sc:01 Moddern war

[Simon_c]

OK. No wireless here, so I'm stuck with expensive g3. So, no pic uploads, and not much chance to play due to family time on holiday.

So, I say swap me and querty round, querty can play over the weekend and post. I'll pick up on next Friday.

S.ilver
Madtown <-- Just Played --
Quotey ** UP NOW **
Simon_c <-- On Deck --

And, I'll be more or less offline until Friday.

 

[Quotey]

querty can play over the weekend and post.

Querty asked for a swap with me. Got it to post on Monday, hopefully!

 

[S.ilver]

Enjoy the vacation Simon! Don't worry, we won't do anything exciting. Looks like builder turnsets anyways.

 

[Quotey]

Turn 0 (470)

The civ list is surprisingly empty.

Go through cities. Keep research on Mass Media, though I would prefer shooting straight for Robotics.

****ING SPIES????

Even Pithom is running max spies. I hope this is not on purpose It is also building a recycling centre 14 below health cap. We have nothing else to build in it though. I veto several builds, especially Islamic Temples in o our aquisitions.

I gave found that seting build orders on the first turn makes the game MUCH quicker, and more manageable.

Also, our destroyers have been promoted. To Drill 1. Combat? Flanking/Navigation is better, but I fear that our Transports have been promoted too. They have, properly. Delete a uselesss destroyer.

Turn 2 (472)

Mass Media completes, check the civilopedia and set research to computers for Robotics and Mech Infantry.

Mining Inc is hilarious, as even Avaris, one of our failed canal experiments, at size 7, can build Hollywood in 17 turns.

Turn 3 (473)

Notice we didn't Paradrop at all last continent. Perhaps do some this one? I don't know how they work though. I assume with a lot of partroopers and commando promoted mobile artillery you could murder a continent.

Oh, seige can't get commando. Commando Tanks then.

Turn 4 (474)

An event gives all our carriers drill 3.

Turn 7 (477)

Computers finishes, Robotics begins.

Turn 8 (478)

Was going to start Giza on Internet, but decide to let one of the AIs have it.

Turn 10 (480)

IT'S OOOVEERRRR

Gift a couple of techs to DeGaulle and Monty.

Also note: Tanks are being built for the homeland defence, as I expect DeGaulle will attack us. You chould probably build more Marines to take out Hammurabi. Next we should go for Adcanced Flight I think. This is getting super boring!

 

[S.ilver]

Go through cities. Keep research on Mass Media, though I would prefer shooting straight for Robotics.

Mass Media was to snag Hollywood for the extra happy (which was done), and build the UN so we can block nukes (because the enemy has fission, which we have no interest in).

****ING SPIES????

Even Pithom is running max spies. I hope this is not on purpose

Actually... this WAS on purpose. We have zero intel on the enemy, so we need more EPs so we can expose their cities for an attack.

I veto several builds, especially Islamic Temples in o our aquisitions.

Well... those Islamic Temples would've made us money and research, but now we have Computers, so that's a moot point.

Also, our destroyers have been promoted. To Drill 1. Combat? Flanking/Navigation is better, but I fear that our Transports have been promoted too. They have, properly. Delete a uselesss destroyer.

I'll let Madtown address this?

Mass Media completes, check the civilopedia and set research to computers for Robotics and Mech Infantry.

Personally, I would've done the top of the tech tree for Stealths and MAs first, in order to take advantage of UoS and the SM for as long as possible.

Notice we didn't Paradrop at all last continent. Perhaps do some this one? I don't know how they work though. I assume with a lot of partroopers and commando promoted mobile artillery you could murder a continent.

Oh, seige can't get commando. Commando Tanks then.

IIRC, commando takes a lot of promotions off the bat. So that's not really feasible. I've also never heard of paratroopers being used (I did use them in Civ 3 but they sucked because they took damage upon landing). They are basically marines that can immediately reach a destination but with zero combat bonuses. I would personally never use them, but I suppose they would make a decent distraction if you promoted them up the guerrilla or woodsman line and dropped them into defensible territory.

Also note: Tanks are being built for the homeland defence, as I expect DeGaulle will attack us. You chould probably build more Marines to take out Hammurabi. Next we should go for Adcanced Flight I think. This is getting super boring!

Nobody is going to attack us. The AI does read the power graph. We're going to have to start the wars (which is what we want anyways, fighting on our terms, not theirs).

Also, a few minor criticisms. I'm not sure when, but at some point in your turnset you started losing huge amounts of stockpiled gold. The end save has it still bleeding around 300 gold with 600 left in the bank. Madtown and myself made a point of trying to stockpile more gold so we'd have the money to upgrade our troops. This might set our timeline back a bit.

Some of the builds on the new continent are pretty as well. Recycling centres are expensive, and should not go up before other health buildings, especially since most of that land is prime cottaged territory, and stuff like grocers would help us cash in even more there. Also, Saxon is building an observatory, when it clearly has lousy commerce.

 

[S.ilver]

Damn... Ok, this is important. I just did the calculations for the domination tiles, and if we do nothing, culture pops in various new cities will give us a domination victory next turnset. I think we kept one or two too many cities (I think the Spanish cities were not part of the original plan). Spamming Sid's Sushi also wasn't good towards this objective, because it makes 46cpt, base. Ugh!

That leaves us with very few options. De Gaulle will take Nottingham and Aachen from us (and Saxon, but that's stupid). However, we're going to be conquering this sucker again anyways, so that's not going to work, unless we are willing to burn those cities.

We can grant the new continent their independence, but our GNP will obviously take a huge hit.

I'm not exactly sure what we can do here actually...

 

[Madtown]

****ING SPIES????

Also, our destroyers have been promoted. To Drill 1. Combat? Flanking/Navigation is better, but I fear that our Transports have been promoted too. They have, properly. Delete a uselesss destroyer.
[/QUOTE]

You want to explain to me why we need 11 move destroyers?!?

Nothing else in our fleets can get 11 moves so the navigation promotion is wasted (at least for destroyers in stacks with other ships). I sometimes give a few of my homeland defense destroyers the navigation promo so that they can cover more coast, but that's the only use I see for that much movement. IMO, it is much more worthwile to give them fighting promos.

The fact that you were in the dark on the spy specs, the destroyer promo's, and Mass Media tech (probably a :smoke: on my part) makes me wonder if you took any time at all to read the previous reports. I'm more than open to criticism, but don't just hop into a save and question/change everything without first understanding the reasons those choices were made. What's the point of me writing a detailed report if you don't read it and take it into consideration when you play?

 

[S.ilver]

Ok... Here are some possible solutions for the domination limit problem.

1) Ignore it. We "lose" the variant in the next turnset. That's obviously something we don't want happening.

2) Give all the cities on the new continent their independence. Pros: We have a very happy vassal who follows us to war and will give us whatever resources we desire. We also get an additional happy face for having a vassal. It also counts towards conquest. Cons: The territory still counts as half of ours for the domination limit. We also pay increased maintenance for a vassal. This also basically makes keeping all the prime cottaged land worthless.

3) Gift some northern cities to De Gaulle with the intent of burning them later on. This is not a good idea, because the northern cities are near Saxon, and will pay the least amount of maintenance.

4) The Switcharoo Exploit.

Ok, let me explain this. We don't have any choices when declaring colonies unfortunately. When declaring colonies independent, all on that landmass are given to one new AI who is our vassal. Now, we want to keep the good cities up north near Saxon, with all the nice cottages and stuff, while ditching the less productive ones in the south to lower our land totals.

We can do this with some very evil exploitation of the AI. Right now, De Gaulle has cities up north near Saxon, Aachen, Notthingham... etc... So he will gladly take those cities off our hands. What we can do is give those cities to him. You can only give one city at a time, so the AI recalculates which cities it wants each time you give them up. Therefore, we can give up all the cities that we WANT to keep on the new continent. This may sound counter intuitive, but remember that we're kicking De Gaulle's ass to begin with.

When we give up the city, all units are teleported outside its cultural influence, because we're not on great terms with De Gaulle. The thing is, the culture is set back to zero when De Gaulle gets it so it controls only the 8 surrounding tiles. De Gaulle will also have no garrison in the town. So our stack sits 2 tiles away from the town (can anyone say tanks?), and there are no defenders

Now, we don't give all the cities to De Gaulle. We keep the ones on that continent that we actually don't want. This is everything in the south, I'd actually say all of Spain and all of Persia (to be safe with the vassalized land totals). Then after we've given the rest away, we grant the remaining cities their independence. We're now only being dinged for half the land totals, so we should be safely under domination totals if we give all former Spanish and Persian lands to the vassal.

Now we simply declare war on De Gaulle, and drive our tanks into all the cities we gave him. He has zero defense, so we get them all back for free basically. The only downside is that there is some French culture in there now (our old culture remains though).

As an added bonus, we'll be able to raze all of the stupid cities De Gaulle made in the north. He should be willing to make peace pretty fast (AIs usually do so when they lose lots of cities in a few turns).

 

[Simon_c]

I think I'd just make a collony out of the new continent. Quicker, and easier to get on with the war against the french.

Probably non-optimal though.

BTW, I should be in a position to play on Friday night.

 

[S.ilver]

The gifting cities and taking them back thing should only take one turn though (take one turn to station a tank in each city before giving it away though). De Gaulle will have nothing to stop us, so we can do that all on one turn.

The only reason I'm suggesting it over just giving independence to the whole continent, is because we'll take a hefty commerce hit when we give up those cities. Sure, we'll pay less maintenance, but we'll have less money to play with as well (I think it might be as extreme as a 50% loss in commerce).

 

[Madtown]

Nothing to see here...

I told'ja we'd hit the dom limit...

I'm not a big fan of cheap tactics like gifting cities only to raze them the next turn, but in the spirit of the variant it is probably our best option. That said, if I were to pick and choose the cities we raze, it would be (in order of increasing usefulness) Augsburg, Aachen, Susa, Barcelona, Madrid.

 

[S.ilver]

I'm not saying to raze anything. I'm saying to exploit De Gaulle by giving him the cities we want to keep, while giving independence to the ones we don't want to keep. Then we blitz and take back the cities we want to keep.

We have no option to raze those cities anyways because we'd still have a lot of our own culture in them.

My entirely though, because I was responsible for taking Spain (should've just razed the whole thing out, then we wouldn't have a problem, and we'd be able to keep Persia). I do think we should ease off on Sid's Sushi though. +46cpt is going to cause massive border pops very quickly.

 

[Madtown]

Right, sorry. I don't know what I was when I wrote that post.

The strategy sounds good to me.

 

[Quotey]

Apologies for taking my time.

Bankroll Stuff

Don't want to seem like a dick, but

Weedy builds on new continent

Eh. I was spreading Sid's an just wanted to get them out of the way. I only started them in cities with Mining Inc. Also, please change the Industrial Park build in York.

11 move Destroyers

My bad. I assumed that destroyers moved the same speed as Transports. Checking, they don't I consider this weird but that's not the point. Sorry.

Intel on the other continent.

Why? We have poewr graphs, GNP graphs. I love having visibility into their cities too, but we could just as well send some spies over to check out garrisons.

Quotey sends us to domination.

I am a complete idiot for spreading Sid's Sushi. I didn't even think about it giving huge amounts of culture.

Could we just remove the domination victory condition through editing the WBSave? We lose all progress on builds and tech, but we keep all our shiny stuff. I guess the relations hits could be changed in WB too. I'm sure there's at least one lurker with the know how, and if not, I'd do it. We know the map already. Making a colony would hurt us, as it probably provides about half our research (amazingly)

And finally, there's a barb city at the top of New Egypt. Can we check out the defenders there?

 

[S.ilver]

Don't want to seem like a dick, but

Well, great. We can recover 2000gpt if we run 0% science. Considering that it will cost roughly 45K to upgrade all our troops, I'd say that's really feasible .

Granted, we have plenty of time for our modern war goal, but that still doesn't mean that we should be burning our treasury willy nilly. I still have no idea how 4K gold went poof in 10 turns... Actually, it's probably because UoS and the SM were providing us with a lot of extra commerce, and we obsoleted them with computers. With our variant, and our lead, there was no reason at all to be researching computers before the entire top half of the tech tree (composites/stealth).

Now it appears we'll need to run 20 turns of 0% science to rebuild our treasury enough to upgrade to modern troops.

Why? We have poewr graphs, GNP graphs. I love having visibility into their cities too, but we could just as well send some spies over to check out garrisons.

Except that would require sending massed spies in advance. I believe we discussed this earlier already. We don't want to send all the spies way in advance, because they can get caught while hanging around (and obviously if they are around longer, they have a greater chance of being caught). The point of the intel is being able to see their troop composition so we can blitz them on turn 1.


EDIT: I don't mean to sound harsh, as I realize we're easily winning this game either way, but this seems like a massive breakdown in SG communication.

 

[Madtown]

Meh, I'm not at all worried about money. We may only rake in 2k at 0% science, but if we put all our cities on wealth for a couple turns I'm sure we could make 4x that amount.

 

[Simon_c]

I'm finally back home, and caught up with all the home/fammily stuff, so able to play tonight.

After re-reading the switcheroo plan, I think it's fair. We should after all be able to grant independance to *some* cities. It shouldn't be an all or nothing affair.

Now, lets see if I can do it right

 

[S.ilver]

After re-reading the switcheroo plan, I think it's fair. We should after all be able to grant independance to *some* cities. It shouldn't be an all or nothing affair.

Yeah, I'm just somewhat upset that Firaxis didn't implement some method to do this without gifting cities away and reconquering them. After all, there are examples of this "partitioning" in real life (i.e. India and Pakistan, which were both British Colonies).

 

[Simon_c]

OK. After about two hours on turn 0 not stopping *that* often to watch the football, this it going to take a while, so I'll post the turn 0 report here.

feel free to comment.

turnset 12 turn 481. 1890AD

turn 0: pre flight check.

We lost a bunch of money and tech with computers.
but, even with 42 cities with a temple in all and a monastry in half of them, that's still only 250 or so gold and sic lost. I'm not sure where the other 200 went. The spanish cities have come online, so maybe the maintenance is lots there.

yep, the corp costs there are killing us I think.


Humm. Suse is costing us a net of 57. (two corps with no courthouse. !)
Change the build there to a courthouse.

Pasargadae has mining in it, but isn't building a courthouse. It has 20 income from religions, but is building a library ? Switch to courthouse

Tarsus has mining, but is building a forge not a courthouse.

Persop is starving has mining and is building a library, and not a courthouse.
Getting sushi in there would have saved the pop.



Thebes building tanks. No point, they will just cost us to upgrade. Set it to build UN so we can ban nukes. (10 turns)

Memphis is producing 907 gold per turn and there's still more land we can convert to cottages now.

I tweak specialists in Amsterdam to Memphis will pop one next.
Amsterdam producing tanks. no point there. Subs with Missiles might be useful. I notice we don't have uranium for building attack subs. I guess we need to pick up fission some time.

I guess we need some marines. No point in sam infantry when mech is just round the corner. No point in paras until we have a plan to use them.

Put UN in giza (6 turns !) Giza can do with a a few farms converted to workshops now Sid's is there.
I think if I put a observatory there, and take the full 90 overflow, then next turn, it will be 5 turns for UN. A free building.

Avaris really doesn't need a supermarket, but there's only 1 turn left.

WTH is Lisht building a observatory for !!! It's not exactly a high commerce city. I set it to bank (help it pay for it self, and it's a 50% building) before putting it onto missile dutie.

Buto is on Industrial park before bank. And it does have a half decent commerce.

Busiris still has a chariot in it !! And it's doing a university before it can pay for it self (market + grocer)

Mendes is building an industrial park before basic commerse/sci buildings, and it is OK for commerce.

Saxon is building observatory when it has health problems.

I gloss over the cities we're going to give to the new AI.

York was building an industrial park and had no bank and health problems !
And has citizen automation on !
Just checking.. Lots of cities have CA on !!! WTH IS GOING ON HERE.

Hastings is building a recycling center when it could use a supermarket instead.
London was building a recycling center when it wasn't even in unhealth, and didn't have a couthouse.
Nottingham was building a RC when it didn't have health problems, and needs other stuff.


I'd say the following cities in our homeland could do with Sid's
Thebes: it can take 6 more pop before it hits it's caps.
Akhetaten: 18 is a bit small for a city
Hieraconpolis: Same.
Pithom is producing Sid's ready to send where we want.


And now I've got to go round them all again and check teh specialists. I wondered why we were running so many merchants everywhere.

 

[Madtown]

Bump.

Recovered from that 0 turn yet Simon?