SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

Kodii · Feb 6, 2007

Turn 0
- Peace with Hatty for her World Map and Divine Right
- Move units in preparation for war with HC
- Dancing workers!

Turn 1
- Electricity comes in, the GS will lightbulb Fission, but I don't think we want that... should I settle it instead?
- Broadway will take 40 turns to complete in Novrogod, 38 in Yaroslavl', is it worth it?
- Mansa asks us to switch to Free Market. Nah

Turn 3
- GE born in Moscow! I save it for the UN

Turn 4
- I will probably declare war on HC this turn, but I must first take a break. Cyrus builds the Versailles in one of his cities.

Compromise · Feb 6, 2007

Kodii said:
...
- Electricity comes in, the GS will lightbulb Fission, but I don't think we want that... should I settle it instead?
- Broadway will take 40 turns to complete in Novrogod, 38 in Yaroslavl', is it worth it?

New plan: Nuke all major AI cities. This lowers their populations and increases our population percentage without increasing our land holdings.

But seriously, I can't believe Broadway is worth building, is it? I think we're better just churning out military from those cities.

Kodii · Feb 6, 2007

Nuke AI cities eh? How come we never thought of that before? That might just be ingenious :lol:

I'm still saving money mostly for upgrades, and if we want to go along with the nuke plan, we're going to need a lot more other techs besides the ones we want. I'll just save the GS for later if we really want to execute that plan.. and on with my turnset.

Iainuki · Feb 6, 2007

This is epic speed. 40 turns isn't that long, and we're not going to get done before then. I vote we build Broadway: it's only one city, and we have rather a lot of them now.

Fission is so far away from any conceivable utility to us that I vote we settle the GS right away. I'd probably put him in St. Pete, but Moscow is the other obvious choice.

Kodii · Feb 7, 2007

Before I heard from Iainuki, I had already started Broadway and settled the GS.

I have played more, but I am not yet finished. I don't have much time for a report, but here is basically what happened:

-HC brought a nasty stack of 9 units to a backline Egyptian city. Using offensive defense, I killed the stack with no losses
-I took Tiwanaku and Ollyanblahblah
-Victoria declares war. On Louis

Iainuki · Feb 7, 2007

Random question: how would we feel about joining Vicky's war against Louis? With MMS and the Representation bonus, if avoid getting more negative modifiers with her, do we think it's possible to get her to Friendly?

Kodii · Feb 7, 2007

The rest of the turnset wasn't very eventful. I had neglected to build cannons, so I began to crank them out. On the war front, I took Cologne and Zhou. Cuzco is next: there are five rifles in it. In reponse to the checklist Iainuki made:

-I declared war on Huayna. I took Tiwanaku, Ollyasomething, Cologne and Zhou
-I replaced many lumbermills with workshops and irrigated wherever I saw fit
-A settler is in place to found another filler city next turn
-Beijing is now a drydock city
-We should no more ancient units, cash is being saved for Radio
-Broadway has been started in Yaroslavl', with about 26 turns left
-The GS was settled in St. Pete's

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

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_AD1740_01.Civ4SavedGame

Turnlog 1

Spoiler :

Kodii · Feb 7, 2007

Turnlog 2

Spoiler :

PS: I LOVE the power graph!

Compromise · Feb 7, 2007

Nice work Kodii.

Regarding Victoria, I think we'll need a net diplo standing of +11 or +12 to get her vote. I don't know if that's possible with free religion or not. And she may switch to FR at some point too, so I don't think we can count on any religion bonuses.

Also, looking at the map and the AI scores from Kodii's screenshot, it seems like we have two courses of action for the next round of attacks: 1) Mansa -> Toku -> Kublai/Louis, or 2) Huayna -> Isabella -> Toku -> anyone. The former has the advantage of hitting the tech leaders sooner and being easier to ship new reinforcements to. The latter has the advantage of being right where our currently active troops will be when they finish with Huayna.

Does Huayna have any island colonies? If not, I don't see any reason to leave him anything on his starting island. We've got plenty of cities to give to Caesar, Mao or Hatty that I don't think we have to worry about the land domination threshold.

Iainuki, feel free to play as many turns as you can. From what I see, the rest of the game is less strategy than tactical exercise.

I assume everyone knows how to chain units across the ocean in a turn or two by uploading from boat to boat?

And we'll want to keep an eye on the overall tech rate to see if we're likely to get to modern units or not.

Iainuki · Feb 8, 2007

I have it. I want to take a look at the save and post some questions before my next turn set.

Sir Bugsy · Feb 8, 2007

If you are going to ship chain, please name the unts so that it is easy to execute. Make it sailor proof, USS Step One, USS Step Two.

Compromise · Feb 8, 2007

If we want to take out Monty, it looks like we'll have to sail through German waters. We either declare war and stay there, or we declare, take out the offending culture and then make peace whenever. But these random wars due tend to lead to unexpected seafood losses, as in LK's turnset.

Maybe that clinches it for Mansa? He'll give techs to anybody, so I wouldn't mind his demise.

Kodii · Feb 8, 2007

Sir Bugsy, I noticed that you signed up for SGOTM4. We discussed on the RB forums interest in forming a team, and three of us have signed up already. Would you like to join us? Or would you rather be a... free radical of sorts? :lol:

I never thought I'd use a chemistry term in CIV...

And as for who to go for next, I think it is 100% Mansa. Iainuki, we're ready for your questions

Furthermore, if we don't plan on getting votes from the AI, we could try going for Gandhi and Victoria. The only problem may be Redcoats, but it might not be a big deal.

Iainuki · Feb 9, 2007

I've been trying to put together some stuff, but I've been distracted with other things. Hopefully, I should have something together by tomorrow.

LKendter · Feb 10, 2007

We only have to the end of March to complete. Any progress Iainuki?

Iainuki · Feb 11, 2007

I apologize for taking so long to get to this; I promise I'll play today or tomorrow. I've deferred a post on our victories and future possible techs because I've been busy with other stuff.

I really don't like harping on these issues (I hope the team isn't too aggravated with me about it), but unfortunately I think that late-game micro is important here, so I'm going to cover some problems I see.

Moscow has still not been respecialized. Not only are we not generating as many GE points as we could be by only running three engineers, but we could be getting more hammers out of this city, to boot.
There are cities quite a bit above their happy caps that haven't been whipped. Yekaterinburg, for instance, has four unhappy citizens, and could whip a marketplace. In cases of severe unhappiness like this, I think whipping away the unhappy people is the correct solution: we're losing eight food per turn because of all this whining, so I suspect that whipping won't hurt our long-run growth curve much if at all. Keep in mind we have the Kremlin, so reduced whipping costs.
In contrast, we have cities sitting below their happy caps that aren't growing. Novgorod is an example of this: it's configured to maximize hammers, and has five "surplus" happiness it isn't using. Hammers are important, but growth is also important. If we're going to stall its growth, we should wait until it's sitting at its happy cap.
We have cities without drydocks building boats. Cities with drydocks build boats faster, and the boats they produce get 4 XP. If you feel we need more boats, add another drydock city, don't just produce them willy-nilly.
Workers sitting around doing nothing. I found workers fortified in cities, and we haven't finished all the terrain improvements we need to. If we're going to fortify workers, can we at least put them outside a city and try to gather them together in one place so they'll be easier to find?
Cities off the governors. At least not all the cities are off the governors, but there are enough ungoverned cities I'm going to have to go through and check each one manually. If we're having problems with cities growing past their happy caps, we may want to consider doing something that I don't normally recommend in succession games: using the avoid growth button. I think I may try this as an experiment to see if it's workable. At the end of my turn set, I'll make a list of all the cities with avoid growth turned for the next player, so they can decide what to do about it.
Please feel free to delete obsolete signs.

That's everything I see right now. I may discover more stuff once I start playing my turn set, and I'll be sure to ***** about it then

. (Seriously, if people are tired of listening to me, I can stop talking about these things.)

Now, for my comments and questions on my next turn set.

Mansa has Steam Power and will trade it for Physics. Physics doesn't have any immediate military uses and Vicky already has it, so I'm going to make the trade unless someone comes up with a strong reason not to.
Our happiness problems are pretty acute, unfortunately. Some of this can be solved by whipping markets, forges, and such, but we need more happiness resources. I intend to start Broadway, Hollywood, and the Eiffel ASAP, each in a separate city: we have a lot of cities now and we're acquiring more all the time, we can afford to dedicate a few to building wonders.

The only happiness resources we don't have, via trade or possession, are gold, sugar, and incense. I'm sure we've all noticed by now that Gyaathar modified the map script to greatly increase the resource density; it appears a side effect was the scarcity of certain resources. There are two sources of gold in the world, one in Isabella's possession, the other in Victoria's. There's only one sugar in the world I see, and Kublai has it. I also see only one incense, and Tokugawa has that. We may want to consider these positions in our future conquest directions.

It's looking increasingly likely we're going to end up obsoleting at least one happiness resource before the game is over: whales with Combustion. We'll have to talk about this when the time comes.

A big contributing factor to our unhappiness in some places is motherland whining. There isn't really a lot we can do about this right now. I'm going to start pushing culture buildings harder, and the Eiffel will help some.

One final way to deal with unhappiness is to produce some missionaries. We don't have that many monasteries, unfortunately, but I'm probably going to build a few to try to spread extra religions to our larger cities.
With Victoria, we have +1 from peace, +4 from civics, -4 from trading with WOE, -2 from declaring war on her friends, -1 from refusing to declare war for her, and -1 from refusing to stop trading. I don't think these penalties will vanish before we win or lose, so we're not getting her to Friendly. Do we still want to try making nice to her so we'll have a tech trading partner as we enter the end game here, or is it not worth the bother?
The current conquest plan, as I understand it, is to finish off Huayna, then hit Mansa. Huayna has no junk cities, so he'll be dead once his mainland is captured. Mansa also doesn't really have any junk cities, so he'll also die. I'll either pass the baton before then, or start arranging troops for an attack on Japan or south to the Indian/English island.
I'm going to finish Radio, then Mass Media, then save money for our next tech.

That's, again, all I can think of for now. Comments and questions for my turn set are appreciated.

Compromise · Feb 11, 2007

I agree with your assessments, Iainuki.

There was one city that I took off the governor: the one on the far southwest of the Roman continent that was getting squeezed by Roman culture from Caesar's last city. I started working the marble and the horses so that the cultural buildings it was working on would finish faster. I should have put a sign near it to indicate this.

Your attack and research plans sound good. I don't remember if that little island with the two Egyptian cities on it has all of Hatty's remaining cities. Since we've got plenty of cities to give back to Mao and/or Caesar, you could probably grab those to reduce Egyptian unhappiness if you thought it wise.

Using the crop yield graph as a proxy for population, I figure we'll have to conquer 4 or 5 more civs after Huayna to get our necessary pop. It looks like we're halfway there now.

Kodii · Feb 11, 2007

Iainuki, there is a LOT of indepth analysis that you have gone through. It is very easy for the current player to forget many if not all of the small issues. I know that I did. Play whenever you're ready, and go ahead and take care of the issues we failed to address. Good luck

Sir Bugsy · Feb 11, 2007

I thought we weren't going to whip our cities anymore regardless of where they are on the happy cap.

Iainuki · Feb 11, 2007

I, at least, never said that. We should be careful with the whip, but the goal here is to maximize our population, and somewhat paradoxically, sometimes whipping is the best way to do that.

SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

Ka ICE

Emperor

Ka ICE

Warlord

Ka ICE

Warlord

Ka ICE

Ka ICE

Emperor

Warlord

Civ.D.

Emperor

Ka ICE

Warlord

Exterminate, exterminate, exterminate!!!

Warlord

Emperor

Ka ICE

Civ.D.

Warlord

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