SGOTM 01 - Short Straw

[Danthor]

Well, there's always the option of befriendling Gandhi and forming a permanent alliance. That shouldn't be to hard.

 

[Grogs]

Hopefully civ #7 isn't confucian. Diplomatic victory doesn't require many techs after astronomy. (Sci Meth, Physics, Electricity, and Mass Media I think)

You forgot radio in there. Also, ideally we'd like to get Biology as soon as possible.You can get a disproportionately large portion of the world population (which is what # votes is based on) by building as many cities as you can, farming everything in sight, and developing Biology. The AI's will use their land much less efficiently, so your pop% can easily be double your land%.

Well, there's always the option of befriendling Gandhi and forming a permanent alliance. That shouldn't be to hard.

I'll be the first to admit I'm walking on new ground here. I've never played Always War, and I've never formed a Permanent Alliance. I know you can't form a defensive pact while you're a war someone, and my instinct would be that PA's work the same way. If that's the case, we would need to wipe out Huayna before a PA would be possible. And if we've got the military capacity to wipe out Huayna, we've probably got enough to take over the world.

 

[ungy]

I have rarely played with PA enabled. I once tried to get one as part of a OCC game and failed. I had heard that you had to have a Defensive alliance for about 30 turns first. In my game I had the DA and my relations were at +17. I think you need +10 for DA. I think very difficult here as we will probably pick up -4 I think for DOW's, and then presumable have close borders. I think unlikely we can get Gandhi to vote us so would plan domination or self vote.--ungy

 

[llib_rm]

I think Thebes will produce more beakers in the long run. With Bureaucracy, a library, and an academy, we'll get 2.6 beakers for each commerce directed towards science there. It also has more hammers available to use for constructing a University, and eventually Oxford U, so putting an Academy there as well allows us to really specialize science there. Elephantine, on the other hand, doesn't have a whole lot of hammers, so it's going to struggle quite a bit to build thing like a University to really specialize in science.

Sounds good to me for the intial academy, but I would consider, if not encourage, that Elephantine & Heliopolis eventually get accademies as well.

 

[Lmtoops]

I've played PA enabled 3 times. It is very hard to predict how the AI will respond. In addition, we would have to wait along time to get a PA. I don't think we can win the SGOTM contest if we rely on getting a PA with Gandhi.

My turn is coming up, I better get back in the loop. I've been following along, but not commenting.

On a side note, I won a space race Emperor game by getting a PA with a very advanced AI. I mean one turn I was building Caravels and Cannons...the next turn I was building Battleships and Howitzers. It was great.

 

[Danthor]

I'll be the first to admit I'm walking on new ground here. I've never played Always War, and I've never formed a Permanent Alliance. I know you can't form a defensive pact while you're a war someone, and my instinct would be that PA's work the same way. If that's the case, we would need to wipe out Huayna before a PA would be possible. And if we've got the military capacity to wipe out Huayna, we've probably got enough to take over the world.

I'm not. I always play with PA enabled.
You can get a PA at war if that civ is also at war with the same guy (and is friendly to you of course).
On the other hand, it really sucks when two other (powerful) civs form a PA...

 

[Grogs]

OK, I'm going to play this tonight. I'm thinking 15 turns as a sort of middle ground on the turn length. It keeps the game going and shortens the length of each turnset a bit.

OK, general plans...

Assuming I can get IW in trade for CoL, I'll probably go ahead and start building swords for our invasion force. Once we get construction, we can probably have every city pop out a cat and be ready to go in a hurry. I'll probably also build a couple of fishing boats - one for the fish by Elephantine, and one for the clams by St. Pete. Other than that, it's probably just finishing up on some of the libraries/granaries we've got going and scouting out Cyrus's lands.

 

[Lmtoops]

Grog...sounds good.

 

[Grogs]

Well, here she is. A little laughing, a little crying, but no wars or anything. Bad news: We got the scientist. I built the Academy and moved on. Good news: We managed to pick up 7 techs on my watch: CoL, IW, Math, Calendar, Archery, Monotheism, and Construction. Also, we have iron and it's hooked up now. Cat doesn't have iron.

EDIT: Also, when you get the save, take a look at that crazy situation by the iron. Cat's been moving those guys all around that iron tile for the last 10 turns. Sort of a Mexican standoff going on down there.

Here's the log:

Turn 160, 100 BC: Check the cities. Everything looks good, so let's go!

Turn 161, 85 BC: Novgorod has 3 archers, 1 spear, 1 axe(combat1), and 1 settler. Yaroslavl has been founded S. of Moscow. It has 3 archers. Pasargadae: 1 axe(C1); 1 acrher(CG1). I put the 2nd WC back on the galley. I'll put him off when I find a good spot to explore.

Turn 162, 70 BC: Socrates is born in Thebes... unreal. Maybe I should go to Vegas since we only had a 7% chance (actually I do have a chance to go to Tunica this weekend - I was going to pass, but I'm reconsidering now.) Tarsus: 2 archers, unpromoted. Socrates builds an Academy in Thebes - research from 41 to 47. Well, that sucks kids... It's 35 turns to build the GL by hand even in Thebes. I just don't think that many turns is a good investment, so I'm just going to move on.

Turn 163, 55 BC: CoL comes in. Cat refuses to trade with us... when did that happen? And Cyrus doesn't have Math so I can't trade him CoL. That leaves Ghandi. I trade Ghandi CoL for Math+Archery. Ghandi and Cat both have Calendar. Research set to construction, due in 15 turns. I decide to *give* Cyrus priesthood. Hopefully I'll be able to get IW from him next turn. Persepolis 1 spear, 2 archers - all unpromoted.

Turn 164, 40 BC: Memphis HE->workboat. In case you ever wanted to know, yes, a workboat does count as a military unit. I give Cyrus a heck of a deal, trading CoL for IW. We have iron just inside the cultural border of Thebes. Catherine has none.

Turn 165, 25 BC: Susa 1 Immortal(C1), 1 spear(C1), 1 archer (CG1); St. Pete library->work boat. I pop rush the granary in Elephantine. We'll get it back in no time, especially with the granary.

Turn 166, 10 BC: Thebes axe->archer (I really don't want to overbuild the military until I can build swords and/or cats); Memphis WB->spear. Elephantine granary->lighthouse.

Turn 167, 5 AD: Memphis spear->archer; Cat's making me a little nervous. She has 2 archers, an axe, and a chariot gathered S of our iron. I send an axe from Thebes to serve as our 'iron garrison' Ghandi now has Alphabet. Both Ghandi and Cat have Monotheism. I think this is a good time to make that trade. I trade Catherine CoL+Alphabet for Monotheism+Calendar. We're doing better on tech - up Lit. on Cat, Alpha+Lit on Cyrus, and down Meditation and Metal Casting on Ghandi.

Turn 168, 20 AD: Heliopolis granary->barracks.

Turn 169, 35 AD: Looks like Cat was just kidding around. I hope. St. Pete Workboat->lighthouse. I realize shortly after the WB can't reach the west coast from St. Pete . Memphis archer->WB.

Turn 170, 50 AD: Memphis Workboat->sword. St. Pete: production changed to sword.

Turn 171, 65 AD: Not much

Turn 172, 80 AD: Memphis sword->sword.

Turn 173, 95 AD: Ghandi has Lit. Man does he research fast.

Turn 174, 110 AD: Memphis sword->sword. Workboats work both the clams by St. Pete and the fish by Elephantine. Unfortunately, Ghandi no longer needs clams. <sigh>

Turn 175, 125 AD: Construction is in! We're up construction over everyone, even HC. Thebes research->catapult. I set research to Compass for now, just as a placeholder.

Here's the save:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm1/Short_Straw_SG001_AD0125_01.Civ4SavedGame

And here's the roster:

Grogs - Just Played
Mushroomshirt - Up
Lmtoops - On Deck
Danthor
RobertTheBruce
VirusMonster
llib_rm
Ungy

 

[llib_rm]

Turn 162, 70 BC: Socrates is born in Thebes... unreal. Maybe I should go to Vegas since we only had a 7% chance (actually I do have a chance to go to Tunica this weekend - I was going to pass, but I'm reconsidering now.)

Unbelievable!

 

[ungy]

well on the positive side of getting the scientist when you make a bad gamble(which we did) you only learn when you lose.

 

[Danthor]

Why did we have a 7% anyways? I thought we were micromanaging?

 

[Grogs]

Why did we have a 7% anyways? I thought we were micromanaging?

I don't know really. I think the governor may have assigned a scientist at some point. It has a really bad habit of doing that if you're running a big surplus of food and you grow - it will assign a specialist rather than picking a tile. I've actually been looking through the SDK trying to figure this process out - it's one of the things that drives me crazy in Civ. Unfortunately, my C++ skills are pretty sad (FORTRAN is really the only language I'm proficient in) so it's not going to happen anytime soon.

well on the positive side of getting the scientist when you make a bad gamble(which we did) you only learn when you lose.

I'm not really sure what you mean by a bad gamble. We tried to set it up so we could build the Great Library with no risk of wasting turns and not getting it. We missed the chance to build the GL, but then again, we invested nothing into it, save for maybe building the library in Elephantine, but that's a good thing to build in the GP city anyway.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

I'm not really sure what you mean by a bad gamble. We tried to set it up so we could build the Great Library with no risk of wasting turns and not getting it. We missed the chance to build the GL, but then again, we invested nothing into it, save for maybe building the library in Elephantine, but that's a good thing to build in the GP city anyway.

It was probably done by accident by the city governor but it was a risk we had to take to get the GL quickly. We don't have Metal Casting and we still wouldn't have the GE if a specialist hadn't been assigned. The GL would have been great but I can't really cry about getting the academy instead.

Militarily, our position looks great. Catherine has a huge stack in no man's land we can use to upgrade a number of our new axes and Cyrus is really strung out. I would suggest taking him soon after Catherine. If we take Arbela quickly we cut off his only horses and fortify the iron mine near Persepolis (which also has easy galley access) we destroy his access to military resources. Only a few more squares to reveal to confirm this. And Cyrus has a nice spread of resources: silk, spice, incense, and wine for happiness and crab and pigs for health.

I don't have a dot map but I think we will have to think carefully about city placement near Rostov. We don't want Ghandi sticking a colony on our island. I know we plan on keeping Moscow and Novgorod and razing Yaro (why does the AI build cities like this). Do we want to keep Rostov to prevent a colony arriving NW of Moscow or just keep a settler in the bank and hope our boarders expand quickly?

 

[llib_rm]

I don't know really.


I'm not really sure what you mean by a bad gamble. We tried to set it up so we could build the Great Library with no risk of wasting turns and not getting it.

It was a bad gamble on my part. I placed a scientist in thebes for three turns to speed along research.

 

[Lmtoops]

I noticed that Heliopolis has 1 unhappy citizen. We can rush the barracks and save 7 turns.

I see that Memphis and Pi-Ramesses have an open production que. I think Catapults would be a good choice. May we could speed up the production so that both Cats are completed within 5 turns.

Are we going to restart the Cathy war in the within the next 15 turns? I think we should be ready in the next 10 turns.

 

[ungy]

couple of thoughts:
as for research I would recommend CS then switch to optics path (maybe grab currency or trade for it)

It seems possible or even likely that Cathy will attack us--that would be great as we wouldn't get the penalty w/Gandhi for a DOW and less WW. Don't think the iron is too key--would be great to lure that stack out in the open. Would be nice to get a healer promo quick--might make sense to put a couple units on that path with the combat 1.

As far as Cyrus goes, I think he will be weak and can be taken out at our leisure. Huge distance penalty will crush our economy if we continue from Catherine. I don't think we can take Cyrus w/o forbidden palace. If Cathy DOWs us, that puts us a little back in the running for diplo--we can scout the world and maybe leave him. Those luxuries look good tho.

--ungy

 

[mushroomshirt]

Looks like I'm up next. Have been away for a while so just catching up on posts. I have checked all the posts, but I'll take some more time to read and consider what to do. Suggestions would be great! I'll try to post my take on things tomorrow (Friday) for comments and shoot for playing my set of turns on Saturday.

 

[Grogs]

It was a bad gamble on my part. I placed a scientist in thebes for three turns to speed along research.

That RNG has a bad habit of biting you in the rear when you least want it to. Don't sweat it though. It's not that much in the big scheme of the game.

I noticed that Heliopolis has 1 unhappy citizen. We can rush the barracks and save 7 turns.

How does the overflow work with that? It costs 2 citizens right now, which gives a maximum of 90 hammers, but only 48 are needed. If the 42 carries over, we should be able to finish a cat in 3 turns. If it doesn't, I would wait a turn before rushing.

Are we going to restart the Cathy war in the within the next 15 turns? I think we should be ready in the next 10 turns.

I'd say 10-15 turns is about the right timeframe.

It seems possible or even likely that Cathy will attack us--that would be great as we wouldn't get the penalty w/Gandhi for a DOW and less WW. Don't think the iron is too key--would be great to lure that stack out in the open. Would be nice to get a healer promo quick--might make sense to put a couple units on that path with the combat 1.

We may be able to 'encourage' her by moving our troops off the iron tile. Put a sword in every city's queue first - just in case we get horrible RNG results and they're able to pillage it. I'd definitely wait until we have at least 1 cat there before I tried though. Our stack vs. hers would be a pretty bloody affair right now, but if we could send in a cat first (preferably with collateral 1) it would soften them up and hopefully let us win it with relatively light losses. Taking out a large portion of her offensive troops in the first round of combat would be awfully nice.

City-wise, Moscow and Novgorod are obvious keepers. Yaroslavl' seems like a complete waste. The only value I could see to it would be filling that space culturally. Rostov isn't a bad city, I just don't care much for its placement. I think I'd like to have it 1 NW of where its at. I'm not sure that it's worth having to use a settler just for that though. After we've destroyed the Russians, I'd probably add a city on the small peninsula SW of Moscow on the tile N of the cows. It would fill in a culture hole and produce a pretty fair bit of commerce as it grows.

 

[llib_rm]

We may be able to 'encourage' her by moving our troops off the iron tile. Put a sword in every city's queue first - just in case we get horrible RNG results and they're able to pillage it.

I remember having my production queue changed when I lost a required resource. This may have been the result of, or has recently changed in, the 1.61 patch. I don't recall. But, do not be surprised if they pillage the iron and we are left with Axes until the iron is mined again.