GOTM 73 Spoiler

[Agni Neres]

Day 6, Sunday Mar 4, 2007

1000 Hit return, Mongol government overthrown.
1010 Mongols form Democracy. Wasn't expecting that!
Cure for Cancer in Satsuma. FLIGHT-->RADIO.
1020 Begin Hoover Dam in Matsuyama. Freight deliveries disappointing payoffs. Mongols and Celts ally against us.
1030 Gift Flight to Mongols, not CSC or ESP.
1040 RADIO-->REF. Avoiding the Automobile pollution a little while longer.
1080 Ref--Auto-->THEO. We could use the extra content citizen and maybe JSB.
1090 Hoover Dam Completed. No factories yet.
1100 Celts develop Conscription--now we need to give it away. THEO-->CHIV. No one had for trade.
1110 CHIV-->LDR. 20-shield horseman (IRB) gone.
1130 LDR-->TACTICS. Avoiding the pollution of MP.
1140 TAC-->TOOLS. JSB in Edo.
1160 TOOLS-->ADV FLIGHT
1180 ADV Flight-->MINI-->ROCK
1190 Spanish walk into one of my colonies--WAR. They take Adv Flight and give to Celts too. Spanish Govt changed to Communism.
1210 Barb city of Trondheim purchased.
1220 MP-->COMP. Oil deliveries pump treasury. Barb city of Kaupang purchased.
1240 COMP--SP FL-->Plastics. Not ready for shuttle parts yet -- defenseless cities. Capture Cadiz--Senate forces cease fire--revolt Nada x2. 1st pollution cleaned.
1250 Vans complete Apollo, will be built next turn. PLA-->NF

Quit for the night. 73 Tech. Democracy 3.4.3 1454-240, 2 turns. Mongols are researching MobWar so may get violent soon. ~65 cities, pop 45.19 M. Supreme and Spotless. Sci City (size 26, 11 scientists, no lab yet--next turn) makes 402b/turn. 225 turns down, equal to 1800ad on Diety.

Gifted many techs to all ex Spanish and Germans before saving. Primarily to slow down their mob war research, which kills my Sun-Tzu. Want to get vet defenders in place for the inevitable hostilites.

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Day 7, Friday, March 9.

Seriously considered switching our completed Apollo over to UN, since we have no factories for SS parts yet. But we should be OK if we hold off on parts until 4-5 factories are done, and build UN before launch.

1250 Hit enter, Sneak Attack from Spanish takes 2 engineers. Celts announce they will join Spanish in war against us. This will endanger our shipping.
1260 Spanish have a bomber--takes out a transport. We need a fighter. Mongols develop MobWar which kills Sun-Tzu for us. They won't trade it to us either.
1280 A few final demanded freights make decent payoffs. LASER-->GW (no good choices)
1290 GW-->MobWar. We'd better be able to make armor, too!
1310 We tell Mongols to remove their troops--WAR! Some Democracy they are! We take the city of Kashgar from them -- cease fire, of course. Sneak attack next turn? Celts declare war again. Deliveries made to nearest cities.
1320 SC-->CA. Spanish and Celts go commie. No sneak attacks.
1330 War continues, revolt Celt city, take Mongol city, capture Madrid.
1350 Notified Celts nearing UN; divert all Freight and RB for ourselves. War continues. All 8 SS components completed. 3 Modules and many structurals in production.
1360 Our ship chain is broken by Celts. We take Bokhara and Senate signs Peace treaty.
1370 War resumes as alliances activate.
1380 ROB-->STEALTH. Stealth fighters will seal the deal. Karakorum (DV) and Seville captured, 2 other Spanish cities revolted. Senate allows war to continue. A good turn!

Quit for the night. Ship check 11-4-4, 3 modules in production (about 4 turns to go). We will need 33 structurals. 1706-369, 3.4.3, 2 turns. Sci City makes 536 b/t. Pollution under control -- no mfg plants but some nice offshore platforms. Estimated Landing 1500ad.

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Day 8, Saturday March 10, 2007

If all goes well this will be the final push. Turns are running ~ 20-30 min each as we conduct a 2-front war and also manage SS production. The era of freight deliveries and tech gifting ended early last session. The frontiers are far enough East that the homeland is not threatened.

Want to remember to build MP next to last turn, and go 100 % Lux last turn. No impact other than to inflate civ score.

1390 Hit Enter, pop exceeds 60 million. All enemy attacks fail. Gift SC to Chinese. Revolt Aleppo -- Mongols only one city now. Original plan comes to fruition -- we can ferry-rail-ferry to Celts homeland with just 2 transports, so some shipping can resume.
1400 STEALTH-->ENV. No need for the fighters -- MM SS and make some freights. Put SETI and MP into production.
1410 Realized SS miscalculation -- 8 each component not 8 total needed! We can launch but its a 14 year trip -- no thanx! If done right, will be all ready in 4 turns. Revolt a Celt city--Peace--gift some tech to get to worshipful--freights delivered.
1450 JAPANESE LAUNCH! 33-8-8 ship due to land 1455 AD (5 turns)

1455 Ship lands, we win. Missed out on last 2 wonders, forgot to rush them 2 turns ahead of landing. If I count right, that's 250 turns on the button. We ended with 3 future techs and 82 M people.

Log tailed off at the end here as this got really long and tiring.

 

[Agni Neres]

Tim, from your log...

590-Food
- Get 50g
- Bribe Celt engineer for 654g. ugh.
- Both former celt engineers start improving around Cardiff
- tax 4/6/0

Could you pls explain? If I read right, you are bribing Celt Eng and then improving their land? Wouldn't they be doing this anyway?

Appreciate you helping me learn new tricks!

Agni.

 

[Agni Neres]

This is just a guess, Agni, but you may have thought it is -2050 because you looked at the right hand panel and saw 2050 BC. That number does not update till all the initial messages about production/discoveries/unrest/... are done.
If my guess is correct, you discovered it after -2050 (or as Duke put it between -2050 and -2000) which is consistent with the behavior you reported.

Yes, this is it all right. Playing for years and never noticed this 'feature.' But to be fair, I never kept real logs until joining GOTM either. In fact I never heard of Oedo until scouring the forums for hints and tips

Thanx.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Tim, from your log...

590-Food
- Get 50g
- Bribe Celt engineer for 654g. ugh.
- Both former celt engineers start improving around Cardiff
- tax 4/6/0

Could you pls explain? If I read right, you are bribing Celt Eng and then improving their land? Wouldn't they be doing this anyway?

Appreciate you helping me learn new tricks!

Agni.

Yes, I bribed the celt engineers and then spent several turns improving their land. And yes, they were already working on their land, but the problem is, they weren't making the correct improvements to the correct land. Those engineers were improving all over the map. (the fact that I could afford them shows they were not working to improve Cardiff). I concentrated effort on the 20 squares surrounding Cardiff - which was the city to which I had all 3 of my trade routes. Also, AI/automated engineers will irrigate, irrigate, irrigate, and then sometimes build roads when the mood hits them. My work was focused on two things: making sure every square in the city had roads, and improving the river squares with irrigation or in one case revealing a hidden special to entice the AI to place its workers on the rivers instead of the dry terrain.

The objective was to increase the base trade arrows of the city in an effort to improve the value of my trade routes. This is something I probably wouldn't even consider except in an OCC game, and even then I don't do it all that often.

I didn't bribe the engineers with the primary intent of improving around Cardiff. They were bribed because I was going to need them to boost my city's shield production for the spaceship construction. They had to be NONEs to (a) avoid food support to keep as many einsteins as possible, and (b) avoid shield support so I could achieve 80s usable production when it was time for the spaceship. Improving around cardiff was just a matter of trying to give my science any little boost possible in the meantime.

 

[ManowaR]

Amazing

Your report shows me crystal clear that i have mucho to learn. Some questions plz:

1.- When you say 970-Food <--- what do you meen whith that? Food caravan? And what did you do with those caravans?

2.- Improving the terrain with settlers? Silk? I know about irrigating, roads, buil forest... By the way, there&#180;s nothing interesting in the location you builded your city. Plz enlighten meeeeeeeee

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Amazing

Your report shows me crystal clear that i have mucho to learn. Some questions plz:

1.- When you say 970-Food <--- what do you meen whith that? Food caravan? And what did you do with those caravans?

Yep, food caravans. (I tried to code the notes so that anything produced is bold, any techs learned are in italics.) The caravans/freights are used to help build the final wonders and spaceship parts. You can add a caravan to a wonder and switch to spaceship parts without the 50&#37; loss in shields.

2.- Improving the terrain with settlers? Silk? I know about irrigating, roads, buil forest... By the way, there&#180;s nothing interesting in the location you builded your city. Plz enlighten meeeeeeeee

The location I built on (I checked, it definitetly was 55,103) had 4 "hidden specials" - squares that would normally have a special, but those squares were grassland, which never displays a special. Getting the silk is just a matter of "mining" to produce a forest on the grassland squares that hide the specials. Since someone (Elephant?) had already posted based on map analysis that they were "whale" type, I knew all 4 would give me silk (as opposed to the fish-type pheasant which produces no trade) if I "mined" the grassland into forest. I also had 4 squares with rivers (including one of the silk), which will produce one extra arrow once roads are built (and will produce 2 extra when you have colossus and superhighways). Rivers also have the benefit of providing a full complement of trade arrows even when they are normally non-trade producing terrain like forests and hills. late in the game when I need to boost my shield production, I transform the rivers and don't lose any trade.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

I generally prioritize a library before the wonders in OCCs these days.

I often wonder about the order of Colossus and Library. (Marco always comes first, unless I get the box filled before discovering Trade, as it may bring in cash through alliances.) I have done detailed analysis based on particular settings but not a general one. I should do that.

I also had the city up to size 33 once the farmland was done. 13 einsteins can get you a long way as well ...

Great point. Another mistake I made was not to buy some settlers/engineers. My improvements were slow and steady so it took me much longer to max out my population.

I haven’t studied it very closely but I’m curious about some of your mid-to-late game tech path. A couple of the techs I prioritize in OCC (mostly Automobile, but also explosives and refrig) seemed to come later than I would have expected.

With Explosvies you may be right (I do not recall the details at this point and have not gone back to study my log in detail either) as in this game I had no terrain to transform so my settler was quite capable only slow. The one hill that I had I was going to keep since I needed it to reach 60 shields at the end. The other two techs you mentioned I should have prioritized and as far as I know I did.

 

[ManowaR]

Yep, food caravans. (I tried to code the notes so that anything produced is bold, any techs learned are in italics.) The caravans/freights are used to help build the final wonders and spaceship parts. You can add a caravan to a wonder and switch to spaceship parts without the 50% loss in shields.


The location I built on (I checked, it definitetly was 55,103) had 4 "hidden specials" - squares that would normally have a special, but those squares were grassland, which never displays a special. Getting the silk is just a matter of "mining" to produce a forest on the grassland squares that hide the specials. Since someone (Elephant?) had already posted based on map analysis that they were "whale" type, I knew all 4 would give me silk (as opposed to the fish-type pheasant which produces no trade) if I "mined" the grassland into forest. I also had 4 squares with rivers (including one of the silk), which will produce one extra arrow once roads are built (and will produce 2 extra when you have colossus and superhighways). Rivers also have the benefit of providing a full complement of trade arrows even when they are normally non-trade producing terrain like forests and hills. late in the game when I need to boost my shield production, I transform the rivers and don't lose any trade.

Thanks a lot Tim, but there is still something i miss: how do you know where the hidden specials are?

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Thanks a lot Tim, but there is still something i miss: how do you know where the hidden specials are?

I'm not going to go through a full dissertation; This is a big topic with a lot of prior research that I won't repeat here.

Start by going here and looking at #59 in post 5 of this thread. You will want to further search around for "specials pattern" and "hut pattern" information. This is the basis for the "map analysis" people refer to. There are also helper tools that can decipher information from the location of huts or specials to project where the other specials on the map will be.

 

[ManowaR]

Thanks again, i will study the thread you gave me

 

[Ali Ardavan]

ManowaR, for a full description of Map Analysis take a look at
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=191447