SGOTM 03 - Team One

[hamfist]

The War plan sounds excellent. I heartily agree with trying to take the great lighthouse. It will be amongst the most useful wonders to have as we tech up the tree and meet even more trading partners.

I think a Christmas break is an excellent idea.

going to 10 turns seems reasonable.

We should mostly forget about wonders until Mass Media.

I won't be back on the forum till the new year. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.

 

[mboza]

7 galleys seems like an awful lot, and splitting China in half is an exageration, as the western half is two tiny cities. But it does remove the copper from China. Is a maceman in a forest or city adequate defense against an elephant? Perhaps we can get away with fewer pikes?

I would like to send a horseman or something over to scout around the china/greek border, ensure that China does not have a second source of iron, rendering our plan useless. Stick a mace or two in the galley, and send it round western china with a trieme to pillage the iron, and build another two or three galleys and ferry our army to greece first.

Can we do better with our triemes? I would concentrate the fishing defense fleet into two stacks, and push one towards shanghai to see what China is defending with. I do not think the AI is good enough to send a boat round the long way to pillage, and we have enough warning for a pair of triemes based around Moscow to respond to most threats.

 

[mdy]

I`m back. Shall we resume playing sometime soon?

 

[hamfist]

I'm back and ready to go as well.

 

[TDK]

Hi guys,

I'm back and ready to play as well. Hope everyone had a nice holiday(I know I didn't, had to hand in an assignment for university on the 2nd of January, why do they do that every year?).

TDK

 

[hamfist]

so who's up?

 

[amh52]

Hi everyone, happy New Year!

It should be Astrum's turn. Let's see if we hear from him. Otherwise TDK can take the save.

Roster:

Astrum - Up
TDK - On Deck
mdy
mboza
Hamfist
amh52

 

[TDK]

I looked at the game.

Not getting the great library was probably not as bad as I thougt, it would be absolete before long anyway. The tech detour sure cost us though.

Joining the last scientist was propably not optimal. On balance, it might yield the same amount of beakers and there is the hammer to count. It will slow us down in the short run though, it might cost us a substantial amount of beakers if we have to research liberalism before we are ready.
This is what I would like to do if I'm next:
-Build all military, but I would not use the whip excessively and allow our cities to grow.
-Immediately send units across the narrow sea to Alex and try to scout from there. Can China attack us in greek territory? In greek cities?
-Trade techs like Navigation, Engineering and Philosophy, but try to maintain our monopoly on techs on the Liberalism path. This would pretty much be my tech plan:

I think that everything outside our path to Mass Media is a waste of time and should be traded for instead of researched. Let's try to trade Meditation and Philo and then research Education. Compass should be traded for as a matter of course, it's on the way to Mass Media. We can then research(or trade) Optics, followed by Printing Press and Astronomy(possibly aided by 2 scientists) and grab Scientific Method with Liberalism.

-Try to circumvent, maybe trade map with France? France could be to the north-east or south-west.

What do you think of this? I can propably play tomorrow if Astrum doesn't show up.

TDK

 

[hamfist]

We can be attacked inside Greek territory if Qin has Open Borders. Even in cities. I found that out the hard way once while doing a future war. had a big stack of stealth bombers in a neighbouring ally city and he took them all out with an infantry

Agree with the tech plan.

I think we can get peace with China before it becomes an issue on the military front. I would start thinking about whom we are really going to attack. Does it seem necessary to do a backdoor? Can we do it with straight research and good diplomacy? Having the tech lead makes it easy to bribe allies if we get attacked and at the same time we pick up a + for Mutual Military struggle, without any - you declared on our friend. Seeing as Montezuma is already Buddhist I think we will have a big buddhist block and Monty will take care of everyone else. Maybe we should ensure that he remains at close to tech parity. Perhaps we need to try and spread Hinduism to someone large so that monty will go after them?? Mao comes to mind..

 

[mboza]

China and Greece do have open borders, but I would not expect the AI to use that to hunt down a scouting unit in greek territory, as long as we can keep a turn away from the chinese cities at the end of each turn. If it does, we might be able to set up ambushes in Greece, rather than simply assault cities. It would be useful to have some idea of the Chinese strength, as we can simply buy china off with tech if fighting an overseas war looks too difficult.

 

[mdy]

Sending a mounted unit to scout Greece seems like an acceptable risk. Unfortunaltly I do not think we can win without conquering a couple of civs. At the moment I think we could only expect the following to support us if we played our cards right.
Fredrick
Saladin
Montezuma
Mansa Musa
Cyrus
Gandi
JC
HC
Louis 14
US
Alexander might also vote for us but I doubt it. Mao won`t vote for us so we might as well finish him off while we can withou picking up "you declared war on our friends" modifiers. Mao`s production is way below ours so we should easily be able to outbuild him, it would also remove our second most advanced rival.

 

[TDK]

Ok, it seems the next 10 turns will be pretty uncontroversial, I will go ahead and play now. I will post the game for discussion if we encounter important decisions.

TDK

 

[TDK]

T0: Changed Moscow from theater to barracks. Traded maps with france, got meditation and gold on top! Sell map to risk free civs with gold(~500 gold). Upgrade one Axe. Disband galley in Japan. Moving warrior from Indian town, don't know what it is doing there.

IBT: Montezuma asks us to declare war with Germany, I refuse as Germany is super popular with our friends(You can press F4 even if it's not your turn and in diplomacy screen).

T1: We have circumnavigated the globe! Reshuffle various trades to popular(and rich civs). We gain ~12 gold/turn.

IBT: Mansa and Mao sign a cease fire.

T2: Having trouble getting Philosophy, will wait for that one. We are making a lot of money on our world map. Trade Feudalism. Gift Drama to Alexander.

T3: Traded Civil Service to Cyrus for Compass+gold+map. We will build Harbors at twise the normal speed, good combo with Great Lighthouse.

IBT: Louis asks us to convert to Hinduism:

What to do? Will we get penalties if we refuse? Sure sounds like he is serious.

As for the Hindu vs. Buddhist block, we will take out Mao and Alex. Egypt will probably convert when they get into a war with a buddhist. That leaves 5 hindu(including us) and 6 buddhist. Some of the buddhist civs are quite small. Anyone of you know which civs uses missionaries and are likely to convert other civs?
I will leave the game running and go out and get drunk, and allow everyone to comment. No use uploading the last autosave as it is only one turn from the 485AD save. Not much changed diplomacywise, I didn't get negative modifiers from anyone who likes us(the only one that comes to mind is a -1 from Isabella).

TDK

 

[mdy]

I would convert to hinduism to get a positive modifier instead of a negative one. We can always convert back to no state religion later.

 

[amh52]

I was afraid of that one. I agree with mdy. We can always convert back later.

 

[TDK]

IBT: Converted to Hinduism. Inca cancel open bordes, Alex also.

T4: Pillage Mao's plantation.

T5-10: zzz

Nanjing will fall in about 2. We have a stack(3 maces, 1 axe, 1 catapult+2offshore if galley picks up in Moscow) outside of Nanjing, I had to cancel attack on Beijing when Alex canceled open borders. If we are lucky, Alex will attack us just when we finish Mao.

We can now revolt back to "no state religion", we might wan't to do that because everybody hates us right now.

Hopefully we will get a scientist in 3 turns, we should use him on Printing Press. We need to trade Philosophy before we get Education so we can go on to research Liberalism. Right before we get Liberalism we should trade Optics for Education, or take it from China, so we can grab Astronomy for free.

Mansa has Paper already so I don't think we can delay Liberalism too much.

We are trading a cow to the Mongols for 4 gold, we should cancel that when we can as Egypt stopped shipping cows to us when we turned Hindu. Strange...

I didn't build more galleys as 1 is sufficient to carry our troops.

Mdy, there are some micromanagement issues between Novgorod, Yaroslav' and Rostov that I didn't resolve.

TDK

 

[mdy]

I would convert back to no state religion. It will probably be our only chance of trading for philosophy before we get education. We should also try to trade for optics so we can grab astronomy.

The stack outside is outside Shanghai not Nanjng, and it looks a little too small to take Nanjing and then hold it against an enemy counter attack, even with the reinforcements. Were you able to find out the size of the enemy reserve in Bejing?

 

[TDK]

I dipatched a Trireme to scout Beijing but it was kicked out by Alexander when he cancelled our open borders. No info, sorry. China has no production, so probably not many reserves in Beijing.

The stack outside is outside Shanghai not Nanjng, and it looks a little too small to take Nanjing and then hold it against an enemy counter attack

Right. China was very defensive so I moved forward. The stack is big enough when it's big enough.
Two more maces will arrive by the time our 3 cats are through bombarding, that will make 5. There are only 2 defenders so I really don't see a problem. I keep thinking you know something about this AI that I don't...

TDK

p.s.: One more note, I was thinking of sending the trireme through Roman lands to find the last civ.

 

[mdy]

The next 10 turns seem pretty straightforward so I will play them this evening if there are no objections.

 

[mdy]

Turn 1: convert to no state religion.

Turn 3: Gandi asks us to declare war On Japan, we refuse.

Turn 4: Islam founded in a distant land.

Turn 6: We capture Shanghai. We were lucky and lost no units. A GS was born in Moscow. I saved him so we could lightbulb printing press later.

Turn 9 : Louis 14 cancels open borders. We discover education and trade it for philosophy, optics and the world map with Mansa Musa. This was a risk but it was the only way we could trade for philosophy.

I have scouted the enemy reserves in Bejing, they consist of: 1 horse archer,1 axe, and 3 longbows(1 with city garison 1,2,3 and 1 first strike). Unless they reinforce Bejing I would march on it as soon as the fifth catapult arrives.

One other thing we might consider is gifting 1 gpt to the allies we are not currently trading with to get the "we appreciate the years you have provided us with resources" bonus.