GK2- The Training Day Experiment

[Gengis Khan]

Alright guys, posting the answers to my questions now & then will be shadowing. Logs will be up in an hour or two.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Q1: Toku has 6 cities, how many units do you plan to have sitting on his border when we declare war(and what kind?)? Sub question, ETA to invasion?

Scouts: I'd like about 8-10 Swords. I think we've got 4 Warriors up there, Allegheny and Oil Springs will produce 1 next turn (6), once Grand River is connected to our road network that will free up one Vet Warrior to go north (7). There is a Vet warrior escorting the settler on the NE Peninsula... move the settler first, if no barbs, return that Vet Warrior to Oil Springs... that will take 6-7 turns. By that time, Oil Springs and Allegheny should have produced 2 more Warriors, and our Iron should be hooked up.
ETA: 7 turns. I think I noted in the AAR that we should prepare for war "within the next 10-15". I guess we should expect the next player to sack Tokyo sometime around his 8 or 10th turn...
alerum: 12-15 units should be perfect for taking on Japan. Will probably be ready in 10 turns... no more then 15.
binyo: The strongest defense Japan has is Regular Spearman
I take the bonus defense is 100% (wall + city on hill) and hope it is right
Units Defenders:
Warrior : 1/2/1
Spearman : 1/4/1
Swordman : 3/4/1
Our best attacking unit Vet Swordsman : 3/2/1.
There are 6 cities on monarch level (I assume) at most guarded by 2 units so total defender 12 units. assuming with RNG
To make sure we got them quite fast we need at least 15-18 units, at least 4 swordsman attacking a cities, and then rest to heal the injured (2 would stay on the city as MP), 11+ other swordsmen go to another city.
We have two barracks already, and it can produce 2 vet warriors each 2 turns. We have 4 vet warriors. At least we need 12 turns.
Solar: 6 Cities, 8-12 swords? maybe a few more, as the RNG usually doesn't like me, ETA, ASAP, possibly my turns if not then next player.
I’d go with 8-10 for the upgrade, we can produce some more as needed. I think anymore then 12-14 will be unnecessary & overkill. I would kick off the war roughly 8 turns or so from now. I’d also make sure I had 2 spears to travel with the stack, one to absorb the initial counter, and the other for our wounded swords to heal under.

Q2: The settler 3 tiles NW of Salamanca- Where's he going, and why?

Scouts: I already answered this.
alerum: There's a nice spot up north that has fish and whale that Scouts pointed out. That looks to be the best site. I believe it's the second tile south of the top of the contient.
binyo: Agree with Alerum and Scout. NE with fish and whales (Seafood everyone)
Solar: Probably to secure the last site on the choke with japan, to seal them into their own territory.
I’d turn him around and head to one of our southern sites, we don’t really need to build a city on the front line we have to worry about defending. Plus it’s so far out it will be worthless for quite a while, and any workers we send up there to help out will do more harm then good cause our core still needs major work.

Q3: From the last dotmap(or opening the last save), where do you want cities to the S & SW(desert lands)? Also where are they in your list of priorities?

Scouts: SW of the incense, and NE NE of the fish.
alerum: I thought I already made a dot-map for those cities? We have 2 RPC sites left there. I can't rememeber which tile, but the dot-map about 3 pages ago has my choices there.
binyo: SW of Incense
Solar: I agree with spot 3 as it will have the fish and the luxury, which will mean that although the city may never be huge, it will be able to generate commerce and shields to turn into science and units. It will also enable us to link the incense into our empire and reap its benifits. (top priority, happiness is going to be a neccesity during the war, to enable us to assimilate the enemy cities faster, and will also help when we decide to go into a more representative government.)
Site 4 looks good to me as well, it will have the hills and will enable us to connect up the roads between towanda and mauch chunk faster, this will enable us to send units down towards persia faster, and settle the jungle faster.
Agree with the masses

Q4: What are the pros/cons of us starting to settle towards Persia shortly?

Scouts: Pros: grabbing land, monopolizing Dyes. Military Pro: if we can settle beyond the jungle we would get to more open terrain that favors our Mounted Warrior. Military Con: Those cities will be much to unproductive to defend themselves. The units to defend them will need to come from somewhere else.
alerum: Pros of settling towards Persia are that we can won't have to wade through 10 squares of jungle to reach them, we limit their expansaion, claim a monoply on... Dyes? Or silks? The only con is going to be digging them out of that jungle, and making them productive with all the corruption they'll have. We'll also have to load up units on the southern choke point city.
binyo: I dont see any contra, grab the lands even it would be unproductive.
1. the jungle may produce a lot of citizen after we cut the trees and mine them.
2. We monopoly dyes.
3. Even its unproductive, the worst I could see, they would still producing 1 warrior each 10 turns for 1 productive shield or 1 worker each 20 turns.
Solar: Pros: When x-man's time comes, we will be able to deliver our fury to him faster, meaning a shorter war.
Cons: More chance of his units getting to our cities, so greater chance of losing cities, though that would be dependant on the amount of units sent his way and the skill of the warmonger controling them
I gotta disagree with everyone, I see 0 pros right now. Once we hook up our iron(momentarily), we can’t build warriors, that means every settler will need to be escorted by spears(cause there’s barbs in the area). The jungle won’t be productive for a LONG time, and we don’t have nearly the workers to clear it. The spears would be better served heading to the front, and we can still block the pass with our Southern scout to keep the Persians out of there until they get Map Making at least.

Q5: What you doing with the 2 scouts?? (Ones in Jap territory & ones south of the Dye Jungles.)

Scouts: The scouts have served their purpose. The one in Japan, disband him where he stands. I was quite tempted to do this on my turns; I'm 100% in agreement with Sir Bugsy on the rep hit thing. The one north of Persia, disband him in one of our cities for the shields.
alerum: Disband the scouts. At least the scout in Japan. I don't think we'll be able to take out Japan and Zulu before they meet Persia.
binyo: Scout South : Hold the choke point as long as possible
Scout on Japan :Before the war : disband them to avoid rep hit if he is still on Japan. But I prefer we use him and take him on the galley with a settler (even suicide galley).
Solar: IMO we should get that scout out of their ASAP, i hate rep hits, and it will only be killed when war starts anyway. at this stage, i would have either disbanded the scouts or be getting ready to ship them to another continent.
Southern scout would be dodging barbs & closing the choke. Jap scout would be breaking for neutral territory, he needs to get out of there land ASAP. If they don’t chase him down & kill him he gets on a galley, if they do ok…. It’s just 1 less archer we have to deal with for a minute.

Q6: Research at 50%, Monarchy due in 12, with +13gpt & 342g. What do you do/why? Follow up: Xerx now has 482g of which you can get 365 of it for Poly, do you deal? Why or why not?

Scouts: I would back research down to 10-20%. At +13 gpt, we need a little more gold for warrior upgrades. I was thinking we'd hold on to Polytheism until X-man gets another tech. OTOH, we could probably use the gold to establish an embassy w/ Shaka, and get him into a MA v. Japan for Poly... which would probably eat up some of Shaka's GA before we have to fight him....
alerum: If we turn down research to 10%, we'll get it in a fair amount of time... long before the AI will... And we do need gold right now if we're going to upgrade 15 warriors to swords... I was going to say to keep poly, but if he has all that gold, and will only give part of it, that means he's going to pay full market price for it. It won't get any more then this, and will probably go down in value.... we could try waiting 1 or 2 more turns, and see if he learns something new, but we need to trade it before it's worthless to us.
binyo: will search Philo at the lowest min. rate. I will sell poly and take the gold from him for upgrading or alliance with Zulu. Xman wont trade to anyone anyway, moreover, xman has more money than 365, it means that is the best deal we could get for philo.
Solar: Tough call on poly, we could go for it now and get the gold, or we could see what everyone else has tech - wise and trade tech for tech. I would be very temptet with the gold, but if the others are willing to let us have a couple of techs for it each, then i would do that, we don't want to fall too far behind the AIs.
I’d back down research, a lot. I also wouldn’t sell poly yet, if nothings changed for about 7 turns(when I’m getting ready for the upgrade, I’d maybe sell it if we needed some cash, but I doubt we would. Then after the upgrade research would get jumped up as much as I could & still make a bit of loot.

Q7: "The pure speculation/in a perfect world question"- What tech you gunning for next after Monarchy? What techs do you think each other Civ will have by the time we finish Monarchy?(depends on your answer to Q6, of course) How would you be going for it? (all out, min research, or somewhere in the middle)

Scouts: After Monarchy, trade for Map Making, beeline for Currency. Markets are Good Things, and Currency is a tech the AI usually neglect. Once we get 3 luxuries hooked up, marketplaces will be powerful for happiness and gold. We should try to get a market in any city capable of growing past size 6.
alerum: I have *NO* idea what to go for next in this level of play.
binyo: I am expecting bot Zulu and Xerxes would research map making since they are expantionist and commercial (both want the Light House wonders), and we may trade with them with monarchy (we need GLH too)
I doubt after that we could get any tech from Zulu, by that time we would at war with Zulu. From persia we may get 2 more techs, but since he is alone, his research will be slow as well.
Solar: One advance we could research soon is literature, i know the great library is off limits, but it gives us libraries to increase our culture and science, and it is also researched late by the AI normally, so we should be able to trade it for some of the techs we are behind by (if any) (max possible maybe as we dont know how close the ai is to it..
Techs the ai could have soon:Maths, HBR, MM, COL PHIL, etc. (The AI always seems to get these quicker than me on monarch.)
I’d go with Math(depending on how long Monarchy took), the AI will snag Map Making & mostly likely either Code or Phil. They love those 3 techs; MMing for galleys, Code & Phil for enabling them to get Republic. They avoid Math for awhile, even though it’s a great tech.


Shadow turn log coming up after dinner.

 

[scoutsout]

@Gengis: I know putting together those multicolor posts takes time and effort, but it sure is effective!

 

[binyo66]

Yes, its nice. We have a nice teacher .

 

[Gengis Khan]

[0]:

Control Freak pointed out that Niagara Falls could be 3-turns worker factory if it grows to size 6. So I switched its production to warrior for MP purpose.

Mauch Chunk switched to wall from worker, it's growing slowly, and we don't know when/if the Persians might attack us :O

Instead of over-expanding and building more corrupted cities, we need to connect our cities together, so I switched settler at Salamanca to worker. It can be 2-turns worker factory. Grand Rivers can do the settler-building.

I decided we should keep researching on Monarchy, since we're religious and as soon we get it, we can switched to it and enjoy the full benefit of FP surrounded by mined hills.

Like the switch in Niagara. Although I would defiantly build a worker after that, Niagara is growing faster then building workers. So until we can get 1 every 2 turn, one every 3 or 4 will work.
Not a big fan of the Mauch Chunk Switch. IMHO walls are almost as worthless as coastal fortresses. I very very rarely build walls, and when I do it’s only under the most drastic circumstances. We could use the scout to block the pass, and then we’ll know way ahead of time if they’re coming.
Not digging the Salamanca switch either, it’s set up as the perfect hassle free settler factory why tempt fate? We’re going to need settlers, and you always want an extra settler or two around just incase.
And the 3 builds I detest(no offense scouts) were left. Towanda, Akawasana & Centraila are all building barracks with 1 sh/pt, they should be kicking out warriors or workers until we get some terrain improvements down. The idea of wasting 40 turns in 1 city for a barracks.*shudder*

[IBT]:The Japanese is trying to sneak a settler through us.
A Persian warrior is escorting a settler.

[1]:
Niagra Falls: warrior -> temple, it'll be a large city soon.
Allegheny: warrior -> warrior
Oil Springs: warrior -> spearmen (it's producing at 3spt)
St. Regis: warrior -> warrior

Moved a warrior to block the sneaking settler/warrior pair.

I’m not getting the temple. We don’t need culture in it, all the best tiles to work are already in it’s radius, and we’ll never have an unhappiness problem with it if it keeps pumping out much needed workers.
Other builds I like, even the spearman.

[IBT]:

Japanese settler trying to find a hole to get in.

[2]
Salamanca: worker -> worker
Settled Tyendenaga at #1, near the whale
Japanse warrior (inside our land) is blocking the other settler's route to site number 2, so I skipped its turn, waiting for the warrior to move out.

Not much to comment on.

[IBT]:

Trespassing Japanese warrior moved north, still blocking the route...

[3]
Allengheny: warrior -> yet another veteran warrior (very productive city, indeed)
I decided to change the direction of the waiting settler to site number 5 (Scoutsout's dotmap).

Like the switched direction of the settler.

[IBT]:
Japanese settler gave up and moved west, they completed Oracle at Kyoto and they started building the Colossus.
Zulu started building the Pyramids.
Saw a barbarian horseman near Mauch Chunk

[4]:
Salamanca: worker -> worker

You’re not giving me much to work with here.

[5]:
Allengheny: warrior -> warrior
Cattaragus: Temple -> wall (it has over 50% corruption, bah!)

Bah! The dreaded walls again. With the invasion we have planned Japan could only dream of counterattacking our cities. We’ll lose some units, but none of our cities will be under attack.

[IBT]
Barbarian horseman attacked Mauch Chunk and lost

[6]:
Salamanca: worker -> barracks (I think we have enough worker for now, plus Niagara Falls will be 3-turns worker-factory in the near future).
Grand Rivers: settler -> settler

Finally hooked up the horse using 3 workers, we can now build the Mounted Warior... But, however, Scoutsout and others doesn't want early GA, so...

Settled Khanawake (nifty name) at spot number 5.

You predicted it correctly, The Persians now knows Map-Mapking, and still haven't contacted Japan or Zululand. I tried to see how much they value their Map-Making:

Their Map-making for our Polythesis + 60 gold sum.

But I didn't trade for it.

We have only 13 workers. With 12 cities, 2 settlers headed out, 3 unconnected cities & a ton of tiles unimproved. We don’t have enough workers.
So you halted the worker & settler factory we had to set up other ones.
Nice not trading Poly.

[7]:
Allengheny: warrior -> spearmen (thanks for Allengheny productive ability, we're growing militaristically stronger than other nations! Now, we need more spearmen to protect our future swordmen...)

I decided it's time to hook up the Iron, so I sent three workers to road the mountain, and it'll take 3 turns to complete it.

Settled Caughnawaga at site number 4.

Looking good.

[8]:
Oil Springs: spearmen -> warrior

Ordering workers around.

[9]:
Nothing much.

[10]:
Niagra Falls: temple -> wealth (give it one more turn to grow, and then you can start buiding worker).

Oil Springs: warrior -> warrior (probably the last warrior it'll produce).

Both Japan and Zulu knows know Map-Making, and the Persians still do not know Polythesis. Good trading here for next player (SolarKnight, I think). Monarchy discovery is due in 2 turns as well.

We'll have both the dye and iron hooked within two turns, and we have excessive gold to pay for the upgrade for the warriors, and I suppose we can invade Japan very soon.

Rule #1 Never, ever put a city on wealth unless you have a very good reason.
Rule #2 If you have a good reason, forget about it & take the city off wealth.

[edit-Thanks guys! Now I just have to get off my ass & find time to update the ToC again.

Hmm, my review sounds really negitive. Don't take offence. I promise to stop reviewing the turns at 6am when I'm grumpy if you guys will promise to start putting more details in there.]

 

[Gengis Khan]

The basics:

• First things first, you can turn research down 10%.
  You're going to need to get those warriors to Oil Springs.
  You want to get the scout out of there Immediatly.
  Wealth. Enough said.

Things for discussion:

• 1. Sell contacts?
  2. You really want all those Rax right now, keep in mind everyone is eating 1gpt.
  3. Sell Poly?
  4. You guys keeping Tokyo, Kagoshima, Edo, & Kyoto? Why?
  5. How many turns till you kick off the headhunting.
  6. What tech you researching next & how fast?

I'm keeping quiet on these ones. Up to you guys.

 

[scoutsout]

1. Sell contacts?
It depends. For what?
2. You really want all those Rax right now, keep in mind everyone is eating 1gpt.
@GK: No offense taken in your previous comments. Though it doesn't look all that great at the moment, Akwesasne is a riverside site with nice shield potential. It can be a good unit producing city with a modest amount of improvement and growth. There is a forest that can be worked while the grassland tiles are mined (and after Tyendanaga is connected). I would not have interrupted the settler pump in Salmanca, not with an additional Incense to be claimed. The others I'm actually okay with. I know they cost money, but our GA is likely to be spent building units for some serious war-mongering... which means unit building... and veteran units are a Good Thing. I am curious about Tonawanda, and where the citizens are placed... and why there isn't at least one worker improving the hill E NE of the city...
3. Sell Poly?
Eventually, but for what? For Map Making, maybe...
4. You guys keeping Tokyo, Kagoshima, Edo, & Kyoto? Why?
Sure. I don't think Japan has accumulated enough culture yet for flipping to be a big concern.
5. How many turns till you kick off the headhunting.
Very, very soon. Pull all the Warriors around Oil Springs into the town, upgrade as soon as iron is connected. On the turn after the upgrade, contact that Japanese warrior forted on the hill next to Cattaraugus, and tell Tokugawa to pull him or declare war. Kill that stupid warrior with a sword, and pile the rest into Tokyo.

IMO, the war with Japan began about 7 turns ago, when that Japanese warrior fortified on that hill.

6. What tech you researching next & how fast?
Depends on whether we can do a trade for Map Making. Once Map Making is in hand, beeline for Currency. Markets are the most under-rated city improvement in the game.

 

[Gengis Khan]

*Struggles to resist the urge to chime in.*

 

[scoutsout]

By the way... for my teammates that don't follow these things, one of our instructors has posted a couple of interesting wins recently. Since he probably won't "toot his own horn", I'm going to do it for him.

In GOTM 30, Sir Bugsy's win ranked 28th out of 116 submissions, with a domination win in 1782. This puts him in the top quartile, for those that like math...

An even more interesting win was Team Bugsy's multi-win in SGOTM1. In that game they pulled off a conquest win and a spaceship victory on the same final turn. The screencaps for the final sequence are in this thread. Though the final results are not posted, there is a very good chance that Sir Bugsy's team will be awarded the "Green Laurel" award for the highest base Jason score among the 10 teams in SGOTM1.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Nice!

A space victory in 1690 on Regent, especially since you guys did 90% of the research yourself.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Thanks guys. Those were a lot of fun. One should also note that Scout played the GotM at the Open level and produced a victory. No small feat.

Edit - I would encourage all the players to give the GotM a try. The Conquest version gives a lot of bonuses to the newbee. Play the game, post your results in the spoiler. Just like here, a lot of people will help you if you post questions in your report. I know Gengis doesn't haunt the GotM, but I do. I give you feedback and we can discuss different aspects of the game (via PM) as long as I've gotten that far.

 

[scoutsout]

Thanks for the compliment Sir Bugsy. I owe much to you, Gengis, and the strong players that have de-lurked here. I don't think this is a spoiler, but in the current GOTM I did a nifty little Warrior-to-Sword upgrade gambit and did a little warmongering.

Now where do you all suppose I came up with that idea? ?

 

[shoguntaka]

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
[0]:

Like the switch in Niagara. Although I would defiantly build a worker after that, Niagara is growing faster then building workers. So until we can get 1 every 2 turn, one every 3 or 4 will work.
Not a big fan of the Mauch Chunk Switch. IMHO walls are almost as worthless as coastal fortresses. I very very rarely build walls, and when I do it’s only under the most drastic circumstances. We could use the scout to block the pass, and then we’ll know way ahead of time if they’re coming.

Mauch Chunk is way too corrupted to be any of use, so it's not much use to improve the terrain around it, and the wall is free (0 maintenance).

Not digging the Salamanca switch either, it’s set up as the perfect hassle free settler factory why tempt fate? We’re going to need settlers, and you always want an extra settler or two around just incase.

In my opinion, we've settled too much, and I switched it to worker. Like you said, we have too few workers, and it became 2-turn worker instead of 4-turn setterl.

And the 3 builds I detest(no offense scouts) were left. Towanda, Akawasana & Centraila are all building barracks with 1 sh/pt, they should be kicking out warriors or workers until we get some terrain improvements down. The idea of wasting 40 turns in 1 city for a barracks.*shudder*

I don't think they're bad build, they're the 1st inner city ring, and will have low corruption, have good shield production, so they'll make valid military builders.

I’m not getting the temple. We don’t need culture in it, all the best tiles to work are already in it’s radius, and we’ll never have an unhappiness problem with it if it keeps pumping out much needed workers.

There's little culture gap NE of the Niagara Falls. At least this temple will claim that area, and give 1 content citizen.

Other builds I like, even the spearman.

Like the switched direction of the settler.

Finally, something you like

Bah! The dreaded walls again. With the invasion we have planned Japan could only dream of counterattacking our cities. We’ll lose some units, but none of our cities will be under attack.

Again, it's badly corrupted and almost useless, maybe you can change its production to worker or wealth, it's not too late. If you said we don't have to worry about Japan's counterattack, why did we put a lot of emphasis on choke ponit?

We have only 13 workers. With 12 cities, 2 settlers headed out, 3 unconnected cities & a ton of tiles unimproved. We don’t have enough workers.

So you halted the worker & settler factory we had to set up other ones.

After Salamanca produced barrack, it can be 2-turn worker factory again. Also, when Niagara Falls grows to size 6, it can be 3-turn factory.

Rule #1 Never, ever put a city on wealth unless you have a very good reason.

I wanted to align the food/shield for worker factory properly.

Hmm, my review sounds really negitive. Don't take offence. I promise to stop reviewing the turns at 6am when I'm grumpy if you guys will promise to start putting more details in there.[/i]] [/B]

What more details?

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I think the kind of detail Gengis is talking about is:

Moved worker at Grand River, 2 north to FP and irrigate.
Settler moves 1NE to forest
scout moves w-nw to mountain

It makes it easier to shadow the game. If the person replaying doesn't know where you moved stuff, it is very hard to replay and evaluate.

One thing everyone should remember that the most important unit in the game is the worker. If you have any doubts go over to teh Gang of Four SG, download a save and see if you can do much without tile improvements.

I think the general concensus on walls is that unless you are going to be attacked, they don't do much good. The shields spent on the walls can be used to build two warriors or two workers.

I agree with your idea of converting the settler factory into a worker factory, but by interjecting the barracks in there, you messed up the factory a bit. The question I would ask is: am I going to be building any military there in the near future? I think your answer is "No" since you intend to make it a worker factory. In that case, I would leave it as a worker factory, until you are done making workers. That will probably be sometime around 500 AD. In the meantime, you have been paying maintenance on the barracks that you aren't using.

I think Gengis point here is that you have other cities building workers, why take your most efficient worker producer off line?

 

[scoutsout]

Fellow teammates: Have a look at this, and tell me how many Zulu cities you see.

 

[SolarKnight]

just 1, or is that the name of their 3rd city?

(in order of founding?)

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I see three.

 

[Gengis Khan]

As do I, nice eye scout.

 

[DJMGator13]

Originally posted by scoutsout
Fellow teammates: Have a look at this, and tell me how many Zulu cities you see.

Please elaborate. I might see 3 but I'm not sure.

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by DJMGator13

Please elaborate. I might see 3 but I'm not sure.

Well...backing it off a bit, how might you see more than one?