean by this? Any turn? This particular turn? When I really want to rush a lot of stuff?

*Why not rush the factory in Yakutsk? We can afford it.

{see rushing deficiency}

*No rail connection to England? How am I supposed to attack?

Yes. That would have been a good setup. I did run rails along our border with Egypt but should have taken advantage of our ROP to rail through Egypt to England. I guess I still was hesitant to hit England.

The Ugly
*Bye-bye Celts!

Thanks for all the comments. I know I am not a Diety player yet. Someday, soon I hope. I'd be glad to take the summer school class.

 

[Speaker]

Let's see if I can't just finish this one up. I'm prepared to go more than 10 turns if need be.

IT- I rush a ton of libraries and a few factories and upgrade our spears, pikemen, and musketmen to riflemen after doing major troop shuffling to free up all of our Cossacks and keep our borders with Egypt well protected. England has a RoP with Egypt as well, so I want to stay secure. I pull troops out of our inland cities and keep our coastal cities protected. We will be able to destroy any landing the AI makes. I have 43 Cossacks ready to attack this turn but no way to get to England. I will need to build a military railnet through Egypt first.

960AD (1): Sanitation comes in and I start on Electricity due in 8 turns with an income of 310gpt. I build a railnet to England. I cancel our RoP with England. There are 3 turns left of England giving us gpt, but since they have Nationalism, I don't want to give them a chance to build more rifles. I will attack next turn after I remove our workers from Egypt. I disband one worker in Yakutsk and then rush the Hospital. Gotta get this city up to 80spt. I work on getting Sevastopol up to 40 uncorrupted spt, but run 1spt short.

970AD (2): Yakutsk gets several workers from dead Civs added to it, but it still has too much corruption, so I disband a worker and then rush the coal plant. This will get it over 80spt for sure. I dial up England and declare war and will set every captured city to a Library.

Leeds
Elite Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-2
Elite Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-4
Leeds falls. Ratio 2-0.

Liverpool
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-0
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-0
Liverpool falls. Ratio 4-0.

Coventry
Vet Cossack l. Reg Pikeman 3-1 retreats
Vet Cossack l. Reg Spear 3-1 retreats
Vet Cossack d. Reg Pikeman 1-2
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 1-2
Coventry falls and we control the Hanging Gardens. Ratio 6-0.

Dover
Elite Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-0
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-1
Dover falls. Ratio 8-0.

I kill a stray Vet Cavalry 4-0.

Nottingham
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 1-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 3-4 first loss of the war
Vet Cossack d. Vet Rifleman 4-0
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 0-3
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 1-3
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 1-3
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 1-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 0-4 and upgrades
Vet Cossack l. Elite Rifleman 0-4
Vet Cossack d. Elite Rifleman 4-0
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 1-4 and upgrades
Vet Cossack d. Vet Rifleman 2-3
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 0-4 and upgrades
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 0-4
Vet Cossack d. Elite Rifleman 1-3
Elite Cossack d. Vet Rifleman 1-1
Nottingham falls. See why I didn't want England to get Rifles? We have no cannons and Cossacks vs. Rifles equals glue factory. Ratio 13-9. Ouch!

I kill a stray MDI, three stray Knights, losing one Cossack. Ratio 17-10.

I move a bunch of Cossacks into range of Warwick for next turn. London will likely be a tough nut to crack so I will hit it last.

Finally I sign an alliance with Egypt against England in exchange for coal. This will let Egypt build rails which will help our warring and will cancel their RoP, so England cannot hit us through Egyptian soil. We do not need Egyptian help in the actual fighting, but they will probably help distract England. I don't expect Egypt to take any English cities.

Just before hitting enter, I remember our Cossack army and use it to kill a stray warrior. Talk about overkill. I also upgrade all of our warriors to MDI, just in case we need some extra attack power. Ratio 18-10.

IT- English counterattack: One Knight kills a Cavalry and that's it. Egypt moves some Cavalry into English territory and kills a unit or two.

980AD (3): Yakutsk Coal Plant => Cossack. It can now build a cossack per turn.

I kill a stray knight. Ratio 19-10.

Warwick
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 1-4
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifleman 4-2
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifleman 2-3
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifleman 0-4 and upgrades
Vet Cossack l. Elite Rifleman 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Elite Rifleman 4-4
Elite Cossack d. Vet Rifleman 3-1
Elite Cossack d. Elite Rifleman 2-1
Warwick falls. Ratio 22-14.

Brighton
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-1
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-0
Brighton falls. Ratio 24-14.

I kill a stray Rifleman and warrior. Ratio 26-14. I move a ton of Cossacks into range of Hastings, choosing not to attack across the river.

WW forces me to up luxuries to 10% and hire a few entertainers.

IT- English Counter with 1 Cavalry which dies attacking an Egyptian unit. Egyptians soften up Hastings for us and kill some stray English units, which is uh, what we wanted them to do. Liverpool flips and we lose a Cossack.

990AD (4): Many borders expand and we now need 228 tiles and 32 population to win.

Liverpool
Elite Cossack d. Reg Rifleman 3-2
Elite Cossack d. Con Rifleman 3-2 and Lenin emerges.
Liverpool falls. Ratio 28-14. Lenin retreats to the core and creates an army.

I load up a Galleon to take Reading and then continue on to Norwich.

Hastings
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifleman 3-3
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifleman 2-0
Vet Cossack d. Vet Rifleman 2-0 and upgrades
Vet Cossack l. Vet Cavalry 3-4 and upgrades
Vet Cossack d. Vet Cavalry 2-1
Hastings falls. Ratio 32-15.

Oxford
Vet Cossack l. Con Rifleman 0-4
Vet Cossack l. Con Rifleman 4-1 and upgrades
Elite Cossack l. Con Rifleman 4-1 and retreats
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifleman 1-2
Vet Cossack l. Vet Spear 1-4
Vet Cossack l. Reg Spear 1-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Reg Spear 2-4
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-1
Vet Cossack d. Reg Longbow 3-1
Vet Cossack d. Vet Spear 1-0
Oxford falls. Ratio 36-19.

Worker action is getting quite tedious, but I persevere.

IT- English counter with 1 longbow who is killed by our Cossack. Ratio 37-19.

1000AD (5): A few captured cities are out of resistance so I rush their libraries.

York
Cossack Army d. Vet Rifle 4-1
Elite Cossack l. Reg Rifle 0-4
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifle 3-0
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifle 3-1
York falls. Ratio 40-20.

Newcastle
Vet Cossack d. Vet Rifle 4-1
Elite Cossack l. Reg Rifle 0-4 and retreats
Elite Cossack d. Reg Rifle 3-0
Vet Rifle l. Reg Rifle 1-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifle 2-2
Newcastle falls. Ratio 43-20.

I have to up luxuries to 30% and hire more entertainers. I use the governor trick to handle the happiness easier. At this point I turn off research because we just need the money and will not need any more techs. We already have the population and just need 180 tiles.

IT- Egypt softens up London.

1010AD (6): I quit this turn early because I don't feel the need to do anything with workers at this point.

Reading
Reg MDI d. Reg Spear 3-1
Reg MDI d. Reg Spear 3-0
Reading Falls. Ratio 45-20.

London
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifle 2-4
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifle 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifle 2-4
Elite Cossack l. Vet Rifle 2-4
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifle 2-4
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifle 0-3 and retreats
Elite Cossack d. Vet Rifle 2-2
Vet Cossack d. Reg Rifle 2-0 and upgrades
Vet Cossack d. Vet Rifle 1-1
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifle 0-1 and upgrades
Elite Cossack d. Elite Rifle 1-0
Vet Cossack d. Vet Longbow 4-1
London falls. Ratio 50-25.

Canterbury
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifle 3-4.
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifle 1-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifle 0-2 and retreats
Elite Cossack l. Reg Rifle 2-5
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifle 1-4
Vet Cossack l. Reg Rifle 0-4 and upgrades
Vet Cossack d. Vet Rifle 3-1
I leave Canterbury 1hp short of being taken, but I have no Cossacks left with movement. I make a clever blockade so the Egyptians cannot attack the city. Ratio 51-28.

1020AD (7): Need 159 tiles.

Canterbury
Cossack Army d. Elite Rifle 5-10ish
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifle 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack l. Vet Rifle 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack d. Vet Rifle 4-2
Vet Cossack l. Con Rifle 0-3 and retreats
Vet Cossack d. Con Rifle 2-3
Canterbury falls. Ratio 54-28.

I trade Alex Sanitation for 76gpt and his pocket change. Hopefully we won't have to attack Egypt to win this game because that might take a while to set up. We need some money to rush libraries, although when this war is over next turn we can turn luxuries back off. I up them to 40% for this turn.

IT- English offer peace. Haha, sure Lizzie, sure.

1030AD (8): Need 144 tiles.

Norwich
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-0
Vet Cossack d. Reg Spear 3-0
Norwich falls. England is dead. Final war ratio is 52-28 or exactly 2-1. Not bad considering we were attacking a lot of Riflemen in size 12 cities.

I drop luxuries back to zero and use the governor trick to reassign tiles.

1040AD (9): Need 119 tiles. I'm not entirely sure why some cities still have resistance when their Civ is dead, but I try to take care of that this turn. I disband some units to build the libraries this turn. I am leaving us open to a massive RoP rape, but they wouldn't dare.

1050AD (10): Need 98 tiles. Tons of libraries finish, so in 3 turns it should be over.

1060AD (11): Need 90 tiles.

1070AD (12): Need 90 tiles.

1080AD (13): Borders expand. Need 19 tiles. Greeks land two knights and I dont like it, so I completely surround them with workers so they cannot move anywhere. We have a RoP so they could rape us.

IT- Greeks do sneak attack us and take a few workers.

1090AD (14): I clean up the Greek units and found a couple cities to claim a few unused squares. We need just 4 more tiles.

1100AD (15): I found a few more cities and mapstat tells me we are over the domination limit, so I hit shift-enter.

And the game ends. Score of 7156 (4th in my HoF). Catherine the Magnificent. A domination victory in 1110AD. I will leave the pictures to someone else--Grimjack? because I have to be up for work soon and I am exhausted. These turns took forever to play. Here is the last save for your HoFs (just hit shift-enter).

EG1-Team1-1100AD

If I may be serious for a moment. A terrific game played by all the members of this team. It truly was a pleasure helping you all become Emperor players and from the beginning it was no contest. I hope you all enjoyed the game and feel like you learned a lot, and I hope you lurkers out there learned something too. I enjoyed this game so much, I might be persuaded to run another Training Game.

Now that my moment of weakness is out of the way, it's time to check out how Team2 did. I've been looking forward to reading their thread for so long.

Happy Civing to all, players and lurkers alike.

 

[Grimjack]

*Attacking the Celts before England. Now England will have riflemen and our task will be much tougher. The Celts were a pushover and could not hurt us. Learn to take advantage of a tech lead against a strong foe.

I thought that england had rifles already. That's why I chickened out on them. That and grimjack had set me up with all the cossacks in Celt range. I did not complete the rail net early enough to move them back. I'm realizing the importance of hitting the AI earlier than they expect. Now I must take that to a new level and hit the strongest when we're capable of hitting them.

<<I will share the blame for this one. In my visualization of battle plan, as directed by the live deals we had when I started my turn, plan was to take Ottoman first, Celts and Egypt after that. That's why I had moved all our free Cossacks to our far western parts, and thats also why the railnet was completed only to that part, and not the english part.>> <<Grim comment>>

*Why not start libraries in all of the Ottoman cities? Doe we need courthouses? And why not rush them? We can afford it.

I either rush too much or not enough. I need to work on my prioritization. Obviously for Domination, border expantion is key.
<<I have the (possibly bad) habit of not really setting any production in cities conquered. I could have left them on courthouses without thinking about it. I KNOW I didn't think enough to put any of them on libraries.>>


*No rail connection to England? How am I supposed to attack?

Yes. That would have been a good setup. I did run rails along our border with Egypt but should have taken advantage of our ROP to rail through Egypt to England. I guess I still was hesitant to hit England.
<<I built the first railnet, and I take the blame for it not being to ENgland, but towards Egypt/Celts. See note above for reasoning.>>

Grimjack

 

[Grimjack]

My thanks for this opportunity Speaker. I have learnt a lot that will hopefully make me better able to get past the hurdle of diety.

I still feel I need more work in the medieval ages, since I always get so deep into the hole here. Feels like all I can do is pointy stick research all the way. I often get caught flatfooted when the prices for the techs skyrocket.

Hopefully slugging through the EPIC potluck will teach me how to better finesse this type of play.

Speaker.

Time to go read the Team2 thread to see what they did. I am somewhat surprised they finished earlier.

Ps, As to EPIC30, Getting the early leader really shaped my game, but in spite of good intentions I couldn't resist peeking on the other players. Will see if I can play an open GOTM game. Think the customized maps often offer better challenge, since luck in the world creation doesn't play as big a part in shaping the game.

Grimjack

 

[SHard]

Wow! Well done guys - I didn't realise when I handed the game off a week ago it would be the last I played of it. I am tired now, and will read through the thread tomorrow, but I will say a big thank-you to Speaker for all his hard work. I have thoroughly enjoyed this game and it is top of my high scores list Since the start of this game I have won on Emperor twice in solo, and I attribute this success to all the useful strategies and tips I have learnt from this game. To ControlFreak and Grimjack, and to a lesser extent Orbit, thanks for a great game, I have really enjoyed playing with you guys

With the new Conquests expansion pack's new difficulty levels I look forward to a 'Sid' level training game with you Speaker

 

[ControlFreak]

Thank you to all.

I'll check in to see how you're all doing when I comeback from vacation.

 

[Rubberjello]

You trounced our score heavily. I think the two teams were neck and neck until we had an incredibly bad luck with the RNG and maybe some poor tactics which wiped out our entire army of 60+ Cossacks the first time we attacked Egypt. That set us back almost 200 years!

The major tactics difference seems to be that while both teams took out the Scandinavians and patsy Chinese at around the same time, team #2 attacked England, then the Ottomans, and then Egypt/Celts while Team #1 attacked Celts, Ottomans, and then England.

Team #2 could have squeeked out a much earlier Domination victory if we had concentrated on libraries on the former lands of England and Ottomans, made a better land grab in the former English lands from the Egyptians, and then take out the Celts quickly instead of attacking Egypt the first time.

Congrats to all! And thanks Speaker for setting this up!

 

[Bam-Bam]

lurker's comment:

Congratulations on a well-played game, folks. Though the other team finished before you--it seems you were able to speed to the finish with less hiccups once the cossacks arrived.

And I echo what Speaker said--all of you are easily ready for tough emperor games and deity games (read open class in GOTM speak ). Grimjack, there is no doubt in my mind that you are well prepared for the hardest of deity games--your tactical skills are fun to watch.

Again--great play folks

 

[SHard]

Well having read this through I must sya what an incredible performance you guys put in this last week to finish the game off. Brilliant warmongering by Grimjack and a good old fashioned 9-hour all-night marathon from ControlFreak.

Thanks again to Speaker for running this game, and my comiserations to team #2 - but also congratulations, as your performance was also excellent.

 

[Grimjack]

Will see if I can find the time for screenies in the evening. Up in a game, and need to post results for EPIC31.

As to difference with team2, I do NOT think it was the late game that was the main difference. I rather think it was our focus on workers. This let us get our cities productive earlier and we managed to crank out most of our cossacks before opponents even had muskets/riflemen. This made all the difference.

I saw in one of team2's posts, that you thought you had enough workers mwhen you had 45. When we had 50, Speaker told us we wanted a 100 more

I think he exaggerated slightly, but not by very much. I think the added workers bought us the 10-15 turn window we got to trounce the first opponents with only slight losses.

( The leader luck nothwithstanding. )
Got me a few sniggers from another comment, when we thought if we would want Leo's or Sun Tzus, and Speaker said he would let us players decide, so he could give us whichever way we went

Grimjack

 

[Grimjack]

In case anyone is still interested, here there be screenies.

 

[Rubberjello]

Originally posted by Grimjack
As to difference with team2, I do NOT think it was the late game that was the main difference. I rather think it was our focus on workers. This let us get our cities productive earlier and we managed to crank out most of our cossacks before opponents even had muskets/riflemen. This made all the difference.

( The leader luck nothwithstanding. )
Grimjack

Team 2 had simply atrociously bad Leader Luck.

You are perhaps right (partially). Our core and even fringe cities were always productive, with the workers always a step or two ahead of clearing tiles before the cities actually needed them. There was something else going on though, as the following analysis shows:

# workers/Score
1000 BC: Team 1: 9/310 Team 2: 10/314

150 BC: Team 1: 34/618 Team 2: 32/510

550AD: Team 1: 82/1233 Team 2: 67/917


When looking for a shred of dignity in all this trouncing, we can unequivically
say that we BLEW TEAM 1 AWAY in terms of wall-clock time!


I would be kind of interested in getting an official post-mortem from Sirp and Speaker, but Sirp may not be very interested in this anymore.

Perhaps a Diety level TD rematch would be in order? If Sirp is not available, we'll take hmmmmm....Sulla

 

[Sirp]

I think that it was the poor tactics at the end of our game, allowing our enemies to get to nationalism and rifles, that was the difference.

If we hadn't researched nationalism, and had played our tactics out a little better, we could have obtained a similiar finish date; as it was, some tactical errors pushed our victory date back a good 40 turns. If you want an early-ish military victory, you simply have to take out your enemies with cavalry before rifles can save them. Nationalism is such a key defensive tech, since it gives both rifles and conscription. If the Egyptians didn't have nationalism, their best defenders would have been pikemen, as we had already taken their only source of saltpeter. We really should have simply cut off research after discovering military tradition.

I also think that the number of workers we produced was fine for the victory type we were pursuing. I never thought that redeeming a large amount of jungle-covered land was going to be a feasible option given the timescale of the game, and so we didn't produce that many workers. I still think that was a good decision, and would have set us up for a domination victory at around ~1000AD if we had played the rest of our hand right.

Another mistake was pursuing chivalry unnecessarily. We let ourselves fall behind too much, and only had a narrow window with which to push our cossack advantage. Our trading wasn't quite smart enough.

I think that the worker-plans for both games were legitimate. Team 1 emphasized more workers, team 2 emphasized 'just enough' to get our economy large enough and powerful enough to propel us to victory. Our troubles finishing it off had nothing to do with lack of economic strength: our economy was pumping out more-than-enough cossacks for a victory, it was just that some tactical mistakes, and allowing our enemies to get rifles delayed victory.

Finally, you guys used mapstat, which allowed you to reach domination at the earliest moment. If we had used mapstat, we may have been able to work out exactly how much land we needed to acquire from Egypt and the Celts in the first war, and finish the game off earlier. I'm not sure about that.

-Sirp.

 

[Speaker]

We ran into riflemen in England as well, so I think that's a wash. We would have finished about 5-10 turns earlier if I had thought to rush the libraries in captured cities by disbanding cossacks. I also did not garrison the captured cities because I thought the resistance would end as soon as the English were dead, so that set us back another few turns.

We can debate MapStat until the cows come home and I know some people are against it. Personally, I don't use it often, but why quibble over a few tiles? If the game is in the bag, it's in the bag.

Both games were wonderfully played by both teams, so let's not argue about who did better, since we were only separated by 30-40 turns, which in a SG is really not that much. We got our FP pretty early because of a leader, and I'll go on the record saying that was the difference.

I don't think a Deity TDG is necessary for my players (I can't vouch for Team2). I taught you all the skills that I would use on Deity, but played the game on Emperor so I was sure we would win. I would encourage Grimjack, SHard, and ControlFreak to move on past Emperor and try out a solo Deity game.

 

[Sirp]

Oh, I don't think that mapstat is a big deal. I wasn't implying "team 1 cheated/had an unfair advantage by using mapstat", I was just pointing it out as a difference between the games. It can make a substantial difference though: we may have been able to win the game (I'm not sure) shortly after 1000AD, if we had known exactly how close to domination we were.

Getting your FP online much earlier did make some difference, but I do not think that was the major difference in finishing time. This is because I don't really think the difference was due to the size of our economies. I think it was due to poorer trading and research decisions by us, and some tactical mistakes toward the end.

We ran into alot more riflemen: Egypt were a large, developed economy with rifles, and the Celts had rifles too.

But anyway, the idea is comparison, not competition, and the finishing dates were fairly close. Both teams did do very well. I think that Rubberjello is ready to attempt Deity, but the other members of my team would do well to try to master Emperor a little more thoroughly first. (Although don't be scared to try Deity anyway!)

I'm afraid that I won't be running another TDG anytime in the near future, as I didn't get to put the amount of time and analysis into this one as I would have liked, and I don't see myself gaining the time and enthusiasm to do better anytime soon.

-Sirp.