SGOTM 04 - Team VQ

GreyFox · Aug 5, 2007

A couple more points for Scowler:

- I stated Scotland Yard in the city near Mehmed: idea is to spy on him to make sure he does not steal a space win from right under our nose, literally.

- With the culture slider back to zero, we are seeing a Ottoman revolt in one of the city. I suggest let it be ... it at least will help keep us safe from Domination.

Spoiler HoF Autolog :

Spoiler CFC's Extracted Log :

Scowler · Aug 8, 2007

Points noted. I'll probably play this tonight or tomorrow morning.

bobrath · Aug 8, 2007

Perhaps Bad bad baldy is not attacking since our power curve is so much higher then his... The only way to safely lower it would be to remove all other threats from the world and that's just ICKY.

Scowler · Aug 9, 2007

This game is crazy! We have all these cities, and we apparently can't even give them away!

Seriously, GF's worker bait didn't seem to be tempting Gandhi so I decided to be a little more daring . . . and I finally managed to coax a cannon out of Kolhapur and into Birka. It seems the way to do it is to lay a trail of workers like dog biscuits:

It will take 9 turns for the city to come online! Another reason for us to get our skates on. I suggest we try the same trick at Nidaros and Bjorgvin (although I've already tried it once and he sent an Infantry out 1 tile to grab a worker - and then promptly turned round to hide in Hyderabad once more!):

I think we simply have to persuade Baldy to take Nidaros within the next 2 turnsets or it simply won't be worth it. It's especially crucial now the Internet is finished (we got Military Tradition, Fascism, Mass Media and Fission). Gandhi is still some way behind:

We also finished Scotland Yard and I've produced two spies to keep an eye on Mehmed. He is currently building Thrusters at Istanbul and Casing at Bursa. He built two Casings (Nos. 2 and 3, I think) during my round.

There is one other city I haven't checked yet. I also strongly recommend trying to infiltrate a spy into Baldy-land to see what exactly the loinclothed one is spending his hammers on (apart from frigates...). In other news, he got a Great Prophet and the Temple of Solomon.

75 turns remaining!

SAVE

Spoiler log :

dot · Aug 9, 2007

I've been lurking this and only this SGOTM4 thread all along. But now it is time to delurk.

This has just been it, Scowler!

How to lose a city in 4 easy steps?
I mean, are you totally out of your mind? Man, that's just way insane. :gripe:

And hilarious, too!

I had to laugh so hard that I nearly fell off my chair! :lol:

A totally insane but yet strategically brilliant idea! :thumbsup:

GreyFox · Aug 9, 2007

Great job losing Birka! (never expect one to say that :crazyeye:

). Wow, we better start producing a lot more workers then ... :lol:

Got it, expect the report soon. I tired of waiting for the non-responsive online gameshop, and decided to go out and buy BTS today. So I want to get this game done with ... I don't want to dual-install. Let's play 15~20 turns each ... now that there is no war anyway ... (real one, I mean, not the phony one which lasted for the past 6 millenniums or so).

--

GreyFox · Aug 10, 2007

Okay, turns played. First order of business is to plunge us into 4 turns of anarchy.

Yes, that's right, 4. With the two wars that we had are phony in all but name, we had no use for police state and theocracy. Since we aim to lose Nidaros, we had no use for bureaucracy (it is building nothing but worker/missionary anyway).

Now, let's see if Scowler's patented 4 easy steps works.

step 1 accomplished!

Next turn, the infantry returns back with his prized slave. :aargh:

Rinse and repeat, let's see I have better luck ... and all we achieved was to supply Gandhi with a Corp of fast workers :crazyeye:

Okay, time to re-think a bit. Scowler did it with an artillery ... let's try with that instead.

Hmm .. so far so good ...

OMG! OMG! OMFG! It's working!!!!

Okay, it doesn't work when the artillery is alone. So in summary, here is what we learnt so far on How To Lose a City When Your Opponent is a Bald Chicken:

this does not work with infantry
this work with artillery
But the artillery must not be the sole defender

So, all we do is wait for Gandhi to somehow reinforce his shiny new cities with more troops. Meanwhile, I have the workers re-build the mines around his cities for him. (Of-course he is most certainly gonna undo what we did by bombarding them ... what a moron!)

Speaking of Moron, did nobody inform Mehmed of our grand plan?

On the bright side we are inching further away from Domination ... but Izzy is still the Space Ship Parts leader

I have been building happy buildings and missionaries mostly. We own Buddhism, Hinduism (hopefully not for long) and Confucian shrines. Confused being the 2nd most wide-spread religion (yeah, I bet most of the simulated citizens are wondering why the hell had we not walk all over India), and I decided to build the Wall Street there. So keep those missionaries spamming. Meanwhile, we are still in Hindu, so the OR will help Hindu cities, thus pump out the Hindi Missus as well.

Finally, I present to you the report from our operatives:

>>> Save (1990 -- 60 turns remaining!) <<<

Spoiler Autolog :

bobrath · Aug 13, 2007

Looks good. Some thoughts:

If we can continue giving up cities at some point soon we'll lose Mehmed as a vassal. Have to be ready for that. Can't have him decide to take more cities away from us!

Is the free speech culture hurting Ghandi? In that we're putting some intense pressure on his newly aquired cities... Just thinking out loud - otherwise good stuff on the civics switch.

Scowler · Aug 14, 2007

I don't think Mehmed is in any position to do us significant damage at this stage, and it doesn't matter if he breaks free as he has outlived his usefulness anyway.

The culture issue would be solved by Gandhi simply taking more cities; the ball is in Baldy's court.

Bob, I'm assuming you are still busy/recovering from your trip? I'll pick this up later today, so holler if you want to grab it first.

GreyFox · Aug 14, 2007

We need to lose way lot of cities to lose Mehmed ... from rule book: a capitulated vassal can only break free (a) go to war with master by refusing a resource tribute, (b) loses more than half of his cities at time of capitulation, or (c) reaches 50% of master's land.

Since (a) and (b) don't apply, for (c) to be satisfied, we need to not only lose all cities in our original continent, my guess is we need to lose a big half of Hannibal's cities as well. That won't happen. We only succeeded in losing 2 cities in 25 turns. We won't lose more than 10 in the remaining 65 turns.

bobrath · Aug 14, 2007

Go for it Scowler, I'll pick up after you.

Scowler · Aug 15, 2007

Please remind me: does AI stand for Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Idiocy? If it is supposed to be the latter I'm sure we can all agree that what we have here is a masterpiece of digital design.

After the earlier success I found myself facing much the same problems as Fox. Gandhi would take a worker and then immediately retreat back into the city. And on one occasion he didn't even bother taking the worker at all:

I was determined to continue until he took Nidaros, so I ended up playing 22 unbearably tedious turns. My only sources of amusement were moving missionaries around and using the spies to destroy all of Mehmed's improvements (the soldiers got to strip Izzy bare, so it seemed only fair that the girls should get their turn with Mehmed :eek:

). Needless to say, there is no chance whatsoever that Mehmed will complete the spaceship before the end of the game - he wasn't even allowed to finish any further parts during this round.

Finally, an opportunity presented itself:

I don't know what is so special about siege weapons, but Fox's analysis appears to be correct:

As you can see, he immediately transported some other units inside. Now there are 10 more turns to wait until the city comes online for Baldy, leaving him with just 28 turns to lift his scrawny ass into orbit.

Ad astra per aspera indeed!

Incidentally, the turn before Nidaros was captured I merged our Engineer into it. Sorry for not discussing this beforehand, but I noticed that we are due to pop another Great Person in around 11 turns and thought, "What use is a Golden Age to us now?" A merged Engineer won't make a great deal of difference at this stage, but I figured that anything that gives Baldy even a couple of extra hammers or beakers is worthwhile. Now watch him use the city to increase his fleet of battleships and destroyers . . . :crazyeye:

Bob, you were right about the culture. Both Haithabu and Birka revolted for 10 turns. Sadly things aren't helped by Baldy keeping only a minimal garrison in his newly-captured cities.

Anyway, I've had enough of this game. I don't expect to have to play another turnset. :nono:

Good luck!

38 turns left!

GreyFox · Aug 15, 2007

I think the effects of Space Elevators and Internet should come into play immediately after capture (no need to wait for revolt to be over) ... I can't open the save right now, but it should be able to tell if my assertion is correct (such as mouse over the hammer counts of 122 in Delhi and check if the Space Elevator bonus is reflected, or simply check the tech screen to see if Gandhi has increased his tech portfolio).

Good job with losing Nidaros!!!

the soldiers got to strip Izzy bare, so it seemed only fair that the girls should get their turn with Mehmed

Indeed!

Bobrath can finish the game if you wish ... it's just 38 turns. I predict we would win (or is it lose? :crazyeye:

) a time victory

--

We need to figure out what tech Gandhi still lacks and try to research it for him, and gift the tech to Mehmed (hopefully that would transfer the tech to the Internet) .... Finally our dog had its use.

--

bobrath · Aug 15, 2007

I did not realize that merged Great People went over with a captured city...

dot · Aug 15, 2007

But they do.

GreyFox · Aug 19, 2007

Hello??? Clock is ticking ... 26th August is the deadline ...

bobrath · Aug 19, 2007

What can I say, I can only take so much of watching an AI that seems hell bent on not winning the game...

It took just over 11 turns, but Sicca fell to Indian hands... Yes that means he took another city with his spoon fed artillery while every turn seeming to enjoying taking workers just off his borders. He started using Mech infantry to snag workers 2 deep, but then returned to his "safe place". Maybe we can trap an MI once it captures the 2 deep worker and force him to take another or even move into the city just steps away.

One upsetting step after seeing Ghandi finish the SS part and begin building a bomber :mad:

was to go on a crash military retirement program. It took a few turns (since I didn't want to remove everything), but Ghandi is now stronger then us (according to the power chart).

In a fit of rage, I destroyed (and raized) Konya away from Izzy. She's down to one city and I'll leave it to the next player to decide what to do. Personally, I'd say wipe her out, just so we can see if Mehmed or Ghandi is next best in the space race.

I lost one spy and then realized we can't build any more... since we lack Scotland yard. So I've got one sitting in Mehmed's capital watching him take 100+ turns to build the Docking Bay and two in Ghandi's homeland... watching him build military up.

Some of his new cities on the other continent have popped nice borders, but are costing G about 20gpt each.

Only thing left to do is to allow Ghandi free range on the seas and letting him pillage all resources and getting rid of our air defenses - since I suspect that his losses in air and ships (where he goes after us...) are not helping the shift to non-military builds. Dunno.

I however just can't take the frustration - 20 turns left on the score countdown. Somone else (if they'd like) can just hit enter 20 more times and end this.

CfC Autolog

Spoiler :

GreyFox · Aug 19, 2007

I will gladly take this to the end. Stay tuned.

On an entirely different topic, just to let it be known, I am disappointed with some of the VQ members who seemingly dropped out of existence but are rejoining the SG action recently ... while I am happy for them that they can again find time to have some Civ4 fun, and I can understand if they don't want to continue playing this (who wants to play a losing game?) ... but the least they can do is is give us the courtesy of dropping in and say that to our face.

Enough rant.

--

bobrath · Aug 20, 2007

Oh.. btw I flipped civics to Nationhood - tried my best to reduce cultural pressure. Doesn't help that Ghandi is more interested in taking cities on the edge instead of driving down the middle.

Also, whomever placed stacks of 4 workers on the two mines and pastures in the north is a genius! They can rebuild the improvement in one turn and they all act as natural lightning rods for Ghandi's air based pillaging (keeping them from being shot down going south). Good stuff that.

I seem to recall (from our diplomacy game) that AIs have a factor which determines their likelyhood to go to war - and its in some part based on relative power levels. It would make sense that the desire to attack (or build up defenses) would be tied to the same.

So in hindsight... we needed to be way more militaristic at the start and just decimate the world and then as fast as possible start disbanding and removing our units to drop our power ranking to nearly nothing.

Second note, I trade Fiber Optics and Fusion to Mehmed with the intention of Ghandi getting it (thanks to the Internet). But by my last check of the F4 screen... Ghandi still lacks that tech... Hunh?

GreyFox · Aug 20, 2007

Yeah, I played 10 turns, and was surprised by that as well (the lack of tech of Gandhi). Then I realized Internet was a project, not a wonder per se. It gets destroyed once the city changed hand :sad:

SGOTM 04 - Team VQ

Make it so ...

Mr. Understatement

Emperor

Mr. Understatement

crossing the i's

Make it so ...

Make it so ...

Emperor

Mr. Understatement

Make it so ...

Emperor

Mr. Understatement

Make it so ...

Emperor

crossing the i's

Make it so ...

Emperor

Make it so ...

Emperor

Make it so ...

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