SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

namliaM · Jan 15, 2007

Yep for tough nuts like CG3/Drill LBs on a hill you do need some sacrificial lambs to throw at that defender

On the up side it should be rather smooth sailing from here on out compared to this ....

After the holy city, we will have yet 2 more cities pressing that holy city and still a stray city down south preventing the choke from beeing effective. Lets pause at this point, turn around on Alex and come back south again.

We do have 4WW points allready in Moscow, I am not sure we can handle much more tho...

GreyFox · Jan 15, 2007

Ok, so I made a few trades - earning us quite some gold.

Remaining of my turns I captured Sandong with our shiny new grenie:

and sank a caravel with our shiny new frigate:

The turn after I captured Sandong, Mao launched a surprised counter attack. Fortunately, we survived, losing a crossbow. This force me to clear out his surviving units, thus the main attacking force heading towards Guangzhou might be delayed.

Here is the defenders in Guangzhou ... it will sink most of his navy, so let's do it fast.

And here are the forces we have:

On the galleon marked is 3 maces, suggest swapping one with a cat, and land the forces to the hilltop next to Guangzhou. We should try to use galleons as much as possible, since it is faster to move troops with them then to slowly walk tile by tile within enemy culture border.

Research wise, as suggested, I delayed Physics and go for Steel first.

Cities wise, Moscow has increased WW, and turned angry. The next player can choose to whip the temple. GP-Farm is now building university, suggest whipping it (3 pops) when there is 3 more turns remaining to grow -- this way, after whipping, one pop will immediately grow back.

Someone planted a sign in Novogod saying to turn jungle into cottage. I disagree. It should be turned into workshop. Now that we have guilds, workshop is starting to be worth the effort.

Someone also questioned my decision to build barracks in Athens. Well, at that time, the city still was not so culturally pressured. I intent to change those plains into workshops, thus transforming Athens into military base. We need more prod centers.

Novogod should keep building longbows until all our cities have at least one longbows each.

>>> The Save (1310 AD) <<<

Spoiler Autolog :

Roster
-- Cosmic == UP
-- Scowler == On Deck
-- Dot
-- namliaM
-- Bobrath
-- GreyFox

Cosmichail · Jan 15, 2007

Excellent ready to play and will wait for some team discussion.

Cosmichail · Jan 15, 2007

Looking at the save and everything looks good but we could use a bigger military. Did I say military? We have five grennies/3 maces/3 trebs/ 3 cats and no one on the homefront. My greatest disappointment was looking at Novgrod. Grennie in 8 turns wow.. We should mine that hill and get the city to work it. Moscow would have built grens every 3 turns sigh....

If we are to make military gains they will need reinforcements but all of our cities are building, "builder" stuff. Except for Yaroslav which is looking good with those workshops. I like the idea of Pikes upgraded as we can then build faster. We just need the moola.

Do we take Chengdu too or just bypass take shrine city and make peace to regroup and go after Sparta. Monty's lands will be easily taken with a large attack force (5 galleons) and what I like he's the only one there and culture won't be a problem once we take all the cities. He's backwards so our grens rule there and cannon only 4 turns away.

Initial attack plan:

Heal the units and move maces up to join army and then head for holy city to take it.

Make peace with Mao and build more units to take on Sparta and join with the remaining forces at China.

Again I ask the question what of vassals. No, yes or maybe???

namliaM · Jan 15, 2007

GreyFox said:
Ok, so I made a few trades - earning us quite some gold.

Nice trading on the gold part, dont know about selling PP to victoria tho...

GreyFox said:
... shiny new grenie:
...shiny new frigate:

You get to have all the fun... :sad:

GreyFox said:
Research wise, as suggested, I delayed Physics and go for Steel first.

Do we want to rush thru ?? And get cannons ASAP? Or stack up some Catapults/Trebs, delaying Steel some turns while running 0% to earn some more money for upgrades?
We currently dont have any real reason for having Cannons over Catapults other than the survival rate. We can build 5 catapults for every 2 Cannons, delaying Steel ups our cannon count quite a bit, in the future....
0% research on steel takes 22 turns, with 3 turn Catapults from Novgorod = 7 catapults.
We can also run 0% on Physics for a while to prevent Steel beeing invented, for building more Catapults. Earning 240gpt.

GreyFox said:
Someone planted a sign in Novogod saying to turn jungle into cottage. I disagree. It should be turned into workshop. Now that we have guilds, workshop is starting to be worth the effort.

This may be a good idea, but we need to put a windmill on that Plains hill. Losing 2 hammers on the plains hill for 3 hammers on the Workshop. At the expense of some (future) commerce... Guess its a good idea, specialising cities and all. Working the fish and the land tiles available to Novgorod it is food neutral at any size we choze it to be, picking up a coastal tile for every pop over size 7.
I would produce nothing but Catapults from Novgorod, whipping a treb when possible (soon) or once food neutral just spam Cata from there.

GreyFox said:
Someone also questioned my decision to build barracks in Athens.

That was me.... But now I change my mine, we can use every single unit. Tho Athens with only (IIRC) 3 land tiles with 1 beeing a Cow wont benifit (much) from having a workshop or 2...

GreyFox said:
We need more prod centers.

I hear that. On that note, what do we do about Beijing? It has some towns allready, do we turn it into a commerce beast? Or put workshops up for massive production?
Only counting the resources Beijing has a food surplus of 5, Shanghai has a food surplus of 7. Meaning we can workshop 12 tiles in that area if we want, bringing in 36 hammers. But at the cost of destoying some towns and villages.

GreyFox said:
Novogod should keep building longbows until all our cities have at least one longbows each.

Dont know about a LB in each city?! Wont Frigates do the job? With our cities in MR producing units allround MR wont be defensless ... and with Frigates taking out most if not all landing parties... do we need them? I think we need Macemen moreso than LBs

GreyFox said:
GreyFox: Upped Rice to JC from 1gpt to 4gpt
GreyFox: Change stone for 7gpt to KK -> Spice for 8gpt

Only 2 deals renegotiated?? Hmz... Nice going on the rice, but why change the stone to Spice?

I think we dont want to whip the Temple in Moscow, let is finish in 2 turns. Start a Market and whip that after 1 turn of production 225 - 35 (1 turn prod) - 10 (overflow from temple) = 180 / 45 = 4 pop, gain 2

+ 1

for the Temple.

From my previous post:

GP Generation...
12 Moscow (16 per turn) 1/8 GS, 3/8 GE, 1/2 GM
23 + 9 St. Peters (18 per turn) 2/3 GS, 1/3 GE
28 + 8 + 8 Beijing (20 per turn) Highly mixed
33 + 9 + 9 + 9 Yaroslavl (18 per turn) 2/3 GS, 1/3 GE
35 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 Athens (18 per turn) Mixed.

Do we want to maximize our chances at a GS/GE??
Right now Moscow is due in 12, 29 if we fire the engineer.
Petes in 13 (with a priest?)
Yaro in 28.
I would go ahead and burn the GS we have allready on Physics, cause we are going to do that anyway and I think he is just costing us GPT.

Rostov needs some culture, or we will lose that Cottage to Mansa... Suggest swapping it to a Theatre...

DONT build Grennies!!! DONT... we want Macemen, they be cheaper (hammers) and get CR or Pikemen.
CR2 Mace is 11.6, a Combat 2 Grennie is 14.4
CR3 Mace is 13, a Combat 3 Grennie is 15.6
Yes the Mace looses out by a considerable margin, but it is way cheaper to build and more than powerfull enough to clean up after a Catapult or 2. And at a 3:2 ratio of build time we can risk losing one or two.
CR2 or even better CR3 Grennies are very nice City raiders...
Looking at hammer investments we want to be building some Pikemen too, they only are 90 hammers and accept CR upgrades too.

We can also put up 2 workshops in Moscow to boost more production there and still have + 1 food. Lumbermills would hurt either, but that takes Replacable Parts which is 4000 beakers and needs banking for 3 hammers in Moscow and 1 in Novgorod...

Tokugowa currently holds the 9% of pop as top AI, we fight him for UN. Gandhi and vicky will vote for him... They just adore him...

On the cash department Toku and Saladin have 260 and 140 in the bank ready for pickup. Alex has 70g in reserve before we blow him away....

I dont know about vasals, the have to vote for you, but also cost upkeep. Both Alex and Mao are very upset with us so I doubt they will give us anything even beeing a vassal...

This may be a little premature... but who is up after Alex/Mao.
Do we take on JC or go for Mansa/Hathy/HC?
I dont know about Monty beeing a target just yes, I know he is totaly backward (has LBs tho) but he is also clear on the other side of the globe => Upkeep is going to be hell. It is a nice place to put up the FP tho...
My other concern, if we go after monty. We have the risk of Mansa running away with the game.

GreyFox · Jan 15, 2007

we sell PP to Gandhi, so might as well we sell it to Vicky rather than let Gandhi sell it ...

As mentioned, my decision for Athens as barracks was before the cultural border changes. At that time, we could change 3 plans into workshop. With guilds, they are quite good.

On defense, naval defense is never foolproof. You can expect AI to bring at least one escort with a pair (or more galleons) in each attack. So that is 3 ships. Galleons movement is 4. So in order for you to effectively rely only on navy for defense, you need at least 3 frigates every 4 tiles. I think having some land defenses is cheaper.

Good thinking on having more cats before getting steel. In that case, I will suggest switching over to Physcis ... no point running 0% for gold, we do well selling tech for money.

On vassals, I think it might better to simply eliminate them. Does vassal always vote for master?

GreyFox · Jan 15, 2007

Other matters:

- We have Heroic Epic enabled. Where to build it?
- Should we build Nat Epic in St Pete? It is going to take a hell long time though ...

bobrath · Jan 15, 2007

Vassals do vote for you(IIRC), but every vassal you take on is a -1 with *every* other AI. Unless we're going to vassalage to a backdoor diplo win... any vassal hurts more then it helps IMO.

Holding off on bulbing the GS gives us extra beakers as our population goes up... right?

Researching at 0% gives us "free" cash. Free in the sense that we don't have to give the other AIs techs they don't deserve. Sure if you can make a big splash (as you did GreyFox) and get a large chunk of change and techs, then its worth it - but that won't always be the case.

namliaM · Jan 16, 2007

Techs are getting more expensive.... Therefor we will get (relatively) less on return. Also Physics is the last tech we can effectively burn GS on.

So if we delay Physics, we can build up some cash... for upgrades or deficit research in the future.
While probably not delaying to long Physics, cause (hopefully) we get two GS. St. Petes and Yaro have the best chances, but we need to slow down Moscow and make sure Beijing and Athens dont catch up.

Holding of on the bulbing does generate more beakers from the GS, but not all that many. In particular with WW going up, and therefor pop going down... It may well be smart to bulb now ...

HE in Yaroslavl? Yaroslavl will have 28 "natural" hammers + 2 for an engineer should we chose to run one... And have +1 food. I think we want 2 food more than the engineer... but its a numbers thing...

Athens only has 4 land tiles, 1 hill, 2 grass and a plains cow. The two grass we can turn into workshops, the others dont make sence.

What do we want to do with Beijing?? Commerce?? Or production?
We can cottage the place up for major money or workshop it... for major production. Either way we have to really finish the specialisation on that city. It allready has 3 towns and 3 villages... Does it make sence to finish cottaging it, destroying most production?
Does it make sence destroying towns?

I think we can safely change the farms for Shanghai to Workshops to add 9 hammers/turn to it. Making it a total of 12 or 15 with the forge.

On water security

To our east (toward Monty) we only have 1 water passage we need to secure. This will also give up plenty of warning should there be and armada of Galleys ! :crazyeye:

be comming from Monty
To our west there are 4 ways. Or two long (Yellow) lines to keep an eye on.

Cosmichail · Jan 16, 2007

We have Heroic Epic enabled. Where to build it?

What about Yaroslav? (as mentioned by namliaM)

Keep Moscow for Oxford/wall street??

HE in St. Petes would be great but again a slow build. How about Athens once we get a few workshops there.

namliaM re your concern of MM. I too am concerned with over expansion we find ourselves falling behind MM.

Do we take Chengdu? or just go right for the shrine city? I am getting the impression we want to finish Mao off so that means having all those crappy cities too. Well Chengdu is the worst the ones north of holy city are worth the keep.

I will play later today and proceed to finish Mao off and am confused as to what we are researching. The jist of it is to go to Physics and burn GS on it. Yes, or continue with steel?

Again I emphasize that the military budget is inadequate. We need more men and will switch Nov to maces and focus on more military. If we want to finish Mao we will need more. Moscow will be needed for military builds for a while.

Heading out for a while and playing when I get back. Will check here and then proceed.

Cosmichail · Jan 16, 2007

Couple more questions:

Is it intended for St. Petes to have an engineer/two scientists? and most other cities too.

Change Rostov from a forge to a theater for more culture.

Perhaps Athens should have two artists instead of scientist to keep our culture and gain some.

We should finish steel only 4 turns left and 75% investment of beakers already. Then we could lightbulb Physics. Electricity is nice boost for those windmills/watermills. We probably don't have RParts yet (didn't check) but that would be a great help to forests and increase prod for windmills I think.

INPUT INPUT.......

bobrath · Jan 16, 2007

I'd say that if our next target is Alex anyway, then "wasting" artists in Athens is prolly not worth it since the first city we capture will more then likely take a ton of pressure off Athens.

We do not have RParts yet (unless someone made a monster trade and didn't mention it!). I think the only thinking on Steel vs Physics was to "waste" some turns on 0 research of Physics once we get Steel one turn out. That would provide a bank to upgrade the cats that get built in the interm. It also might give our second GS a chance to pop putting us much closer to Physics.

Just my vague memory.

Concerning eliminating Mao. We can't fully eliminate him since he's got that lone village on the other side of the world from us (or close enough). I'd leave the iceball of Chengdu til second to last. Picking it up does nothing for us (imo) and its even further from our capital meaning its own maint costs will hurt until we get a courthouse (perhaps whip that first instead of lib/gran/theatre).

namliaM · Jan 16, 2007

INPUT INPUT INPUT....

Just going to send some output for your input

Cosmichail said:
Keep Moscow for Oxford/wall street??

The Judaist city seems fit for Wall street, but first we need to build enough Banks/Universities...

Cosmichail said:
HE NE in St. Petes would be great but again a slow build. How about Athens once we get a few workshops there.

Athens sounds like a good place for NE, but we need military more than NE/Oxford/Wallstreet/Universities/Banks
Banks + Wallstreet more so than Universities if we wish to fund our (soon to be ??? ) huge empire

Cosmichail said:
namliaM re your concern of MM. I too am concerned with over expansion we find ourselves falling behind MM.

One way of dealing with MM is jumping on him, we can send a couple of ship loads into Egyptian lands and just crush him... No more need to worry about MM...
Next up, Hathy, Saladin, HC
Also much like Monty, we wont have much trouble with culture from Hathy, that is untill we start warring against her. The two closest cities to mansa are Arabian ones up north, Hathies cities are so far away from the first Mansa one we allmost have to worry about her putting a new one inbetween.

I would take the holy city first and sink that navy that is in there.
KILL KILL KILL everything in sight...

On research I would do as I allready suggested. Run 0% research for a while OR research steel to 1 turn then swap to RP and slow burn (0% for a while) on that. RP will give a nice trading tech which is not on route to Mass Media. I would try and generate 3 GS before returning on the Physics part, so we can burn them.

Need military plenty, but Cata are better than Macemen from Novgorod. They build quicker and mostly are suicidal with the low XP. Moscow can churn out 5xp Macemen with maybe some 5 XP Pikes inbetween.
Yaro go for HE, it will turn into a 60 hammer/turn (i.e. mace every 2 turns) war machine.

I would like to see some culture in Rostov, BUT if we are targetting Mansa before Monty or roughly at the same time... It dont matter much... (Alex is first tho

)

Dont try to fight the Greek culture, we will lose that fight... Our fight is with men. Remove the culture by making the city ours. Run scientists and Engeneer(s) is my suggestion, and possibly try to whip something usefull like... Macemen or Trebs (Cheap upgrades to Cannons).

Edit on Bobs Xpost:
Courthouses are definatly better to whip as one of the first things now that our number of cities is growing and growing.
There are some cities in MR that could benifit from a courthouse too, but Units = more important I think.

Cosmichail · Jan 17, 2007

Playing now and will post later today. Was going to play yesterday but had some car problems. Thanks for the input guys appreciate it.

namliaM · Jan 17, 2007

Hope you have fun

Cosmichail · Jan 17, 2007

PART ONE

1316 AD

First turn and move the troops closer to our target. We make the following trades:

He dont look happy does he?

Sell philosophy to Toku for 270 gold

Also sell Drama to the dramaqueen for 130 gold

Sell philosophy to Saladin for 130 gold

Some of these trades actually improve our relations with Izzy who is now cautious and Saladin as well.

Freddy asks us to cancel deals with Mansa and considering how puny he is I decline since cutting off mansa isnt always wise and we see later in the game.

We continue our approach on Ghangzou and attempt to take it but simply lacked the forces to deal with the CD3 drill archer. Didnt like it but decided to regroup and bring in more grennies which are better equipped to deal with it.

1328AD

George Washington makes this request of us and I decline. We are trading with KK now so better to have his large empire on our side rather than the puny iceball American empire.

We also sell philosophy to KK for 110 gold.

Mansa Musa requests OB with us and I accept. As suggested I turn off science for some cash flow and see even at 0% there is only 7 turns to steel. I let it finish as after that CD3 lbm pain in the arse I feel we need cannons.

1334AD

Gandhi makes this request of us and after some thought/checking we shouldnt let this tech get out. Sorry no way.

Saladin also requests to trade crab for gems but decline for now. We could use a happy pill right now as Moscow is being difficult.

We sell banking to Alexander for 100 gold.

1358 AD

With some luck and a few losses we do finally take Ghangzou and see that it nets us 26 gold for the shrine. My only worry is the counterattack as I had to tap out our forces to take them all out and only a knight/gren is defending for one turn. Next turn two fresh maces will arrive. Oh yes and we did sink his navy. wooooohooooo

They do manage to counterattack with a pike and take out our knight. No further attack occurred and all the troops moved into the city. WW is starting to hit us and need to move the Slider to 20% but just for Moscow.

Continued in Part 2

Cosmichail · Jan 17, 2007

PART 2

1364AD

Isabella requests open borders and accept. More trade is better.

This deal might still be available for the next player but it’s pricey:

We also sell theology to Toku for 100 bucks

We also make this trade since PP is out of the bag.

Victoria request Sci Meth for free. Of course I gave it to her what do you think. She isn’t smart enough right. NOT!!!!!!!

Gandhi offers this trade. Not bad but didn’t take it should be available still.

1370AD

We discover steel and upgrade a few cats to cannons. Yaro/Nov will build two cannons shortly and Moscow is building maces. Our cash flow is good and set science to RParts for now.

This is what Mao will offer in the way of peace. He is also offering Xian which would leave him with about three cities. For the next player to consider.

I also checked all the cities for Great People situation and made this chart:

I do realize that once a cities pops at 750 it will move the number to 1500 for the next Great person.

Great people stats

1. Moscow - 734/750 : 10 = 2 turns 48% GM 38% GE

2. St. Petes - 678/750 : 18 = 4 turns 63% GS 25% GE

3. Beijing - 476/750 : 26 = 11 turns 42% GE 26-29% GP/GA

4. Athens - 444/750 : 12 = 25 turns 48% GS 40% GE

5. Yaro - 390/750 : 12 = 30 turns 81% GS

On matters of day to day the workers continued to build workshops at Yaro and the city is almost working all of them with two scientist. I moved a citizen in Novgorod to the forest hill for better production. Monty is pestering us at Athens and a frigate is in position to take him out. We can make Mao a vassal take off culture pressure off Ghangzou all in one sweep turn our forces around and go after Sparta and we should disconnect those elephants right away.

We are now no. 1 in score and we just need to build the military up somewhat. As to Great People Moscow is a crapshoot but likely going to be a Great Merchant. We should turn off Moscow then and let St. Petes pop the Great person as it’s more likely to give us a Scientist. Although again I ask as to “why” do we have an engineer in there. The AI keeps putting engineers everywhere I notice and we have to watch that. Definitely from these stats I would put The National Epic in Beijing where the most GPP points are. Yaro is a great candidate for the Heroic Epic. If we get the National Epic in Beijing quick and get 52 per turn and concentrate there on scientist (right now artists) we could produce a GS in about 20 turns or more depending on how fast we build National Epic. Rostov the forge has been whipped with overflow going into theatre. Probably more whipping should have been done but I wanted to keep the integrity of the specialist in place. I just realized we likely need a library in Beijing too for scientist to be there unless we go to caste system and do it that way which would be way faster to accomplishing our goal for now. I don’t think we need the whip anymore and there are lbms in every city except St. Petes which has an axe and Moscow a chariot.

Another to consider too is that several of the AI are capable of researching physics. Again St. Petes should pop it first so turn off Moscow right away and hopefully we get a GS at St. Petes. The next strongest candidate for scientist is Yaro although once we get Athens some free space again it will easily hold lots of scientist and has a good percentage towards it as well. Beijing will need work towards getting GS percentage there and more likely to give us Great Engineer which in my eyes is a good thing as we could use him for something like Pentagon or Statue of Liberty.

Considerations:

A deal with mansa although costly will get us Replaceable parts.
Going to caste system and pump up Beijing with scientists and St. Petes.

(definitely we should do this soon and get those GS’s a lot quicker)

Und der autolog:

Spoiler :

The Save

Cosmichail · Jan 17, 2007

CFC autolog

Spoiler :

bobrath · Jan 17, 2007

Nice stuff.

I like the offer from Mao for peace - free city? Woot. However I wonder if the capitulation would really be worth it. Basically we'd be stuck with him for the rest of the game as there's no good way that I know of to unvassal an AI OR to wipe him (and his culture and the yearning to be part of father land). Is taking him on as a vassal good for us in *any* way?

Peace yes - saddling ourselves with his sad sack of a nation... I don't think so.

GreyFox · Jan 17, 2007

I would say let's take Xian but leave out capitulation. However, would Guangzhou be able to produce effectively with half of its BFC within Chinese culture border? If not it might be better to to just take the three remaining Chinese cities.

If we wnat to take out the two cities east of Guangzhou, then using galleons to move troops, I suspect we can take the two cities within the next turnset. Once we take the two cities, then we see if Mao would still part with Xian. The remaining Chinese city that is far far away can be left alone ... some AI would surely see how weak he is and eliminate him for us.

It's time to focus on assimilating the Greeks cities into the Soviet Union.

I am concerned with the plan to lightbulb Physics solely based on scientists. I would suggest instead of Rep Parts, just switch to Physics and so as to get it as soon as possible.

Roster
- Scowler == UP
- Dot == On Deck
- namliaM
- Bobrath
- GreyFox
- Cosmichail == Just Played -- got us Canton

- FuRRie / Robo == Post something to get out of autoskip status

--

SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

Deity

Make it so ...

Dark Lord of The Sith

Dark Lord of The Sith

Deity

Make it so ...

Make it so ...

Emperor

Deity

Dark Lord of The Sith

Dark Lord of The Sith

Emperor

Deity

Dark Lord of The Sith

Deity

Dark Lord of The Sith

Dark Lord of The Sith

Dark Lord of The Sith

Emperor

Make it so ...

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