SGOTM 02 - VQ Black

namliaM · Aug 23, 2006

bobrath said:
(Feels like I'm talking to myself now...)

Yeah I know the feeling

bobrath said:
If we make Hokkiado a production powerhouse.... why are we worried about using the BT islands to support a landing? Seems like we'd be better served by keeping Hokkiado concentrated on supporting (via science and income) our nation. Yes there will be some sites on Hokkiado that will be production heavy, but trying to make them all that at the expense of growing cottages seems very short sited to me.

Well what is our goal? Conquest right? Right...
What do we need?
- Catapults (we have)
- Samurais (we have)
- Galleons (we have, in 30-40 turns)

Optional:
- Knights (Guilds)
- Cavs (MT & Gunpowder)

Additional optional:
- Grenadiers (Chemistry & Engineering )

Anything beyond that research is going to be a waste IMHO. If we are gunning for any shot at the first price .... well I think we should stay with Samurais maybe complemented by some Knights as I like the production that a workshop gives.

Also if we do want to keep researching some we can... we will be getting 100+ gold per city we capture/raze to fuel our research... and maybe we can grant peace to an AI for 10 turns in trade for one of these techs?

About BT making Cats, well that is NOT for supporting any landing that is supposed to be a landing on its own...15 or so cats complemented by some 5-6 archers (to be upgraded to Crossbows) and some 5-6 LBs (as primary defence)...That should/could just be enough to take down Mansa....

bobrath · Aug 23, 2006

No worries on the 5.5 extra turns. I just figured that we're coming up on the phase of the game where it will require a bit more thought AND the turns will start taking longer to play then write up!

namliaM · Aug 23, 2006

I really thought we were still on 15 :blush:

and the one ENTER extra...well... :mischief:

didnt much matter.

On the other hand 5.5 turns extra... Now thats a bit much ....

What are your thoughts on Research and the needed budget?

pigswill · Aug 23, 2006

We're looking for quick conquest and the first thing we have to do is speed up research on astronomy; there's no obvious shortcut which means more beakers so commercialise existing cities, new cities can start on farms and growth. It'd speed things up a bit to have some galleys we could upgrade to galleons.

bobrath · Aug 23, 2006

IMO, we can't take over the entire world within the duration of usefullness of our samurai. There's just too many cities. SO we need to think about maximizing the impact we have with them and making sure we have the next stage (grens/rifles) to mop up the rest.

Bismark/Hatty have a tech lead on us. Not sure about the others. Our UU will help with that tech disparity, but we need to get Astron sooner rather then later to get them over there. Course... our galleys can start the war a bit earlier with cats. So get that cat army (+ arrows) up and get it smacking down. Hopefully about the time the cat army runs out of juice, Astro will come in and we can ship Samurai across from Hakkido.

Cosmichail · Aug 23, 2006

I brought my whip and light saber. I'll use the light saber to cut up our enemies into little pieces and whip our citizens out of their wits. So we are at 10 turns and have read everybody's post carefully (ok that whipping stuff gives me a headache) but will do as I am told. We Sith Lords will say that but as duplicitious as we are doubt it will go far.

Had a busy day today and this is "I got it" and might play tonight still with the owls. Don't have to work until tomorrow evening so will be able to sleep with the sunlight. Sunlight bad for me darkness good. NamliaM nice work taking out the psycho *****. So we get some cats happening in BT with archers and even copied the whipping instructions. I think NamliaM should start his own thread explaining whipping techniques to teach to the whole civ community.

Pardon moi my dark attitude but after roaming around in it tonight I am feeling kind of nocturnal.

EDIT: ok why did it block out my psycho B**ch. Censorship yuk I really detest that.

Cosmichail · Aug 24, 2006

T1 (3/4 turn)

KK gave us 10 gold
Demanded 20 gold from MM
Bismarck gave us 50 gold

T2

Bring science up to 50%
Kyoto whips harbor
Osaka finished market start Samurai
Move workers
Troop deployment (getting to barb city from north)
Barb archer attacks Satsuma and looses
Another barb approaching, HA on the way to intercept.

T3

troops deployment/ship deployment

T4

Barb archer attacks HA and looses

T5

zzzzz
troop/ship deployment

T6

Pop grows in Osaka and add another scientist.
Osaka finishes samurai start another
We get a GS in Osaka and feel we should use him for an academy. He will give paper and I realize it’s a good trading tech but still feel academy will speed up to getting Astro. We are loosing out on important techs like guilds/banking so we need to speed it up. Hope everybody agrees.
Astronomy goes from 32 turns to 28 turns

T7

Whip Cat in Kyoto and let overflow go into archer.
Our BT is surrounded by AI’s. (nice one Thunderfall??)

T8

2 barb archers take out our beloved HA which was on a distant hill scouting the city.
Kyoto finishes Archer start another cat.
Samurai takes out barb archer
Granary in Edo useless we have no rice, corn or wheat in BT. (well not entirely)

T9

Trade KK philo for Drama
Troops near barb city that should be able to take it in next turnset.

T10

Madrid will pop borders in 3 turns.
Hatty cancels OB with us.
Osaka builds Sam start another. ( I was contemplating building HE there but we might want to keep it for Oxford/Wall street)
Whip Cat in Edo overflow goes into lbm (think lbm better now)
Troops almost at Khoisan (whatever) and should be there in 1 turn or two as we need to get across that river to avoid the penalty.
Whip forge in Barcelona.
Whip cat in Kyoto overflow in lbm.
And look it here Mao has Astronomy.

We should build a few settlers now as Mao probably will be heading over.
We can’t really afford to and the buildup of forces is costing us. The sooner we have banking the better. Workshops with guilds will offer one more hammer for those cities like Barcelona/Seville where there is very little production. No AI will give up guilds but maybe at some point we can get it from KK for CS.

Spoiler :

The Caldron of Death

bobrath --> OUR SHOGUN
namliaM --> killed off the psycho chick
Cosmichail --> just played --> feeling rather evil tonight but no fun with war for me
Pigswill --> UP --> monitoring the resident pyschopath (now who would that be??)
LuvtoBuild --> on deck --> all sit at the campfire listening to his stories (psychokiller hiding in the bushes)
Eektor --> Will his wrath be exerted upon the heathens of the other continent

namliaM · Aug 24, 2006

Cosmichail said:
I brought my whip and light saber. I'll use the light saber to cut up our enemies into little pieces and whip our citizens out of their wits. So we are at 10 turns and have read everybody's post carefully (ok that whipping stuff gives me a headache) but will do as I am told. We Sith Lords will say that but as duplicitious as we are doubt it will go far.

Had a busy day today and this is "I got it" and might play tonight still with the owls. Don't have to work until tomorrow evening so will be able to sleep with the sunlight. Sunlight bad for me darkness good. NamliaM nice work taking out the psycho *****. So we get some cats happening in BT with archers and even copied the whipping instructions. I think NamliaM should start his own thread explaining whipping techniques to teach to the whole civ community.

Pardon moi my dark attitude but after roaming around in it tonight I am feeling kind of nocturnal.

EDIT: ok why did it block out my psycho B**ch. Censorship yuk I really detest that.

LOL on the post... Thanks for the complement, but... I dont think I am quite the expert you make me out to be... The +2

per whip just makes sence...
It also makes sence to use BT as whip bait... + I read about the whip "bug/exploit/bonus" (what ever you call it) on the forum someplace....

bobrath said:
IMO, we can't take over the entire world within the duration of usefullness of our samurai. There's just too many cities. SO we need to think about maximizing the impact we have with them and making sure we have the next stage (grens/rifles) to mop up the rest.

While I dont strongly disagree... I do beg to differ...
The best defender at the moment is LBs(6), next will be Musketmen (9).
Tho Muskets are a serious upgrade from LBs... They mean not much to samurais (8). With 2 first strikes a unpromoted Samurai can still win 1 on 1 vs a Musketman even with 25% fortification bonus. When you add in 1 or 2 catapults before.... The odds should still be well in our favour.
LBs have natural +25% CD and get CD promotions. Musketmen dont have either....
Important is that we get samurais to CR3 for the Gunpowder bonus of CR3, which will help.
Also we need/want some Pikes in the group too to protect us from knights.

Rifflemen and Grenadiers will be where we may get in trouble, tho I have rarely seen AI beeline Chemistry
Guilds (2242) => Gunpowder (2691) => Engineering (2242) => Chemistry (4036) = 11211... It doesnt seem that far away...
Also we will be capturing some cities which will earn us some gold. And those cities are likely to have (better developed) Cottages too... Also probable we will need to whip a culture building in there, what better than a library? Also these may well have a Market or Guild allready done for us

thus adding greatly to our Economy (even more than just the 100gold).

Also we dont have Theology which may be nice to have for the +2xp, if we choose...

We are now at 40% science, making 79 beakers, +7gpt. If we run science at 100% we will make 180 beakers, -79gpt. 0% science we make 18 beakers (scientists), +58gpt. 50% science, 95 beakers, -7gpt
Running 7 turns of 40% science, followed by 3 turns of 50% nets us 838 beakers, 28 gold
Binary science 6 turns of 0% and 4 turns of 100% nets us 828 beakers, 32 gold

Binary science actually doesnt help us...

Maybe if we have an Acadamy in Osaka... Lets see... Osaka currently is making 78 beakers at 100% an Academy will add 40... thats not a lot...

A Great engineer could actually help in discovering Engineering

Just for a comparison Guilds (2242) => Nationalism (4036) => Gunpowder (2691) => MT (4485) = 13454
And Samurais upgrade to Grenadiers, not Cavaliers.
I would say beeline Grenadiers, at our current techrate thats 13 turnsets or about 134 turns of research. But I think we can greatly trim that by:
1) Turning of science after Astronomy and extorting/trading for Engineering and Guilds, both are allready on the market. But not yet for trade, we have Philo on HC, who has Guilds
2) Beeing buddies with Kublai if we can. He is backward compared to the other AI, we have CS, Philo and Feudalism on him. Should he discover Engineering or Guilds I am sure we could trade him for it.

Looking at relations, Mansa is (I think) the least liked AI out there (on average), while Hathy is the most liked (again on average). Can someone confirm that?
If this is true then Mansa should be our first target, maybe after declaring war we can buy some AI into war with him? I.e. Mao, Kublai and HC... just to boost relations a little... and slow them a little.
If we do continue to research our goal should be Engineering, both Engineering and Guilds are known by 2 AI. But only Guilds is currently Tradable for us (Mao, for Philo).
Philo tho is only 1800 beakers, while Guilds is 2242... so a straight up trade wont do....
Engineering is also 2242 beakers so maybe we have a shot at that trade (Mao dont have Engineering either).
If Kublai on the other hand discovers either we have a good trading opportunity...

Edit: Crosspost with Cosmichials turn... I have to go to work now, so I dont have time to account for that.

Just want to add that any granary in BT is well worth it if only for the double growth => More whip

namliaM · Aug 24, 2006

Call me a slacker, I looked at the save... A couple of things....
1) The catapult in Edo only has 11 overflow... There should be about 40, take care when you whip something. If you miss a whip point, no biggy... Use that for overflows from other whips.

2) We want to work the HIGH food tiles in Kyoto for max grow => Max whip. Those 6 beakers and 6 GPP arent really helping us a lot Are they?

3) With the 2 catapults we are about to finish, we have 9. We need to switch 1 city to whipping LBs...
LBs are whippable from 19 hammers thru 29...
Cats are whippable from 4 hammers thru 14...
I think either overflow into an Archer or Overflow 2 whips of the 1 into the other. I.e. Whip LB, overflow into Catapult (Build it 1 turn only, adding ~35 hammers) then Switch the build to another LB whip that and overflow into the same Catapult (again adding ~35hammers, finishing the Catapult).

4) In about 4 turns Kagoshima will grow to size 4. In about 10 turns or so we should be near size 5, just a 4 turns before Size 5 start a Granary for 1 turn and whip it(2 pop)... We should gain back the growth quick and get the Forge quicker in the end.
Alternatively Kagoshima is producing 5 hammers per turn. We could switch now and in 9 turns (maybe 10) whip the granary for 1 pop.

5) Seville needs mines (DUH!) and a granary to stimulate growth after the Forge.

6) Barcalona is an EXELENT whipping city. I suggest we apply the same to Barca as to BT, maybe even add the Globe theatre to it. Please fire the priest and Get a granary ASAP (remember the whip! Granary: from 34 to 44, but at 1 hammer per turn... just whip it ASAP, atleast 3 turns or so before growing)

7) Madrid will be a nice whip city too (WOW this is centered around whipping !!! ) with three 5food tiles

Put a turn into a Forge and whip it. Work a bit on a barracks and on the Granary (this to whip point see 6). Wait for the whip to ware of and whip ....

8) Toledo will be our commerce center? Cottage spam that and add a market to start (Chopping) then start Missionaries to spread Confusionalism and Taoism. Every 2 cities with the 2 religions adds 5 gold

And the cottages will only add to it. Also having A monastary of both religions in Osaka would add some nice beakers there...

9) Osaka, Fire those scientists... get to producing the Heroic epic in Osaka +150% on producing units is nice... In particular since Osaka isnt a great whipping place... We lose 3 turns on Astronomy but add 4 raw (6 after Buro) hammers to our production + we grow faster = WHIP

10) Tokyo I wouldnt build a single cottage in anymore (it will have 2 soon). Only farms and Workshops

11) For good measure: Samurais are whip bait from 49 to 59 hammers or from 1 to 15 hammers (for 2 pop)

12) Is it me or is Mansa's land very small??

pigswill · Aug 24, 2006

Skip. Hey chaps, bit of a problem. I loaded the save to have a look and civ died on me. :cry:

I then tried loading a couple of my own saves and civ still died on me. :cry:

No obvious reason for this. Civ has now come back to life but I'm concerned that if civ dies half way through my turnset I could end up possibly having to reload and risk disqualification.
So I think I'd like to wait a day or so to see if this was a blip or a problem. I'd like to skip so as not to hold the game up. I'll be back as soon as my machine behaves itself. :sad:

btw does anyone know how to change autsave frequency to every turn?

AlanH · Aug 24, 2006

If everyone who had a crash and reload in Civ4 were disqualified from the competitions we'd have a far smaller user base. But you do need to have Civ4 autosave every turn if you have an unstable system.

Quit Civ4.
Find CivilizationIV.ini somewhere in \My Documents\Civilization IV\
Open it in Notepad and look for the following lines:

CivilizationIV.ini said:
; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 4

Change the '4' to '1' in order to have it save every turn.
Save the .ini file and relaunch Civ4.

pigswill · Aug 24, 2006

Skip? Thanks Alan_H for advice (and patience). My machine's a bit less sick now and I've changed autosave interval to every turn. Shall I carry on?

bobrath · Aug 24, 2006

Please do so pigswill. No sense missing out on the whipping fun(?).

Game discussion:
I'm still wanting to know how we got Calendar. Anyone?

Why do we have a state religion? Its hurting our relationships with the existing AIs, is providing minimal happy impact and reducing the overal culture of our empire. We should still spread the religions we have shrines for, so make sure we have at least one monastery for each.
Unless someone can convince me otherwise, we *need* to switch to no state religion right away and perhaps then switch out of OR to save on the upkeep costs. Yes we'd lose a turn to anarchy, but I think we might be better off... If all of our unit producing cities had the same religion, then switching to it and Theocracy would be worth it - however that's not the case.

eektor · Aug 24, 2006

namliaM said:
Hmz, I have a screeny... Appearently didnt post it... Traded it from Poor old Kublai

The poor guy, he is so far behind in techs... I thought he could use the boost

namliaM got it in a trade from KK. Its on the post from the previous page.

Go ahead pigswill.

bobrath · Aug 24, 2006

AH, thanks eektor! I cross posted and the forums didn't show that one as a new post so I never read it! SIlly forums.

Cosmichail · Aug 24, 2006

Ok guys I not finding this fun anymore.
When I played last night most cities were busy with NamliaM's set of turns building forges or whatever and had things queued so the only real input I had was building some samurais in Osaka. Rather than having some individual/team input I was just following what NamliaM wanted.

Also contradictions too like don't get calender then the very person that stated this goes ahead and trades for it????????
Now we have to fire the scientists in Osaka and build Heroic Epic there which will not allow us to build either Oxford or Wall street. The extra units we are amassing is costing us. All this whipping in BT is stunting the pop which if it grew to max would be working a lot of commerce tiles improving science overall. I think 10 cats is enough whilst we have a financial problem which only worsens by building more units.

One minute we need Astronomy quick and the next we are to take actions that just slow it down. Two scientists add more than 6 beakers with multipliers of library/bureaucracy.
As to the scientist in Kyoto I didn't put them there and NamliaM you stated yourself that we should keep at least one engineer/scientist there. So now we fire four scientist. 4x3=12 beakers and with multipliers more. So Astro goes from 22 turns back to like 28.

Workshops are useless until we get guilds which is like 30 turns or more away. (even then plains forest provides the same) Now we are going to whip Barcelona/Madrid (PS Toledo was razed so maybe you mean Cordoba) now too again stunting population which again takes away from working commerce tiles and improving science. Workshops will have 1f2h with guilds and with Chemistry 1f3h. Then with state property 2f3h.

When I saw all those forges I realized that was the intent on whipping everywhere. I learned in this game pop is everything and if you get your cities to max allowable pop you get a lot of science/commerce from it. Whipping just slows that down and does hurt eventually.

I also pointed that Mao has Astronomy so he is likely to come settling on our land. Did anybody notice that? Not that long ago we were talking about filling up our continent.

I agree that missionaries are good for helping wealth and it's really the only thing I concur with.

If you want a fast victory by the whipping method well just look at our science now. IT SUCKS. Madrid could be a powerhouse commerce/science city and likewise for Seville/Barcelona/Cordoba.

BIG cities mean BIG commerce/science. Producing units right now will just worsen science and that needs to be addressed. We are falling behind and only one we can trade with is KK. I traded Philo for Drama to get the max out of it. I felt in the beginning we were heading the right direction but now I think we are slowing down. Researching Astronomy right now only hurts us and won't be much of a trade tech with Mao having it already. Bismarck tends to be friends with everybody so that Astro will be traded. Now I haven't looked at the relationship so I could be wrong about that. Huyana has Guilds but won't trade it.

What I feel we need to do:
Improve science/commerce so we can get Astronomy out of the way and get to guilds/banking to improve our finances. Stop building units for now and get our financial house in order. We won't be able to support a large army with these finances. 40/50% science is too low and should be at 70% at least. I would have loved to build missionaries but again "it's build lots of samurais, whip catapults and who cares if we have 3 crappy cities" Those crappy cities could be offering a lot of commerce at their max pop. If we don't want Mao on our land we need to build settlers.

So what's it going to be:
Build settlers or build missionaries or build military units. Troops are near barb city so that can be taken soon. We may need another 3 settlers to fill up the continent which will only push us deeper into debt. Having Kyoto/Edo with max pop working many commerce tiles will help alleviate that. Madrid/Barcelona/Seville/Cordoba likewise. Tokyo can only work so many tiles (other cities too) so just build what we need and move on to the next city and build what we need.

I was really enjoying this game but now feel like I am only playing NamliaM's SP turns. I am being truthful about how I feel and this is a team effort. I don't use whipping a lot as I like to grow the cities to their max and then consider whipping if they exceed that. Kyoto is at 10 cap now which never gets past 6 those 4 extra citizens would produce 8Coins more and help with our research. Why not have a GP farm in Kyoto and pop scientists.

We are going in too many different directions and not addressing our immediate needs. Bottom line. Both Bob/NamliaM come up with things like WHY this and WHY that like what is this the Spanish Inquisition. We are here to play and have fun. Now switching to non state religion and switching from OR to what Paganism again?? Wouldn't that be 2 turns of anarchy. So now Astro will be more like 30 turns considering NamliaM's plan and Bobs.

Bob asks something "Calender" and one post away is the answer. NamliaM felt sorry for KK. Now our new cities won't pop borders anymore until we get a religion there but oh with no state religion that won't happen. We can build theaters now so that will do the trick but the faster we pop borders the better so as to stop Mao from settling on our land. Eventually Bismarck/Hatty will be showing up too with settlers.

I hope we can consider all the players input since there are six of us.

EDIT: I understand that NamliaM you want to take Timbuktu with the cats/archers/Lbm but again we can't afford it. I would love to take that city as it is a gem. You can't go to war if you don't have the financial infrastructure to back it.

eektor · Aug 24, 2006

After reading Cosmichail's post, I think we should take a break and see where we want to go as a team.

I think we should settle our continent as quickly as possible. When I mentioned before about making the cities more production powerhouses, I meant that I didn't want us to go crazy with cottages.

As for Osaka, I think we should use it to build Oxford University instead of Heroic Epic. As long as we have bureacracy, it doesn't need the boost in production, we might as well let another city have it. Also, with all that commerce and science, the University would be better.

I would save Wall Street for one of our holy cities.

Being in paganism doesn't give you any culture for the religion in cities, we need free religion for that. So we should decide whether to be in OR or Theocracy. I think staying in OR would be great since we should be building up our new cities in Hokkaida and then later we can switch to Theocracy or Free Religion.

So what does everyone think?

pigswill · Aug 24, 2006

Sounds like we need a bit of discussion andsome consensus building about long term strategy and how we're going to achieve it. Maybe serendipitous that my machine was playing up a bit.
May as well put across my point of view. We need an army and there's no doubt about that. Whipping is certainly a way of producing things quickly but there is a cost to it namely that cities don't have the chance to grow. This can be a good thing in some circumstances; as I understand it distance maintenance increases with size so keeping BT cities small helps a bit, whether the increased commerce would match the increased cost is something I'm not sure about.
However there's no point having a large army until there's somewhere to send it. At this point that means astronomy. The sooner we get an ocean going fleet established the sooner we can start conquering, the sooner we can win. I think I've long argued in favour of developing Hokkiado and I do think we need to improve our economy substantially and quickly. I also think that we need FP sooner rather than later; if we can achieve that through whip overflow that's fine by me.
Minor points; you get culture for religions even in no state religion. Nerfing stonehenge by calendar was going to happen soner or later. It does mean we can build plantations. Culture can be replaced by religions or libraries so this is not a huge problem.
My overall conclusion is that we need to grow cities and grow richer now and then look at whipping out an army and navy (hopefully running feudalism and theocracy) when we're able to invade.

Cosmichail · Aug 24, 2006

I agree with you Eektor, and Wall Street would be good in one of our holy cities. Also I DO realize we needed calender for Astronomy. But I thought we were going to hold off until we filled the continent. Astronomy is important yes and will connect us to BT and allow us to invade the other continent. We should have had more discussion regarding this as had we gone the Paper/Education/Liberalism path we could have had it for free. (of course after opening up the path through the MC/Machinery route)

Yes I used that scientist for an academy mainly because of poor science. With it we got only like 70 beakers happening in Osaka. What is lacking there is definitely a university and coin to up the science overall.

So let's take a break and review our direction with all players input. Let the consensus decide. Unfortunately we won't have a lot of trading power with our current tech status.

I have won more games with GP farm and popping lots of scientist than not doing that. Even Madrid would be an excellent GP farm. (making them as superspecialist can have a real impact on economy/science too)

Our score has slowed too in comparison to RatPack/VQ Red.

EDIT:

I also think that we need FP sooner rather than later;

Totally agree as well as with your input too Pigswill. So let's grow those cities and get some coin happening to support that large army.

bobrath · Aug 24, 2006

Whoa... sorry if my questions and thoughts came across as demands or directions. I'm sorry (again) if my questioning on Calendar seemed callous or rude. I simply missed the reply since it was posted as I was placing my (talking to myself) post up. The new post indicator didn't flag correctly and I never thought to look back. I'll do better about reading all the posts.

I guess I'm struggling to understand how we're planning on going about 1) continuing to move forward as a civ and 2) eliminating all the other AIs.

Towards those points, I do agree that Hokkiado is in need of some tender loving care. I was suprised to see that we started whipping there. My intent was to abuse the whip in the BT because there's just so much darn food there it makes sense (to me).

The hard part here is that we truly have two unique empires that are joined by our leadership. We have BT which is your uber-prototypical :whipped:

island nation and we have Hokkiado which could on its own become a monster nation with the right loving care. We've been trying to deal with the upkeep of these two widely separated (physically) sites while applying the same thinking to both and that's just plain ugly.

We moved the palace and it made good sense to do so. I think the FP could go down in BT, but might make better sense on the ring. Its a toss up that centers around how quickly (from right now) we could establish a secure beachhead. Given that the AIs are going to be agressive and two already have Astro - we're going to be dealing with a military invasion of *our* shores sooner rather then later. Does giving them a secondary target with a ring landing make sense? It might.

We can land a force from BT at almost any time we want *without* Astronomy - as long as we can keep open borders with Bismark. Obviously we'll be much more free to do what we need to when Astro comes in. Remember that once we de-garrison the BT islands (by placing a landing force down), the whip unhappy will demolish those cities. Not to mention the war weariness that will crop up when we start losing units. This thought in itself really scares me... The cities will starve into nothing and might be defenseless enough that one of the AIs takes the gamble on an amphib landing and wins.

The rush I'm feeling is the desire to get Samurais into action before they are obsoleted. If on the other hand we want to ignore that push and tech to the lead in units... well I don't think it will be the fastest conquest win, but it will be a much more certain one.

BTW, once we start conquering the ring with Aggresive AIs and raging barbs... how will we keep the lands we've "cleared" free of follow on settlements and barb cities?

I never intended Astro to be a tech that we traded to get back in the race. I saw it soley as a way to get our Hokkiado based units into the fray. I guess I'm trying to switch my typical mindset of "kill only what I have to and build like crazy" to "kill em all fast" :scan:

That's a tough switch and so I've tried to reduce inserting my style and gone with what I thought the flow of the game was. Our drive to use the whip is a big reason there's the feeling this is not quite an SG.

Re: whipping. I think everyone would agree that Namliam has a better understanding of the dynamics of the whip. The problem is (imo) that none of the rest of us really get it and so a good chunk of our turns has become "WWNamliamD"? I do know that whipping has its place even in modern times, and Namliam has made great arguments for whipping. If I could get my head around it better, I might be able to truly agree or disagree. I'm guilty of saying to myself - well if he said this is what works then it must.

I have no problem slowing down to figure out what we're doing, but lets not allow ourselves to get offended by comments. I've already seen somethings written that caused me to step back and :eek:

. Its fine to feel frustrated, but lets continue the fun and enjoyable spirit that I've seen in other VQ games.

SGOTM 02 - VQ Black

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