SGOTM 06 - Trash Team

[patagonia]

Which direction did Alex's archer come from?

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And on an unrelated note:

I'm going to be away and unable to play from the 24th to 28th. Shall we take an xmas hiatus or does someone want to swap?

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Just had a look at the save. We should mine the riverside hill in London next and then carry on improving York (with farms and mines). Working the copper hill brings the Oracle down to 20 turns during which time London will grow again to work another mine, so Cabert should complete the slingshot on his set. Once that's done, I vote we revolt, build barracks in London and York and then spam Longbows ready to take out some rivals.

York should finish its second workboat at about the same time London finishes the Oracle.

 

[stuge]

He wandered up from the south, before the sentry net was complete.

 

[cabert]

90 : nothing to change
91 : moving archers
92 : growth in london brings oracle to 18 turns, while monarchy is 21.
Working the gold mine in york brings monarchy to 17 turns .
93 : one less scout to worry about (combat odds : 98%)
95 : WB goes north. I start an archer.
100 : one less barb archer
103 : archer finished i, I start a settler for stone city.
106 : A barb archer dies to one of our glorious protective archers.
However, the barb's hidden twin kills the glorious archer ignominously.
107 : monarchy in. I start masonry (needed for the stone, and very cheap). Our glorious archer is revenged.
108 : oracle in. I take feudalism in 880 BC. team.

I already have gone over my turnset, so I stop here.
I didn't revolt yet, but we can do a triple civic change (see picture).

Or is serfdom better for a while?

I found no new enemy land, but there is an island to the north.

the save

 

[chopster]

Great work guys - two very successful turnsets that aligned perfectly with our goals.

And on an unrelated note:

I'm going to be away and unable to play from the 24th to 28th. Shall we take an xmas hiatus or does someone want to swap?

My vote would be for a break - there's likely to be a lot of people unavailable for some time over the coming week or so, and we're at the point where we've completed our short term plans, so some more in depth planning is probably warranted before we get too far ahead of ourselves.

 

[chopster]

Looking at the culkture graph on the progress page, would you guess that CRC built Stonehenge AND the Oracle?

 

[pigswill]

Good stuff on feudalism slingshot.

Maybe go for serfdom, cuts down on the number of workers needed and stops possibility of slave revolts in London.

Pottery after masonry?

Christmas break? Sounds good.

My computer is back and working though haven't reloaded civ yet.

 

[remconius]

Excellent turnset, cabert.

I agree with chopster to have a small christmas recess. Most people are visiting family with limited access to internet, let alone the game. Of course, discussing next steps is allowed!

Happy Holidays!

 

[patagonia]

I won't play until after the xmas break though.

Some thoughts on where to go next:

HR + Vassalage + Serfdom makes sense to me, mainly because we'll be able to survive with fewer workers for a little while and our priority at the moment is military.

In terms of tech:
Masonry > IW > Pottery makes sense to me. The main reason for getting IW before pottery being that we want to be working mines rather than cottages for now, and we want to be building longbows rather than granaries (plus if we're in serfdom we won't be whipping). Learning IW will also allow us to see where our enemies iron is and pillage it.

After that we should be thinking about either maths > construction; or go straight to sailing/CoL depending on how the war effort's going.

In terms of a plan for the next few sets:
Founding Nottingham to get horses and stone seems to be in order. The workers can chop a monument, then chop a barracks, two chariots (one promoted to sentry; the other to medic 1) and some longbows.

Once London's built a rax, it should spam longbows. Being on the frontline, Nottingham will want 2 to defend it. Nothing'll shift CG3 longbows there for a long, long time. The rest can go into an SoD.

York is the city I'm unsure of as we've got 3 options there as I see it.
Option 1 - finish settler, build another worker.
Option 2 - finish settler, spam archers (these don't need a rax, they'll be CG2 for defending acquisitions).
Option 3 - finish settler, build another workboat for anticlockwise exploration.

At the moment, I'm torn between options 1 and 2. Option 2 gets us to war faster (always a good thing in AW games), but 2 workers is not enough. We may be able to capture some once the fighting starts, but probably not until the end of the war unless the AI gets careless.

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When I do play, is it worth me playing until Nottingham's founded (21 turns) since that seems to be the next natural breakpoint, or shall I stick to the 15 I'm officially up for?

 

[cabert]

there's a point for slavery if we want to rush monuments

about next turnset, I overdid it, and suggest you do the same.
Turns will be longer to play when actual fighting occurs.

 

[stuge]

Try to get us one or two more workers. The conquest will go much quicker if we can build roads to the targets. (Combat engineers ftw.)

Mansa looks like a good first victim. He's nearest, and Nottingham will provide a nice supply line. That city should build a monument, perhaps barracks (both chopped) and then longbows.

Masonry-> IW-> pottery sounds good. I'd go for construction after that, then CoL to prevent going broke.

I'd prefer slavery over serfdom. Whipping a captured city for a longbow is a great way to keep the war machine going. We won't even have to worry about slave revolts. (Does "Warlords" ring a bell? )

 

[pigswill]

Not keen on building workers in York in the near future because I think its better off growing and working more tiles sooner. Maybe London could knock out a worker before completing barracks? Maybe York could build a barracks then produce longbows. We've got some archers already, LBs and archers have the same maintenance cost so I don't really see the value in building obselete units.

 

[remconius]

I hope everybody had a great christmas!

Founding Nottingham is definitely in order.

York should spam units until it's grown to a good size.

London could build a few workers in between lbw spam.

Civic-wise I normally prefer to see slavery, but as we have cities with good production and average food I prefer serfdom at this time.

Techwise I agree to get IW. Later we should see if we can get to a religion and Theocracy for more experienced units.

Regarding turn-length, go ahead and found Nottingham. It's a more natural end of a turnset. Once the war gets nastier we'll go to a regular 15 or 10 turn turnset.

The only advantage of building archers instead of lbws is that they are built faster. They are roughly half strength at 50% of the cost. They are strong enough to defend cities and its a great way to increase unit-count fast. Longbows can then be promoted to attack cities.

 

[patagonia]

Well it sounds like we've got a fairly clear plan set out. I'll probably play later on tomorrow.

In terms of the whole slavery/serfdom debate, I'm with the serfdom camp at the moment.

Although we're not spiritual, it's a fair few turns before we'll be going to war and serfdom will be more of a boon in that time. There'll be a few turns of anarchy in each city we capture and keep, so we can always revolt to slavery during that window later on if there's sufficient population available to whip up an army.

 

[pigswill]

Now reloaded civ and hof mod and managed to download the 880bc save so I should be good to go when its my turn (though I'm rustier than the Titanic ).

 

[remconius]

Pigswill, good to see you are back in the game. Starting the game is the first step. ;-) Now let's see if SGOTM6 brings your interest back.

With regards to the rust, grab some sandpaper and oil and you'll be rolling in no time!

 

[stuge]

Heavy-duty industrial solvents are also good.

 

[patagonia]

880BC: revolt to HR, vassalage, serfdom (3 turns of Anarchy in the UK).

zzz

775BC: Alex founds Thebes (location shown below).

zzz

610BC: Nottingham founded; forest chop arrives in Nottingham (monument there in 5; border pop in 20); IW discovered.

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I can't formally upload the save because I'm getting the following error when I try:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: xmltoaarray() in /home/gotmciv/public_html/submit/civ4sgotm.php on line 50

Not sure what that's all about - I'll try again tomorrow.

If anyone wants to peruse it in the meantime, I've attached it to this post.

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Quick recap of the situation:

1. Revolted to HR, Vassalage and Serfdom.
2. York built the settler with the aid of a chop (done to mine the grassland hill there.
3. The workers built another farm by London, completed a road to Nottingham and chopped a forest there the turn it was founded to get the monument done faster. They're not teamed at the moment as one of them had a turn spare.
4. London built a rax and 2 longbows (currently working on a 3rd).
5. We've learned masonry and IW (the only source of iron is to the south by the fish/cow site). Research is currently set to pottery, but no beakers are invested so feel free to change if something else is more appropriate.
6. The archer on the jungled rice has just been relieved by a guerilla 2 longbow and is heading to fill in the gap in our defensive line 2E1N of his current location.
7. Alex has founded Thebes on our doorstep and may make a more appropriate first target as a result. Our guerilla 2 longbow gets 67% odds; one promoted to cover and combat 1/drill 2 would get much better odds so it may make sense to take/raze this soon.

I think London should finish its next longbow and then build a worker or two.

 

[patagonia]

Quick follow-up to my post:

Looking at the top 5 cities/wonders page, Alex built the Great Wall in Athens in 1780BC. He's philosophical, which means he'll get a GE 75 turns from then unless he's employing priests/scientists (unlikely this early). Any idea when that might be? The pyramids are still available so we could get lucky.

 

[remconius]

Good stuff, patagonia!

I propose we give the cows to york for a while. This leaves london with 15 hammers (stagnant growth and longbow every 5 turns ). It helps York grow faster and gives a little more production.

Nottingham needs another defensive unit 1N to close the Maginot line. Then we can take the barb city to close the perimeter.

Roster
-Remconius
-chopster
-stuge
-cabert
-patagonia (just played)
-pigswill (UP)
-Cam_H (on deck)

 

[remconius]

From the maintenance thread:

CRC can not upload last save. (GOTM25 has the same problem)

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: xmltoaarray() in /home/gotmciv/public_html/submit/c4_submission_check.php on line 70

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: xmltoaarray() in /home/gotmciv/public_html/submit/civ4sgotm.php on line 50

and the response:

All fixed now, I think. I removed the excess 'a' in the name of that function while working on some replay script enhancements, and failed to repair it in all the places it was called.

Should be fixed, patagonia.