MIA Grand Strategy Meeting !

[General_W]

The Poll:
The poll asks you to vote for a time A, B, C, or D.

Once there's been discussion, if there's no consensus on a time to meet, I'll put the 4 most popular times up to a vote, and we'll settle it democratically. (by assigning a time to A, a time to B, etc.)


Current Agenda:
How will we win this game? (20 mins)
What should our settlement strategy look like? (10 mins)
How should we deal with the other teams? (20 Mins)
Other? (10 mins)


What is this?
It's time the team sat down together and had a talk about Big Strategy.

Consider:
1) In the next few turns we will have met all teams
2) We are facing getting swept away by the KISS rapid expansion
3) We are closing in on the end of the Ancient Era
4) We're falling behind in Victory points, and we can't blame it on a Military Buildup like the Doughnuts.


Thus far, our "strategy" has pretty much been to react to things. I think we are now suffering from our lack of defining goals and strategy.

So here's the first step in the plan to get us back on track…

The First Ever MIA Grand Strategy Meeting.
This thread will be used to settle on a time and an agenda for that meeting.

Please post here about what times you are available for a team Chat.

Also – if there's anything special you’d like on the agenda, please post here.

We will try to stick to our agenda very closely, and keep the team meeting to no more than 1 hour.

 

[fe3333au]

Times should be in GMT ... to avoid confusion

I also think that for the Oz and Yank contingents to meet, we should try for a weekend

So I am virtually available from GMT 20.00 (10am TassieTime) to GMT 13.00 (3am TT)

AGENDA IDEAS
I am primariy after constuctive criticism and improvements for Foreign Department ... and especially a chat about how we feel about our close relationship with KISS.

I am concerned with the KISS Settlement Tsunami and am eager to discuss the idea of getting a blocking wall of cities placed ... which would be land grab and resource securing ...

Also I would be eager to build a galley asap ... so we can pop any goody huts that we have discovered on the Conflict-In-Continent and have an expendible warrior to wander the land acting as a war correspondent when not popping every hut he can ... (Like to get some bets happening with KISS as to putting bets on battle outcomes) ... that may be the last thing to discuss in other.

Also recruitment ideas ... we have a very low team compared with KISS ... they are the only one we have had data from 20+ active players.

Also what sort of victory are we going for ... I'm hoping not military ...

 

[peter grimes]

Peter Grimes is regularly available the following times:

every day GMT 11pm until GMT 3am the next morning

weekends spotty, but I'm usually available after 11am GMT

EDIT: another way to list our schedules is a jpg of a 24 hour calendar, we can each download and Paint with our availability in different colors.

 

[Chamnix]

If it's guaranteed to be only an hour, I can make it weekday mornings (10AM - 12:30PM GMT - I'd like to see General_W make that!)

Most weekday evenings are fine (10:00PM - 3:00AM GMT) except Wednesday I am unavailable 11:00PM - 2:00AM GMT.

Weekends it is tough to know in advance what the girlfriend has planned for me. Before she gets up should be fine (probably 10:00 AM - 12:00 GMT). Other times on the weekend are certainly possible, but I can't say for sure right now exactly when is OK.

EDIT - something that could be added to the agenda that could affect our settlement strategy... where will the Forbidden Palace go, and will we eventually move the palace (and to where)?

 

[Kentharu]

week days is not soo god for me anymore, weekends is the best 11:00am- whenever really GMT of course
week days maybe on 9pm-11pm
all times are in GMT

 

[General_W]

(10AM - 12:30PM GMT - I'd like to see General_W make that!)

ouch - that's cold. 10am GMT - LOL - you might be able to get my body there, but my mind dosen't get up before 2pm GMT.

So yeah - weekends or weekday evenings are looking better and better...

weekday evenings: 1am till 7am GMT (except Thursdays - which is actually Wednesday for me)

weekends: 3pm Saturday till 7am Sunday GMT is best for me.

(I need to be careful here- with Daylight Savings Time, I think I'm still GMT-8... because GMT observes this DST time also - am I right? Someone please help!)

 

[Chamnix]

(I need to be careful here- with Daylight Savings Time, I think I'm still GMT-8... because GMT observes this DST time also - am I right? Someone please help!)

If you are right about this, then I need to adjust my times by an hour. I was thinking I am GMT-5 during "normal" times, and GMT-4 during daylight savings, but I am really not sure either.

 

[fe3333au]

Correct ... Daylight savings -1 hour ... so that old 5.00pm is 4.00pm
ie the sun rises one hour later ...

Great to see support for the concept

 

[peter grimes]

I don't think we should wait forever to do this. Let's try and shoot for this weekend if possible.

The turns are moving quickly, and we're going to meet TNT in 5 turns. We should have much of this hammered out by then.

 

[General_W]

I don't think we should wait forever to do this. Let's try and shoot for this weekend if possible.

The turns are moving quickly, and we're going to meet TNT in 5 turns. We should have much of this hammered out by then.

Ideally - I 100% agree with this.

Unfortunately – I'll be gone this weekend (and Meleager also it looks like)

Realistically – it'll be challenging to find a time when everyone can make it – so go ahead and do it this weekend without me if it works!

The way I see it – the team chat is a way to jump start the soul-searching we need to do as a team on what we're doing strategy wise.

I'll write something up before I leave for the weekend and post it here – maybe it can serve as a starting point for the discussion, and I can feel involved even though I can't attend.
(I'll just be a problem child when it comes to setting a meeting-time since I live on the WestCoast of the USA anyway.)

 

[Meleager]

Times I cant do....
Tis weekend, Fri 000 GMT - Mon 1800 GMT
Next Wednesday Before 100 GMT
And when I am asleep (1200 - 2200 GMT to be safe (no, I dont sleep for 10 hours a day))

Apart from that I am free for the next week or so (UNI is finishing)

EDIT - X post with Gen_W, feel free to do it without me if you have to aswell

 

[Meleager]

(I'll just be a problem child when it comes to setting a meeting-time since I live on the WestCoast of the USA anyway.)

Actually its easier for an Australian to chat with a west coast american then an east cost one (the east cost is almost exactly on the oposite side of the world)

 

[classical_hero]

It seems that I will be a Problem too. My times vary with work. My general times during the week are 10:00GMT to 14:00GMT. Saturdays are gennerally much better but on Sundays I go to church, so that will stop me from morning chats or early evening chats.

 

[peter grimes]

I'm going to try something here... I've made an Excel file. I can email it to everyone, so you can see the times, but it's looking to me like around 11:00(am) GMT this saturday is going to be best so far.

 

[General_W]

Ok – since I won't be around this weekend for the big strategy chat, I'd like to share a few of my thoughts on this topic.
Hope it helps!
(please note – all of this is my opinion, and I hope some of you disagree/prove me wrong! Otherwise, I'm painting a pretty grim picture)

Part 1
On Victory Methods

This is the one I have the hardest time with – and therefore I think needs the most attention.
HOW will we win this game??

Cultural: we'd have to be insane to try for a 100K victory. 20K is more reasonable – but we should've built a temple a long time ago.
Pros:
1) No competition – every team seems focused on expansion or military
2) Given that we'll probably be out expanded by every other team – this is a nice strategy for a smaller civ.
3) Our cheaper science buildings help.
Cons:
1) We'll have a heck of a defensive job to do – and it could get exciting as other teams catch on and try to snatch key wonders away from us.
2) We're already behind and should have built a temple 40 turns ago. Someone could do the math, but at this point, I don't think we could pull this off before 1900AD.


Spaceship
It's hard to imagine the game lasting this long. But – I know I've said this before – humans tend to realize that if they are at war – and other humans aren't – unless they get big victories, they will fall behind the peaceful players. This tends to really limit war. The fact that there hasn't been any major wars so far – means either a) all hell is going to break loose in the Medieval era or b) this could be a weirdly peaceful game.
Pros:
1) Greeks are probably the best civ in the game to win a space race victory.
2) IF the destined TNT v. Doughnuts war ends up as a stalemate with heavy losses on both sides, and IF KISS leaves us alone (or maybe even gets involved overseas), and IF we manage to avoid getting dragged down in the war – then we've got a shot at beating KISS on a spaceship.
Cons:
1) I still can't believe that SOMEONE won't go for a domination win long before we get here. How would we stop them? If we get drug into an all out war, then we're pretty much abandoning the Spaceship strat anyway.
2) If/when TNT or Doughnuts emerge as the victor in total control of their continent – the quest for Domination win will begin, and the weaker civ on our continent will be attacked (likely to be us). A massive war for survival on our continent will pretty much kill our potential for a space race win.

Conquest/Domination
Dom/Conquest seems to be what's left. It's the easiest, most straight-forward way to win. Unfortunately, it will also be the hardest way for the Greek/MIAs to win.
Pros:
1) If we go for this, and hit KISS with a surprise attack, we have a good chance to score some big early victories, secure more (if not all) of our continent, and leverage that into a Domination win.
2) KISS isn't expecting this, so unlike TNT/Doughnuts land, our continent isn't all geared up for war.
Cons:
1) KISS may be thinking the same thing I've written above – they may hit us first!
2) We could be starting a long, bloody, winnerless war – inviting conquest from the other continent, and handing victory to TNT or Doughnuts.
3) We destroy our reputation and lose our best trading partner.
4) Greeks suck (compared to Persia, Celts, and Iroq) for a military win.


Conclusion
All this looks pretty grim to me – I'm just not seeing a good way out. So someone please tell me where I went wrong, and what our Best strategy is to win!!
(our only other option is to keep playing reactionary, hope all the other teams blow it big time, and we swoop in at the last moment and snatch victory however it becomes convenient).



I'll post more on our settlement strategy later when I get more time.
In the meantime – feel free to comment in advance of the big meeting if you'd like!

 

[Chamnix]

Maybe we will end up with a “Grand Strategy Thread” instead of a Grand Strategy chat. Anyway, it certainly doesn’t hurt to get our thoughts out early.

Keeping to winning conditions for now… this is an area I feel very weak on due to the fact that I have never played a multiplayer game before. Running through the possibilities:

I agree with General_W that Cultural 100K is realistically impossible.

I don’t share General_W’s pessimism about the potential finish date for Cultural 20K – we are only on Turn 50, and the first 50 turns are not that productive for a 20K city anyway. Considering that we now have developed terrain, enough workers to add to a 20K city if we chose, and all wonders still available, I think that an early 20K date is possible if other players let us. Unfortunately, I think playing for 20K relies on the goodwill of our neighbors too much. Everyone will know we are going for 20K, and at some point, someone (or everyone) will try to raze our 20K city, and I am not at all confident that we could prevent that from happening if we are devoting our resources to building culture in our best city instead of setters and military. In short, I don’t think 20K is reasonable unless we get a couple early SGLs to help us.

If we are going for Conquest/Domination, we need to think about when to attack (knights? cavalry? tanks? bombers?), and what order we plan to attack in. It seems like KISS’ plan is to have us and them take over the other continent first. It seems like thanks to our cooperation and their early warfare, we will get ahead of the other continent. We could split up the other continent, then turn on KISS if we want. Or, we could agree with KISS to attack the other continent, wait until their troops are deployed over there, then backstab them. I don’t know how “honorable” our team is – will we keep our word, or will we break our word at a time when it could give us a game-breaking advantage? I think if we are planning on keeping our word throughout, then Conquest/Domination is going to be very difficult with respect to KISS – giving an opponent 10 turns warning is tough.

I think our best bet is Spaceship. If we trade techs to stay even with KISS early, and split up the other continent during the Middle Ages (with cavalry?), then both of us should have no trouble maintaining 4 turn research throughout the rest of the game, but our free Modern Age tech should enable us to build a spaceship 4 turns before them. Of course, once they realize that, then they will certainly attack us, and we will have a massive late Industrial/early Modern war, but we may be able to complete the ship before either team can reach domination.

Those are the opinions of how to win a multiplayer game from someone who has never won one…

 

[General_W]

Good points Chamnix.

Re: Spaceship vs. 20K

It seems like we're basically facing a trade-off in what kind of a war we want to fight.

Spaceship War
Victory Method: Spaceship win
Enemy: KISS (who will certainly attack us as soon as it is down to the two of us)
Objective: Prevent a KISS domination win long enough to complete a spaceship.

KISS won't wait to "realize we can beat them to the spaceship" before they attack. They'll hit us as soon as TNT and Doughnuts are polished off.
We'll be facing KISS on two continents by this point, and it's very likely they will control more (% wise) than we do on both continents. They will have the luxury of striking wherever we are weakest (they'll only be interested in getting those last few percentages of land) and will basically be on a technological parity with us. They will have more cities, more units, and will almost certainly get to the necessary % of land mass – only question is, can we finish a spaceship before they get there. Seems pretty grim to me.

20K War
Victory Method: 20K culture in Athens
Enemy: Everyone
Objective: Hang on to the city of Athens till it reaches 20K

Because our defense objective is so much smaller, defense becomes much more simple. Of course a determined 3 prong assault can crack any defense– but if we play our cards right, bribe the right people, etc – I think this may have a higher chance of succeeding than trying to hold off a KISS Industrial Age domination win.

Try this theory on for size:
We could play nice to everyone and do everything we can to make sure all the other teams stay alive and at war for as long as possible.
Of course they'll see our win coming – they will probably be able to calculate down to the very turn we'll win – which works to our advantage!! Hopefully we'll be laughed at for trying a 20K win, and no one will worry about us till we're about 20-30 turns from victory.
TNT and Doughnuts (and maybe even KISS) will try to sneak fleets down for a direct assault on Athens.
But here's our trick - by lining our southern coast with cheap units (only about 25-30 would be needed for total coverage) we can prevent any units from landing (pre marines). Since they'll try to stay out of our LOS, they probably won't see our wall of units until they sail up next to Athens and it's too late. As they turn East or West to sail for somewhere they can land – our naval units (left in cities till this point) can come out and try to sink as much of their force as possible.

Therefore – we force any invasion to come from the North. We could bunker in along that mountain hill range in the near north, and basically turtle in. Since we can focus our defense on a 17 square range (East coast to West coast) with lots of Mts and Hills, we should be able to mount a pretty serious defense and buy even more time. Hopefully our enemies will leave us alone long enough and underestimate our defense enough that we can win.

(If we don't win before the enemy has marines – we pull those 30 cheap beach guarding units into Athens and fan the navy around Athens to do as much defense as possible.)

There's a lot that could go wrong with this plan - but my gut instinct is that we have a better chance of holding off the last min assault on our mainland than we do of holding off a huge KISS enemy looking for a Domination win.

What do you think?

P.S. I don't really like this plan either – I'm just not seeing any better options. Please convince me that there's something better we can do!!

 

[Chamnix]

First, I have to say I had a couple more thoughts about our potential spaceship win (on the golf course of all places - should this be in the "1000 reasons" thread?). It is not as simple as I thought with our free tech giving us the advantage. There is the Theory of Evolution to contend with, but even regardless of who gets that, the fact is that KISS (or whoever is chasing the other) will have plenty of opportunities to steal techs from the leader eliminating the 4-turn advantage. So I think it would come down to us winning only because we go before KISS if we both built a spaceship.

Back to the discussion... let's turn this around - how is KISS planning to win? You sound convinced that KISS is planning a domination win with us as their last target, and you seem equally convinced that they will win that battle. I'm not sure either of those assumptions will hold. I don't know what KISS is planning, but if we assume it comes down to a fight between us, I don't take our defeat for granted. KISS will grab more land than us in the expansion phase. If we fight well and smart, we should be able to grab as much land as them from the other continent.

In our final war, don't underestimate the power of the commercial trait. They may have more towns, but most will be useless. Our core towns and especially our second ring towns will be more productive than theirs thanks to reduced corruption. We should be able to produce more military than they can, so if we can keep losses even, we should be able to more than hold our own.

There is the danger that they will use their religious trait to switch to communism and fight a war of attrition. Maybe we should make sure our war comes before Communism? Still just thinking "aloud"...

 

[General_W]

You're right… I am assuming they plan to win via domination. The original KISS
Proposal was written to last "until MIA and KISS are the only two remaining teams in the game." Which I took to mean "until everyone else is dead and we turn on eachother."

The proposed 1 + 1 = 3 treaty for MIA and K.I.S.S.

Spoiler :

The teams could agree to:
- be allied until MIA and K.I.S.S are the only two remaining teams in the game, and to act in cooperation and unison to ensure that they will become the only two remaining teams in the game.
- share all technologies until M.I.A. and K.I.S.S are the only two remaining teams in the game.
- share luxuries (when possible, due to extra sources) until MIA and K.I.S.S are the only two remaining teams in the game.
- share strategic resources, if needed, (when possible, due to extra sources) until M.I.A. and K.I.S.S are the only two remaining teams in the game.
- give a 10-turn notification before ending the alliance (only possible if M.I.A.and K.I.S.S are the only two remaining teams in the game).
- consult and agree with the other party in the alliance on any deals and diplomacy with the other teams, before meeting with other teams and signing agreements with said other teams.
- grant first strike on end-of-deal turn given to party undergoing end of deal (only possible if M.I.A. and K.I.S.S are the only two remaining teams in the game).

Now – it IS very possible that I'm wrong. But what you're describing from your Golf Game sounds very much like a Domination strategy – not a spaceship strategy! (not that it's bad!)
Do you think KISS may seriously be considering a Spaceship win?

Re: Communism – I don't see how we get rid of TNT and Doughnuts before the advent of Communism. With our 2 teams working together on tech – we'll rocket through the Middle Ages – and Communism is only 2 techs into the Industrial era - KISS will get it quickly if they want it.

Of course – if the Middle ages go by too quickly – that hurts our chances of getting a 20K win before Bombers/Marines/Tanks make any defense hopeless.

If we're thinking about war latter anyway – it may be worth thinking about a surprise Middle Ages attack as soon as we get Knights? (our hoplites will still provide effective defense in the MA and their Pikemen will eventually lose to our knights and MedInf) But of course, this risks making us the war torn continent that is easy picking for TNT, Doughnuts, or God-forbid, a TNT/Doughnut alliance.

Sigh – I know I sound like I'm arguing against everything. I don't mean to be down on everything… hopefully all my negativity will spur us to find an awesome solution.

 

[peter grimes]

Great reading here. I'm glad we're seriously talking about all this. In hindsight we should have had this Meeting a bit earlier That makes no sense. We are doing it at the earliest possible productive moment. Everyone is about to become Met. Perfect time.

I like the optimism regarding the power of our Commercial trait and the strength of defense we'd be able to bring to bear against KISS should they want to snatch land from our homeland.

There is another aspect to the assumption of a KISS (or TNT of DNUT) domination victory. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Domination requires a civ to hold 67% of the land area and pop, no? That means that should we want to go for, Spaceship, for example, we need to maintain something over 34% of land and pop. That is much more doable that us grabbing all 2/3.