SGOTM 9 - Smurkz

Great test. :thumbsup:
Really weird about Recycling though. :hmm:

I'll post my goals in a few hours, and start playing tonight. Might not finish all 10 turns, but with no fighting things should run fairly smooth.
 
zyxy said:
Nice test CB.
I don't understand why the Elevator doesn't give recycling. A bug? But it's good to know for sure it will give every tech needed for space race.
Its because of the order the techs are in in the tech list in the game.. recycling occurs before a tech it requires... totally there are 2 techs that has this property.. recycling and music theory.

It is actually possible to use this property to make great lib give no techs after education by switching around the order of techs in a scenario...
 
Gee, I sure hope you haven't done that in this game. :eek:
But I think you would have told us... right? ;)

Long Term Goals
  • Release Gandhi by gifting Indianaposmurkz in 750 AD.
  • Let Gandhi ride the tech elevator some time in the MT, by letting him take Grad and by gifting someone up (probably Ottos).
  • 4-turn research at least until Gandhi is lifted to the MT.
  • Let Gandhi have our southern core, proably via proxy.
  • Hold the northern core and continue research after Gandhi gets the lower parts of the continent.
  • (Possibly) Take out/cripple Spain when we have no more need for her.
Mid Term Goals
  • Develop the northern core with emphasis on research capacity and income.
  • Research at 4-turns per tech, hopefully straight for Steam Power to get rails, then probably Replacable Parts for increased worker speed.
  • Develop the southern core for India with emphasis on production.
  • Fill Tadpole with scientist towns (?).
Short Term Goals
  • Research: Magnetism (1) -> Banking (4) -> Metallurgy (4) -> Start on Theory of Gravity (1).
  • Warfare: Take Bursa, peace with Osman.
  • Workers: Prioritize Northern core, and Sages in particular.
  • Production:
    • Rush Uni in Sages (200 gp) then go on towards Newton (with prebuild).
    • Build Sistine in Missi.
    • Build Unis, banks, temples and cathedrals in northern core.
    • Build workers where possible.
  • Tadpole: Build workers and settlers.
 
Looks good. Please keep in mind that we will need libs/uni's down south as well, to keep up research throughout the IA.
 
Yes sounds good.

Keep an eye out for the Mongols/Ottomans that they don't eliminate each other until they are in proper prisons. You should probably start sending settlers for the prison colonies as well.
 
>>The Save!<<

550 AD (0):
Move the settler in Entremont to the site 3SE, to get access to the FPs.
Wait to hit Bursa until the horse has healed.

MMing looks great, thanks zyxy! :thumbsup:
New Heim switches to market, Istanbul to worker, most towns on Tadpole to settlers, HotB berserk->temple.

Rush Uni in Sages for 200 gp.

Notice that Atlanta is before Zentral and Cabana in the list, so the harbor will finish first, bringing the luxes in. Thus I can skip the taxmen.

IBT: Lots of Spanish ships moving. :eek:
America and Celts sign peace.
We learn Magnetism, start Banking.

Atlanta harbor->settler
Victoria aque->market
Sages Uni->Sun Tzu (prebuild for Newton)
Stein worker->worker

560 AD (1):
Golden Smurkz founded near Lugdunum.
Move troops on Tadpole to strategic locations.

IBT: HotB temple->cathedral (will switch to bank)
Olive market->harbor
Smuez worker->worker.

570 AD (2):
Forgot about Spain! :blush:
Trade Mono for 21 gpt, 130 gp and WM.
Trade Theo for 42 gpt, 5 gp.
Trade Edu for Furs. Could trade Edu + 4 luxes for Furs and Gems, but we don't really need that at this point.

Advance on Bursa.
Lots of MMing, not much else.

IBT: Bursa spits out an archer who dies flawlessly on the spear, who promotes to vet.
San Ansmurkzio uni->courthouse (should be bank)
Nan harbor->aqueduct
Ismurkz uni->court (bank)
River uni->court (bank)
Spicy lib->aqueduct
Atroid court->lib
Stein worker->worker

580 AD (3):
Worker moves and MMing. Join workers to Sages.
Science to 30% (!), Banking in 2.

I'm a bit worried over the fate of America. Lots of Spanish ships moving in that direction.

IBT: Spain and America sign peace treaty. Whew!
Carthage court->aqueduct

590 AD (4):
Workers and MMing.

IBT: All the Spanish galleys turn back north.
We learn Banking, go on Theory of Gravity.

Cabana uni->bank
Missi Sisting->uni
Stein worker->worker

600 AD (5):
Capture Bursa, one resistor.

Science to 50%.

Trade Banking to Isa for Gems, 11 gpt, 30 gp and WM.
Didn't help for happiness, seems there is a hard limit of 8 luxes. :(

Switch a bunch of towns to banks.

IBT: Theveste (Carthage) emits a settler, probably headed for where Bursa's borders expanded before.

Istanbul worker->worker
Olive harbor->uni

610 AD (6):
Peace with Osman.
RoP with America.

IBT: Stein worker->worker

620 AD (7):
Unload two units on America to block hostile landings.

IBT: Entremont worker->worker
Indiana aque->market
Kalmurkz lib->aque
Albu market->uni
Capulco harbor->market
Buffalo worker->worker

630 AD (8):
Science to 40%.

IBT: We learn ToG, go for Metallurgy.

Grad uni->bank
Deer lib->market
Stein worker->worker

640 AD (9):
Science to 50%.

IBT: Mongol galley kill pesky barbie galley, thanks a lot!

Lugdunum worker->worker
Ari aque->uni
Smuez worker->worker

650 AD (10):
Move workers and caravels. Do some MMing.
Science to 40% with some scientists, they're not really needed but just to be on the safe side and see a Metallurgy (3) in the box. :)


Handoff thoughts:
  • I didn't do very much with our navy, perhaps I could have upgraded a few more units. I've set a few caravels on goto for various harbors for upgrading. But I don't think we'll have any more major use for our navy until we have transports in any case.
  • The units on Tadpole could be given better placement. I played a bit too much in a hurry to really consider what to do with them.
  • I didn't do anything for the prison islands as I didn't have any opportunities to get settlers. If we want to protect Mongols and Ottomans from each other, we could rush two settlers somewhere on Tadpole and found two prisons on islands. The technique to block landings is nice, like I did with America.
  • Most builds back home are more or less handling themselves. I checked the F1 listing every turn and checked in on most towns of interest, but I think I only actually MMed on average 3-4 towns per turn.
  • The worker stacks should be correct (even the one with a total of 7 WT worth on the jungle outside Atroid, they were 5 the two first turns :p). I've been applying many of CF's ideas to good effect, in particular splitting workers in smaller groups to road several jungle tiles, then bring them together to clear one jungle at a time. Works like a charm! :thumbsup:
  • Oh, and with the larger towns and the new unis (and with the help from Spain) we can now almost (-10 gpt) sustain research at 80% meaning >800 bpt, i.e. Steam Power in 4! :eek: :D
 
Sounds like we're really going into builder mode. (Especially since all details of the assault on Bursa were abbreviated. :p )

zyxy@ I'm glad you kept pushing us to delay the GA. You and Niklas took the helm at the perfect time to get us rolling with nearly 800bpt and now it seems like we can do the rest of the IA at 4-turns without a GA.

We should be pretty secure until Spain gets uppity (and she will). A good way to keep her honest is to never let her troops near an empty town. I haven't looked at the save but I'm sure that's what Nikas means by strategic positions.

What are the next wonders to watch out for to prevent accidentally triggering the GA?

When should contact be traded? I'd hate to find out by accident that India has gained three techs by meeting Spain first somehow.
 
ControlFreak said:
Sounds like we're really going into builder mode. (Especially since all details of the assault on Bursa were abbreviated. :p )
We are. I played my turns in a single session (no reloads, yay!), taking perhaps 2 hours total, including the logging (though the added game time in the save is surely much higher, I had the game running while doing other stuff as well).

The short note regarding Bursa could also have something to do with the fact that I almost botched it. :blush:
I forgot to move the mace who were supposed to go with the rest, so when I reached Bursa I suddenly had only the two elite horses, a cat and a spear. The cat did nothing of use, and on the first turn one horse won flawlessly and the other died flawlessly. I decided to chance it on the turn after, and the remaining horse won at 1/5, capturing.

ControlFreak said:
zyxy@ I'm glad you kept pushing us to delay the GA. You and Niklas took the helm at the perfect time to get us rolling with nearly 800bpt and now it seems like we can do the rest of the IA at 4-turns without a GA.
I agree that delaying the GA was a good decision. And thanks for the praise, but really I did nothing special, just kept building what I was supposed to build. The strength is in our strategy, not in its implementation. These turns were almost boringly void of interesting choices to make... ;)

ControlFreak said:
We should be pretty secure until Spain gets uppity (and she will). A good way to keep her honest is to never let her troops near an empty town. I haven't looked at the save but I'm sure that's what Nikas means by strategic positions.
Or it could mean that I didn't have a clue where to put them, and just put them where I thought they would have the best chance at getting to different places fast. I did place a few units in elevated positions though, for the view. In hindsight, we should probably spread the units a bit, in particular Broadway could use some better protection. And the archer there should be upgraded.

ControlFreak said:
What are the next wonders to watch out for to prevent accidentally triggering the GA?
Suffrage. I kept Zentral's wonder prebuild rolling in anticipation of it, but clearly we won't be able to build it thus early (and perhaps we want to put it in soon-to-be-India?). Other upcoming wonders are ToE which we want to wait with, and Hoover Dam which should go down south as well. If we manage to get access to Bach, Smith or Shakespeare I guess all those are beneficial to India too. So I see no real use for the prebuild in Zentral, cut our losses and go for a bank?

ControlFreak said:
When should contact be traded? I'd hate to find out by accident that India has gained three techs by meeting Spain first somehow.
Good point. We could gift all contacts right away, are there any drawbacks of doing so?

Oh, and I almost forgot: Ro(o)ster!
  • CommandoBob - UP!
  • ControlFreak - On Deck!
  • WarDance
  • zyxy
  • Niklas - Just Played
  • Methos - ghosting

EDIT: I edited my turn log to add some better hand-off thoughts at the end, and give it some better formatting.
 
I've been looking at the graphs again, trying to construe meaningful info from them. One thing that strikes me (which may be my imagination) is that during this my last turnset, our territory graph gets only a moderate increase compared to previous sets, but the score graph makes a very distinct upward turn. This has natural causes, with the aquisition of three new luxuries that makes lots of citizens give more score than before.

What I find interesting though is that I don't see a similar upwards turn for any of the other teams near the same timeframe, except klarius where it coincides with a large increase in territory. Does this mean that
  • The others don't have Magnetism thus early (not likely), or
  • The others, despite Magnetism, don't have access to the available luxuries, or
  • The others don't have as many markets as we do to get the effect, or
  • The others don't have as large towns as we do to get the effect.
No way of knowing of course, but regardless of what the answer is (probably different for different teams too), I believe it speaks well for us. Hmm, maybe I should plug some values into my per-turn-score calculator to get the per-turn scores of the other teams, then compare that to their territory... Yeah, I know I'm making too much of this! :p
 
Niklas said:
I've been looking at the graphs again, trying to construe meaningful info from them. One thing that strikes me (which may be my imagination) is that during this my last turnset, our territory graph gets only a moderate increase compared to previous sets, but the score graph makes a very distinct upward turn. This has natural causes, with the aquisition of three new luxuries that makes lots of citizens give more score than before.

What I find interesting though is that I don't see a similar upwards turn for any of the other teams near the same timeframe, except klarius where it coincides with a large increase in territory. Does this mean that
  • The others don't have Magnetism thus early (not likely), or
  • The others, despite Magnetism, don't have access to the available luxuries, or
  • The others don't have as many markets as we do to get the effect, or
  • The others don't have as large towns as we do to get the effect.
No way of knowing of course, but regardless of what the answer is (probably different for different teams too), I believe it speaks well for us. Hmm, maybe I should plug some values into my per-turn-score calculator to get the per-turn scores of the other teams, then compare that to their territory... Yeah, I know I'm making too much of this! :p

Assuming the up-turn isn't in your head (which I think it is :p ) could it be from American specialists? I haven't been studying the metagame.

As far as our game goes, it looks like we've gotten a lot of work done with the workers. :goodjob: I still think we need more with Steam Power coming in 7-11 turns. The workers should all work together building a rail system from North to South. Once that's done, then we can start prioritizing cities, probably starting with Sages and rail the whole city. These are big projects and we can get them done very quickly if every worker is dedicated to the same task.

More later, I've got to run to a meeting.
 
Excellent. You ended with about as much cash in treasury as what I started with :D. Really impressive.

Here's my shopping list :D for the next set:
  • In three turns we'll advance to the next Age. At this point, we gift the Ottomans up (required techs only) so that they get their free tech. There are two cases:
    • They get Steam Power. We research Medicine. Possibly Medicine + contacts+WM will buy Steam. Otherwise, research Economics as well, and buy Steam for Medicine + Economics. I don't think you need the contacts in this case, but you can hold them back in any case.
    • They do not get Steam Power. Then we research Steam Power. If Ottomans got Medicine, then we can trade them Steam for it. If they got Nationalism, then I don't care much for the tech.
    Btw, in all cases Ottomans will have Nationalism or get it in 40 turns probably.
    In all cases, after Steam Power I would head first for Corporation (Factories, Stock Exchange, Wall St), and then for Repl Parts (better military to keep India at bay, no limits on irrigation, and faster workers). Longer term: Mass Production (Docks, location of Oil). The first few techs on this road are 3200 beakers or less, so easily in reach of 4 turn research. The first tech to be more expensive is Electricity, but still no problem. Refining is probably the first hurdle we'll have to take.
  • Indianaposmurkz will go to India in 10 turns. I would not let India take another city in this period - not that she will try very soon, by CF's analysis. The gifting of Indianaposmurkz has two effects:
    • We'll want some troops in the area. Six cats, half a dozen MDI and some horses will be enough for now, India cannot build anything but archers and spears, and not very fast. We don't really need to train more troops, as they can come from Tadpole and the area around Bursa. Preferably take elites ;). The ships being on goto isn't the greatest idea IMO, it means CB will have to hunt them down for transport duty :).
    • India does not have currency yet, so the market would be destroyed and hence is rather useless. Unfortunately we cannot build a granary, so a military unit is the best choice. India has Construction, so the aqueduct will stay. We could of course still try to grow the town as much as possible.
    I don't know what the effect is on our rep.
  • The build in Zentral is probably best switched to Bank. After that it can do a new prebuild, for a factory. Please remember to switch Sages to Newton's.
  • Railroads: It probably doesn't matter much whether we rail Sages first - it will have at most 7 turns to go on Newton's once we get Steam. On the main continent, the top priority should be to rail towns that are small (rail on irrigation) or behind with improvements (rail on mines). We have quite a few towns struggling with aqueducts in the second ring around the palace, these would be good candidates - and it is these towns where we can make the most gain in increasing the science rate. Preferably rail in such a way that we get a transport network as well. On Tadpole, the transport network is more important than tile improvement. Oh, and try to keep workers working in large stacks for now, so that they quickly are available for new tasks once Steam comes in.
  • I don't see a problem with selling contacts, except that it will potentially increase India's research speed. If needed we can use the contacts to trade for Ottoman free tech in 7 or 11 turns. Otherwise, our best choice is to sell them to Spain first. She'll currently give all she has (82 gold + WM + 3 gpt) for 3 or 4 contacts, but not for 2. We could wait a few turns to see if the offer improves. After selling to Spain, sell/gift them to all others as well, so that no trade value remains for anyone. It doesn't look like any of them has anything to give for it. Please make sure that all the civs India knows are more advanced than India, so that she cannot trade her way up. In the present situation, that means gift the Celts construction.
  • Let's try not to go too easy on deals with Spain. We don't want them to get too close to the IA. It's good to know that the 9th lux doesn't help us. No need to trade for more than 1 lux with the Spanish then.
  • Defenses on Tadpole: I prefer to have them on roads as much as possible. A few lookouts on mountain tops are OK, better use useless spears and archers for that rather than useful MDI and horses. Also, we still have 2 scouts doing nothing. They only cost 1 gpt each, but could at least do something useful or be retired.
 
Technology
I put together a spreadsheet of techs, their cost in CAII, their age, if they are required and if we can currently research it in 4 turns at 70, 80 or 100 %SCI.

For the industrial age, required techs, it looks like there are six techs we can't currently do. They are, with the number of bpt we need to add:
Refining (47)
Atomic Theory (314)
Combustion (47)
Flight (180)
Electronics (180)
Radio (314)

I'm not sure the rounding formula for calculating library contributions but if it's round-down then we stand to gain ~37bpt by building librarys in >1bpt towns (including Entremont!). Building the Unis in the same towns would gain ~258bpt for a total of 295bpt. So we can get everything but Atomic Theory and Radio once the unis are built. We would need 19 more scientists than currently exists in America which should be no problem. So I think we want to delay the GA until the modern era, unless we have difficulty running at 100% Science for ~24 turns (6 techs).

Wonders
Sages can now build Newtons and should be switched. Zentral is way past a bank and will need to finish a wonder if we don't want it to waste >100s. With Sun's due to expire soon, I think it needs to be put on Leos until we research Economics or Music Theory. Economics would be preferred since we'd rather have Bach's down in the south. That gives us 11 turns to get Economics IF we use the big picture to switch Zentral to Smiths (should happen on my turn).

Without knowing what Spain will research and knowing that Spain will build any wonder from scratch faster than we can, we either need to have a constant prebuild in the south, research Music Theory on our own, or forget about giving Bach's to India.

The other option is to have a strike force prepared to decimate Madrid if it tries to steal OUR wonders. This is probably the prefered method because it will also allow us to delay building Universal Suffrage and TOE. The former because it will trigger our GA and the latter to hopefully grab some Modern Age Techs with it. Ideally we would grab Miniaturization and Space Flight with it as they are the most expensive required techs. India should then be allowed to take the Great Library so they can start building Apollo.

(BTW, the Spaceship screen indicates that Robotics is not a required tech for the Spaceship. Are you sure it's required?)

Improvements
It seems like Niklas' build list is:
Library, Harbor if possible, Aquaduct if necessary, Courthouse if helpful, market, university, temple, Cathedral. I like this order (with occational swaps as appropriate).

I think Spicy Smurkz could join Steinsmurkz in worker production rather than building it's aquaduct right now. Switch it to a harbor due in 1 to prevent wasting shields, then start the worker after the harbor finishes. If you irrigate one of Stein's tiles (1 North of the Lake is easy), it can make 5fpt with only one wheat. Spicy would use the other wheat and the oyster for 6fpt and alternate the osyter with a mine. They could both make workers every other turn.

We have the equivalent of about 94 workers (slaves=.5 workers). That sounds like a lot until we say that we are working 263 unrailed tiles. That equates to a minimum of 1578 worker turns. In reality with the hills and mountains that we will need to use, its probably closer to 2000-2500 worker turns. so it would take us twenty turns to railroad. The more workers the better.

Kalmurkz might be better off supplying a worker and then a settler since the aquaduct won't have enough space to fit 12 citizens. Don't forget there's a chop coming in 4 so building the settler right off the bat would waste 5s of the chop unless you can speed the chop by a turn or two.

Mo needs a harbor rather than a galleon.

Other MM
According to CAII, we're 8bpt over the exact amount need to finish Metallurgy in 3. There are a lot of scientists hired that could be switched to taxmen, or into food for growth but do the city MM first incase you need to switch from coast to mine (like in Tromsmurkz).

Ismurkz could get the bank in 3 instead of 4. Cabana could get it in 10 instaed of 13. (All of these sacrifice some science so be careful not to mess up the 3 turns left on Metalurgy.)

I'm sure there's others, but overall things look good. I like how many towns are at 10spt (no MM needed).

Dealing with the other AI
The only critical issues with the AI that I can see now are:
  • Mongols or Ottomans need to be moved to their own padded wall room before they eliminate each other.
  • Carthage has a settler pair walking through our land. I'm sure he'll withdraw if asked. If he makes it halfway, then asking him to leave will teleport him to the Bursa area that's vacant which would be bad but not a big deal. Just don't let it walk into an undefended core town because that would set us back the cost of replacing all the infrastructure.
None of the other AI seem to have pressing issues. We can leave Gergovia there as long as we want but it will allow them to repopulate some of the territory.
Carthage has an Atoll town that needs to be ours soon so that we can "give" it to India but not a pressing issue.
Spain has connected their saltpeter so there's no point trying resource denial against them. They are currently 74gpt of our economy so I hope they can sustain that.

OK I've been posting this for a long while. Time to submit.

EDIT: Not surprizing I cross posted with zyxy. Except for the bank in Zentral I think we're saying the same thing. Switching Zentral to bank will blow >200s!

I was under the false impression that railroads give an extra commerce as well as an extra sheild/food. I was wrong, so yes, Sages can wait for rails.
 
Things are looking very good. :goodjob:

How many more workers do you think we should build?

Civ Assist shows we are 261 tiles from domination. I estimate that cultural expansion and settling of the southern end of tadpole will give us another 70 or so land tiles. I'm not sure how many coastal tiles but probably another 60+. We'll need to watch that carefully now.
 
WarDance said:
How many more workers do you think we should build?

MORE! :crazyeye: :bounce: :love: :mischief: :drool:

Sigh...

I just love workers, you can never have too many. Once the rails are done on the homeland, there will still be irrigation and rails to make. And we could forest/chop improvements almost everywhere.

I would be happy with fifty more. Well, maybe 60, no no 70, well an even hundred would be nice....:twitch:
 
CommandoBob, are you still around?

ControlFreak said:
Zentral is way past a bank and will need to finish a wonder if we don't want it to waste >100s. With Sun's due to expire soon, I think it needs to be put on Leos until we research Economics or Music Theory. Economics would be preferred since we'd rather have Bach's down in the south. That gives us 11 turns to get Economics IF we use the big picture to switch Zentral to Smiths (should happen on my turn).

I agree that Smith is the only decent wonder somewhat accessible, but it requires us to research another tech. Our research path then looks like: Metallurgy -> Steam OR Medicine (depending on Ottomans) -> Economics. Smith will save us perhaps 75 gpt on average (markets in about 30 core cities, banks, stock ex's and harbors in at least half of those), so we'll get the money invested (1500 beakers) back soon enough. We do not get the turns back, so this is only worth the detour if we cannot sustain 4 turn research all the way. The 10 Modern Techs we need will cost 8000 (2x), 7500 (4x), 7000 (3x), 6500. We could get the two most expensive ones (Space and Superc) with ToE. Can we do 7500 in GA? The GA increases the normal commerce yield of a tile from 2 to 3 for an increase of 50%, but the percentage increase is less for bonus and river tiles (33% for rivers), for specialists (none) and for highly corrupt towns (none). So maybe 40% is a good guess. Then, 7500 / (1.4 * 4) = 1340 bpt "without GA", and we can do all four consecutively in the GA. Also, we would have to do some 7000 beaker techs outside GA, that means 1750 bpt, about double the current sustainable rate. Even with more uni's, labs (not available for Computers, one of the 7000 techs), docks, and larger pop, perhaps even if we move our FP to Tadpole somehow, this seems a stretch, and cash maybe the limit to our research speed in the end.

It's still a bit of a guess, but it seems that we could use some money savers, and Smith and Wall St are the obvious choices. Of course this assumes we'll want to do 4 turn research right until the end, which is only true if we do not let India on the elevator until the very end.

Without knowing what Spain will research and knowing that Spain will build any wonder from scratch faster than we can, we either need to have a constant prebuild in the south, research Music Theory on our own, or forget about giving Bach's to India. The other option is to have a strike force prepared to decimate Madrid if it tries to steal OUR wonders. This is probably the prefered method because it will also allow us to delay building Universal Suffrage and TOE. The former because it will trigger our GA and the latter to hopefully grab some Modern Age Techs with it. Ideally we would grab Miniaturization and Space Flight with it as they are the most expensive required techs. India should then be allowed to take the Great Library so they can start building Apollo.

I would doubt Spain can build faster from scratch than we. We would be very unlucky not be quite far along building some expensive improvement down south that can be switched to a wonder. And after we get factories we should definitely build a lot faster. I would also hope Spain doesn't reach US or ToE for a long time. Only reason they look advanced now is because Niklas traded them 4 techs - and we should not sustain that rate I think. Hopefully, Spain will now head off to Democracy and such, and not reach the IA for some time to come.

Btw, we could always launch a small operation to take Murcia (for the 8-th luxury). A bit fliprisky though, but it saves 1 tech trade per 20 turns.

(BTW, the Spaceship screen indicates that Robotics is not a required tech for the Spaceship. Are you sure it's required?)

You are correct. So we can probably skip Miniaturization as well, and just build those labs by hand, ignoring the internet. Only techs needed are Ecology (7000 beakers), Rockets (6500), Fission (7500), Comps (7000), Space (8000), Nuc Power (7500), Synth Fibers (7500), Laser (7500), Supercond (8000) and Satellites (7000): 10 total.

Kalmurkz might be better off supplying a worker and then a settler since the aquaduct won't have enough space to fit 12 citizens. Don't forget there's a chop coming in 4 so building the settler right off the bat would waste 5s of the chop unless you can speed the chop by a turn or two.

Sounds good. It's a badly placed city btw, why did we do that? Should have been 1 tile E or SE it seems... Is it too late to move it?

Carthage has a settler pair walking through our land. I'm sure he'll withdraw if asked.

Good catch. We can simply block him off (and guard our towns), and then capture him and Oea. Need a bit more troops (MDI) on Main Continent for this though. Also, we cannot use cats at Oea (but we can use galleons for logistics).
 
zyxy said:
CommandoBob, are you still around?
I've been lurking a bit while I played my turns in nerovat's training game. Now that those turns are done I can concentrate here.

Will download the save and look at it shortly.
 
zyxy said:
It's still a bit of a guess, but it seems that we could use some money savers, and Smith and Wall St are the obvious choices. Of course this assumes we'll want to do 4 turn research right until the end, which is only true if we do not let India on the elevator until the very end.
This seems fuzzy to me.
Research Economics to get Smith's or not?

Hold on. Instead of waiting until turn 5, let me pause the game after the Ottomans are gifted up to Industrial Age to examine this in more detail, as you discussed in Post #791.

ControlFreak said:
Wonders
Sages can now build Newtons and should be switched. Zentral is way past a bank and will need to finish a wonder if we don't want it to waste >100s. With Sun's due to expire soon, I think it needs to be put on Leos until we research Economics or Music Theory. Economics would be preferred since we'd rather have Bach's down in the south. That gives us 11 turns to get Economics IF we use the big picture to switch Zentral to Smiths (should happen on my turn).
"Sun's due to expire soon" Did you mean built soon? This has me puzzled.

zyxy said:
We'll want some troops in the area. Six cats, half a dozen MDI and some horses will be enough for now, India cannot build anything but archers and spears, and not very fast. We don't really need to train more troops, as they can come from Tadpole and the area around Bursa. Preferably take elites . The ships being on goto isn't the greatest idea IMO, it means CB will have to hunt them down for transport duty .
We have seven cats total, five are on Tadpole. We have 12 maces total, don't recall how they are distributed. We have 3 eSwords and 4 eHorses on Tadpole, bring them all back to fight the Indians?

ControlFreak said:
The other option is to have a strike force prepared to decimate Madrid if it tries to steal OUR wonders.
Spain has muskets, we have maces. And some vHorses on Tadpole. We have 30 military (non-catapult) units on Tadpole. Seven may head back to fight the Indians, leaving 23 or so. A 12 unit strike force of maces and horses should be sufficient to subdue two or three muskets, (right ?) leaving 11 to watch and guard our borders. Does this spread us too thin?

zyxy said:
Defenses on Tadpole: I prefer to have them on roads as much as possible. A few lookouts on mountain tops are OK, better use useless spears and archers for that rather than useful MDI and horses. Also, we still have 2 scouts doing nothing. They only cost 1 gpt each, but could at least do something useful or be retired.
We have one archer and one spear on Tadpole guarding cities. They can be switched with the maces on the mountains.
The scouts are both on the continent of Smurkz. One is by Theveste, the other is helping to blockade the other Carthage city on the Ring Mountains.

General Impressions
Except for getting units across the sea to protect us from Gandhi and forming a strike force to take care of Madrid, to be used only if needed, the biggest question seems to be whether or not to research Economics, which we can discuss after we get into the Industrial Age.

Not sure if I will get to do much railroading, but will try to get workers into groups of 6WT each on Smurkz. On Tadpole, will try for groups of 3WT, since so many workers are working solo.

If we bring units back to Smurkz and assemble a Madrid focused strike force, I am not sure there will be enough units left to deal with Mongol/Ottoman issue that ControlFreak mentioned this turnset.
And we need the Ottomans to get their free tech.
Should we gift the Ottomans a city somewhere (south Tadpole or an island), just in case the Mongols get frisky?
 
@CB, I meant that Sun's was due to be built (our prebuild will expire).

It pains me to throw away 200s building a bank in Zentral. I think the investment in Economics will be worth it. We are going to be building harbors in every coastal town, markets, banks and stockexchanges in every town. The longer Smiths is built, the longer we have to pay it off. If we throw away the 200s now, that's a stockexchange we could have built instead of having to wait to finish Smiths later.

Ottomans/Mongols
A temporary fix would be to move the scouts or a scout and a unit onto the two tiles next to Izmit. That would put a border between the two and they would have to declare on us to eliminate each other. It would also be something useful to do for the scout. It's not a permament fix but it should last a while.

Celts
Do we want to capture Gergovia? I would do that before we move units away from Tadpole. We should probably bring settlers with the attack force to claim the land around Gergovia before Spain can if we want that area. Otherwise, we could get Spain to declare on the Celts again and let them take Gergovia. It would be more productive to them anyway and might help with their research/our gpt deals. Get some units around Sing Sing first.

Spain
If we move units away from Tadpole, be prepared to lose some of our American holdings to Spain if only temporarily. They have a decent military and are better positioned to own Tadpole than we are. I also get the feeling they have a FP that's helping their Tadpole towns to be productive. Zaragoza is way to far from Madrid to have built a full priced harbor AND enough culture buildings for two expansions already without benefit from a FP.

If we keep them as an Ally with a fake war on the Celts, they will be less likely to backstab us. Giving them Gergovia will consolidate their holdings and if I'm right about the FP, will essentially give them two cores that will really help any research efforts they try to help on.

America
Houston is a flip risk. We missed our opportunity to rush a library there and control that 2nd radius tile. We need to have some units down there to either prevent flipping (in town) or recapture (out of town). We are also in need of a lot of settlers. They will probably come from size 12 towns with full food boxes.

Boats
We only need the one chain of galleons. The unupgraded caravels should go explore to clear the fog. There must be more unclaimed furs in the fog. Don't bother wasting the turns to upgrade first. The movement rate is the same and if you need the extra storage space, you'll just have to head to a harbor for upgrade when you pick up your load.
 
zyxy said:
(Regarding Kalmurkz) Sounds good. It's a badly placed city btw, why did we do that? Should have been 1 tile E or SE it seems... Is it too late to move it?

That town was placed simply to reduce worker turns roading through the jungle on the warpath to the Mongol lands. Seems like ages ago! It's not too late to be moved... Currently it is only puting out 6 beakers per turn and six gold and does 5 shields per turn. Moving it east or southeast to the river would mean it doesn't need an aqueduct. BUT it would encroach on Ol' Smurkz River which is a pretty productive town. I think it's doing 24 beakers right now. If we move Kalmurkz it might be better to move it to the coast. The only thing with that is we burn the library that it has already and to be productive on the coast it really would need a library, aqueduct, harbor, and a courthouse. Maybe we should move it to the coast and simply irrigate some of those tiles and pump workers out of it.
 
ControlFreak said:
Assuming the up-turn isn't in your head (which I think it is :p ) could it be from American specialists? I haven't been studying the metagame.
No, it's certainly not in my head. Check the score graph, but limit it to, say, 850 AD, and you'll see it too.

Wonders
Regarding Zentral, it's a shame that we'd lose hundreds of shields, but we'll lose even more by continuing to build something that we won't even need. I agree that the only reasonable choice would be Smith's, bould I would vote against spending 4 turns on it. Even if we can't keep up 4-turn research throughout the MT (which I would argue that we don't have to), we should be able to do 5-turn research for the last techs. As long as we don't do more than 4 techs at 5 turns each, we're no better off with Smith's.
I say cut our losses and switch to bank.

The only Wonder that we really need for our own sake is Darwin. All the others are more important to give to India. We should probably have one or more prebuilds going on down south.

Research
Depends on Ottos clearly. Hopefully they will get Medicine, so that we can get Steam and trade. Trading the other way never works, though perhaps it would if we throw contact with Spain in the deal. I guess we should hold on to those contacts a little while longer then. In any case I think CB's suggestion is good, play 3 turns and then pause for discussion, then possibly another pause after 4 when we know if the trade goes through.

Important early techs are Steam, Industrialization, Corporation and Replacable Parts, as zyxy noted. We should not forget Sanitation though. It's an optional tech, but it seems to me that we need those Hospitals in order to keep up 4-turn research later on.

Btw, regarding Robotics, you are right. That was changed for C3C, and is changed in the GOTM mod the same way, but SGOTM use the standard rules. So both Robotics and Miniaturization are considered optional for us.

Military
I don't have much to chime in here, except that I would leave Spain alone. The MA vs Celts sounds like a good idea, no way she could get to SingSing. We will have to keep trading her techs to get the extra lux and gpt from her, so she will be in the IA before long. I don't see that as a problem though, we'll beat her to the wonders simply because we are so much better at railroading.

Tadpole
We should simply spam out towns here. We could take some of our treasury to rush settlers in towns that don't have that many high-food tiles to work. City placement should be ICS.

The Lost AIs
If we rush some settlers on Tadpole right away, we could quickly set up a few prisons for Ottos and Mongols, then conquer that island.

Kalmurkz
I agree that we'd be better off moving it, and I agree with WarDance that the coast is to prefer over SE or E, to not encroach on River.

ControlFreak said:
According to CAII, we're 8bpt over the exact amount need to finish Metallurgy in 3.
I spent the last moments of playing switching taxmen to scientists to get exactly to the point where we get Metallurgy in 3. So this seems a bit strange...
 
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