SGOTM 04 - Trash Team

[Cam_H]

So much discussion!

OK ... I am still advocating more test games because there's no grand strategy. If Cabert doesn't want to play a test game that's his prerogative but I still don't think that we should undertake the 'real' version yet. I'm suspecting I will be playing a test game this weekend ... and trying to get my P666-04 game done!

We are going to need a bucket-load of boats in order to pull off Independence Day given we're not fighting a large island of Barbarians and want to stay powerful throughout. Given that we don't know the map, timing might be a huge issue ... there might be a large island where we can settle pre-Astronomy with Galleys rather than Galleons (?).

I am happy to go along with Bronze Working > Sailing if that's considered better than Animal Husbandry and/or Agriculture for the reason above, plus 'whip-ability'. Pottery would be handy, but we can work the water for a while for the commerce.

Welcome on board Patagonia!

I think we should work on the water with site 'B' (i.e. shift two to the east rather than as proposed), but site 'A' looks OK to me.

 

[cabert]

So much discussion!

OK ... I am still advocating more test games because there's no grand strategy. If Cabert doesn't want to play a test game that's his prerogative

Don't you like the independance day strat? Patagonia made it quite clear, and it's definitely what I see as best overall strat.Seems strong enough for me.
I'd just go a bit further in the deal, saying that we need to remove every neighbour on our own island before going away.
It's simply in order to avoid another civ taking our cities.

but I still don't think that we should undertake the 'real' version yet. I'm suspecting I will be playing a test game this weekend ... and trying to get my P666-04 game done!

in other words, you're late and try to slow us down to get some time to test a bit more?
That's OK for me. .
We can explore a bit without too much interference with the grand strategy.

We are going to need a bucket-load of boats in order to pull off Independence Day given we're not fighting a large island of Barbarians and want to stay powerful throughout. Given that we don't know the map, timing might be a huge issue ... there might be a large island where we can settle pre-Astronomy with Galleys rather than Galleons (?).

I am happy to go along with Bronze Working > Sailing if that's considered better than Animal Husbandry and/or Agriculture for the reason above, plus 'whip-ability'. Pottery would be handy, but we can work the water for a while for the commerce.

the more I think of it, the more I think we won't be able to give our cottages to gandhi. Meaning we really should use the coast + colossus.

Welcome on board Patagonia!

yep!
your first post is showing you already gave this variant some thoughts, so double welcome.

I think we should work on the water with site 'B' (i.e. shift two to the east rather than as proposed), but site 'A' looks OK to me.

exactly what I was going to say, so I 100% agree with cam (as usual, when it's not about trading techs ).

 

[pigswill]

Let's not worry too much about locations of cities #2 and #3 because we ain't done that much exploring (one turn's worth in fact). First question is location of city #1 folowed by initial research and initial build. Once those are decided we can explore a bit more.

We've already got fishing for easy food production, I'd reckon we start with mining/BW and build a workboat while exploring further. Settle on settler's current location, still got food tiles available and hills for mining.

 

[cabert]

Let's not worry too much about locations of cities #2 and #3 because we ain't done that much exploring (one turn's worth in fact). First question is location of city #1 folowed by initial research and initial build. Once those are decided we can explore a bit more.

We've already got fishing for easy food production, I'd reckon we start with mining/BW and build a workboat while exploring further. Settle on settler's current location, still got food tiles available and hills for mining.

I second this. workboat first, then warrior, then possibly worker or settler (to be whipped)

 

[stuge]

^^^^ Sounds good to me.

 

[remconius]

Welcome Patagonia, and solid strat!

I like it very much, build a powerful base, and give it away. Basically we land on another island, take cities from whoever is there and gradually let Gandhi take our cities.

It's like a Nomad strategy.

Let's teach G how to wage war . As soon as we have new cities we abandon the old ones near Gandhi and move on. We could even take over another civs core and be there for a while. Only tricky part is to make sure we have relevant resources at all time. So we dont abandon our iron/copper site until we have a new one.

With regards to boats, we dont need that many. In independence day we only had 5-6. We dont have to be sailing all units at the same time. We can easily move some units and ferry the rest while we explore, capture, settle.

Playing a nomad strategy will keep us moving across the map, while Gandhi's empire continues to grow and gain power. How's that for a Grand Strategy.

It will be a very different game than other games I reckon.

I agree to settle where we are now and to start mining/BW. Meanwhile building a workboat, then worker.

 

[pigswill]

Any contrary views re opening moves (settle in place, build workboat, research mining/BW) ?

 

[Cam_H]

Nope ... happy enough with that. I'm wary of Work Boat > Worker, and would like to pause to look at whether Work Boat > Warror might be the better option.

I have played a bit from my earlier save ... clearing the continent I feel is the right approach, although I am really frustrated that Gandhi doesn't seem to be able to do anything other than send in pillaging Horse Archers, and doesn't want to expand despite ample opportunity to do so. I was not ready to give up the 5x Ivory 2x Clam 1x Copper 1x Wheat site quite yet when his Horse Archer arrived! I keep having to declare war on more ambitious tribes who keep settling in the free spaces that I have created by beating up Hannibal just to continue to protect the vacant land that Gandhi never seems to want to settle in.

 

[MrMahk]

Any contrary views re opening moves (settle in place, build workboat, research mining/BW) ?

Sounds good to me.

 

[Cam_H]

Zee Grund Stretegy!

OK ... Independence Day it seems to be.

In contrast to earlier posts, I think that we're going to be so preoccupied with clearing any 'third parties' off our landmass (provided we get a semi-reasonable map) that spreading a religion may well have to take a 'back seat'. If Cap'n Pigswill still wants to focus on religion, then we'll possibly have to take things very much in stages or we'll possibly be spread too thin.

Gandhi in my test game was hopeless in taking unprotected cities let alone settling on empty pockets of land. I jumped back to an old save and captured rather than razed cities. As Patagonia says, I had to "bait" Gandhi's troops with Warriors, Scouts, and Explorers towards unprotected cities.

 

[cabert]

Zee Grund Stretegy!

OK ... Independence Day it seems to be.

we have a strat!
that's a nice change

In contrast to earlier posts, I think that we're going to be so preoccupied with clearing any 'third parties' off our landmass (provided we get a semi-reasonable map) that spreading a religion may well have to take a 'back seat'. If Cap'n Pigswill still wants to focus on religion, then we'll possibly have to take things very much in stages or we'll possibly be spread too thin.

we'll have to watch closely relations.
If it's a trading partner for gandhi, we should feed him missionaries.
If it isn't it should die.

Gandhi in my test game was hopeless in taking unprotected cities let alone settling on empty pockets of land. I jumped back to an old save and captured rather than razed cities. As Patagonia says, I had to "bait" Gandhi's troops with Warriors, Scouts, and Explorers towards unprotected cities.

good to know
In my test game, I didn't even have to empty the city.
I left a lone warrior in there, and it worked.
But the city I tried with was really on gandhi's borders.

 

[pigswill]

Seems like we're getting close to a strategy:
Develop our continent. Build/capture bait cities near Gandhi and encourage him to capture them. Try and snag Gandhi's religion and spread it. Meanwhile build ourselves a reasonable economic/military base while going for an astronomy beeline (possibly involving multiple GS). Build Colossus. Push off to pastures new (or second-hand!), Rinse and repeat.
Also keep Gandhi's pals/trade partners fairly intact and stomp his enemies.

All we have to do now is make it work.

 

[patagonia]

Seems like we're getting close to a strategy:
Develop our continent. Build/capture bait cities near Gandhi and encourage him to capture them. Try and snag Gandhi's religion and spread it. Meanwhile build ourselves a reasonable economic/military base while going for an astronomy beeline (possibly involving multiple GS). Build Colossus. Push off to pastures new (or second-hand!), Rinse and repeat.
Also keep Gandhi's pals/trade partners fairly intact and stomp his enemies.

All we have to do now is make it work.

Making it work's bound to be the easy part

It's worth considering the astronomy beeline some teams used in SGOTM 2, but that does mean we'll have to avoid some potentially useful techs (meditation and civil service if I remember correctly) until we've teched to galleons. Thinking about it, maybe that's why the Vikings have been chosen for this strat...

Beeline astronomy whilst settling your own landmass.
Get caravels out ASAP to identify a good target for colonisation.
Pop Astronomy.
Research CS while building a fleet of galleons.
Mass whipping and drafting (if we get that far), or upgrading of Berzerkers.
Amphibious invasion!
We won't need to worry about WW etc in our old cities since we'll be encouraging Gandhi to capture them as we take new ones for ourselves.

In the run up to that we'll hopefully be able to get a few CR3 axes/swords primied for upgrade by trimming back India's neighbours.

Do you think this is what they were planning when they came up with the variant?

 

[stuge]

All we have to do now is make it work.

Best-laid plans and all that...

I think that our principle is sound. We just have to be ready to adapt, if, say, the map is a pangaea or something similiar. So let's all sing together:

Exploration!

Exploration!

The lifeblood of civilization!

 

[Cam_H]

I like the thinking - vague on execution!

It's worth considering the astronomy beeline some teams used in SGOTM 2, but that does mean we'll have to avoid some potentially useful techs (meditation and civil service if I remember correctly) until we've teched to galleons.

Do we want The Colossus therefore if we're actively pursuing the technology that obsoletes it, and would we be better off with The Great Lighthouse ... or is the thinking that The Colossus's very role is simply to get us to Astronomy and hopefully pop a Great Merchant? The Colossus city is later abandoned by us before Gandhi gets to Astonomy himself so he can use it?

Sorry - I missed SGOTM2's threads and have yet to go through them - how 'pure' is this bee-line that you're proposing? For instance we miss Alphabet, so no technology trading?

 

[pigswill]

Sorry for the delay chaps, I got caught up playing a shadow of ALC13.

I've run three practice starts from Cam_H's epic save. I went for mining, BW, agric while building workboat, warrior, worker. Fastest time to worker was 2800bc working food tile to pop 2 then lake and clams, once BW was in whipped WB with one turn overflow to worker, then warrior whipping again once up to pop 2 again.

It then occured to me that an alternative path might be mining, BW, sailing with build order of WB, warrior, TP (trading post).

I don't know if anyone else has experimented with different starts. All ideas welcome.

I reckon that starting with WB, mining, BW is pretty much agreed so I may as well make a start up to discovering BW.

 

[pigswill]

City founded on top of the plains hill, starting to build a workboat while working corn (bonus hammer will come in useful). Scout scurries around happily discovering extensive gold deposits, checking out a range of impassable mountains, pondering if there's an isolated peninsula behind them or if he's been following the shores of a large lake. Then he disturbs a sleeping bear!

'Yikes' he exclaims muttering quick prayers to Loki god of tricksters and Thor god of war. His prayers are answered.

He thanks his lucky star and rests up to heal.

The Frozen North:

The Gilded South:

Still nine turns from BW. I'd be happy to play these nine turns or equally happy to hand over to remconius.

 

[stuge]

Gandhi is bound to be behind those mountains, I can feel it in my water...

Go ahead and play the nine. We can then practice the fine art of dot-mapping. (At least get some early scrawls together.) Hopefully copper shows up nearby.
(Like in a recent game of mine as Rome. I popped BW from a hut and then copper popped up under my capital. Earliest axe-rush I've ever had.)

MC will be the early priority, now with forges granting +2 happy faces. And that gold site makes me drool.

 

[remconius]

Good stuff Pigswill!

We have fish, clams, pigs, sheep, corn. Looks like a good supply of food already. With both gems and gold we can grow some reasonably sized cities early on.

Play the other 9, let's see where the copper is!

 

[patagonia]

Play the other 9, let's see where the copper is!

Aye.

*prays for copper*

At the moment the site 4W of the capital looks promising. 3 gold to finance some early rex/war and fish for food, plus it can borrow pigs from the capital to quickly grow on to all those tiles.

============

In terms of potential astronomy beelines, here are a couple of useful links:

VoU's beelining thread shows the bare minimum required.
The Great People Tech Preferences thread shows who will lightbulb what and when.

To pop astronomy with GS we have to avoid CS as it'll open up the Paper > Education etc branch. Avoiding meditation means we'll avoid opening up philosophy too, potentially saving us a scientist. As a financial civ with 3 gold nearby, 4 would probably be plenty (compass, optics and 2 for astronomy itself). With all the food at our disposal, caste system would be an easy way to generate them and having 2 cities on the project would yield fastest results.

Whether any of that's worthwhile depends a bit on when we want Gandhi to take over our original core cities and how accessible our two empires turn out to be.