Fix the 5th trash game

[pigswill]

As cabert asked for it, here it is:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/90414/Trashy_pigswill_1650ad.CivWarlordsSave

But its hardly worth looking at compared to the excellent games we have already.

 

[pigswill]

With two voters still to decide we've got two games tied for best and a strong contender. The field is wide open.

Six games have received votes. No-one has voted for me though .

(ha ha I'm immune )

 

[Öjevind Lång]

If you wanted land, you should have built settlers "en masse" (at least 4). Look at pigswill's report (once again, I beg for the save ), there was room for a lot more cities than what you did, without the cost of research.

I don't care much for cities that simply overlap the territory of other cities.

 

[KMadCandy]

Ojevind one comment about the culture war up north ... settling a GA in Lahore will be helpful, as you know, because culture over time is an awesome weapon. but right now you're using your free specialist there as a scientist rather than an artist. use him as an artist no matter what for now, let the other cities show off their big fancy brains. Lahore has other priorities .

hubby was out of town yesterday so i thought today was saturday not sunday . i so easily lose track!! looking at saves again now in an effort to be decisive.

 

[cabert]

I don't care much for cities that simply overlap the territory of other cities.

tiles unworkable between cities = total loss
culture war for no tiles won = total loss
maybe you should care for those things, when you don't have room for better expansion.
A culture war now is going nowhere anyway. you could spend the next 200 turns without flipping anything.

 

[KMadCandy]

looking at the saves that know SciM, there are only 4 land sources of oil on our continent. 2 belong to jerkface bismarck, cyrus has 1, and our only source is right on the german border. it is one tile east of where i settled my lahore (i had no idea at the time). i like my city placement even more now, all my old reasons for putting it there still stand (this isn't a campaign so i'll spare you the list *giggle*) and now it has the bonus of blocking bismarck from putting any new cities to try to gain control over our oil. i don't know whether he would try (he already has two of his own and the city would steal tiles from munich), but he could legally put a city to the west of munich 2N of that oil and try to get it. if we settle my lahore, or a city on the oil, he can't get anywhere nearby due to the 2 tile rule and frankfurt's location. the oil tile is quite solidly ours anyway because dehli's been pushing out culture since day 1, this is just a random thought. i played a game once with no oil (OCC, no chance to get any) and it was the SUCK. totally. completely. i had no ponies either, just like this game. you don't even want to go there. even gunships need oil; i had jumbos accompanying my mech infantry, no tanks, my marines rode around on galleons .

here's hoping that paragraph doesn't go too far over the "future strategy" line. as always, my signature applies, don't ever just apply what i advice without thinking about it first and considering the situation as a whole. even though i am getting better, and part of that is from participating here. it's fun, and i even learned from every one of the games i would have voted for as "worst" if this was a trash round. all of you had ideas/did things that i hadn't thought of in the way that you had, and that is really spiffy. so please never feel, even if looking at the other rounds makes you feel "oh wow i really did worse than i thought" (as happens to me), that submitting your save for us to look at wasn't helpful and educational. i thank you all, and declare it against the rules to be discouraged and to lose sight of the fact that even the saves without the overall best results all teach at least me a thing or two or five. that's part of why we do it after all, and don't just sit back and read about the expert's playing it by themselves.

as far as giaur's game, and hoping he doesn't lose any arms ... bis has too much on his hands but we haven't met wang kon, maybe he has and they had a little tiff?

that area was surprising to me, how several hadn't gone to meet the remaining folks. i guess i shouldn't have been surprised. doing that does take time and hammers away from other priorities and requires a calculation about how much you think you'd benefit from meeting them early. i'm like cabert, i trade a lot and just trust/hope (often with unpleasant results, i admit) that i'll benefit more than my rivals do from the trades, so for that playstyle, the more, the merrier. more conservative traders wouldn't benefit as much from having more prey ... err ... contacts.

cam: your culture bomb didn't due anything but it also didn't take the city from refined to influential. i'd likely have waiting to do it until the city was at the point that the great work would cross that border, that wasn't many turns away. note that i'm playing a cultural victory game now so i'm a bit obsessed. in any event, that border pop will happen in two turns. i resisted the oh-so-strong urge to hit shift-enter twice before submitting my vote .

it was really interesting to see who put which national wonders where.

for me, absolutely fascinating to see how many actually did sign defensive pacts already. i simply never realized it before seeing in direct contrast with others in the same game, but my style is to keep the DP option in my back pocket. i'm just confident (perhaps overly so) that it will be still be there if i get nervous and decide i need it later, so i don't sign them ahead of time. i know they'll get me a negative with everybody else, so the act of signing one (or more) to protect me in the event of a war makes said war more likely to occur . that's just how i play, i don't even think about it really, i look at the situation and if nobody is out to get me soonish then that's what i do. i've done so many OCC games going for diplomatic victory, where i have to check relations every turn and even one point can be a deal breaker; some at very high levels. i obsess over every little detail.

i never knew the extent to which that makes me such an oddball (in that area, i know i am in other ways). obviously i did know that i have more peace-loving ways than ya'll do, especially in this game; how much that sticks out in those blue lines on the diplomatic screen that i'm keeping as the "if i need it" case but haven't connected yet, was striking to me. add in that i still cannot get over how i was nervous, but never reallllllllllly in my heart-of-hearts thought cyrus was going to DoW in that other round, but he did some of you, and i just feel "gosh i'm so naive and happy-go-lucky, but hey, it usually works ." now i'm off to go knock wood/touch iron since i am very superstitious by nature.

 

[pigswill]

With one person left to vote (who pmed me to say they were running late but intended to vote) there's only one point seperating the top two selections. Depending on last vote I could get to vote a tie break .

 

[KMadCandy]

With one person left to vote (who pmed me to say they were running late but intended to vote) there's only one point seperating the top two selections. Depending on last vote I could get to vote a tie break .

the suspense! if i had any delusions i was one of the top two i'd so hope you were open to bribery. would be double fun to see what people did with my own save, and to enjoy immunity the next time around . was that fun for you, to see what we all turned them into?

but hey, this way i save my favors to bribe you for something else in the future . i will neither confirm not deny whether i am the remaining voter.

 

[Cam_H]

cam: your culture bomb didn't due anything but it also didn't take the city from refined to influential. i'd likely have waiting to do it until the city was at the point that the great work would cross that border, that wasn't many turns away. note that i'm playing a cultural victory game now so i'm a bit obsessed. in any event, that border pop will happen in two turns.

If I had my time again it would have been Verlamion rather than Vienne.

As I said in the report, I wasn't too certain what to do about this one, but I was surprised that I didn't at least pick up a Wine tile to the west of Saradis. The boundaries did push out, but no tiles of great use unless you consider stealing tiles off Camulodunum of value. I'm not sure of our chances if Camulodunum does flip to Brennus whether we can later steal it off him.

Thanks for your thoughts though - and best of luck with your Cultural game. (I'm thinking P666-05 could also be a Cultural game masquerading as a Space Ship game! )

Then again, there's this thought ...

A culture war now is going nowhere anyway. you could spend the next 200 turns without flipping anything.

 

[KMadCandy]

re: cam's thoughts and cabert's line "A culture war now is going nowhere anyway. you could spend the next 200 turns without flipping anything."

there are culture wars, and then there are subtle culture battles the enemy never notices . flipping control of tiles can be more crucial to your strategy than flipping an actual city, depending on circumstances. hence my obsession with our single oil resource noted above. flipping tiles is much much easier than flipping cities for a variety of reasons, and takes much less time.

"I'm not sure of our chances if Camulodunum does flip to Brennus whether we can later steal it off him."

if i'm remembering right, "captured cities can be flipped by culture" is a checkbox option when you start the game. if you don't check it, a city you took over in a war cannot ever be taken over by the original owner through his culture, it has to be through battle again.

i'm going by memory, and this city is a twisted case. when cyrus captured it, we were the "current owner", i think but cannot guarantee that the game defines "current owner" and "original owner" differently. so i'm not sure how that would apply in this situation. maybe brennus can flip it from cyrus since cyrus didn't take it in a war from HIM, maybe he can't flip it by culture since he was the original owner regardless of who the current owner is and how current owner acquired it. such cities can go into revolt frequently, which is of course a hassle for the current owner and fun to watch if current owner = someone other than yourself.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

tiles unworkable between cities = total loss
culture war for no tiles won = total loss
maybe you should care for those things, when you don't have room for better expansion.
A culture war now is going nowhere anyway. you could spend the next 200 turns without flipping anything.

What on earth are you talking about? My ambition was to save Lahore from flipping and instead, if possible, flip Ergili. I find that preferable to stuffing a lot of cities into already existing territory.

 

[pigswill]

The votes are in .

We have a winner .

The winner is

Spoiler :

Giaur the Great

 

[cabert]

since we're not in a dominant position I suggest a detailed preliminary discussion, giving minimal instructions for everyone to follow. The idea is to avoid an unsalvageable trash round.

First congrats to Giaur. First game submitted, first time elected .

Second, the points we should agree on before starting the round (I hope noone played yet):
- war preparation.
yes, there will be war. Bismarck has enough on his hands, and he is our immediate neighbour. Sure relations are good, but the decision may be "old" = before relations improved. Even if he doesn't target us, he will ask for help and since we need land, it sure is a good idea to be ready to follow.
I vote for switching to nationhood for 5 turns and get a few rifles ready + stopping the iron trade to cyrus and build cannons.
Ideas?
- teching : what do we need? steam power is good, for it's trade value mostly. I suggest teching all the possible trades now with steel, giving us almost tech parity. After that, which way do we go?
railroad is strong, for 2 reasons
1) the rail itself (provided we have coal, which is by no means certain)
2) MG
physics is strong too, because it leads to artillery, which is great for war and on the way to rocketry.
ideas?
Do we go for a suicide internet strat?
- diplomacy : everyone loves us (at least neighbours), but bismarck being on a war foot is going to change this. Who do we want to be friends with? We need trading partners, so cyrus is with us. Augustus is a good trading partner too, and FdR too. Bismarck is a jerk, so is Brennus.
Ideas?
- specialization : where do we build Ironworks, GT? I suggest using the GE in stock to rush IW in calcutta, building theaters everywhere to allow Globe theater in vienne. If we manage to build wall street, it's best place would be in delhi. Too bad it already has 2 national wonders. Gergovia can also get a shrine, and calcutta can get a shrine. I'm sorry to be negative about your game Giaur, but this is a mess (no GT, and using both slots in delhi I mean).
Ideas?
- economy : we're too small for a good CE, we're lacking food for a good SE. I suggest specialising cities a bit more. Calcutta could use more food, vienne has unirrigated rice, which need fixing. The rest should be cottaged up.
- culture : build all the usefull buildings to get culture. temples are cheap for us, even though they only give 1cpt. Free artists in border cities are good. Going for a GA is not going to help us, since the neighbouring cities are ancient and have high levels of ancient culture.
I'm pretty sure a culture bomb in vermalion wouldn't give us a single tile.
- building cities : we have good land to improve has cam and others (pigswill too) showed. There are workable grasshills there = good production possibilities. We're going to need production to launch! I vote for this middle empire production city. Others? I think war is going to solve the land problem.

I'm not trying to give too much direct orders, but we cannot afford a complete trash round. So I suggest keeping the due trash round, but with only moderate moves possible.
All ideas are welcomed, including ideas about the next round. Timing is still to submit before friday, so we need to discuss fast
+ I'll be on holydays next week (including the coming weekend), so I won't be able to
- check the games,
- vote
- propose anything for the next round
- play the next fixing round.

Options :
1) we delay the current trash round into a 2 weeks round, allowing preliminary discussions
2) we delay voting until I come back .
3) someone takes over this thread while I'm away.
4) we take 2 weeks for the round and we each get 2 attempts to try to get our best, least-trashy attempt
5) didn't find yet a 5th one, but any idea is welcome

 

[KMadCandy]

option 5) we take 2 weeks for the round and we each get 2 attempts to try to get our best, least-trashy attempt? *giggle*

 

[cabert]

option 5) we take 2 weeks for the round and we each get 2 attempts to try to get our best, least-trashy attempt? *giggle*

this is noted as option 4.

 

[Giaur]

Disable avoid growth in Delhi.

We have GE. Ironworks or Globe?

edit: btw. Bismarck was always a jerk :]

 

[cabert]

Disable avoid growth in Delhi.

We have GE. Ironworks or Globe?

edit: btw. Bismarck was always a jerk :]

globe is actually cheap, IW costs a lot more.
+ we already have the forges, while we don't have the theaters.

 

[Giaur]

globe is actually cheap, IW costs a lot more.
+ we already have the forges, while we don't have the theaters.

But we do not know if we have coal ...

edit: btw. I feel happy and honored that my save was selected

 

[cabert]

But we do not know if we have coal ...

true
trading away the iron + not having coal makes IW less of a priority

 

[Cam_H]

I'm happy to go with the group decision.

My marriage would like it if we took a week off, but as discussed before, dragging these things out does sap momentum from the exercise, and I'm very worried about that (more so than my marriage it would seem! ).

The two submission thing sounds good to me, but it would work best if they were differentiated somehow (e.g. one warmonger vs. one builder game, or one to be submitted by this (American) Friday night vs. one to be submitted one week later).

And congratulations to Giaur on your win!