SGOTM 01 - Short Straw

[Lmtoops]

Hmmm...I wonder if VirusMonster is reading the thread??

VM...are you out there?

 

[Lmtoops]

As far as CFR, their score looks good. They have a much higher culture than us, I don't know how much that influences their score. I see that their Power score is higher, but not by much.

In any case, we have played great.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

For obsessive end game management.

According to the demographics screen we currently have 525 tiles and need 576 to trigger the domination win. Managing the following cities to have max artists.

Next turn:
Atlanta expands +6tiles
LA out of anarchy +5 tiles
Lisht expands +1 tile
New Yaroslavl founded on our continent +3 tiles

Total + 15 tiles

Turn 2:
Edfu expands +1 tile
Washington out of anarchy +6 tiles
Buto expands +4 tiles (needs to have 2 artists)
NY out of anarchy +7 tiles
Found city between LA and Seatle 1 above barb ruins +3 tiles (settler is near edfu but auto-directions are wrong)
+21 tiles (+36 tiles)

3rd turn (1580)
SF out of anarchy +4 tiles
NY expands (+5 tiles)
LA expands (+5 tiles)
Washinton expands (+2 tiles)

+16 tiles (+52 total - one to spare)

We plant the flag for a 1580 domination victory!

 

[RobertTheBruce]

As far as CFR, their score looks good. They have a much higher culture than us, I don't know how much that influences their score. I see that their Power score is higher, but not by much.

In any case, we have played great.

I agree, great game.

It looks like CFR culture bombed some city. They probably took Cyrus' cities and tried to culture bomb Ghandi. Unless they grossly mismanage their research or FDR does a much better job of trading techs with Ghandi and builds a decent army, they will probably be able to beat our time since they will only need the Arabian cities out of anarchy for victory.

Still, I'm pretty impressed with pre 1600 for a multicontinent domination victory.

Edit: I guess looking at the finishes will show what strategy works better. We skipped a war with Cyrus and beelined for astronomy and chemistry to attack with grenadiers. CFR probably attacked Cyrus, Memphis Blues did according to their 1st spoiler. Will research delays and increased maintenance due to a war with Cyrus delay their attacks on Saladin and FDR so much that they can't sweep through the third continent as quickly? I'm sure everyone focused on eliminating Cathy first, I think Cyrus was a big decision point for a lot of games.

A stack of camel archers and cats could have really slowed an attack on Saladin.

 

[llib_rm]

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

Nice Job guys!!!

It looks like the clock is running on VirusMonster and I am on deck. I will be unable to play until Saturday. If VM cannot play, I will give my spot to Ungy.

 

[Grogs]

I gotta tell ya, my first reaction when I opened the save was 'holy crap!' I can't believe you took out Roosevelt in 10 turns (actually 8.) Well done. Very well done indeed. Not only that, but you've got a pretty serious invasion force ready to strike at Cyrus. I read your log, but I didn't think we could take all those cities in 10 turns.

I was doing some tile analysis and while I did, it looks like RTB beat me to it. FWIW, I came up with *exactly* the same number of tiles owned and required for domination. I didn't check out his numbers for how many turns it will take to get those 51 tiles, but based on the rest of his analysis, I'm willing to take his word for it. By the way, if anyone ever needs to do that in the future, the absolute easiest way is to get the land area in the demographics screen and divide by 1000 to get the number of tiles owned (thanks RTB - I learned something new today.) Then divide number of tiles by the domination percentage to get the total land tiles on the map - 900 in this case. Once you have that, it's easy to calculate how many you need.

Sooo... let's go ahead and attack Cy. Why not? It will give the last player something to do besides just hitting enter for the last few turns. Personally, I don't think Ghandi will attack us, but I'd like to know. Even if Ghandi declares on us, there's no way he's taking a city in 3 turns. I'd just go through and check all the cities that could benefit from popping cultural borders and assign artists and have them build culture. Any city with more than 6 hammers will get at least +3 culture from that (as good, or better than building a theater, and we don't have to wait.) Also, let's raise the culture slider to 100%. We can only sustain that for 3 turns, but that should be all we need.

 

[Grogs]

It looks like CFR culture bombed some city. They probably took Cyrus' cities and tried to culture bomb Ghandi. Unless they grossly mismanage their research or FDR does a much better job of trading techs with Ghandi and builds a decent army, they will probably be able to beat our time since they will only need the Arabian cities out of anarchy for victory.

I wouldn't sweat it. I know Dynamic's on CFR, and he's probably one of the best GOTM players out there, as well as akots, and maybe a couple of others. Win or not, we've still played a heck of a good game.

 

[mushroomshirt]

RobertTheBruce, you're my hero. That's a hell of a turn set.

Hopefully VirusMonster is around and can take us home by 1580! Like Lmtoops, I'll count that as a victory for us!

 

[ungy]

Robert the Bruce awesome set!! Seems like it's basically done--if VM doesn't check in I will finish the game--haven't spent time looking at it but will follow the plan.

Great game all!!

 

[ungy]

Some thoughts on our game vs. other teams:

I think we played good strategy and with one exception worked well together as a team and that should beat most teams I think.

It seems like the most significant event of the game was how the war with Cathy went. I think we did well but in a large group I would expect a few to go better--St. Pt will not always be founded on a hill--if not it is an easy pickup and some group probably got Moscow early. I wouldn't have played our war differently, but somebody probably got it easier.

We also got unlucky with the GL--let's face it that hurt.

I think the decision to avoid Cyrus was a huge winner--unless someone had a different start-(Cyrus with Madras), I counted around 60 tiles there as only 4 cities could be kept. So we would still have needed war with FDR--maybe save 5 or 6 turns in that war and cost centuries in crashed research. So I think avoiding that trap beats several teams.

I think we did a good job on offense--we took down HC,Sal, FDR in about 60 turns--pretty quick I'd say.

 

[Grogs]

We also got unlucky with the GL--let's face it that hurt.

On the positive side, I'm not sure when was the last time I played a CIV game and didn't build the GL. Having to deal without it is good because I learned how to adapt to that situation. I'd love to have it (and every other wonder as well ) but as you move up the difficulty scale, that's not always possible.

I think the decision to avoid Cyrus was a huge winner--unless someone had a different start-(Cyrus with Madras), I counted around 60 tiles there as only 4 cities could be kept. So we would still have needed war with FDR--maybe save 5 or 6 turns in that war and cost centuries in crashed research. So I think avoiding that trap beats several teams.

Me too. I was initially all for charging in there with guns blazing, but I think it was a pretty big trap. From some of the GOTM writeups I've seen from the likes of Hendrikszoon, A'AA, and others, the date you get Astro is key to the finish date and a tanking economy is not the way to get to Astronomy quickly.

I do have one request for whoever finishes us out. If you could post up the save from the turn before victory, that would be great. That way everyone could DL it, press enter, and watch the victory movie, see the replay, add the game to their HOF, etc. You could either submit it as a regular save and then submit the winning save, or just go ahead and submit the winning save and attach it here.

@Danthor: Are you still going to do the first spoiler? If you're too busy, it's OK, it would just be nice to know before we break up so we can put someone else on it.

 

[Lmtoops]

We got lucky with the random resources popping up. I believe we had 3, and at least 2 were in major cities. That helped boost production.

 

[Lmtoops]

Please somebody play this game and end it.
Release me so I can read the other threads.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

On the positive side, I'm not sure when was the last time I played a CIV game and didn't build the GL. Having to deal without it is good because I learned how to adapt to that situation. I'd love to have it (and every other wonder as well ) but as you move up the difficulty scale, that's not always possible.

I'm curious how much losing the GL hurt us. It terms of beakers, the academy vs 2 specialists were close to a toss up. The big difference would start after the academies are built in our two science cities. We were closing in on astronomy so we might have saved a turn or two researching chemistry. Since we turned science off so early, the main advantage would have been an additional great scientist.

Our attack went so well because you switched Elephantine to produce that first great merchant who funded a huge group of upgrades. With less grenadiers and some maces we probably would take a few more turns fighting Saladin.

Getting unlucky with a great scientist instead of an engineer saved us from getting unlucky with a scientist instead of a merchant.

 

[mushroomshirt]

I'm curious how much losing the GL hurt us. It terms of beakers, the academy vs 2 specialists were close to a toss up. The big difference would start after the academies are built in our two science cities. We were closing in on astronomy so we might have saved a turn or two researching chemistry. Since we turned science off so early, the main advantage would have been an additional great scientist.

Our attack went so well because you switched Elephantine to produce that first great merchant who funded a huge group of upgrades. With less grenadiers and some maces we probably would take a few more turns fighting Saladin.

Getting unlucky with a great scientist instead of an engineer saved us from getting unlucky with a scientist instead of a merchant.

I agree- I think the great merchants were pretty key as was switching off science after chemistry. I never do that properly in my SP games.

I think it has officially been 24 hours and VM has not checked in? It would be great if he could take us home, but like Lmtoops, I'm dying to read the other threads. If I understand the rules right, it's OK for ungy to step up and bust out our victory.

I really had a good time on the team with everyone and I feel like I learned a lot about not warmongering. The vast majority of our discussion was constructive and focused on achieving our collective goals, which is hard to do in this kind of situation, I think. I'm very interested in ungy's position on not attacking Cyrus & (like Lmtoops) am anxious to read the other threads who beat us (assuming any do!) to see how they handled the Cyrus question.

I hope everyone is up for team Short Straw again on SGOTM 2!

EDIT: Hey I'm a warlord now! That's my reward for annoying all of you with my constant posts.

 

[Grogs]

I think it has officially been 24 hours and VM has not checked in? It would be great if he could take us home, but like Lmtoops, I'm dying to read the other threads. If I understand the rules right, it's OK for ungy to step up and bust out our victory.

You are correct. VM has 24 hours to post an 'I got it' in the threads, so he's MIA. ungy should probably post an official 'I got it' when he starts playing, just in case VM were to show up and start playing at the same time, in which case we would have 2 winning games and a big mess on our hands.

I really had a good time on the team with everyone and I feel like I learned a lot about not warmongering. The vast majority of our discussion was constructive and focused on achieving our collective goals, which is hard to do in this kind of situation, I think.

My fastest conquest and domination victories in my SG are SG's, while my fastest SS and Diplo wins are single player. I think this is because I tend to be a conservative player when it comes to warmongering and I wait for massive superiority before attacking. Playing with other folks has helped me with that, though I'm not entirely cured yet.

I'm very interested in ungy's position on not attacking Cyrus & (like Lmtoops) am anxious to read the other threads who beat us (assuming any do!) to see how they handled the Cyrus question.

Good point! In the maintenance thread AlanH clarified that there's no problem reading everyone's threads once we've finished, but we really shouldn't post on their threads before they've finished the game.

I hope everyone is up for team Short Straw again on SGOTM 2!

I'd love to play with you guys again. Some folks may be interested in playing with different people each time though, and that's fine. I've also been toying with the idea of putting together a concurrent SG. If you're not familiar with the format, everybody plays each turnset and posts it up on a predetermined time, then the team discusses whose turns they like the best and continues on from there. It's essentially like a 'best ball' tournament in golf. It may be a couple of months before the next SGOTM begins, so if you guys need something to hold you over until then, let me know.

EDIT: Hey I'm a warlord now! That's my reward for annoying all of you with my constant posts.

It's really weird with the forum identifiers being similar to the difficulty levels. A lot of people put the actual difficulty they play on there, so it gets confusing.

EDIT: As for the GL spoiling our supply of merchants, that also gives us something to think about as far as placement. We all decided to put the GL in our GP city, but maybe Thebes would have been a better choice. It would definitely have produced more beakers there and we could have still run Elephantine with 5-6 merchants later in the game to produce merchants.

 

[ungy]

I'll make it official that I am taking the next turn--I can't play till tomorrow aft.

 

[ungy]

I confess I didn't consider the switchover at all when thinking about the GL--I am not used to playing this type of game. In my normal games I tend to lose interest once it is clearly a win or a loss and don't play for time or score.
Those merchants were pretty big so maybe we got most of it back given where we were going to put it. I think we'd have been better off in Thebes as well.

 

[ungy]

I'll post the save on the turn before victory

 

[ungy]

one more thing about other teams--anyone who really tried diplo was going to be way off the pace.