SGOTM 05 - Mac Team

willpax · Oct 10, 2007

Save here.

Highlights:

1577:
1580:
1583: Japanese caravel defeats our caravel in the west. Begin market in Karakorum, Courthouse in Anjar. We discover music.
1586: Begin theater in Izumo to deal with cultural pressure.
1589: Alex offers cow for bananas. I take it.
1592: Beshbalik begins caravel.
1595:
1598: Begin work boat in Khurasan. Spot an Indian galley with longbow and settler near our two galleys in the east.
1601: Lose one galley to sink the Indian galley.
1604:
1607: Currently one turn away from finishing guilds. Next tech will be an early decision for next turnset.

Spoiler :

peter grimes · Oct 10, 2007

Great job sinking the Indian!

I can't look at the save now, but if someone else can, it would be helpful for discussion if we knew what we will be able to research after guilds comes in.

I trust that we still can't make peace with Toku and Asoka?

dr_s · Oct 11, 2007

I looked at the save, but I don't have it in front of me.

We are very close to both Theology and Engineering due to free beakers (1 and 3 turns, but I don't remember which is which). We should probably finish those up because they are both very useful. I think we should switch to Theocracy when available. I don't recall seeing any free beakers for anything else right now.

We might want to try to raze Nara (the other Japanese city on the islands to our east). Maybe we can get peace with Toku then. I think we should try to get peace with Toku and Asoka ASAP, so that we can war with some of our neighbors. Waging these long distance wars isn't gaining us anything. Right now neither Toku nor Asoka will make peace.

Long term, I see a couple different paths. One would be to take out Saladin and Qin, then settle down and go for space race. I think that would be doable. The other would be to go after Alex. We could raze his city to the east, then proceed westward, taking the sugar island before invading his home islands.

peter grimes · Oct 11, 2007

If we're going to go space race, then we'll need to pillage down Cyrus and the other big guys' towns. Slow down the tech pace a bit, right?

Welnic · Oct 11, 2007

I'll grab the save and try to play tonight. I think we should stay friendly with Alex, he's our buddy!

dr_s · Oct 11, 2007

He is our buddy, but what has he done for us lately? I also don't see any route to the main island except through Alex.

Welnic · Oct 12, 2007

Started building things, doing some whipping. Going to Theology right away wouldn't have done much, only 3 cities were jewish and none of them were building units anyway. Started researching Education, it said 42 turns when I started and now it is at 24. Theology and Engineering happened without any input on our part. The tech that we really need is Astronomy, but since that is picking up up beakers it will get cheaper and cheaper. There weren't any beakers in Education when I started it. I was thinking that maybe we could trade with it, but most civs have it now.

I tried to bring a galley up from the west to run units up to Ning-hsia, but Toku brought a caravel in after it and then squeezed with his other one. Both of his caravels are just NW of Ning-hsia at the moment. I am running a galley to the west to bring a missionary and worker over to Izumo.

If the tile SW of Anjar was farmed, that would also irrigate the rice. And we could also farm the grassland 2 W of Old Sarai, which would let us farm that plain tile of Khurasan which we are going to have a hard time using. Cottages could have gone 1 and 2 E of Anjar instead.

There were a couple of cities, I think both Old and New Sarai, which should have been using mines that were within their fat cross, but those tiles were assigned to other cities that weren't using them either.

Asoka will take Guilds for peace. Toku is set on war. There is a Great Priest in Karakoram, he popped a couple of turns earlier. I think that we should just install him in Karakoram, but I didn't in case any one had some fancy purpose for him.

Spoiler :

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm5/Mac_Team_SG005_AD1637_01.Civ4SavedGame

peter grimes · Oct 12, 2007

I should have been paying more attention - for that matter we ALL should have been paying more attention - to the Maintenance Thread.

There is indeed a deadline for this game (not a soft one, apparently). :eek:

The Deadline is Oct 31! :run:

We can no longer afford to have 10-turn turnsets. I propose 25 turns.

Also, if the next player in the queue hasn't posted a "got it" within 24 hours of the save being posted, the next person in line should play the save. If THAT person doesn't post within 12 hours, the second in line should play.

We've got some real ground to make up here - I think we need to pull in at least 50 turns a week - more likely 75 - in order to make the deadline.

So, that said: Dr_S, I believe you're up

dr_s · Oct 12, 2007

I think we should make peace with Asoka, so I'll do that unless someone objecs. I agree about settling the GP.

I also agree about irrigation. Furthermore, I think we should chain farm to the east as well, toward Kufah, which only has +2 :food:

and will take forever to grow. That means irrigating the tile N of the bananas in the screenshot above, and the two to the east of that. There's a worker building a cottage on one of those tiles; I would propose stopping that and building the farms instead.

If we need Astronomy, why not switch to it right now? It's 19 turns away. I don't think Education will do us any good at this time. I think in general we need to pursue military techs ourselves, and let our free beakers pick up the other techs.

I will play sooner rather than later; by tomorrow at the latest.

edit: I will play up to 25 turns if I feel comfortable doing that (no big decisions!).

second edit: Went ahead and played my turnset. Will update later.

dr_s · Oct 12, 2007

After doing a quick calculation---we might have as many as 300 turns to play over the next three weeks, which is 100 turns/week---I decided to go ahead and play my turns. I played 25 turns, so we're now at turn 374, 1712 AD. Save here.

I forgot to make peace with Asoka, and by the time I remembered, we didn't have any techs to give, so we're still at war with India and Japan. There was almost no war action this set; one battle between one of Toku's caravels and one of ours---we won.

I sent a caravel over to Greek territory which we hadn't explored, so now we know the location of Athens. At one point Isabella came and demanded 90 :gold:

, which I gave her, of course.

I switched research to Astronomy and then researched Gunpowder. After that finished I chose Chemistry. That's still a ways off. We picked up Philosophy via free beakers.

I spread Judaism everywhere for the OR benefit. I concentrated on infrastructure builds to take advantage of the OR benefit as well. I didn't whip in large or food-poor cities, but I whipped liberally in small, food-rich cities. I built a lot of harbors/lighthouses/theaters/courthouses/markets/grocers/temples as appropriate to the city.

I built a lot of farms, irrigating around Anjar and Kufah. Three of the workers are now building a farm on top of a cottage south of Anjar so that we can spread irrigation to the plains tile south of that. The other three workers are over at Izumo, also building a farm.

The only units I built were some galleons and one maceman that I think was in the queue already at Kufah. Izumo needs a workboat, but we should build it in Anjar when Anjar's current build is done; Izumo is currently so hammer-poor that it will take forever to build a workboat there. We should use Izumo's hammers on buildings that can't be built elsewhere.

We popped a GS in Ning-hsia, and I moved him down to Karakorum. We can use him for an academy there or settle him. I'm not sure what tech he would lightbulb. Ning-hsia can run lots of specialists. We might want to whip the National Epic there.

Toku has a couple caravels near Beshbalik. We have two galleons and a couple caravels nearby. I'll leave it to someone else to decide if we should try to kill his caravels or not. His caravels are both Combat II.

We might want to switch to theocracy and build some CRII macemen so that we can upgrade them to grens when we get chemistry. We need to get some more land soon, I think. Saladin seems like the easiest target. We still have one archer down there to scope out his units. I moved the other two over to Izumo for defense there.

I had a crash-to-desktop at turn 356 but was able to replay exactly from the autosave.

Peter, you're up!

Autolog:

Spoiler :

peter grimes · Oct 12, 2007

Wow

Great set! I'll play in about 8 hours. I'll do another 25 turns.

Tech after Chemistry could be Steel (cannons)

I dont' think we should go after Saladin until we have at least 5 level2 cannons and 5 grenadiers. Therefore we won't be going to war during my turnset.

dr_s · Oct 12, 2007

You can get a lot done in 25 turns.

I agree about Steel after Chemistry. You might move the archer around Sal's territory some to see what his forces are like. We might be able to take him fairly easily with CRII grens and catapults. Of course, we don't have any of either of those right now. We do need a significant military buildup soon, so we may be getting close to switching to theocracy.

peter grimes · Oct 13, 2007

save is here.

Played much later than I thought I would - didn't get home until late last night. Sorry.

Anyway, not a very eventful turnset, but I was able to sue for peace with both Asoka and Tokugawa. The cost was steep, and I hope we don't come to regret this: Chemistry.

I was also able to make a couple of strategic resource trades with people we're not likely to war with: Horses to Alexander for 9 :gold:

pt, and Copper to Qin (or was it Cyrus?) for 9 :gold:

pt

I stockpiled gold to do flat out research on both Chemistry and Steel. That's why we have so much :gold:

in the bank. But now we'll be able to finish steel at 100%, taking advantage of every last little rounding error

Education and Divine Right came via Barbarian Messenger while I was researching Chem.

I started producing Grenadiers is some cities, but they should NOT be allowed to complete until we revolt to Theocracy. I started the Heroic Epic in Karakorum, do we get the +25% OR bonus while building that? :dunno:

If not, we should revolt immediately.

National Epic has been started in Ning-Hsia, as that's our most food-rich city. I think we should whip it as soon as possible. Ning-Hsia isn't Jewish, so a missionary is being built to spread the word.

Charles Darwin is available for employ, you can find him in Karakorum. I think it's best to settle him in the Capital, to leverage the Library, Academy, University, and Observatory. But that's up to the next turnplayer.

War Plans:
Saladin's army is primarily stationed in Mecca, and there are 9 or 10 units on Galleons. He's got a scary army compared to us :shifty:

Yep, there are some tough promotions embedded in there. 3 grenadiers with Drill2, a grenadier with CityRaider2, a grenadier with Combat1, 3 cavalry with Combat1, 1 with Combat2, plus a few unpromoted units: 2 cavalry, 2 grenadier, 3 longbow...

I'm not sure that I've been able to list his whole garrison. I don't know how to see the units that are implied by the "..." at the bottom of the unit info box :hmm:

As for his other cities, they are lightly defended:
Medina
archer, lonbow, pikeman, 3 catapults

Damasus
pikeman, longbow

Basra
maceman

Bagdhad
archer, longbow, pikeman

Goals for next turnset:

Figure out a good time to Revolt to Theocracy, and produce Grenadiers only in Jewish cities. Dont' let military units (other than Galleons) complete before the revolt!

Complete both Epics

Finish Steel, then go for Military Tradition, using binary research (0% :science:

or 100%

) Barbarian pirates have already done a lot of the grunt work for us

Once we have about 12 Grenadiers and 8 cannons, I'd be comfortable invading Saladin. But I don't think that's going to happen this turnset.

Good luck :salute:

dr_s · Oct 13, 2007

I forget, can we still make macemen after we know chemistry? If so, we should build macemen, promote them to CRII, then upgrade them to grens.

Saladin didn't have grens or cavalry during most of my turnset, I don't think; those are recent upgrades.

We could build lots of frigates and let Saladin try to attack us, and then sink his galleons with our frigates. That would argue for building some drydocks once we get steel.

peter grimes · Oct 13, 2007

I don't think Frigates 8 :strength:

are so handicapped against Galleons 4 :strength:

that we need to build drydocks. I would think it's more important for us to simply get the Frigates out on the sea quickly, so the cities can go back to producing offensive ground units. After all, frigates are essentially defensive, and I'm not sure that Saladin is about to attack...

dr_s · Oct 13, 2007

I was thinking of DOW'ing Sal, but then letting his fleets sail to attack us before we attack him.

And since he has chemistry, he'll have frigates, hence the need for drydocks.

peter grimes · Oct 14, 2007

Good plan, dr_s!

This is a bit off-topic, but there's a game I'm involved with that needs some help. It's the cIV MultiTeam DemoGame. One of the teams no longer has anyone who is able to play the save, so their looking for a replacement turnplayer.

The catch: it's version 1.61. We can't patch up to 1.74 because one of the teams, playing as Catherine, is in the middle of a war. The patch reduces Cossacks' bonus against mounted units.

So if you're unpatched, or willing to play off a dual install, please consider being Loco's turnplayer.

Info here
Signup here

peter grimes · Oct 15, 2007

According to our 24-hour rush schedule, since Dojo hasn't posted a 'got it', we should advance to the next available player.

Willpax, you're up! :hammer:

peter grimes · Oct 16, 2007

Okay, Skip Willpax, Welnic is up!

If there's still no 'got it' post here 12 hours, the I propose that Dr_S plays 50 turns, if that's not too much to handle.

Time's ticking :eek:

Welnic · Oct 16, 2007

I'll grab it and play tonight.

SGOTM 05 - Mac Team

Warlord

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Prince

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Emperor

Prince

Emperor

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Prince

Prince

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Prince

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Prince

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Prince

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Emperor

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