SGOTM 03 - The Real Ms. Beyond

[LKendter]

This city has lots of commerce and not much production. I think it should stay on military.

I am totally lost on this one. Why would we want a commerce heavy city not to build multiplier buildings?

 

[LKendter]

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 %.

My vote would be ASAP. The reason I accepted the Indian city was we only gained one tile to domination. The spice city in the south and the iron city each gain ZERO tiles. I vote to build settlers ASAP for both of these cities. Population is going to be our challenge. Two sources of free pop is very important.

 

[Iainuki]

I am totally lost on this one. Why would we want a commerce heavy city not to build multiplier buildings?

Your confusion was natural because, while I was editing the post, I included an old version of something via cut-and-paste error. Sorry, my mistake! It should make sense now.

 

[Compromise]

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.

I agree with everything here except that Sparta might be better with a barracks instead of a theater. I'm not looking at the save, though, so use best judgment.

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.

Hmmm. Courthouses are 20% cheaper than marketplaces or grocers, so that might have some bearing. But yes, this reasoning is correct. A courthouse will save us 4-6 gpt depending on the city. If a marketplace or grocer can save us more, that's the way to go. Also, with newly captured cities, we might want to look to see just how much population we can whip away when it comes out of rebellion. That might determine which building to whip first (followed by a granary, probably). I suspect most of the non-capital AI cities will have pretty poor commerce and should get courthouses first.

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.

Good point. Let's wait for Versailles. My earlier suggestion of putting the FP on the Egyptian/Incan continent is probably bad. It's too close to our capital on this map.

We should probably make this decision during or after our next war after we decide which cities to take next.

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.

I agree with this. Ideally, Mao will declare on us just as we're deciding who to stomp on with cossacks. That way, we won't lose any more diplo "attacked our friend" penalties to eliminate both from their starting island. I don't think we need to go after any of their cities that aren't on the starting island.

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.

I agree. If we happen to have somebody who is at (or could become with a simple civics or religion change) friendly with us, then we can make that change toward the last moment.

I'd move some caravels to scout out Mao's cities to see what he has and where he's building up his forces.

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 %.

My vote would be ASAP. The reason I accepted the Indian city was we only gained one tile to domination. The spice city in the south and the iron city each gain ZERO tiles. I vote to build settlers ASAP for both of these cities. Population is going to be our challenge. Two sources of free pop is very important.

I agree with this, especially the spice city. Maybe best to figure out what is going on with Mao, though. I don't like the idea of working on a settler before he's declared on someone, just in case that someone is us.

 

[Compromise]

Oh, one other thing. I was reading this thread and have decided that city raider is the right first promotion for suicide artillery. This conflicts with my earlier thinking and the way I did things on first landing in Roman territory. Just FYI for anyone interested.

 

[grangerm]

Ideally, Mao will declare on us just as we're deciding who to stomp on with cossacks.

Well, not exactly when we are ready with cossacks, but Mao declared on us when I ended the 0th turn! In the long run, I think it's a good thing cause it'll save us the diplo penatly. I'll still build towards cossacks, while playing defensively so we don't lose Sparta or Athens. I plan on doing Theatres in both ASAP so we can get some of our borders up to help defend and limit his movement.

 

[Compromise]

Wow. Well, I'm glad we're on his continent instead of ours.

Your plan sounds good to me: Keep the war (plural if you count Alex) going and them wipe them off that island. I don't see any reason to leave them any part of it or to go to any other island to chase them down.

 

[Kodii]

What is with the AIs declaring on Turn 0?

Its probably best to keep working towards Cossacks and wipe out most of Mao's offensive defensively. We probably won't be able to get to some offensive work until the next turnset, unless you play extended.

 

[Iainuki]

For the initial war, I think we should capture as far south as Hangzhou, and consider taking Xian and Thermopylae. I think we should carefully consider how far south we want to go: Chengdu has little food and Tianjin will be squeezed by Creative Cyrus' culture. Macau is tundra junk and Shandong only has whales. It's possible that all these cities will be worth taking, but this is a decision we should make as a team.

Lee, switching to Nationhood has proved to be rather prescient. Grangerm, draft as much as is needful to hold out against Mao until cossacks arrive.

 

[LKendter]

Lee, switching to Nationhood has proved to be rather prescient. Grangerm, draft as much as is needful to hold out against Mao until Cossacks arrive.

If we are lucky some of the Roman cities should be draftable soon. There was a reason I whipped a theater in all of ex-Rome.

The Mao attack really didn't surprise me. It seems like I always get some civ trying to screw me.

 

[LKendter]

[*] 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.

I was thinking theater, followed by hopeing we can whip globe ASAP.

 

[grangerm]

Well, while Mao technically was the one to declare war, he didn't do much fighting. I would say that he turtled, except that he really just rolled over and played dead. Perhaps, he was too busy reading Sun-Tzu.

I waited a couple turns for his attack and I moved some of our ships to intercept any landing parties, but it never came. So I moved a stack SE and took Shanghai.

Full Report:
--------

0) Killed Alex's pike that was sitting outside of Sparta with a mace.
IBT) Mao declares on us.

1) MT -> Gunpowder. Science down to 0%. Traded our last clam to Cyrus for 5 gpt. His only enemies are our enemies, so I figured it wouldn't matter. We'll get more clams when Athens comes online and it's not like we were using them anyway. Split our galleons into 3 groups, one pair stays on ferry duty, one pair S, one pair to protect Athens from an amphibious landing.
IBT) Alex moves a mace and a longbow to Sparta's doorstep.

2) Lost a HA attacking Alex's troops. I didn't want his mace to kill one of our highly promoted, but injured maces. I figured I'd rather lose the HA. I was hoping for a withdrawal, but whatever. Damaged the mace down to 0.8, decided to let them suicide themselves on our defenders. Took out a galley and caravel of Mao's.
IBT) As predicted, Alex suicides his longbow and injured mace.

3) Trade Paper to MM for 470g. Again, his enemies are our enemies. Got a diplo bonus from him, now he's pleased. Science back to 100%, Gunpowder in 4.

4) Athens out of revolt. Whips theatre, then whips lighthouse with the penalty same turn. Decide to finish lighthouse first to prevent as much starvation as possible. Yeka... whips its WB. At this point since Mao isn't doing anything, I decide to send a stack to take Shanghai.

5) Athens builds lighthouse. No more starvation, stable at size 5. Sparta out of resistance. Morale is starting to become a problem so I authorize our HA to pillage a silk plantation. You've got to let them have some fun!

6) Gunpowder in, science back to 0%, set to research Sci. Method. As Compromise said, knight production became cossacks. Athens: Theatre->Barracks.

7) Stack begins to bombard Shanghai.

8) Rome grows to 9 and becomes unhappy even though it was 14 > 13 last turn when I checked it right before ending the turn . Whipped its market to get rid of the unhappy faces. Whipped Oxford in St. Pete (6-pop!). Took Shanghai for the price of our CR3 suicide cat.

9) St. Pete: Oxford-> Market. Rome: Market->Grocer. Athens: Rax->HE.
IBT) Cyrus demands Gunpowder. I thought about it, but declined. Izzy declares on Louis and finishes the Taj! (If Louis asks us to join the war, we definitely should)

10) Novograd swaps from Taj to Cossack. Finally found where China was stationing all her troops...as far away from our cities as possible (pic below). Upgraded our HA in Shanghai to a Cossack for 355 gold after seeing the China stack. I moved a 2nd pike from Sparta/Athens area towards Shanghai. It's in a boat 1N of Shanghai right now. It can be moved back if the next player feels a little nervous about having no pike near Athens or Sparta.

-----

Speaking of feeling nervous , I'm sure some of you will feel nervous when I tell you that I moved the troops out of Moscow and put them on China's continent. Right now, Moscow is empty except for our GE, who I don't think will put up much of a fight . I don't see that it's a problem since Moscow isn't threatened, doesn't need the MP happiness, can whip and/or draft defenders immediately if threatened.

On this train of thought, I dont have a problem with MPing our cities on the main continent with warriors. We've got at least a couple axes that could be moved to the warfront. Again, we can whip/draft a defense if anyone thinks that attacking us is a good idea (though I doubt anyone will).

When I chose new builds for cities, I tried to follow Iainuki's guidelines for the cities. In hindsight, one error I made was theatre first in Sparta. The theatre wasn't really that important once I realized that Mao wasn't about to flood the region with his units. Anyway, it's 2 turns from completion, so we should probably finish it anyway.

I took out probably 5 of Mao's galleys and caravels. I've been keeping the galleons together mostly for defense. Apparently the positions of our southern fleet near Thermopyle have been threatening enough to keep Alex's settler/galleon and Mao's galleons in their cities.

 

[Iainuki]

I wrote this up before reading the turnlog, so apologies if any of it is obsolete.

At the moment, it looks like we're going to complete the required technology before finishing the conquest for backdoor domination. So, I think it's time to think about what techs we might want to get that are off our beeline.

We need to think seriously about which Economy civic we want. It doesn't seem that Victoria has the Banking and Economics lines yet. Unfortunately, her economy is probably in much better shape than ours because of her smaller size, and she does have Education. Depending on circumstances, though, if we can be first to Economics, is it worth investing the beakers? A cash bomb in one of our distant allies' capitals, like Louis, could produce enough money to pay back the beakers and then some.

As we kill off AIs, we're going to lose open borders and good foreign trade routes while gaining more cities. We have Representation, so each city will generate 3 beakers above and beyond the 1-2 hammers or 3 commerce each specialist generates. Free Market will be better earlier in our conquest, because of the cheap harbors and the good trade routes get funneled to our best (largest, with harbors, having the most commerce infrastructure) cities; Free Market also has a synergy with Bureaucracy, if we want to switch back. I'm not sure where the cross-over point is, but Mercantilism will be better than Free Market at some point.

However, there's a third option, State Property. State Property is a strong civic for bloated empires (which we're aiming to become) because of the removal of distance maintenance costs and low civic upkeep; and it's also a strong civic for archipelago maps, because there tend to be lots of dry cities that can benefit from no-penalty grassland workshops, and the production benefits from +1 food watermills can be quite useful. State Property requires an off-beeline tech, Communism, but one that we need both the prerequisites for in any event. Communism also offers the Kremlin, which I think we could get quite a bit of use out of: given our permanent wartime footing, I think we want to stay in Slavery for the duration, and the Kremlin will make whipping infrastructure in new cities more efficient.

One note about our next civics switch: it looks like it takes two turns of anarchy for us to switch one civic now, so when we change our economy civic, we can change something else for free. Depending on the circumstances, I think we might consider going back to Bureaucracy. Are there any other changes we should consider making?

Another set of techs we should look at is the Replaceable Parts-Rifling line. The former tech requires Banking (which we will want to research or trade for anyways) and Printing Press, which we have; it will get us lumbermills (we don't have many forests left, but we do have a few) and better windmills and watermills. The real key, though, is that Rifling would allow us to draft rifles, which are much better than the muskets we would otherwise get, and allow to upgrade city raider maces into rifles rather than grenadiers.

Since we already have Engineering and will have Gunpowder soon, Chemistry is another option. If we develop this before Scientific Method, we'll get the prerequisite bonus. Chemistry gives us grenadiers, frigates (which could be huge for naval superiority, given that everyone has Astronomy), and better workshops; it also opens up Biology and Steel. The benefits of Biology, in a game where we're going for backdoor domination, should be obvious; and Steel gets us cannons, drydocks, and the Iron Works.

At this point, I see a couple of viable paths for our next set of techs, after we finish Gunpowder.

Banking -> Economics

This would aim for early Free Market and the great merchant.

Chemistry -> Scientific Method -> Biology

Biology should be a huge tech for us, because it will let cities that aren't growing grow, boost our GP farm, and speed our path to backdoor domination.

Chemistry -> Steel

Early cannons and drydocks to build frigates, plus possibly the Iron Works.

Scientific Method -> Communism.

This would aim for a fast switch to State Property and the Kremlin.

Banking -> Replaceable Parts -> Rifling

This would aim to supplement our cossacks with rifles ASAP.

I don't think we should beeline Mass Media and then turn off tech: there are a good selection of techs that aren't in our beeline that could help us conquer to the backdoor domination limit. We also don't have that much to use cash on at the moment: until we develop Chemistry or Rifling, we can't upgrade our old units, and we don't have Universal Suffrage to cash-rush. I'd rather not rely on trading for key military techs, especially Chemistry.

 

[LKendter]

Speaking of feeling nervous , I'm sure some of you will feel nervous when I tell you that I moved the troops out of Moscow and put them on China's continent. Right now, Moscow is empty except for our GE, who I don't think will put up much of a fight . I don't see that it's a problem since Moscow isn't threatened, doesn't need the MP happiness, can whip and/or draft defenders immediately if threatened.

On this train of thought, I dont have a problem with MPing our cities on the main continent with warriors. We've got at least a couple axes that could be moved to the warfront.

Well I now have NO question I am not suited for the SGOTM. While I will finish out this commitment, I will not sign up for another round. I can't play on a team that gambles like this.

 

[Iainuki]

Quick comment: how did Izzy finish the Taj that fast?! Did she get an enginer?

 

[grangerm]

Well I now have NO question I am not suited for the SGOTM. While I will finish out this commitment, I will not sign up for another round. I can't play on a team that gambles like this.

Sorry to make you feel that way, it just seems to me to be a waste to leave useful troops on our main island that probably won't be attacked for the rest of the game. I feared far more for Sparta than I did Moscow.

how did Izzy finish the Taj that fast?! Did she get an enginer?

I don't know, but you can look in the event log if you are really curious. She might have had a golden age at some point that helped out.
how did Izzy finish the Taj that fast?! Did she get an enginer?

FYI, I didn't start any settlers cause Mao attacked.

As for tech, I agree that we could have the UN long before we have the necessary population.

At least a couple civs had banking by the time my turn was over. Not sure if they had the pre-reqs for Econ. Though, I do think that a Great Merchant was born in London...Hanno, I think. And isn't he the 1st one in the GM list? So that would mean that Vicky probably already has Econ.

Biology looks like a good idea, except that we will need to research Sci Method (and obsolete the GL) to get it. Cannons are sweet city raiders.

 

[Compromise]

Okay, good turns, grangerm. I think that's the last AI war declaration we're likely to face. Now, I think we need to look at how to get our population without too much land.

While I think the next obvious step is to clear out the Greek/Chinese island, I want to take a look at the save in some detail to plot our future course. We probably won't have a monopoly on cossacks (cavalry for the other civs) for long. We can choose either to take out AI leaders or AI stragglers, or a combination of both.

Since frigates are both dominant in the water for a while (except for ironclads) and can bombard cities, I think chemistry will be a good tech to get.

I hadn't thought about trying for the Economics free Great Merchant. Let's see if that's a possibility.

I also want to check to see how many more great people we're likely to be able to get.

State Property is very appealing because it could mean not really caring at all about which cities we conquer.

Lots to think about....

EDIT: What I'd really like to see is a count of the world's population and then a laundry list of the cities we want. (There may even be some more to found.) We should be able to estimate how long it will take to get the cities and thus how much off-beeline research we can afford.

 

[Iainuki]

Grangerm, can we get the save? I'd like to look at it.

 

[Compromise]

I think the save is posted at the SGOTM progress and results page. I always go to the first page in this thread to find the link to it.

 

[grangerm]

Sorry I didn't post the save. Here's a link to it.