SGOTM 03 - Team One

[amh52]

Another way to improve relations with HC is to switch to Hereditary Rules. We would lose the bonus from Representation with JC but maybe that's ok. Also should we adopt Emancipation and Free Market or should we wait until after the first vote?

I'll play tomorrow or Tuesday evening. My priority will be to finish the UN and take the last Aztec city. I will try to upgrade a few macemen to grenadiers if I find the gold. Also do we know if the Aztec Galleon outside Calix is empty? Finally I'll pay attention to city management and try to emphasize growth.

 

[mdy]

What about signing defensive pacts with Julius and Isabella and convert to buddhism?

I think we need to be friendly with them for this which we are not. We should still be able to get Caesar`s and Isabellas vote in buddism PROVIDED we gift enough techs to Isabella to get the shared technologies bonus, as she is backward this should not be a problem. Other than Izzy I would not gift biology to anyone, it would be better if they asked us for it as a gift later, this should also reduce the chances of it falling into the hands of our enemies.

Another way to improve relations with HC is to switch to Hereditary Rules.

If we did this we would lose Caesar`s vote. As Caesar has a greater popultion than H.C. this would actually set us backwards.

Also should we adopt Emancipation and Free Market or should we wait until after the first vote?

State Property would probably be more useful than free market as we have the GL. We could switch to emancipation after we have whipped the growth buildings in the Aztects cities. To speed things up I would not make any civic/religion switches till after the UN is built.

Do we positively know that we will not immediately lose the "shared military struggle"-modifier when the aztecs are destroyed?

I think it will stop increasing, but what we have should stay. It might be worth bribing Izzy into a war for the last few turns to get this to increase.

 

[mboza]

I think the galleon is empty, as it has sailed past some lightly defended cities, it has floated about Calix for a while, and I think it was the source of the increase in troops in Texcoco in 1472, but there may have been an inland aztec stack wandering about.

The combination of war weariness and biology has seen the computer assign lots of specialists to avoid growing unhappy people. Once the ww goes, I think the AI will start assigning for growth again.

 

[TDK]

Several things:

Once the ww goes, I think the AI will start assigning for growth again.

Let's not count on it, better be safe than sorry.

Mboza, picking up another negative with Mansa was a mistake, what did he ask for? Can we be sure of his vote? He is friendly with Hatty also.

Mdy, what makes you think we can afford switching to buddhism? Isabella is currently at +8, won't we pick up a -2 with buddhism instantly? If we want to do this we will need to start throwing ressources after her or hope to get another +1 for open borders.

One thing which could help our economy is to trade physics to Saladin in exchange for communism and switch to state property, which could save over 100 gpt. HC dosn`t have communism at the moment so we could trade it to him for gold to try and get the shared technologies bonus.

Great Idea, it might do the trick.

Other than Izzy I would not gift biology to anyone, it would be better if they asked us for it as a gift later, this should also reduce the chances of it falling into the hands of our enemies.

What do you mean later, I thought we were aiming to win in about 10 turns. If we are going to give them biology we should do it now to get any effect. Let's not give free religion away, we don't want anyone to switch to free religion.

What I would do now:
-Assign an engineer in Moscow to limit our loss(UN 5 turns).
-Assign an artist in Nanjing(gp 3 turns), if artist "culture bomb" Nanjing.
-Negotiate all the trade embargoes against Hatty that we possible can, as a safeguard against someone suddently going free religion.
-Kill the Aztecs.
-Post a screenshot with the Speaker election result.

TDK

 

[mdy]

Mdy, what makes you think we can afford switching to buddhism? Isabella is currently at +8, won't we pick up a -2 with buddhism instantly? If we want to do this we will need to start throwing ressources after her or hope to get another +1 for open borders

Yes, but she is backward so we can gift a lot of techs to her for the shared tech bonus which will give us +7, open borders will give us +8 in a little time. Resource trades will increase this to +9/10, though this may take a little while.

[edit] One other thing that has just occured to me is that the middle ranking AI`s are fairly close in score, so if we gift a large enough number of techs to Isabella for the shared tech bonus then Izzy`s score should rise enough that the iworserank modifier no longer applies to us. This would give us +8 before the open borders bonus rises, +9 after it did, and +10/11 with resource deals.

What do you mean later, I thought we were aiming to win in about 10 turns. If we are going to give them biology we should do it now to get any effect. Let's not give free religion away, we don't want anyone to switch to free religion.

Even with Izzy`s and H.C.`s vote I suspect that we will still be a few votes short, so we would have to grow for a little while before winning. If biology found it`s way into the hands of our rivals it would boost their growth, which if we were unlucky would be enough to delay our victory for a few turns. Free religion becomes available with liberalism which almost everyone seems to have.

-Assign an engineer in Moscow to limit our loss(UN 5 turns).
-Assign an artist in Nanjing(gp 3 turns), if artist "culture bomb" Nanjing.
-Negotiate all the trade embargoes against Hatty that we possible can, as a safeguard against someone suddently going free religion.
-Kill the Aztecs.
-Post a screenshot with the Speaker election result.

I agree with all of that.

 

[TDK]

I think switching to buddhism is worth a try, but I will remind you that Isa og Gandhi both posses their religions holy city and therefore the negative modifiers will pile at twice the normal speed. We should wait to change religion until the turn before the final vote.

TDK

 

[amh52]

Ok, starting now. I think I've got everything...

 

[amh52]

T0 - 1508
Trade Physics to Saladin for Communism and trade embargo with Hatty
Trade Chemistry to Ceasar for 170 gold and trade embargo with Hatty
Trade Chemistry to Cyrus for 210 gold and trade embargo with Hatty
Trade Biology to Mansa for Replaceable parts and 210 gold
Bribe Isabella to declare War on Monty for 130 Gold and Banking
Revolt to State Property (2 turns anarchy)
Upgrade 3 Macemen to Grenadiers

T1 - 1514
Trade Communism to HC for 260 gold
Isabella is now friendly as the mutual struggle bonus increased to +3

T2 - 1520
Take Mycenae
Revolution is over. Reassign citizens to work food tiles
Assign Engineer in Moscow and Artist in Nanjing

T3 - 1523
Attack Texococo
Sacrifice 4 Trebuchets. 2 retreat, 2 die, ouch!
2 Grenadiers and 3 Macemen kill 1 Musket, 1 Elephant and 3 Longbows
Decide to keep the Knights and Pikemen for next round

T4 - 1526
Take Texococo killing 1 Longbows, 1 Elephant, 1 Axe and 3 Pikes. That was close. Lost 2 Knights and 1 Maceman.
Isabella is back to pleased as the mutual struggle went back to +2

T5 -1532
GE born in Nanjing. What to do with him?

T6 - 1535
Finish the UN in Moscow
Gandhi asks us to swith to Universal Suffrage. Refused.
Biology to Ceasar for 240 gold
Ceasar declares on Victoria. Is this an opportunity?

T7 - 1538

T8 - 1541
Vote for Secretary against Hatty

T9 -1544
We win this vote 794/1287
One surprisingly bad news is Mansa voting for Hatty

The real vote should come in 3 turns I believe. Is there anything we need to do?


I uploaded the file and I guess TDK can take it from there.

 

[mdy]

The Mansa-Musa result puzzles me. According to my calculations we are at +10 with Mansa Musa, but Hatty is at +8. There is clearly something we have not factored into the diplomacy system. In the spreadsheet there is an ibasepeaceweight modifier which seems to add a certain randomness to the relations, as far as I can tell this must be what is affecting the results.

I think the only easy way to get back Mansa`s vote is to switch immediatly to free market.

After that we will need to switch to Buddism to get H.C.`s vote-We will need a +2 from this, fortunatly he has it`s holy city so this will happen relativly quickly.

To ensure we keep Izzy`s voe we will need to sell/gift to her every tech we have until we get the shared tech bonus.

JC only picks up a -1 from religion so we should keep his vote in Buddism there is therefore no absolute requirement to increase the shared military struggle bonus with him. As it would give us a -modifier with Mansa and Gandi I would not declare war on her.

To avoid any last minuite upsets we should agree to any request from our allies(except war and trade embargoes if the - modifiers we got from agreeing would have a worse effect than the - for refusing).

Other than that the only thing we can do is maximise growth in our cities. We won`t win the first vote, but if we do the above we should have a good chance of winning the second vote.

 

[TDK]

We have victory! Second vote, 843/843 needed! Writeup to follow.

Congrats to all!

 

[TDK]

1544: Revolt to Free Market to try to win back Mansa's vote. Start flooding Isa with with surplus ressources.

IBT: Kublai declares on Gandhi.

1547: Trade Biology to our friends where it makes sense. We pick up a +1 "ressource" modifier with Isabella.

1550: Send caravel to investigate India and Gandhi is about to lose his capital! I brooker a cease-fire to avoid the vote loss.
Make a tech trade with Mansa to get steel(which Huyana doesn't have) and rifling. We get a an extra +1 with Mansa for "Shared technology"! We discover computers and gift everything to Huyana with no result.
We complete Hermitage in Nanjing with the engineer.
We pick up a +1 "open borders" modifier with Isabella.

1553: We pick up a +1 "Shared technology" with Isabella. She is now high enough on the list to cancel the "worse rank" modifier.
We revolt to Buddhism.
The results for the first vote are in. We have Mansa's vote again. Even if we had Huyana's we would be one vote short.

1568: We win the second vote 843/843 needed!

TDK

 

[ori]

lurker's comment:

 

[mdy]

Excellent news, well done everybody.

TDK did you upload our winning save, the results page still shows our 1544 save as being the latest?

Now we have finished our game would I be right in assuming that we could have a look at our competitors thread?

 

[amh52]

Wow, nice finish TDK!

I think we did a pretty good job. Congratulations everyone.

I believe the last save doesn't get listed in order not to show our final date. I am not sure if we can have access to the save though.

We can look at the other threads now. It should be very interesting.

 

[mboza]

Nicely done. Thanks everybody.

I was worried this game was going to continue on to March, while we tried to steal pop from the weaker civs, where we have actually finished in time for a GOTM before the next SGOTM. Speaking of which, I see mdy has signed up for the next one, so I shall go add my name to that list.

 

[TDK]

I will attach the save.

I will also sign up with Team One for the next one. And again, thanks to Ori for the spreadsheet and much confusion. I see a lot of other teams are using your work, some of them with more succes than others.

TDK

 

[mboza]

Looking at the SGOTM 4 sign up, we have mdy, TDK and myself, and it looks like we will get merged with someone. If anyone else wants to sign up, or if mdy or TDK have a preference for teams to merge with, pop over to the sign up thread.

 

[TDK]

I've asked Team Short Straw if they want to merge, they are also only 3 players. I've also sent a PM to Grangerm asking if he wants to rejoin the team.

TDK

 

[mdy]

A merger with team Short Straw sounds good to me.

 

[TDK]

I wrote AlanH:

AlanH,

Team One and Short Straw have merged and will now answer the new name: "Team One Short Straw".

TDK