SGOTM 04 - Trash Team

[cabert]

^^I guess we could extort something from mehmed too, plus it would give him good relations to gandhi : double plus good

 

[patagonia]

If we're going to DoW on Mehmed, it'll mean a return of much of the WW we recently built up against him and take most of my set (if not more) before he'll talk peace.

Since the WW either means running up the culture slider (bad) or allowing our cities to starve (also bad), if I'm going to teach him a lesson on stuge's behalf, it'd make more sense to scrub his annoying little civilization off the map in a single turn. I've got no objection to doing that (it'd be fun, and won't make much of a difference to Gandhi's eventual launch date), or allowing stuge to jump in now and do so himself. Note that he's got a settler in position to replace Nidaros so you'll need to raze there too.

Otherwise, as I see it our main goals are to tech up (cheapen techs for Gandhi) and cash-rush potentially useful buildings in cities he's likely to take.

 

[remconius]

Great to see the save game is fixed...

I dont see any harm in us building a few spaceship parts. I think it'll stimulate G rather than hurt him. Also having the techs makes them cheaper for G. Especially if we give them to the other AI.

So my proposal is keeping all AI very small, but gifting them all techs. This will make the techs very cheap for G.

 

[cabert]

OTOH, if we just let things go in peace until we see something that requires our intervention (like a city going to build an expensive part in less than 10 turns), I'm pretty sure gandhi will take off.

 

[remconius]

If we let things go in peace it will be slower than us rushing to get all spaceship techs and trading them to weak AI.

One other thing. If we are going into "peaceful stroll to the end"-mode can we go to 20 turns each. Turns tend to be rather uneventful at this stage.

 

[cabert]

If we let things go in peace it will be slower than us rushing to get all spaceship techs and trading them to weak AI.

One other thing. If we are going into "peaceful stroll to the end"-mode can we go to 20 turns each. Turns tend to be rather uneventful at this stage.

Even war turns tend to be rather uneventful when you have such an overwhelming power . I'd say OK for 20 turns, but I'd like to see included in the report all the spying details.
Something like :
- turn 450, madrid is building a casing, 12 turns left.
for each city

 

[patagonia]

So is there a plan? Peaceful tech-whoring?

Does stuge want to jump in and squish Mehmed like a bug?

To be honest I could use a skip as I'm not feeling too good at the moment and don't think I could concentrate on civ for 10 turns, let alone 20.

 

[stuge]

Thanks for the offer but I'm currently up in my other two SGs so I'll just have to kick the poor shlob's behind some other time.

Regarding our official spoiler, I'll have it up here tomorrow.

 

[pigswill]

Looking at the roster if Patagonia is skipping that puts me UP.

I've been keeping an eye on the thread but haven't looked at the game itself for ages so I'll have a go at loading a save and then posting my thoughts (on the off chance that I happen to have any).

 

[pigswill]

Edit: downloaded the save so I've Got It.

Sure looks messy. We've got Hanging gardens in Karakoram so we might want to keep that but the rest of the continent can go.

Gandhi also seems to be making progress in Carthage.

While its nice to see him expand we do need a bit of territory. Maybe keep Old America and some slices of Turkey.

We could have a go at neutralising everyone's manufacturing capacity while leaving their commerce largely intact (this includes Isabella) and tech trading ourselves. Its fairly straightforwards I think, a few turns of war and then gift them nice techs in exchange for peace (or else extort).

Let's keep and defend America, may need to relocate some national wonders.

 

[cabert]

^^I have a completely different point of view.

We need to make sure
1) that we don't inadvertantly win by domination
2) that Gandhi doesn't win by domination
3) he has enough research and production capacity.

For 1), it just means that we don't use the culture slider too much. If Gandhi captures some cities, it's not a problem anymore and we can invade and keep more cities.
For 2), it means that we need to check his land once in a while. If we're above 40% land, there is no threat.
For 3), it essentially means that we need to let him capture good production cities. What civics does he run? I guess he's not running state property, so we may have to use a few workers to farm some tiles and workshop others.
We may even need to prevent him from changing the tiles .

I guess no more trading options will open, nor for gandhi nor for us. So it doesn't really matter if the ottomans, celts or spanish have research capacities or not. This means that essentially we could bomb them back to the stone age, or simply get rid of them without any negative side effects on gandhi. The only drawback is the bonus for techs already known which would be lost. This isn't going to be a real problem if gandhi leads the dance.

I'm no barbarian, and don't want to do a "near conquest" thing.
But I think we should :
- let gandhi take whatever he wants = move our troops away when his troops come, if we need more cities, let's just take ottomans or spanish ones . If we can $ rush labs, factories, power plants, recycling centers ... into those cities before gandhi takes them, let's do it.
- check where he starts building the biggest parts. If there aren't enough hammers there, we should sabotage it or take the city (we're at war with him, we're allowed to ).
- check what the others are building. If there is some kind of threat, it's either war or sabotage.

 

[stuge]

It could be said that we were erring on the side of caution in the early game. That is, we had six pages of discussion and test games before we even settled Nidaros. Finally we founded our first city on the plains hill 2N of the settler's starting position.

The first turnsets went quietly, with exploring and basic research. The matter of the placement of the second city sparke lots of discussion. Finally we agreed on this site west of Nidaros.

At this time we were checking out Genghis' estates in the south and a most cunningly devious plan was starting to come into being. It consisted of kicking the Khan's behind while doing a GS-powered astronomy beeline. With the whole continent under our rule, we would take to the seas with our galleons bristling with berserkers and trebuchets, with a serious intention of kicking yet more backsides, leaving our old land defensless for Gandhi to capture.

Well, at that point it was still a long way to go and there were more immediate concerns. Like our next city. We decided to settle agressively towards Mongolia and so Haithabu was founded in the south.

We would capture Phyrgian later and so solidify our southern border.

Metal casting was researched pretty early, for forges and the Colossus. We built the latter in 5 AD in Birka, which was founded north between the clams and the iron. The Colossus was important for fueling our research in the classical and medieval times. We weren't big on cottages, because we were afraid that Gandhi would just pillage them upon invading, and so maturing them would be a waste of time.

Birka marked the end of our peaceful expansion. Here's a view of our lands from that time.

We got optics in 155 AD and headed out to the oceans to meet the world. Over the next centuries we met the other civs. (Brennus, Isabella, Washington, Mehmed and Hannibal, in that order.) Our early caravels really paid off in regards to trading. (Even though the same could have been achieved with a work boat.) We made good deals with everyone across the sea, except Washington, who we singled out as our target. He was disliked and fared badly in a war against Hannibal. Winning the circumnavigation prize was a nice bonus.

Our attention turned back home when Genghis declared war on us in 260 AD. At that point we weren't really ready for war. Fortunately his attack was quite pathetic and we soon gained the upper hand, capturing his cities in our back yard and marching towards Karakorum.

We made peace with him in 560 AD, our swords vs. his longbows just wasn't fun. Then he declared on us again in 770 AD. That war was still going strong by 1000 AD, though we were again dealing out more pain than we took.

The astronomy beeline was completed in 785 AD. From there it was to civil service for the vikings with two big axes. Our game was reaching a turning point.


Added into the spoiler thread.

 

[cabert]

I' would remove "That war would last well into the next millenium but would ultimately end in Mongolia's demise."
We shouldn't give out informations for anything later in the game.
Also, I wouldn't mention the trading of astronomy, since we only did so afer 1000AD as far as I remember.
Except those details,

 

[pigswill]

Looking good.

I agree with cabert regarding no info about events after spoiler date; you could say for instance that the war started in 770ad and was still going strong at 1000ad.

I couldn't see any mention of astronomy being traded; astronomy was mentioned as enabling us to trade successfully.

 

[stuge]

Ahoy mates! Be there a word from the cap'tn?

 

[pigswill]

Sorry chaps, played 5 turns of nothing interesting so far then got diverted by SGs, WOTM10 etc but I haven't forgotten.

 

[pigswill]

Played 19 turns to 1920.

The save:http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm4//Trash_Team_SG004_AD1920_01.CivWarlordsSave

Whole lot of nothing at all for much of the set.

Isabella is building settlers and colonising the void formerly known as Celtia. She's building Apollo in Valencia; still had 20 turns to go in 1920 so she's possibly not a serious contender.

At this point Brennus is totally irrelevant.

Mehmed built a couple more casings. Konya was putting some cultural pressure on Istanbul and Bursa which was getting silly by 1916:

So I declared war in 1917. Lost a bomber! Borders had improved by 1920 though this did have the net effect of giving Izzy access to aluminium.

Gandhi captured Jelling in 1902. No other adventurous moves. Bits of pillaging, we lost a couple of navy units, Gandhi lost a couple of navy units, nothing serious. Gandhi is building units in Old Vikinglands and Carthage. tried to get a spy into Gandhi heartlands, sunk by a sub. There's a replacement spy and sub waiting to be launched next turn. Gandhi has built 3 casings and has got satellites for thrusters. Izzy is leading the space tech race however.

On the subject of tech I decided thatwe should get some: researched computers, plastics and robotics, currently researching satellites to open up composites.

We popped a GM who raised 3150 gold in Madrid (aint air travel wonderful).

We've got about 5000 gold in the bank but I'm not keen on upgrading atm. It will just encourage Gandhi to build more units instead of parts.

 

[cabert]

doesn't look too good, does it?
Has gandhi at least reached a relevent tech level?

I guess we should wait until isabella got a few good techs towards space race, then strike her hard in a pillaging form (no more good tiles to work = no space ship launch).

I agree with the suggested tech path.
And about the money we have in the bank, I suggest 100% science. It should melt down fast enough.

 

[remconius]

That makes me up. I'll get it tonight and play at the same time is possible.

For the rest of the game we should keep all AI, except G small but technologically advanced. This will make tech cheaper for G.

We research the tech and gift it all around. As long as they are small enough not to build to many parts we should be fine.

 

[pigswill]

I agree with gifting techs to small civs, I gifted refrig all round but thought I'd leave computers until after team discussion. I'd be reluctant to gift robotics until we've got composites, Gandhi would probably upgrade everything to MI and we need a counter to that (stealth and MA).

Maybe a quick war against Spain is indicated; raze Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia then Spain joins the also-rans.