SGOTM 07 - Fifth Element

MacBalt · Jun 30, 2008

The save is here.

Finished with a few small surprises, but I don't think any of them could screw us up much.

The biggest surprise for me was that Liz had Artillery ready to trade and researched Rocketry on her own. (It turns out she was in a Golden Age.) When her new tech appeared on the tech trade screen in turn 199, I decided to switch us back to Fission. I'm not sure that was the correct move, but I figured for just two turns it couldn't screw us up much if I was wrong. We can still build Rocketry in three and we have five turns to go on Fission. Cathy also has Rocketry, by the way. She was the first to get it -- it appeared to me on the trade screen on turn 195.

Second biggest event was a new Defense Pact between Cyrus and Cathy. The DP appeared to me on turn 196. After this happened, I didn't want to give Cyrus Radio, so I couldn't get Assembly Line from him. Cyrus still likes us better than Cathy. He was at +12 with us and +9 with Cathy on turn 196. I don't think that has changed much (if at all). I couldn't find any way to bribe him into doing something that would break the new DP. (Didn't check on the possibility of bribing others to attack Cyrus or Cathy. Doubt we could do it, but...)

The third surprise was that our buddy Asoka declared war on Kublai, which broke our new DP with him. Oh well. JC and Asoka are currently continuing to kick Kublai's butt. Kublai doesn't like us much, but now he hates Asoka worse.

Hatty and Alex are both dead now; Hatty by Cathy and Alex by HC. HC currently has a respectable 4-city empire on our continent's west coast. Cyrus was the one who took out Toku, so he has a city on our continent now too.

We still have a monopoly on Radio together with Liz. Cathy, Cyrus, and Asoka are knocking on the door but don't have it yet.

Saladin has a monopoly on Railroad. Cyrus has a monopoly on Assembly Line (or else just lost it -- can't remember).

I tried to spread Biology and Steel around, but don't know if I did a good enough job. Held off on Artillery (mostly) once I saw Liz had Rocketry.

George is really feeling the heat from Bombay's culture. The mountain 2 North of Washington (the city) is now owned by Asoka. Honestly, if the cow flips away from George I'm afraid there is a real chance it could go to Asoka instead of us.

Oh yeah, we are now building :science:

, but the Iron Works is available. I decided not to go that way because of :yuck:

, but we may want to reassess that...

Will start you all with the autolog while I post the save. Will update this post with the link as soon as I can.

The Autolog:

Spoiler :

Session Turn Log:

Spoiler :

MacBalt · Jul 1, 2008

The charts are looking a little better for us now. :mwaha:

I would never dare to suggest CRC might not have been able to win by 50 AD, but I remain cautiously optimistic.

(I noticed that Lexad left the team sometime back too... :confused:

...

)

Oh, and we still have two Longbows with good double-guerilla promotions sitting in Beijing. We should probably upgrade those directly to infantry when we can. :ar15:

Have a great vacation BLubmuz!

WastinTime · Jul 1, 2008

Excellent work! I was worried we would just be "pressing enter", but you got us some good tech trades. I hate to mention it, but Liz is ready to sign the PA. I'd like to do some more tech brokering. Possibly finish Fission, Refrig, Genetics and then sign. That's about 25 turns of research. (IronW takes 17 turns so we could start it, just don't finish it until some health comes in. EDIT: No coal -- Liz has it at least. Maybe skip this? Not sure.)

Let's take our stone back from Asoka and windmill that tile.

MacBalt · Jul 1, 2008

WastinTime said:
I hate to mention it, but Liz is ready to sign the PA. I'd like to do some more tech brokering. Possibly finish Fission, Refrig, Genetics and then sign. That's about 25 turns of research.

I agree that doing the PA before trading Fission around would be a waste. Since no one else has a DP with Liz yet, I'm all for waiting until at least Refrigeration too, but then we should probably reassess.

Cyrus could still be an option too. We could spoil the thing Cathy has going with him. Still, Liz is right on top of the tech game with us now, and if Cyrus were to putz around with the spaceship parts then whoever gets a PA with Liz might be able to run away from us. Maybe we should decide on Liz right now and not fool around with this any more (but still wait until the right time to get the PA). Since I've had good luck with Liz in the past and I have no experience with Cyrus I lean strongly toward staying with Liz.

One good thing, with Asoka off chasing Kublai I think the chances of him competing seriously with us for Liz are very low. He'll be more likely to pair up with JC, who -- even with three cities -- is still rather backward.

Sweetacshon · Jul 1, 2008

Nice work!

We can afford to hang back with Liz, as she has no DPs and hasn't warred. This is good and gives us a versatile position. Perhaps someone could check or post the GNP screen?? It's been a while since I've seen who's bringing in the beakers - and production for that matter.

I notice that we are very close to worst enemy for a few AIs, most notably Cathy. No-one hope for any more excitement in the end-game, OK?

culdeus · Jul 1, 2008

Take our chances with LIZ. Cathy is almost certain to try to screw this up for us in some way and may use Cyrus to do it. Thing is AI is so horrible at landing troops that I'm not worried, but they must be cutoff. In the meantime can we get some non sentried ships out in the water to screen for invaders?

If we lose it's one of two ways:

Lose a spaceship to the Cyrus-Cathy alliance
Lose by conquest to a sea based force from the west

I messed around with the build queue thing for the PA. I think this is pretty overpowered and perhaps an exploit they should look into for GOTM rules.

WastinTime · Jul 1, 2008

culdeus said:
I messed around with the build queue thing for the PA. I think this is pretty overpowered and perhaps an exploit they should look into for GOTM rules.

Explain please.

P.S. I think getting beat to space is almost impossible.

MacBalt · Jul 1, 2008

This is the last roster from BLubmuz I could find. If Sabre is still floating then that would put GreatBeyond up next, right?

BLubmuz said:
Roster
dutchfire - UP for ten turns - try to not be eliminated by Russia (or much likely America)
Sweetacshon - on deck - if he can play
Balthalion
Sabre - floating until news
greatbeyond
WastinTime
Blubmuz - eliminated by Spain, but in another game - vacations 07/01 to 07/09
Merum
culdeus - resting

@ culdeus: I'm not clear on what the "build-queue thing for the PA" is either. It sounds interesting tho!

@ Sweetaschon: I'm not exactly sure which screen you mean by "GNP screen." Is that the Demographics screen with the rankings in the right-hand column or the Financial screen with our income and expense breakdown?

WastinTime · Jul 1, 2008

This is feeling good! We could be signing PA around turn 220. That could let us finish before 250. I said our target should be 250 (for the purpose of calculating things like GS lightbulbing) but realisticly, I was expecting turn 260-270, considering the war with GW, etc.

Things to note: Liz gets our sheep tile when we sign so we probably won't want to sign until at least refrig...which seems to be the consensus. Signing before completing Genetics might be best so Liz can get on that Iron and make a factory. Plus there's that huge research bomb you get when you sign. Did you notice that in your test games? We can probably finish Genetics in 1 turn...+3 health mmm.

The Fur deal with Liz will get cancelled when she gets industrialism. That might be a good time to consider signing, so keep an eye out for that. I'm worried she'll waste research on MassMedia after Industrialism.

Something to consider: Add 1 scientist so our next (hopefully) GS pops out before we get combustion. After combustion, it may want to bulb Flight instead of Genetics, so we'd have to save it until something with a higher priority than Flight is being researched. I think that's Fiber Optics. The flip side of that is just keep working the windmill and grow the city. The GS can be used for Fiber Optics after the PA.

Remember, if we start seeing Apollo, it's not a big deal. Early apollo doesn't help if you don't have the tech to finish parts.

Don't let liz waste time on Railroad, combustion, fission, etc. gift those quickly, or maybe try to get Assembly for two of them.

MacBalt · Jul 1, 2008

WastinTime said:
This is feeling good! We could be signing PA around turn 220. That could let us finish before 250.

Turn 250 is 1700 AD, right? That would be sweet, and if we could find a way to edge it into the 1600s that would be absolutely delicious. :yumyum:

@ WT (& anyone else who cares to comment): In your opinion, should I have taken the trade for Assembly Line with Cyrus? He wouldn't take less than Radio, Biology, and Artillery (or steel). I'm second-guessing myself now and wondering if it wouldn't have been better to just bite the bullet and take that trade.

Random Thought: I wonder if Cyrus would take Rocketry for Assembly Line? Since Cathy already has it, I wouldn't mind giving that to him now. (It would take us three turns to finish Rocketry, but it would delay Fission.)

By the way, I agree that it is time to break the stone trade with Asoka and put a windmill on that tile.

WastinTime · Jul 1, 2008

Liz has Assembly (doesn't she?) and always goes for Industrialism next, so we can't help her. It's not necessary that we get Assembly yet. It was wise to save those techs to trade for something she doesn't have. Railroad, combustion. We could even wait until the PA is signed to aquire Assembly. Industrialism is very hard to get in trade.

EDIT: Liz doesn't have AssemblyLine. I see back on turn 195 you could have had Assembly and given it to Liz. That probably would have been best. Let's focus on Railroad/combustion and not make the same mistake. I'm sure it's too late to get Assembly for her now. She'll research it or trade for it soon.

culdeus · Jul 1, 2008

WastinTime said:
Explain please.

Manipulating your own build queue such that the AI doesn't build things that are sub-optimal for the goals is a little bit of a gray area in the spirit of things.

Sweetacshon · Jul 1, 2008

That just sounds like good ol' common sense.

Seriously, tho, even tho we may not think it is in the spirit of the game, I'm sure other teams will use it, and we just have to play as best we can under the current rules.

MacBalt · Jul 2, 2008

WastinTime said:
I see back on turn 195 you could have had Assembly and given it to Liz. That probably would have been best.

Yeah, I was afraid of that. I didn't want to give Cyrus Radio because of the UN thing -- especially given his new DP with Cathy. Now I think the risk probably would have been justified by savings in research time. Oh well, live and learn.

WastinTime · Jul 2, 2008

Don't worry too much about it. It seems like if you speed the AI up (by giving Liz Assembly in this case), then she'll just waste time on Flight or Mass Media. Maybe we can stop Liz from going there and then there is no real loss in spaceship launch time.

dutchfire · Jul 2, 2008

Nice work

Spoiler :

Fiber Optics - Flight - Genetics

I agree with signing with Liz. When she gets industrialism (as per WT)? Will we lose the diplo bonus after that, or do we want to avoid Mass Media and other useless techs?

WastinTime · Jul 2, 2008

The diplo bonus for years of resource trading won't go away, at least not immediately. It's not like a religion change.

greatbeyond · Jul 2, 2008

I'll wait until Friday to see if Sabre can take the next turn. In the meantime we can work out a plan for finishing up.

culdeus · Jul 3, 2008

I'm all for once we get the PA and the spaceship gets started that if nothing else just let someone wrap it all the way to the end short of some war or some major issue.

At the point where the space ship starts there is literally, absolutely, totally, nothing to do but wait it out. We should be able to give one part to the effort and then just build navy the rest of the time. And if we want to go without a navy. A couple of tactical nukes on cyrus or cathy will be, if nothing else, fun.

culdeus · Jul 3, 2008

CRC is off the watch list. They have submitted a new save.

Our new watch list member is real ms. Nothing this week to advance on 1000AD and thread is quiet. All other teams have made some progress.

SGOTM 07 - Fifth Element

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