SGOTM 03 - Geezers

[markh]

Sounds good.

I would say do the trades. We need the techs anyway.

If we do want to go for the colossus we should research MC soon. Another option would be to go drama -> philosophy after lit to found taoism.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

We're up IW on Vicky & Ghandi. I would be inclined to see what we can get for that instead. We don't really need Archery anyway. That way we might not have to trade alphabet to Julius just yet and it would probably be nice it we don't have to trade it to Vicky or Ghandi either.

 

[markh]

We would need archery for horse archers once we have horseback riding. However I do not know wether we will ever need these on this map.

I am not too experienced how fast the AI will research alphabet themselves. With that many AIs the risk might be quite big that we lose our trading position sooner than later.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I am not too experienced how fast the AI will research alphabet themselves. With that many AIs the risk might be quite big that we lose our trading position sooner than later.

Oh absolutely. There's no surefire way to proceed. It's just a question of trying maximise tech exchanges. On that subject some of the trades didn't look that generous.

 

[markh]

Oh absolutely. There's no surefire way to proceed. It's just a question of trying maximise tech exchanges. On that subject some of the trades didn't look that generous.

Yep. Right you are. Maybe Dagnabit could post a save, so we can have a look at it.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Maybe Dagnabit could post a save, so we can have a look at it.

Yes I think that would be helpful.

@Dagnabit - You can attach the save to this thread and/or upload the save to the submissions page. The choice is yours. Just let us know what you did.

 

[Dagnabit]

I uploaded the save from my computer. There were no more techs we could get at this time that is why the last one is light . I don't know how long I would wait though. I forgot to mention that Vicki an JC are at war so they probably won't be trading between themselves for a few turns.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

We probably need to be building swords rather than axes now, as swordsmen are *much* stronger at capturing cities. A spear or two wouldn't go amiss at some point too in case we encounter enemy chariots/horse archers, though I suspect that's unlikely in Alex's case or we'd have already seen them.

St. P is growing nicely now we have the gems - size 6 already

Does New Novgorod want to be working its cottage rather than the forest? It's building a library but getting the cottage to grow will have a bigger impact on science than having a faster library at this stage.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

A few related points:

1. Since Vicki & Julius are at war then whichever one we trade with will get us a demerit from the other civ.
2. We've already turned down a request from Julius to join the war against Vicki and he's nearer to us.
3. Because of the above two points I think it may be wiser not to trade with either of them for the time being.

My experiments asking for trades are below:

Ghandi Offer
Vicki Offer
Julius Offer

Because of the war I think it's better to take Ghandi's offer above or maybe Ghandi's offer for Mathemetics that Dagnabit had earlier.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

We probably need to be building swords rather than axes now, as swordsmen are *much* stronger at capturing cities. A spear or two wouldn't go amiss at some point too in case we encounter enemy chariots/horse archers, though I suspect that's unlikely in Alex's case or we'd have already seen them.

I must admit I tend to find axes a better all round unit than swords however I've no objection to building swords although they take one more turn IIRC.

@Dagnabit - it would be helpful if we could move a galley to scout out Alex's land to the north.

 

[Dagnabit]

I must admit I tend to find axes a better all round unit than swords however I've no objection to building swords although they take one more turn IIRC.

@Dagnabit - it would be helpful if we could move a galley to scout out Alex's land to the north.

Had planned on using the galley to check out Alex's other city but with only the two and one being pretty much tied to coppertownski I was a little leary of getting it too far from Moscow which needs to produce a few troops in my opinion if we are going to be timely. I think we will need at least 6 axe/swords to topple Alex's first city which is on a Hill. One of the archers is +70% which must have come at the expense of our earlier chariot.

 

[Thrallia]

I'm not sure what to do with the tech trades...I don't generally give away Alphabet, but we WANT the AI to research fast, that generally means trading away anything and everything we get as fast as possible for anything we can get for it. The fastest space race/diplo games in the GOTM seem to take that approach, sometimes even giving the techs away for under 100gold, just to get an AI to have it.

Also, it is still early enough to get rid of a negative for trading with enemies, so I don't think it'd be a problem to trade with Julius and/or Vicky. We definitely want Mathematics, Masonry, and Agriculture...the religious techs would be nice, but we don't have to have them...archery would be good because we don't want to get to feudalism and find we can't build longbows cause we don't have archery!

So...my preference would be to trade IW and alphabet with gandhi if we can get everything from him taht way(do it in separate trades, AIs don't up their offers enough when you do two techs), otherwise trade with Julius to get the rest of what we need, as we are more fearful of him right now.

 

[Dagnabit]

We probably need to be building swords rather than axes now, as swordsmen are *much* stronger at capturing cities. A spear or two wouldn't go amiss at some point too in case we encounter enemy chariots/horse archers, though I suspect that's unlikely in Alex's case or we'd have already seen them.

St. P is growing nicely now we have the gems - size 6 already

Does New Novgorod want to be working its cottage rather than the forest? It's building a library but getting the cottage to grow will have a bigger impact on science than having a faster library at this stage.

Cottage it is and more swords on the agenda.

@Dagnabit - it would be helpful if we could move a galley to scout out Alex's land to the north.

Will start the closest boat scouting Alex East. But think we need another galley build. If we take Alex we will then be bordering Mao and he has already shown us is galleys.

I'm not sure what to do with the tech trades...I don't generally give away Alphabet, but we WANT the AI to research fast, that generally means trading away anything and everything we get as fast as possible for anything we can get for it. The fastest space race/diplo games in the GOTM seem to take that approach, sometimes even giving the techs away for under 100gold, just to get an AI to have it.

Also, it is still early enough to get rid of a negative for trading with enemies, so I don't think it'd be a problem to trade with Julius and/or Vicky. We definitely want Mathematics, Masonry, and Agriculture...the religious techs would be nice, but we don't have to have them...archery would be good because we don't want to get to feudalism and find we can't build longbows cause we don't have archery!

So...my preference would be to trade IW and alphabet with gandhi if we can get everything from him taht way(do it in separate trades, AIs don't up their offers enough when you do two techs), otherwise trade with Julius to get the rest of what we need, as we are more fearful of him right now.

I am leaning to this approach. Anymore discussion? I will try and finish my turns in about an hour and get the save posted shortly thereafter.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

AlanH has posted the final standings from SGOTM02. We came 12th which is a bit of a difference from the 3rd place in the first SGOTM. Still we now have a further incentive to do well in this game.

 

[Dagnabit]

Well the save has been uploaded.

Things pretty much progressed as discussed. Changed worker to cottage in New Nogorod, started a sword in Coppertownski. With Alpha in started Lit but set research to 0 as our research rate is 40%. Traded IW to Gandhi for AG,Masonry &Archery. Then traded him Alpha for Math. Traded Julius Poli & Med for Alpha. IBT- we got a lucky break. Not 1 but 2 of Alex's 3 archers came out and attacked a lone Axe and didn't make it home! If I had one extra axe at that point we might have taken the city.on Turn 9 (265BC) Vic wanted us as to help in the war against Julius but I declined again. Unloaded 2 axes..Turn 10 (250BC) Galley moving east spots 1 archer reinforcement coming from capital. Wasn't in a position to stop nor take the city before it's reinforced. At the end of my turn I went to take a screen shot and somehow hit enter instead. So the counter has just turned to 235BC but I saved before making any moves. Sorry about that.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Very nice! I also notice that out of the 4 teams that have played to 235BC, we're significantly in first place in power, and have just edged into first in score. We'll need to take Alex's cities pretty quickly if we are to hold that position though.

I think there's also hints in the graphs that footballguys jumped into their turnsets too quickly with inadequate discussion, and they might now be paying the price in terms of slipping behind everyone else.

 

[Thrallia]

yeah, I figured the footballguys were in trouble once I saw they were at 500AD and still had a pretty low score. I'll check the save in a minute...I've unfortunately had to stop playing civ on my laptop for the next 3 weeks since my wife has gone to visit her family for christmas(I can't cause of work working retail sucks). Anyway, normally that wouldn't be bad cause while my laptop has a centrino in it and my desktop has a pentium 4 that's twice as powerful, my good video card on my desktop died a couple weeks ago...so I've now got a 6 year old video card in it that 'doesn't meet the minimum civ requirements.'

So...I can play, but everything takes as long as it did on v1.00 and without the harkonnen patch. I'm gonna try to get myself a new video card this week, (until then I may be out of Civ other than posting about it, cause I just can't stand the lag on the game. At least I can load the save and look around(and I could play my turns for the SGOTM, I just am gonna have to hold off on GOTM13 and WOTM4 until I get a better card)

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm not sure what to do with the tech trades...I don't generally give away Alphabet, but we WANT the AI to research fast, that generally means trading away anything and everything we get as fast as possible for anything we can get for it. The fastest space race/diplo games in the GOTM seem to take that approach, sometimes even giving the techs away for under 100gold, just to get an AI to have it.

I think it's more complicated than that. We want to keep the AI roughly level with ourselves so that we can trade. If they slip too far behind or get too far ahead, we can't trade, which slows us down either way. OTOH we'd like the AI to be a bit behind us in military techs (so wars are easier) and in any techs that give bonuses for the first discoverer, or which allow building of wonders that we want. So on balance I think we really want the AI to be just slightly behind us, and to be significantly behind us in certain key techs. I'd guess the best approach is for us to focus our research on the techs that we really need, and trade those away freely (except for crucial techs where we need an advantage) in the hope that the AI will fill in the techs we don't need so much for us.

btw an interesting exercise is to open the science advisor and click on Mass Media, to see what techs we need for a diplomatic victory. It's surprising how many techs you don't need (although many of them may be important for because they somehow speed our research. Literature, for example is a tech that we don't strictly need to have at all, although we probably want it to build the great library and possibly the heroic/national epics).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I must admit I tend to find axes a better all round unit than swords however I've no objection to building swords although they take one more turn IIRC.

Interesting, that's slightly different from my experience. I guess, in more detail, my experience is: Axes beat swords if the opponent is a melee unit (base strength 7.5 in that case, 5 otherwise). Swords have base strength 6, which rises to 6.6 when attacking a city). Since city defenders are usually mostly archery units, swords beat axes by a long way when you're trying to take cities.

OTOH if you are pillaging/moving your stack to the city, then having an axe or two in the stack is crucial, since (other than horse archers) nothing else in the early game can defend well against enemy axes. So usually at this stage in the game, my invasion force will consist mostly of swordsmen, but I'll have a couple of axes, spears and war chariots on hand to give that kind of additional defence. If I have a stack moving in specifically to pillage, then I won't use a sword; if I don't know what units my opponent has then I'll likely use an axe+spear+horse archer combination if I can, or axe+spear+war chariot if I can't build horse archers. (In the real world I might not be able to spare 3 units; in that case I'll probably go for axe+spear if the opponent has horse archers, axe + war chariot if he doesn't and I'm concerned about speed of pillaging)

Is that any closer to what you tend to find?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Couple of points for Htadus when you pick up the save (sorry if this is being really picky and pedantic, just couldn't help noticing them).

• St P is ready to poprush its library (it's unhappy and poprushing requires two pop. Perfect conditions).
• Worker chopping forest near Lodestone City. Do we want to complete that, or do we want to save the chop for a wonder? Lodestone City has decent production, can poprush and so has no obvious urgency for forest chops. Another worker's doing the same in Coppertownski, although since we're building military there, there's probably an advantage in doing that in order to get the units to take Athens and Sparta more quickly.
• Is it worth having Moscow build a settler after its library is complete, so we can get our last city founded and then open borders?
• Coppertownski will get unhappy in 6 turns if we don't put a military unit there. Options: 1: Build a chariot there after the swordsman, will complete just in time. 2: (more risky but better for our invasion of Greece). Take the warrior from Moscow to Coppertownski (he can get there just in time too), and replace by moving that axe into Moscow. Then Coppertownski can continue producing swordsmen. With the forest chop we'll have 3 swords in 6-7 turns.

Also to note:

• Mao appreciates Alex supplying him with resources. What resources? That probably means Alex has two of something that Mao doesn't have - there's not many tiles of his left to explore and so far all we've seen he has is a cow.
• Caesar is +5 towards us but still only cautious(!!!). What do we have to do to turn that into pleased? Open borders?