SGOTM 03 - Geezers

[DynamicSpirit]

Strategy:

Thanks to the ivory, and that we can build forges, most of our cities now have some growing they can do, so I now agree with Sam and Mark that for the time being, we're probably better off being peaceful and getting our cities/economy build up. When our cities start maxing on size again, then I'll probably be saying 'let's attack Mao!' At the same time, I think it's almost certain that Mao will attack us again soon anyway (he can build elephants again now - Shanghai's borders popped so he has one of the ivory's back Thrallia's prediction was correct after all), so we're going to need to get our forces together again in both Beijing and Lodestone. Our unit maintenance cost is going to make it hard to build many more units until our population is bigger again. (Sorry, that was partly me poprushing units in Moscow in response to the perceived threat from Alex).

The great scientist has got me thinking. We assigned science specialists to rescue our economy, and the great scientist popped out as an unplanned bonus, but perhaps we should continue doing it and semi-running a specialist economy for a bit, so we can get more great people - they'll be very useful!

Tactics:

We're looking a bit short of workers: We have calendar but noone around to hook up the spices. Our four Muskovy Isle workers are all up North, two of them trying to furnish New Novgorod with more cottages, the other two are trying to build a road along the isle (lower priority than spices I know, but without the road they'd take a while to get to the spices! )

We need to decide what to do with our scientist. We don't yet have any outstanding commerce city where building an academy will make a massive difference. He's currently offering to lightbulb compass, which I don't regard as a sufficiently expensive tech to be usually worth lightbulbing. If we can allow ourselves to sidetrack to research drama, we'll then be able to lightbulb philosophy instead, which could be extremely useful, but that does mean diverting our research to get drama first (11 turns at our current 30% sustainable science). The major lightbulbing tech after philosophy is education, which is a biggy, but that's ages away and I imagine we'll have another scientist before then.

 

[Thrallia]

Great job. Looks like mark and Sam were right in their fears, so its a good thing we had started out each war with a bang...we were able to use diplomacy at the last minute to get out of that jam.

As far as research goes...I think currency is great and afterward CoL looks to be important. As far as the Great Scientist is concerned...Compass is a cheap tech to lightbulb, and while we don't have any great commerce cities right now, we do know which ones WILL be great ones. Perhaps park the scientist in one of those(Rostov or St. Petersburg?) and go ahead and start getting at least a little bonus for research.

I think running a couple scientists in St. Petersburg and Moscow for awhile sounds great once they get near their new happiness limits. Great Scientists are my favorite great people thanks to those academies!

As for production...Ctown should continue with the Colossus, I think we've got a great shot at it. I also think we should attempt the Great Library somewhere, either in Ctown once it finishes the Colossus or in another production city(Moscow can be changed over easily...just work the stone and mines). If nothing else we'll get a good cash boost out of it. With luck, we'll get a good science/great scientist boost. We should continue building military in the production cities that are not building those wonders(Lodestone, Sparta, Beijing, New Novgorod) so that we don't look as weak to Mao now that he's got a formidable military of Elephants and LBs. We'll wnat to take him out some time, but not yet.

Diplomatically, it looks like we've got ourselves a pretty solid alliance growing...Gandhi, Julius, Cyrus, Hatty, Frederick(perhaps Vicky now that she and Julius aren't at war). That might actually be enough for us to swing a victory if we can find and create a large opponent that no one likes(Hopefully Toku is expanding with Samurai's somewhere?) Something to keep an eye on is the % of the world's population following each religion...if Christianity looks like it is one of the top ones and Hatty/Cyrus/Frederick didn't found any, perhaps we should try to convert them and then convert ourselves. A faith based alliance of 6 or 7 civs would be extremely strong in a game with 18 civs(16 soon hopefully!)

edit: It also looks from the team graphs as if we are in strong standing for one of the laurels as long as we can shmooze the right civs along the way.

edit 2: I just remembered we're going to want to be keeping close watch on our ability to build the Hanging Gardens and the Hagia Sophia...they'll give us +4 GE points if we build them in the same city. I believe the HG is already available now with construction, and the HS is available with Engineering.

 

[Htadus]

Good two turn sets. I for one is glad that Mao thought well to come attack us and the us taking Beijing was a boon. All and all we are doing well since the maintanance cost will only go down. I too think we need more workers to adaquately help our cities to grow. Currency is a good direction to go with its benefit. Since I can not add anything else anew, let me ask is there is any way for us to get a GA to use as a culture bomb in Beijing? Drama?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

@Thrallia: We should stand a pretty good chance of getting the hanging gardens; that would involve going aquaduct->hanging gardens in Cski after it's built the colossus; I think we should do that. I think great library is a lot more dubious since Gandhi's known literature for a while and we don't have marble. Since Moscow already has a library, our best shot at it is probably to start having Moscow build it asap, and reassign tiles to make Moscow a production city (and get that stone quarried). If we did that, we'd need to rely on New Novgorod and Lodestone City for our military needs.

@Htadus: The two ways currently available and doable to get an artist in a reasonable time are
1. Research drama, build a theatre somewhere, then run 2 artists in that city.
2. Research COL (which we'll want to do soon anyway), change to caste system and run artists somewhere.

I think 2 is out for now as we still need slavery to complete infrastructure in Rostov, St P, and Novgorod, none of which have any significant production.

But I wouldn't be surprised if Mao declares war before we've had time to generate the great artist. (And if we do get a great artist, there are other uses that might be better: Lightbulbing nationalism, for example). I do think we should prioritize culture in Beijing for now though.

@Everyone: A reason to consider finishing off Alex soon: Athens could be a vital link in our supply of ivory to Muskovy Isle. Without Athens, I think almost all our cities will lose their access to ivory (elephants + happiness) the moment Mao declares war on us again. That'll be a big blow if our cities have already grown into dependency on the ivory.

 

[markh]

Sounds like you had some fun.

Both peace treaties came at the right moment. No doubt it was the right decision.

Colossus looks doable. I do not think we will have a shot at The Great Library. Furthermore it would take another city out of business for quite a while.

I still would prefer to have Coppertownski as our main military provider. I would not like to see that city build another wonder. Regarding the hanging gardens I am also not sure we really need that. We have no problems with health and that additional one population point is not worth the costs IMO.

We have to get our military up on the Greco-Chinese island as Mao will declare sooner or later after the peace treaty has expired. We will need some cats and if possible some phants there. I agree that we should take out Alex soon and with some cats it shouldn't be a big problem.

Had a look at the save and everything looks in good shape. We have the possibilty to trade one of our crabs to Gandhi for one of his incense. I would do that as that gives us another lux and strengthens our relations to him.

Roster :

Thrallia
Simon - just played
Sam - UP
Dagnabit - on deck
Htadus
Mark

 

[Dagnabit]

@Everyone: A reason to consider finishing off Alex soon: Athens could be a vital link in our supply of ivory to Muskovy Isle. Without Athens, I think almost all our cities will lose their access to ivory (elephants + happiness) the moment Mao declares war on us again. That'll be a big blow if our cities have already grown into dependency on the ivory.

Simon, can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure why we lose access to the ivory. Is it because Sparta is not on the Coast? Doesn't the culture connection keep the trade route? Why does war effect it?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Certainly an interesting turnset DynamicSpirit. I'm glad it turned out better than I feared.

The great scientist has got me thinking. We assigned science specialists to rescue our economy, and the great scientist popped out as an unplanned bonus, but perhaps we should continue doing it and semi-running a specialist economy for a bit, so we can get more great people - they'll be very useful!

All that grassland certainly screamed GP farms to me. Originally I was going to propose sending the GS to New Novogorod but it's tied up with military. Therefore SP looks a better bet. I would still send a future GS there though.

I don't really see the point of a workboat in Moscow. At present there's nowhere to deploy it. I'm inclined either to resume work on the galley or alternatively a barracks. I think the latter would be better.

Unfortunately Coppertownski is tied up with the Collossus for my turn. Regettably the G. Lib looks out of reach. Even after MMing Moscow for prod we would still require 60+ turns before chops. And of course there's a shortage of workers to do the chops. The HG would still be good though (in Moscow rather than Ctownski). Surely you remember that GE , from HG, that we used to build the UN with in SGOTM01 mark?

As far as our not so friendly neighbours are concerned I think all we can do is try and hang on. The treaty with Alex runs out in 5 turns so I'm inclined to move an axe from Beijing to Sparta to discourage/defend against a resumption of hostilities by Alex.

It's shame we don't have Drama yet as a theatre is rather quicker than building a library. Beijing is going to be under strong cultural pressure so I wonder if it's worth pillaging our own elephant before it falls to Mao? At least that way it only leave one camp to pillage. It really depends how soon one of Mao's borders are likely to pop again. Opinions anybody? Despite the problem with culture in Beijing I'm inclined to start a barracks there and rush it when possible. I think Mao is just as likely to resume war as Alex.

Which neatly bring us to military, or the lack thereof. With Ctownski unavailable for my turn I propose rushing the barracks in Lodestone and building military there although it's unlikely that I can get any reinforcements to Sparta/Beijing during my turn. New Novogorod might as well continue building the cat as anything else will take just as long.

I really don't think there's anywhere to build workers this turn. However I think I'll move one of the workers by New Nov. to start work on the spices after the jungle has been cleared.

Whilst I could play later today that won't leave too much time for comments. Therefore I'll play tomorrow instead.

EDIT: I intend to drop off the scout and a chariot as quickly as possible before bringing the galleys back for transport and defensive duties.

EDIT 2: It looks like Alex has traded for Mao's iron.

 

[Dagnabit]

At this juncture of the game is it better to use the Scientist in St Pete as a specialist or for building an Academy?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

At this juncture of the game is it better to use the Scientist in St Pete as a specialist or for building an Academy?

I was intending to build an academy. Sorry I should have mentioned this in my post.

 

[Dagnabit]

I don't really see the point of a workboat in Moscow. At present there's nowhere to deploy it. I'm inclined either to resume work on the galley or alternatively a barracks. I think the latter would be better.

Sparta has clams to work but a barracks first might be OK

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Sparta has clams to work but a barracks first might be OK

Aah! I didn't spot it down to the south before. However I don't think it's a priority at present anyway.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Aah! I didn't spot it down to the south before. However I don't think it's a priority at present anyway.

Yep, the workboat is for Sparta. The reason for building it in Moscow is that Sparta is not on the coast, and therefore can't build the workboat itself.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Simon, can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure why we lose access to the ivory. Is it because Sparta is not on the Coast? Doesn't the culture connection keep the trade route? Why does war effect it?

My understanding is that, yes, it's because Sparta is not on the coast. If resources are to be 'traded' across the sea, you need a city on the coast on both landmasses. Our only coastal city on the ivory continent is Beijing, but the sea route from Beijing to anywhere on Muskovy Isle is blocked by Mao's borders. As I understand it, you don't have to have open borders for a trade route to work through sea borders, but if you're at war with the civ the route has to go through, then that will block the route. That understanding seemed to be confirmed by during my turnset, the ivory became available to Beijing and Sparta as soon as Beijing came out of revolt, but it only became available to the cities on Muskovy Isle after we signed peace with Mao.

 

[Dagnabit]

My understanding is that, yes, it's because Sparta is not on the coast. If resources are to be 'traded' across the sea, you need a city on the coast on both landmasses. Our only coastal city on the ivory continent is Beijing, but the sea route from Beijing to anywhere on Muskovy Isle is blocked by Mao's borders. As I understand it, you don't have to have open borders for a trade route to work through sea borders, but if you're at war with the civ the route has to go through, then that will block the route. That understanding seemed to be confirmed by during my turnset, the ivory became available to Beijing and Sparta as soon as Beijing came out of revolt, but it only became available to the cities on Muskovy Isle after we signed peace with Mao.

Thanks, Another Christmas present All the more reason to get those cats n bring Alex some Newyear Cheer

 

[Dagnabit]

edit 2: I just remembered we're going to want to be keeping close watch on our ability to build the Hanging Gardens and the Hagia Sophia...they'll give us +4 GE points if we build them in the same city. I believe the HG is already available now with construction, and the HS is available with Engineering.

If we have the Colossus in Coppertownski can still build both there?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Certainly an interesting turnset DynamicSpirit. I'm glad it turned out better than I feared.

The counter-attacks certainly came quicker than I expected.

All that grassland certainly screamed GP farms to me. Originally I was going to propose sending the GS to New Novogorod but it's tied up with military. Therefore SP looks a better bet. I would still send a future GS there though.

If we are to have a dedicated GP farm (which I think would be a good idea), then I vote it should be Athens, since Athens has a lot of food but doesn't look to me like it'll be much good for anything else (Few cottageable tiles and few production tiles either).

In terms of the academy, I think our strongest science city is likely to be Rostov with its three gems, but that won't be running strongly for another couple of turnsets. St P probably won't be as strong in the long run, but it is already generating substantial commerce so an academy would have an immediate effect.

As far as our not so friendly neighbours are concerned I think all we can do is try and hang on. The treaty with Alex runs out in 5 turns so I'm inclined to move an axe from Beijing to Sparta to discourage/defend against a resumption of hostilities by Alex.

I think you have an interesting challenge here. On the one hand, we need enough forces to (presumably) take Athens and withstand the likely onslaught from Mao. And to add to that I suspect from now on we need to keep a reasonable garrison on Lodestone City (partly because Mao has demonstrated that he regards it as an invasion target, and partly because Caesar is no longer tied up in an English war, is by nature slightly trigger-happy, and isn't that pleased with us...). Yet on the other hand every unit we build costs us more gpt at the moment; many more units before our pop has grown enough to increase our free unit quota will kill our science again My suspicion btw is that if we declare war on Alex, he'll almost immediately take his invasion fleet back out of Athens; if so, that'll heavily reduce the number of units we need to wipe him out.

It's shame we don't have Drama yet as a theatre is rather quicker than building a library. Beijing is going to be under strong cultural pressure so I wonder if it's worth pillaging our own elephant before it falls to Mao? At least that way it only leave one camp to pillage. It really depends how soon one of Mao's borders are likely to pop again. Opinions anybody? Despite the problem with culture in Beijing I'm inclined to start a barracks there and rush it when possible. I think Mao is just as likely to resume war as Alex.

Well the further elephant has gone back under Mao's control because Shanghai's borders just popped from 2 to 3 (on the last turn of my turnset I think). For the borders to pop again, Shanghai willl need to get from 150 to 750 culture - I don't think that's going to happen any time soon (unless Mao has a great artist lying around to culture bomb with, in which case Beijing is basically toast anyway).

Besides, don't we want our ivory to remain there so that we can build a few elephants?

Which neatly bring us to military, or the lack thereof. With Ctownski unavailable for my turn I propose rushing the barracks in Lodestone and building military there although it's unlikely that I can get any reinforcements to Sparta/Beijing during my turn. New Novogorod might as well continue building the cat as anything else will take just as long.

We're safe for at least 8 turns Actually I suspect we're safe for a fair bit longer than that - Mao will probably be wanting to build up some of his forces before he declares again. Judging from the typical continent sizes on this map, I doubt it'll be long before those two chariots have finished exploring Rome, perhaps they can come home then?

I really don't think there's anywhere to build workers this turn. However I think I'll move one of the workers by New Nov. to start work on the spices after the jungle has been cleared.

Moscow may work, after/instead of the workboat?

EDIT 2: It looks like Alex has traded for Mao's iron.

Interesting. What makes you think that? That would only happen if Mao has more than one iron (which is possible, since we haven't seen all his territory)

 

[Sam_Yeager]

If we are to have a dedicated GP farm (which I think would be a good idea), then I vote it should be Athens, since Athens has a lot of food but doesn't look to me like it'll be much good for anything else (Few cottageable tiles and few production tiles either).

Well it's certainly a contender but let's face it, what else is New Novogorod good for? And at least we can get some additional cottages there for commerce.

In terms of the academy, I think our strongest science city is likely to be Rostov with its three gems, but that won't be running strongly for another couple of turnsets. St P probably won't be as strong in the long run, but it is already generating substantial commerce so an academy would have an immediate effect.

I think that's more likely to become a commerce/production city.

I think you have an interesting challenge here. On the one hand, we need enough forces to (presumably) take Athens and withstand the likely onslaught from Mao. And to add to that I suspect from now on we need to keep a reasonable garrison on Lodestone City (partly because Mao has demonstrated that he regards it as an invasion target, and partly because Caesar is no longer tied up in an English war, is by nature slightly trigger-happy, and isn't that pleased with us...). Yet on the other hand every unit we build costs us more gpt at the moment; many more units before our pop has grown enough to increase our free unit quota will kill our science again My suspicion btw is that if we declare war on Alex, he'll almost immediately take his invasion fleet back out of Athens; if so, that'll heavily reduce the number of units we need to wipe him out.

Even if Alex takes some of his units out that would still leave him with four archers according to our last update on his strength. I suspect there may be the odd spear and/or axe now. With the time needed to knock down his defence bonus that would mean we would still need to leave a reasonable force to defend Sparta so it only helps us a bit.

Well the further elephant has gone back under Mao's control because Shanghai's borders just popped from 2 to 3 (on the last turn of my turnset I think). For the borders to pop again, Shanghai willl need to get from 150 to 750 culture - I don't think that's going to happen any time soon (unless Mao has a great artist lying around to culture bomb with, in which case Beijing is basically toast anyway).

Besides, don't we want our ivory to remain there so that we can build a few elephants?

I was wondering whether Nanjing might pop it's borders but it looks as though it's unlikely to pop soon. As we were unlikely to be able to make much use of the ivory during my turn that wasn't that much of a factor when I was thinking about it.

We're safe for at least 8 turns Actually I suspect we're safe for a fair bit longer than that - Mao will probably be wanting to build up some of his forces before he declares again.

True. On the other hand we don't know what sort of forces Mao has down in the south. I think it's safe to assume that he already has construction.

Judging from the typical continent sizes on this map, I doubt it'll be long before those two chariots have finished exploring Rome, perhaps they can come home then?

I was actually thinking of only disembarking one of them anyway.

Moscow may work, after/instead of the workboat?

I was intending to work either the galley or a barracks instead with a preference for the barracks so that we can get some units with experience.

Interesting. What makes you think that? That would only happen if Mao has more than one iron (which is possible, since we haven't seen all his territory)

If you look at the resources screen you'll see that Alex has iron surplus and yet Mao appears to have none. Also Alex is using copper even though we didn't see any when we scouted Athens. Mao and Alex definitely seem to be good buddies.

EDIT: Looking at this post again I think I should make it clear that I don't intend attacking during my turn.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

If we have the Colossus in Coppertownski can still build both there?

Probably. I'm fairly certain that it's only national wonders where there's a restriction on the numbers you can build in a city. OTOH I would really like Coppertownski to be working on military until Alex and Mao are out of the way.

 

[Thrallia]

I think once the Colossus is built Ctown can go back to military for awhile. I'd actually prefer the HG and HS somewhere besides Ctown because we want to be SURE we get at least 1 GE, preferably two. If we built them in the same city as the Colossus we'll only have a 66% chance of getting a GE at best(unless we assign an engineer spec too) And yes, the two wonder restriction is only for national wonders, I've built 7 or 8 wonders in a single city before(one of my more wonder happy games)

I've got stuff to prepare for(my christmas is this weekend cause with my wife out of town and no family within 6 hours of me, my family is driving up for christmas for new years instead ) So I'll try to look closer at the save later tonight but can't promise it

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I think once the Colossus is built Ctown can go back to military for awhile. I'd actually prefer the HG and HS somewhere besides Ctown because we want to be SURE we get at least 1 GE, preferably two. If we built them in the same city as the Colossus we'll only have a 66% chance of getting a GE at best(unless we assign an engineer spec too) And yes, the two wonder restriction is only for national wonders, I've built 7 or 8 wonders in a single city before(one of my more wonder happy games)

It could work either way. The risk is that if you have a town that is only working engineers/hanging gardens/hagia sophia, then because that gives so few great person points, you're continually trying to hold back on other towns generating scientists and other useful great people, because of the risk that they prevent the engineering town from ever actually producing any great people. So you have your guaranteed engineer, but you've also damaged yourself by having fewer great people overall than you would've done. Because of that, I'm more inclined to favour having a few cities producing as many great people as possible, while doing whatever we can to maximize the chance of an engineer popping out from most of them. So eg. on that basis, CSki would be giving us points from hanging gardens and colossus, and perhaps we'd run an engineer there. Perhaps we'd also run an engineer/forge in Moscow or other towns that are running specialists.

The disadvantage of my approach is that there's always some uncertainty which great people you'll get, which makes planning a bit harder; the advantage is you get more of them. And - in the case of Cski, by building the hanging gardens there, we finish it a lot faster than we would've done anywhere else, which makes it less likely we'll find we can't build it at all...