SGOTM 01 - Short Straw

[VirusMonster]

ok, i got situation under control. I will score a conquest victory in 10 turns and you guys can all go home.

 

[Grogs]

ok, i got situation under control. I will score a conquest victory in 10 turns and you guys can all go home.

LOL! I'm afraid we're not allowed to win by conquest though.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the best way and when to start building up an off-continent invasion force for taking out (most likely) HC.

Also, we're playing 15 on this go round.

 

[VirusMonster]

1025AD: I took over. I quickly browse through forums and realize you need an invasion force to take out Cyrus. I check our military spendings +10 gold / turn at the moment, when a 15 unit invasion force is ready and outside our cultural borders, we will pay an extra 15 gold. That would hurt our research badly for a short time. I considered attacking Gandhi first, but he is too strong(looked at power graph) and technologically advanced. To have a chance for a domination victory, we should take out Cyrus as soon as we can. I don't think he will have knights, because we will capture his horse resource first, the city of Arbela. Thus, there is no need to wait for Pikeman. Attacking Capac first is another idea, but he is even weaker and further away than Cyrus, so if we take out Cyrus first and next Capac, we could score a domination victory.

Now, our invasion force can be made of a few galleys that we already possess, we have already 4 build. I am moving all our galleys close to Arbela. We will need a few more caravels tough. Rostov, Pi-ramesses, and Novgorod will build caravels. 3 should be enough to carry all we got into Cyrus borders. I plan on upgrading a few our most experienced axeman and swordsman into maceman.

Most importantly, we lack catapults. We need 5-6 catas to reduce city defences in 1-2 turns. Currently, we have only 2 catapults, I will produce 4 more. Moscow and St. Petersburg can pump out 4 more catapults in 10 turns.

Some of our cities have no courthouses, but they can build them once our invasion force is on the way to Cyrus. I see no need at this point to build Forbidden palace. I would rather build forbidden palace on a different continent.

1040AD: Islam has been founded somewhere and Cyrus gets a great person. Harbor done on St. Petersburg. I am following the plan I explained above. I am not interrepting any of the previously started building construction in cities except on the cities I have stated. I am building 3 new caravels and 4 new catapults total. I will upgrade some axeman into maceman and that should be enough to take Cyrus down. Hmm, I also let Memphis build a caravel.

I am sleeping most units we got, I did NOT use the settler we have to found a new city west of Novgorod. I think we got sufficient cities for now.

1055AD: I switch to Theocracy for a few turns to get extra experience on Caravels and Catapults. I spread Buddhism to St. Petersburg with a monk
Hmm, I also decide to keep the galley on the east shores where it is. Some defense might be necessary later to defend against Hapac's sea forces.

1070AD: Harbor done in Heliopolis and I switch to building a forge. Rostov starts building caravel.

1085AD: Caravel ready in Memphis.

1100AD: Following plan.

1106: Novgorod builds a Courthouse and starts Caravel production. I have 2 caravels out already. Buddhism spread to Giza through monk.

1112: Elephantine has some health problems and starts Aqueduct production.

1118: Massing troops near Arbela.

1124: Massing more and building road. I got 6 catas ready.

1130: Gandhi builds Sistine Chapel

1136: Massing more.

1142: Catapults into 3 galleys, Rest goes into caravels. ****, I realize caravels cant carry military units ( I am so dumb. Well, sorry guys. 6 turns until Astronomy is discovered. We will upgrade galleys and I switch to galley production on Rostov.

1148: I am so dumb, I built 4 caravels for nothing.

1154: We got lucky and discover gold near Moscow. We got gems, gold, and silver. We got a great person popup at this turn. I give up. 15 turns are over.


Recommendations for next player. Upgrade the galleys into galleons and carry all units to Cyrus territory. You will do 2-3 runs with those galleons, but it should work out ok. Wipe Cyrus out Capture 5 cities, leave the Tundra cities until later and raze them if you capture them eventually.

Build forbidden palace on one of cities you capture from Cyrus.

 

[llib_rm]

Recommendations for next player. Upgrade the galleys into galleons and carry all units to Cyrus territory. You will do 2-3 runs with those galleons, but it should work out ok. Wipe Cyrus out Capture 5 cities, leave the Tundra cities until later and raze them if you capture them eventually.

Build forbidden palace on one of cities you capture from Cyrus.

Looks like I am up. Since Ungy is gone until Wednesday, I will take time to form a consensus on what our near term strategy is. Please chime in...



Cyrus: Take out now or leave until later?
HC: Seek and destroy or wait until (what)?
Circumnavigate: Yes or No?
Build strategy: Army/Navy/infrastructure what should we focus on?
Research: Friggates/Cavalry/Other?
GP: Tech/Specialists/Save for GA?
FP: Build local & palace jump/build after conquest/???

 

[mushroomshirt]

Looks like I am up. Since Ungy is gone until Wednesday, I will take time to form a consensus on what our near term strategy is. Please chime in...



Cyrus: Take out now or leave until later?
HC: Seek and destroy or wait until (what)?
Circumnavigate: Yes or No?
Build strategy: Army/Navy/infrastructure what should we focus on?
Research: Friggates/Cavalry/Other?
GP: Tech/Specialists/Save for GA?
FP: Build local & palace jump/build after conquest/???

My 2cents:

Cyrus: I like the idea of taking him out now before we tangle with HC. If we take Cyrus out we can start cottaging his cities and have a decent economy for controlling HC's expensive far away cities. We can also get promotions for our units this way. Maybe we want to build a decent navy though in case HC comes calling earlier than expected.

HC: We'll probably need to scout him out before attacking... this will take at least 10-20 turns and maybe more if we get open borders with his neighbors and scout his land borders

Circumnavigate: Yes. It will probably be easy to pick this up after scouting other civs anyway.

Build strategy: I like building a decent navy to make sure we can defeat an attack before they make landfall

Research: I like military tradition, but soon after we probably need to pick up some more economy techs like printing press, banking, etc. To get domination we'll have to be supporting some expensive cities

GP: I like merchants per Grogs's post

FP: Never done this before, but could alleviate our economy problems a bit. I wonder if it makes sense to do it until we have a decent foothold on HC's continent. Cyrus is pretty close so maintenance cost for his cities can't be that high without palace jump, can they?

 

[Lmtoops]

1142: Catapults into 3 galleys, Rest goes into caravels. ****, I realize caravels cant carry military units ( I am so dumb. Well, sorry guys. 6 turns until Astronomy is discovered. We will upgrade galleys and I switch to galley production on Rostov.

You didn't really screw-up our plans. We planed on build 3-4 caravels for exploration, circumnavigate the globe, and defense. You built up the military...which was the plan. It looks like you did not do any exploring with your caravels, which does set us back a few turns. We probably would have circumnavigated the globle by now.

My criticism is that it seems you didn't read a single post from the last two turn sets. We have been discussing strategy for the last few days. Then you almost go off in the wrong direction. You were really scaring me , when you talked about taking over India....we have a permanent peace agreement with India...you cannot go to war with India .

The 15-turns are yours, and you are the . But next time, please read the past from the last few days.

 

[Lmtoops]

Attacking Cyrus would be beneficial to Ghandi. Cyrus is holding back Ghandi's cultural borders. Also we would get negative relations with Ghandi, close borders, attacking our friend (?). If Ghandi were to declare war on Cyrus in the next 15 turns, we would be foreced to go after Cyrus ourselves.

Of course, we don't know where HC or any other civs are located. If we had this information, it would make the decision much easier. At this point, let's build an invasion fleet...we can decide where it will go in the next few turns.

 

[Danthor]

1025AD: I took over. I quickly browse through forums and realize you need an invasion force to take out Cyrus.

WHAT?!?!?

1148: I am so dumb, I built 4 caravels for nothing.

EXPLORE goddammit!!!! Get the Circumnavigate bonus!!!!!
That's what caravels are for! you can't have units sitting idle

 

[Danthor]

Looks like I am up. Since Ungy is gone until Wednesday, I will take time to form a consensus on what our near term strategy is. Please chime in...



Cyrus: Take out now or leave until later?

Later. Maybe take some of his cities but since he serves as isolation wall betwenn us and Gandhi, leave the ones near Gandhi alone, at least until we get our perm. alliance with him.

HC: Seek and destroy or wait until (what)?

Let's explore more to get a better idea of the world layout first.

Circumnavigate: Yes or No?

Of course YES! 1 caravel West and 1 East should suffice.

Build strategy: Army/Navy/infrastructure what should we focus on?

infraestructure

Research: Friggates/Cavalry/Other?

$$$

GP: Tech/Specialists/Save for GA?

What is GA?

FP: Build local & palace jump/build after conquest/???

Save it for later. Depending on the distance between other continents.

 

[Lmtoops]

WHAT?!?!?

EXPLORE!!!! Get the Circumnavigate bonus!!!!!
That's what caravels are for! you can't have units sitting idle

I was being nice in criticism, because I knew Danthor would let you have it

 

[VirusMonster]

I was being nice in criticism, because I knew Danthor would let you have it

I think you guys like to play peaceful games. You know Cyrus is enemy, so take him out NOW. Having negative bonus penalty with Gandhi for close borders is not important at all. We have IMBA same religion bonus for our relaitons. Gandhi is religious so he would never attack an ally of same religion.

Capac has even less score than Cyrus, he prolly has even less cities than Cyrus has and a much weaker force. I upgraded so much maceman already If you don't take Cyrus now, all the invasion force I prepared at the border goes waste.

Take out Cyrus now when all our troops are ready. You need to upgrade the galleys we got ( 3 galleys there into Galleons and move the troops in 2-3 landfalls.

Sorry for not getting circumnavigation bonus I was dumb, my whole idea was carrying troops over Arbela, but I figured too late that they did not carry troops. If I realized earlier, I would let them travel the globe.

I read some stuff you write in the forums, but I can't agree with all. When I look the scores of other teams and see that ours is not so high, then I start thinking maybe they captured more cities and support more population than us already. So that is why I decided to take Cyrus down, and I don't think you should do any different. We can wipe him out very quickly. We got everything cats, swordsman, maceman, everyting is ready. Upgrade galleons and move over. Even if Gandhi flips 1 city due to culture, we still will keep 4 cities there. Raze tundra cities.

 

[Danthor]

I think you guys like to play peaceful games. You know Cyrus is enemy, so take him out NOW. Having negative bonus penalty with Gandhi for close borders is not important at all. We have IMBA same religion bonus for our relaitons. Gandhi is religious so he would never attack an ally of same religion.

Yes, I gues we can take Cyrus' best cities and raze the tundra ones.

Capac has even less score than Cyrus, he prolly has even less cities than Cyrus has and a much weaker force. I upgraded so much maceman already If you don't take Cyrus now, all the invasion force I prepared at the border goes waste.

Oh, I thought we were still at swordsmen...

Sorry for not getting circumnavigation bonus I was dumb, my whole idea was carrying troops over Arbela, but I figured too late that they did not carry troops. If I realized earlier, I would let them travel the globe.

Ok, ok, so this is your only downfall from my point of view. Hopefully we'll still get the bonus.

When I look the scores of other teams and see that ours is not so high, then I start thinking maybe they captured more cities and support more population than us already.

Actually you have to compare scores at the same date. As of 1154 AD we have the highest score (followed closely by Queen's Men), the 3rd or maybe 4th highest culture, and the 2nd power rating.

 

[Grogs]

OK, let's first of all have everyone try and stay calm and professional. We don't really need anyone getting warned over this.

@VirusMonster - The caravels are no big deal. Everyone is going to make mistakes in SG's and nobody expects perfection. What has everyone so upset is that you pop in after not posting in the thread for a week or more and head off in your own direction without the least bit of discussion, and your write-up makes that fact obvious. I have no problem if you disagreee with the way others want to play the game - when it's your turn, you're in charge, but I think doing so without the least bit of discussion about it is pretty discourteous to your teammates. If you don't have time to catch up on the thread and discuss, ask for a skip. This is a team effort. I've been in an SG before where everyone played their own little game, and it was ugly.

That said, love it or hate it, what we've got is what we've got. We need to focus on where we go from here.

Priority A#1 is obviously exploration. Ghandi already has caravels, so if at all possible, we'd like to meet the other civs before he does so we can trade for resources and techs. We also need to know where HC is and scout out all the other continents - we know there's one due east of Heliopolis because I can see it thanks to Optics.

Cyrus - ungy convinced me, and I'm still convinced, that Cyrus is a lodestone. It will get us diplomatic hits with Ghandi, that wil quite possibly make him stop trading with us and possibly rule out the possibility of a PA. It will add maintenance costs, and we have no choice but to keep *all* those cities, even the crappy tundra ones, or Ghandi will claim the land. It means more cities we have to defend, and quite possibly we could be attacked by HC while we're messing around with Cy. We are at war with HC, and there are only 3 possible outcomes - we destroy him, he destroys us, or we keep fighting until the game ends. Once HC has been destroyed and we have a formidable navy capable or terrorizing the seas, we can knock Cyrus out in 15 turns or less while we're finishing off the other off-continent civs. I've won enough domination wins to know that once we get rolling, we'll be nigh unstoppable, but we need to get rolling first.

Trades - there are trades available, specifically HBR, Feudalism, and 410g from Cyrus. We could use all of those things right now.

FP - I think building the FP in Cy's land helps us exactly zero when it comes to other continents. Those are the cities that are going to eat up our economy. There are 3 ways I see to deal with it:

1. Wait on the FP and build it in a well-placed off-continent city, HC's or one of the other civs.
2. Go ahead and build it in Moscow or wherever, and once we find a suitable spot on another continent, build the palace (or Versailles, but that's bloody expensive) there and jump our capital.
3. Beeline for Communism/State Property, it really doesn't matter *where* we have our capitals.

- We've got a GS. We can use him to research philosophy. It's a pretty useless tech, but we could use it as follows: philosophy (GS) -> paper -> education -> PP (GS) -> liberalism -> Scientific Method (free tech) -> Communism. Communism permits State Property and permanent alliances.[/b] Whether we end up going for a diplo or domination win, if we can add Ghandi's 19% land / 22% population to our own, we're going to win much faster.

 

[mushroomshirt]

We are at war with HC, and there are only 3 possible outcomes - we destroy him, he destroys us, or we keep fighting until the game ends. Once HC has been destroyed and we have a formidable navy capable or terrorizing the seas, we can knock Cyrus out in 15 turns or less while we're finishing off the other off-continent civs.

This makes a lot of sense. I've been a proponent of taking on Cyrus but this is a very good point. He is weak and can wait and HC must be destroyed and the sooner the better.

 

[Lmtoops]

I say leave Cyrus alone because he is limiting Ghandi's growth. In addition, we maintain good relations with Ghandi and keep the PA option available. If the other civs are close, we should wait to attack Cyrus last.

We should give Cyrus our older techs. He can be a great trading partner for the techs that are not in our path. We would be able to trade with Cyrus and Ghandi.

I think we will still get the circumnavigation, the AI just wanders around and lucks into the bonus.

The beeline to Communism is the best route.

 

[Grogs]

I think we will still get the circumnavigation, the AI just wanders around and lucks into the bonus.

Quite true. The only times I'm usually beaten to the bonus is on a map where I don't care (pangea) or if I'm just way, way behind (Emperor+ stuck alone on an island scenario)

 

[Lmtoops]

Looking at the save, I see more land!!!! Look 7 tiles East of Heliopolis and you can see the edge of another land mass. Is it an island? or another continent?

 

[llib_rm]

I think you guys like to play peaceful games.

For my part, I tend to play balanced games. Perhaps too balanced.

I read some stuff you write in the forums, but I can't agree with all.

I would like to understand why you disagree and then form/change my own opinion.

I think everyone is in agreement that we should take out Cyrus. It is just a question of when.

 

[llib_rm]

Priority A#1 is obviously exploration. Ghandi already has caravels, so if at all possible, we'd like to meet the other civs before he does so we can trade for resources and techs. We also need to know where HC is and scout out all the other continents - we know there's one due east of Heliopolis because I can see it thanks to Optics.

I agree, did I read that a settler was available?

FP - There are 3 ways I see to deal with it:

1. Wait on the FP and build it in a well-placed off-continent city, HC's or one of the other civs.
2. Go ahead and build it in Moscow or wherever, and once we find a suitable spot on another continent, build the palace (or Versailles, but that's bloody expensive) there and jump our capital.
3. Beeline for Communism/State Property, it really doesn't matter *where* we have our capitals.

I am leaning towards the second/third option. I think we should build the FP now to get early benefits and beeline towards State Property.

This is a decision I would like discussion on.

 

[Grogs]

For my part, I tend to play balanced games. Perhaps too balanced.

Me too. If I have a failing in CIV, it's that. My GOTM06 game (it's over now, so I should be able to talk about it) was a perfect example. I scored a 1795 domination win, which wasn't very fast, but I had one heck of a strong empire - banks, universities, wonders, etc, when I won.

I agree, did I read that a settler was available?

Yep, he's up by Moscow. I think we built him so we could have him ready if the AI tried to send a settler over. There are 2-3 more spots we could build, they'd be so-so cities, but certainly nothing spectacular.

I am leaning towards the second/third option. I think we should build the FP now to get early benefits and beeline towards State Property.

This is a decision I would like discussion on.

In an ordinary win any way you want, kill anyone you want game, I wouldn't be so hot on the idea of beelining to Communism. But since securing a PA with Ghandi would be so very, very powerful in this game (we could shut off research completely - he's out-researching us anyway, not to mention getting his land/pop added to ours for Victory conditions. We're at +11 with him right now and we can expect another +2 eventually for supplying him with resources. A switch to US would (after ~50 turns) net us another +5 relations. Unfortunately, it's possible he could switch to free religion, in which case we'd lose our +6 with him

The path to communism isn't trouble-free though. We could miss Liberalism, or we could strike out on the GS and get a GA instead, meaning we'd have to take PP as our free tech and research S&M by hand. We're also passing on several military techs, engineering and guilds in particular, and hoping we can trade for them.

Looking at the save, I'm not sure the FP is all that useful right now. We'd probably save 1-2 gold in the 4 russian cities, but I think that's about it. Since we're going to need to be building galleons in 6-7 turns when we discover Astronomy, Moscow, as an inland city, would be an ideal city to churn out troops.

VM has done a good job building the core of an invasion force, but I'd like to see a couple more crossbows and several more catapults in the stack. Just guessing on what we'll see in HC's cities, I'd like to get 8 galleon's worth (24 troops) over there as quickly as possible. We should probably go ahead and send out all four caravels, 2 east and 2 west now, since we're almost to Astro and we need to figure out where we're going as quickly as possible.

And please, for the sake of my sanity, rename those maces. There's nothing more confusing than a mace named 'Sword#1.'