SGOTM 23 - Phoenix Rising

[LowtherCastle]

Did PR steal techs?

 

[Gumbolt]

Done a few edits to the above so worth a refresh.

No we didn't. Did we build a spy?? Nope! Hatty had philosophy and theolgy on our T83 save.

edit we had 228EP on darius. We could of stolen philosophy with some work. We had no real EP strategy.

 

[Rusten]

Did PR steal techs?

No, I forgot to put that on my list.
We should've put EP on Egypt the moment we met Hatty.

 

[Gumbolt]

So T83 challenge for Rusten. Can you replay PR game from T83 and finish ahead of T126.

The gauntlet has been laid.

 

[elitetroops]

I see. Then I think you have to be a bit careful making comparisons for different turn times:

Not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean 1 turning those techs wouldn't have been possible 6 turns earlier, or? The reason we managed to 1 turn them was that they were researched right after Edu and Chemistry, which both got bulbs into them, then we had >3000 overflow beakers going into SP. We maxed out at about 2250bpt.

PR and TA took fairly different paths to roughly equivalent results. We settled different spots, we started with different techs, TA got Alphabet many turns sooner, and yet you seemed to have achieved parity and even went beyond our tech pace (someone needs to do an actual comparison to verify that).

I'd be interested to know if we were ever ahead of you in tech as well. There's one particular time I'd be interested to look into more. We completed HG for a massive increase in score, a couple of turns later you got a similar increase. But right after that your score again got a massive increase and you went ahead of us to stay there until the end. At the time we thought you peace vassaled Kublai or something, but this was not the case.

Oh, now when I look at our game, I can totally see what happened. It took us 13 turns(!!!) to get from Moscow to Novgorod. What the heck were we doing? How is that possible? The only other cities we captured in those 13 turns were Lisbon and Oporto (and Smolensk, which we let Stalin retake). No wonder you guys shot ahead of us in score at that time. Stalling conquest like that for 13 turns is criminal! Once we had Novgorod, it took us 19 turns to capture another 35 cities and vassal Kublai...

If we were ever ahead of you in tech, you must have regained the lead when we had to go into full military mode to have a chance at finishing conquest in time for railroad. After the Novgorod disaster, we did 5 turns of Slavery, PS and Vassalage and also teched to cuirs asap (even used GE to bulb Gunpowder). For the last part of the game we were in Nationhood and drafted Musketeers.

Correct estimation of effort is what TA did relatively well and that's where Rusten's and your critiques of PR fit in. How to balance hammer output with teching? When to start the GAs? This scenario was excellent in my view particularly because is involved a very complex set of variables to balance.

Agree that it was an excellent scenario.

 

[Gumbolt]

Elite I kept telling you Moscow was our downfall. No one believes me.

When you start planning trebs for a map that should really be mainly mounted units you are in trouble.

Don't get me wrong Russian cities were amazing but not 13 turns amazing! Also the number of turns and units we lost on Moscow. Pretty much took out a chunk of our stack. We were fighting a brick wall in many respects. Also a very strong Russian Ai who was spamming units. Meanwhile TA were taking out all the weak southern AI.

Still for 13 turns spent stalling we picked up time later or TA suffered delays?

 

[Rusten]

Oh, now when I look at our game, I can totally see what happened. It took us 13 turns(!!!) to get from Moscow to Novgorod. What the heck were we doing? How is that possible? The only other cities we captured in those 13 turns were Lisbon and Oporto (and Smolensk, which we let Stalin retake). No wonder you guys shot ahead of us in score at that time. Stalling conquest like that for 13 turns is criminal! Once we had Novgorod, it took us 19 turns to capture another 35 cities and vassal Kublai...)

Yes, that's a bad period. Combination of completing wonders (HG+MoM) and diverting our attention to western europe (already been mentioned as a mistake).
We also ended up relying on siege. This has not yet been brought up. It would've been much better to get knights earlier than relying on mace+trebs. The latter are just too slow. And we were getting these units when our conquest stalled. Guilds+banking should've been teched before engineering.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yep. We had many mace later on that were wondering about. Better to beeline guilds and have knights. Painful looking at the mace doing very little as they could not reach anywhere that fast.

Another key decision was engineering vs guilds. Was delaying guilds a mistake? I guess we kind of waited for knights.

 

[Mitchum]

Nice job, PR. You guys did very well as a new team!! It's also tough when you lose strong players mid game.

Still for 13 turns spent stalling we picked up time later or TA suffered delays?

I wouldn't say this 13-turn stall added 13 turns to your end result since your empire was still doing other things (i.e. teching, GPP generation, infra building, tile improvements, etc.)...

 

[elitetroops]

Elite I kept telling you Moscow was our downfall. No one believes me.

We had some bad rolls on Moscow, which made us scared. I just opened the 300BC save and did this:

Spoiler :

Captured Novgorod 10 turns earlier than we did in the real game, none of our existing cities were put at risk of being recaptured while doing so. Okay, I had a couple of good rolls there and I can see that it wouldn't have been a certainty that the attack would have succeeded at that time. But like I said in the lurker thread, we were very close. With one or two more HAs, it would have been a safe attack and our conquest could have continued without interruption. It was the sum of several factors. We had bad luck on Moscow, just as we had slowed down the stream of reinforcements to build HG/MoM/Colossus and also started building maces for Portugal and England.

The whole treb operation against Novgorod I never understood. I thought we teched Engineering before Guilds to get reinforcements to the front faster.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yes that was a bit harsh of me. Sorry team.

That is interesting Elite. There were finest of margins in some of the decision. Pushing for 3-4 more HA to Moscow could of made a differnce. Capturing Novograd would of been big. Although I fear 300bc was too late anyway. It left 25 turns for rest of map. Hmmm.

Colossus vs building more units?? We also build CH's, forges, libraries etc. Till we finally saw how short of units we were. Trebs were used when we just saw how strong Novograd had become.

 

[elitetroops]

Colossus vs building more units?? We also build CH's, forges, libraries etc. Till we finally saw how short of units we were. Trebs were used when we just saw how strong Novograd had become.

Yeah, you're right that those courthouses was a much bigger mistake than for example Colossus. Didn't we even plan to build FP at that time?

Forges are always a tough call. Had we known that the date to beat is 275AD, then we should have skipped them. I think we were aiming at something like 600AD at this time.

Another big difference to TA was that we never sent a scouting unit into Ottoman territory and weren't aware of the marble. Had we known about the marble (and had Darius built GLH instead of Mao), then we might also have ended up taking the southern route.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean 1 turning those techs wouldn't have been possible 6 turns earlier, or? The reason we managed to 1 turn them was that they were researched right after Edu and Chemistry, which both got bulbs into them, then we had >3000 overflow beakers going into SP. We maxed out at about 2250bpt.

Yes, all I meant is that 10t at that time of the game can mean the difference of 1000 bpt versus 1500bpt (random numbers).

I remember an analysis from ~SG11 in which DingDing added up all the beakers and divided by some number to determine that the gold PD popped in a mine only helped by 1.5t. I did a more precise analysis, based on how much that gold helped percentagewise at different phases of the game and the difference was closer to 4t, not even including the extra . That's not the same analysis as what you're making, but the point is, analysis has to consider certain factors.

Another big difference to TA was that we never sent a scouting unit into Ottoman territory and weren't aware of the marble. Had we known about the marble (and had Darius built GLH instead of Mao), then we might also have ended up taking the southern route.

We used the scenario largely for our exploration. We Googled maps of ancient times, guessed what the scenario might look like and were right often enough. Plus, we knew the rr had to go through Istanbul, so we searched for it. The marble was just luck, although Greece was known for tons of marble.

 

[Rusten]

So T83 challenge for Rusten. Can you replay PR game from T83 and finish ahead of T126.

The gauntlet has been laid.

That's not much of a challenge given all the prior knowledge I'll have, I think. Not like we were lagging behind at that point.

I did play a few turns just for curiousity's sake, and a much more natural path is to delay bureaucracy and instead tech towards Music and use artist for GA and GS to bulb philo --> adopt Islam+pacifism and get GPs in Alex and Thebes.

 

[Rusten]

Here's what our save could've looked like at 425 BC had we ignored Stalin. I played pretty quickly so in fact it could still be better (especially military movement). Maybe I could've been rdy to attack a Persian city already. I even got my first GG in Thebes with no way to ferry quickly.
We are (IMO) ahead of both our save and TA at this point. Conquest is slightly ahead of TA on a similar path (I've killed off the Ottomans).

Sloppy mistake this run was messing up diplo with Stalin so I couldn't trade for construction, but this is just for showing anyway.

We have a GS sitting in Paris (either academy or bulb). 2T left of GA. GM in 1T from Thebes (can start next GA together with next GS from Alexandria). Back to slavery in 1T. Marble in 3T --> HE in Athens, NE in Thebes, MoM in Berlin (at some point).

I kept with the bureaucracy plan in Paris due to the way we settled and we had beakers invested in the tech already when I started playing (T83).

 

[Gumbolt]

Looking at the city graph it says it all. There is a period from 400BC to 50AD where our city numbers barely grow. In that same time TA took out nearly 9 cities. It wasn't till knights that we finally kicked in and started to match TA on cities again. By that point TA were already in end game mode and still using HA.

At 375BC we had a 3 city advantage. We were ahead with Athens, Thebes and Jerusalem. We gave all the lead when we went for Russians. Sure we were building wonders and stuff but we still lost some focus. Rusten game above showed how mcuh easier the southern path was. The Mongols would of been a much easier target near the end.

Our unit count at 375BC was under 40. TA was circa 55. Our graph shows 2 big hits where we lost overall 7-8+ units from attacking cities.

The snowball effect of having Thebes and Athens sooner should of given us a big advantage here. Not looked at Berlin dates yet.

 

[elitetroops]

At 375BC we had a 3 city advantage. We were ahead with Athens, Thebes and Jerusalem. We gave all the lead when we went for Russians. Sure we were building wonders and stuff but we still lost some focus. Rusten game above showed how mcuh easier the southern path was. The Mongols would of been a much easier target near the end.

They have all those 3 cities, already out of revolt, in their 400BC save. Or did you mean that we captured those earlier?

In 400BC we are 3 cities ahead. Empires otherwise quite the same, Egypt, Greeks and Germans dead, but we have 2 extra African cities. Memphis and GoldCoast. They have just captured Istanbul, we have just captured Yaro and St Pete. We also had a small advantage in the captured Great Wall, helped a bit in Africa. Not that it seemed to bother them much. They were fogbusting with a great scientist.

Spoiler :

"Yes yes, Plato, that's a very interesting story about the cave. Why don't you go out and find one to sit in."

Techwise I think they are slightly ahead at that date. They have Aesth-Lit-Music, Construction and Theology, halfway through teching Machinery. We have Machinery, Civil Service, about to 1 turn Construction. The difference is that we are doing 338bpt while they are doing only 221. Our cottaged bureau capital with academy is responsible for much of that difference.

I'm still a bit surprised that the southern route would have been so much easier. If I recall correctly, Mehmed had quite a stack in his capital and there was some other hill capitals along the way as well. Our Russian scouting revealed only 1-2 units/city before we declared, except for his stack in Yaro. I was honestly quite surprised that a monarch AI managed to pump out the amount of units he did. After the first 3 cities, he seemed to have stacks everywhere. Even 5 units in pop 1, 0% culture Smolensk. I have no idea where those came from.

 

[Rusten]

I'm still a bit surprised that the southern route would have been so much easier. If I recall correctly, Mehmed had quite a stack in his capital and there was some other hill capitals along the way as well. Our Russian scouting revealed only 1-2 units/city before we declared, except for his stack in Yaro. I was honestly quite surprised that a monarch AI managed to pump out the amount of units he did. After the first 3 cities, he seemed to have stacks everywhere. Even 5 units in pop 1, 0% culture Smolensk. I have no idea where those came from.

I can't say for the other cities, but in the replay posted above I bribed Mehmed on Darius and thus didn't have to deal with his stack. Then the whole world followed suit and also declared.

And yes, Stalin's unit capabilities surprised me too.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think it's more the fact he is 60% likely to build units and started with 3 cities. He quickly reach 8-10 cities and had been in war mode a very long time. It's one of the big no no's of war. The longer you stay at war with an Ai the more they spam units.

 

[elitetroops]

He quickly reach 8-10 cities and had been in war mode a very long time. It's one of the big no no's of war.

He was never in war mode before we declared.