SGOTM 02 - VQ Black

[LuvToBuild]

She certainly could and probably will sign a DP with Mao, perhaps Bismarck as well. I might could have gotten away with holding Memphis and not signed a peace treaty. I just wasn't sure I wanted to take the risk and our unhappiness was quickly becoming a problem.

So, what is our plan to prevent a Jewish bloc DP from stalling our conquest? The one thing about Mao is that he either has to conduct a naval landing or travel the full circumference of the ring.

Options for Mao:
1. We try to get KK and/or Huayna to close their borders, thus forcing him to conduct naval landings. With a decent force of frigates, we could rule the strait.
2. Allow him to pass freely around the ring, thus luring him into a position of weakness at his core. By the time he gets around to us, Hatty could very well be finished and it would be Mao's turn anyway. With (hopefully) a sizeable force traveling around the ring, Mao would have less forces to counterattack our lightening naval invasion.

Bismarck is not as powerful as Mao but he is more likely to be the thorn in our side. He will probably attempt to take Elephantine so getting a decent garrison of CG grenadiers would be a good idea. I personally don't care if he takes the city but forcing him to use up troops against a hill city is better than letting him head north and do more serious damage.

 

[bobrath]

BTW (from the maint thread) in our turnlogs, whenever you see a pillage message like

You have plundered 304 from the Village!

we're actually only getting 30g. The turn log parser sees the symbol as a 4. So we're not quite as rich as we could be.


LTB, no need to post the "I'm sure I will be the subject of wrath..." stuff. At least I hope not! We're all getting a bit involved in these choices and as my wife reminded me last night, "Its just a game honey". Of course I gave her a quizzical look as if she just doesn't understand. She does tho.

We're making progress, tho not as quickly as we'd like to see. Pointy stick research works (in my experience) best when the AI believes they can still be succesful with the cities they have left, but only if you stop right now. So you can't knock a civ down to nothing and get techs, but you also have to do enough damage that they really feel it.


Next step in the war? Ugh. WW will pop right back up as soon as we reopen combat, but given Hatty's creative trait and the long standing culture from both civs, our newly captured cities will begin flipping very soon. So that means we have to reduce the pressure AND remove Hatty asap. We can get deals cancelled with her and that should slow down a DP spread (I hope) or even remove a DP.... It might cost us more then we're willing to pay.

Anyway, taking 3 cities in 10 turns is nothing to sneeze at. Good job on that. Now its up to me to set up the next war, and perhaps get it started as soon as possible to keep DPs from forming up.

 

[LuvToBuild]

My apologies. I don't mean to sound so defensive. I just feel like every new turn report these days is followed with a lot of "Why didn't you X this and Y that??!!" (Yes, I'm guilty too). We should probably spend a bit more time patting our fellow teammates on the back for the good plays and less time griping about moves. The game would be more fun. I don't mind seeing the debate between opposing viewpoints but at the end of the day, it's the current players decision. It would be nice though if we could all come to some kind of consensus.

I've never had much luck at pointy stick research. I don't always bother to try but when I do I usually seem to run into the "we'd rather die" phenomenon. I can't say I blame the AI. I usually tell them to go fly a kite too. They'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.

When you say culture flipping, are you referring to Bismarck's culture or Hatty's culture? Unless the setting for it is enabled, I don't think Hatty can retake Memphis or Elephantine through culture. I suppose I should have checked to make sure the setting for that wasn't enabled.

Lessons learned:
1. The suiciding of units is going to cause considerable WW. I don't know about anyone else but that's not something I had considered until now. Osaka and Madrid will need a sizeable garrison to keep them productive when WW sets in and we can't afford to stop the war early.
2. The adoption of Emancipation by the AI's while we maintain slavery will certainly be a problem in the future. It's not much but when added to the WW, it can mean the difference between using a plains hill mine or having the miners join the war protesters.
3. A superior navy is the key to a quick victory. Without the galleons that I had amassed along Egypt's northern coast, I could never have pulled off the 180 and taken Memphis shortly after taking Anasazi.

 

[bobrath]

Forgot to mention, but great job on the 180. It probably suprised Hatty too! A superior navy will protect Hokkiado and BT, and if you can manage to get a medic whip or two... well units healing on board ships are nice.

I'm giving Eektor the full 24 hour to post got it, but if he doesn't, I'll be taking it right away.

 

[pigswill]

There has been a reasonable degree of criticism in the game; even if there wasn't there would still a tendency to be self critical and feeling you're letting the team down by making sub-optimal decisions,which is compounded by there being a competetive element to SGOTM.

 

[namliaM]

Why Alexandria?

Why not keep anything? Every city we keep at this stage (up to 50%) is going to add Production and Unit support even with the extra defender needed (if at all)...

It can build its own defender if need be...

Captured and razed Niani. Continued on to Anasazi.

Why??? Do we go east? to capture mediocre cities when we have prime cities towards the north...

Turn 7
I managed to get the defenses down in Memphis and take the city. Unfortunately, I really don't have sufficient forces to hold the city without exposing the expended stack of catapults to an onslaught of cavalry from Thebes.

When I am faced with such a situation I usually leave the 1 lone defender instead of taking the city. Sure it can be reinforced, but now you are forced into a peace you/we dont want/need....

Taking 3 cities definatly

My apologies. I don't mean to sound so defensive. I just feel like every new turn report these days is followed with a lot of "Why didn't you X this and Y that??!!" (Yes, I'm guilty too). We should probably spend a bit more time patting our fellow teammates on the back for the good plays and less time griping about moves. The game would be more fun. I don't mind seeing the debate between opposing viewpoints but at the end of the day, it's the current players decision. It would be nice though if we could all come to some kind of consensus.

consensus = Whipe the floor with the AI
The problem => How?

The why thing with me is just my way of trying to understand. One can type 2 paragraphs and be nice about it, but I am a direct person and just ask questions point blank. I appologize (I think I did so too before) if that is to direct for anyone... I will try to limit myself a bit... (more)
It just not that I am a bit fanatical about civ tho....

A medic transport... Hmz... I never considered that one Learn something new everyday

On a more positive note? OK we have peace with Hatty... It looks like we can get at Germany thru Elephantine => Hun, How about we take Germay (in a flash, Get Frigates to bomb Essen and Berlin (HE!) while land units take on Hun.)
Once these 3 cities are ours Germany is broken... We could take Berlin and turn around to Cologn and Frankfurt, ending up right on Hatty's doorstep again, this time going South => North. Ending in Thebes, ready for the cross into China... Cake walk from there.
Or add Munich as well?

 

[Cosmichail]

I just feel like every new turn report these days is followed with a lot of "Why didn't you X this and Y that??!!"

I agree and positive reinforcement always works better. Like Bob's wife said: "it's only a game" (and for some a complete heroin addiction)

I've never had much luck at pointy stick research. I don't always bother to try but when I do I usually seem to run into the "we'd rather die" phenomenon.

Odd weren't you the one that pointed out how well it works many posts ago. I didn't say much because I thought I was doing something wrong as I never have much luck with it. They would rather rather give you their ice city. No thanks I think I just keep razing away until nothings left. Stupid AI DOH DOH DOH DOH DOH DOH DOH DOH DOH

The adoption of Emancipation by the AI's while we maintain slavery

AI is teching very fast and another reason why I like to at least keep a certain degree of science. We have a science super city at our disposal but it isn't doing near that. Maybe we can still trade Education for Chemistry as if the AI is on democracy it just means that it won't be long until assembly line.

I think that ruling the world with cats/sams was way overestimated and not all things were considered.

None the less we all have done an excellent job and are good SG players. We have different styles but in my opinion compliment each other in a sense. Let's keep it positive and get away from why and offer solutions that bring us ahead. Why is one of those phrases that gets peoples back up.

In a sense we all played the way we felt best. I did give into NamliaM just to prove that it "ain't" no cakewalk. We might be lucky to be done by the 1800's but would like to see it sooner. In other SG's NamliaM you seemed more participatory rather than adversarial. Someone makes a point and it's "who cares" whoopy blah blah. I just don't get it good buddy. Maybe you don't mean it to sound that way but it just comes across like our opinion means very little. DP's are a pain and if we have to take on 3 civs at once forget it we don't have that ability.

We have to work with what we got and WW is a problem too now especially when we have to suicide cats. It affects the production line/science/commerce and everything. We have a long haul of warring ahead and need to address that problem and religion would certainly help. I hope that the next player considers going to confused for the happiness factor and theocracy. (that may have been done already as I haven't checked the save recently)

 

[pigswill]

My hope isthat we would go for spreading confu, starting with Osaka,switch to theocracy and aim for cannon asap 4 accurace cats/cannons+CR2 cannon with existing CR grenadiers should cut our loss rate significantly.Given that unit loss is a factor in WW then maybe this is something we should be aiming to reduce (but let's wipe Hatty first). I like the idea of razing unwanted cities first coz razing doesn't slow you down. The time for a break is after a civ has been totally annihiliated.

 

[namliaM]

In other SG's NamliaM you seemed more participatory rather than adversarial. Someone makes a point and it's "who cares" whoopy blah blah. I just don't get it good buddy. Maybe you don't mean it to sound that way but it just comes across like our opinion means very little. DP's are a pain and if we have to take on 3 civs at once forget it we don't have that ability.

Who cares... Well I feel we mostly (me included actually) are a group of builders at heart. I have been making the (sometimes painfull) transistion to Warmonger... This is a warmongers game... Not a builders game.

I was trying to be a bit adversarial to be honest as I pasionatly believe that we have created our own problems at the moment. Getting rid of some AI research power = Take down/out 1 or 2 AI... Once there are 2 AI gone (not including Mansa) things will slow down Considerably...
This is why I was allways pushing and pushing...
By us Teching along we leave the AI to do the same while trading their tech among themselves (not to us) giving them a (even) bigger a lead...

By leaving the real push on the mainland to after Chemistry we let the AI do that very thing. While had we not been so focussed on Infra structure we would have had more Sams at the moment we got Astronomy. Shipped over a few Sams ASAP and declared war on *any AI* atleast 20-30 turns earlier.

But that is all behind us, please dont take above part the wrong way... Just trying to be constructive in criticizing our game.

For the future, I dont think we are in that much trouble (yet). If we can take out the tech leaders before they get Tanks/Machine Guns, then CR3 Grennies and a few Cannons can do real damage...
Just be picky about picking fights with the Sams and get them to CR3 ASAP and to Grenny.
We are having some problems getting a feel for AI standings at this time but to get to Infantry, thats 2 expensive techs Assline and Steam Power.
I havent looked at the save yet, but do AI have Chemistry? Without that no Steam power.

 

[namliaM]

spreading confu, starting with Osaka,switch to theocracy and aim for cannon asap 4 accurace cats/cannons+CR2 cannon with existing CR grenadiers should cut our loss rate significantly.Given that unit loss is a factor in WW then maybe this is something we should be aiming to reduce (but let's wipe Hatty first). I like the idea of razing unwanted cities first coz razing doesn't slow you down. The time for a break is after a civ has been totally annihiliated.

Razing unwanted cities is not the way to go.... IMHO... In my war lessons the cities worth keeping are actually the once you want ASAP.
They ADD to our goal while significantly drainng your opponent.
Razing mediocre cities while not draining as much from your opponent, doesnt add anything to our cause.

Take Germany, we want to keep Berlin. Berlin houses the HE for Germany, if we leave Berlin till the last Bismark can build units double time. Taking Berlin ASAP removes that capability.
Take Egypt, Hatty is getting most out off Memphis and Thebes. While we want to keep those cities, it is her "core". Taking away that core... well.... you get the picture...

Offcourse all this IMHO... and water under the bridge (again trying to be constructive not destructive)

Back to current events:
About Confu vs Juda, I take Juda anytime of day. For 1 reason, spying... Which I think is very important, also it is "only" 2 xp. Yes 1 promotion, but only 2 xp. Pick your fights and we should be able to pick up those 2 xp easy...
Also pretty soon the number of Judaist cities should outnumber the number of confused cities. Getting 1 or 2 missionaries to Osaka & Madrid may well be wize....

Arent we in theocracy yet? If not lets revolt ASAP.

 

[pigswill]

Strongly disagree re confu theocracy. Only 2xp perhaps but the difference between CR1 and CR2 which is often as not the difference between winning the fight and losing the fight (and unit, so have to replace it, transport the replacement, get more war weariness for the unit loss). Spying is less important than additional xp. On subject of keeping cities, yes they increase production (significantly through whipping) but every city costs 7 or 8 gpt extra.

Argument about research vs production is not straightforward. Yes we could have been building more units, particularly sams but every unit costs maintenance which slows down research which slows down astronomy which means that units hang round longer; the argument about commerce vs production tiles is basically a different aspect of the same argument.

Edit: On a different subject score/power graphs can be misleading. If we raze a city we gain nothing in terms of score or power but we gain significantly in terms of conquest (ie. up to now we've taken five cities, kept two, razed three, if we'd kept them all our score and power would be higher but how much closer would this make us to annihilating egypt?). So until we get to the end of the game and can check out other threads we don't actually know what score/power graphs actually mean.

 

[namliaM]

Yes we drop some GPT, but that is made good (by far) from the added commerce either from cottages or Trade routes or Shrine income or Pillage.
From the pillage of a town capture alone, we can run 8 gpt upkeep for 25 turns (not counting producting and commerce from that city)
+ They produce replacement units which dont need to be shuttled.

With keeping those cities soon Judaist production will by far outway the production on Hokkaido, more so if we shuttle back 1 or 2 missionaries for Osaka and Madrid...

And whats more, IMHO, we have GPT allready comming out of our ears... (dutch saying) meaning IMHO we have to much allready, with FP and/or Versailles we will save even more on upkeep... While upping our production, more production => More units => shorter wars => Less WW.

Having units in enemy lands alone (I think) adds to WW. Lets take Germany ASAP, not only does it (effectively) take out an AI. Germany is home to no less than 5 lux to counter our WW and WDE (We demand Emancipation) troubles. Lets tech ASAP to Cannons and pointy stick (hopefully) Germany out of Nationalism.
We need to run 0% for a while again after Steel anyway to account for (mass) Cat=> Cannon upgrades

Edit: About the score/power graphs you are right... Tho for the live of me I still dont understand your point about going after "razable" cities (IMHO none of Egypt are razable but if any were/are it would have been the 2 we razed) instead of going after cities we want to keep. We want to keep them cause we think they would add something, why? Cause they are adding to Hatty allready. *anyway I went into this in previous posts, Trying to cut back on the Critique and more on positives...*
So trying to be positive, yes we wouldnt be much closer if we had kept the razed cities... But we may have had a bit more production and even maybe some more commerce ....

Edit2: IMHO this game is/was not about us getting tech up, but rather getting AI tech down....
But again this is offcourse beating a dead cow (again dutch proverb) lets not dwell on that...

 

[bobrath]

Please folks, if you don't post any pictures at all..... at least post an updated war front w/culture showing. It just makes conversations easier if we can "see" what we're proposing.

Since I don't have access to civ right now, I've marked on the last shot I posted:

If I had the up to date shot I assume:
Hatty has Helio and Thebes, with Thebes putting some intense cultural pressure on Memphis (I have no idea if the "don't flip" bit is set or not).
Elephantine has cultural room to the east since Niani and Anasazzi don't exist.
Alexandria is pushing north tho.
(Has germany put any settlers into the freshly cleared lands?)

If we want to leave Hatty alone and move on Bizmark right now and we take Hun... we'll be unable to continue the land war unless Essen's culture can combat that of Mycenian enough to leave a small land bridge on the west. Is keeping Hun even realistic? I don't see what it gives us. Essen being a marginal keep, we're finally at the gates of Berlin which is a good keep as its a capital site and it secures another landing point.

So if the first ten(ish) turns of war go optimally with Bizmark, we're looking at having Hatty's culture to our north and also to the east. Biz has open borders with Hatty, so he can move units through her eastern holdings to attack E & M. That means we need possibly even more defensive units there to combat any retake attempt by Hatty and counter attack by Biz. The upside is that we'd be placed very well for taking Mycenian.

Its a risky proposition that is built on a couple assumptions:
1) Bismark is still a bit backwards in techs and unit count.
2) No one else will jump on us as we concentrate on Bismark.
3) We can manage a second set of WW

Until we wipe out the civilization, the WW is going to be our limiter. No matter how many cities we capture, no matter how many units we produce to throw at the enemy, we're going to incur severe WW. Kyoto will be the only city immune to it. SO when we do move on civs, the faster we can roll each up (and be sure they have no tiny colonies somewhere else - trade or demand world maps as we can) the better of we'll be.

We'll get our second -1 for declaring on a friend with most of the ring with a declaration on Germany. Not devastating yet, but if we do switch to an unfriendly religion, we'll see open borders disappearing.

 

[LuvToBuild]

Odd weren't you the one that pointed out how well it works many posts ago. I didn't say much because I thought I was doing something wrong as I never have much luck with it. They would rather rather give you their ice city. No thanks I think I just keep razing away until nothings left.

I think you misunderstood me a while back when I was advocating for a war now vs. infrastructure building and science improvement policy. It was clear to me then, as it is now, that we need to slow down the AI. I wasn't saying that we could gain tech parity through pointy stick research. I was saying that we should grab their ankles and drag them down to our level. By slowing them way down, we give ourselves the ability to catch up, thus acheiving tech parity. I suspected then and I have confirmed now that pointy stick research is a bit overrated. It's not impossible but it's not really a plan for getting to Nationalism and MT.

 

[bobrath]

Updated screen shot:

So Hatty has already replaced one lost city, and I spotted a German settler pair on its way. (I also saw that Hatty was farming over a village (5 turns away from a town!) right next to Memphis. I can't believe an AI is that devious. She's spread her forces out much better, but Thebes is much more accesible now. I think the next war should be to remove all trace of Hatty north of our current holdings.

Having looked at the save now, taking Hun *might* still leave us a land route to Essen, but I just don't trust Hatty's creative trait driven culture to not seal that off. So while I do like the idea of taking Germany now, our naval forces are not setup to work around Hatty's culture closing off the land.

Mao has rifles and I saw that HC has cavs. Thankfully it looks like the rest of the world is a bit less militarily inclined. I do think that Hatty will be building up a much more massive army now, so the next turns should more then likely be spent making sure our stick is bigger and pointier!

I might suggest popping some jewish missionaries to Edo and Kagoshima soon along with revolting to Theo. I'm undecided about which religion benefits us the most.

Judaism gives us spying and that is a nice edge in war planning. Also, we're already in it so there's one less turn of anarchy.
Confucianism will give us much more bang for our buck in Hokkiado + Kyoto.

Its a tough choice.


Keeper list:
Thebes
Heliopolis
Alexandria
Mycenian.

 

[namliaM]

Having looked at the save now, taking Hun *might* still leave us a land route to Essen, but I just don't trust Hatty's creative trait driven culture to not seal that off. So while I do like the idea of taking Germany now, our naval forces are not setup to work around Hatty's culture closing off the land.

Most of the egyptian culture in Hun was due to Elephantine draw a line around Mycenian and find that there will be 1 tile left for us to walk on... Offcourse Germany will have the advantage of using Egyptian culture, but the AI aint that smart IMHO.

I might suggest popping some jewish missionaries to Edo and Kagoshima soon along with revolting to Theo. I'm undecided about which religion benefits us the most.

uhm I hate to do this but WHY?
Edo and Kago are not big military producers. If we are going to pop some Missionaries lets pop some for Osaka and Madrid which have a much higher production rate.

Judaism gives us spying and that is a nice edge in war planning. Also, we're already in it so there's one less turn of anarchy.
Confucianism will give us much more bang for our buck in Hokkiado + Kyoto.

Its a tough choice.

True but IMHO hardly a tough choice, Judaism will give free culture in the captured cities besides spying. Confused will not.
Also if we do keep Germany (minus crap cities Dortmund, Kumbi Saleh and Waleta) and Egypt (minus Pi Rammeses) we will have in total 15 (including Kyoto) Judaist cities, by far outnumbering Hokkaido.
Now add 1 or 2 missionaries to Hokkaido (Osaka and Madrid) and ~90% of our production will be getting the Judaist Theacratic bonus of 2xp.

Keeper list:

For germany and Egypt keep everything (maybe but for the towns I mentioned above + the new town replacing the gem town....)

 

[bobrath]

Edo and Kago are not big military producers. If we are going to pop some Missionaries lets pop some for Osaka and Madrid which have a much higher production rate.

Mainly to give our ships as they sail out the extra promotion so they can reach medic level sooner. Additionally the voyage is a short one that doesn't weaken defenses. Sure I'd love to get the religion spread over to Hokkiado, but that's a longer trip and one that we can pull off once the waters are ours. /me shrugs


So updated Keeper List:
Egypt
Thebes - Capital Site
Helipolois - Town + quality site
Alexandria - Quality site (?)
Mycenian - Versailles
Germany
Essen/Frankfurt - why?
Berlin - Capital Site
Cologne - Angkor Wat
Hamburg Quality Site
Munich - Quality Site

Sorry, but I just don't see the need/benefit in keeping Hun. Am I missing something?


Roster note:
I'm putting Eektor on auto-skip until he reports back in.
I'll play in about 8 hours.

 

[namliaM]

Hun has little to offer but commerce... 3 dye are good for 15 commerce... Add the village and the other tiles... Potentialy a nice commerce city... I would keep it.

Essen can be a pretty good producer with them hills... Just farm around them...

Frankfurt... a lot of overlap with both Mycenian and Cologne, other than that it is high food... we could whip it for 2 pop every 15 turns. It is very close to Mycenian, once we have Versailles it will not cost much in upkeep...

You should be able to whip the Globe in Kyoto next turn... and start churning Grennies

Edit: Hatty is willing to sign open borders ! ! ! ! Eliminating Germanies advantage over us .. And she is even willing to trade again how nice...

Elephantine doesnt have a barracks....
I think we should be building Frigates in BT not Galleons.... Frigates make much better defence than Galleons do... Which we will need if we declare war on Germany soon...
I would stricktly build Catapults on Hokkaido at the moment. Untill we get to Steel. Upgrades come cheap...
Also dont build Grennies on Hokkaido... Build Sams... Sams get CR, Grennies dont...

 

[Cosmichail]

I think we should keep Hun because the name is kewl... (just kidding)

Build Sams??? but we don't have rocketry yet. (just kidding)

You're right CR is a great promotion and looking forward to your gameplay Bob. What happened to Eektor? Hope we hear from him soon.

EDIT:

Just looked at the save. A couple things I noticed:

Bismarck will go to war with Hatty for chemistry and 50 gold.
We can get nationalism for chemistry from Kublai and Education from HC for the same.

I think we shouldn't deviate from finishing off Hatty and going for Mao next. Bismarck does have quite a stack in Berlin I think. I thought maybe he was preparing for an invasion but he doesn't say he has his hands full. He is friendly with us so why not use him to distract Hatty and let us continue finishing taking the north. I don't why Mao is tech so fast as he hasn't really got anything substantial in the way of cities or science city from what I can tell.

If we didn't use Bismarck for war we could trade probably for Printing Press with him and gain three new techs but like your last turn Bob I am sure you are considering this as well since you grabbed five of them last time. We won't be able to hold the monopoly on Chemistry for much longer and Natiionalism would be great for Kyoto once we get Globe finished.

 

[namliaM]

Build Sams??? but we don't have rocketry yet. (just kidding)

I mean Samurais (Sams) offcourse....

Hatty is allready broken, we dont need Bismarks help... If anything we need to eliminate Bismark, if only becuase of the 5 lux he has...

It wont come as a surprise I think if I say: Please dont trade Chem for Education...., No need to trade it for Nationalism either IMHO...