SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

Cosmichail · Feb 15, 2007

We do have a large contingency in Saladin's land that could go after Toku's capitol. (as a last minute plan in case votes don't materialize). Only it would be nice to have a couple of aircraft carriers with it.

How does the timing work and how many resolutions do you get before UN sec. (don't know much about this as I rarely do diplo and usually domination/space)

bobrath · Feb 15, 2007

IIRC its 3 votes between sec gen votes, but I'd like confirmation on that.

Cosmichail · Feb 15, 2007

Wouldn't then the next be sec gen vote? So that gives us time to regroup in Rome and take those big cities south but do it as you suggest just before the vote and take them. (I notice a lot of cities especially bigger ones take about 7-10 turns to come out of revolt capitols even more) We can in the meantime just take out lots of defenders to prepare for that.

During my turn I did three diplo votes. Well the one you started and I saw the results and two more.

GreyFox · Feb 15, 2007

Excellent turnset. I agree on beefing Monty up by gifting him one or two transport and marines. Although this is a bit like the US training Osama in the earlier 80s ... but I don't think the game will drag on for us to see Monty successfully build up an Al Qaeda to fly airplanes into our Great Lighthouse and Eiffel Tower.

A tad risky to rely on revolting cities to put us 1% shy of domination and yet 1% extra for diplomatic votes ... but hell, it is the player who risk all that will take all.

Will be playing this tomorrow.

Cosmichail · Feb 16, 2007

Hopefully we will just need 85 votes however Gandhi is friendly so he better vote for us next time or else.

There are lots of transports in Saladins lands and could be offered to Monty from there. Only problem is and I am sure you know you have to get them to his lands and then gift them. Then you have to hope he moves them to Medina and takes the city. I am not so sure. He has been told to attack Medina so maybe asking him again after gifting may do it.

Sounds like a lot of work to me and why don't we just blitzkrieg those 85-90 votes (yep the total just keeps growing so who knows how many we will need next time around)

As to the Osama yes Monty is that and I like the analogy. The real Great Light House did perish many moons ago in a big earth quake. (the one that was supposed to have submerged Atlantis)

I hope we can finish this during your turnset Greyfox as our voting margin is now very slim. Hopefully after taking the rest of Rome in sequence with next diplo vote we should win.

I do agree that we should risk it since we are so close.

GreyFox · Feb 17, 2007

First off, decided we can't rely on Gandhi. Therefore, help monty a bit:

and gift him a transport ...

Apparently the marine on board get auto-teleported back ... :smoke:

... must be a fix to the gift-untis-in-transport exploit.

However, by end turn, Monty still has not yet moved towards Medina. You call this "your best"? My Foot!!!

Pbffttt!

War-wise capture Cumae ..

Next turn, JC captured it back :lol:

Same thing happened with Ravenna:

After that, I learnt my lessons and decided wait a bit for airlift reinforcements. By end turn, the man roman continents are all ours:

Also hammered on Sally and KK:

We are moving halfway across the globe to hunt down the last city of Mongolia.

Now, the more important diplomatic votes:

Gandhi votes for us alright ... but this is the UN Secretary votes:

When the Diplo votes come in:

Damned. The vassal penalty added one more thus pushing Gandhi back to pleased. :aargh:

Never knew that vassal penalty will also increase with time.

Meanwhile, Mansa came asking for help:

Sure, always glad to help. Do come back often!!! I mean it, sincerely!

I played one more turn to see the next UN Diplo Victory results .... but computer crashed upon saving!

Thus, here you go, I uploaded an autosave in 1836AD. It is an autosave, so next player, when you load up the game, you will see all the build completes and UN voting results screens. Sorry.

As a teaser:

But bear in mind this is taken after the votes, so Gandhi may not yet reach friendly when casting the votes.

I's decided that we have enough units, so I started the Hollywood and Ironworks. Please see if you can rush them with money.

As it is weekend, Scowler is UP.

--

Cosmichail · Feb 17, 2007

Good stuff Greyfox and too bad about Gandhi. He's one frustrating dude. If we just could time it that he's friendly and have enough of our own plus his we should win this. I was surprised too that JC didn't have more fight in him when I attacked but I see that he did by taking by a city or two. Those cities in Rome are a fair sized and our votes did jump to 1004. Don't worry Greyfox even with Gandhi that one wouldn't have been won as we were 11 votes short. Another city or two and Gandhi's votes should secure us the win finally. I think if we had to do this over I would have chose space race no variables there just build. (AI with so many civs is just too unpredictable no matter how well you play diplomacy. No matter what you do you always affect another civ by it.)

Please finish this one Scowler so we can start lurking at the other threads and talk about SGTOM04 which starts in 5 days......

Scowler · Feb 17, 2007

Cosmichail said:
Please finish this one Scowler so we can start lurking at the other threads and talk about SGTOM04 which starts in 5 days......

Cosmichail · Feb 17, 2007

"We'll our best"

That coming from you Scowler means something, coming from Monty it's well ok maybe he will and maybe he won't. So we gift him transport and marine and he still can't find his way to Medina. Thought so you have to handfeed him and too bad you can't gift to your vassal in enemy territory that would simplify matters quite a bit.

Hope your computer can cope ok Scowler mine certainly was chugging along and was glad with the thought that was the last time. (maybe who knows)

namliaM · Feb 18, 2007

Hiya all, I am BACK!

Dont much feel like meddling in this game anymore as it is near over... (Why isnt it over yet tho??!!!)
It was a nice reading thru this thread... had a few laughs too

WHOOOOO hoooo !! SGOTM4, I hope someone auto inserted me !

GreyFox · Feb 18, 2007

Welcome back, namliaM!

I consider it a failure to not finish this before you come back ... :lol:

You should sign up for yourself, it isn't too late.

Scowler · Feb 18, 2007

The game isn't over yet because Gandhi is being a complete :aargh:

I've played 4 turns so far. There have been 2 votes for the diplo victory.
Both times Gandhi abstained, despite being "Friendly"; both times we would have won if he had supported us. :mad:

Here are the most recent results (this turn):

And this is how we currently stand re. the Domination limit:

I finally made Caesar salad out of our Roman buddy so we don't need to worry about him any more. The new cities should come online without triggering Domination but I don't see how any further warfare can help us if we can't get Gandhi to see reason (I hope he gets splinters up his ass-crack from the fence he is perched on... :evil:

) I've currently turned Culture down to 0% to reduce the risk (I'll check the effects of this again when I resume)

What else? I made peace with both KK and Saladin on the inherited turn. I was concerned about the high level of culture we were running to stave off war-weariness (e.g. +28 in Tiwanaku!). Monty seemed unwilling to get off his backside so I decided it wasn't worth pursuing these nations any further and peace would reduce war-weariness allowing me to turn down Culture and reduce the likelihood of us triggering Domination too quickly. Instead I captured a size 12 barb city without the need for war...

Incidentally, immediately after making peace, KK became a vassal of Toku - I hope the 3 votes Toku gained are worth the minus he will get from everybody else for running a Vassalocracy.

And Toku declared war on Mansa! Mansa hasn't turned to us for help ... yet!

I've uploaded the current save here. Any suggestions about how we can twist Gandhi's arm before I continue?

Scowler · Feb 18, 2007

Spoiler nasty log :

Spoiler nice log :

GreyFox · Feb 18, 2007

IIRC, domination only count land %, so if all our culture border is already extending to waters, there is no danger in running culture. Worst come to worse, gift some size <5 cities to Izzy. We need one of their votes. :aargh:

namliaM · Feb 18, 2007

Just an idea I remembered today, I offered it before leaving IIRC.

You dont have to capture cities go get the votes you need.... What we need is a certain percentage of the voting. Asumming we have say 10 milj voting people and the world holds 20 milj voting people. We then have 50% of the vote... We can get to 11 milj. but in the mean time the voting number of people have also gone up to (atleast) 21 milj. so we only gained 1/21 instead of 1/20. In this scenario you need to raize your pop to 20 (double your original) to get to 66%.

Or you can do the reverse...
Take the 20 milj. voting pop and reduce that to 15 milj to get the same effect of having the 66% (10/15 = 66%) without having to increase your own population.....
Just build a S**t load of planes on carriers and pillage the hell out off farms and mills, anything that does anything pillage/destroy it!
I read some mention of a size 27 city in Toku land. NO city should be over size 20 without farms/nets. Mostlikely each city has some hills or plains, lowering the natural cap to say 17.
Also on this map a lot of cities are living of the water. If we can blockade the city while at war with some ships (remember each boat blocks 9 tiles from beeing worked, so just 2 warships can effectively block half the city radius), effectively removing the 2 food from those tiles as well, just sit and watch the cities starve to half their size in just a few turns...

Do this to all our opponents (that are not voting for us) and we will jump the voting fence. Also IIRC from back when I was playing Hathy was willing to help us in some wars... if we can get some + diplo for mutual struggle from her... it may bring her into the fold....

namliaM · Feb 18, 2007

Now I loaded up the save and had a look, I have no clue who is who and where is what... AND wow you folks did a number on those AI, Orange everywhere

But Mansa is still alive

, I would have liked him to be dead... *GRMBL* but thats the way it is...

I took 2 screenies just to illustrate what I posted above...
Example 1, Cyrus:

If you take the cities as they are now... 55 pop... Cyrus has a bunch of plains tiles... Just take out the farms in the red circles and you take away the irrigation bonus all over. Reducing food radicaly...
Continue on to bombard all the farms and food will come down like a house of cards.
Place 4 warboat on the black crosses and (near) no more seafood for Cyrus, offcourse one will be worried about the attacks from Cyrus' navy... but that is all in the game... and we have to account for that.... So put a couple of boats there... just to make sure...
Assuming the seafood is blocked, Now take Cyrus' capitol, Persipolis.... Size 17, but only 3 grass tiles and one sheep plains. Meaning 4 + 2 (1 food) plains tiles, makes this city limmited to size ~6 without farms/mills to support it!
Pasargade, size ~7 and Ecbatana is living large of the sea... This would be reduced to size 2 or 3. Reducing 3 major cities of Cyrus from 55 pop to 16-20? Pop.
Taking (most likely) Cyrus' 116 votes to something more like 56!
Making the total votes available 1922-50 = 1872, with our voting power still at 1077 needing ~1160 votes...

Example 2, Hathy:

Repeat this process... Black crosses again are boats to take out the seafood....
Remove all the farms and mills
Heliopolis size 15 => ~3
Alexandria size 17 => ~7
Elephantine size 16 => ~7
Thebes size 15 => ~7
Moving Hathy from 63 in these major cities to ~24 also moving her from 101 votes to 51 votes. (hopefully) Further reducing the total votes without doing anything to ours... 1872-50=1822 needing ~1129

*** Disclaimer ***
Above numbers are just guestimates and may be off by a great margin in particular on the voting part... I did not do a carefull investigation into how much population each AI has therefor do not know if taking away 50 votes is realistic...
The 50 may just as easy be 75 or 25 depending or the real size of the particular AI....
**************

Rince and repeat this for a few AI and we should have enough votes soon... easy!
Also to limit the ability of the AI to rebuild you have to remain at (phony war) to stop them from re-farming the place. This will cost some WW-problems... but even if you make peace it will take the cities quite some turn to regrow to the sizes they are now.

Also you have to be carefull not to get diplo negatives for "you declared war on a friend" thus losing the votes for an AI, losing us more votes than we "gain".

Re: Twisting Gandhi's arm to push the right voting button, I have NO ideas... Does making Cash deposits to his favorite charity work?

Scowler · Feb 19, 2007

GreyFox said:
IIRC, domination only count land %, so if all our culture border is already extending to waters, there is no danger in running culture. Worst come to worse, gift some size <5 cities to Izzy. We need one of their votes.

Cities like Antium, Neapolis, and Zapotec could be more troublesome as they will collect more land tiles once online; but going back to the save I don't think we could keep culture at zero anyway unless we want to lose population through starvation.

Izzy won't take any of our cities. The only favourably inclined civs who will are Mansa, who will take Baghdad (size 2) or Damascus (size 7), or Hatty, who will take Damascus. Trouble is that both these cities currently hold mostly water tiles so will not lose us much domination territory. Hatty is also willing to take some of the old HC cities, but some of these have pop in the 20s so I guess not! :lol:

namliaM, your plan may be the best way to proceed in the meantime, and Cyrus would certainly be the best candidate to tackle first. He is not liked by our buddies and has no defensive ties. Also we have plenty of planes in the neighbourhood for strikes. NB, he also has a small fleet in Persepolis that we should be aware of, but doesn't seem to have enough of an army to trouble our lands at this point.

Sorry, but I probably won't have time to play any more of this today (or tomorrow), so if anybody else want to pick it up in the meantime please do so. Make sure you turn Culture back up to 20% immediately.

bobrath · Feb 19, 2007

I would suggest that using our air force to completely destroy any improvement (including roads) is a viable alternative as long as we can keep Vicki from getting opportunistic on any captures (obviously Monty is no threat for this.... darnit).

If you do it all with air and take no loses, then WW will be a minor thing.

Cosmichail · Feb 19, 2007

I hope he gets splinters up his ass-crack from the fence he is perched on... ) I've currently turned Culture down to 0% to reduce the risk (I'll check the effects of this again when I resume)

Me laughs very hard........

namliaM so nice to have you back. Perhaps a nice relaxed brained from honeymoon haven can show us how to win this game. What's up with Gandhi how can he not vote for us being friendly???? Don't understand that at all. I have had AI (hannibal vote for me diplo even at pleased????) One would think with Gandhi's modifiers he would be easy to get to vote????

Ok f*ck it and let's nuke everybody.....just enough for one vote. Love watching those nukes and pretty mushroom cloud LOL.. But seriously (don't have time to get nukes) I DO think namliaM's plan is the best.

So why don't you play namliaM and finish this as my frustration level with this game is at a ultimate high. 18 civs and the only ones that vote for us is vicky/monty who are pretty much locked into us. I read in the first post of VQ thread (Maquis) and noticed him saying VQ sucks at diplo. Well we do much better warmongers. Of course that's why most of the world is orange and hey that's not Russia's colour that Nederlands colour. (you know William of Orange) and all.

At this point even vassaling a few AI's might be the answer since the amount of votes needed isn't really that many and negatives at this point really don't matter since we can't get anybody to vote for us. Monty couldn't find his ass on a good day. We give him transport/marine and does he go after Medina NOT. He is still doing his best whatever that means.

GreyFox · Feb 19, 2007

Any vassal and we will trigger Domination.

SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

Dark Lord of The Sith

Emperor

Dark Lord of The Sith

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Dark Lord of The Sith

Make it so ...

Dark Lord of The Sith

Mr. Understatement

Dark Lord of The Sith

Deity

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Mr. Understatement

Mr. Understatement

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Deity

Deity

Mr. Understatement

Emperor

Dark Lord of The Sith

Make it so ...

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