SGOTM 21 - Jag älskar er

[BSPollux]

Good job guys, well done!

Join the lurkers and tell us how you liked the game.

 

[elitetroops]

Some more screens from last turnset.

War on China

t195:

Spoiler :

t196:

Spoiler :

Well, this will come in handy, as our last golden age happened to end between turns.



Also:

t197:

Spoiler :

t198:

Spoiler :

Finally the artist gift to isabella is born, shipped to Madrid, and we can switch into our endgame civics.



In China:



Units from galleon SW of Kunming finish this battle amphibiously.

t199:

Spoiler :

Teching complete.







Damn you Cathy!

t200:

Spoiler :

Transports upgraded and rifles ready to head for parade:

Spoiler :

 

[elitetroops]

Meanwhile in Spain

t200, army in place, she suspects nothing.

Spoiler :

Taking the tundra:

Spoiler :

Had 2 rifles on galleons to finish the last 2 cities amphibiously where needed. The musketman in Zaragoza appeared between turns, so this became a bit tighter than I had planned.

Salamanca:

Spoiler :

Clearly overpowered here, but this was the army arriving from China in the east and they couldn't have reached any other city. Also, taking this city was essential for the tank-crossing and she had 5 units that could move into the city between turns, so I decided to land all units anyway. Those that didn't attack could be loaded back on galleons and chained to any city (except Barcelona) for amphibious attack t203. She didn't move anyone into the city, instead she moved 3 units to take out one single mace that I had move in SE of Salamanca from Mali territory.

Murcia:

Spoiler :

She used the artist we gifted to culture bomb this city. This was no problem as she only had longbows.

After taking first 2 cities:

Spoiler :

Tanks unload in Murcia and drive across the continent to the galleons that dropped off units at Salamanca last turn. Next turn there is a parade in Moscow.

Santiago:

Spoiler :

A bit of a miss that I had 3 cannons in one galleon and couldn't find a way to split them between cities. Must have been very tired, because now when I look at the pic I see that I could easily have dropped one or 2 outside Cordoba as well.

Cordoba:

Spoiler :

Another miss here when I got short on galleon movements to be able to drop an infantry to defend those rifles. Put another extra rifle instead, expecting to lose one as I saw his grenadier. He attacked between turns, but the single cannon was chosen as top defender, and lost, so I was forced to take this without siege. Still no problem.

Toledo:

Spoiler :

West of city a tank that could choose to attack either Toledo or Barcelona.

Settler is there as a backup plan for tanks to land and walk across continent, in case something fails in Murcia and Salamanca, or if the culture bug would have left her culture between those cities after they fell.

Barcelona:

Spoiler :

SW of city is 2 cannons and an infantry. In addition it can be reached by 3 tanks. The CR3-Morale super infantry can attack Madrid as well.

Madrid:

Spoiler :

She must have unloaded units from a galleon as a HA, phant and treb appeared between turns.

Seville:

Spoiler :

Here I was short on units. Partly because of those extra units that appeared from a galleon in Madrid, had to send backup amphibious attacks there. But mainly because I made one mistake when setting up the attack. I accidentally failed to load the settler for the backup tank landing site on the galleon he was supposed to be on t200. I had to send him out that turn on a transport that was supposed to bring in t201 draft infantry for amphibious attacks. With those in place, this war would have been over in one turn.

End of turn:

Spoiler :

3 wounded longbows left... I would have needed that t201 draft infantry.

If the plan had been to do a one turn war, I could have had a couple of whipped marines available for amphibious attacks as well. But as it was planned as 2 turns, I didn't cold whip them to save some pop. I knew they could just as well do their duty on the second turn of the war. Winning this war in one turn wouldn't have made much of a difference as the tanks weren't in Moscow for the parade until next turn.

Apart from cannons, I don't think I fought a single battle below 90% in mainland Spain. Most way above that. I checked the statistics and it appears I lost a total of 8 cannons and 1 infantry in the war against Spain.

 

[elitetroops]

And finally, the world t194:

Spoiler :

All our army is in China at this point.

9 turns later:

Spoiler :

Those were some crazy 9 turns! But it was a lot of fun and I'm glad the plan worked.

I still think we could have won one turn earlier, if the galleon chain could have been figured out. With galleons devoted to only shipping tanks, the best I could come up with was 13 needed galleons, which would have been 7 more than the ones we had. What I didn't explore was the option to use galleons that have landed units in Spain after the drop. Most of them reached the shore in 2 moves, then they had 3 left to chain tanks. 4 in the case of transports. Maybe it could have been done this way. Though this would on the other hand have removed some flexibility in the attack. I had all the galleons in spots from which they could reach as many cities as possible, to be able to react to whatever she did between turns before the DoW.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Congrats, gang! Good game, and the first to finish! Wish I could have played with you but real life has too many demands on my time and/or I don't have the energy I used to. Thanks for the many pictures and explanation of what was going on near the end, ET!

 

[elitetroops]

Thanks! We sure could have needed some more players on the team, were a bit short towards the end.

A big thank you to the team for pulling this through, despite being very short on players! Amazing that we were the first team to finish. Will be interesting to see how the other teams finish.

Dhoomstriker just posted some tech predictions for their game. One of the models had them done with teching t199, exactly the same turn we were done teching. Currently they seem to be 3 turns ahead of us in tech (communism in t150, we libbed it t153). But they seem to be aiming for AP. Our research was largely funded by conquest gold, which they might not be able to do if going for AP. Not sure what kind of war plans they have. We got some nice trades, like Railroad and it seems they are going for Radio and Rock'n'Roll, in addition to the techs we got. Let's see if they can keep up. AP also restricts them to only winning when there is a vote. Normally I would expect them to easily keep up and run away from our tech pace, but they have only a week, with a lot left of the game, so they cannot keep making as detailed plans all the way. Or maybe they can...

We had 9 turns left of the last golden age when we were done teching. We could have started them earlier. Then we should have been faster to capture MoM... Interestingly, knowing how this game ended, it would have been better for us to start the GA 3 turns earlier, despite not having MoM yet. Though I don't think anyone of us was predicting that we would be done teching before t200 at that time.

 

[elitetroops]

Hmm... looking at Xteam's latest turnset, them being only 3 turns ahead of us in tech at communism is an illusion. They captured MoM t150 and started GA with communist spy plus a GM. Taj is under construction, and they'll most likely have a 3 GP GA as well. Much like we did, except that we captured MoM t171, over 20 turns later... As a result we lost much of the last GA when we won before it was over. Between lib and the t171 GA we weren't even teching, mostly banking gold cause we didn't have Oxford yet. They had it up t131.

I'd say the t199 teching estimate was way too conservative, even the more aggressive model suggested by Dhoom, having them done teching t192, might be underestimating their teching power. Their voting cycle has votes coming up t188, t198 and t208. I'm guessing they can make the t188 vote. If not, they will for sure make it in time for the t198 vote.

So...

On the other hand, FE won't make it until the t199 vote in their game, they are aiming for t209 vote and t210 win. They'll be done teching t199 or t200, but then they still have to ship the tanks to Moscow. Going for AP doesn't pay off as they have to wait for the win after being done with all their goals.

 

[kcd_swede]

Well played, elitetrooper! You and Zhary carried us over the finish line. It was a lot of fun playing with you guys and the whole team, really. I learned a lot. (I learned I'll never be patient enough for carrying out such complex turnsets!!)

However we finish, I think we are winners - we had a lot of fun and pushed ourselves to improve over what we thought was our best possible effort.

My own opinion... the timing of Shaka declaring war on us was unfortunate and made it impossible to carry out our well-planned strategy the way we had intended - probably lost most of our turns with that- though I thought we adapted superbly. Anyhow, that's civ for ya, you can always assume Shaka will cause trouble.

I guess its time to look at the competition... for the moment, we are in first place, so I'll enjoy the top of the podium as long as I can.

 

[Zhary]

Thx for letting me paly with you guys it has been a lot of fun. You all made an exelent job especially ET. Also I would like to remeber the lost ones of our team Eca and Chris i hope that their RL issues are cleared out and that they are back for the next SGotm.

For our placeing Im would not give up on third place yet. I think XTeam might struggle a bit in the end. Our empire where bigger so we benefited a bit more from a GAge. They need to improve their flasks/turn with 300 every 10 turns to be able to beat us and I think it would be hard. To achive this they must build failgold/wealth to have slider at 100% at the same time as they need to build more uni/obs. I looked at our turn 150 save and we where doing about 800/turn there as they did and we where out of good tiles. So either they build a larger army to conquer more land or they grow into scientist/fishermen. I don't think its possible to growing into the lowest possible 30 scientist/50 fishers every 10 turn.
So my bet for us now would be:
Think possitive

 

[BSPollux]

If I design the next SGOTM, than it will be very relaxing compared to this one.

 

[elitetroops]

Thanks Zhary! And thank you for playing with us. Was great to have you on the team! Thanks to Kcd as well, sorry the planning got a bit complicated towards the end.

For me this was quite a learning experience. Never had to think so in depth about a game before. And now in retrospect it's good to learn from the mistakes, which I did a lot of... And to learn from the other teams!

I recommend reading the PD thread, it's very interesting to get a glimpse of their thinking. I only read the first 100 posts or so, but there was already a lot of new ideas in there.

Interesting to see their oracle discussion. When I suggested oracle currency, it was met with a lot of opposition and we ended up oracling MC as we wanted fast astro and MC is on the way there. PD says immediately from the start "we want fastest possible astro so let's oracle currency"... The only option they really consider is oracle CoL. I don't remember if that was ever seriously considered by us.

 

[enKage]

It was close, but it looks like we lost with yu by some turns. Congrats!

 

[BSPollux]

A new game was announced.

Just trying to abuse your notification settings by posting here