SGOTM 07 - Fifth Element

[Merum]

Can't say I agree with handing GW 2574 beakers worth of tech in order to kiss his behind. I doubt he'll stay happy for more than a few turns anyway. I'd much prefer to use the tech lead we have to pick up engineering and whatever else we can get out of it.

We are already health challenged. Cutting down more forests to build cottages seems unwise to me.

I also believe it's foolish to not have some sort of priorities for dealing with AI. None of us are stupid enough to declare war on Liz based on Asoka's demand, but there are other situations where simply knowing who stands where on our list will allow the player who's up to make a decision regarding how to handle a demand without slowing down the game for three days of discussion.

 

[WastinTime]

Ok, some discussion. great.

I feel that a +4 with Wash will allow 'Cautious' to last the entire game. Edu now and then we can hold back on him the rest of the game. He's a good tech'er and we'd like him to have universities. We still have Lib, PPress, Astron, and soon SciMetch to trade. I don't think we should fear big tech gifts. He's losing the culture battles, so his tech will probably slow. Giving Edu is not a big deal, it's not like he'll be in the Physics race.

(Personally, I would OB with him too to get to Pleased and eliminate any war possiblility, but I'm OK without the OB.)

I think 2 towns is worth 1 health, and where else will our people work? We should finish the cottage we're working on and count our forests. Odd number = 1 more cottage, even # = 2 more cottages. I imagine we all agree on 1 more if odd# of forests, so let's hear opinions about 2 more or zero.

 

[Merum]

After the current cottage build finishes, we'll have 6 forest tiles left. I'd put lumbermills on the remaining forests once RP comes in. If we drop our total health too far, it's going to constrain our growth and limit our SE possibilities.

 

[WastinTime]

After the current cottage build finishes, we'll have 6 forest tiles left. I'd put lumbermills on the remaining forests once RP comes in. If we drop our total health too far, it's going to constrain our growth and limit our SE possibilities.

If this were BTS, I might agree. We could do forest preserves and get some commerce out of those with environmentalism. I think our role in the PA is first and foremost researcher before builder. If we thought 1 health was such a burden, we should not have built a Forge.

Let's hear from some other team members.

 

[MacBalt]

I don't know what to say about giving Washington techs. It would be better to get him happy, but I honestly don't know how long the trading bonus would stick around. I agree that it hurts to just give him expensive techs like education tho...

I really don't think we should let health issues get in the way of our cottage plans though. Cottages are just much more valuable than the small health penalty we'll get. We're still at +1 health and we haven't even built all our health buildings yet either. We've got an aqueduct to build now and we'll have a grocer coming up. Health problems aren't nearly as bad as unhappiness anyway. I think we should expect to grow our pop until we simply can't grow any more -- never mind the unhealthiness. Before it becomes too bad we'll be discovering advanced techs that will improve our health output anyway.

More to say, but on the run. Back later...

EDIT: Cross-post with WT

 

[WastinTime]

I also believe it's foolish to not have some sort of priorities for dealing with AI. None of us are stupid enough to declare war on Liz based on Asoka's demand, but there are other situations where simply knowing who stands where on our list will allow the player who's up to make a decision regarding how to handle a demand without slowing down the game for three days of discussion.

I've learned a lot from this team, so I want to learn this too. I just can't see any value to this list. It can only do evil in any example I can dream up. It seems to me that "the list" will either point to the decision we all would do anyway (no war, don't cancel deals), or it will point to the wrong answer. So it only gets us in trouble and never saves the day. Am I missing something? Could I get an example so I can see the light?

 

[Merum]

I've learned a lot from this team, so I want to learn this too. I just can't see any value to this list. It can only do evil in any example I can dream up. It seems to me that "the list" will either point to the decision we all would do anyway (no war, don't cancel deals), or it will point to the wrong answer. So it only gets us in trouble and never saves the day. Am I missing something? Could I get an example so I can see the light?

What it does foremost is to focus the discussion on our goals. Our goal this game is to gain a PA with some civ and eventually win a space race victory. Our strategy to this point has been and will continue to be heavily dependent on diplomacy in order to facilitate the eventual acquisition of the PA and to keep us out of war, as well as to facilitate trading. With diplomacy such an important part of our strategy, it's important that we all understand who our prospective PA partners are, and who we don't care that much about. It's also important to know the relative values we as a team place on relations with particular civs.

Extreme micromanagement is sort of against the spirit of a succession game. Part of the fun of a succession game lies in waiting to see the results of the next set of turns, and comparing what you would have done to what the player of the turn chose to do. That's part of the learning aspect of a SG, and certainly part of the fun. The stakes are relatively higher in a SGOTM because of the competitive aspect, but it's still at its core a SG.

While I don't advocate any one player having carte blanche with regard to decision making during a turnset, there is supposed to be, and needs to be, some freedom to make decisions during the course of a turnset rather than having to stop the game mid-turn for a day and a half of discussion. Given a discussion of overall goals and objectives, any player on this team should be capable of making all but the major, possibly game-breaking decisions.

Obviously any sort of list of this nature is more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule. With the game bogging down and some players already complaining about the pace, making sure the team is on the same page with regard to decisions that are anywhere below game-breaking level both speeds the pace and makes the game more fun.

A real-world example of this: We prefer diplomatic relations to be good with team 1 over good relations with team 4. Team 4 approaches the player asking for a trade embargo with team 1. Because there has already been a discussion and general agreement on which relationship we value more highly, the player can base his decision to refuse the embargo based on that, and play on.

 

[MacBalt]

I didn't think Wash would trade anything.

He won't -- at least, not right now.

Unless there are 4 and 5 city civs over there, I doubt we will consider them for PA.

I agree. It is almost certain to be either Asoka or Liz. I aimed at Asoka in my test game, but for some reason he ended up being more difficult to partner with anyway. Don't know what will happen here, but I think we should keep prepping them both just to be sure whoever it ends up being is right on top of the tech situation with us.

Can't we get Drama without giving Lib?

Nope. Not this turn anyway. Cyrus only wants Liberalism and Astronomy. I suggest we don't give him astronomy. We could wait a turn or three... George, Liz, and Izzy all have Drama too but are unwilling to trade it (which gets back to WFYABTA and us being careful about not overdoing the tech trading right now if we can avoid it.) Once again, I think we ought to be very careful to make sure we can get Nationalism as soon as it becomes available.

After the current cottage build finishes, we'll have 6 forest tiles left. I'd put lumbermills on the remaining forests once RP comes in. If we drop our total health too far, it's going to constrain our growth and limit our SE possibilities.

I think we should cottage our two remaining grassland tiles. We need to be a research engine and that requires cottages. I expect the spaceship to be built entirely by our PA partner.

EDIT: cross-post with Merum

 

[Merum]

Regarding cottaging the forest tiles, if a preponderance of the team chooses that as the best course of action, I'm happy to follow it.

 

[MacBalt]

What it does foremost is to focus the discussion on our goals...

Nice post Merum. I thought it was very well considered.

Extreme micromanagement is sort of against the spirit of a succession game...

While I don't advocate any one player having carte blanche with regard to decision making during a turnset, there is supposed to be, and needs to be, some freedom to make decisions during the course of a turnset rather than having to stop the game mid-turn for a day and a half of discussion...

This part was especially good too. Having not played a succession game before, I appreciated the clarification about the nature of how it is supposed to work. I suppose the hard part is deciding which decisions are likely to qualify as "game-breaking" and which aren't. I'd still like to see more detailed turnset plans (generally speaking), but I can see why it would be impossible (and maybe just less "fun" too) to try to cover everything.

I guess I like the idea of some kind of list of PA priorities/possibilities, but I can't see any realistic prospects beyond Asoka and Liz right now. Perhaps Cyrus could also be a candidate (if he has managed to do some of that research on his own)? None of the other AI on our continent seem like good possibilities to me. Anyway, I'm not sure a full pecking-order is required. Maybe just a list of our top two or three would be best?

 

[MacBalt]

I noticed that Cyrus has Guilds too, but won't trade it yet. Maybe it would make sense to wait a turn or three and try to get both Drama and Guilds from him for Liberalism.

Guilds should become available very soon, as 6 AI already have it now, including Cyrus, Fred, George, Asoka, Liz, and HC.

 

[Merum]

Thanks for the kind words, Balth.

Other examples and uses of the list are "People who are not PA targets, but who we'd really prefer not to fight" or "People who have resources we're interested in so we want them happy" or "People who might be willing to engage in a proxy war for us".

 

[MacBalt]

Other examples and uses of the list are "People who are not PA targets, but who we'd really prefer not to fight" or "People who have resources we're interested in so we want them happy" or "People who might be willing to engage in a proxy war for us".

These ideas got me thinking... But things got too complicated for my brain pretty fast once the AIs on different lists started 'cross-cutting' against each other. Perhaps a single "low-boy" list would be easier to work with... I'm thinking about something like a "Do Not Trust" list of AIs to always keep at arm's length. [EDIT: I think we could also keep a very short list of 'specials', like proxy war candidates, etc.]

I recently got my ass handed to me in WOTM 17 partly because I relied too much on the value of a Defensive Pact and a high positive rating in the Glance screen. The problem was that my good-ol-boy "partner" was Ragnar (Vikings). He surprised me by dropping our DP and DOWing me on the same turn. I managed to fend off his attack, but then got DOWed by a more deadly foe before I could re-establish another DP. The more deadly foe (Shaka) was the one who administered the coup de grace, but when I saw that Ragnar still liked me enough to be double-digit positive with me (mid-range double-digit too -- go figure) in the Glance screen after our little spat, I resolved not to put too much trust in the Glance screen ever again.

I think this may be why I'm reluctant to try to get Washington to be more positive with us on the Glance screen simply by gifting him great techs. Once burned, twice shy. I'm just not convinced he won't take it into his head to attack us again anyway. I'm wondering whether a better approach might not be to gift that great tech to someone else to get them to DOW George and get him focused on hating someone else. Or better yet, get them to take his miserable little presence off our doorstep once and for all... (No bitterness there, eh? )

Which reminds me... What about upgrading one of our archer to Longbow?

 

[WastinTime]

Having not played a succession game before, I appreciated the clarification about the nature of how it is supposed to work.

That's exactly what I was going to say. I didn't realize how SG is supposed to work. Since we spent so much time micromanaging our first TS (cus we had a week to kill before we could play,) I just kept that level of detail. I'll adjust.

 

[Merum]

Don't misunderstand me, I want to win this game, too. WT's analysis as well as Balthalion's have put us to the larger extent on that track, and I wouldn't want to give that up... I'm just saying that if we talk about things up front we should be able to stop less.

 

[WastinTime]

A real-world example of this: We prefer diplomatic relations to be good with team 1 over good relations with team 4. Team 4 approaches the player asking for a trade embargo with team 1. Because there has already been a discussion and general agreement on which relationship we value more highly, the player can base his decision to refuse the embargo based on that, and play on.

This is a perfect example of why "the list" is so dangerous. In your case "the list" lead to you the obvious choice of declining the embargo. Turn that around. What if we prefered Team 4 over Team 1? Now a player would use the list to justify accepting an embargo! This can have horrible consequences. The list will lead us to dangerous/wrong decisions 50% of the time. I don't want the list to replace common sense. The general rule should be decline all wars and embargos especially since we only have OB and trade with a few select civs. If it's an interesting case, like someone we really love wants to war with someone really weak that we really hate, I imagine the player will stop and discuss it with the group.

The other features of planning out which AI we're courting, etc. is good, but responding to AI demands should not be involved.

 

[WastinTime]

Which reminds me... What about upgrading one of our archer to Longbow?

I'd agree that once we build up a little cash we could spend it on this. That's a good example of something a player could decide on-the-fly. We don't have a lot of use for cash. It's nice to have some around to get tech trade evened out sometimes.

 

[culdeus]

Well, everything was an enter fest for a bit. I just couldn't pull the trigger on a -1200 or -1000 beaker trade for stuff we had no use for at the present. Swapped for liz's whale to get a later trading bonus, but did not outright give her anything.

Then we get this:

KK comes across our border at the silver. Good thing only one worker was there as he took it. He's got 3 archers on our silver.

2 turns till the Duct comes in.

One Archer was promoted to LB on my first full turn. Stopped short to discuss this. If all he can put across are archers this shouldn't be a big deal.

 

[Merum]

I don't want the list to replace common sense either. I'm just trying to get a discussion of end game strategy going, for the reasons I stated previously.

 

[Merum]

KK comes across our border at the silver. Good thing only one worker was there as he took it. He's got 3 archers on our silver.

... so you're saying we are at war again?