SGOTM 24 Lurker thread

[haphazard1]

Looks like Darius beat Xteam to Liberalism. Ouch.

Yes, that arctic off-shore zone north of Toku is potentially very nasty if you had not explored far enough north/were not expecting it. We got a galleon out of captured Osaka, but that takes time for the city to come out of revolt and then you need to build/whip/buy the ship somehow.

 

[Gumbolt]

There is no reason to lose lib race. They had 6-7+ cities that can spam scientists. I guess if you don't get Oracle/GLH or Mids it's a bit tougher. We waited till around 1050ad to tech this. Then again we attacked the Persians much earlier than most. Seems a lot of teams tried for Sh this game with mixed success. With 2 ind Ai here SH seemed a bit risky. TA got it on the turn most AI built it. Losing that early on would of hurt a team here.

Perhaps they should of just gifted Toku techs. Then gifted a city with a stationary spy near the end. Not sure they needed to take down Toku and both Indians. We left 2 Ai alive and had land to spare. They will look at what TA did here with interest.

 

[Gumbolt]

US are done and so far are 3rd. If Nostalgia don't finish they could win the 3rd laurel. Unclear if they intend to finish their game. They were doing pretty well.

X team have a lot of work to do here.

 

[LowtherCastle]

If XTeam increases its score too much, TA might get the Wooden Spoons.

 

[Pangaea]

An AP resolution comes up to stop the war against Stalin, I vote defy - the anger if it fails because of us will only apply to cities with Buddhism in them so should be manageable as we only have 2.

Not sure if I've ever gone for an AP win, so am fussy about the details, but think I've read somewhere that this means you can't win AP until you have successfully voted for another resolution first. Even if you happened to be in he AP religion at the time of the defying, it puts you down from full member to voting member, and disables you from winning that way.

Please correct if this is incorrect.

Guess they are still far away from a win, so time to change things around, and it's not like they could have done anything else anyway. Stopping the war would have been a big delay. Yet another reason why I strongly dislike the Annoying Palace.

 

[nocho]

Congrats to Turbo Ants and Dancing Bears for some very nice finish dates!

Not that it means anything of course, but we get the consolation prize of beating you both on score! It seems winning in the 15th or 16th century is more optimal for that.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Congrats to Turbo Ants and Dancing Bears for some very nice finish dates!

Not that it means anything of course, but we get the consolation prize of beating you both on score! It seems winning in the 15th or 16th century is more optimal for that.

Thanks, nocho. Well done on powering through...

 

[Gumbolt]

Considering Mylene was going for high score over gold laurel you will indeed have ruffled a few bear furballs Nocho.

Nostalgia have started to play their game again today. They have most of the FP reserves built. Albeit they seem to be fighting a war when they need to spread religion. They must of considered AP as they have a gift city for Toku already. No missionaries yet. I wonder why they even need to fight a war? See what happens.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Nostalgia have started to play their game again today. They have most of the FP reserves built. Albeit they seem to be fighting a war when they need to spread religion. They must of considered AP as they have a gift city for Toku already. No missionaries yet. I wonder why they even need to fight a war? See what happens.

They have already spread Confu to the TOku gift city, but no spies inside for flipping him to Environ. They also have 2 more confu in Gandhi's land right now. One spy total built and only 7 eps on Toku and 0 eps on Stalin. Bismarck is Cautiuos with them so they'll need espionage to flip him to Environ too. Or kill him off.

If I'm seeing right, they only have 46 forests in their primal area, so would need another 40 elsewhere and only have about 16. That's one reason for war. Amazingly, Stalin still doesn't have Feudalism in 1040AD. But Stalin's cities will have to come out of resistance and Moscow is pop15. That's like 10t of resistance, just to get the inner BFC of forests.

They've still got a long haul if I'm seeing this right. Looks like silver for DBs to me. When did you guys (DBs) finish?

Edit: Omg. They've already burned Liberalism on I don't know what. (Edit2: Astronomy! ) They still have ~6t to Biology and then Medicine by hand. No chance they beat DBs.

 

[Gumbolt]

I don't think they will need 40 more forest. 46x2=92. So 8 turn wait. As there is a minimum 1 turn wait this makes it 35 FP more needed. However my testing showed after a certain number of turns the forest regrow at quite a fast rate. You will notice they have already had 4-5 forest regrowths already. They will easily get 2-3 more here.

So the biggest delay to winning is religions and AI.
Yes they need to bribe Germans and Toku into environmentalism.
What about Russia? Is it quicker to attack Russia or use EP to bribe them? Easy to gift a city back here. That is a lot of spies to risk here. I suspect having spies sit in a city is quickest way.

Russian Island city for Germans.
Toku gift city.
Plus a Russian city to give back.

For now capture gold seems best way to reach Ep targets.
If they wanted happiness they could of easily gifted resources here. Between Indians and Germans that is 7G a turn.
Add on pillage, capture gold and tech trade gold and those EP points are not far off.

The main issue is getting the Ap votes. Indians should be easy votes here? As they should be only AP option on the vote.

Hard to know what they have done really. Only 5-6 pages of posts here and a probable bronze laurel for a team's first time out.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Yes, both Gandhi and Asoka will currently vote for nostalgia. COnfu should be planted in Indian's biggest cities to get nostalgia below the 75% threshold. Can't gift a Russian island city to Germans, they won't take it. They'll have to plant spies in a German city and that spy mission will cost a small fortune. The Russians they might as well kill off, along with Darius.

All of that can be faster than teching to Medicine and buying eps, I think.

 

[nocho]

Considering Mylene was going for high score over gold laurel you will indeed have ruffled a few bear furballs Nocho.

Fast finish and high score don't go that well together, in BOTM far superior domination or conquest dates regularly get beaten on score by much later entries as well. The bonus of your 47 (!) turns earlier finish doesn't weigh up in terms of score to 47 turns of growth, even if we partly whipped it away quite hard, although the last turns I did make a point of growing as much as possiible to at least milk the score a bit. For more score maybe you could've considered conquering the orange Indians too.

Anyway, you played a great (and obviously superior) domination game. Did you really conquer it nearly all with just trebs and xbows? Impressive stuff. Did Japan settle off-shore iin your game?

 

[LowtherCastle]

I don't think they will need 40 more forest. 46x2=92. So 8 turn wait. As there is a minimum 1 turn wait this makes it 35 FP more needed.

Right. My math was off...

 

[haphazard1]

Did you really conquer it nearly all with just trebs and xbows? Impressive stuff. Did Japan settle off-shore iin your game?

The vast majority of the fighting was with trebs and crossbows, yes. We did have a couple mounted units later, after conquering Darius and taking his horses, mainly for mobile GG medics. And in the very late stages we had some muskets.

We whipped a galleon out of Osaka after it came out of revolt to check those little ice islands north of Tokugawa, but he did not have any cities there. I was rather surprised by that, as usually the AI will settle just about anything it can reach no matter how terrible the land.

 

[nocho]

We whipped a galleon out of Osaka after it came out of revolt to check those little ice islands north of Tokugawa, but he did not have any cities there. I was rather surprised by that, as usually the AI will settle just about anything it can reach no matter how terrible the land.

More so as that land was indeed pretty terrible, but the sea food rather impressive, about 10 crabs around 4 tundra islands! So in that sense I was also surprised that Toku settled only 1 city there in our game, which unsurprisingly given the food reached size 12. He could've had 4 of those easily.

 

[Gumbolt]

Xteam need to get a move on here. Asoka and Darius both have rifles. If Gandhi gets rifles too it will make it harder when they have to reach Toku. Thankfully Toku will accept the gift city. So maybe they just need to take down Germans. The Germans now have cannons and frigates too. Caste and nationhood would really help here? All those basic forest they are running.

At this stage I would not even completely wipe out Germans. Albeit they do need a lot of mish asap. Bribing Toku and Germans is order of the day. Ap win screams as the easy option here.

 

[Gumbolt]

Xteam seem to be planning another war?? Not sure they have twigged Toku will accept that indian gift city. All Indian cities will accept religion spread. Not sure what they are doing now. Gift the techs. Spread the religions and get their own vote below 75%. They are still short on 2-3 preserves.

Looks like the 2 games left here will run to the final day deadline here.

 

[haphazard1]

Is it possible to shift Toku into environmentalism, due to his favorite civic being in the same category? If my reading of Xteam's thread is correct, that is why they are planning to kill Toku -- they do not think they can get him into environmentalism.

With their tech being where it is (Physics known), they are planning to get airships into their gateway city to scout Toku's lands. That should help them realize what they are facing, including possibly cities off shore north of Japan.

And yes, it looks like they will be playing a lot of turns yet in the time remaining. Good luck to them on finishing in time.

 

[Gumbolt]

Espionage? Spies?

Tried it on a test game. Even with Toku in fav civic you always get option to switch him with a spy.

Toku has castles and grenadiers now. Plus a likely large stack near the Indian border. They may need cannons here for Toku. Their current stack won't be enough. Toku was a tough nut to crack on our game. He will be much harder on this game.

 

[sossos]

@LowtherCastle

Wow, you almost picked out all of our reasoning, plan and mistakes, LC, like a fortuneteller.

We plan to send the missionaries to Asoka, but we are not aware that there is no road from Gandhi's land. What a shame!

Bismark will only accept the gift city after we remove all Russian cities in between, so it cost us 444 EP finally. We gifted Bismark 4 cities so we can have 1-turn revolution.

Gandhi is not friendly to us even with +8 attitude bonus. I don't know why. He should have base attitude of +2, isn't he?