SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

Compromise · Jan 17, 2007

Iainuki's summarizes very well the approach I would lean toward (much more articulately than I could have put it!). But I think it's best to have both his and Lee's techniques on the table for discussion. Good intel can substitute for preparedness.

As this is a succession game, I think the most important thing is the discussion and being open to other's opinions. In the end, though, it is up to the turnset player to decide what to actually do.

For the record, I don't have a problem with the paper-thin defense. Especially if we have some info on what Mao is up to.

LKendter · Jan 17, 2007

I will take my turn tonight. I will declare war on Greece with the provision that I am changing civics to Nationalism turn 1 and I will draft the cities hard if I even think a ship may land.

I will land first to take our Heroic Epic / Globe Theater / draft abuse city. We appear to have agreed on Athens. With building both of those we will quickly have large amount of Russian culture in those cities.

It looks like I am picked a tough match for team members. I totally disagree with the paper thin defenses that two of the other members like. I have been screwed to many times on guessing the diplomatic situation and getting an unexpected war front. I still plan to and thicken our homeland defenses.

Compromise · Jan 17, 2007

I actually think Nationalism is a good compromise and allows some decent resistance in the event of a surprise attack.

Iainuki put it well early on when he said that an unpleasant fact of the "game of the month"-style of competition is that the winning team will probably have attempted a risky strategy and had it pay off. Some teams who attempt a risky strategy will get burned and not win, but playing it safe all the time probably guarantees that we won't finish first.

We may even have not risked enough since we've started our assault on the AIs rather late. But, we'll see. Maybe Kodii is right about many of the other teams, and they won't be able to finish in the 3-month time deadline!

Good luck, LK. Looking forward to reading your turnset report.

LKendter · Jan 18, 2007

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_AD1400_01.Civ4SavedGame

1352 AD
We have 12 cities, and just 10 workers. I disagree that we have to many. If anything, we are going to be short when lumber mills and rails arrive. I certainly don't want to work under the assumption that we win the UN vote the first time.

I swap Novgorod to Taj Mahal. If we didn't already decide to save the GE for the UN, I would rush this with him.

Since we let Rome live I am going to push ASAP theaters there. We need to 2 more for the Globe, and the faster we get culture in Roman cities the sooner the draft is a valid option.

Looking at the relationships screen, my big worry is turning out to be true. We have *zero* potential votes from other civs at this time.

I revolt to nationalism. Now I need to get the former Roman cities eligible for the draft.

1358 AD
(IT) I tell Gandhi to shove his demands.

1364 AD
The insanity begins, and I declare war on Greece. Now I need to pray a stray ship of his isn't near former Rome, since the draft doesn't work yet in those cities.

1370 AD
Athens falls at the cost of 2 catapults. Stupid city lacks a barracks, so it will take longer then I want to get Heroic Epic on-line.

1376 AD
(IT) Silly Victoria expects us to cancel deals with the Inca whom like us better.
Then Washington with lousy relations expects astronomy for free. :rotfl:

1382 AD
Well this is a pain I didn't think about. The Chinese borders just totally engulfed Athens.

1388 AD
(IT) The Germans are trash, and Louis at least somewhat likes us. I cancel all deals with Germany.
Mongolia hates us, so I refuse to give him printing press. He then proceeds to declare war on Cyrus.

Well here is a bonus conquest. One tile toward domination is worth another city.

1394 AD
I really hate binary science. I calculated one turn off, and don't know if I can finish MT with cash on hand.
(IT) Here comes the idiocy. I am so tired of Civs offering worthless divine right in my games.

1400 AD
Of course, the forums have to be down at the moment. Well so much for confirming what the scientist is to be used for.

I give Huayna liberalism to get guilds, and $170. The only thing available now is divine right.

Sparta is captured. It solves the problem of 100% cash for the final turn of MT.

Rather then delay the game another night I am stopping here. I couldn't get to forums to figure out where to head past Greece.

=======================

Summary:

Spoiler :

Compromise · Jan 18, 2007

Real life is swamping me today. Looks like a good turnset. Did you keep Lahore? (I didn't know we had the choice to disband it!)

The swamping of Athens in Chinese culture implies that Mao is our next target. Do we have the forces to do it?

And we now have a great scientist to use up, is that right? I recommend saving him until we make a run for Sci Method, Physics, Electricity. It seems to me that we could save money for a long time to do that.

LKendter · Jan 18, 2007

Compromise said:
Real life is swamping me today. Looks like a good turnset. Did you keep Lahore?

Yes, I guess my comment wasn't clear enough.

Sir Bugsy · Jan 18, 2007

I tink we need a lot more military before we do much of anything else. Please take with with the newbie grain of salt: If this was a personal game, I'd have at least two of my top five cities building military at all times. if we aren't producing a vet unit every three turns or so, we are painting a target on our chest. We need to shuttle those guys over to Greece as soon as they are trained.

Compromise · Jan 18, 2007

More military might be a very good idea, especially against an AI leader like Mao.

Just to throw a little wrench into the works: Should we consider Rome--instead of Athens--for our Globe/Heroic Epic City? It has seafood, pigs, farmable land and an iron mine.

EDIT: Oops. I miscounted the food surplus (I had counted surplus at Athens and total food at Rome). Athens is the better spot. However, if we're concerned about a delay or if we don't want to worry about Mao, Rome is an alternative.

LKendter · Jan 19, 2007

Moscow is on permanent military duty. In fact, in shipped more units over to Greece during my turn. In addition iron island city is also slowing building them. With that city in growth config it is taking it awhile.

This is part of the reason I did agree to hit agree against my better judgement. We need to get our heroic epic city going. Athens should be able to take constant whipping and / or draft after globe theater.

Compromise · Jan 19, 2007

Okay, I've had a bit more of a chance to look at the save. I think we're in pretty good shape. The religious fracturing of the world has kept any band of AIs from getting together and getting too much technological headway. I hope it stays that way. Our tech lead looks great.

There's no way our current military is going to work with Mao. We need cossacks before we take him on. It looks like we're about 10 turns or so--since we need gunpowder too--from starting our buildup.

On the Roman continent, I think Antium and Rome need to be devoted to military. (Why is the former building a library and the latter a marketplace?) Neapolis might be able to fight back some Indian culture with a theater. But maybe not enough to get the 2nd seafood.

If we make peace with Alex as soon as he'll talk, that will likely incur another "war on our friend" with Gandhi and maybe others. We might not get their votes after all.

Our military cities can build catapults until cossacks are available. Other cities should probably build granaries, courthouses, harbors and maybe libraries. Then, they should just pump longbows to serve as city garrisons in newly captured cities. No need for barracks. If they have any kind of food, they can run scientists with a library. Cities with decent production can build a barracks instead of a library and then crank cossacks.

Only well-cottaged AI cities should get much of a commerce infrastructure. The rest just need to reduce their costs via courthouses and harbors, then grow while producing garrison troops.

I think we should grab that northern island and have it build a granary and workboats. With all the religions in the world, it should have one spread to it before too long.

For the tech plan, we have a great scientist and a great engineer. Do we want to use the engineer to rush the Taj or save it for the UN? My original thinking was that we wouldn't build the Taj, but now that we've decided to do so, we should think about when it would be best to do it. We could time the building of the Taj with the discovery of gunpowder. Then, we could build cossacks at a good clip.

The UN is 1500H and an engineer will probably give us ~1200 of that. That's a lot of turns, so we should consider which will slow us down the most: acquiring cities or building the UN.

I suggest stockpiling great scientists and cash after we get MT/gunpowder. Our next techs are Sci Method, Physics(gives GS), Electricity (can burn GS), Radio and Mass Media. The only other techs I can see wanting are Banking/Economics for Free Trade (I've changed my mind, I like FT better than mercantilism) and chemistry for Frigates.

That means that after gunpowder, we don't need any other techs for our military strategy. And the next tech--Sci Method--will hurt us by obsoleting the Great Library. We could literally stockpile cash (our commerce cities should have markets in them and maybe grocers too) until we have enough cash to research all 5 techs at once. Why hurry Sci Method? Any scientists we discover will be happy to hurry our research on Sci Method, Physics and Electricity.

I forgot to look to see where the Great Lighthouse is. Do we know? Is it capturable? We don't plan to get Corporation, so it could last the rest of the game for us.

We should continue to keep an eye out for places where we can plant cities that will have good seafood. Working seafood plus maybe a few farms is a good way to get population without much land. There might be some spots on Mao's island.

It's looking like I might not get another chance to look at the save over the weekend. I hope I saw enough.

EDIT:
Okay, I glanced at the save again: Cuzco (Inca) has the Great Lighthouse. That's now a big priority for me. Two extra trade routes in every city is 4 (base) -6 (w/cheap harbor) gpt per city. That will basically finance our expansion. If, while we're building up our cossack forces, Mao attacks someone else, we should consider leaving him alone and attacking Huayna first instead.

Also, looking at the UN which has no production doubler: Moscow has a max production of 18hpt base, plus 25% for a forge. That's 22hpt. The 1200H a Great Engineer will likely give us is...55T! Wow. I doubt we'll save 55 turns by going to a golden age, so I'm leaning toward saving the great engineer. Switching back to Bureaucracy brings that to 31hpt, saving us about 15T. We could build some workshops at the end to make that a little better. But still, we're looking at around 30T minimum that a single great engineer is going to save us at the end of the game.

Kodii · Jan 19, 2007

I haven't had the time to take a really good look. I think we need to prepare a war as soon as we can get our Cossacks out. Is Mao the consensus? Or would we rather go for the Incans? Because of the steps and choices we have made, we probably have to depend on ourselves to win diplomatically. Remember this:

The AI has three choices: Vote for us, vote for our opponent, abstain.

From the way it sounds, only the really good friends of our opponent will vote for them, we vote for ourselves and everybody else abstains. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't happen, especially for the Secretary-General vote. We WILL get some votes, especially if an AI hates our opponent.

The actual Diplomatic Victory vote will be different. A lot of AIs will abstain, but theres also the possibility that they'll vote for us if they don't like/hate our opponent and like us. For example, Louis.

The next person to play will probably just build, and tech up to Cossacks. If we continue not to hear from grangerm for a while, I'll play.

grangerm · Jan 19, 2007

Hey, sorry for being MIA. I will be able to play this weekend, though I will be out of town (again!) from Jan 29-Feb 2.

I don't think there's that much to talk about. As people have noted, we aren't ready to wage war on Mao, this turnset should just be getting ready to build some cossacks. Does anyone know if knights being built will automatically convert to cossacks when we get gunpowder? Not a big deal, but we can save a couple turns on a couple cossacks.

I like that the last player started the theatre in Athens. I'm pretty sure we get a turn of production coming out of resistance, so we can whip it w/o the penalty the first turn. It's always a good idea to tell resisting cities what to do even before they come out of resistance (at least I think

).

I think Mao next is a no brainer. Even if we plan to go after HC next, we should take out northern China to get a better foothold on the continent. The only problem with Mao is that two of his friends are Louis and HC, two of our best friends. They'll surely give us a -1 for declaring.

What about the Forbidden Palace? Have we had any discussions about where/when?

I am in favor of saving our GE for the UN.

According to what I see our next GS will get us Sci. Method, then Physics, then Chem (once we finish Gunpowder), then Electricity. Since getting Sci. Method will obsolete the GL, should we research something else after MT and Gunpowder to prolong its use? I think we'll be getting to the UN way sooner than we are close to getting voted in, so we can delay Sci. Method w/o delaying our win. We could go MT -> Gunpowder -> Chem -> Sci Method -> Physics -> Electricity. We have one GS, could use it later on Physics and we could probably get another from St. Pete by the time we finish Sci. Method, which could also be used on Physics. Then the free GS from Physics could be used to help with Electricity, as long as we've already got Chem. Plus Chem would get us Frigates to help bombard and control the seas.

I plan to continue to grow St. Pete, while adding its 2 scientists back. Should I plan to whip Oxford if it become availible during my turnset?

Compromise · Jan 19, 2007

grangerm said:
... Does anyone know if knights being built will automatically convert to cossacks when we get gunpowder? Not a big deal, but we can save a couple turns on a couple cossacks.

That's a good question. I'm not able to run a test game, but if anyone can, this would be good to know.

I like that the last player started the theatre in Athens. I'm pretty sure we get a turn of production coming out of resistance, so we can whip it w/o the penalty the first turn. It's always a good idea to tell resisting cities what to do even before they come out of resistance (at least I think ).

I agree.

I think Mao next is a no brainer. Even if we plan to go after HC next, we should take out northern China to get a better foothold on the continent. The only problem with Mao is that two of his friends are Louis and HC, two of our best friends. They'll surely give us a -1 for declaring.

Yep. Maybe during the buildup to take on Mao we could take Thermopylae? Alex seems to be friends with Gandhi and each time we declare war, it's another diplo penalty with his friends. Then, peace with Alex will be good.

What about the Forbidden Palace? Have we had any discussions about where/when?

Hmmm. I don't have a thought for this. Maybe in the middle of the Mali/Egyptian/Incan continent (Thebes?) since I assume we'll take the whole thing.

I am in favor of saving our GE for the UN.

According to what I see our next GS will get us Sci. Method, then Physics, then Chem (once we finish Gunpowder), then Electricity. Since getting Sci. Method will obsolete the GL, should we research something else after MT and Gunpowder to prolong its use? I think we'll be getting to the UN way sooner than we are close to getting voted in, so we can delay Sci. Method w/o delaying our win. We could go MT -> Gunpowder -> Chem -> Sci Method -> Physics -> Electricity. We have one GS, could use it later on Physics and we could probably get another from St. Pete by the time we finish Sci. Method, which could also be used on Physics. Then the free GS from Physics could be used to help with Electricity, as long as we've already got Chem. Plus Chem would get us Frigates to help bombard and control the seas.

I think we should trade for chemistry once an AI gets it. I think the better use for our money is in upgrades and to rush all the way to Mass Media. Is there any reason not to save up the 15,000 gold (or whatever the number is) that we need to research all the way from Sci Method through to Mass Media? We can deduct some time depending on how many great scientists and/or artists we have through then.

We should be able to estimate that amount. Taking new cities will yield some cash, but will also cost us in maintenance until we can get infrastructure up.

I plan to continue to grow St. Pete, while adding its 2 scientists back. Should I plan to whip Oxford if it become availible during my turnset?

Whipping a wonder, even a national wonder, isn't very efficient, but it might be the best we can do. Do you want to try the two-whip trick whereby much of the overflow production goes to the wonder? Without a forge, you want to have 45+ hammers left in the build when you whip. With a forge, I think the number is 56+. (Those numbers should probably be checked!)

Basically, I think you're right: the goal for the next turnset is to prepare for massive cossack building.

Kodii · Jan 19, 2007

Compromise
greggo (?)
LKendter (just played)
grangerm (UP)
Kodii (on deck)
Sir Bugsy
Iainuki

I should revive the summary post...

grangerm · Jan 19, 2007

Compromise said:
Do you want to try the two-whip trick whereby much of the overflow production goes to the wonder?

But don't you waste the hammers that you put into the build before the whip, that could have gone towards the wonder? I understand that you get a unit and overflow towards the wonder, but I think in this case it might just be better to whip the wonder.

The way I see it is that of the whip hammers, you'd only be putting ~45/2 = 23 hammers/pop point towards the wonder. It's a 50% penalty, so if you just whipped the national wonder, it would net 33 hammers/pop. Plus you only get 1 whip penalty, though in this case that might not be a big difference cause I think St. Pete had 11 happy faces. But either way, I dont think its a major difference.

As for tech, I think I'll just finish MT, get gunpowder ASAP then shut it off. We can talk about how long we want to run 0% later, it's not really important now. One problem with having a lot of gold would be the constant demands and associated the diplo penalties. Normally, I wouldn't care, but since we are trying to win diplomatically, we need to minimize the negative modifiers.

Also, when it comes down to preparing for the UN vote, we should do what can to ensure that our opponent will be someone with few good friends if we can. We might want to smack opponents around until we get a desired opponent next in population.

Compromise · Jan 20, 2007

grangerm said:
But don't you waste the hammers that you put into the build before the whip, that could have gone towards the wonder? I understand that you get a unit and overflow towards the wonder, but I think in this case it might just be better to whip the wonder.

The way I see it is that of the whip hammers, you'd only be putting ~45/2 = 23 hammers/pop point towards the wonder. It's a 50% penalty, so if you just whipped the national wonder, it would net 33 hammers/pop. Plus you only get 1 whip penalty, though in this case that might not be a big difference cause I think St. Pete had 11 happy faces. But either way, I dont think its a major difference.

I think of it this way: either you waste 50% of the hammers because you're whipping a wonder, or you waste 50% of the hammers because you're building something other than the wonder. Of course, you have to be building something that costs between 45H and 88H. Otherwise, you spend more than 50% of your hammers on something other than the wonder.

Another point is that when you're whipping throughout the build, you're getting your hammers from lower population. That means the conversion of food to hammers is more efficient.

The price is a lot of micromanagement and more whip unhappiness. We probably have enough happiness and enough delay between potential whips for St Pete that the whip unhappiness doesn't matter. Of course, since the technique isn't all or nothing, some people can try it and others pass on it.

As for tech, I think I'll just finish MT, get gunpowder ASAP then shut it off. We can talk about how long we want to run 0% later, it's not really important now. One problem with having a lot of gold would be the constant demands and associated the diplo penalties. Normally, I wouldn't care, but since we are trying to win diplomatically, we need to minimize the negative modifiers.

Looking at this from the other angle, this might be a way to buy votes from the civs we want to befriend!

Also, when it comes down to preparing for the UN vote, we should do what can to ensure that our opponent will be someone with few good friends if we can. We might want to smack opponents around until we get a desired opponent next in population.

We should make sure not to complete the UN before we have >50% of the world's population. That way we can be sure to be the secretary general. That way, we don't care who our opponent is. Any votes we can get from a friendly civ are cities we don't have to capture.

Of course, we'd rather not have an ally be our opponent. Toku might make a good runner-up.

Compromise · Jan 20, 2007

I whipped up a quick test game to test this: yes, knights in the build queue automatically upgrade to cossacks when you get Mil Trad / Gunpowder. So, we can save a few turns by starting knights before MT/Gunpowder.

Kodii, since the next turnset is likely just prep for cossacks, you could save the summary till after that.

grangerm · Jan 20, 2007

Compromise said:
Looking at this from the other angle, this might be a way to buy votes from the civs we want to befriend!

I hadn't thought about that. So as long as the demand is reasonable (ie, small amounts of money), we can give in and get a +1 tribute/help a friend bonus.

When are we planning to build our fishing villages? We want to have enough time to whip at least a granary and lighthouse and then grow them up nice and big to help with our pop %, w/o impacting our land area %.

As for whipping Oxford vs building it with overflow whips, it will take us around 30 turns to whip longbows and put the overflow into Oxford. It would net us 5 or 6 unpromoted longbows. If we whip Oxford ASAP, it should be around 8 or 9 turns from now, with no longbows, less pop points whipped, less unhappiness, so St. Pete is quicker to be able to be the GP farm it is supposed to be. Based on this, I will just whip Oxford unless anyone else has strong opinions on the matter.

Compromise said:
knights in the build queue automatically upgrade to cossacks

OK, great. Thanks for testing it, I will make sure that our military cities get a headstart on a couple cossacks.

I will be playing sometime today.

Compromise · Jan 20, 2007

grangerm said:
When are we planning to build our fishing villages? We want to have enough time to whip at least a granary and lighthouse and then grow them up nice and big to help with our pop %, w/o impacting our land area %.

I think after we take care of Mao and/or Huayna

As for whipping Oxford vs building it with overflow whips, it will take us around 30 turns to whip longbows and put the overflow into Oxford. It would net us 5 or 6 unpromoted longbows. If we whip Oxford ASAP, it should be around 8 or 9 turns from now, with no longbows, less pop points whipped, less unhappiness, so St. Pete is quicker to be able to be the GP farm it is supposed to be. Based on this, I will just whip Oxford unless anyone else has strong opinions on the matter.

Wow. I didn't expect that. Well, faster is certainly better.

I will be playing sometime today.

Cool! Maybe make a note of who our possible friends will be in case we get demands from them. That'll be helpful for a summary post.

Iainuki · Jan 20, 2007

I'd really like everyone to take at the recommendations for city specialization I wrote up here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4986445&postcount=760. I think I have some good suggestions, particularly about making the Roman continent productive. Looking at the save, I'm going to make some more suggestions:

St. Pete: I vote for whatever method gets us Oxford the fastest. Then, grow it until it can run all of its scientists.
Yaroslavl': Do we want to optimize this city for growth? It doesn't have any commerce infrastructure, the only tiles it has to work are coast, and we need military pumps.
Antium: Ok, I can see the argument to get some culture here for drafting, but I really think this city should be a military pump. We have enough silk, I'd farm over that one.
Neapolis: I think this city should remain on commerce infrastructure, with food/production/commerce emphasized so it works the mine. We should consider whipping in a monastery to help it win back the clams from Calcutta.
Cumae: I think we should farm over its silk and give it the other grassland farm from Antium. I don't think it needs a theater: it will never have enough food for drafting, IMO, and it needs to focus on commerce infrastructure.
Rome: This city has lots of commerce and not much production. I think it should stay on infrastructure.
Athens: This city is going to have a lot of starvation when it comes out of rebellion. Can we consider whipping something more pop-intensive, either a library for culture or a grocer for maximum pop-to-hammers before they starve? I strongly feel Athens should be our Heroic Epic/Globe Theater city. No other city has comparable food and lack of other good things to do.
Sparta: Probably ought to whip a theater here.

Generally, I think we should be conservative in our use of courthouses. At the moment, our break-even point is between 30% and 40% science, so when we expect a city will soon generate more than 20 or so commerce, we should put in marketplaces and grocers before courthouses.

I'm not sure where we should put the Forbidden Palace. This is something we need to talk about. No one has built Versailles yet; its placement should be a consideration in both our future conquests, and our positioning of the Forbidden Palace.

My feeling about war with Mao is this: if Mao declares on someone else, we should think about going after Inca first for Cuzco and the Great Lighthouse. However, I don't think this is going to happen: I think Mao is going to declare on us, so we should prepare to overrun him with cossacks. Either way, I don't think we should declare war until we have some cossacks on the ground.

I don't think we should make peace with Alex unless we have to: even our biggest cities aren't getting war weariness, so there's no incentive to make peace. If we fight with Mao next, we can take out Thermopylae as part of that conquest.

Some of our decent friends should vote for us for UN Secretary-General. I don't think we should count on any votes for diplomatic victory.

SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

Emperor

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Emperor

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Emperor

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Civ.D.

Emperor

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Emperor

Ka ICE

Warlord

Emperor

Ka ICE

Warlord

Emperor

Emperor

Warlord

Emperor

Warlord

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