Ronnie1
Deity
Green
[BTS] SGOTM 24 Unusual Suspects
- Thread starter AlanH
- Start date
green for 3,4 turns
UN path seems longer and more complicated (build UN, win vote, win vote for Environmentalism, win game by vote) than Domination with spy civic change.
UN path seems longer and more complicated (build UN, win vote, win vote for Environmentalism, win game by vote) than Domination with spy civic change.
Green from me too. Definitely like bulbing PP.
I played a turn more than intended, 5, but for good enough reason which was capturing St Petersburg. We also captured Thracian and we founded MarbleArch on the marble. Stalin is pretty much gassed out and will give us feudalism for peace. We can however also just press on.
I decide to whip the universities and got going on Oxford in Persepolis. We also started NE in Cahokia, FP in Mound and HE in Moscow.
We bulbed printing press and finished that. We can take liberalism now. However, nobody is able to research it yet, so we could still try for something fancier. In particular, we could self research Scientific Method as we got a GS who can bulb it and we have enough cash for 2 turn full throttle which should about finish it after the bulb. Then we could take communism or physics (both for a free great person too! Maybe the GSpy could even steal some stuff (nationalism) from Bismarck?). Give it a thought and let's discuss.
I also made a second medic with the GG we had, we now just popped yet another one.
Not much time now to comment more. Tomorrow with a fresh look I'll try to formulate a plan for 5 more turns.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Unusual_Suspects_SG024_AD1090_01.CivBeyondSwordSave
I decide to whip the universities and got going on Oxford in Persepolis. We also started NE in Cahokia, FP in Mound and HE in Moscow.
We bulbed printing press and finished that. We can take liberalism now. However, nobody is able to research it yet, so we could still try for something fancier. In particular, we could self research Scientific Method as we got a GS who can bulb it and we have enough cash for 2 turn full throttle which should about finish it after the bulb. Then we could take communism or physics (both for a free great person too! Maybe the GSpy could even steal some stuff (nationalism) from Bismarck?). Give it a thought and let's discuss.
I also made a second medic with the GG we had, we now just popped yet another one.
Not much time now to comment more. Tomorrow with a fresh look I'll try to formulate a plan for 5 more turns.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Unusual_Suspects_SG024_AD1090_01.CivBeyondSwordSave
Spoiler :
Ronnie1
Deity
Nice!
Good job... keep åresing on. I am too busy to be much help, and haven't looked at the save in a long time. Feels like it is going good. We should probably have a tech order plan, and a target end date in place, if I get time I'll maye even add to the discussion. Sorry, lots of work travel and stuff.
With the advent of liberalism I think the time has come to decide on our VC. Kcd had a good post about that a couple of pages back, but it didn't quite get the attention it deserved. It seems we're all rather busy (me included) to really focus on the grand plan... Well, I guess that traditionally among all our team's virtues, focus never has stood out too much. 
Other things about communism that appeal to me are the GSpy and the Kremlin, which would be great for whipping our cuir army. The GSpy could be used to infiltrate Bismarck and steal nationalism. He also holds other techs over us that we may not need but that we can get that way. Also we can use the EP for city revolts upon attacking. Hence I'm leaning to libbing communism. Then we can also just ignore the foregin palace.
A plan could be to tech sci meth now with GS bulb, lib communism and follow up with gunpowder-chem while getting GSpy and spy (or spies) in place for stealing nationalism. Meanwhile build Kremlin. Once we hav nationalism, tech MT, then follow suit with biology and medicine while getting an army to conquer Bismarck, one of the Indians and Toku. The last Indian will be EPd into environmentalism eventually. With communism we can also start filling up islands to get land for domination. Note vassals are off so the 64% land should be all ours. EDIT: or we leave Bismarck and conquer the 3 Asians. The left over EPs on Bismarck should be sufficient for the civic switch to environmentalism.
If we don't go UN, we can also just use next GP (born in 4 turns) for a GA (we haven't had one yet!) even if it's a GE. That'll allow us to switch to state property and free religion without anarchy.
What do you think? I think it all fits more or less nicely. Maybe we should have thought of this 1000 years earlier, but at least it's some sort of plan.
On another note, we can get music now from Gandhi for Paper (or optics) and currency. We obviously would need music for MT, I also think building culture will help (like for the city on Long Island and newly conquered ones). So I'd propose to take that trade.
So indeed, UN or domination? I think kcd makes a good point here about the hassle and time consumption involved with the UN. Also in real time probably domination is more straight forward. So maybe we should just go that way. The techs we need are sci meth, gunpowder, chem, biology and medicine for the game conditions to be fulfilled. The latter two are expensive techs that we probably can't lib as we'd need to self-tech the former three first. Then for domination of course cuirs with MT come to mind, which would involve teching nationalism, music and MT. If we go the domination route, I think communism would be great to keep our finances in check.
Other things about communism that appeal to me are the GSpy and the Kremlin, which would be great for whipping our cuir army. The GSpy could be used to infiltrate Bismarck and steal nationalism. He also holds other techs over us that we may not need but that we can get that way. Also we can use the EP for city revolts upon attacking. Hence I'm leaning to libbing communism. Then we can also just ignore the foregin palace.
A plan could be to tech sci meth now with GS bulb, lib communism and follow up with gunpowder-chem while getting GSpy and spy (or spies) in place for stealing nationalism. Meanwhile build Kremlin. Once we hav nationalism, tech MT, then follow suit with biology and medicine while getting an army to conquer Bismarck, one of the Indians and Toku. The last Indian will be EPd into environmentalism eventually. With communism we can also start filling up islands to get land for domination. Note vassals are off so the 64% land should be all ours. EDIT: or we leave Bismarck and conquer the 3 Asians. The left over EPs on Bismarck should be sufficient for the civic switch to environmentalism.
If we don't go UN, we can also just use next GP (born in 4 turns) for a GA (we haven't had one yet!) even if it's a GE. That'll allow us to switch to state property and free religion without anarchy.
What do you think? I think it all fits more or less nicely. Maybe we should have thought of this 1000 years earlier, but at least it's some sort of plan.
On another note, we can get music now from Gandhi for Paper (or optics) and currency. We obviously would need music for MT, I also think building culture will help (like for the city on Long Island and newly conquered ones). So I'd propose to take that trade.
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Ronnie1
Deity
Still haven't seen the newest save, busy also, but it sounds like we made great progress.
Domination with civic switching through EP does sound pretty straight forward.
We need workers, those preserves are going to take a bit of time.
Communism makes great sense if we want to conquer foreign dirt!
We need galleons if we are going over seas in numbers.
I won't really get a chance to look at the save until Sat. or Sun.
Domination with civic switching through EP does sound pretty straight forward.
We need workers, those preserves are going to take a bit of time.
Communism makes great sense if we want to conquer foreign dirt!
We need galleons if we are going over seas in numbers.
I won't really get a chance to look at the save until Sat. or Sun.
When I look at the progress page, I feel like there are two teams going the Dom route, and appear to be ahead in turns. So the strategic question is whether we try to beat them at their own game, starting in the hole, or we are aiming for Bronze, or we need to think outside the box. Perhaps kill everybody but a friend and an enemy, taking the AP as booty, putting the last two in Free Religion with spies, and running unopposed for an AP win
At this stage, I think we should be considering Bronze as ours to lose, or to improve upon. Can we Dom faster than UN? ProbBly. Can we Dom faster than Dancing Bears or etc... questionable. So please think about what might be at stake, what we might gain, what we might lose, and the probabilities of each.
But whatever we decide, its imperative we have a plan for how many worker turns needed for the fp's and how to sync that with VC- We should not really go much further on that until we have a working plan (and yes, plans can change faced with contact with the enemies) A bad plan for ending this is far better than no plan. Nocho's latest post is a great start - and no, I am not implying it is a bad plan. Far from it, it is the seed for a plan, which is better than just reacting to what we see. But as always, I am Green like a Martian, since I do not know when/if I will be available to do more than comment from the sidelines.
TTYL
At this stage, I think we should be considering Bronze as ours to lose, or to improve upon. Can we Dom faster than UN? ProbBly. Can we Dom faster than Dancing Bears or etc... questionable. So please think about what might be at stake, what we might gain, what we might lose, and the probabilities of each.
But whatever we decide, its imperative we have a plan for how many worker turns needed for the fp's and how to sync that with VC- We should not really go much further on that until we have a working plan (and yes, plans can change faced with contact with the enemies) A bad plan for ending this is far better than no plan. Nocho's latest post is a great start - and no, I am not implying it is a bad plan. Far from it, it is the seed for a plan, which is better than just reacting to what we see. But as always, I am Green like a Martian, since I do not know when/if I will be available to do more than comment from the sidelines.
TTYL
I'm quite sure Turbo Ants and team Fippy will be out of reach, judging by the graphs the mysterious nostalgia team also seems to be doing rather well. So probably our objective should be dodging the spoons at the expense of Xteam. 
More seriously though, I wouldn't look too much at the graphs and just try to think of a plan that gets us home soonest. We can't influence what other teams do, nor can I see what info we can get from the graphs that may alter our own plans.
The main question right now to me is whether or not we discard the UN as a VC. If we would go the UN route, I'd probably lib physics now. Note that after that the UN is only 3 techs away (electricity, radio, mass media). They are expensive, but partly bulbable probably. If we do get the GE, UN shouldn't take all that long to build. It may however be hard to get enough votes without growing by force.
The force requirement seems to apply too to the AP-based win as suggested by kcd. Rahter obviously to domination too. So more force seems key in any case. That implies MT under all circumstances.
Given we can steal nationalism from Bismarck if we use the GSpy from communism, we'd only need to self tech MT. Gunpowder is needed anyway towards biology, music we can get in trade. So in 3 turns we finish SciMeth, the 4th turn we finish lib and take communism. If we can get boats in place (which we can), GSpy could infiltrate around T7 or T8 from now. If we get some normal spies out asap, by T8 they should be able to have been in place for some turns to get stationary bonus, although we don't necesarilly need to wait for full bonus, I think. So around T8-T9 we steal nationalism and start MT. From T5 we can research gunpowder which should be finished by then. So we can probably build cuirs within 11 or 12 turns from now. Note that in my plan from the previous post we would be in a Golden Age from T4 with better civics (State Poperty and Free Religion), so I certainly think all this should be feasible. After MT we only need to finish chem-bio-medicine. Unfortunately physics will be in the way of GS-bulbs for those, but if we get a lot of them, we can just bulb physics out of the way and get a free GS in return.
So while we wait for MT we should prepare the spies, build boats and settlers for overseas land grab. Kremlin too. From MT just go crazy on cuirs and conquer the Indias and Japan. With focussed play, I would say it could all be done in about 35-40 turns for a win around 1500AD. Maybe a shortcut AP win presents itself meanwhile. I don't doubt though we'll get handily beaten by some 30 turns.
In any case, I'd like to hear more opinions before committing to anything.
More seriously though, I wouldn't look too much at the graphs and just try to think of a plan that gets us home soonest. We can't influence what other teams do, nor can I see what info we can get from the graphs that may alter our own plans.The main question right now to me is whether or not we discard the UN as a VC. If we would go the UN route, I'd probably lib physics now. Note that after that the UN is only 3 techs away (electricity, radio, mass media). They are expensive, but partly bulbable probably. If we do get the GE, UN shouldn't take all that long to build. It may however be hard to get enough votes without growing by force.
The force requirement seems to apply too to the AP-based win as suggested by kcd. Rahter obviously to domination too. So more force seems key in any case. That implies MT under all circumstances.
Given we can steal nationalism from Bismarck if we use the GSpy from communism, we'd only need to self tech MT. Gunpowder is needed anyway towards biology, music we can get in trade. So in 3 turns we finish SciMeth, the 4th turn we finish lib and take communism. If we can get boats in place (which we can), GSpy could infiltrate around T7 or T8 from now. If we get some normal spies out asap, by T8 they should be able to have been in place for some turns to get stationary bonus, although we don't necesarilly need to wait for full bonus, I think. So around T8-T9 we steal nationalism and start MT. From T5 we can research gunpowder which should be finished by then. So we can probably build cuirs within 11 or 12 turns from now. Note that in my plan from the previous post we would be in a Golden Age from T4 with better civics (State Poperty and Free Religion), so I certainly think all this should be feasible. After MT we only need to finish chem-bio-medicine. Unfortunately physics will be in the way of GS-bulbs for those, but if we get a lot of them, we can just bulb physics out of the way and get a free GS in return.
So while we wait for MT we should prepare the spies, build boats and settlers for overseas land grab. Kremlin too. From MT just go crazy on cuirs and conquer the Indias and Japan. With focussed play, I would say it could all be done in about 35-40 turns for a win around 1500AD. Maybe a shortcut AP win presents itself meanwhile. I don't doubt though we'll get handily beaten by some 30 turns.
In any case, I'd like to hear more opinions before committing to anything.
I agree that we will need MT and further conquest, so I cant think of anything better than your tech plan. State Property is going to help us so much regardless of what else we do, so I think Communism is a great option.
Am surprised no one else can research Lib yet, there were several AI just needing Edu at the end of my set....go figure but happy days!
I think we lost when we missed out on Stonehenge by a turn....and/or missing the GE for early Engineering, but we have played a reasonable game.
Am surprised no one else can research Lib yet, there were several AI just needing Edu at the end of my set....go figure but happy days!
I think we lost when we missed out on Stonehenge by a turn....and/or missing the GE for early Engineering, but we have played a reasonable game.
Ronnie1
Deity
We definitely need to war some more as Neil said, so the MT path you propose is the logical choice also imo. I have always loved State Property as well, a very simple route. Winning by about T200 seems doable, especially if we can roll through a couple golden ages!
It seems we more or less agree on proceedings, so here goes a PPP.
Take Music + WM + 40g from Gandhi for Paper and Currency. Asoka already has paper anyway, so let's sit on Optics. Less pesky caravels later.
Tech: research SciMeth + bulb, finish Liberalism and take Communism. Continue gunpowder.
With the next Great Person from PovP launch a GA, whatever we get. Switch to State Property and Free Religion inmediately. I would also take caste for the duration of the GA and go back to slavery before the end of it (which will be well after my set). With caste our few workshops will get an extra hammer and we might squeeze out some more GPP. Also border pops with artists in new and conquered cities with artist will be good. Will try to whip anything urgent (spies and settlers) before.
Cahokia - NE
PovP - Worker (we'll need more for the forest preserves), settler
Mound - Unqueue FP -> worker
Fishy - Obervatory (whip now), worker
Stoned - Treb (whip), worker
Eye - Galleon, wealth, Kremlin (in GA it nearly doubles hammers, best city for it imo)
Phant - settler
Pork Chop - Treb (whip next turn), settler
Clish - Treb (whip), worker
WG - Forge, units (MP)
Persepolis - Oxford
Pasargadae - switch to spy (whip), treb
Ecbatana - CH (whip), WB for MarbleArch
Gordium - switch to spy (whip), treb
Susa - cat
Chaco - library (whip when possible), WB
Moscow - HE
Rostov - culture, wealth
MarbleArch - culture, LH
Thracian - culture, granary
St Pete - culture
War: keep on pummeling the Russians, I would like to conquer at least Yaroslavl and Novgorod on my set.
Send GSpy and spies towards Dusseldorf.
Settling, I would like to settle the eastern Isthmus of Asia, north of WorkerGraveyard/Phantland. Zapotec looks interesting to conquer. Also western part of Long Island. Will try to get some units from somewhere for protection.
With infiltration of Bismarck coming soon, will dedicate EPs to Indians to gather some info about their demographics.
Workers: key improvements in new cities, otherwise forest preserves.
Barb cities:
Is Chinook on Long Island a keeper?
Do we keep Chehalis if/when it flips? With SP won't drain much money really, otherwise I'd certainly raze it. It gives TRs and could work the dyes while WG whips boats or units.
Great General: maybe a strong 2-move elephant that can be upgraded to cuir later? Or settle in Moscow?
Take Music + WM + 40g from Gandhi for Paper and Currency. Asoka already has paper anyway, so let's sit on Optics. Less pesky caravels later.
Tech: research SciMeth + bulb, finish Liberalism and take Communism. Continue gunpowder.
With the next Great Person from PovP launch a GA, whatever we get. Switch to State Property and Free Religion inmediately. I would also take caste for the duration of the GA and go back to slavery before the end of it (which will be well after my set). With caste our few workshops will get an extra hammer and we might squeeze out some more GPP. Also border pops with artists in new and conquered cities with artist will be good. Will try to whip anything urgent (spies and settlers) before.
Cahokia - NE
PovP - Worker (we'll need more for the forest preserves), settler
Mound - Unqueue FP -> worker
Fishy - Obervatory (whip now), worker
Stoned - Treb (whip), worker
Eye - Galleon, wealth, Kremlin (in GA it nearly doubles hammers, best city for it imo)
Phant - settler
Pork Chop - Treb (whip next turn), settler
Clish - Treb (whip), worker
WG - Forge, units (MP)
Persepolis - Oxford
Pasargadae - switch to spy (whip), treb
Ecbatana - CH (whip), WB for MarbleArch
Gordium - switch to spy (whip), treb
Susa - cat
Chaco - library (whip when possible), WB
Moscow - HE
Rostov - culture, wealth
MarbleArch - culture, LH
Thracian - culture, granary
St Pete - culture
War: keep on pummeling the Russians, I would like to conquer at least Yaroslavl and Novgorod on my set.
Send GSpy and spies towards Dusseldorf.
Settling, I would like to settle the eastern Isthmus of Asia, north of WorkerGraveyard/Phantland. Zapotec looks interesting to conquer. Also western part of Long Island. Will try to get some units from somewhere for protection.
With infiltration of Bismarck coming soon, will dedicate EPs to Indians to gather some info about their demographics.
Workers: key improvements in new cities, otherwise forest preserves.
Barb cities:
Is Chinook on Long Island a keeper?
Do we keep Chehalis if/when it flips? With SP won't drain much money really, otherwise I'd certainly raze it. It gives TRs and could work the dyes while WG whips boats or units.
Great General: maybe a strong 2-move elephant that can be upgraded to cuir later? Or settle in Moscow?
Good analysis... we need to kill stuff fast in any case. If a way to steal a victory faster than dom is looking available, we'll adjust as we go along. Greem on the PPP... I still have not looked at the save, so the details are beyond my ability to comment/suggest betterments.
Ronnie1
Deity
Had a chance to look at the save this morning! In short, green!
Kill Russia, build transports and troops for India, and set up redundancy for tech stealing in case of failures.
Kill Russia, build transports and troops for India, and set up redundancy for tech stealing in case of failures.
I've played on until 1160AD, all pretty much according to plan.
We libbed communism and are now in a GA with 6 turns left. Russia has been removed from our continent and is left with 2 cities, one of which he'll offer for peace. But I just parked some trebs next to it. He might also give feudalism, which he was willing to give earlier, but won't give both (city+feud), which I tried. The war weariness starts to be noteable, although is still manageable.
I settled a city up north, there's a second settler on a boat there, which could settle somewhat west from it, south of Zapotec. We have a galley near Phant Island with 2 archers intended to be shipped north, but they need the gallleon to drop the settler first. There's also a settler ready to settle the western part of Long Island next turn.
NE is done, HE can be next turn. Oxford also done. Built some workers who started on forest preserves, Stalin also just gave us some (4). Popped some borders building culture.
Two spies planted in Dusseldorf, the GSpy is on a boat and could infiltrate Bismarck next turn.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Unusual_Suspects_SG024_AD1160_01.CivBeyondSwordSave
If nobody else is available wouldn't mind to play some more turns during the week.
We libbed communism and are now in a GA with 6 turns left. Russia has been removed from our continent and is left with 2 cities, one of which he'll offer for peace. But I just parked some trebs next to it. He might also give feudalism, which he was willing to give earlier, but won't give both (city+feud), which I tried. The war weariness starts to be noteable, although is still manageable.
I settled a city up north, there's a second settler on a boat there, which could settle somewhat west from it, south of Zapotec. We have a galley near Phant Island with 2 archers intended to be shipped north, but they need the gallleon to drop the settler first. There's also a settler ready to settle the western part of Long Island next turn.
NE is done, HE can be next turn. Oxford also done. Built some workers who started on forest preserves, Stalin also just gave us some (4). Popped some borders building culture.
Two spies planted in Dusseldorf, the GSpy is on a boat and could infiltrate Bismarck next turn.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/download.php?file=Unusual_Suspects_SG024_AD1160_01.CivBeyondSwordSave
If nobody else is available wouldn't mind to play some more turns during the week.
