SGOTM 04 - Trash Team

[Cam_H]

I agree that we should hold off playing the 'real' game until we know what the heck we're doing. For this reason I don't think that we'll benefit much from a parallel game.

The test game that I posted gives us a close enough identical start to the one in the screenshot, and has leaders that are generally pretty moderate in terms of not being particularly nutty or erratic, as far as Civ leaders go. Remco has another test game with quick speed.

I really believe that all the team members would benefit from playing one of these through to completion and comparing results. Personally I don't play Epic speed that often, so I need to get a better handle on how to better use the whip and not to be so impatient. I don't know if it's better if we do this 'succession style' or whether we just play one or both of these in our own time.

Sorry if I'm sounding like a pain in the @r$e about this, but I don't feel comfortable about starting the real game until we have a solid plan derived from some experience with this set up. Of course, I will go along with the group decision if it differs from my position.

 

[cabert]

Hum,
Maybe I'm not competitive minded enough, but I gave up the testing.
It's kind of boring to play similar games twice or more.

I believe some independance day move is the best for us.
That's why I want us to create a very strong commerce city to semi gift to gandhi.
We may have to "protect" the cottages vs pillaging, and that's a tricky part.
But I believe a totally empty city is enough temptation.

 

[pigswill]

Until we actually start playing we won't know where Gandhi is in relation to us, and so we won't know whether migration is a good option.

I'm wondering how near we are to making a start in sgotm4. We've agreed pretty much on explore first turn to decide on location of first city. We could also do with deciding on initial tech and initial build then we could start exploring our home island and hopefully find Gandhi fairly early.

We're still quite a way from establishing a grand strategy.
1) We've more or less decided on religion.

2) An equally important question is do we expand towards Gandhi which let's him capture our cities early but means he builds more units and doesn't develop tiles or do we expand away from him (assuming of course we have options to do either) ?

3)What's our policy towards third parties?

4) We have to survive and prosper ourselves. What's the most effective way to achieve this? How does this balance with helping Gandhi?

 

[cabert]

Until we actually start playing we won't know where Gandhi is in relation to us, and so we won't know whether migration is a good option.

I'm wondering how near we are to making a start in sgotm4. We've agreed pretty much on explore first turn to decide on location of first city. We could also do with deciding on initial tech and initial build then we could start exploring our home island and hopefully find Gandhi fairly early.

We're still quite a way from establishing a grand strategy.
1) We've more or less decided on religion.

2) An equally important question is do we expand towards Gandhi which let's him capture our cities early but means he builds more units and doesn't develop tiles or do we expand away from him (assuming of course we have options to do either) ?

3)What's our policy towards third parties?

4) We have to survive and prosper ourselves. What's the most effective way to achieve this? How does this balance with helping Gandhi?

Good post captain

My position on your questions :
1) OK, although it's not necessarily easy to get gandhi's religion in our cities. Sailing may be a priority for this. Over BW? I'd say no. Over agri/AH? I'd yes. Which means we need no workers for the first 3000 years.
2) We'll dotmap when we know a bit of the land of course. But for the first 4000 years, we need to give Gandhi a break = build "away" from him if possible.
3) That's the tricky part. We cannot help out gandhi directly for a long time (giving him cities early would cripple him!). So our influence can only be on the third parties. I'd say :
- we need to help him in any war he is in.
- we can try to improve his relations with good tech partners by spreading his religion and declaring war on those guys : mutual struggle will help him grow in their hearts. For those things, we need power, and loads of it.
4) that's another tricky part. I'd say we don't need to be tech leader, we need to be power leader = the world's big guy. Techs help in this matter of course, but I'm not sure that trading away anything is actually helping Gandhi.
This is the one game where I would like to be a cautious trader and a big military freak.

 

[remconius]

I agree we need to test a bit more to get a feel for the grand strategy.

We can, however, take the first steps. And even play the first turnsets to see how the cards are dealt. We need more info to make a grand strategy.

With regards to indepence day: We built 4-5 commerce only cities. Rush to astronomy with great scientists. Have cities with minimal improvements. Then sail a bunch of settlers, workers and units to the other land. Build one city, let the old world get captured, so the capital moves. Then build other cities... voila.

 

[pigswill]

Depending on the map we may have a bolt hole accessible by galleys. We may not. If Gandhi is sharing an island with us then we can build lots of non-culture improvements for him to capture along with our cities so its quite different from Independence Day (the game, not the movie).

 

[stuge]

How to make civ x like Gandhi.

- Flood civ x with missionaries of Gandhi's religion.

- Declare a phony war on them so that the mutual military struggle-bonus kicks in.

Then pray that x and Gandhi will trade a lot. This can be done with multiple civs, if our resources permit it. Imagine a cheesy high school movie. We're the big bully, who all the little nerds hate and conspire against.

Any more ideas on this?

 

[cabert]

How to make civ x like Gandhi.

- Flood civ x with missionaries of Gandhi's religion.

- Declare a phony war on them so that the mutual military struggle-bonus kicks in.

Then pray that x and Gandhi will trade a lot. This can be done with multiple civs, if our resources permit it. Imagine a cheesy high school movie. We're the big bully, who all the little nerds hate and conspire against.

Any more ideas on this?

well, those are the only ideas I had too
we could try other moves, but those need testing :
1) pillage civ x's health or happiness that Gandhi has 2 or more of, to try to force trading the resource
2) bribe civ Y into war with Gandhi and bribe civ x into war vs civ y ... (could be a better move than trying to be stronger than all the rest)
3) trade to civ x a tech gandhi doens't have when gandhi has a tech civ x doesn't have? tricky one, though

 

[remconius]

About adopting Gandhi's religion... Would give him and us the penalty of being at was with brothers of same faith... not good.

Ideally Gandhi's friends will be pleased/friendly with us whilst we have no religion. And G's friends will have the same religion....

 

[stuge]

well, those are the only ideas I had too

Shut up, you. I'm trying to focus on posting not reading...
Er, wait. That sounded so much better in my head.

Rem is right about the happiness hit. Let's hope that the diplomatic situation allows us to adopt some religion. Theocracy would be nice.

 

[cabert]

About adopting Gandhi's religion... Would give him and us the penalty of being at was with brothers of same faith... not good.

Ideally Gandhi's friends will be pleased/friendly with us whilst we have no religion. And G's friends will have the same religion....

we don't need to switch to that religion!
only to build a monastery and loads of missionaries

 

[pigswill]

First there were the Seven Samurai....

Then there was the Magnificent Seven.....

And at last, when you thought things just couldn't get any better,

We Proudly Present (fanfare, drumroll) The Trash Seven!

Patagonia is joining us!!

 

[pigswill]

Re religion spreading and brothers of faith; if we felt extravagent we could spread Gandhi's religion without joining it ourselves (and foregoing religious civix?).

 

[cabert]

Re religion spreading and brothers of faith; if we felt extravagent we could spread Gandhi's religion without joining it ourselves (and foregoing religious civix?).

we could even be worse and adopt another religion

 

[remconius]

We should be religionless (rush for liberalism?) and stay friends with Gandhi's friends who are the same religion.

Pigswill, oh great one, can you please post the roster?

 

[pigswill]

So, are you sitting comfortably?

Then we shall begin....

Once upon a time in a far off land there lived a fearless leader of warriors and vikings, Ragnar the Bold.

For each person there is a doppleganger, a shadow, the opposite of all they embody. For Ragnar this was Gandhi the Timid, a fearful leader of workers and cowards.

Between these two there is a bond of eternal emnity which would last until the stars. Death could not break their mystical link.

This is the story of their intertwined destinies.

List of raconteurs in order of appearance:

Pigswill
Remconius
Cabert
Stuge
Cam_H
MrMahk
Patagonia

 

[remconius]

Go, Ragnar, travel bold and with honor.

Report back what you discover after 30 years (1 turn )

 

[pigswill]

Well here's what's revealed after settler moves 2 north and worker moves 1 south east:-

Does this raise more questions than answers?

 

[MrMahk]

Very interesting moves right there. These are my initial views:

Site A would be great for production (as discussed), and we could possibly throw some cottages in there and make it a hybrid.

Site B would obviously be a commercial powerhouse. 13 visible grassland/jungle/forest tiles (not including the resources), with 3 of them being on a river. Barring some resource in the unknown, however, it would not have much food and thus be slow to grow.


Anyway, those are my initial opinions, and I'm sure you guys may differ, so I look forward to hearing what you think.

 

[patagonia]

Hey Team Trash, I'm a bit of a late arrival
but have just caught up on the thread and have a few ideas regarding the variant (apologies if this is rehashing what's already been said, but it's quite late here).

The first thing to note is that we need to be powerful enough until late enough to affect the outcome of the game. Gandhi needs to get to space first, but that's several hundred turns away so he doesn't need to be much of a factor early on. It's having a large, powerful India in the late game that's important. For this reason I'd advocate something similar to the "independence day" scenario that was mentioned earlier - develop a powerbase on our own continent, then launch an oceanic invasion and bait Gandhi to capture our original lands and cities.

Ideally, we want to have a clear tech and power lead by the time we get Renaissance units, then do something like a cavalry rampage through the civ likely to be Gandhi's main space race rival. Depending on the map, this'll make optics and astronomy reasonably high mid-term goals to work towards.

As far as cottages are concerned, I fear that pillaging isn't the only factor that'll complicate our abandonment of commerce cities to the AI. Post biology, the 2.08 version loves to farm. It runs a decent enough specialist economy, but that can't compare to a cottage one at that stage.

This sounds like a fun variant. Looking forward to seeing how it plays out!