Geezers WOTM03

[erikthecelt]

got it, will post any thoughts tonight and play tomorrow unless some contorversy arrises.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I'm not entirely certain why our stack is where it is. I thought we were going to go via the stone and woods? Since it's there though it does raise the question whether we should carry on round to the forested hill to the NW of Thebes. It's an extra turn before we start attacking Thebes however we get good defence from attackers and we could pillage the horses whilst we're knocking down the cultural defence with the cats.

Interesting that Hanny has adopted Police State. I wonder if he's thinking of attacking Shaka?

 

[erikthecelt]

There are no real attacking units in Thebes - I would go for it - less time to whip more defenders.

Tech path is important here, I don't think we can win the race to liberalism. I see paper and philosophy in the AI. We need both + Edu for Liberalism. So the path looks like Feudalism, Guilds, Gunpowder, Chemistry.
62 turns to gunpowder at current tech rate.

Edit.
Susa is useless without the pigs - any ideas on what to do there.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Edit.
Susa is useless without the pigs - any ideas on what to do there.

In the short term we can only hope that religion spreads there. In the longer term we might be able to build/acquire a monastery somewhere and then a missionary. I'm not sure that we can justify the to build a library there.

 

[Harbourboy]

Um, the stack is where it is because it has been fighting counterattackers on its way to Thebes and keeps sidestepping to protect weakened units. Probably highly inefficient but I didn't want pillagers coming into our very poorly defended core.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Um, the stack is where it is because it has been fighting counterattackers on its way to Thebes and keeps sidestepping to protect weakened units.

I suspected something like that but it wasn't very clear from the report.

 

[Harbourboy]

Hopefully, Erik can make something of our whacky stacky. We are so far behind on technology - I will be interested to see what difference Thebes has on the Egyptian power. We'd be completely stuffed if Shaka hadn't done us that favour by attacking.

 

[erikthecelt]

Turn 0 – 1070 – MM for a little more and hammers
IBT – Pasagarde becomes Christian – borders expand in 15 turns.

Turn 1 – 1085
Thebes – 3 LB, 2 axe, 1XB – small scout stack goes E from Arbella, Reinforcements leave Pi for Thebes

IBT – Egypt Knight kills mace at Thebes

Turn 2 – 1100
Bib – Pike – Pike, Pers HA – Treb
2 knights now in Thebes – bombard to 44%
Reinf find settler party moving towards Thebes

IBT – Egypt cat suicides on reinforcements – Ragnar’s city revolts to join us, I disband as it won’t give us anything useful and will slow research. We get 1 free archer.

Turn 3 - 1106
Relocate Tolosa axe to mainland
3rd Knight in Thebes – reinforcements kill guard and capture a worker (they were going to reinforce Thebes)
Scouts from Arbella get to river – no Egyptians
Bobmbard Thebes to 0

IBT – ragnar circumnavigates the globe

Turn 4 – 1112
Tolosa cat – treb – cat relocated to mainline
Scouts find Memphis – 1 Knight, 2 LB, 1 mace
Thebes – lose cats (1 retreats) 1 mace and 1 Gallic – kill knight and longbow

IBT –

Turn 5 – 1118
Thebes – kill more / lose more – 4 defenders left

IBT - cat attacks and retreats – more reinforcements in Thebes

I've paused my turn - the attack on Thebes has failed - I can try for peace with Ramesses and have our wounded troops - about 14 units transported somewhere. Ramesses has out produced us.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Perhaps it might be worth posting the save. I've lost track of what units we actually have by Thebes.

 

[erikthecelt]

Perhaps it might be worth posting the save. I've lost track of what units we actually have by Thebes.

I can't post the save until I get home tonight. There is a mix of maces, spears, pike and XBow outside of Thebes - they are all wounded - and a cat/ha/mace/spear stack outside Memphis - about 3/4 tiles south of Thebes.

Thebes has a stack of 8 units - 4 arrived IBT including healthy knight and LB. We are too weak now to take them out.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I can't post the save until I get home tonight. There is a mix of maces, spears, pike and XBow outside of Thebes - they are all wounded - and a cat/ha/mace/spear stack outside Memphis - about 3/4 tiles south of Thebes.

Thebes has a stack of 8 units - 4 arrived IBT including healthy knight and LB. We are too weak now to take them out.

Assuming that you don't think we can realistically reinforce/heal quickly enough to recommence the attack then it looks as though we have no choice but to make as good a peace as we can get.

Rather disappointing but s**t happens. Let's just hope our forces are not whisked too far away. I wonder if it would have been worth taking out the horses before attacking or would we just have got loads of LBs instead?

 

[Harbourboy]

What lessons can we learn then? What should we have done better?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

What lessons can we learn then? What should we have done better?

Looking at the writeups it seems that the losses you suffered whilst moving towards Thebes as well as the losses that erik received meant that the stack was too small to take Thebes before additional reinforcements arrived. Unfortunately it looks as though Ramesses was able to replace his losses against Shaka & The-Hawk rather quicker that we anticipated.

In retrospect we appear to have had too few units at Pi. With more units your stack could have ignored most of Ramesses' attackers and reached Thebes earlier whilst the units left at Pi could have fought off Ramesses attackers. OTOH I think most of us thought that we had broken the back of Ramesses' forces so we didn't expect to need additional forces.

 

[erikthecelt]

What lessons can we learn then? What should we have done better?

It starts at turn 0 when we chose to our first moves and plan

However, either a larger stack or a faster arrival would have given a better chance to win the fight.

Here's the save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/106568/TeamGeezers_AD-1124.CivWarlordsSave

 

[The-Hawk]

The bad news... Ramesses wants Pi-Ram back for peace. I think this is too high a price to pay. I'd stay at war and send all reinforcements to Thebes. By the way, we have no medics at Thebes, so that is a priority promotion.

Here is the wild card: Hannibal has three knights sitting near Pi-Ram and has too much on his hands right now. Someone is gonna get attacked. Could be us, could be Izzy, could be Ramesses. If it is Ramesses, then maybe Hanni will soften up Thebes and we can opportunistically capture it. All the more reason to stay at war a bit.

Of course, if Hanni is after us, this could get really ugly.

 

[Harbourboy]

It would be interesting to go back 20 turns and see if a better outcome could be achieved. This is something we can't normally do. I was concerned about our cottages and cities that only had one or two weak defenders, but maybe I should have been more gung ho - or done more Balbes-style fancy footwork. We didn't really have very many spearmen to deal with the pillagers.

 

[erikthecelt]

It would be interesting to go back 20 turns and see if a better outcome could be achieved. This is something we can't normally do. I was concerned about our cottages and cities that only had one or two weak defenders, but maybe I should have been more gung ho - or done more Balbes-style fancy footwork. We didn't really have very many spearmen to deal with the pillagers.

I think we have to go back to beginning to really have a shot at fixing this one up. I knew I was probably going to lose at Thebes given the size of our stack vs the defenders but I went for it because we could have got lucky. The real issues we had were not growing fast enough early. Our choice of moving the settler did not benefit us at all, and not learning the resource techs slowed us down. We gambled on finding copper or iron close by and lost.

If I were to play this one again, I would settle in place and learn the resource techs. I would grab the stone and build the henge.

 

[erikthecelt]

The team threads for CGOTM 06 will be up soon. I would rather spend time on preparing for that than continuing this game.

Do we have a proficient world builder on the team who can create a test game for us?

@Sam - do you have an updated team procedures document.

Do we want to do lessons learned here or in the new team thread?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

This is the latest draft. I think it is worth deciding which bits we want to keep to slim it down. Some parts I think we just overlooked/ignored. It's not worth leaving those parts in unless we're actually going to abide by them.

Draft guidelines and rules

Game Strategy and Management

1. If there's a suitable test game available then all team members should play it until at least the early ADs. This will help them to contibute more fully when the game strategy is discussed.
   
2. After initial scouting we should decide on the likely game victory condition(s) where it has not been explicitly set. Subsquent to that the following should be considered:
   • what is our long term tech path?
   • What are critical builds?
   • What shouldn't we build?
   • What techs don't we need?
   • What types of units should we concentrate on?
   • Do we need defensive units, or only offensive?
   • Do we need a navy?
3. Estimate timescale for completion. Yet to be agreed by team
   • Third place finish date has ranged from 1202 AD (257) - 1961 AD (571).
   • The vast majority of third place finishes were in the 300s (1544 AD - 1766 AD)
4. Identify a rolling list of short term objectives. Yet to be agreed by team
   • Useful to check how well we are doing.
   • This is a continuing task throughout the game.
5. Regular review and refinement of overall strategy. - The nearest we came to this was The-Hawk's post
   • Is it still applicable?
   • How well are we following the aims of the strategy?
   • Does it need changing and if so how?

Game Playing

1. Post brief outline of goals for turnset.
   • Leave sufficient time for comments. 24 hours should be enough
   • Amend as necessary based on feedback
2. Give feedback in writeup on which goals were achieved. - Did any of us do this?
3. Turn lengths
   • Adopt differing turn lengths depending on whether we are at war?
   • Report on progress part way through turnset if at war e.g. 5+5 system used by CFR?

Acknowledgement: Mostly plagiarised from Erkon's post in the Murky Waters thread.

• Ensure that you have read and understood the rules provided by the administrators (C-IV SGOTM Reference Thread) and try to follow any ongoing discussion at the SGOTM xx Maintenance Thread
  
• The next player shall post a ”got it” within 24/48? hours of the upload of the previous game. Else the next available player has the right to post the ”got it”. This is a rule in addition to the guideline in the C-IV SGOTM Reference Thread. To ensure a smooth handover, please post the ”got it” within 48 hours. The rest of the team needs the in between 24 hours to solve whos next. It’s also good practice to wait 24 hours after the ”got it” before you play. Else, the difference in time zones and busy work days may prevent players to post useful advice.
  
• In general, whilst scouting for the initial city build the settler should not be moved until the warrior/scout has been moved and a screenshot posted for the team to consider.
  
• No-one is forced to play a turn set. You don’t need to announce the reason for skipping a turn set. Any players can swap turn sets. Please post as quick as possible to reduce unneccesary confusion and delays.
  
• Please use smilies and emotes in your posts as much as possible. Jokes, humour, sarcasm and offensive language can and will be misinterpreted. Remember that written text is a poor method to convey feelings. Not everyone is native to the English language The differences in culture is also a source for misunderstanding. If you get upset by a post, please wait a few hours before you respond.
  
• Don’t be afraid to post things that may appear stupid or evident. Each player have strengths and weaknesses. For example don't assume that everyone knows the difference between peace treaty and cease fire). Don’t be afraid that other members will think you are stupid.
  
• Issues where we cannot reach concensus is resolved by the active player. If you run into a situation where you need advice, please upload the save and let the rest of us take a look. Or post a quick request for advice. It’s better to delay the game a day than build the Globe Theatre in the wrong city Don’t be afraid making mistakes though. We all screw up once in a while (some of us more often than others though )
  
• Don’t promote units until they are close to action (unless the promotion increases movement). If you are unsure of suitable promotions, don’t hesitate to bring that up for discussion. We all have very different experiences from promotions, for example barrage/CR for cats.
  
• Don’t play intoxicated (from alcohol, drugs or smoke). Don’t play when you are too tired. Or when you have your kids/wife screaming at you
  
• Try to keep track of the diplomatic events each turn, and visit each city regularly. It’s mandatory to check cities that grow or have a border expansion. Remember that the number of happy people will change due to changes in war weariness (WW), gained/lost resources etc. Keep track of specialists. We don’t want to polute the great person pool.
  
• Ensure that you have the autosave settings to 1. Please contact AlanH if your game crashes, even if you can repeat all your moves.
  
• Remember that a lot of players read what we post. Don't be rude or disrepectful to any player not on our team.

I think lessons learnt would be better in this thread rather than cluttering up our team thread. I'll see if I can knock up a test game although it may take a day or so.

 

[Harbourboy]

I think a major lesson learnt is that the early game is CRITICALLY important. We should make sure that we put more focus on the little decisions at the start of the game. In all the games we have played, we keep saying "If only we had done X at the start." and "The game was lost when we overlooked doing Y in our first city."