SGOTM 04 - Geezers

[Harbourboy]

Looking good, Thrallia! I am excited to see the words "Cottage" and "Catapult" appearing in your turnset. Sounds like our army is building up nicely.

What are the implications for our strategy of Ghandi getting the Great Library? It is quite difficult to keep thinking in terms of his victory instead of ours. I would assume that Gyathaar would have given Ghandi some difficulties to overcome. The game will surely not just work on the basis that he has some killer position where he can cruise to the stars without our help. There must be some other people standing in his way somewhere along the way.

 

[Thrallia]

He's probably next to a major warmonger.

As for his lands...thus far it looks very food-rich. Lots of seafood, some sheep, I've seen gold and gems for him. He's already outteching us as we know 2 techs he doesn't(math and construction), while he knows at least 6 we don't(depending on whether he knows any we can't see, which is likely).

As for him getting the Great Library...I'm certainly not opposed to it. I'd prefer we had it so we could keep up with him in tech, but I definitely prefer he build it than anyone else. He's Industrious and with Org Rel, that gives him +75% wonder building right now, if he's building it somewhere he has Confuscianism...if he has access to Marble(? is it marble or stone?) then its even higher.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of land Gandhi will have, but I suspect it will be research strong but production poor...I think he may have given Gandhi good land considering the difficulties faced in the Civ3 version of this SGOTM(refusing to settle off his 1 tile island, refusing to build apollo program, refusing to build spaceship parts)

 

[Harbourboy]

You ARE a veteran of this stuff. How do you stay interested for so long?

What do we do if Gandhi simply refuses to go into space? I'm sure that wouldn't happen. He always does in my games. He seems to be going along nicely at the moment so there must be Montezuma or someone similar perched on his doorstep to cause him problems.

Good to see our Power Graph starting to trend upwards.

 

[Htadus]

Well the problem we could run into in this game is that he will go for a cultural victory. If that happens, we simply raze that city. All the AI's seem to like to build the ship in this game.

As for the Great Lib, I would rather we build it, and let him take it as most AI start to slow down in the mid game at this level since that is the only way we can assure that he will get the benefits down the road instead of some one else building it. Of coarse we too will benefit from it. I do not have it yet. But will right after this. Will post my game plan in 24 hrs.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

What do we do if Gandhi simply refuses to go into space? I'm sure that wouldn't happen. He always does in my games.

Well the problem we could run into in this game is that he will go for a cultural victory. If that happens, we simply raze that city. All the AI's seem to like to build the ship in this game.

AIUI the AI is hard coded to go for space with, I believe, Diplo as a fallback option.

 

[Harbourboy]

I have never seen the AI go for cultural victory. Does that actually happen?

Looking forward to hearing the big plan, Htadus, and seeing our graphs go through the roof! Unless that is not the plan, of course.......

 

[Sam_Yeager]

I have never seen the AI go for cultural victory. Does that actually happen?

I've only heard of it happening in Better AI mod games.

 

[Thrallia]

You ARE a veteran of this stuff. How do you stay interested for so long?

What do we do if Gandhi simply refuses to go into space? I'm sure that wouldn't happen. He always does in my games. He seems to be going along nicely at the moment so there must be Montezuma or someone similar perched on his doorstep to cause him problems.

Good to see our Power Graph starting to trend upwards.

*shrug* I bought Civ4 at launch, got Warlords shortly after its launch. I don't get time to play more than a game or two per month, but all of them are W/GOTMs and the SGOTMs, so I've learned quite a lot since I started them. As for all this analytical stuff...that's just something I've always been good at...and having a good amount of factual knowledge about the game just helps me analyze it more accurately.

It's a good thing that Gandhi is teching so fast, but we need to be able to keep up with him or something may go wrong later on and we'll be unable to stop it.

 

[markh]

It looks like Khan gets into some serious trouble.

Very nice we got the Pyramids.

I will have a look at the save this evening.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

@Thrallia - Looks like a nice productive turnset.

I'm not entirely sure why we're chopping jungle atm, especially on land that can easily be pillaged?

Khan's trireme shows he obviously has sailing so our food by Nidaros is likely to go when we attack him. It also means we have to watch out for seaborne invasions so we'll have to be careful about maintaining our garrisons. It looks like Khan has founded another city to the N of Chehalis so it's probably a good idea to send our warrior to see what's there.

The military looks much better although we're still pretty thin on the ground. On the research front Currency, on the way to CoL, would be a good after Alpha. Hopefully we can fill in the gaps in the tree, including Sailing, from Khan.

 

[Htadus]

I'm not entirely sure why we're chopping jungle atm, especially on land that can easily be pillaged?

The military looks much better although we're still pretty thin on the ground. On the research front Currency, on the way to CoL, would be a good after Alpha. Hopefully we can fill in the gaps in the tree, including Sailing, from Khan.

The jungle chop will help even without any improvment. But we should either farm it or cottage it. Farm may be best for the moment for 4 food.

I think we need to chop a forest in Iron city to complete the Lib and build a cottage. I would rush a grainary just before that city grow to 3 and let any overflow go to a Rax. I will continue building units for my turn set. Currency is a good choice for me at the moment but I only got to look at the file for a brief time. I will post if I see any changes needed.

We do need to get a war plan going. I see a horse pillage team and a town capture/raze team starting at the iron city and going CW. I am not a fan of the Mongol Capital site or the city by the marble. They both need to move north. I do like the Iron city site and would not mind keeping it. We should leave them with 2 cities for another extortion round after the first war. The low production coastal town and another would be ideal.

 

[Thrallia]

I kinda liked the Mongol capital...it looks like a potential powerhouse with all those floodplains.

As for the jungle, yes, I decided to chop the jungle instead of just building a farm or cottage, partly because I didn't know which we'd want(it is a river tile, thus would give +3 commerce immediately if cottage and +4 food if farm) and because it doesn't take any extra time to chop then build than it does to just build. It also gets rid of the jungle unhealthiness faster...I learned that from Simon last SGOTM.

 

[Harbourboy]

I agree that chopping jungle then improving is usually slightly better than starting the improvement on the jungle itself.

 

[Htadus]

Well since there are no other comments for the moment, I will play later. I will set science to zero for turn 0 and on next turn with the new pop in ElDo, I should be able to run science at 100% until We learn Alphabet. Since there is no way of assuring Gandhi will build the GLib, we need to try. With Marble within the radius of our next city , we should be able to build it in the cap rather fast. Any ways, I will stop at that point to see what all others think. Currency still is a good choice and so is CoL. Since we will not have Marble available soon, we might as well go for currency. Then again, we won't be able to build a market for a while due to troop buildup.......ok time to go to bed. Has any one learned Col yet.....I am out

@Thrallia - The reason I would like to move the Mongol Cap one north is to give it 3 - 4hammer tiles while still retaining a ton of food and commerce, and speed up the construction of all the needed building and units. And leave room for another city to be placed to use the sheep to the south. And we will not get a city with a lot of population saying they want to join the motherland. And no more ands.

 

[Thrallia]

Confuscianism was founded by Gandhi during my turnset...so I'd assume Gandhi already has CoL

The main reason I would support CoL next is to enable us to keep Khan's cities if desired without destroing our economy completely. We would just whip Courthouses in them ASAP

 

[Harbourboy]

So Caravels are a bit of a way off then?

 

[Sam_Yeager]

So what exactly is the plan for Khan? As we're playing Warlords it seems to me that we have four options:

1. Eliminate Khan.
2. Damage Khan enough to vassalise him.
3. Fight a limited war to take out the two cities to the west and the two cities to the east, which might turn out to be the same as option 2.
4. Build a big enough military with the option of following option 3 if Khan attacks us and live in relative harmony with Khan for the time being.

The discussions so far seem to indicate option 1. Is that really the best idea? The majority of our cities are going to be tied up building military for quite a while and our science will not be that brilliant. Option 2 seems better although we will still be focusing on war for some time and who knows how long it will take for Khan to capitulate? Option 3 has advantages although since we will probably want to keep Chehalis and Ning-Hsia to stop Khan settling those areas again we will suffer unhappiness. Option 4 still means some focus on military since we can't trust Khan that much and Khan is likely to be more difficult to take out in the future.

I can't say that I'm that keen on option 1 as it distracts us from cracking on with research and discovering the other civs. OTOH all the other options have a downside as well.

I'm raising the subject now so that we can consider how much the current course of action will impact on our subsequent game before we are committed.

 

[Jenarie]

Just quick thought - I don't think we can take any vassals this game. WE know the war with Gandhi is "fake" but any vassal we have will also be at war with thim and if they have any power at all could give him a hard time.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Just quick thought - I don't think we can take any vassals this game. WE know the war with Gandhi is "fake" but any vassal we have will also be at war with thim and if they have any power at all could give him a hard time.

Ack! That's a good point. Spot the person who hasn't played too many games on Warlords.

MInd you I still think we need to consider whether or not the disruption caused by attacking is worth it. After all that leaves us without any trading partners until we can contact the other civs.

Speaking of which I hope Htdatus moved the WB to explore Ghandhi's lands.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

The main reason I would support CoL next is to enable us to keep Khan's cities if desired without destroing our economy completely. We would just whip Courthouses in them ASAP

I agree that CoL's good. Not only for the courthouses but for the Caste civic. However unless we can trade for the religious techs then we probably have to go for Currency first anyway. Which raises the quezstion of what we would trade for those religious techs. If Khan doesn't know IW then would we really want him to know about the iron by Ning-Hsia?

However Currency is also good to make the most of the gold.