SGOTM 04 - Geezers

The-Hawk · May 28, 2007

Sam, you've done an outstanding job on this turnset... :worship:

I'm thinking you should consider writing an article for the War Academy on how to fight a defensive war against superior forces. I continue to be impressed with the quality of play and teamwork of all the Geezers. :goodjob:

Ghandi's landing is a terrible turn of events.

I had hoped he would not be interested in the long distance war, especially when we have all those plum cities to his south in the old homeland. I'm starting to wonder if we will ever get him to focus on technology vs. conquest. We know Mehmed has industrialism, Ghandi doesn't even have Rifling yet. He is light years behind.

Here's my new concern... 1823 AD, 227 turns left. I would think at Monarch, the other AI's will be launching in the late 1900's. However, even if we were to eliminate Hanny and Mehmed, I'm not sure Ghandi will launch in time. This game is really not far from being over, I don't know if we can win from where we are. Given I think we've played a solid game, it makes me wonder if anyone is going to win this scenario? I wonder if there is a tiebreaker if nobody gets him to launch? Maybe it will be the latest date of an opponent launch?

Our two strategic options:

Ghandi launch strategy:

I think the best chance for a Ghandi launch is to abandon the old lands as quickly as possible, hope he doesn't raze too many cities, and then hope the commerce boost pushes his technology pace in spite of himself. This is a dreadfully risky strategy, as we will not be able to tech much more. We will be increasingly under pressure from far superior forces in the new lands.

Abandoning our old cities will not be instantaneous, we will still be teching in the mean time. I would tech Physics, Arty, Rocketry. This will give us Inf, Arty, and Sami's for defense. Without Sami's things are going to get really ugly soon when Izzy and others get gunships.

In the new land, I would start building almost all military (Inf, Arty, Sami's). We will need to be in a position to survive Ghandi's apparent endless attacks. I'd make peace with Izzy and try to get far enough ahead in power that she leaves us alone. With Ghandi landings, maybe we can't afford to spend too much energy wupping up on Izzy??? :undecide:

Exception to building military is Scotland Yard. Might be nice to have some spies to send off to Hanny and Mehmed and slow their space production down.

Survive to a Hanny or Mehmed launch, hope for a tiebreaker of some sort:

If we are going to play to survive from here, then we should defend our old lands vigorously and stop abandoning any cities. This will allow us to tech to the end, maybe beeling to something useful (like Mech Inf) and then make war with Mehmed and Hanny to slow down their launch dates.

Oh, if we are going to keep our old cities, might want to plop the FP in there somewhere. The long distance maint is killing us.

/EDIT: BTW, congrats to Harbourboy for making Quattromaster!

Sam_Yeager · May 28, 2007

Turn 433 - 1823 AD
Draft inf from Verlamion. Evacuate both inf and gren from Verlamion as it's clearly lost and I'm running short of units. Lose cannon from New Sarai attacking cav on stone. Finish off cav with inf. Upgrade Vienne gren to inf. Draft inf from Durnovaria and Isca. MM all cities.

IBT:
Ghandhi captures and razes Verlamion. :mad:

Izzy's fresh reinforcements kill two inf and a gren in Bagacum. Our trade deal for silver to Hanny is auto cancelled. Presumably due to the loss of Verlamion.

Turn 434 - 1824 AD

Upgrade Camulodunum gren to inf. Upgrade Isca axe to inf.

IBT:
Bagacum defence kill one spanish arty. Another arty withdraws. Lose 2 inf in defence. Now only have a cannon and spear left in Bagacum. Both are wounded. Expect to lose Bagacum as I can't get reinforcements there before Izzy attacks next turn.

Turn 435 - 1825 AD

Camulodunum Cannon -> Gren. Upgrade Vienne gren to inf. Kill indian cav S of Sanchu with inf. Kill cannon NW of New Sarai. We have a GG in NK.

I have left him there for the time being.

IBT:
As expected Izzy kills the cannon and spear and takes Bagacum for the loss of a wounded arty. Rifle to SW of Bagacumn killed by spanish inf. :eek:

First one of those I've seen.

Turn 436 - 1826 AD

Isca Cannon -> Gren. Cannon retakes Bagacum killing a wounded cav in the process. Only a forge is left of our buildings.

Reinforce Bagacum with another two inf. Kill spanish inf on hill to SW of Bagacum. Kill cav to SE of Sanchu. Gergovia completes cav and resumes observatory. Three indian cannon and one gren fall easily to Vienne's inf.

IBT:
Inf on hill to SW of Bagacum kills attacking cav but falls to another.

Turn 437 - 1827 AD

Well that brings up my ten turns and I'm totally knackered and brain dead despite splitting the turnset over two days. I think Htadus can take over now. He can take the extra turns if he wants. I've hardly moved any units so it's all up to him.

Hanny built the Statue of Liberty in Carthage at some point so we missed out on that. The GE in Bibracte could build Scotland Yard, contribute 1050 :gold:

towards the Pentagon or partly research Railroad. Alternatively we could start a golden age or just hang on to him. We still have that GG in New Karakorum btw.

Science is a disaster area and most of our cities in the new land are small due to the repeated drafting I did.

Spoiler Izzy Forces - 1827 AD :

Spoiler Ghandhi Forces - 1827 AD :

1827 AD Save

Spoiler Turn Log :

Sam_Yeager · May 28, 2007

The-Hawk said:
Sam, you've done an outstanding job on this turnset... I'm thinking you should consider writing an article for the War Academy on how to fight a defensive war against superior forces.

I think you overestimate my ability. :blush:

The downside is that our science is non existent.

The-Hawk said:
Ghandi's landing is a terrible turn of events. I had hoped he would not be interested in the long distance war, especially when we have all those plum cities to his south in the old homeland.

I'm beginning to wonder if Ghandhi's traits were tweaked to make him more aggressive. He sent a far more powerful force to our new lands that he ever did to our southern lands. :confused:

The-Hawk said:
Here's my new concern... 1823 AD, 227 turns left. I would think at Monarch, the other AI's will be launching in the late 1900's. However, even if we were to eliminate Hanny and Mehmed, I'm not sure Ghandi will launch in time. This game is really not far from being over, I don't know if we can win from where we are. Given I think we've played a solid game, it makes me wonder if anyone is going to win this scenario? I wonder if there is a tiebreaker if nobody gets him to launch? Maybe it will be the latest date of an opponent launch?

A couple of the teams have got very high power ratings. I wonder if they decided far earlier to go for far more aggressive tactics like wiping out the opposition.

The-Hawk said:
I'd make peace with Izzy and try to get far enough ahead in power that she leaves us alone.

I wish! Izzy still refuses to talk. I would gladly have taken peace to try and rebuild our forces.

I'll have to have a think about your two options and post later.

Sam_Yeager · May 28, 2007

I wonder if it's worth converting to Buddhism? It might persuade Izzy to come to the negotiating table. With luck Mehmed might also be persuaded to give us a tech as well. Both Hanny & Washy shouldn't be bothered as they're running Free Religion.

However the downside is that we would have to revolt from Free Religion ourselves (2 turns anarchy) and then convert (1 turn anarchy?) so it may not be worth it.

I think the AI has to lose x units before it starts talking peace. Hopefully we can't be too far off that limit.

Harbourboy · May 28, 2007

Well, Sam, you lasted 10 turns longer than I would have.

Seriously though, I think survival will be a big enough challenge in this game now. If this was WOTM, I'd be digging in to see how long I could last from here. I am very pessimistic about Gandhi's ability to win space race.

Maybe there could be bonus points for Gandhi winning another way.

Sam_Yeager · May 28, 2007

Harbourboy said:
I am very pessimistic about Gandhi's ability to win space race.

Maybe there could be bonus points for Gandhi winning another way.

Frankly I'm pessimistic about Ghandhi winning in any way whatsoever. :lol:

At the moment Hanny seems to be the most ahead on the build front e.g. Apollo & SoL. However Mehmed seemed to be further ahead on the military front e.g. Tanks. Perhaps they've just been following different parts of the tree.

Jenarie · May 28, 2007

I looked at the save before Sam played but couldn't think of anything to add at the time so didn't post. I have been kinda thinking about this though and I was wondering...

I don't really understand why we are so worried about our survival. It may be worse then I think but I'm used to being the little guy surrounded and I don't normally have a problem surviving. But... the obvious solution is negated by our variant. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad though.

What if we tried to get either Hannibal or Mehmed in on the war with Gandhi. We've been protecting him all game (well trying anyway) but maybe he NEEDS to lose some of his military advantage so he can (1) leave us alone and (2) stop thinking domination and start thinking space.

I can't open the save now as I'm running out the door but would either one come in on our side? I think that maybe letting all the high military guys duke it out on each other might work here if any of them will be willing to declare.

Its a risk but I think if they'd do it it would give us the best odds of survival and we could worry about the rest once we aren't worried about being knocked out of the game.

Sam_Yeager · May 28, 2007

I've been pondering The-Hawk's suggestions on the way forward. I agree that it looks prettyunlikely at present that Ghandhi will win the space race. As I see it The-Hawk's suggestions can be summed up as follows:

Give up our southern cities in a staged process, pray he doesn't raze them, tech for military, try to survive and cross our fingers that Ghandhi launches first.
Hang on to our southern cities for grim death and try to survive until one of the AI launches.

The trouble with option 1 is that we know from past experience that we can't give up our cities in a controlled manner because Ghandhi will pillage the improvements out of sight unless we let him have the cities quickly. Equally we don't know if he'll have the common sense to hang onto our cities anyway. :aargh:

I'm not a great fan of option 2 because I'm sure some of the teams will get Ghandhi to launch first. It may well be later than might be expected but I'm sure someone will manage it.

A possible option 3 is to slow down the opposition to let Ghandhi catch up and launch. The trouble with that is we're behind the tech and military curve and we're bottom of the power rankings. Whilst I know the power rankings are misleading I think they're accurate enough with respect to Hanny and Mehmed. A high risk option would be to convert to Buddhism and get friendly with Mehmed. This might allow us to persuade Mehmed & Izzy to attack Hanny with a little bit of help from ourselves. Given that neither of them like Hanny that much they might declare regardless. If nothing else we might be able to beg a tech or two from Mehmed. Of course this leaves the difficulty of how do we slow down Mehmed. :hmm:

I think we need to get Scotland Yard, and hence spies, up and running soonest. I would be inclined to use our GE for that. It's probably not feasible to use the spies for sabotage though as the missions cost such a lot. Perhaps we should have a modified option 2 where we try and get lots of gold for sabotage? I don't think that's likely to work though.

I'll be interested to hear other peoples views.

Sam_Yeager · May 28, 2007

Jenarie said:
What if we tried to get either Hannibal or Mehmed in on the war with Gandhi. We've been protecting him all game (well trying anyway) but maybe he NEEDS to lose some of his military advantage so he can (1) leave us alone and (2) stop thinking domination and start thinking space.

@Jenarie - To an extent Ghandhi's attacks are not that serious mainly because he's so far behind in tech. Although I grant you that cavs are a bit of a pain in the backside. I wiped out just under half his attack force, on a hill, with four inf. Only one inf took damage. The real pain was having to deal with him whilst also being at war with Izzy.

The real problem with Ghandhi attacking us is that he's devoting his energies to that instead of paying attention to space research. With his power rating it's pretty unlikely that Hanny or Mehmed will try and attack him. In fact the last thing we want is for him to be attacked as he'll go and build even more military. :rolleyes:

On the survival front our problem is that Izzy has tech parity with us and really doesn't like us. She also has a big friend who's far more dangerous. Because of giving up our cities our research bombed and the war with Izzy has made things even worse. Normally by now I would expect us to have reasonable tech parity with the AI which would make it feasible to attack the AI. As it is we would have problems with Izzy, never mind Mehmed & Hanny. Or at least that's my take on it.

Thrallia · May 29, 2007

Of the-Hawk's options...I prefer Option 1. In the Civ3 SGOTM that this is based on, the team that got Gandhi to build the Apollo Program fastest won...and only like 3 or 4 teams got him to do that! I don't think anyone will get him to launch this game...and that we could get a medal just for getting him to build the Apollo Program.

I think if we can build a large enough military, we can take down any civs that get in the way of Gandhi launching first....who knows, maybe if we take down Izzy we'll have a good enough spot of land to tech back up to parity with Mehmed and Hanny, at least militarily.

Htadus · May 29, 2007

No Peace with Izzy cause we need to wipe her out.
We do not need Gandhi becoming Hanny or Mehmed's Vassel since that might means they will be our new enermy since the peace option is not on the table.
May be we should discourage him a bit by taking one of our old cities back. Which might mean he will focus on that city thus continue building units.

As for others launching, if we catch up on mil techs, all we need to do is take out the capital. If we catch up, no problem. I will look up the save and play tomorrow. Please lets talk out loud even the silliest ideas.

Sam_Yeager · May 29, 2007

Htadus said:
No Peace with Izzy cause we need to wipe her out.

Although Izzy has not been that great at passing on the techs to Ghandhi we do still need to maintain a trading partner for Ghandhi so elimination is probably not an option.

We really need a period of peace in our new lands to rebuild our economy, science and catch up on military units.

I would like to see Scotland Yard built soon. I propose that we use our GE to build it as Vienne will be tied up producing military and it's our only decent production city.

markh · May 29, 2007

Sounds like a fun round for you, Sam. :goodjob:

Nice handling of the situation.

I have not looked at the save, so I do not know how our military stands. Do we have enough units to launch a counterattack on Izzy ?

Concerning the overall strategy I think we will be lucky if Gandhi completes Apollo. I do not think that he will catch up on Hannibal. Hannibal is financial and he is teching very well. The only way to stop Hanny would be to get him into a war. We do not have anything to bribe him into a war and going for him isn't an option either. He will have tanks at the time we will be able to go for him. Maybe he has them already.

Sam_Yeager · May 29, 2007

markh said:
I have not looked at the save, so I do not know how our military stands. Do we have enough units to launch a counterattack on Izzy ?

We only have 6 or 7 inf in our new lands with maybe one cannon. Realistically I don't think we can go after Izzy at present.

Htadus · May 30, 2007

Okay. Took a look and it appears that Harbourboy and Sam has done one hell of a job securing the new homeland. Good job to both.

I would like to take back two of our old cities just to give G'man the reason to chase another victory condition, so what do you think of taking back sanju (?) and Upps. We can use the income and the power graph to back off Izzy.

I also think we have units to counter Izzy too since some of our units can be promoted. After taking care of the indian problem, I will take a few units (5or so) to pillage all her production and food sites and may conduct a counter assult.

I will wait another day to play since the current turn is the best to take Sanju and I would like to do so. Please let me know and I will wait for a decision. The way I see it, if we think Gandhi is not going to win by spaceship, we might be able to help him win by scoreat the end.

markh · May 30, 2007

I could not download the latest save as the site was down. I will have a look tonight.

Sam_Yeager · May 30, 2007

Htadus said:
I would like to take back two of our old cities just to give G'man the reason to chase another victory condition, so what do you think of taking back sanju (?) and Upps. We can use the income and the power graph to back off Izzy.

I'm against this idea. I think the net effect would be that Ghandhi increases his production of military. Whereas now it's difficult for Ghandhi to do too much pillaging of our improvements as he is some distance away it would be much easier for him to pillage the improvements by Sanchu & Uppsala. At present we are bottom of the pile wrt to the power ranking. What we need to do is increase our power rating and then the AI will be somewhat less inclined to attack us.

Htadus said:
I also think we have units to counter Izzy too since some of our units can be promoted. After taking care of the indian problem, I will take a few units (5or so) to pillage all her production and food sites and may conduct a counter assult.

I think we have a grand total of 6 inf and a cav in the new lands at present so I'm puzzled as to where you're going to find 5 units to go pillaging in Izzy's lands. As you may have noticed I had to strip all the other cities of any significant military to defend Vienne & Bagacum. Thankfully Izzy has not yet tried a landing yet. However she does have a destroyer roaming round our ~~lands~~ coast so that may not last. The only good thing about Ghandhi's attack is that he landed by Verlamion which gave me a chance to reinforce Vienne. Had he landed by Vienne or Bibracte initially they would have fallen immediately.

Personally I think we need to build up a larger military before we start thinking of sorties into Izzy lands. This will also help our power rating to rise. Bear in mind that WW will start rising if we lose units in Izzy's lands.

Btw I think we can probably afford to restart research @ 50%.

markh · May 30, 2007

Had a look at the save. Fantastic job, Sam. :bowdown:

I agree that we should not take cities from Gandhi. He should get them running now and he would just produce more military. In the old lands we should play the war defensively now. We should let it be as it is now.

I think we will get Izzy to peace talks only if we take a city from her, so military buildup should be priority in the new lands. I saw a nicely promoted pike in Birka that should get upgraded to infantry still this turn. I think once we have 4 cannons and 5 - 6 infantries to spare we may go for one of Izzy's outer cities. These will not be that heavily defended and we could get peace for a while to take a breath, build up even more military and finish her off. :trouble:

Htadus · May 31, 2007

Team. I played a few turns and things are calm for most parts. However, I would like to revisit the idea of taking back Sanchu and Uppsala. The biggest pain during the last few turns has been Gandhi's cavs. And he got them after he captured these two cities. Please look at the save and see for your self. G man is not catching up. We need to try to eliminate all others in the next 180+ turns and in order to do this we need to tech and tech fast. We can use those two cities and all our culture is still there too. Anyways here is the turns I played and the save for your viewing plesure. BTW Hanny just built another ship part.

1827 AD(Turn 437) Kill Gandhi's Cav by Saria, cannon by Vienna and Cav south of Vienna. Promoted many souple units. Playing checkers with units.
IBT: Indians are pillaging.

1828 AD(Turn 438) Killed of all but one of Indian units, the cav. Promoted another unit. Killed off 2 Indian Frigs in old world.
IBT: 3 Indian Cannons land next to Vienna.

1829 AD(Turn 439) Set Science to 50%, Physics in 9. Killed off all Indian groung units and 2 frigs in new world and a Spanish Cav. Two more cavs moved in. Workers chop useless forest.
IBT: Indians land a cav, Granadier and a musketman by Vienna and a cav by Sarai.

1830 AD(Turn 440) No more bad guys in Viking Lands and Izzy will give us peace for a Bagacum. I laught. We can send a pillage team now but.... I will not.
IBT:Bombardment

1831 AD(Turn 441) Worker action to rebuild. Hanny claimed the two Silver with a settlement.
IBT:Zzz

1832 AD(Turn 442) More worker action. No amount of begging has helped. Izzy still want our city. No. We still have the largest land area but 6th in Soldiers.
IBT: Spanish cav show up on a hill and 3 more of Gandhi's units land on the ice tile (no defense value) NE of Vienna-2 cavs and granadier. So lets keep that tile open.

1833 AD(Turn 443) Lost an Infantryman to the cav with 78% odds. One of our cavs finished the spanish peacock. Killed Gahndies landing party. Moving the GG to new world.
IBT:Gahndies cav show up by new Sarai.

1834 AD(Turn 444) Loose an Infantry man killing it. GG and the escort right back inside the city. Izzy's Destroyer showed up by it IBT. Phew :run:

.

Stoping here for discussing Gandhi.

markh · May 31, 2007

I am at work now, so I cannot look at the save now.

Izzy is behaving normally. She will want Bagacum for peace unless we take a city from her or ww strikes her too hard, but this can still take some time.

Still I do not know whether Sanchu and Uppsala will gain us much. If we take them back and the courthouses are gone these cities will cost us quite much and I fear that we will tech worse than we already do. :dunno:

SGOTM 04 - Geezers

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