SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

Compromise · Feb 4, 2007

Nice playing, Bugsy. You're the guy I'd want in the cockpit on a rough flight.

I suspect the most challenging logistics we'll face for the next few turns are how to handle whatever ships Kublai has, figure out what Victoria's Secret is, and handle the fact that we have no ships on the eastern side of Egypt and no Panama Canal to quickly get any there. I wonder if "Better AI" favors the formation of canal cities?

Looking forward to the next installment.

Sir Bugsy · Feb 5, 2007

Part Two

1667 (con’t) – The English are patrolling their coastline. Not movement towards our shores. Set up a frigate screen to the northwest of our mainland (where the Mongolians are). Still keep an eye on Vicky. Whip Pi-Rammesses and Athens. I’m going to get a settler out of Athens next.

IBT – No response from either foe.

1670 – Marching on Memphis. There are seven defenders (3 rifles, 2 LB, 1 pike, 1 cat). Hatty has shifted everything west. Eastern cities are weakly defended. Whip a barracks at Pi-Rammesses. I upgrade our cats in such a way that we won’t lose a turn of movement.

1673 – I ship our cannon to Memphis via the sea. I now have most of the sea lanes that communicate with our lands monitored.

IBT – two Mongol frigates show up at Yekaterinburg.

1676 – Move to take out the Mongol frigates. Drop off the cannon north of Memphis and a cassock south to prevent any more defenders reaching the Egyptian capitol.

IBT – South of Memphis we go one for two, losing the Cossack. We also go one for two at Yekaterinburg as we lose our frigate.

1679 – Send the remaining Mongol frigate to Davy Jones’ Locker.

@ Memphis – The cannons reduce the defenses to zero. I’ll have to check the log, but I think we only lost one Cossack. With the pinch promotion (gunpowder) they are really effective against rifles. We also got lucky with three retreats.

Hatty has just about emptied Machu Picchu. There is only a catapult defending. If she doesn’t dramatically reinforce it during the IBT, we’ll have it.

Whip the forge in Elephantine. We also shift to full blast on science. We’ll have electricity in six turns.

IBT – Hatty drops off three units next to Pi-Ramesses.

1682 – We kill the three invaders. Then at Machu Picchu

With all that grassland, I figure I’d keep it for the time being. We can always give it back to HC later.

Thee are seven defenders in Alexandria as we start marching on the final Egyptian city on this island.

IBT Mansa steps forward with a nice offer. Rifling & 80G for communism. After having him throw in him WM, I take it.

1685 – Found Orenburg as our coastal farming city. Still marching on Alexandria.

1688 – Whip a barracks in Thebes. Marching, marching. Thebes gives us 33 beakers and cuts a turn off electricity. We begin the bombardment of Alexandria as everyone else catches up.

1691 – Alexandria’s defenses are down to zero but our troops need another turn to get into position.

IBT – We lose a frigate in the strait between India and Japan. Hatty thinks a straight up peace treaty is a good idea. How about after I move into your palace in Alexandria?

1694 – Here is one of our Cossacks leading our triumphant arrival into Alexandria:

I suicided a cannon to begin the attack, but in hindsight I probably didn’t need to do that.

I ferried some workers over to Egypt to rebuild the countryside. HC pillaged her bare.

After Action - I think we can make peace with Hatty now. It will take a while to get to her remaining two cities and I’m not sure they are worth it. I also think we should go after Mansa as our next foe. I will follow Compromise’s lead and leave many units unmoved so the team can decide. Electricity comes in next turn.

We need to get several units with amphibious assault promotion if we want some of these one tile cities.

Some pictures, the save and the log to follow.

Sir Bugsy · Feb 5, 2007

Passdown log:

Here is where the Mongol frigate was:

Kublai might have some invasion forces with him.

Here is our northwest screen:

We need a few frigates playing zone defense behind it.

Same to the east:

We could use another ship at white dot.

I have a similar set up along the English coast, but you get the idea.

As to who to attack next: Huayna is closer to our troops, so that makes the most sense. We will need a few turns to get into position and get our new lands defensible.

I would take Tiwanuku first and then hold on for a counter along the Alexandria Tiwanuku axis. After the counters, I would work counter clockwise starting with olly-olly-oxenfree.

A campaign against Mansa is much easier given the layout of the island.

Sir Bugsy · Feb 5, 2007

Save: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_AD1694_01.Civ4SavedGame

Autolog, part 1:

Spoiler :

Sir Bugsy · Feb 5, 2007

Autolog, part 2

Spoiler :

LKendter · Feb 5, 2007

Compromise
LKendter
grangerm (perma skip)
Kodii (UP)
Sir Bugsy (just played)
Iainuki (on deck)

Iainuki · Feb 5, 2007

This isn't directed at anyone in particular, but it's a problem I've seen developing in the last couple turn sets which I feel we must address.

We have two prerequisites for victory in this game: the completion of the UN, and acquiring 60% of the population. I'll take these in turn.

First, we're not that far away from the tech we need to finish the game. We have Radio and Mass Media to go, then we're done. After that, we'll continue research mostly to keep up on military techs with the AIs. (We need to talk about that, too, but that discussion is not urgent for the next turn set.) We have a clear and commanding tech lead, a tech lead that will only grow as we conquer more territory. At this point, a minimal city costs six maintenance, but adds a minimum of four commerce from trade routes and the center square. Commerce is no longer a problem. We shouldn't ignore it, but we can afford to take some hits in the science and cash category.

Second, we're rather farther from the population we need. We're at 28.05% population, with 22.71% of the land. We have to get to 60% without passing 50% of the land. To do this, we need to maximize our population base on the land we have, and the sooner the better, because all that population will take awhile to grow. We must get on those farms! I see multiple places where we haven't bulldozed towns to get food to cities that are growing very slowly, or not at all! This is unacceptable. We have lots of water tiles still to work, and even other tiles that can support population if only we had the food to do it. I'm going to make a list of cities that need food by the next turn set.

Xian and Thermopylae. Xian is size two, Thermpoylae is size three. There's an unirrigated corn here. An irrigation chain for it only requires bulldozing a watermill and a workshop. Moreover, if we bulldoze a town too, we can farm over a workshop north of Thermopylae, but I'm not sure that's necessary: if we farm the forest 2E of Xian and give Thermopylae the corn, that should be enough to get both them growing. Windmill the hills, and we have two growing cities with lots of sea tiles to work and good growth rates. Xian also needs culture, to reclaim its water tiles from the Chinese.
Chengdu. A four-food farm here will get this city growing. It has a decent number of water tiles to work, and once it runs out of those, we have it work tundra lumbermills or windmilled tundra hills.
Tianjin. This city needs culture buildings, or else it's going to lose ground to Sidon, and it needs those water tiles to grow. As it is, we need to replace those mine with windmills ASAP, so it has some food while it's working on culture.
Sparta. Sparta has unmined uranium, which is pretty ridiculous. Unfortunately, I put a farm there before I knew the uranium was there, so we're going to have to bulldoze it. Sparta also has an unirrigated grassland farm and two unworked plains cottages, unworked for lack of food. We need to mine the uranium and then run an irrigation chain to the those plains cottages (bulldoze 'em!) to get this city food.
Moscow. This city needs three watermills. We should move the watermill that Yakutsk has to the north side of the river so Moscow can use it. We should irrigate over a town here, then spread the irrigation to the villages and hamlets, so we can feed more engineers. If we max out our engineers and have "too much" food, we can add a workshop somewhere.

These are merely the most egregious offenders, and the ones that are still around from my last turn set. There are more cities we've just acquired on the Egyptian continent in similar situations. Now, I'm confident we can get more than 60% of the population with just 50% of the land, but this isn't the way to do it: we need to be smarter than the AIs about making sure every city is growing to its maximum possible size. There really is no such thing as too much food in our situation: if we have "excess" food for some reason, we can run engineers for more production and science.

As I've said, I see no reason to keep forests. Lumbermills are no better than workshops, and we have no need of health. I don't think we need any more cottages before we win, so the only improvements we should build from here on out are watermills, workshops, farms, windmills, and special resource improvements, when we need the resource or they're better than an ordinary tile.

About city improvements: Compromise has convinced me that in general we need to be building military instead of infrastructure. As I've noted above, we really don't need to max out our commerce, since it's not the limiting factor in how fast we can win the game. Every city should have a granary and lighthouse for growth, a barracks for the +2 happy and building units, and, IMO, a forge, for the possibility to run an engineer, the happiness, and the +25% production. (We might make exceptions to the last for small cities with very low production, but as long as a city has four or more hammers, I think a forge is a solid choice.) Large cities may need a harbor and grocer for health, and a market for happiness. I think we should put culture buildings only in places that need to take back workable tiles, or in large conquered cities with good food and decent commerce, where we might want to draft; there, I'd put libraries and universities, since more tech is never a bad thing.

I'll wrap this up with some questions.

I think we should make peace with Hatty. Her remaining cities are desert junk (only one seafood on the whole island, and it's clams), and they won't pressuring anything we care about. We should see if we can extort Democracy; if not, just take what she's willing to give us.

Who do we want to declare war on next? I'm not sure here: they both have rifles, so they'll both be somewhat annoying to conquer.

What wonders do we want? I think I actually favor that we build Broadway, Rock N' Roll, Hollywood, and the Eiffel Tower. We're going to be trying to run continuous warfare while maxing out our population and dealing with Emancipation unhappiness. Thus, I think we should look at trying to bump up our happy cap, and since they're on our tech path anyways, I see no reason not to build them. The Eiffel Tower synergizes with the happiness benefits of the other wonders, gives us +50% culture which will help with taking back tiles in places we're having trouble while also mitigating some of the effects of AIs switching to Free Speech, and let us run artists in new cities to get them up to the 10% limit for drafting without having to build anything. At this point, I think our civilization can handle having one or two cities building wonders instead of military: we have a lot of cities now, and our production is much more distributed than it was. Of course, we also wouldn't be building either in our two military capitals, Moscow and Athens.

As a final note: how do we feel about drafting our rifles instead of building them? It's a lot more efficient, particularly if we pick a couple of smaller cities with good food and draft them regularly. I think we should focus on building cannons, cossacks, and grenadiers, since the food-to-hammer conversion of drafting is so amazing. Also, I see cities that aren't Antium building ships: do we need another drydock city? If so, we should find another city and build a drydock, and put all our other cities to land units. There's no excuse at this point for building ships without a drydock in the city.

LKendter · Feb 5, 2007

Iainuki said:
Commerce is no longer a problem. We shouldn't ignore it, but we can afford to take some hits in the science and cash category.

I agree with you to a degree. My only worry is if we get to aggressive destroying towns it WILL become a problem. Of course, a harbor in our larger cities really help to offset this with the +50% multiplier.

Iainuki said:
We must get on those farms! I see multiple places where we haven't bulldozed towns to get food to cities that are growing very slowly, or not at all!

This one baffles me. I know during my last set I got some of the windmills by Moscow, more farms by Sparta (anticipating drafting vs. whipping), and an ivory in former China starting one of your suggested irrigation chains. As long as it is low commerce tiles (including cottages, ivory, etc) I agree with getting those farms in place.
Growing our population is the same reason I added the extra city in former China, and pushed for spices and iron city in our homeland.

Iainuki said:
As I've said, I see no reason to keep forests. Lumber mills are no better than workshops, and we have no need of health. I don't think we need any more cottages before we win, so the only improvements we should build from here on out are watermills, workshops, farms, windmills, and special resource improvements, when we need the resource or they're better than an ordinary tile.

I agree that we are done with building cottages. Our key for more income is to make sure we capture the cities from the AI with there towns in tact.
In this particular game I agree with chopping forest to get the irrigation chains going. With our population problems I have no problem ignoring improving the forest until after we have the needed farms.

A few more workers wouldn't hurt.

Iainuki said:
About city improvements: Compromise has convinced me that in general we need to be building military instead of infrastructure

I agree with this for cities that will cap out relatively small. Your comments on the larger cities are also good. My only difference is I would want the theater in larger cities, and in good captured cities to get to 10% culture for drafting.
At this point I would be willing to agree on NO more science multipliers or income multipliers (unless we get a really good shrine city).

Iainuki said:
I think we should make peace with Hatty.
Who do we want to declare war on next?

I can't look at the game right now, but I would like to hit one of the other civs on Hatty's continent.

Iainuki said:
What wonders do we want?

I can't say what city makes the most sense, but I agree we want every possible wonder that helps with happiness.

Iainuki said:
As a final note: how do we feel about drafting our rifles instead of building them? It's a lot more efficient, particularly if we pick a couple of smaller cities with good food and draft them regularly.

Well size six (IIRC) is needed for drafting, so we can't go to small.

Iainuki said:
Also, I see cities that aren't Antium building ships: do we need another dry-dock city?.

IMHO - yes. I would try to put in away from the front since ships are easier to move around. Is there another Roman town available?

Kodii · Feb 5, 2007

I haven't looked at the save nor have I read through all the comments. I did scan over Iainuki's suggestions for our cities in order to maximize population, and I will try to get that under way in my turnset. I will probably play my turnset tomorrow, assuming that we have decided our next target. I learn towards Mansa, but I could be convinced another way.

EDIT: More comments from me later

Compromise · Feb 5, 2007

I've read, but not thought deeply about, what Iainuki and LKendter have written above. The only thing I find myself disagreeing with is the building of forges. GPP don't matter any more, so the difference between a normal citizen specialist and an engineer specialist is only 1H per turn. Even with the +25% applying to whipping and cash production, I think it will take too long to repay the 180H investment. The only exception to this is population that's going to starve away anyway in newly captured cities. Might as well whip forges there on turn 1, then whip away the other starving citizens too. (This can be done in some of those recent Egyptian cities which are starving now!)

Bugsy, in general, I think you played great and your ship observation network looks great. If I have any complaint, it's that I would have used the GS to help with Electricity, but since tech isn't going to be our limiting factor here, I don't think it makes a difference at all. Now, I have no suggestions about how to use the GS. A super-scientist adds a hammer, so maybe put him somewhere where we need a little hammer boost. Engineers are all we want from here on out, though an artist can be burned on mass media and/or radio.

As to who to attack next, I'm glad our diplomatic expert Kodii

is up next. My opinion is simple: if we think we can get him to vote for us, he lives, otherwise we take his lands right now. Can he be bribed into joining another war with us? Next up: Mansa.

The next strategic question is: do we start gunning for tech leaders like Kublai or is there enough population in the American/German/etc. land to get us the win.

Sir Bugsy · Feb 5, 2007

Fighting a war with Kublai would be difficult in that the resupply lines are very long - three or four turns with galleons.

I like compromise's logic in who is next. I don't think Mansa would vote for us, but HC would. Let's try and bring HC in on the next war.

We need as many ships as possible on this map. I would have at least one more city building ships. One city on frigates, one city alternating between frigates and galleons.

We also need to start doubling and tripling up ships into little mini-fleets. They will be less likely to be attacked.

Sorry about the GS.

Kodii · Feb 5, 2007

Taking a look at the save... our relations with HC weren't as good as I thought. We're only at +7. If we want him to vote for us, he'd have to be Friendly, which means what we'd probably have to switch to Christianity and have a few more wars together (and probably switch to Hereditary Rule). The problem with that is... well, he won't join in a war with anybody because he doesn't like us well enough.

Compromise · Feb 5, 2007

Sir Bugsy said:
...Sorry about the GS.

I wouldn't worry about ita bit. Tech rate isn't going to slow our victory.

And keeping the ships in groups of 2 or 3 is a great idea. I notice that the AI loves to do this, and it's because it's effective. You either win and get lots of experience, or you lose and your backup gets experience.

About naval promotions: I almost invariably use the combat line of promotions for the boats. Sometimes I'll get medic on one or two. Does anyone ever use any of the other promotions for boats?

On a side note, we could easily have built the UN a while ago if we hadn't made so many tech detours. If other teams have pulled off diplomatic alliances, they'll be able to beat our finish date.

I must say that this is the second SGOTM where I've been massively wrong about our ability to tech faster than the AI. I thought we'd be able to bring cossacks to bear in an overwhelming fashion on many if not most of the AIs and have a quick victory. In fact, we only got through Mao and part of Hatty with them. Maybe it was all the jungle we had to plow through at the beginning. I'm looking forward to wrapping things up so I can see what the other teams have done. We only have until the end of the month, right? I suspect several teams won't finish in time.

At some point, we should talk about what measures to bring up in the UN before the diplo victory vote.

Kodii · Feb 5, 2007

From the scenario, I'd wouldn't be surprised if the winner won by a Spaceship Victory..... diplomacy on Aggressive AIs and a packed map is certainly very difficult.

Iainuki · Feb 5, 2007

Kodii said:
Taking a look at the save... our relations with HC weren't as good as I thought. We're only at +7. If we want him to vote for us, he'd have to be Friendly, which means what we'd probably have to switch to Christianity and have a few more wars together (and probably switch to Hereditary Rule). The problem with that is... well, he won't join in a war with anybody because he doesn't like us well enough.

There's no way that's worth bothering. Honestly, I think we should stop worrying about trying to get votes (it's not going to happen) and just pick based on how much population they have and how hard it will be to take them over. I strongly feel that Huayna and Mansa should be our next two targets, but I'm not sure which order we want to kill them in.

LKendter · Feb 5, 2007

Iainuki said:
There's no way that's worth bothering. Honestly, I think we should stop worrying about trying to get votes (it's not going to happen) and just pick based on how much population they have and how hard it will be to take them over.

It is really sad, but I agree with him. I all but got sick when I look at our relationships with other civs. We simply will NOT get another civ to vote for us. I agree to abandon that idea. We simply need to go after high food civs, preferably with nice resources.

Compromise · Feb 5, 2007

Then I think Huayna is next. He's got a lot of potential farmland. We can whip workers out of starving cities on that continent.

Iainuki · Feb 6, 2007

LKendter said:
I agree with you to a degree. My only worry is if we get to aggressive destroying towns it WILL become a problem. Of course, a harbor in our larger cities really help to offset this with the +50% multiplier.

Fair enough. Generally, I only favor destroying necessary towns; the windmills and watermills will start adding a lot of commerce now, too.

LKendter said:
This one baffles me. I know during my last set I got some of the windmills by Moscow, more farms by Sparta (anticipating drafting vs. whipping), and an ivory in former China starting one of your suggested irrigation chains. As long as it is low commerce tiles (including cottages, ivory, etc) I agree with getting those farms in place.
Growing our population is the same reason I added the extra city in former China, and pushed for spices and iron city in our homeland.

As I said, my criticism wasn't of any particular player: we all needed to get those farms going, and as yet, it hasn't happened. It's something we as a team really need to work on.

We ought to get more of those squeezed-in filler fishing villages built soon. There's another one available on China. I didn't examine Egypt closely, but I don't see any good cities for that island because of its shape and lack of unused seafood; if I missed any, please say so.

LKendter said:
I agree that we are done with building cottages. Our key for more income is to make sure we capture the cities from the AI with there towns in tact. In this particular game I agree with chopping forest to get the irrigation chains going. With our population problems I have no problem ignoring improving the forest until after we have the needed farms.

I'm saying we should chop all the forests. Remember that even with railroads, workshops are as good as lumbermills, and for now, workshops are strictly better. If we don't need to farm/watermill them, we should chop them and build workshops. We have no reason to save the forests for later: the sooner we convert them to units or infrastructure, the more good they'll do us.

LKendter said:
A few more workers wouldn't hurt.

Yes, I agree: with the pillaging on Hatty and our lack of focus over the last few turnsets, we have a lot of improvements to build. I was hoping to capture more workers, but the yields have been meager so far. I think we need to whip out some extras.

LKendter said:
I can't say what city makes the most sense, but I agree we want every possible wonder that helps with happiness.

I think the new wonders should go into either Novgorod or Yaroslavl'; sometimes both, when we need to be building two.

LKendter said:
IMHO - yes. I would try to put in away from the front since ships are easier to move around. Is there another Roman town available?

I don't think so: the rest of the Roman island is much better at commerce than production. I think we should use one of the Chinese cities on the south side of the Chinese island. Beijing or the city right east of it?

Compromise said:
The only thing I find myself disagreeing with is the building of forges. GPP don't matter any more, so the difference between a normal citizen specialist and an engineer specialist is only 1H per turn. Even with the +25% applying to whipping and cash production, I think it will take too long to repay the 180H investment. The only exception to this is population that's going to starve away anyway in newly captured cities. Might as well whip forges there on turn 1, then whip away the other starving citizens too. (This can be done in some of those recent Egyptian cities which are starving now!)

Larger cities are likely going to need some kind of improvement to boost their happiness, given Emancipation + war weariness + size. Forges are, I think, the most cost-effective means of doing that. If a city will never need happiness and doesn't have much production, I agree we shouldn't invest in a forge.

Compromise said:
The next strategic question is: do we start gunning for tech leaders like Kublai or is there enough population in the American/German/etc. land to get us the win.

I haven't analyzed the map in detail, but generally, there's a reason why the tech leaders are the tech leaders: they usually have much better land than the AIs that got left in the dust. I think Huayna and Mansa are our obvious next targets, and then after that, we can see where we stand. I think we should use civs like Germany and America only to push ourselves over once we're close to hitting 60%, because they'll be easy pickings whenever we decide to go after them.

Compromise said:
About naval promotions: I almost invariably use the combat line of promotions for the boats. Sometimes I'll get medic on one or two. Does anyone ever use any of the other promotions for boats?

I almost always promote combat ships up the combat line. Drill is useless as always, and I've found flanking not to be much use in naval combat. I do usually try to have at least one combat ship promoted flanking 1 -> navigation for those situations where you need 1 or 2 more movement than you have, and another promoted flanking 1 -> sentry traveling with the main fleet to spot incoming threats. For transports, I almost always use one of two types of promotions: flanking 1 -> navigation, or combat 1 -> medic. Navigation helps troops get where they're needed, and medic ships heal the units they're carrying as well as the combat ships guarding them.

What are we doing with the great scientist? Settle him or use him to research Radio?

Consensus goals for the next turnset, as I understand them:

Huayna's next, Mansa after that.
Improve tiles with an eye to getting food to cities that need it.
Found any available filler cities.
Build another drydock, probably in Beijing or the city east of it, and set the city on ships.
Upgrade all our units, then save cash for Radio, then start research on Radio.
Start Broadway in Yaroslavl' or Novgorod.
Do something with the scientist.

Did I miss anything?

I have some more comments, but they're big-picture stuff and I'm also out of time right now.

Kodii · Feb 6, 2007

That sounds like a good plan. Thanks for the outline. Unless I hear other ideas, I'll play sometime in a few hours.

PS: Regarding SGOTM4, anybody interested? There are already four people who have shown interest (including myself) in the RB forums. This game is only in Warlords.

Compromise · Feb 6, 2007

I'd probably pop a tech with the scientist. Then aim for a GE in Moscow for the UN.

I'm going to pass on SGOTM4. I don't have Warlords yet, and this doesn't look like the one to learn on.

Another great post, Iainuki. They're like reference works. I apologize for wasting worker turns on lumbermills.

SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

Emperor

Civ.D.

Civ.D.

Civ.D.

Civ.D.

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Warlord

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Ka ICE

Emperor

Civ.D.

Ka ICE

Emperor

Ka ICE

Warlord

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Emperor

Warlord

Ka ICE

Emperor

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