SGOTM 24 Lurker thread

[haphazard1]

We never did settle for the whales. We mostly had enough happiness, although there were a few points where we had a couple cities with unhappy faces due to heavy whipping. But we had quite a few luxury resources from conquest and from trade, so mostly we had enough.

Religion was quite late spreading to our part of the world. We did consider going for the AP using a GE, but had not pushed for the religious tech line and were not really set up for it. Probably would have been faster in the end, given how difficult it turned out to be to deal with Tokugawa militarily. But a lot would have depended on getting the timing of the vote cycle to line up with the forest preserves and environmentalism counter. Missing the timing on that would mean a significant delay.

 

[LowtherCastle]

@Gumbolt: Looking at saves is a PITA for me because I only have CIV on a virus-laden computer which I never connect to the internet any more. I try to minimize saving saves on one computer and moving them to the other. Plus, it's more fun interacting with you guys.

One reason to attack Stalin first, which we did, was that his land was hammer rich, unlike our homeland. Moscow was great for wonders. We built the AP and Hagia there. Stalin built the Pyramids there before we captured it (the primary reason we targeted it). If Toku had built the Pyramids, we'd have had to adopt an entirely different strategy probably. Toku was wonder whoring in our game. The only wonders we built in our homeland were both in COw CIty, SH and GLH.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We never did settle for the whales. We mostly had enough happiness, although there were a few points where we had a couple cities with unhappy faces due to heavy whipping. But we had quite a few luxury resources from conquest and from trade, so mostly we had enough.

Religion was quite late spreading to our part of the world. We did consider going for the AP using a GE, but had not pushed for the religious tech line and were not really set up for it. Probably would have been faster in the end, given how difficult it turned out to be to deal with Tokugawa militarily. But a lot would have depended on getting the timing of the vote cycle to line up with the forest preserves and environmentalism counter. Missing the timing on that would mean a significant delay.

Okay, this is a significant RNG difference in our games, although I'm not sure how much not DoWing Darius affected that. Darius teched CoL and got Confucianism in our game, so we spread and used it for our Pacifism 100% GP bonus. Moscow, StPete, and Novgorod also already had it when we captured them so AP in Moscow was a no-brainer, and creating a confu miss to spread to Asoka and Bismarck was geographically easy.

But that's clearly a major advantage for AP. If we had had to spread Christianity after teching Theology, that would have been a serious issue, especially for our GP spamming. Interesting. Obviously in that case we simply would have gone for domination, which we considering anyway.

Incidentally, our warring was mainly with HAs.

 

[haphazard1]

The core of our army was crossbows, plus trebs for siege. We did mix in some HAs, especially later after we conquered Darius and took his horses. And some elephants were very useful also, mostly against the northern continent AIs. But crossbows did most of the work against Darius and Stalin.

 

[Gumbolt]

Fair enough. We used a GE on GLH. Then built Mids after Oracle. It was quicker to build mids than building GLH. Using rep and it's specialist advantage was key to us.
So DB built -Oracle 1560bc, GLH 750BC, Mids 650BC.
TA - SH 2240bc, GLH 850BC. Mids captured 200ad.
TA - Hunting 3800bc, AH 3320bc, myst 3040bc Mining 2720bc, TW 2400bc, BW 2000bc, Pottery 1800bc, Sailing 1480bc, Masonry 1320bc, Writing 1200bc, MC 500bc, currency 50bc, astronomy 325ad, Optics 150 AD. Alphabet 425bc. COL/Monarchy 200ad. Machinery 500ad.
DB -Hunting 3760, TW 3400bc, Pot 3040bc, Mining 2800bc, BW 2360, Med 1920, PH 1760bc, MC 1520bc, Sailing 1440bc, writing 1080bc, Mas 950bc, Alphabet 575bc, currency 450bc, Maths 250bc, Optics 75bc, astronomy 150ad.

Tech wise DB hit some critical techs a bit sooner than TA/ Albeit TA were focusing on different things. Getting currency, alphabet and astronomy sooner could of helped us. Early mids gave our science a decent push as we switched to rep much sooner. Not looked at GP strategies. We had 12 forest growth early game. Plus 1 early after FP came in. Then pretty much none. Our science was impacted heavily after wars and new cities.

Germans built AP 660ad. To be fair at 640ad we had a spare GE, Theology and Christian holy city. The only thing we didn't do was get philosophy sooner. We had been sitting on that GE since 250ad. We got Theology around 250ad. So AP should of been an easy option here.

Come 620ad your science was way ahead of ours by 200 beakers a turn. Our unit cost and supply at this point came to 53 gold a turn. We had also just taken down Delhi amd other indian cities. Our Russian war had just started too.

Challenge to Mylene. To play our save from 250ad and see what AP date we could of got? Looks like we had a strong start to this game.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Fair enough. We used a GE on GLH. Then built Mids after Oracle. It was quicker to build mids than building GLH. Using rep and it's specialist advantage was key to us.
So DB built -Oracle 1560bc, GLH 750BC, Mids 650BC.
TA - SH 2240bc, GLH 850BC. Mids captured 200ad.
TA - Hunting 3800bc, AH 3320bc, myst 3040bc Mining 2720bc, TW 2400bc, BW 2000bc, Pottery 1800bc, Sailing 1480bc, Masonry 1320bc, Writing 1200bc, MC 500bc, currency 50bc, astronomy 325ad, Optics 150 AD. Alphabet 425bc. COL/Monarchy 200ad. Machinery 500ad.
DB -Hunting 3760, TW 3400bc, Pot 3040bc, Mining 2800bc, BW 2360, Med 1920, PH 1760bc, MC 1520bc, Sailing 1440bc, writing 1080bc, Mas 950bc, Alphabet 575bc, currency 450bc, Maths 250bc, Optics 75bc, astronomy 150ad.

Tech wise DB hit some critical techs a bit sooner than TA/ Albeit TA were focusing on different things. Getting currency, alphabet and astronomy sooner could of helped us. Early mids gave our science a decent push as we switched to rep much sooner. Not looked at GP strategies. We had 12 forest growth early game. Plus 1 early after FP came in. Then pretty much none. Our science was impacted heavily after wars and new cities.

Germans built AP 660ad. To be fair at 640ad we had a spare GE, Theology and Christian holy city. The only thing we didn't do was get philosophy sooner. We had been sitting on that GE since 250ad. We got Theology around 250ad. So AP should of been an easy option here.

Come 620ad your science was way ahead of ours by 200 beakers a turn. Our unit cost and supply at this point came to 53 gold a turn. We had also just taken down Delhi amd other indian cities. Our Russian war had just started too.

Challenge to Mylene. To play our save from 250ad and see what AP date we could of got? Looks like we had a strong start to this game.

Wow! 12 forest growths to our 4, pre-FP. So chopping wasn't a bad deal for you guys. You simply created more chances for forests to grow. Plus, your teching was far ahead of ours, it appears, because of the Oracle slingshot. And that's non-trivial because precisely MC took us an eternity to tech. Getting the Mids so early was powerful too. Then again, your two GEs were at the expense of GSes later, unless you were to use them for golden ages. We only had gene pollution in Cows, intentionally, because it was a hammer producer, not a GP spammer.

 

[haphazard1]

Gene mixing...oh boy. That did come back to bite us late, in a big way.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yes but without GE gene pool getting mids and GLH would of not happened. Even GLH gave a GM gene pool. Oracle a GP gene pool. That being said we had other cities that focused just on GS or GM. Mixed kettle of fish. Ultimately our games diverged as we decided on domination. Even if Ap had been an optimum route we would of never taken it. It's not Mylene's way.

No way to get all the wonders in one city. We did run 2 golden ages and this soaked up the excess GP we did not need. If we had planned for AP from start our game would of differed greaty.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Yes but without GE gene pool getting mids and GLH would of not happened. Even GLH gave a GM gene pool. Oracle a GP gene pool. That being said we had other cities that focused just on GS or GM. Mixed kettle of fish. Ultimately our games diverged as we decided on domination. Even if Ap had been an optimum route we would of never taken it. It's not Mylene's way.

No way to get all the wonders in one city. We did run 2 golden ages and this soaked up the excess GP we did not need. If we had planned for AP from start our game would of differed greaty.

Difficult to remember SGs where we knew early on what our ultimate strategy or VC would be. Same here. That's part of the balancing act -- keeping the prospective VCs in mind and attempting to make all possibilities align to what we're actually doing. Domination was surely the easier path for ending the game when you've got Medicine and 50 FPs.

I would assume that having captured Darius juicy cities, you'd be able to make up for the extra GEs by having more GP cities. We had a limited number of GP cities and simply had to make do with that. That was another point of concern for me, comparing our games. I had the impression you were attacking Darius first and with your Oracle tech advantage, owning his cities might have been more powerful than having him as a trade partner.

I think you guys had a better early game than we did, just like last SG. Perhaps we got lucky you didn't opt for AP.

 

[Fippy]

I just read US lost stonehenge by 1t in cowcity, that's rough
Tbh i never thought about SH, fearing that could / would happen.
They gave themselves some comfort with failgold, but if you settle cow first instead of 2x river corn (and also delaying fishx3) it's imo really brutal.

I would not say "never" with AP, Gumbo..but after we were already settled for big wars with galleons and stuff, it's true i thought the AP would not fit now.
It's a bit silly either way, me and the AP, fastest route counts and all options should be considered. If there's a next game, i / we will surely do that

 

[Gumbolt]

Losing SH is not good. Especially by 1t. Did they beeline it?? SH was useful for border pops and maybe a GP for xtian or conf religion. I think what we did was strong. We were first to theology anyway. SH also meant Oracle was less likely. We may also of faced issues with double corn site like TA did.

As for galleons this would of made little difference as you can quickly whip mish and spread them. Spreading 7-10 mish would not of been a huge task. Only Toku would of been likely to adopt the religion. Most Ai would of hated him. So AP was always an option. Take my 250ad challenge and see what date you get.

 

[LowtherCastle]

To me the biggest sacrifice with SH was not REX but exploration. We debated whether to send out an exploring wb around t30, which would have delayed SH by 3t. We decided against it. That wb would have found Gandhi by t80 at the latest. That would have given us a whole different perspective on the game, but I'm not sure it would have changed anything. If we had met Toku before Alpha, then we might have gotten OBs with him, but there were no TRs available anyway, right? Not even with Astro. Those would have been juicy TRs otherwise. BIg cities.

 

[LowtherCastle]

We built SH in 2040BC, US lost it 1960BC, so maybe building the wb would have lost it for us. Although WT wasn't too worried about getting failgold instead.

 

[Gumbolt]

Went 2040bc in our game (DB) by Germans. In Xteam 1440bc by Persians. Nostalgia 2040bc by Germans too.

So if Germans went for it you had pretty low chances of grabbing the wonder. It's a question for Zhary as to how close you were?

Trade routes with Toku were possible if you travelled around the whole island? Again would of taken some luck scouting wise.

 

[WastinTime]

fyi, we didn't settle cowcity to get SH. It was a last minute idea to squeeze in Myst and grab it. It really allowed our cities to develop much faster. How long for a monument with no chopping? and then you still have to wait 10 turns for borders. And your monument delays your granary.
I think we chose cowcity when we chose to do AnimalH after Hunting.

IIRC, I liked Cowcity for quickly getting us to settle/war West and North. I wanted to leave our home area quickly. (and for GLH). It was also a workboat factory and Mitchum and LC wanted to take advantage of our fishing knowledge and hope to explore. Turned out there was no one to war with and not much to settle in either of those directions.
And for the record, we were going to settle DoubleCorn coastal (like where our barb city appeared), so we didn't like making that city #2 cus it wouldn't be connected for trade rts very quickly/easily.

 

[WastinTime]

Trade routes with Toku were possible if you travelled around the whole island?

I don't think so. I believe we completely explored the ice for any holes.

 

[Gumbolt]

Yeah actually the route does seem to be blocked by ice when viewing your save. We never fully got a unit round there. There is one ice tile among passable ice. You could also place a city on the tundra tile but a lot of effort to get a trade route.

 

[Fippy]

We chopped 1 forest for fishx3 monument, city south of Cap borrowed deer for monument whip.
Doublecorn whipped most of our settlers, i think settling there first balanced no SH out a bit for us.

 

[Gumbolt]

US have burst into life here. 53 cuirs now. They should take down Asoka and bribe Toku/Germans into the civic. Germans need friendly? Still a bit to do land wise but they have those 4 forest island and Asoka's land. Need settlers to resettle here.

They have 46 forest in their main area but only 17 preserves. They have a lot of workers here but only 9-10 in FP area. This could be what slows down their end date here. That and building settlers.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Nocho: Anyway, it's 1490AD and both Indias are dead, while Japan is reduced to 1 city. However, it's off shore in the northern arctic and of course no way to reach it other than from former Japan itself.

Ouch! As if it isn't bad enough that Toku was isolated..