SGOTM 01 - Fifth Element

Doom Train · Jul 23, 2006

According to my experiences Saladin will abstain his votes if do not improve our relationship with him. There seems no other way to improve relationship other than switching Teo. If adopt Teo than its effect will be +1 at start but it becomes +2 after few turns.

I think we should start preparing for invasion to HC s land without wasting time. There is no guarantee that saladin will vote for us with +8...

gskur · Jul 23, 2006

I think we could convert some land to farms in order to increase food supply, even is we have to destroy a town or two, or a plantation: having extra population is very important. I did not look in any detail at the last save, but there is always an opportunity of this sort, in my experience.

Perugia · Jul 23, 2006

gskur said:
I think we could convert some land to farms in order to increase food supply, even is we have to destroy a town or two, or a plantation: having extra population is very important. I did not look in any detail at the last save, but there is always an opportunity of this sort, in my experience.

Good point. This expands on our current policy of windmilling over hills destroying the mines. Don't forget we can farm over workshops also and it would be good to pick up Biology so we can irrigate without water and boost farm output. Clearly underdeveloped cottages in small cities should be the first to be sacrificed.

For this aspect of the overall plan we would want to adopt Serfdom to increase worker efficiency by 50% but the trouble is we also might want Caste System and are keeping Slavery as an option at the moment. A comprehensive decision on the future of Labor Civics is needed.

I think we can go to Serfdom for the next 8 turns though.

@Doom Train.
Thanks for your input. We should try Theocracy and go for +8 to see if it works. From what you say it looks like we have to assume it won't and prepare to invade HCs land.

This also means our cities will have more like 40 more turns rather than 20 so a few more new buildings may still be helpful.

Goodenuf · Jul 23, 2006

FYI, SGOTM-2 is now available for sign-up; did we want to organize a team for this?

I am away most of August and too busy until the end of September to participate, so I'll sit this one out. If the rest of you team up, I'll likely lurk to see how things are going and input where appropriate.

Doom Train · Jul 24, 2006

I ll definetly participating SGOTM 2 and I want to do it with Fifth Element again

.

We have 14 days to finish this game btw...

Merum · Jul 24, 2006

We'll finish it.

FDR will give us Steam power + WM +160g for Radio. Steam Power will let our workers build improvements 50% faster. Does anybody know whether this stacks with Serfdom?

Switching out of free religion will give us a 10% science hit. I don't know what that will do to our MM research, and I'm afraid to try it, but I will.

I'm playing turns tonight. It's feasible that these 20 turns could win the game, if things go exactly right.

We may be spinning our wheels with Saladin and Theocracy. Every time we trade with FDR we will get more negative with him, won't he?

BrianS · Jul 25, 2006

I'm in for SGOTM2 with Fifth Element.

Dolphan · Jul 25, 2006

Merum said:
We may be spinning our wheels with Saladin and Theocracy. Every time we trade with FDR we will get more negative with him, won't he?

It may be worth avoiding trading with FDR for that reason actually. +8 with Saladin also not liking Gandhi is worth a shot. Invading HC won't be the easiest process, he's had plenty of time to build military. He's far behind on tech though, so not too much to worry about.

Won't have the time for SGOTM2 I'm afraid, and after that I'm off to university. Its been good playing with you guys though!

Goodenuf · Jul 25, 2006

FYI, I am away for 3 weeks holidays into our fine Kootenay country starting July 30th, so I likely will not be able to take on another turnset, and I likely won't see the results of our labour until I get back. Good luck with the finish and thanks again for the good learning experience. I look forward to see how things turned out for us.

Perugia · Jul 25, 2006

I am signing up for SGOTM2 with the Fifth Element cadre. It looks very interesting with a one tile island start as Japan.

Have a great break Goodenuf and don't forget to check how things turned out for us.

I am all for trying out the idea of avoiding trading with FDR and Theocracy to swing Saladin our way. Will this actually remove the -3 diplo hit for trading with the enemy or just freeze it. BTW this can get worse as (eg Gandhi is -4 right now) so we need to act soon to reverse this if we can.

So we should trade with Gandhi and Saladin only from now on and get Steam Power from Gandhi not FDR. Gandhi is not likely to have much time to build or certainly benefit from Broadway.

If this works then we only have to do a little fighting with HC otherwise it will be a much harder process.

I see this as a matter of timing so Merum you will need to decide whether we should defer these changes until we are closer to Mass Media. My thoughts on the timing are as follows:

I have no problem in switching to Theocracy as soon as we have military to pop from our cities to benefit from the 2XP. I think we will have to time these civics changes carefully as we need to switch into Organised Religion as we learn Mass Media so we get 25% bonus hammers for building the United Nations.

As you say abandoning Free Religion with give us a science hit and thus delay construction of the UN but if this gives us the diplomatic leverage to get Saladin to vote for us and gives us the necesarry military boost to quickly deal with HC then it is worth it.

So the choice is either Theocracy > Organised Religion > Theocracy or Free Religion > Organised Religion > Theocracy.

We should also switch to serfdom now then back to slavery while we are in Organised Religion (to pop rush UN as needed).

Do what you can to hold back the Indian culture with Great Artist(s), buildings and straight culture . I do hope we pop a GA at Giza and another at Moscow. If Caste System is needed for Great People then this obviously takes prescedence over serfdom.

And finally don't forget to MM for growth everywhere practical and ensure our workers are doing the right things. BTW with Serfdom and Steam Power they will work 2x speed.

Good luck in your remainng 15 turns.

Merum · Jul 26, 2006

1682 continued

I pop Li Po in Susa, and get... 2 squares for our trouble. On the bright side, one of them is the pig outside Bactra, so that will help. Don't know how long we'll keep it, it's only 50% after the pop.

Game crashes. Good thing I had to save and go back to count squares.

I reload, and off we go again.

I MM everywhere practical for food, and turn on emphasize food in all cities.

Electricity goes to Ghandi for Steam Power, WM, and 170g.

I decide to maintain Free Religion for a few more turns, as I'm unsure of the magnitude of the research impact.

1685

I send the galleon from Giza to check out Vilcabamba. This is what I saw:

I decide to make the jump to Theocracy/Serfdom here, as we have rifles due in the next couple turns. It makes us +7 with Saladin, up from +6.

Mass Media still in 7 turns after the civic switch.

Not a whole lot else to do.

1688

Start a frigate to harass HC.

Switch Persepolis and Pasagardae to Culture to try to push on Susa some more.

Gordium is still ours, and has a 6.85 flip chance. I'm going to move 1 unit at a time from Susa to see if I can improve it. Bringing the knight over dropped it to 5.85, Susa has zero chance of flipping. Start a Mace over there as well.

1691

Our gP is born at Giza, and he is an Artist! I start him towards ex-Persia.
Moving units from Susa to Gordium has a positive effect, and I continue to do so.

1694

Not much happening. Building farms where I can find space to build them.

1697

Population reaches 20,000,000!
I can't move any more units to Gordium without Susa getting flip chance, but the flip chance at Gordium is now down to 0.98%.

1703

We learn Mass Media.

I'm stopping here for the night, for a couple reasons. First, my computer insists on crashing each time I flip back to take notes. Consequently, My notes are a mess, so sorry about that. The last three turns notes were lost on the last crash, but not a whole lot happened.

Second, we have big doings! Ghandi has declared war on HC!!

Third, Saladin found a way to counter our switch to Theocracy by demanding we stop trading with the Vile Indian. We're back to +6 with him now. I think our strategy needs to change here.

Save

Doom Train · Jul 26, 2006

Lets build UN and see the votes. It should take 2-3 turns thanks to GE.

We need to start moving HC s territory, but it should be without FDR because he will get relationship bonus with Gandhi since India also declared war to HC. As i can see from 3rd screen HC s military is outdated...

Dolphan · Jul 26, 2006

Should have cancelled with Gandhi. That would have sealed it.

gskur · Jul 26, 2006

Thist a thought:

I have not looked into the cities on the Indian border, but I see we are struggling there. It has been my experience that the cutural "score" a city has is just a factor, but not an overwhelming one. The most important factor (it seems) is the rate of cultural growth. Culture bombing has a limited effect in the proximity of an established and, more importantly, quickly growing opposing cuture. Buildings (incl. Wonders), artists, and the cultural slider are the things that work very effectively. If we are doing all this already and see no progress then we are going to lose those cities, no matter what--this happened to me in some games, and I could do nothing about it. We might be better of just using tonns of MPs to delay the flip, and save some GAs for the use in the Inca's terretory when we invade, in this case.

Merum · Jul 26, 2006

Dolphan said:
Should have cancelled with Gandhi. That would have sealed it.

I'm not sure that another +1 would have guaranteed us the vote, but I see your point. I almost reflexively deny these requests when they involve a major trading partner, and obviously I did so again. I've been screwed by Saladin before.

If Saladin is really that pissed at Ghandi, I'm sure he'll come and ask again.

In the meantime, I plan to build the UN tonight in Persepolis. I guess that will tell us where we stand.

Right now I feel that our Indian border cities are no longer at risk. The revolt chance at Gordium is 0.98%, and we have no flip chance anyplace else. Placing another unit in Gordium will probably put us in good shape until the victory.

Perugia · Jul 26, 2006

We are now in a race with Gandhi and need to grab as many of the HC cities as we can. Gandhi has infantry but we are closer.

We should ask Gandhi to attack the most highly defended one, it's a shame there are none so the capital would be a good choice or one that's hard to reach.

Vilcamamba seems to be held only by obsolete forces and should not be a match for a stack including city attack 3 rifllemen (upgraded from maces) plus catapults to bombard the defenses and some other units. Let's get our stack ready in Giza with naval support.

BTW the explorer medic I last saw in Susa may not help minimise revolt chances (Recce unit certainly do not count as garrisons). If it can be spared then it should head for Giza.

I see Moscow is building wealth in the 1697 screenie. Surely a unit would be better unless the idea is to build the UN there but I had always thought we would start in Persepolis. Now we have Mass Media Persepolis should put one turn of hammers in and use the Great Engineer then see how much population would have to be sacrificed to rush to give an indication of whether and when we should switch back to slavery. Maybe Universal Suffrage is all we need though so we can cash rush and save some people for the vote when Democracy comes in.

I think the new Great Artist should be used to culture bomb Gordium. How soon can we get another from Moscow?

Groin_Apologist seems to have stopped posting. So it might be me up next after your remaining 9 or so turns.

Perugia · Jul 26, 2006

@Merum. I know what you mean about instinctively denying requests to cancel trade deals. I do hope Saladin comes calling again.

I am worried that FDR asked Gandhi to DoW on HC and so will get +4 from FDR for our Mutual Military struggle. This will mean FDR may become more friendly with Gandhi than he is with us. Please check what FDR thinks of Gandhi and let us know on the next post.

I agree with gskur that even though you think the Indian border is safe it might be worth upping the culture slider a notch for good measure just to help the Indian border and dont forget those 2 forests 3 tiles from Susa that can be chopped for another cultural building.

Remember that Organised Religion will contribute to the UN if we need it.

Merum · Jul 26, 2006

@Perugia

I'm afraid we're at least 5-10 turns away from a decent combat stack for HC.

The reason Moscow is building wealth is that it's so hammer-poor after MM for food that it's not really practical to build anything there. I can put it back at the expense of growth.

The current save is up if you want to look at it. Suggestions are welcome.

I wonder... can we chop Ghandi's forests? :mischief:

Doubtful, but it would be nice...

Merum · Jul 26, 2006

1718

My computer decides unilaterally that now is a good time to reboot, again trashing my notes. :mad:

1721

UN vote for Secretary General. Ghandi is our opponent. I vote for us.

1724

We win the Secretary General Vote. Saladin and FDR voted for us. HC abstained.

1727
We're getting close to an invasion fleet. I recommend we bypass Vilcabamba and then circle back to it. The other two cities nearby are lightly defended.

1730
I'm contemplating upgrading Galleys to caravels so we can run these troops across faster.

1732

UN Vote. Here we go! Ghandi is our opponent. I vote for us, because I'm selfish.
Democracy discovered. Research to 0. Changing civics next turn. (if we need to *crosses fingers*)

1735

Heartbreak! Saladin abstains his vote, and we fall 68 votes short.

I'm stopping here, because I'm tired, and we need to think. Handing over to next player.

We're going to need to take HC off his island to win. I've built a good stack in Giza, so go get him!

Here is the Save

Turn Log

Spoiler :

Goodenuf · Jul 27, 2006

DOH! So close! What was the voting breakdown? How many votes was HC worth?

How many HC cities are worth 62 votes... hmm....

SGOTM 01 - Fifth Element

Warlord

Chieftain

Prince

Warlord

Warlord

Permanent Jet Lag

Prince

Warlord

Warlord

Prince

Permanent Jet Lag

Attachments

Warlord

Warlord

Chieftain

Permanent Jet Lag

Prince

Prince

Permanent Jet Lag

Permanent Jet Lag

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Warlord

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