MB4 - GOTM24 Redux [civ3] Roster B

[mad-bax]

I think we did lots of things right and only a few things wrong, but the things we did wrong really bit us. Falling off the tech pace when we did probably cost 30-50 turns. Our Sams were facing muskets, and our cavalry faced rifles almost as soon as we had the ability to build them. This means we had to build more military than would otherwise have been necessary, which in turn meant we had building phases, a war that we had to abandon and otherwise slower progress during war. The other major weakness in our play was our use of workers. We built plenty, but we didn't use them optimally. We worked the wrong tiles for ages, we mined when we should have irrigated and we didn't team the workers adequately. Adrian pointed this out and corrected it, and in truth it was mainly my fault. Although I never automate workers I might aswell because I use them on autopilot. I see a bonus grass, I mine it, I see a plains and irrigate it. The terrain in this game was unusual, and I didn't compensate for it, mainly because I didn't think about it.

Our strengths were many. City management was good, build orders were good. We built the minimum military required to do what we had to do and used the extra shields for improvements. We didn't build too much "happy" culture. I thought everyone handled the warfare exceptionally well. Gormdragan fought two outstanding wars, and Peanut finished the game beautifullly.
Our trading was OK most of the time, except for the short period I have already mentioned. But most of all we had fun. We were able to differ without throwing our toys out of the pram, we listened to each other and tried out each others ideas. We made a good team and I really enjoyed playing such a wonderfully crafted game with you guys.

So. lets all lurk in the PTW thread, where they are trying to decide how many nukes to build and who to aim them at.

 

[Peanut]

Good assessments Mad-Bax and Adrian. I learnt from this the need to manage production and happiness a lot more closely.

I also had hammered into me the need to prepare for wars and have them when it suits us. Remember the first few turns of the Shimadzu invasion ? That was the late game turning point I suspect. Shimadzu ran into the brick wall of our defences and that was the end of them.

A jolly good show all round chaps. It was great sharing this game with you.

A few things have cropped up here in Peanut's real world so SG14 is out for me . I would be interested in SG 25 (or later) in a few weeks, if you need me to fill out a team email me. I could play any of 1.29, PTW or C3C.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by AdrianE
I am surprised we came out ahead of team A. I am really interested in knowing what team A did that resulted a higher raw score at each and every spot on the chart. We were always about 10% behind score wise even though we were roughly the same in territory. Did you guys build lots of cathedrals early? Or was there some other factor?

I don't think we had any more happiness than you guys early on, we only built more cathedrals after we had sanitation and started to grow cities beyond pop 12, and when we had captured the Sistine to make them cost effective.

I think the early score rate difference was all about territory:

Our early development took advantage of our settler factory:
At 1000 BC we had 11 cities, you had 6.
At 470 BC we had 16 cities, at 390 BC you had 11.

Our first wars gained territory earlier than yours:
We took out Tokugawa and Takeda first, starting in 470 BC, and we had the whole of our starting mainland by about 750 AD. Your first fight with Kuroda started in 190 BC and your mainland was secured by around 1000 AD.

Once we both had our home continents there was very little territorial difference so our rates of score increase became very similar. But the initial score differential we built up by starting earlier remained, and the curves ran parallel about 400 points apart.

Now we just have to work out how you managed to destroy the other continent 25 turns faster than us.

 

[smackster]

Well done to team B, I'd love to say that the best team won, but I wont

Although I thought team A played a good game I think our game plan backfired on us because of the slow tech rate. We essentially played a classic build lots of horses, and upgrade them to Knights and then Cavalry game. For long periods we had low corruption cities building nothing but horses and no infrastruture like libraires.

This policy normally works for a Dom or Conquest victory, but in this game the AI tech pace was too fast and our Cavalry were not enough to defeat Han in the end. When we realised that and researched towards Tanks, it just took us too long. I don't remember the exact dates, but I think we got tanks at least 100 years after Team B.

I think I'd play the same style in any normal game, but a tech slowed game with continents I'd rethink.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by smackster
Well done to team B, I'd love to say that the best team won, but I wont

Although I thought team A played a good game I think our game plan backfired on us because of the slow tech rate. We essentially played a classic build lots of horses, and upgrade them to Knights and then Cavalry game. For long periods we had low corruption cities building nothing but horses and no infrastruture like libraires.

This policy normally works for a Dom or Conquest victory, but in this game the AI tech pace was too fast and our Cavalry were not enough to defeat Han in the end. When we realised that and researched towards Tanks, it just took us too long. I don't remember the exact dates, but I think we got tanks at least 100 years after Team B.

Team A 1580 AD
Team B 1480 AD

Spot on Smackster. That pretty well explains most of the Conquest date difference.

 

[Karasu]

Yep. In fact, we faced that very problem when we started fighting the Shimazu.
That was the last use we had for our cavalries, and we basicly had to go through a building phase before we were able to take on the Han. A faster tech pace on our side would probably have avoided that.

I think loosing our reputation somewhere in the game, which greatly reduced our trading potential, is one of the factors that determined our slow tech pace.
This is not to say that that's the only source of our delays: we did make a good use of our 'bad reputation', but in that situation we probably should have done more to slow down the Han.

Anyway, a great game from all teams, and a remarkable learning experience.

Now, what about starting to put some pressure on the PTW roster?

 

[smackster]

I thought we planned our rep break, as we didn't feel any need to trade at that point as we were on our way to victory. I don't remember who did the break now, but I'm sure that if they hadn't I would have done it soon after.

To simplify my earlier description, I think you can research to MT without much library type infrastructure, but if you need to go beyond that then you need the libraires etc. Of course if you haven't started building the libraries by the time MT is researched then you are probably in trouble. Obviously you need to make the estimate early as to whether you can win with simply MT.

In GOTM23 SG we did win with just that, and I remember building one library that AlanH severly berated me for

I've just read the GOTM28 announcement, in that one I predict a pre-MT game, with no libraries and victory by Elephant.

Smackster

 

[AdrianE]

I see that team A got their settler factory running sooner than ours. We had 5 cities and 3 settlers at 1000BC. That will explain the turn based score differential. Team A was probably always ahead on native population.

In the early wars it looks like team A had a heavier proportion of Kensai than we did. We were about 50-50 Kensai-Horsemen when we took on Tokugawa. The percentage of horsemen rose after that as we built more horsemen than Kensai. This I think was advantageous for us as the horsemen have a better upgrade path.

The credit goes to Mad-bax who realised we would need research so he built libraries and banks in our core cities. That allowed us to keep the tech pace after military tradition. Good thinking mad-bax!

I have to say the race against the other teams made the end game exciting. Usually after the human player gets the Hoover Dam the game is just a long drawn out boring mechanical exercise as the human victory is inevitable. In this case the "race" made it interesting.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Adrian,
Good observation regarding your decision to build libraries and banks. In Team A it took us longer to realize our need to do our own research, and thus we were slower on the libraries. I do think we were on the bank bandwagon early.

You are absolutely right about the competition making the end game exciting. That was probably the most exciting finish I've ever had. Granted, I got to play our last turns, but the tension kept building rather than slacking as we raced against an unknown target of beating your team. Will we get ToE? Will our science pace be quick enough? How do we take out the Han quickly enough? How do we get the most from each and every unit's turn? As I said in our thread, that game is one of my top three all time most memorable games.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Sir Bugsy
I do think we were on the bank bandwagon early.

True! I commented on it at the time, as libraries and unis give you better return on investment than banks and stock exchanges as long as your research slider is above 50%. We had the priorities the wrong way round for a time

You are absolutely right about the competition making the end game exciting. That was probably the most exciting finish I've ever had. Granted, I got to play our last turns, but the tension kept building rather than slacking as we raced against an unknown target of beating your team. Will we get ToE? Will our science pace be quick enough? How do we take out the Han quickly enough? How do we get the most from each and every unit's turn?

I agree. The lesson is that you should always play the whole game as if you are in a competition, even if you're only competing against your own previous best result.

 

[MacBaldrick]

Congratulation Team B ! - proud to have been a part of it, if only at the beginning. I will have to look at that ruthless finish in more detail.

Certainly consider another (especially multi-team) and I won't have a six week absence to break the play.

 

[mad-bax]

This game has now been completed.

The final scores are shown in the first post in the thread.
Some individual scores are not shown as they were not reported in the thread (or else I couln't find them).

I will remain subscribed to threads for a while in case there is anything that arises that needs my input.

Thanks for a great game everyone.