Enders Game 1: The Training Game Competition - Team 1

[Speaker]

I'm afraid that we are going to have to move on, but if you would like to replay the turns yourself and email me your notes, I will gladly comment on them via email. If this is something you would be interested in doing, say so, and I'll PM you my email address.

Grimjack => On Deck
Control Freak => In the hole
Orbit => Sisters, can't live with them and they can't pee standing up (see Major League 2).
SHard => Up Now
Speaker => Might take a turn next time through the rotation. Then again, might not.

 

[Orbit]

Originally posted by Speaker
I'm afraid that we are going to have to move on, but if you would like to replay the turns yourself and email me your notes, I will gladly comment on them via email. If this is something you would be interested in doing, say so, and I'll PM you my email address.

Too bad, but I agree with your decision. And I think I will take you up on your offer.

 

[Speaker]

Sorry but we have already waited over three days since ControlFreak last played. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn't teach SG ettiquette as well as playing skills?

 

[Grimjack]

I usually start up notepad and alt-tab to it during turns, so that I can write notes down as stuff happens. ( also, no need to retype should you run out of time

Grimjack

 

[ControlFreak]

Good luck SHard!

Sorry 'bout getting skipped Orbit.

BTW, Speaker, because of RL, I don't get online during the weekends. I'm stuck playing weekend games Monday night and posting Tuesday. I can usually plan ahead for that during the week but if Grimjack gets it and plays it late Friday night, I might miss my Got it. (Didn't want an unexplained silence.)

Great game you're running here. Thanks for letting me be a part.

 

[Speaker]

As long as you give advanced notice, we can switch the order around if the need arises. I don't want anyone to miss turns.

 

[SHard]

Um.. got it.

 

[SHard]

Just played this now. Hope it went OK, we are almost ready for war Turn report follows.

Ok, here goes.

Pre-Turn: Wow, our income is up since I last played this. England has CoL, but no point buying now at 1st with no brokering oppurtunities.

1225BC: Smolensk gets a nasty disease :/ Hope this isn't a sign of things to come. A couple of workers standing on jungle. Are they meant to be connecting Sevastopol to our trade network? That doesn't really seem necessary to me at the moment as it is size 1 growing slow. The war will be on the other side of the country, so I flick them back towards the core. Lux -> 10%

1200BC: St Petes Spear -> Warrior. Smolensk Warrior -> Barracks. Notice workers clearing jungle by Smolensk? Stop them immediately with the intent to road the spices instead. Send some workers up towards Tblisi's grasslands. Send St. Pete's spear up towards Viking border. Defense will be needed there if anywhere.

IT: China offers a world map trade. Hmm. Map Making is out then.

1175BC: Moscow Settler -> Worker. Kiev Spear -> Warrior. Immediately look for trades on maps. I am not really sure what to do here. I bite the bullet and go for trades. WM to China for WM + 1gold. China's WM reveals most of the land. Sell WM to Egypt for 15 gold. Trade WM for WM with England (they had no gold). No other civs have mapmaking. We now have complete view of our landmass. There is a small island to the west of the whole continent. Before trading for tech I decide to hold out for polytheism. Ah, Moscow's settler. What to do? There's nice land in the centre of the map but the city won't be very productive for a long time. Should I found a jungle city in between us and the Vikes? My slightly dubious decision is to hold him to claim the Vikes land from auto-razes afterwards. I figure after the next round of tech trading we will be in position to go to war (we now have 18 warriors), provided we have enough gold for upgrades. Start sending scouts home due to exploration now being complete. Lux -> 0%.

1150BC: Trondheim builds Oracle . St Petes Warrior -> Warrior. Odessa Rax -> Warrior. For now leave warriors in towns where built. Should think about moving them towards a town with barracks nearest to Vikes. MM Moscow.

1125BC: Moscow Worker -> Settler (?). I thought we would need at least one more for colonising Scandanavia, maybe not? Kiev Warrior -> Warrior. Workers start road to Tblisi + the Vikes.

1100BC: Continuous stream of warriors continues. MM Moscow for growth. Road to Tblisi takes slight detour for horses.

1075BC: We now have 23 warriors. I'm thinking of hooking up that iron soon. We have enough gold for 12 upgrades now, but more is flowing in and poly is due in 1. Don't start on iron just yet - hold off til Poly trades. Start moving warriors to Odessa, closest city to Vikes with rax. Lux -> 20%.

1050BC: In comes Poly. Set min sci. run on Monarchy, reckon this is our best chance of a monopoly, but it ain't a particularly useful tech. We can switch if neccessary. Some AI have construction. I make some trades;

-Poly to England for Construction, WM + 2Gold.
-Poly to Vikes for CoL + 19Gold.
-Poly + CoL to China for MapMaking and 11Gold.

That Polytheism gambit worked out pretty well - we now have tech parity/lead with every civ.

1025BC: I'm going to get that iron online now. Finally get a second MP to Minsk. Lux -> 10%. Realise that Smolensk was built on spices and smash head against table. Wasted a lot of worker turns hooking them up :/.

1000BC: Most of our towns now have ample improvement. One more grassland to be mined for Minsk. Six workers concentrating on war path (Just mined horses to up production in Tblisi). They have built up to Tblisi, I'm thinking of roading into the jungle to make it quicker for moving troops (good idea? Maybe not worth it?). Start work on iron. We have enough gold for 15 upgrades next turn. We have 28 warriors. I think we need to get this war going now - 15 swordsman will be enough. We have 2 settlers in Tblisi to fill in gaps in the viking empire, and we can certainly produce more.

Just some notes on Moscow + Odessa. Moscow is running on +6 food/+4 food rotation. Currently Moscow is working an unimproved riverside tile with road to get extra commerce, and Odessa has taken the wheat for growth. Don't forget to switch these around for efficency.


Hope this was OK. Good luck to Grimjack, we should be looking to hit the Vikes ASAP IMO. We can cancel the road to iron if this is too soon to be hooking it up.

Save (zip file this time!) : http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/EG1-Team1-1000BC.zip

 

[Speaker]

@SHard: Very good turn overall.

1: Connecting the spices, despite the fact that it was stated in the last turn that it was unnecessary. I don't need to beat a dead horse here, so I will just leave it at that, but this is the lesson you (all) should learn. When you inherit a turn, carefully read the turn before, taking note of instructions, recommendations, etc, and carefully examine every city as well as the F4 screen before you hit enter. This might be one of the most important lessons I teach you.

1: Excellent handling of the Polytheism trade. This really goes out to the entire team though, for our perfectly executed 40-turn run. They are such a great play in the Ancient Age and Polytheism is one of the best techs to use.

2: Why Monarchy? It will be known in less than 40 turns and we don't need it and likely never will. The only tech worth going 40 turns on at this point is Republic, although we will probably be better off trading our free tech from the next age for Republic. A better move here would have been to turn off research all together until we know Philosophy, when we would then start 40-turns on Republic. I know, it defies logic to turn off research, but it can be a great move.

2: Our army is ready to kick some serious butt. I think we should definitely siphon off some of our attackers and hit China at the same time. They are still quite weak and if we could cripple both China and Scandinavia at the same time. With that said, the Iron road will be complete in 4 turns, and we should be able to finish 4 ver warriors before then. I count 13 warriors ready for upgrade, so we'll have 17. I'll let Grimjack decide on the troop allocation to the Chinese and Scandinavian fronts, but I really think we should attack them both. We should be able to steamroll Shanghai and then hopefully push on to Beijing. China's army is weak compared to ours. We are even with Scandinavia, so we will probably want to strike fast and then get peace as quickly as we can before they can counterattack. Kudos to SHard for leaving two settlers to fill in the razed lands. I am a little confused as to why Moscow is building a regular warrior and not a worker though..........(hint hint )

Excellent report SHard. That is the kind of detail that I try to always put into my reports and I appreciate the notes at the end. I always give my reports a sort of conclusion. Grimjack is up and might get to do some on his turn, or will at the least probably leave ControlFreak in a position to rock.

Grimjack => Up now
ControlFreak => On deck
Orbit => In the hole
SHard => Just played
Speaker => Looking forward to our first war victory.

 

[SHard]

Thanks for the comments Speaker!

I never even considered turning research off completely. Still, we can turn it off now , only started it three turns ago.

Moscow building a warrior is a mistake, I meant for that to be a worker.

Also - can I ask - what do you think about the workers roading into the jungle to get closer to scandinavia. Would this be of any use. My inkling says it would take up far too many worker-turns to be practical. Good Luck Grimjack!

 

[ControlFreak]

How important is it to use a two prong attack? If we just marched counter clockwise from Moscow, the AI will head us off and we'll face a lot of resistance IMO. BUT, if we send a small strike force to the northern towns (Reykjavik or something, forgive me, I don't remember the names.) And delay the attack on the southern towns we would pull the Viking troops up north. Without roads they would never be able to recover to their southern positions when the big strike force hits their exposed underbelly.

I'm also wondering if their army is really all that big. They have quite a few towns and each must have a defender. But none of those troops are mobile since they "must" stay to defend. We may not face that many offensive troops. China on the otherhand, with a small empire (half the number of cities) but the same size army as us would me a lot of excess troops that could be mobilized against us.

Just thinking out loud and wondering what you better-at-war-than-me types think.

Good turn SHard. Sorry I didn't put my comments about the spices in bold letters for you. Also, for what its worth, I would have done the Monarchy thing too. I feel naked without a little research.

 

[Grimjack]

Hmm, China is weak compared to our warriors, while Vikings are comparable. They will be pitiful once we upgrade to swords.

I suspect roading through jungle in order to increase mobility might be a wise move if we are to go all out warfare. Biggest drawback to Sword are their lack of mobility.

I will probably send some 6-8 swords against Beijing, and the rest directly towards Viking core, aiming at getting at least the city containing Oracle. ( In case we build a temple before Oracles goes out of fashion )
Also hoping Vikings will grant us their northern cities as peace-offerings.
Hopefully I will be able to play tonight.
Grimjack

 

[ControlFreak]

Check the culture on the Vikes (I haven't). Can we actually hold onto the Oracle city?

Are we looking to eliminate China or just knock them back a peg?

Extra luxuries will be a blessing, the road to Scandinavia should have that in mind. Roading will be a lot easier on their grass rather than through the jungle.

Go get 'em Grimjack! I'll be waiting in Munden's Bar with Bob the lizard.

 

[Speaker]

I don't think w're looking to eliminate China, but merely prune them to give ourselves more room to expand and to keem them from growing and becoming powerful. We should probably still be pumping out settlers from Moscow and putting cities in the west. Even though they are corrupt, they are cities we can get some culture in and will increase our borders tremendously. Any land that we claim now is land we won't have to conquer later. Just something to think about.

 

[Speaker]

Oh, to answer your question from before SHard. How many jungle tiles do you think we can get roaded before the war? I would guess less than 3 if even 2. There are probably better uses for the workers, altough we will need to get some roads up there at some point. It's up to Grimjack if he wants to continue the road.

 

[SHard]

Thanks for the encouragement ControlFreak. The spices were my fault.

We have 6 workers over there Speaker. Team of 5 does 1 every two turns right? I don't think it is worth it.

The city containing the Oracle is Trondheim, the Viking Capital. We would be wanting to take the capital anyway right? Holding on it will depend on where the new capital is.

Edit: Embarassing typo

 

[ControlFreak]

Since I have horrible worker management and we're talking about chopping/roading a lot of jungle, I started to make some tables with worker turns.

I'm sure that all of you know all this, but since this is a Training Day Game, I figure any extra info is OK.

We are non-industrious.
It takes 3 turns to road flatland
It takes 9 turns to road jungle.
It takes 24 turns to clear jungle.

The best approach to jungles are stacks in multiples of 3.
3 workers take 8 turns to clear, 1 turn to road, 1 turn to move on. 6 Jungle tile cleared and roaded/60turns.

6 workers take 4 turns to clear, 1/2 turn to road, 1 turn to move on. 6 Jungle tiles cleared and roaded/33turns.

9 workers take 3 turns to clear, 1/3 turn to road, 1 turn to move.
6 Jungle tiles cleared and roaded/26turns.

Note that there is a law of diminishing returns here. Each worker move is a wasted turn. Every worker must move once per jungle tile. The more workers in the stack, the more "wasted" move turns occur per jungle tile. Thus, if speed is not an issue, its most efficient to have only one worker clearing/roading. Three is more efficient than 6 which is better than 9.

At 9, there is an interesting way to road and chop. You can send a stack of 3 to the first jungle and let the 6 other workers do another job for 3 turns. The stack of 3 begins a road, complete in 3 turns. When done, they move to the next jungle to start roading it. The stack of 6 move to the new roaded jungle and chop it, due in 4. Once moved (1 turn) the stack of 3 starts roading again. The road (stack of 3) completes the same turn as the chop (stack of 6). This still clears and roads a jungle tile at the same rate as the other method of all nine chop, with the three left over workers roading the tile, every 4 turns. The difference is you get to let 6 workers remain on other tasks at the begining and you get the road done before the chop is done. The reason this is the same number of turns is you have a +6 penalty for roading a jungle instead of grassland but a -6 bonus of workers moving on the road and chopping the same turn (no movement turn penalty).

The road ahead strategy will help the income of our trapped in the jungle cities, it will increase happiness earlier and provide a movement bonus earlier as well.

Don't know if this help you more experienced workertypes with solving our jungle dilemma.

 

[Grimjack]

Thanks ControlFreak. Being Mathematically inclined, this helps immensely in seeing how to use workers.

Grimjack

Started to play now, will hopefully manage to get it done within three hours. ( when it is time for me. )

 

[ControlFreak]

Well since it helped, I'll post my whole table. If anyone want the Excel sheet or an HTML copy PM me and I'll email it.

 

[SHard]

Good table ControlFreak. As this is one my weakpoints I decided to take you up on that offer of a copy

I hereby declare that I will try and be more efficient with my workers from now on