SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

GreyFox · Jan 26, 2007

I concur there is no hurry in researching Mass Media.

RE: Mao ... my fear is he may capitulate. This will make it messy should the need to take him off arise. Plus why leave someone who is definitely voting against us around? Also, the happiness penalty is sooner or later going to limit growth. Growth is the key to winning.

Re: MM and Hatty ... if people are willing to throw Hatty out as a potential friend (.e. our blue block), we can actually eliminate them both :evil:

However, I think we have better targets (HC, Monty, Louis, KK) which does not affect those who are currently pleased with us.

Re: AI getting into PA ... let's worry about that when it does occur. It is exceedingly difficult to try to spoil relationships among AI without spoiling bother their relationship with us. Notice we are also Toku's best friend ... if say MM+Hatty do join in matrimony, then so be it, they will become our opponent and we get toku's vote. It cuts both way.

Currently all troop-producing cities are building land-troops - Macemans, and with a star in it at that. Please remove them. WE are broke, no more money to upgrade maces. We can only sell so much tech without conceding the tech lead. WE need NAVY!

--

Cosmichail · Jan 26, 2007

True about Hatty/Mansa and of course we will have to deal with it if it does happen.

As to Mao should we divert some forces his way and finish him off? That might motivate him to vassal up to somebody and slow us down. Maybe we could have troops ready at both cities (if we go that route) and pounce on him at the same time so he won't have a chance to vassal up just when we are warring. (meaning take the cities in 1 turn and finish him off so lots of frigates and grens to take it right away) We should watch JC though that might bring him from pleased to cautious. Only question I have and Bob has mentioned this: Is it worth it diverting our forces that way when they are in Egypt so new forces would have to come from mainland.

I take it you think we should change builds to frigates/galleons instead of maceman. I agree but still think we need more land forces too to take on HC which is a nice piece of real estate. We might get smothered by culture from Hatty so start maybe on a city with a hill distant from Hatty(anda something has a hill and we could start from there and if he attacks us at least we will have defensive bonus). Even Cuzco has a hill for defensive bonus and good start to hurt him bad right away. We need to take advantage of his weakness right now so going after him soon is a good idea. But we do need more land troops and building maces is good for CR grennies but as pointed out we really don't have the cash for it.

Last time I looked at save we are bleeding -270 (100% science) which makes me think "state property" is badly needed since CH takes a lot of time to build. I am not sure how that affects trade routes though as the GL is still paying off until corporation. That high amount of 270 makes me think too that we aren't in the green until we drop science quite a bit so we should find out what eating up a lot of gold right now and build CH or go for communism right away if that doesn't mess up trade routes. (probably not but not sure since I don't build Great lighthouse much)

Tech wise we should finish radio (or not) and get MT/communism. MT to get Vicky into DP once we are finish warring. Vicky might go to war with HC so that will help too. Communism for PA possiblity with Vicky.

It would also be helpful if we get a GE and tuck him away for UN. Since we can't plug St. Petes with GE's the city with ironworks will allow for the most engineers and get us GE. A bit of a balance act to get it but maybe we can swing something.

So bottom line of the opinions:

1. Finish Mao off to help growth in ex Chinese cities and remove the possibility of him capitulating.
2. Attack Huyana soon as he has longbows in every city but that could change if we wait too long.
3. Hold off on Mass Media and get other needed techs. I vote for MT/communism and then return to path of Mass Media to make sure we get UN.
4. Stop building maceman and start pumping up navy.
5. More land forces needed. Do we build grennies now complimented by cannons? (then we might as well get rifling if we are satisfied we have enough CR grennies)
6. Economically we need to deal with coin bleed which is normal after taking so many cities.

Another thought too is maybe putting a drydock in Yaroslav too for the XP points for the ships and it speeds up ship building. (if not done already haven't checked)

GreyFox · Jan 26, 2007

Re Land Troops :- I think we have enough attack forces. What we need is defend force, to garrison cities as we capture them, remembering that the "No City Raze" is ON.

Re: economy :- Can try reducing research if necessary to see how much is 10% worth. If it reduces our bleed by 80~100gpt, then I say we are okay economically wise.

Re: finishing Mao :- Sorry for being misleading in my original post ... I think there is no hurry in finishing Mao ... I just mean that we should finish Mao off before voting, but it is not high up in priority as long as we are still 2 or 3 pops away from happiness cap in the former chinese cities.

We already have a GE sleeping somewhere if I remember correctly when I looked at the save last night.

--

bobrath · Jan 27, 2007

Well.. hmm... where to start.

HC has rifles and cavalry, our Chinese cities are unhappy, our GM was no where near as profitable as we had hoped (only 1650g), and there are 2 DPs in our world, oh and Ghandi went and emancipated his citizens.

I tried applying the Sirian Doctrine (tm) - only problem is HC likes to found off the coast!

Lets see.... Good news.... We do have a GE sleeping in Moscow. HC paid us a tribute of 310g to not attack him. We attacked anyway. Ghandi gave us 610g for Liberalism. For the most part, folks like us - lots of "pleased". I did give Izzy Guilds when she asked and ditto to Cyrus for Liberalism. They're both fence sitters, so it was worth it.

I picked up Constituion from KK along with 120g in exchange for Sci Meth. I made no other tech deals tho. We still have a semi monopoly on Physics - Mansa hasn't traded it away, but lots of AIs are clamoring for it. We're 1 or 2 turns out on Radio. I slowed research to about 50% when we ran out of money at the start of my turns. I kept a reserve so GreyFox has options - deficit research or upgrade many units.

We needed courthouses badly in much of our empire (we had some cities with +10 "corruption") - I applied the whip where appropriate. We're not quite the military juggernaut I hoped to hand off, but we can far and away outproduce any Civ out there.

We went to war as the #1 civ against the #2 civ. Well, we're still #1 in score, but HC isn't even in second now. (IIRC Ghandi is). The in game graphs tell an interesting story, HC's gnp takes a dive (and Monty's along with it...). If not for a sudden burst of riflemen in his cities this last turn, the power graph would be turning embarassing. Anyway, here's some of the interesting screenshots from my turns:

I sent our carvel in to take a peek at MM's first city:

NEXT!

Vicky offered this trade and I was tempted:

She has researched Steel and we have Constitution as of the end of my turn now.

First turn of our war on HC involved moving SODs up to city borders:

(note that HC was already losing culture to Hatty here? I pillaged the town on the oil to nothing before Hatty's culture covered it. No sense giving her too much free!

We captured both in the first two turns of the war. Some forces went north and the rest boarded galleons and are on the southern tip of HC's land mass. We do have some top notch offensive units guarding these two cities and I just unloaded a few defenders (there's a flag in game). We need to get some garrison troops over soon so our offense can keep the momentum.

Two interesting pop ups:

I had removed all auto build orders as we need to better control what's on the field for us. Suprised to see this. Makes sense if we want to upgrade units with CR.

Lots of "productive russian citizens"

Coming up, the end of turn shots, the auto logs, and the save.

bobrath · Jan 27, 2007

The war front as of my last (10th) turn:

And the Unit layout as we know it:

Frigates are doing all they can to reduce defenses prior to our army arriving. I chose to walk the coast counter clock wise with the Sirian Doc. Only had to change that a bit when HC got MT... his only horse resource is located here:

If GreyFox isn't confident in those forces, you can reduce our defenses a bit in Vilcas and Tiwaniku and have them to this front in 3 turns. Just be careful of marauding cavalry. I haven't had to defend against them yet, but I see them in cities.

Here's the upcoming "big" battle:

There's a big counter attack coming from his capital. Not sure if he'll send it south against our stack (majority are still on the galleons) or if he'll push it west to attack/recapture the horses.

The Save

The CGC AutoLog:

Spoiler :

The AutoLogger:

Spoiler :

And finally, the all important "whos' on Top" screenshot:

According to demographics, we're the 3rd largest in population.

Cosmichail · Jan 27, 2007

Nice work Bob. Not surprised by the DP's, Gandhi getting demo and HC upgrading to rifles rather quickly. Always happens to me in games so I tend to prepare for it now. Therefore come on strong with a huge army. But that's me and I am sure Greyfox will find a way to deal with it.

I think we should take those trades from Vicky if we intend eventually to PA with her if we can. We have our work cut out for us. Good luck Greyfox.

Cosmichail · Jan 27, 2007

Just had a look at the save:

I see we are building CH's where main is crazy but wouldn't it be easier to get communism and go for state property which eliminates distance cost.

FYI KK/JC are both planning a war. -- both have a lot on their hands right now

Maybe Gandhi wasn't the lead tech before but he sure did a good job getting back in the game.

Also Vicky/Isabella are quite willing to go to war with HC. Isabella only wants Nationalism but I didn't check with Vicky since all we had was physics and we should trade that.

I think KK needs liberalism and has some nice trades.....

EDIT: I just thought about something which makes state property very attractive: workshops get 1 extra food. mmmmmm Yaroslav has a lot of workshops +1 food per tiles sounds like a nice pop help.

GreyFox · Jan 27, 2007

Looking good, looking good!

I would get as many of our "Pleased" to declare HC ... w ehave chosen not to join religions ... Mutual Struggle is now the only viable option to get as many friends as possible.

The price for war with HC:
- Vicky: 1890gold.
- Toku: 1880gold.
- JC: WHEOOHRN (we have enough on our hands right now)
- Hatty: 2240gold
- Izy: Nationalism

WE definitely don't have enough gold to buy everyone, so I plan to get the war rdie on some tech trade, or get back the gold by selling a tech. However, we are trailing behind in some of the more crucial tech, like corporation, economics, and replaceable parts.

thoughts?

bobrath · Jan 28, 2007

I'm torn on getting help in the war via mutual struggle. I hate losing cities to opportunistic AIs. Add to that the fact that already AIs are horrible at amphibious warfare and how much help are we looking to get here? Or are we just bringing them in for the + of mutual struggle?

If we just want the positive, I'd weigh the benefit of the lone positive point against what we give up. Lets only bring in those that will A) go to friendly very easily and B) are sitting the fence in terms of voting for us versus Tokugowa. (assuming he's our opponent).

Yes State religion would help it only addresses distance cost and not # of cities cost) but a couple things we have to start thinking about with civic switches:
- The 2+ turns of anarchy
- Switching away form a civic that is getting us bonus points with AIs. Nothing worse then tossing away +5 favorite civic points for an upgrade in economy.

GreyFox · Jan 28, 2007

I think we definitely need to get some mutual struggle relationship going to get friends. It is more of the diplomatic + points I'm looking for, not exactly hoping for AI's help military wise.

I am not too keen to go after State Property myself, I think the benefits is not worth the cost currently. In relation to favorite civics, not too many civ has favorite civics in the economy section. Let's see:

Cyrus, Vicky, JC: Representation
Gandhi: Uni Suff
Hatty: HR
Izzy: Police State

Only Toku (Mercantilism), Mansa (Free Market), Mao (State Property) has favorite in economic civic. As long as we stay in Rep, we should be fine.

--

GreyFox · Jan 28, 2007

Desktop crashed, spend half the day fixing the problem. Anyway, I'd played half a turn ... these are the moves I made so far:

I am planning to bring in Vicky + Hatty a swell. For Hatty, I am trying to offer SciMethod for War + Economics. For Vicky, we have no choice but to give her the money, unless people are comfortable with giving her physics.

Since we are throwing Chemistry to the market, might perform a trade with Cyrus or Gandhi to get Replaceable Parts.

Let me know the teams' input on letting Chemistry out. Will complete my turns tomorrow night.

bobrath · Jan 28, 2007

Chemistry is basically already out (imo) since there are multiple AIs that (appear) to have it. Get what techs we can in exchange for it. I'm going back and forth on the Physics to Vicky route - for war we get a nice mutual struggle bonus, but we can get (at least during my turns) some nice techs for it.

Remember with MT we get cossaks...

Cosmichail · Jan 29, 2007

Remember with MT we get cossaks...

Hello I knew we were forgetting something. Let's utilize these puppies against the cavalry out there no match.

Re: state property

It would make a big difference but ok. You DO realize we are still in decentralization which I am baffled??? We have TGL and we don't go for economics to get "free trade" and get that extra trade route. We have some 20+ cities and an extra trade route in each would make a big difference. We are bleeding coin so it's probably good for either. Yes the 2 turns of anarchy is a loss but necessary as sooner or later we will need to change our economics. We're aren't in the middle of any critical builds (wonders) and 2 turns wouldn't make a big difference in military production so I think we should consider either: state property or free market.

OK another question, who's in a DP I didn't see any in the diplo screen???

Yes to both Izzy/toku and vicky too. Let's do it and get the bonuses from it.

bobrath · Jan 29, 2007

Vicky and Izzy are in one DP and the other is.... jeez can't remember off top of my head. I want to say Fredrick and someone.

GreyFox · Jan 29, 2007

I didn't notice any DP either ... but with Vicky and Izzy both in the war with us, the DP is broken.

War

Anyway, in addition to Toku and Izzy, whom I bought into war with Nationalism with some change to spare, I got Vicky and Hatty to jump on the bandwagon as well, conceding some gold to Hatty while getting a tech each from them.

So, in summary, we have four war allies hunting down the frightened cat: Toku, Hatty, Izzy and Vicky. Funny, women are more vicious then males in this game.

Toku and Vicky did send in some ships, and Hatty having land access, send in quite a respectable force of cavs and rifles. No doubt she used the money we gave her for some upgrades.

In 1559 AD, Vitcos and Ollantaytambo were liberated.

I think I have lost 2-3 troops for these two cities, but not certain abt that .... anyway the autolog would reveal that. The good thing about "No city razing" option is that you get to take over the city with the courthouses, ighthouses, etc in tact. Of-course, the downside is that you have to keep city like Mycenae (see pic later) which should have bobrath tearing half his hair off (can you say Nara?), and I think, we don't get any gold for capturing cities.

A few years later, the perfect usage of the Sirian Doctrine netted us Andahuaylas as well.

I think I lost a cannon here. From here, we cannot go on with the Sirian Doctrine, since the next coastal city is Cuzzco, which is insanely defended. Plus, we would like to remove Machu Picchu first before hitting on Cuzzco. Here are the forces at Machu Picchu:

Next player should be able to take it next turn, and have troops move up to the capital city from there, and some cannons from Andahuaylas can then be ferried north ... the land and sea-faring troops should try to land on the same turn to avoid being picked off by the defense. You can possibly let Hatty take the blunt as well, but she seems to be interested in pillaging those cottages that would soon to be ours ... so it might not be a good idea to take our own sweet time.

Other Civil Matters

And here is the Nara city in this game:

Actually it is not too bad, having iron and silver. But the city can never ever work on them and grow. Later half of my turnset, war weariness is starting to creep in, and I have a worker mining the silver as one of the way to combat it.

And yes, I put in a defender as well

You would notice our 2 military production city are not building military, because of war-weariness. I have them start a temple and a market each. Yes, market brings happiness, plus our capitol could benefit from the +25% boost as well. Furthermore, the culture slider is moved to 10%.

We got a scientists, I am not too sure how to spend him.

An academy or super-scientists at this stage seems wasteful, but we don't need fission. Or maybe we do, we could sell it for money, diplo points, or buy war allies in future war (I am sure we need a few more wars to get to the stage where we could win the elections).

Oh, by the way, since I brought Hatty, I also traded away Chemistry to Gandhi for RR.

I also slowed down Radio, thus learning it in 4 turns instead of 2.

Seeing as we have monopoly on radio and we still need a few more diplo points, I go for steam power first. (NOTE: Don't Ever Go For Corporation). We can build the Eiffel/Broadway, I suggest we do so for the added happiness.

And yes, cosmic, I have revolted. It is not 2 turns, but 3. I did not revolt immediately however, preferring to produce some cossacks first.

Here is the relations screen, and we got our first friend.

>>> The Save (1580AD) <<<

Spoiler autolog :

GreyFox · Jan 29, 2007

Other things:

- we may consider building the Nat Epic in Sparta instead, it is coming up nicely as a GP-Farm with 3 seafood resources, cows, and some hammers to spare.

- on building wonders: Eiffel vs Broadway: although broadway is cheaper, eiffel is fast with iron double boost. But Effiel can help in happiness if culture slider is non-zero. I don't know whether is it worth it or not.

- our defenses is giving me a very uneasy time ... but we do have some crash, so if needed, we could do emergency upgrade of the lone defenders. So keep those cash around.

- After steam-power, we may need to start mass media.

- we have a revolt in Shandong ...

I am starting to get more and more irritated by Mao. The Jewish holy city is about to grow in less than 5 turns, once it grow, whip the bank.

--

Roster
-- Cosmichail == UP
-- Bobrath == On Deck
-- Scowler == Hopefully, its weekend by then
-- GreyFox == Just Played

-- Dot == OoP til March (Game should be over by then

)
-- namliaM == Mooning over the Honey
-- FuRRie / Robo Kai == obviously no longer interested

--

Cosmichail · Jan 30, 2007

Looking good Greyfox and I understand no corporation so we don't loose lighthouse bonus. Will have to have a good look and likely play tomorrow sometime. Got it......

Cosmichail · Jan 30, 2007

Check it out to see if we can sell anything or make any trades and see we can sell liberalism to Saladin for 190 gold

Hit enter and as predicted by Greyfox we should take Machu Pichu and do in one turn. I think one cannon lost but we take it. Start moving our forces towards Cuzco and speed up taking out HC as WW is affecting us as well as emancipation civ causing a lot of it too. Load up the frigates and galleons with cannons to meet up with forces once they arrive at Cuzco.

1592

We make this deal with Freddy:

Catch this message and see that Toku makes peace with HC already. The girls are still at it and keep going to the end of my turnset. Hatty has shown the most in the way of troops and was surprised to see that Cuzco wasnt that heavily defended anymore. I think Hatty weakened and even took some out.

1598

Cuzco falls fairly easy and we loose one cannon. The rest of the cannons took out many defenders even at 30-40%. Only one grennie was used and a cossack but the cannons took out the most.

Using the ships again grab a force and see that I can still take Huamanga during my turnset.

1601ad

We make this deal with Mansa. Why I am not sure but I thought if in the chance we dont have coal we will be getting it via trading.

We also sell banking to Washington:

1607ad
(9th turn)

We discover steam power and start on communism. I feel we need it to get a PA happening with Vicky. Only two turns into it so change it if feel it necessary but I think the sooner we get it (good trading tech too) the faster we know where we stand on the PA.

1610ad

I started Eiffel tower in Moscow. We dont need any more troops some are gathering at Moscow and HC is almost finished. Only one city left on Hattys mainland and another city on a island south of our position.

We move on Huamanga and loose another cannons but also take if fairly easy after that.

GW asks us to cancel deals with Monty but we are getting 8 gold from him so decline.

Only Kufah left on the mainland and the Island city of Vilcabamba.

I didnt list the builds and hope that the Autologger will suffice for that. Good luck Bob

Turnlog and save to follow

Cosmichail · Jan 30, 2007

Spoiler :

Here is the save:

Save

GreyFox · Jan 30, 2007

Well done, Cosmic. HC should be gone by the next turnset ... I would suggest eliminating him, but if the team wants to leave him alone exiled in the south, I don't really mind.

According to the log (which, with all due respect to the CFC staff, I would prefer to read the HoF Autolog than the CFC-extracted log), Hatty made peace even earlier than Toku :lol:

I suspect the main reason you want to go for Communism is still state property (which is a perfectly valid reason, BTW)

, because I don't think we would stay in DP for long. We must keep expanding our populations (and diminishing the negative voters' pop) if we hope to win this diplomatically. Of-course it is not too late to change our objective to Space Race

In fact, we might want to build the UN soon enough, and consider going space race as a back-up plan.

I disagree with the comment that we don't need more troops. We need to start assembling a force to hammer on Monty. If we do not want to go State Property, we could certainly use the Versallies. We have no time to waste. We have to keep at it and grow grow grow. Consider getting Biology.

We could also consider building the Forbidden Palace in one of the newly-liberated HC land.

Bobrath is UP. Play it before Friday, I will get a go before Scowler

--

SGOTM 03 - Team VQ

Make it so ...

Dark Lord of The Sith

Make it so ...

Emperor

Emperor

Dark Lord of The Sith

Dark Lord of The Sith

Make it so ...

Emperor

Make it so ...

Make it so ...

Emperor

Dark Lord of The Sith

Emperor

Make it so ...

Make it so ...

Dark Lord of The Sith

Dark Lord of The Sith

Dark Lord of The Sith

Make it so ...

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