SGOTM 03 - Geezers

[Thrallia]

Turn 0: Make peace with Toku, he gives us 40 gold.
Gandhi gives us his map for 10 gold.
Vicky gives us her map for 20 gold. We find Izzy's land and almost have complete circumnavigation.
Cyrus gives us his map for 50 gold.
Hatty gives us her map for our map, even exchange. We now know all of Mansa's land and the location of Saladin's capitol(Jewish and Hindu holy city)
Louis gives us his map for 60 gold-it shows me most of Khan's land-it appears he either shares an island with America or Toku.
Unfortunately, all this map trading tells me exactly where our last two rivals are...they are trapped between Monty and Toku, that'd explain why they haven't talked to us yet.

There's a TON of land on this map...a lot more than I would have expected given an archipelago map.

IBT: Vicky asks for Paper and 230 gold for Music...I decline

Turn 1: We gain a circumnavigation bonus thanks to the map trades. I also note that Frederick has two cities...neither of which are very good and has no room for expansion. If Hatty and Cyrus would stop being pleased with him(they are at +0 but pleased!), then we could write him off...he's worthless for us, he'll never grow.
I gain back all our gold by trading our new maps with Vicky and Mansa for a combined 100 gold and their new maps.

IBT: Monty asks me to declare war on Frederick. Knowing he'll be of no use to us, and seeing our happiness levels with Cyrus and Hatty, I go ahead and agree to get Monty happier with us.

Turn 2: Beijing Cat>Sword. OB with Monty, our exploring galley goes up between Izzy and Monty to contact Khan

IBT: nothing

Turn 3: Coppertownski Caravel>Caravel. Send Caravel up between Toku and Mansa to check for America. Athens comes out of resistance and I start a LB.

IBT: Nothing

Turn 4: Trade Philo to Louis for 160 gold and a WM.

IBT: Nothing

Turn 5: Interestingly, Julius is willing to declare war on anyone(including Gandhi), except for Mao(the person I was check about)

IBT: Nothing

Turn 6: Rostov Caravel>Courthouse, Lodestone Spear>Courthouse

IBT: Nothing

Turn 7: Nothing

IBT: Nothing

Turn 8: Meet Khan, he's at war with Izzy and loves Toku and Louis.
Sell Paper to Julius for 600 gold!! Sell Theology to Cyrus for 100 gold.

IBT: Izzy asks for help against Khan, I refuse

Turn 9: Beijing Sword>axe. CuSki Caravel>Courthouse. Rush LB in Athens

IBT: Nothing

Turn 10: Keep exploring with Caravels and Galleys. Athens LB>Theatre

Summary: Education is due in 3 turns! At that point we can trade off Paper to anyone we want for extra cash to get Liberalism researched quickly. Also, We should research Engineering either just before or just after Liberalism to get the Hagia Sophia(which gets bonus prod from marble)...we need a GE!

Courthouses are going up all over to combat city maintenance, which is costing us over 50 gpt!

The only civ we don't know is America, and about 75% of the map has now been explored thanks to the maps I've been collecting.

Hatty, Cyrus, Gandhi, Vicky, Julius, and Louis are all pleased or higher with us. Mansa is close to being pleased, we just need to find a resource to trade with him.

We are at war with Frederick, but its a stale war, he'll probably be willing to give us cash soon to end it.

Mao culture bombed Guanzhou and we lost two more Beijing tiles to it...they'll never come back to our control without a culture bomb or taking over Guanzhou. I think we should declare war on him now as we've got the navy to prevent a counter attack and a large assault force in Beijing. I didn't so that we could talk about it and finish off Education first.

 

[Htadus]

also, our population has increased to #2, army size is #2, and production and food yield are #1. GNP is still #8 though...

on the Mao front. I think we want Shanghai, Ninjing, Guanzhou, and perhaps Hangzhou...but we don't want to kill him off. He's founded at least 3 really bad cities in the tundra that we would not want to even approach, since we can't raze them.

What about gifting those really bad cities to our allys? Would it not help us to get to the votes we need and get rid of someone who will vote against us? We can gift cities like in Civ3 I assume. Of course we have to give it to the right civ.


Good work with the map trading. It is time to go wacko on Mao.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Wow, there's a lot been happening since I last checked in! I'll have a look at the save later today and start thinking about my turnset...

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Interested to see two artists in Beijing. When did you hire them Thrallia? Are you sure that Mao used a culture bomb or did some of his borders pop naturally? IIRC our land was only about 6% ours before anyway.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Wow, there's a lot been happening since I last checked in! I'll have a look at the save later today and start thinking about my turnset...

Well I'm heading to bed shortly so I'll probably comment tomorrow.

 

[Thrallia]

I'm not sure that he culture bombed, but when I started my turnset, I found two scientist specialists in Beijing, so I transferred them to artists until our border popped. It didn't make a dent in Guanzhou's culture, but I changed them to scientists again once we popped. When he popped his borders and took over the tiles directly next to Beijing, I put them back to artists again...I don't think we'll get those tiles back, they are all over 80% Mao's, they shouldn't have been ours unless they were at least 50% ours, so I figured it was a culture bomb.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

OK, looked at the map, what I'm thinking for my turnset is:

• After education is researched, head for liberalism in the hope that we can get astronomy as the free tech.
  
• Will do whatever trading I can do to raise money for our research, but I'll hesitate about trading paper and almost definitely won't trade education, in order not to jeopardize risk of losing the first-to-liberalism tech.
  
• Beijing is suffering from cultural pressure (it's using all its tiles and still starving), and I'd like to take neighbouring cities asap to relieve that. I'll use two of our caravels to check what forces Mao has in the cities we can see and attack if that suggests we can pull the war off. Strategy to depend on what I see, it may involve a quick city-rush, or it may involve declaring war and waiting for Mao to sacrifice lots of units on Beijing and to our caravels before moving our units out If appropriate it may mean temporary taking production off the courthouses to build some extra units. (If we do go to war, an extra caravel would be really useful to kill Mao's galleys while still leaving some of our caravels free to explore).
  
• Exploration priority is to find and meet the Americans (I guess they are North of Monty/Huayna. Just possibly South of Monty). Subsidiary priority to check out the unexplored bit of Mao's land.
  
• Poprush market in St. P (3 pop) as soon as it grows into unhappiness (2 turns time). Can use excess hammers either for theatre (giving us two artists) or forge (one engineer + extra happy). I suspect engineer is more important, but theatre will be completed much more quickly.
  
• After theatre, consider lighthouse for Athens, so it can become a great people farm, this'll allow other cities like Novgorod (that can work more cottages it can use) to focus on then and growing.
  
• May do some poprushing for infrastructure, but only in those cities that can grow fast and have almost no production.

As usual, let me know any comments/concerns/objections in the next 24 hours

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Totally agree with Thrallia about Beijing.

@Sam: We have no choice about the two specialists are in Beijing now - we can choose to have scientists or artists, but the fact of the specialists is forced on us by that Beijing has insufficient tiles to work (and will eventually starve if it doesn't get more).

@Htadus: The problem with capturing cities to gift to allies is that we have no idea whether they'd be willing to accept them until we've captured them. If we capture them and find our allies don't want them, then we'll be stuck with them. AIs are fussy about accepting cities (Firaxis tightened that up in one of the patches, to close an exploit where players would ruin an AI by gifting it a useless city with massive distance costs)

@Htadus: No, I'm still in the UK. I just thought I needed a change of avatar...

@Dagnabit: I'm not sure whether the comparison of our power graph with Gypsy Kings' one is good or bad. Unfortunately, one interpretation is they are managing to get more civscore per military unit than we are doing

 

[Dagnabit]

@Dagnabit: I'm not sure whether the comparison of our power graph with Gypsy Kings' one is good or bad. Unfortunately, one interpretation is they are managing to get more civscore per military unit than we are doing

I really don't have much knowledge on what even goes into Score and Power so just thought it interesting to speculate. Culture seems a little more straight forward as a mathmatical count.

 

[Dagnabit]

I just had a look at our save and things continue to progress nicely. 2 quick questions. First I noticed a work boat being built and I don't see any seafood that we haven't worked. Is it for Athens? If so we can delay it for several turns as the borders won't expand for awhile. Second- If we are getting the cultural pressure from the West, by taking out Quang and Hang will that relieve the pressure totally or does the culture just continue stronger from the eastern cities?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Beijing is suffering from cultural pressure (it's using all its tiles and still starving), and I'd like to take neighbouring cities asap to relieve that. I'll use two of our caravels to check what forces Mao has in the cities we can see and attack if that suggests we can pull the war off. Strategy to depend on what I see, it may involve a quick city-rush, or it may involve declaring war and waiting for Mao to sacrifice lots of units on Beijing and to our caravels before moving our units out If appropriate it may mean temporary taking production off the courthouses to build some extra units. (If we do go to war, an extra caravel would be really useful to kill Mao's galleys while still leaving some of our caravels free to explore).

I'm pleased to see you're going to scout Mao first. I think a key problem with attacking Mao is the fact that Beijing can be attacked from multiple directions, including the sea. This means that we can't just take all the forces from Beijing to attack one city; which probably means we may need additional forces to defend Beijing whilst the attack force is on the road.

Poprush market in St. P (3 pop) as soon as it grows into unhappiness (2 turns time). Can use excess hammers either for theatre (giving us two artists) or forge (one engineer + extra happy). I suspect engineer is more important, but theatre will be completed much more quickly.

I think a harbour or courthouse maybe a better idea, although I can see the attraction of a theatre. I think it would be better to run an engineer in Coppertownski or Lodestone instead as they already have forges.

After theatre, consider lighthouse for Athens, so it can become a great people farm, this'll allow other cities like Novgorod (that can work more cottages it can use) to focus on then and growing.

Lighthouse for Lodestone is also desirable.

 

[markh]

Things look good.

I agree with your plans, Simon. You should definitely scout Guangzhou with a boat before declaring war. I passed the city once during my turns and he had a lot of units in that city. I think he is preparing his main attacking stack on us there.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

What do you guys think?

Mao's unit totals are:

to the East:
Nanjing:
1 horse archer
2 longbows (one with CG2)
2 cats
1 spear

Shanghai:
1 mace
2 longbows

to the West:
Guangzhou:
6 longbows
1 cat
1 spear

Tianjin (the one opposite Lodestone City):
3 longbows
2 galleys
1 horse archer
1 spear

Unfortunately we have an unknown: I'm at turn 3 and I misclicked a caravel and sent it the wrong way (sorry!) which means it'll be 4 more turns before we can see what's in Hangzhou. I doubt the cities further south will contain anything too relevent.

Set against that, Beijing contains 6 cats, 5 swords, 2 axes, 1 spear, 2 elephants, 1 horse archer, 1 longbow. Since Mao has no boats in his eastern cities we should be able to pull the sword out of Athens too.

Assuming there's nothing too surprising in Hangzhou, I think we can pull it off. The forces in Guangzhou seem to be mostly defensive, while Tianjin is set up to launch an attack on Lodestone City, which we should be able to dispose of at sea. Mao can build macemen and cho-ko-no, so I imagine if we are to attack we need to do so asap before he actually does, hence I'm reluctant to wait the 4 turns before we can see Hangzhou.

btw Tianjin isn't on a separate island, it's connected to the Chinese mainland by a narrow strip of land, but isn't yet roaded.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

What do you guys think?

<snip>

Unfortunately we have an unknown: I'm at turn 3 and I misclicked a caravel and sent it the wrong way (sorry!) which means it'll be 4 more turns before we can see what's in Hangzhou. I doubt the cities further south will contain anything too relevent.

Set against that, Beijing contains 6 cats, 5 swords, 2 axes, 1 spear, 2 elephants, 1 horse archer, 1 longbow. Since Mao has no boats in his eastern cities we should be able to pull the sword out of Athens too.

I think Shanghai & Nanjing look promising. Guangzhou looks too strong to take without reinforcements, particularly cats. Hangzhou as you say is the joker. Although Mao has iron further south it didn't look as though it was hooked up at 1100 AD so Nanjing would probably be better as the first target. With luck the mace will make a sortie from Shanghai on a pillaging run. However it's probably worth moving either the axe or spear in Sparta to Athens in case the mace gets lucky.

I strongly suggest we get Coppertownski, Lodestone & Moscow building military now as we will need them soon. Teaching granny to suck eggs I know, but try to give Mao as little notice as possible before invading his lands. We also need to leave some decent defence in Beijing in case Hangzhou has anything half decent.

btw Tianjin isn't on a separate island, it's connected to the Chinese mainland by a narrow strip of land, but isn't yet roaded.

Typical AI! Especially when you think how long that city's been there.

 

[Dagnabit]

I think Shanghai & Nanjing look promising. Guangzhou looks too strong to take without reinforcements, particularly cats. Hangzhou as you say is the joker. Although Mao has iron further south it didn't look as though it was hooked up at 1100 AD so Nanjing would probably be better as the first target. With luck the mace will make a sortie from Shanghai on a pillaging run. However it's probably worth moving either the axe or spear in Sparta to Athens in case the mace gets lucky.

I strongly suggest we get Coppertownski, Lodestone & Moscow building military now as we will need them soon. Teaching granny to suck eggs I know, but try to give Mao as little notice as possible before invading his lands. We also need to leave some decent defence in Beijing in case Hangzhou has anything half decent.



Typical AI! Especially when you think how long that city's been there.

Either direction is Ok but we don't have near enough Cats. 6 longbows will require suiciding at least 3 if we want to minimize attacker loss. I would set Moscow to Cats for sure and Coppertownski to swords. I think there were 2 swords in coopertownski that can be sent to the front with a cheep build. What happened to the Scout, he'd be good as a placeholder in Coppertownski. And no one ever said what the workboat in Moscow was for. Did we build it or still waiting for Athens?
East looks quicker from a troop requirement point and getting Mao's ivory a given. And I agree if Mao is making Maces we don't dare wait too long or we will need to alter our research.
It would be nice to keep his galleys in port but I presume they sail the moment we declare. Second best is to send the troops to a watery end

 

[markh]

Where are his phants ? He had 1 or 2 IIRC.

The Eastern cities will be a secondary. If we go for him we have to hit him hard at the first strike, so I assume we will attack Guangzhou first. 2 or 3 more cats wouldn't hurt I think. 6 LBs will be quite a nut to crack.

 

[Htadus]

I think that the east is the direction to go since by taking those two cities we can assure that we will be attaacked from only one direction. The effort we will need to take Guangzhou should be enough to take the two cities to east. I would suggest using the Navy to land the units for the first attack.

Can we send a suicide unit to take out their Iron? No Maces or Cho ku nu's.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

(Followed Sam and Htadus's suggestion of East)

Summary:

1. We haven't won a diplomatic victory yet.
2. We have captured Shanghai, and Nanjing will fall next turn.
3. The war is too easy. Other than catapults, we almost have too many units; Mao is putting up very little fight.
4. We have another great scientist. I've left him in Rostov since that looks the most likely place he'll be useful.
5. Science has gone badly (partly because we're now paying 22gpt for units); no useful techs to trade for money. But we should be able to up it to 100% for liberalism in 7-8 turns now-ish.
6. We haven't discovered America yet (Columbus, where are you...?)
7. Unit movements: Just north of Beijing: The elephant and spear are going after Mao's elephant, the swords on the same tile are heading south to the main battle. Nanjing's been bombarded to zero so should fall with ease next turn. The longbow by Shanghai is headed there to take over defence from the offensive units currently healing in the city.


In Detail:

240/pre-turn: Change Moscow to caravel (workboat not needed for a while)

IBT: Mao asks for philosophy (do I need to say how I responded...)

241. Cancel the fish we're giving to Vicky for free and sell her cows for 4gbt instead. Cancel clam to Hatty in hope of renegotiating it but looks like we can't this turn. Sell clam to Mansa Musa for 3gpt instead. Sell iron to Gandhi for 3gpt.

Bugger. Looks like I misunderstood the diplo screen. The clams to hatty were for fur not for free, we've lost the fur now. Poprush caravel in Lodestone (we have no caravels on west coast of china).
Nanjing has 1 horsearcher, 2 longbows, 2 cats, 1 spear. Tianjin has 3 longbows 2 galleys 1HA, 1 spear.

242. Poprush market in St P. Aaargh! Misclick and send a caravel the wrong way. Won't know what's in Hangzhou now. Shanghai has 1 mace and 2 longbows.

243. Education comes in. Set research for liberalism. Guangzhou has 6 longbows, 1 cat, 1 spear. Tianjin isn't on a separate island, it's linked to the Chinese mainland. I suddenly find we have a galley that was on a long goto near Isabella's territory, now awaiting orders!

244 Tianjin has added a spear. Move caravels into war position. Poprush longbow in Beijing. Declare war. Most of forces in Beijing move East towards Nanjing. I also move sword out of Athens and units out of Sparta (leaving spear/archer) to take to battle. A couple of empty Chinese galleys appear out of Hangzhou, heading for Beijing.

IBT: Saladin offers open borders. I refuse. Mao's loaded galleys (2 longbows/mace/HA) leave Tianjin - heading East! Presumably to mount counterattack on Beijing.

245: Our caravel by Tianjin sinks one of Mao's loaded galleys. Now he only has a mace and a longbow. Ah. Found Mao's war elephant and longbow - they are guarding the iron by Nanjing, I didn't notice them before. I don't want to deal with those yet so move the attacking force North to Shanghai. I also start moving a galley with a chariot from Lodestone City to swap with two swords from Coppertownski to take them to the battle. Another galley takes the archer from Moscow to boost Sparta's defences. Moscow completes a caravel. -> Longbow.

We need to rustle up another 800 gold to complete liberalism in 8 turns at 100% - I see no sign of getting it anywhere (other than from taking cities). So research -> 0%. We can make more gpt by trading with civs not in our block. In desparation I go for it: I sell clams to cyrus for 4gpt, and gems to Kublai for 4gpt

IBT: Napoleon offers world map exchange. Reject (with hindsight that may have been a bad move). Kublai demands we stop trading with Isabella; I decline.

246. New Novgorod: Market-> Harbour (it's unhealthy). An empty Chinese galley appears by Athens (I guess it'd been exploring somewhere). Near Tianjin, Mao's sole surviving loaded galley turns back West. Our caravel sinks that too. Bye bye maceman/longbow ! Tianjin now has only a longbow and a spear, but we have no units nearby able to take it (not sure we want it anyway). Our Northern caravel that's around Mongolia and heading West in search of America gets trapped by ice - has to turn back.

Mao's elephant leaves the iron and moves in to attack us.

IBT. One of Mao's galleys by Beijing attacks our caravel (when the caravel is on coast with +10% defence bonus). The idiot! Caravel is undamaged. The galley by Athens pillages a fishing boat. The other galley by Beijing does the same.

247: Hinduism has spread into Beijing. Athens completes theatre -> Lighthouse. Charles Darwin born in St. Petersburg. Our caravel attacks the galley by Athens - and loses I start moving Darwin to Rostov. One of our caravels by Tianjin is heading south to explore and sees that Xian has 2 longbows and a spear. The other, nearly dead from its galley battles, moves into Lodestone City to heal. Hangzhou has 3 longbows, a galley, a mace, a settler. It looks like Mao's elephant is heading to pillage our ivory! Since it's now evident Sparta is at no risk I remove spear from there, leaving only the archer to defend.

IBT: Cyrus offers world map exchange. I accept. it tells us nothing we new.

248: Attack Shanghai in order: Cat (loses), cat (loses), elephant (wins), sword (wins), sword (wins), horse archer (wins, I give it medic 1). Shanghai falls! Lots of excess units, so I move 2 cats/sword/spear to hill by Nanjing, ready to start bombarding there. btw, why did our cats already have promotions added when they hadn't yet seen any battle???? Mao has a third iron by Xian, not hooked up yet. There's silver on the tundra too.

IBT. Mao counterattacks! His two cats lose against our hill stack, and a horsearcher fails to retake Shanghai. Mansa offers crab for gems. I change to fur and accept. Sparta: Cat->cat. Beijing: Axe->cat. A Chinese caravel emerges from Nanjing.

249. Our caravel by Beijing attacks Mao's galley then goes into the city to heal (The alternative was to risk a combined caravel/galley attack by Mao). The 2 swordsmen from Coppertownski arrive by Sparta.

Mao's galley by Athens has a charmed life. Despite only being strength 1.1, it wins against our galley that I sent to finish it off . Our Xian-caravel discovers Chengdu, south of Guangzhou, in tundra, contains longbow and 2 spears. Also sees that Mao's iron in the extreme south is still not hooked up. Moscow completes longbow. I allow it to complete the long outstanding workboat.

I check how much Frederick will give/wants for peace. He'll give us a world map, 80 gold, and 1gpt. I accept.

IBT. Reject an offer from Louis for music in exchange for paper + 200 gold. Kublai asks us to go to war against Spain. I refuse that too.

250:Moscow: WB->harbour (it's -3 unhealthy). Cski: Courthouse->Cat. I realize we're giving away all our clam, and cancel the clam we're giving for free to India. That Chinese galley by Athens, now at 0.9 strength finally succumbs to an attack from another galley of ours. Mao's elephant has started heading towards Sparta. That's potentially dangerous, so I send a spear/elephant after it. Nanjing's defences bombarded to zero.

 

[markh]

Sounds like you had some fun. And Sam will have some, too.

I think not much to be discussed this time.

Roster :

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

 

[DynamicSpirit]

A couple of things that may be worth discussion:

1. What do we do with Charles Darwin? (my inclination is to found an academy in Rostov - I didn't because it only delayed 1 turn and I didn't want to make that decision without consulting).

2. Tech to research. I think it's very likely Sam will discover liberalism and get the free tech in his turnset (especially with an academy), so we'll need to figure TWO techs to research next. I don't have the open game in front of me, so can't see what the options are or how much they'd cost, but I'm inclined to guess astronomy would be most useful as the free tech. If we are to continue beelining towards mass media, the one after that is scientific method, which by itself confers no benefits (other than revealing oil, which probably isn't much benefit at all for us) and is pretty expensive to research, so I'm wondering whether it'd be worth a short break to try and go for banking/economics, see if we can get the great merchant?

Note: The scientist is currently offering to lightbulb towards printing press. If we get astronomy, that'll change to scientific method, and after that, to physics. Hence he or more scientists could be very useful. If we are still continuing a straight beeline for mass media, then I think holding Darwin off so he can lightbulb scientific method will be most useful; if OTOH we go for banking/economics, or for something else first, then an academy might be more useful. Lightbulbing printing press seems to me of marginal benefit as yet, especially as he'll only partially discover it (not sure how many turns would be left?).