SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[Kodii]

*pulls out the GS lightbulb list*

Education will make full use.

After we research Education, the GS will actually lightbulb part of Printing Press next, rather than Philosophy...

Perhaps the academy is worth it, unless we want to use the GS now to lightbulb Philosophy and the next one for Education. If we wait until after we get Paper, it'll lightbulb Printing Press instead.

I'm hoping to hear from Bugsy and Lee on this. Maybe even Compromise, just a Yes or a No or something. I don't know where greggo is.

Academy: Iainuki
Lightbulb:
Not Sure: grangerm, Kodii, Sir Bugsy, LKendter, Compromise, greggo, Atlas*, (other semi-official lurkers?)

I won't play until tomorrow.

 

[Iainuki]

I know at least Victoria has Philosophy. Who else has it? Without Taoism and Angkor Wat, I don't see lightbulbing Philosophy as a viable option--IIRC, it doesn't use full beakers even if you lightbulb it ASAP. We wouldn't derive any benefit from lightbulbing until after Education, when presumably more AIs will have it. I think we missed the window on this one, and should go for techs with more long-term benefit.

 

[Kodii]

Thats very true. I have some time right now, so I'll see if I can play now.

 

[grangerm]

The missionary was meant for St. Pete. Judiasm spread to St. Pete, so I started a Jewish Monastary there. We could use the missionary there to get a second monestary or use it on Moscow which is still religionless.

If we wait until after we get Paper, it'll lightbulb Printing Press instead.

Good call, I missed that. We can manually calculate the number of beakers we'll get, but I'm just lazy and haven't done it. One thing is for sure, we'll get at least 2250 beakers from every GS lightbulb. The formula for an epic GS lightbulb is 1.5 * (1500 + 3 * pop). As Iainuki says, that would be approximately 2500 beakers for us now.

And as for the question of lightbulb or academy, since we'll be wasting more beakers than I originally thought on Philosophy, I vote for Academy with our current GS. I'd also vote for manual research of Philosophy (cause no one will trade it to us) next, then using our GS coming in 13 turns to help research Education. I doubt we will have put 1500 beakers into Education by that time, so the next GS will be used to its fullest potential.

By not lightbulbing Philosophy, we are slowing down how quickly we can get to Liberalism, but I don't think that really matters. No other civ has paper and philosophy so we shouldn't have any trouble making it there first, even with just one lightbulb. Further, the object of this game isn't to get to Liberalism first, its to get to Mass Media (that's the UN tech right?) first and the academy will pay more dividends long term.

 

[Kodii]

I begin by moving the GS to Moscow.

IBT - Isabella asks us to join in a war against Louis; a war I wasn't aware of. I obviously decline.

T1 - Oh, Izzy declares war on Louis. I build an academy in Moscow.

T2 - Meet Kublai Khan. He is Buddhist. We're missing only one more civ... America.

T3 - Caesar cancels our Silk and Gems deal. We are his worst enemy.

T4 - Paper comes in. I begin Philosophy at 0%

T5 - Nothing

IBT - Caesar cancels Open Borders, India asks us into war with Japanese and I decline. Kublai asks us into war with the English... I decline.

And now I must interrupt my turnset as I have to go. Caesar will probably declare war soon. Thoughts?

 

[Tatran]

Lurker's comment :

This team is contradicting itself. Why?
Talking about to switch to free religion, but delaying it.
Also without a religion you won't make much friends who'll
vote for you. You don't even know who'll be your opponent
in the elections.
You keep on talking about researching and lightbulbing. It's 1000 AD
you still haven't conquered anyone.
Without friends you'll have to conquer a lot of cities which require a lot
of production, means you won't have time to improve your infrastructure.
This map is logistic disaster, all those island need to be protected, but are
hard to reinforce.
You are running representation, but only 3 leaders favor this civic,
Victoria (+4), Cyrus (+3) and ... Caesar (+4). More positive modifiers you lose.

The spirit of this team is more focused on a space victory.

To the team,

 

[grangerm]

Talking about to switch to free religion, but delaying it.

We don't have the tech for it yet and are only delaying liberalism to reach the rest of our needed techs sooner.

You are running representation, but only 3 leaders favor this civic

Also without a religion you won't make much friends who'll
vote for you.

We aren't running for election anytime soon, so I don't think there's any reason to run an inferior civic or choose a religion yet. We can do that 100 years before election and still get bonuses if we choose to.

It's 1000 AD you still haven't conquered anyone.

This map is logistic disaster, all those island need to be protected, but are hard to reinforce.

Here I agree that we haven't been active enough. We are building units and should be ready to attack someone (weak Alex or our worst enemy Caesar) soon.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

Sorry I didn't check in sooner.

1. I agree that using the GS for an academy was a smart move. It is a long term investment in our research capability.
2. Caesar is going to declare very soon. I would expect a repeat of his last amphibious landing. Probably want to get some defenders over to iron island ASAP.

Let's talk strategy for a Roman war.

1. Initially we should let Caesar attack us and suicide some units. Do we have walls on Iron Island? walls would be a good thing to whip if we don't have any yet. I'm not sure a castle is worth the hammers on defense, but I like walls.

2. We should consider bringing in another civ in the war. Louis would be ideal since we would get the "mutual military struggle" bonus in diplomacy. If we can't get him in, perhaps converting to Buddhism and pulling in one of our "brothers in the faith." By giving Caesar two enemies in the war, it will cause him to hold back forces in defense. Three enemies will paralyze him and put him in turtle mode.

3. We need more intel on the layout of Roman cities. Without that it will be difficult to plan out a campaign. I say we do not make peace with Caesar until a) he is about to hurt us really badly, or b) we have hurt him really badly (at least three cities captured.)

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I'm sorry, I see we have some decent intel on Roman lands.

I think once we get into attack mode in a Roman war we need to hit the Roman city directly south of Iron Island first. I have two reasons:

1. Logistics and reinforcement will be much easier there. (Old army adage: professionals plan logistics, amateurs plan tactics) Making sure our supply lines are secure and efficent will be key to success.

2. The front will much more controllable and narrower once the resistance ends and the boarders expand.

I need to open the save and look at the terrain in those eastern Roman lands, but I think these two factors need to be taken into consideration in campaign planning.

 

[Kodii]

Continuing...

Does Caesar have a new worst enemy? He offers the Gems, Silk deal again, which I agree to until we are able to build up our army. Tatran is right. We shouldn't be holding up war. All cities should be building units, maybe with the exception of St. Petes... so all productivity is changed.

As for circumnavigation... I got really paranoid so I bought Louis' world map for a small sum of money.. and therefore:

As for IBTs, I sure got a lot of demands, and I had to decline almost all of them. I think we have enough galleys, we just need more cats and money to upgrade our axes.

A Lahore update: It is 0% Indian. Still not revolting. Gandhi builds the Notre Dame and Victoria converts to Taoism as I expected.

Finally, I made a good choice by sailing towards a large black patch of fog.. which reveals to us our last opponent: Washington. Hes a loner like Victoria, as he is the only member of the Confucian block. We can now access the spoiler thread. Does someone want to report for us? (Compromise, when he is available? )

We're actually surprisingly close to declaring war. I moved troops to Yaroslavl' in preparation of war against Caesar... assuming we'll declare on him first. We have enough money to upgrade three axes into macemen, and we have two macemen on the way to Yaroslavl'. I believe we currently have three cats in Yaroslavl' and a bunch more in construction.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/The_Real_Ms_Beyond_SG003_AD1025_01.Civ4SavedGame

Sir Bugsy is up.

 

[LKendter]

I will try to add some thoughts later tonight. I have been out of the loop for the last 30 hours.

 

[Iainuki]

If I read correctly, we're hitting the first spoiler now, right?

 

[Kodii]

Yes, as I mentioned in my turnset report.

 

[Sir Bugsy]

I have it. However, I shall wait at least 24 hours for guidance.

Thought: should we be going after Alex first. He seems like a good target, especially if Caesar is back to trading with us.

 

[Kodii]

I talked with Iainuki earlier when we were setting up our RB Middle Earth game. He reminded me that China's UU is active right now. Therefore, we should go for Alex and Caesar first. Which one? I'm not sure. Going for Alex might be easier, but he already has longbows out. Mao doesn't.

 

[Compromise]

Happy New Year team!

I'm back online. While I got the occasional chance to read a few posts over the last couple weeks, I'm nowhere near up-to-speed yet. I'll try to take a look at the save tomorrow and maybe have some comments then too. Seems like we've come quite a ways since I last looked at the game. Cool!

 

[LKendter]

Going for Alex would be a waste. If China declares war again we would have two very exposed cities. Alex serves one purpose - stepping stone to China. If we aren't going after China, then forget Alex.

I hate going against Praets, but Rome is the better choice with the listed options.

 

[Kodii]

Thats probably true. We should probably take Rome now, then when Cossacks come around, we can take out Alex and Rome. We'll probably have more targets by then too. (At this point, I think Tokugawa will our UN opponent, which is probably a good thing)

 

[Compromise]

I think I'm close to getting caught up, but I only have a moment to post a thought.

Regarding the use of great people: (Did we use the latest G. Scientist yet?) I think the measure we should use when deciding how to make the best use of them is "number of turns" rather than full beaker value. At the end of the game, our research rate will be higher than it is now, so 2500 beakers then is less valuable than some smaller number now. The faster we get to Education, the quicker we will be to the benefits of cheap universities and Oxford. Still, we'd have to run some numbers. I suspect that at the end of the game, most of our research will be performed by just a few cities. Maybe 5 or so. I'll have to look in-game to see how this thought affects us right now.

Regarding war: Again, the measure is turns. Cities take a while to be productive. With no razing, we'll have to take poorly placed cities too just to get rid of enemy cultural borders. Of course, cities are better contributing to our empire than anyone else's....

Last thing for today: I had a potentially interesting thought and I want to bounce it off of everyone. We can't raze cities, but maybe we can redistribute them. What if we take cities and then gift them to nearby tech-backwards civs? For us, this is the same as razing them. If we pillage all cottages and mines, the cities will mostly grow, which is what we want. We can come back and capture them from the (presumably still) tech-backward civ while we're researching Mass Media and building the UN.

The trick to this will be finding a civ to give the cities to, and not creating a monster in the process. Of course, we could keep very good cities for ourselves.

I'm not sure this idea is sound, but we might need some kind of trickery to win the fastest-finish race. Judging from the score chart, many other teams seem to be trying the conquer-quickly strategy. (Or at least conquer sooner than us! )

 

[Iainuki]

Regarding the use of great people: (Did we use the latest G. Scientist yet?) I think the measure we should use when deciding how to make the best use of them is "number of turns" rather than full beaker value. At the end of the game, our research rate will be higher than it is now, so 2500 beakers then is less valuable than some smaller number now. The faster we get to Education, the quicker we will be to the benefits of cheap universities and Oxford. Still, we'd have to run some numbers. I suspect that at the end of the game, most of our research will be performed by just a few cities. Maybe 5 or so. I'll have to look in-game to see how this thought affects us right now.

I agree with this. When I say, "full beaker value," I'm essentially using it as a shorthand for saying, "try to be efficient." Philosophy is pretty much useless to us at this point except as the gateway to Liberalism, so I definitely think we shouldn't lightbulb it. I still suspect that the academy in Moscow will give more beakers in the long run than even a lightbulb at this point.

I'm sleepy--I'll try to get some more solid commentary together at another point, but that point is not now.