SGOTM 07 - Fifth Element

BLubmuz · Jun 15, 2008

Dutch, congrats on your graduation (this make me think you're our youngest member).

Useless to say, i don't like much your sig.
at least, do your best to beat Romania

WastinTime · Jun 15, 2008

AlanH said:
Thanks for letting me know. I have no problem with either of these innocent mistakes, please carry on as normal.

AlanH's response to my confession about the enter key I pressed and the accidental viewing of other team threads.

Merum · Jun 15, 2008

BLubmuz said:
Useless to say

"Needless to say"

This has been Blub's English tip of the day^tm

WastinTime · Jun 15, 2008

Merum said:
"Needless to say"

This has been Blub's English tip of the day^tm

, I was just thinking about correcting this popular phrase of his too, but I didn't want to be the English Nazi.

BLubmuz · Jun 15, 2008

Thanks guys, i can't improve without corrections.

My english improvement was maybe the main reason i subscribed to my first SG and probably this was my best success on the SGs.

but...

Useless / Needless: the general meaning does not change.

Perhaps Needless is the word normally used?
In french i would say "ça va sans dir" which translated literally in english is completely different, but i know it's the right way to mean "needless to say".

ohh, well

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

Good news from Alan H.

Thanks for taking care of my inadvertent clicks too, WastinTime.

@BLubmuz: The best way to approach English, IMHO, is never to expect it to make much sense.

Here is the revised plan. I'll play about 2-3 hours from now, unless something else comes up in discussion.

Plan for the Next Turnset:

Turns to Play: Finish 138, play 139-145, stop before ending turn 145.
Research Path: Finish Scientific Method, begin Physics
Build Order: Finish Galleon (1t), Theater (2t), begin Globe Theater.
City Priority = Growth: Population = 14
- Tiles to Work: 2xCrab, Sheep, Deer, Fur, Marble, 4xGrass Cottages, Plains Cottage, 1xCoast, 2xScientists (shift one coast to deer from current configuration); growth in 4.
- After Galleon, MM the tiles worked to get both theater and growth in two turns, even if I have to pull one or both of the scientists for a turn or two to do it.
- After Theater, MM the tiles worked to try to time the next growth with the completion of the globe theater. I may or may not keep up to two scientists employed. (Please let me know if anyone has strong ideas about keeping the scientists even if they might ****** our growth a bit.)
Inherited Turn: Upgrade archer on silver to Longbow. Make trade with Louis (see #8) & upgrade archer in Beijing to Longbow. Open Borders with Cyrus and George.
Worker: Immediately move worker and escort to grass/forest 2S-1E of Beijing and finish cottage. After that, move to grass/forest 2E of Beijing and begin cottage. Try to time the completions with building the Globe Theater for extra .
Military: Move galleon to our coast/fish tile and sentry there.
Technology Trading:
- Trade Louis Guilds for his Music + 100 gold + World Map. We need music for Military Tradition later and I’ll use the 100 gold immediately to upgrade another archer (the one with two hills promotions in Beijing) to Longbow. The world map could be useful for getting to see the other continent too.
- One Warning: Louis and Isabella are furious with each other. This trade will probably get us a “traded with our worst enemy” penalty with Isabella, but I’m willing to eat that now. Louis is also not happy with either JC or HC, but they are only -1 toward him. Everyone else is either at zero or above with Louis on the glance screen.
- After 1 or 2 turns, when we've finished Scientific Method and begun Physics, I will use Astronomy to bribe Asoka into joining the war against Kublai Khan.
- Will keep my eyes open for cheap Banking and/or Engineering trades, but probably won’t take either this turnset for fear of WFYABTA. I’d like to make sure we can get Nationalism as soon as it becomes available.
- No trades for Horseback Riding or Theology
- Technology gifts? -- Will give Civil Service to Mansa for his World Map and whatever gold I can get. After 3-4 more turns, I'll gift him Guilds too. No other technology gifts this turnset.
Resource Trading: No new resource trades. It looks like the Cyrus whale for fish trade has got us set up pretty well.
Civics Changes: None this turnset.
Political Demands:
- Do not give in to any demand for Scientific Method (even if it comes from Asoka or Liz).
- Do not end the war with Kublai (for less than a truckload of stuff).
- Do not give in to any demands that would require anarchy (religion or civics change).
- Give in to all other demands for resources or techs.
- Do not join any wars.
- Do not give in to demands to cancel any deals (unless the request comes from Asoka or Liz and it appears to make sense for us).
Final Play Notes: If any significant new invasion force arrives, or if we get any pile-on DOWs (from George, for example), I'll plan to stop and consult the team about our options.

Merum · Jun 15, 2008

Kill 'em. There's a 15 year old bottle of Nikka Yoichi in it for you if you win the game in this turnset.

Balthalion said:
@BLubmuz: The best way to approach English, IMHO, is never to expect it to make much sense.

Stop, you'll have him sounding like our president. :mischief:

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

Merum said:
Kill 'em. There's a 15 year old bottle of Nikka Yoichi in it for you if you win the game in this turnset.

Ha! If I throw my cpu out the window or beat it to pieces with a stick does that count as a win??? :badcomp:

Merum said:
Stop, you'll have him sounding like our president.

I've leaned that the best way to deal with that GW (for me, at least) is to close all borders and try not to listen at all. It is easier on my blood pressure that way. (He doesn't seem to get any better with editing, either. For me, understanding what he means just makes it worse.)
:gripe:

:suicide:

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

Okay, everything went pretty much as planned, so nothing exciting to report. The save is posted at the results page here.

The Short Story:
We are at population 15 with growth in two and the Globe Theater due to complete in two turns. Asoka was bribed into war with Kublai on turn 141. The good news from that move is that he is now "Friendly" with us and at a whopping +9 on the glance screen. :eek:

The bad news is that he doesn't appear to need Scientific Method, so he may beat us to physics after all. I guess he must have been working on SM even without having Astronomy. :confused:

We are currently due to get Physics in 8 turns. The worker is building a cottage in the forest 2 east of Beijing. The Galleon is on station at our fish. We have a full map of the other continent and have now met Saladin and Hatty. I gave Hatty OB. Louis asked for OB but I didn't give it. Cyrus, Saladin, and Liz all have Nationalism, but no one will trade it yet. There are lots of opportunities to get Economics and Engineering, but I decided to wait until we got Nationalism.

The Submit Page Autolog:

Spoiler :

The Game Autolog:

Spoiler :

Merum · Jun 15, 2008

OK, obviously Asoka went through chem and we are now at risk of losing the physics race.

So, hear me out here:

If we MM the city like this:

We can get a GP in 3 turns. It's likely to be a scientist, which brings me to the question... how did we get 19% artist pollution in our GPP pool? We would have had to run an artist for a significant number of turns to get it that high.

(EDIT: never mind, I see it's coming from the NE, dammit.)

Anyway, we still get the globe in 2, at the cost of a little starvation, but we greatly improve our chances of winning Physics, assuming we get the scientist and bulb it for physics. I'd much rather do this and win the race than let Asoka get the scientist.

Alternatively, we can MM in a slightly different way, run the same number of specs, and get the globe in 3 with a little less starvation.

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

Is it really worth the starvation tho? We'll have to grow back 24 food, and there isn't any guarantee we'll get a scientist. (My past experience with the "RNG" makes me think we'll get an artist despite the 80% chance for a scientist.) If Asoka is going to be our PA partner, then I'm not sure we really lose anything if he gets the extra Great Scientist. We'll be researching everything together anyway once the PA happens, and so long as we can keep him "friendly" we'll probably be able to get great trades out of him before then too.

EDIT: Also, the Globe is going to add to our artist pollution.

Merum · Jun 15, 2008

It's a pretty sizable "if" to say that we'll have Asoka as a PA partner, although it appears to be shaping up nicely. I'd say that if we take the less starvation route, then it's definitely worth the risk. Yes, we'll be researching things together, but we still need to maximize our science for the purposes of trading with other civs and suppose we decide to research opposite techs from Asoka while we're researching?

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

Would the "less starvation" route be something like working the deer instead of the marble? If we are willing to delay our growth to try this then I don't see any problem with delaying the Globe for a while. We won't need it and we can put off the additional artist pollution for a while. Going to have to go back to the game and tinker for a minute...

EDIT: Okay, if we work the deer and a cottage instead of the stone and marble, we still get a GP in three turns but only lose a total of 6 food in three turns. (Maybe less if we can put the Engineer back to work in a cottage after a turn or two.) The Globe is only delayed by one additional turn. That route would be the better gamble, IMHO.

BLubmuz · Jun 15, 2008

Good "cruising" TS, Balth.
Pity you haven't checked the SM thing before the trade with Asoka.
Still, since he couldn't research physics without Astro, there's the hope that he's now researching Chem.
Loose the race is not a big deal, mainly if this guarentee him as the PA partner, let's see.

I opened the save and noticed we miss only Russia to meet.
Noticed also Louis conquered KumbiSaleh from MM, curious to see if Djenne was conquered by Russia or just flipped.

I think we must restart our tech trades, or we'll miss some opportunities.
Only Liz and Fred show the "WFYABTA".
Also, i think Liz can be difficult to have as PA partner.

Some good relation is due to HR, and this will disappear when we'll adopt Representation. On the other hand, some relations will improve (JC, Cyrus) pity we got -3 for trades with JC's worst enemy (KK perhaps?).
So both can be considered as PA partners if Asoka is not interested.

Start to trade, please!

after read the crossposts, i think that a quick GP is worth a little delay in growth: please note there're NO health resources on commerce and probably will never be.
If that Gp will be a GS better burn him on physics, if a GA we can settle him.

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

After reviewing the world map, I noticed that Grocer isn't going to help us at all with health. I couldn't find any spices or sugar on the whole map, and HC and Liz own the only banana and wine tiles, so far as I can tell.

Merum · Jun 15, 2008

But it we trade for them, we still get the + :health:

, right?

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

Yeah, but with no sugar or spices in the whole world, there isn't anything to trade for. And with only 1 banana owned by HC and one wine owned by Liz, I doubt they will ever put them up for trade. :dunno:

WastinTime · Jun 15, 2008

Keep in mind: If Asoka gets the Scientist that means the AI (as a group) researches faster. Even if Asoka is not our PA (which he probably will be), we still help the cause. So losing the race is not that critical. Asoka could not have started Physics until t142, so we're probalby going to win anyway unless he lightbulbs.

If we settle that GS it will give us around 3000 beakers by the end of the game. Lightbulbing now gives only 1500, we we lose an entire GS by lightbulbing now.

If you all decide to LB anyway (I currently vote against unless a new arguement arises). Then I suggest doing it differently. Getting a GS in 3 doesn't help because you've now made Physics go to 9 turns. After LB you still have 2 turns to go and you could still lose the race to Physics! Better to MM to get the GS in 4 turns. No starving, no loss of research Physics stays at 8 turns. No risk of getting an Engineer. And a slightly higher probability of a GS.

EDIT: If we rush the GS slightly in 4 turns and settle it, that may be enough to get Physics in 7.

BTW, the GS rush is an excellent strategy. I would be behind it 100% if we were going for Diplo victory.

Merum · Jun 15, 2008

These are the scenarios I see for moving forward:

1. We get the GS, bulb him on Physics, and win the race, settling the second GS.
2. We get the GS, settle him, and win the race, settling the second GS.
3. We get the GS, settle him, and lose the race. AI gets too far ahead of us in tech, and we lose trading abilities.
4. We do nothing and lose the race.
5. We do nothing and win the race.

My assumption is that Asoka already researches faster than we do so a flat out race we probably lose. I don't know how much settling the first GS does for our race chances.

I don't like allowing the race to be lost, because it was the primary goal of the last 30 turns or so, and we made plans based on that. Given that we can ensure a win without much loss to growth, I think we should stay the course. I don't like option 3 much at all, and I'd like to be the first civ shopping physics around, too.

Point: We just obsoleted 2 super scientists on this path. I'd like to get them back.

MacBalt · Jun 15, 2008

This is a tough one. I like the four-turn rush best (if the GS was a sure thing, I might go for the three-turn first), but maybe we should ask the next player (GreatBeyond, I think) to stop at that point and update us all on our options (without having to upload the save). We may get beaten to Physics in four turns, we may get a Great Artist instead of a scientist, or we may have a clearer idea that we will win the race to Physics (if Asoka turns out to be researching something else, for example). Not sure we can plan it perfectly at this point no matter how hard we try...

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