MB4 - GOTM24 Redux [civ3] Roster A

[Sir Bugsy]

Alan - Thanks for the Kensai Oda update. I never faced any units from Japan in the short time I played GOTM 24 and in GOTM 25 I've yet to go to war against Tokugawa. (Although just about everyone else :devil2: )

I think your plan for TFT is very sound.

The reason I was looking at the tile N v. NW was two fold:

1. To have a river defensive bonus when it came down to war, should we have the misfortune of being attacked.

2. To have that city on the same side of the river as the rest of our civ in case we needed to get units back to the civ quickly.

Going for the RCP location certainly makes sense.

 

[AlanH]

Point taken about the defensive bonus and movement issues. I guess "defense" and "retreat" are not concepts I have had much experience of in Civ3.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Again one of the very cool things about SGs. I am usually in the defensive mode early in a game and like to place my cities to take advantage of defensive bonuses such as hills and rivers. I have recently been shown some of the advantages of the offemsive approach by Gengis and gormdragan.

The exchange of ideas is always good. We are going to make decisions that the entire team may not agree with. I feel that as long as someone thinks through a decision and explains their reasons, rather than "well it felt right" or "I had a hunch" it is easier for the team to accept it.

If I come to a decision that I feel could be a game breaker, I always ask for an option, but in general I find playing a set of turns that I can present to the team as the best possible situation that could be played is a challenge and fun to play.

 

[AlanH]

Turn 0 1750 BC Preflight

Switch Azachi from footman to warrior (2 turns), growth next turn. We can build warriors for 10 shields each, and will be able to upgrade them to Kensai Oda when we hook up the iron. Oda have 4.2.1 stats and will dominate until Chivalry.

MM Nagoya for granary and growth next turn.

Confirm no deals available, slider is 7.1.2

Hit next turn.

IBT: Tokugawa demands Masonry. We are not strong enough to defy him, so give in .. through gritted teeth. Until next time, Lord Ieyasu!
Nagoya grows to pop 4, completes granary -> warrior (2 turns) while pop grows

Turn 1 1725 BC

Settler W, Footman S for a miniature exploration while he waits for settler.
Warriors explore, no change in diplo screens.
Slider 6.1.3 to keep Nagoya happy.

IBT: Azachi warrior -> warrior (2 turns)

Turn 2 1700 BC

Warrior W from Azachi. We need to clear the fog SW, S.
Settler SW. Footman NW. Diplo - all quiet.

IBT: Dyes road complete. Nagoya warrior -> warrior

Turn 3 1675 BC

Worker to SW of Azachi to start road towards Ise. Settler SW, Footman SW
Slider 7.1.2 now we have dyes, 8 gpt. Diplo no change.

IBT: Azachi warrior ->warrior (2 turns). Worker completes mine east of Nagoya.

Turn 4 1650 BC

Settler to city site. Warrior S from Azachi. Worker starts road E of Nagoya. Worker starts road SE of Azuchi. Diplo peaceful.

IBT: Nagoya warrior -> settler. Now at pop 5. 4 turn settler farm operational.

Turn 5 1625 BC

Build Koromo -> worker.
Footman to mountain, sees cattle north of Koromo.

IBT: Azachi warrior and pop 4. Starts worker.

Turn 6 1600 BC

Warrior stays in Azachi.

IBT: Roads completed. Kuroda have settled close to Ide.

Turn 7 1575 BC

North worker moves to bonus river tile. SE worker moves towards Ide.
Warrior from Azachi to Nagoya as extra MP for pop 6.
Temple in Ide is now 19 shields to completion. Pop rush it.
Kuroda has Alphabet at monopoly price. We'll wait.

IBT: Azachi worker -> warrior (2 turns). Ise temple -> worker (10 turns)

Turn 8 1550 BC

Tokugawa now has Alphabet as well (did he extort that as well?). 3rd civ price is now about 130 gold. Takeda doesn't have it, and has 42 gold.
We need to know when Calligraphy is in play, and the price isn't likely to reduce much. Decide to buy Alphabet from Kuroda for 64 gold + 3 gpt and sell it to Takeda for 42 gold.

IBT: Nagoya settler -> settler.

Turn 9 1525 BC

Nagoya is at pop 4! WTH? It has a full food box, and has produced a settler. It looks like the food was calculated out of step with the settler. We'll waste a turn of food production now, and the farm will be out of sync!
Settler heads towards city site 2 tiles SE of Azachi on my last dot map.
Slider to 9.1.0 because of pop reductions.

IBT: Barb horse appears in S.
Azachi warrior -> warrior

Turn 10 1500 BC

Settler moves SE from Azachi. Warrior threatened by barb horse fortifies on mountain. Slider to 8.1.1. MM Nagoya back to low shield production to get it back in sync.

Firaxis score 151.

Post mortem:

Not much to say, really. We need to keep pumping out warriors for upgrade and settlers. We can hook up iron near Nagoya, and we can build a city or two to bring it inside our cultural border.

Current headcount: 11 warriors, 3 workers, 1 footman, 1 settler en route.

Over to you, Honorable Smackster!

The zipped save.

[Edit] Here's a screenshot/dot map:

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Good job getting the settler factory going Alan

Originally posted by AlanH
MM Nagoya for granary and growth next turn.

I was afraid that with the granary completing the same time that the city grew that we wouldn't have a full granary. I guess I got this wrong. Glad someone on this team knows what they're doing

IBT: Tokugawa demands Masonry. We are not strong enough to defy him, so give in .. through gritted teeth. Until next time, Lord Ieyasu!

One more reason to get that %&*#$ out

IBT: Roads completed. Kuruda have settled close to Ide.

Looks like the AI are standing in line to become our targets :devil2:
trading for Alphabet

 

[mad-bax]

smackster: you are up already.

 

[smackster]

I got it, about to play right now

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by smackster
I got it, about to play right now

I'll send a virtual search party out to look for Gengis Khan and warn him he's up soon.

 

[smackster]

1500BC

My first look at this map since the start. Looks like an easy 4 turn SF, although with not a lot of room for growth, so that early war will be essential. Will continue to pump out settlers and warriors. I'll look for something interesting to do!!!!!

Nothing to change everything looks ok.

ET

IBT Barb horse dies attacking Tokugowa warrior and upgrades him. Takeda building Pyramids, which is nice of them.

T1: 1475BC
Settlers continues SE (funny but I would call that east, but I know where we want to settle him). Warriors continue to open the fog.
Nothing to trade, nothing to MM.

IBT Kuroda archer appears in our territory near Ise. Not much we can do if he attacks. Worker completes road in the middle of nowhere, but I realise this is Alan telling us where to place our cities, thanks Al.

T2: 1450BC
Warrior built in Azuchi, send him east for now to see off the archer, not that it would get there in time.
Not sure if we intended Azuchi for just warriors, but I decide to push out one settler, we do have a granary you know.

IBT Archer moves back east, phew.

T3: 1425BC
Settler built in Nagoya sending him sw to settle on the hill. Warriors find two barb huts, and will bravely move in for kill.
Slider back to 0%

IBT Kuroda Archers moving to barb huts

T4: 1400BC
Our warrior dies on barb hut in mountain.
Slider back to 10%

IBT Tokugawa asks us to move our warrior having a quick spy on their territory

T5: 1375BC
Warrior kills barb hut and gives us 25 gold.
Have to switch slider to 30% for Koruma, footman is back there in two.

IBT ZZZZzzz

T6: 1350BC
Ise Worker->Worker
Ogaki Warrior->Barracks (10 turns for temple, something strange there)

IBT zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZ

T7: 1325BC
Nagoya and Azuchi build Settlers, Azuchi back to warrior
Takeda have Shamanism, but wont give it up, even when I threaten them (only joking)
Slider back to 0%

T8: 1300BC
Yokachi built
Warrior spies a little island to the south

T9: 1275BC
Azuchi Warrior->Settler, obviously the next person can do what they like here
Suddenly our friends all have Calligraphy and Shaminism. Find that two of them know Mori but Takeda does not. We can buy it for 188 gold. Its expensive but I'll go for it on the chance that this will help us now.
They want 116 gold for Mori contact, decide to take that too. The Calligraphy turn only lasts one turn, normally you can get a lot for it. I think this was maybe too expensive and I'm sorry for spending all our gold but I took the chance.
Mori have very little but give us 16 gold for Alphabet. Takeda give us 57 gold for contact with Mori.

T10: 1250BC
Suzuka built
Slider set to 20%. Nothing to trade, they want too much for Shaminism.

Summary

8 Cities, 13 warriors, 4 workers, and 1 footman. 90 gold, 20 turns to Shaminism. 194 firaxis points.

.zip

 

[AlanH]

@Smackster: Good job getting three more settlers built and installed in your ten. We are now up to the same strength as our rivals. BTW, I notice your new cities are all as placed on my dot map. I went for an RCP with rings at 3-3.5 and 7-7.5, but there's been very little discussion, so please feel free to find better places.

A difficult call on the Calligraphy trading turn, but with such a small group of contacts it was never going to be very profitable. For such a small group, the AI tech rate is still fast and furious - I guess the others are doing better from barb huts than we are.

Having slept on it I realise what went wrong with the Nagoya settler factory during my turns. It's not built on a river, so it can't grow to pop 7. I'm sure I've seen posts elsewhere that claim you can still run it from 5 to grow to 7, and back to 5 in 4 turns because the pop 7 never really happens. Well, I think I proved that's wrong. After my first Nagoya settler was produced I had a full food box and pop 4 instead of empty and pop 5. So it tried to grow to pop 7, failed, stuck with a full food box and then produced a settler to fall back to pop 4.

So to get a settler every four turns we need to run Nagoya from pop 4 to pop 6, and back to 4. We can produce 6 shields per turn at pop 4 and 8 shields per turn at pop 5, with 2 bonus shields from a forest at the first pop increase to make 30 total, remembering to MM it back to 5 fpt at each pop growth.

It's too quiet around here, so here are a few points for discussion ...

The next major trading round is Mapmaking. We need to build our treasury up again for that, and go all out on exploration to make our map as complete and valuable as possible. Trespass across rival territories to build it up further. You can get two turns into rival territory before you get kicked out. If you choose your path carefully you can get kicked out to the other side of the civ and you are off on further fog clearance.

We also ought to consider whether to cut our losses and switch research targets now that two others already have Shamanism. We've spent 50 or 60 gold on it so far, but we'll never get it back now. I'm not sure where we could go instead - maybe we just switch off research and build our treasury. We really only need Mapmaking to get some overseas exploration going, and I'm sure that's going to turn up on the diplo tables soon. We should keep our tech trading to a minimum to slow the pace, and focus on building Task Force Tokugawa (TFT).

Warriors + iron + gold = Kensai Oda

We are building a nice stockpile of warriors for upgrade for TFT. If we build a city plus temple on the northern promontory site on my dot map we'll have the iron in our borders [edited - we need the temple]. We can then road that easier than the southern iron in the mountains. We need to have maybe 20 warriors in barracks ready to upgrade to Oda, then we can shake our pointy sticks at the Purple People Eater. Note that 20 warror upgrades will cost 800 gold!

How about declaring war on Takeda and getting an alliance with Tokugawa? We need to distract these guys, and we probably won't be ready to take on Tokugawa for another 20 turns. Takeda is too far away to give us much trouble, and Tokugawa is in between. At the end of the 20 turns we'll have choices about how we play it. I don't know whether 90 gold will buy an embassy and an alliance right now, but we could buy the embassy anyway and get a view of Tokugawa's capital, then we'll get a feel for what an alliance would cost. Of course, if he's already at war we might even be able to *sell* an alliance.

C'mon CivGeneral and Gengis, this is a team effort, so let's have some ideas?

 

[smackster]

I don't think we have enough to get the alliance (unless they are already at war), but lets get the embassy and then think about it. Unless we are sure we can get the alliance I would not do this now, especially as there would be a chance of an alliance the other way.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I think 20 turns is a good target for TFT. In order to get our 800G do we want to try lone-scientist?

There are three nice river valleys to the south that would be nice for settling. I think getting at least one city on the southern coast should be a short term goal.

In order to get a MA with Takeda against Tokugawa, we're going to need to have something juicy to dangle in front of him. Unless of course Tokugawa has ticked him off too. I doubt we'll have a trade route by then, hopefully, we'll have some contacts that we can give them.

Alan - thanks for figuring out what was going on with Nagoya. I looked at your save and couldn't figure it out. Not having the water supply is the ticket.

 

[mad-bax]

Although I have already PM'd him...
Gengis Khan you are UP.

 

[mad-bax]

Gengis Khan is skipped.
CivGeneral: you are UP

 

[Gengis Khan]

Noooo!! Sorry guys my computer time has been severly limited over the last week, so my Civ & forum time has been cut to a bare minimum.

Once again I apologise.

 

[smackster]

Come on guys, what is going on. I can understand not having the time to play the moves as it can take a couple of hours to do it properly but I don't understand why you can't post a 'skip' or 'I got it' message.

Smackster

 

[mad-bax]

If CivGeneral doesn't pick this up, then the only suggestion I can make is that we kill this game and the three of you that are playing move onto the other vanilla roster. I would then retire and just administrate. I'd be happy to do this as other SG's I'm in are dragging on and I am playing too much really.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I'm up for whatever the majority wants. How does the other team feel about it?

 

[smackster]

I'd like to keep playing even if I'm the only one left (although I might just play through if I was )

Madbax we can certainly self manage the next up/on deck if that helps your time, but I would like to see the comparitive scores that you are posting.

 

[GenMarshall]

Ive Got it,