SGOTM 07 - Unusual Suspects

Good job Melior! :thumbsup:

We are playing longer sessions now, ~15 turns with breaks. You are still up. Of course, please say if you are too busy for play.

I can play some more.

I'll examine things closely soon. I've looked the save a bit and I have a question for you Melior: why didn't you build more artillery for Asoka? CR II is the strongest thing we have for city attacks.
Seems to me busting cities isn't so much the problem as surviving repeated attacks from enemy Artillery if Asoka decides he wants to fight. The emphasis on Infantry is to try to make sure that even if Asoka hits the stack with all his Artillery, the stack can still be effective & not have to sacrifice our own Artillery in defense. We don't want to waste time building replacement units for the war machine if we can avoid it.

I think we should evaluate our strategy at this point. Specifically:
  1. War with Asoka, logistics and tactics.
As I said, I'm thinking we should declare war & see if Asoka makes any offensive moves. If he doesn't then march to Bombay while leaving enough troops in Washington for a credible defense. To do this quickly, the 3 Infantry fortified on the Fur forest will have to be committed to the operation, meaning newly produced units will have to stay home to guard against a possible counterattack into our lands.
  1. What are we going to research after Industrialism?
Flight & Radio, perhaps? Those would be useful militarily.

  1. Are we going for Domination for sure?
Yes, I don't see any other option for quicker victory.

  1. How much time do we have before AI's launch?
Maybe mid-late 1800's?

  1. Drafting for fun and profit. ;) We could farm everything and draft those scientists!
Giving up Bureaucracy to draft 2 pop Infantry when Tanks will be available soon doesn't make much sense to me.
  1. Other civic changes?
Nothing comes to mind.

  1. What do we plan to research till the end? What do we expect AI to research by then?
I don't see anyone on our continent fielding Mech Infantry, but all the same, I'd keep researching to Modern Armor, because I don't see what else to do with our commerce.

  1. Plans for war with Liz - when, how many soldiers, what technology?
Probably 5 or so Tanks backed up by the Infantry/Artillery stack should get the job done. Sneak attack Kyoto first to make sure Liz's most potent stack doesn't cause problems. Also sneak attack Nottingham in the first turn of the war. A good sized defensive stack in Washington to withstand the Artillery stack in York. And 4 Battleships to defend our nets. Once Kyoto falls, march the army over to York and finish her off.
  1. Plans for war with Capac - Kublai, same questions.
More Tanks, maybe some Bombers too if we have them by that time. And send the Battleships to reinforce Caesar's capital.
 
Hi again. After looking at the save and listening to the discussions, I really feel like the present plannings are a bit over my head. I trust whatever consensus you warriors come up with.

As for strategy, I think Dom is perhaps our only chance to win, given the AI tech rates and inevitable SS by about 1700's in my guesstimation. Either we must attack to forestall that, or we must attack to reach Dom limits. I like our chances a lot better if we just concentrate on taking over the continent asap, and then if we haven't won do what is necessary to finish. Somewhere along the way the UN will get built and that will pose another set of challenges. We should keep that in the back of our heads (for defensive purposes against diplo loss), but for the time being we should stay focused on fastest way to spreading our empire from sea to shining sea.

Good job keeping the stack intact while taking Washington. The Washington first strategy counted on that... and it was done well. Expect some losses against India, and watch out for Liz backstab... both countered by continued unit prod in Beijing.

Lets here some detailed plans. Its obvious that now we have 2 turns in Indian territory to reach cities, so be sure to have a medic along who is not going to end up as the strongest defender as arty cat damage takes its toll on other units. But if we are fortunate, Asoka will see our superior numbers and just hunker down in the city. Rarely does Asoka attack when it reduces his defenses, unless he has equal or better numbers. That should be to our advantage. But don't count on it... Deity AI may have different thoughts.

When do you plan to finish the turnset? We still have planning to do, but that planning should come first (with flexibility in mind if we have difficulty reaching consensus).
 
I've been a bit busy lately but I have some time now to examine things closely.

A word of warning: Liz is Friendly at Asoka and Annoyed at us & JC. According to the personality file, it is possible to bribe her to war in such circumstances!

Asoka could bribe her to war against us! She is very dangerous, her stack in Kyoto is very strong.

I propose we make a sacrifice here: giftting Medicine to her!

That should bring her from Cautious to Pleased at us. Pleased at us and Annoyed at JC averages to Cautious, if I remember correctly. I've read about it, this must be checked. If we bring her to Cautious that should secure us. Of course, nothing is 100% in civ. :)
 
<Logistics for George>

I'll examine things closely soon. I've looked the save a bit and I have a question for you Melior: why didn't you build more artillery for Asoka? CR II is the strongest thing we have for city attacks.

Seems to me busting cities isn't so much the problem as surviving repeated attacks from enemy Artillery if Asoka decides he wants to fight. The emphasis on Infantry is to try to make sure that even if Asoka hits the stack with all his Artillery, the stack can still be effective & not have to sacrifice our own Artillery in defense. We don't want to waste time building replacement units for the war machine if we can avoid it.

Yes, this make sense, I agree. Especially since Asoka "upgraded" his machine guns to SAMs. :lol: We actually need more MG at this point.

<War with Asoka>

As I said, I'm thinking we should declare war & see if Asoka makes any offensive moves. If he doesn't then march to Bombay while leaving enough troops in Washington for a credible defense. To do this quickly, the 3 Infantry fortified on the Fur forest will have to be committed to the operation, meaning newly produced units will have to stay home to guard against a possible counterattack into our lands.

Asoka will most certainly send some soldiers for the attack. He'll probably send soldiers on Beijing and Washington too. However, we have a problem with the waiting tactic: there is a Roman stack in Washington, we don't want JC to suicide soldiers. We also have a GA that we should use properly, sending him to Washington and gifting him to Caesar is logical. We have to be careful about the timing, we could get good and bad results. If we get some tiles from Asoka we can approach the city from a better position. Btw, JC moves before Asoka, that's important to now. I think we need more MG there too, we could use those 2 from Beijing too. Let's think this through.

Like I said before, I think we are forced to gift Medicine to Liz now to prevent her from joining Asoka against us.

<Techs after Industrialism>

Flight & Radio, perhaps? Those would be useful militarily.

Yes, those will be useful, but I'm not sure about exact order. We could also use Plastics for Hydro plants or for the Three Gorges Dam. We'll take the Coal eventually from JC, he'll need the power. However, TGD demands a lot of hammers even for JC. Btw, Alex after Liz for more Coal is a strong possibility.

We are going to need more production for the tanks, Ironworks and Coal plant will be needed soon. We also have to connect that oil. Btw, we shouldn't bother much working JC's land, he'll make his own improvements over the farms we make if he won't like them.

There is also Refrigeration to consider for faster ships and Supermarket for 3 more :health:. Btw, Liz will have battleships too! Uranium will provide that.

I don't think we need Flight just yet. Fighters won't be able to bombard tiles effectively, SAMs would stop them.

Radio leads to Computers for faster research and enables us to see if somebody researched Mass Madia for the UN, that could be important.

:hmm: I'm not sure what's best at this point.

<Domination>

Yes, I don't see any other option for quicker victory.

Yes, we have to go after that, other teams will do it too.

<Expected AI launch times>

Maybe mid-late 1800's?

1850 AD is turn 295, that's in 77 turns. It is quite possible that they'll need ~100 turns, they are not that fast in this game.

<Drafting>

Giving up Bureaucracy to draft 2 pop Infantry when Tanks will be available soon doesn't make much sense to me.

Agreed, I gave this idea more thought, not the way to go here. Bureaucracy gives 21 :hammers: atm, and those forests are giving a lot of :hammers: too because of the bonuses.

<Civic changes>

Nothing comes to mind.

Agreed. I was considering Police state, Drafting and Slavery but that would be wrong to say it shortly.

<Stopping research?>
I don't see anyone on our continent fielding Mech Infantry, but all the same, I'd keep researching to Modern Armor, because I don't see what else to do with our commerce.

Yes, let's keep researching. There is no need to stop and stronger soldiers are always useful. :)

<War with Liz>
Probably 5 or so Tanks backed up by the Infantry/Artillery stack should get the job done. Sneak attack Kyoto first to make sure Liz's most potent stack doesn't cause problems. Also sneak attack Nottingham in the first turn of the war. A good sized defensive stack in Washington to withstand the Artillery stack in York. And 4 Battleships to defend our nets. Once Kyoto falls, march the army over to York and finish her off.

We'll discuss this more when the time comes. I agree, Kyoto first while defending Washington with marines probably. Don't see the need to attack Nottingham too fast. JC's soldiers would be too far, reducing the garrison would probably autoraze the city. Of course, Liz could do the same thing as Wasington did. :crazyeye: What about Liz's battleships? We should consider spies for that uranium.


Btw, nice baiting tactics against George. :thumbsup: I considered that against Fred but decided not to do it. I didn't expect Fred to send so many soldiers for the bait. Crazy AI. :lol:
 
@Kcd_Swede

<Launch times>
AIs are not that fast in this game. They are not much faster than us, if faster at all. I don't expect them to launch soon.

<UN>

I don't see anybody getting the required votes at this point. Of course, we should watch who has Mass Media and use spies to search for the UN. We'll sabotage the surrounding tiles to stop the production if needed. Btw, sabotaging tiles is far better than sabotaging city production by my experience.

<Liz>

Liz is a big threat to us! I'll try to find the article regarding the Team attitude. I'm pretty sure that if we get her to Pleased that she won't join Asoka in the war. If we don't get her to Pleased, I think that there is a very good chance that she will attack us!

Btw, I've recently seen AI dogpiling without WHEOOHRN signs. I think it was due to invitations to war. AIs were paired in that game, 2 pairs of Friendly relations and Annoyed to others due to religions. Friend joined the war without WHEOOHRN. They didn't attack me btw, everybody was Cautious at me, I avoided state religion. That was BtS but things are probably not much different here.


<war with Asoka>

If we gift the GA, we could get a tile from Asoka for faster city attack. Asoka will certainly move some units out. There are unit scripts that all AI use, you can see that with World Builder. Asoka surely has some units scripted for city attacks.


Let's finish the planning for the war with Asoka, we have to be careful here. We must keep Liz out of the war, she could cause horrible problems.


EDIT: Team attitude

VoU wrote about it in the wfybta article:

...
Furthermore, the value that is used is the average attitude of these relationships. Note that attitude means Friendly, Pleased, etc. not +10 or +20 or whatever the net of the plusses and minuses is.

And as usual, the averaging is done with integer division, which rounds down on any excuse to do so.
...

Therefore, Liz is Annoyed at our team and Friendly at Asoka! She is willing to join wars in such situations! I'm not comfortable with that. Gifting Medicine doesn't come easy, but that should get her to Pleased at us and average relations to Cautious. It is not likely that she'll trade Medicine away, she likes to keep Monopoly techs for herself. She could trade it to Asoka but hopefully he won't be around long to continue the trading.
 
If we are considering giving Medicine away to Liz, then we need to be sure that will keep her from intervening for Asoka when we attack him. I'm dubious that we would get back up to Pleased though, because we already have +2 with Liz for fair trade, so we can only pick up +2 more for giving away Medicine, but then we'll pick up a -1 for attacking Asoka.

Alternatively, we could postpone the war for a while to get the IW/Hospital combo up. By the time those are built, Industrialism should be researched. We can start cranking out Tanks then. Liz can't build any Tanks & Asoka's not a militarist, so if we can build a Tank per turn, by around 10 turns post-Industrialism (certainly by 15 turns), we'll have an army strong enough to take on both Liz & Asoka at the same time.

I think we should recall the Worker near Berlin, take the Coal & build rails on our production tiles. We'll pick up another 7 raw :hammers: once the rails are all in place.

If Caesar bombs the GA at Washington, he might claim the NE tile, which would be helpful for an invasion later on, so we can be at Bombay's doorstep in the first turn of the war.

I'd go for Flight ahead of Radio myself. Fighters can still take out improvements (namely Asoka's Oil well), which might be necessary.
 
If we are considering giving Medicine away to Liz, then we need to be sure that will keep her from intervening for Asoka when we attack him. I'm dubious that we would get back up to Pleased though, because we already have +2 with Liz for fair trade, so we can only pick up +2 more for giving away Medicine, but then we'll pick up a -1 for attacking Asoka.

Yes, you are right, that -1 would probably push us back, we can't risk that. Besides, Asoka has many soldiers. I've been trying to find the right attacking tactic, but I couldn't find any. It looks like we are forced to postpone the war.

Let's just give that GA to JC. AI seems to understand how to culture bomb, he should gain some tiles there.

Alternatively, we could postpone the war for a while to get the IW/Hospital combo up. By the time those are built, Industrialism should be researched. We can start cranking out Tanks then. Liz can't build any Tanks & Asoka's not a militarist, so if we can build a Tank per turn, by around 10 turns post-Industrialism (certainly by 15 turns), we'll have an army strong enough to take on both Liz & Asoka at the same time.

I think we should recall the Worker near Berlin, take the Coal & build rails on our production tiles. We'll pick up another 7 raw :hammers: once the rails are all in place.

Remember to build the Coal plant, that's +50% production! Maybe even right away, ignoring +1 :yuck: over health. We could also built another worker to hurry things up.

If Caesar bombs the GA at Washington, he might claim the NE tile, which would be helpful for an invasion later on, so we can be at Bombay's doorstep in the first turn of the war.

This should happen. :)

I'd go for Flight ahead of Radio myself. Fighters can still take out improvements (namely Asoka's Oil well), which might be necessary.

That tile is most likely protected by SAM infantry. There is fog of war on it , we can't see. What do you think about Plastics? Power is very important for JC, we want him to build as many units as possible. Btw, he has 6 cities now, the magical number. :)

What about Refrigeration for more :health: ? Well, we can discuss this after Industrialism.

What do you others think? Do you agree that we should postpone the war?

Marconos
, do you have a wild war tactic for us to use? ;)


EDIT:

We should play soon, tonight preferably. We've slowed down, war preparations are not easy. I'm planning for the next session to finish on Sunday hopefully. :)

If we don't get any new input soon, I say just go for it Melior, play it till Industrialism.
 
The one comment I'm going to make here is that we should IGNORE Flight.

Why? Too many SAM's around atm.
 
Sorry haven't had a chance to look in detail at this yet. IMO screw Liz, if she wants some come get some ;).

I'll get a detailed look tonight and post my thoughts.

I have been thinking about one thing --- why not Liz before Asoka ... I'll look at that when I get the save tonight. I think part of the reason we are in a sort of stuck spot is we left the two strongest Civ's alone on our continent. I always prefer attacking the strongest person 1st.
 
Sorry haven't had a chance to look in detail at this yet. IMO screw Liz, if she wants some come get some ;).

I'll get a detailed look tonight and post my thoughts.

I have been thinking about one thing --- why not Liz before Asoka ... I'll look at that when I get the save tonight. I think part of the reason we are in a sort of stuck spot is we left the two strongest Civ's alone on our continent. I always prefer attacking the strongest person 1st.

Please make exact plans if you think we can take out Liz. I don't see that happening so soon, we need Industrialism. Strongest person can also crush you from time to time. ;)

Anyway, I have to report a problem with my computer. WinXp is currently not operational, I'm posting from another computer! I'm not sure how much time I'll need to sort this out. If I'm lucky, few hours. If I'm not, few days or even worse.

Continue the good work while I'm gone! :thumbsup:
 
Then I will proceed as outlined: postpone war for now, build Coal Plant/IW/Hospital, lay down railroads, research Industrialism.
 
Man, things are looking rough but I think we still have the upper hand. Here is why I think that.
1. The computer is pathetic at running a military
2. The computer is all spread out.
3. The computer won't move much around in a stack as they keep too many on defense (IMO).

Agree that Elizabeth is just too strong ATM. She has 5 destroyers and 2 transports. That makes her somewhat mobile (though they are too stupid to know how to properly use them). The biggest problem with Liz is the number of artillery she has. IMO we have to wait and then draw her units out of the city to attack them (at least their artillery.)

War with Asoka ... do not wait!!! We need to move now. Capac and Kublai are getting stronger every turn. We need those two cities that won't be culture constrained and can quickly come into full production.

Asoka unit breakdown.
1. Delhi .. total of 12 unit there. Only 3 artillery and 1 Sam infantry, rest are standard infantry. She has virtually no upgrades on any of her units. The artillery are definately made for city assualt as they all have +city attack on them. I would assume he would move 6 - 7 unit out of this city making it cake to take. City will be a pain to get to and will result in an open plains battle.
2. Bombay .. total of 17 units there (2 war elephants .. WTH???). 5 Artillery. I would expect this to be Asoka's leaping off point (really hope it is). This city should fall fairly easily with out unit makeup.

My plan of attack:
Declare war now but DO NOT move any units into their territory, watch where Asoka attacks from and intercept that stack. We can pick off that stack before it hits our capital if he goes there. If he goes for Washington .. hunker down and kill off the stack there.
At that point we launch our attack on Asoka. Follow the hills to bombay and take out the city.

At that point Asoka will either have another stack moving out from Dehli or will hunker down. If he hunkers down the capital attack will be bloody but we can win. After bombay heal for a turn or too and then move on to Dehli.

As for Elizabeth, I don't think that she will want to get involved in this war. It will be costly for her if she does. Here is my plan if that happens.

If we declare and liz immediately joins we hunker down in Washington for 1 turn and see where she moves. We DO NOT stop the stack down in Kyoto, Ceasar can stop that on his own quite well or cause severe damage to it and slow it down. If Liz does not move troops N from Kyoto or move troops out of York to attack us we would then forget about Asoka and move SWest out of Washington and go through Capac's land coming up on York from the Southern direction. What will most likely happen is Liz will see those unit and move the stack from Kyoto up to intercept. The beauty of this is she will leave too much behind in Kyoto thus making that stack puny. By the time she would get there York would be dead or dieing. Once York is gone we would move quickly to London and hit them.

Man the more I think about it I really think we could knock out Elizabeth. We would have to adjust to what she does but I don't think it would kill us off ..... hmmmmm, well I'll leave that up to you guys.

As for the Trade, I'm not for it but I'm not good at the diplomacy part, I prefer diplomacy at the end of barrel ;).

That's all I have .. we are looking pretty good but have to keep moving with the war or the AI's are going to pass us in power.
 
Well, we could declare war on Asoka with what we have ATM, but I think having to possibly fight Liz too is too much of a risk to take. And declaring war on Liz herself is not a much better option. At best, I think it would be a hard-fought, bloody victory for us. At worst, a stalemate until we build up more troops to launch a decisive campaign. Remember we need to take into account Caesar's losses too. If too many of his troops are killed off, he will waste time building up troops to defend his own cities instead of sending troops to capture new ones. We can't just leave Caesar to fend for himself. He might do something stupid, like lose a bunch of troops counterattacking.

I don't think we can afford to win any hard-fought, bloody victories. What we need are decisive, overwhelming victories that minimize casualties. Right now, we have about 12 Infantry + 12 Artillery available for an offensive campaign. To replace each lost unit would require one turn, and this doesn't take into account the time needed to get a replacement unit to the front. I think we need to spend the next 10 turns or so building up the infrastructure we still need (Coal Plant, Ironworks, Hospital). Then, the next 15 turns or so, build up the army (and some token navy) to a critical mass, enough to knock out Liz with overwhelming force at Kyoto on the very first turn of war. Once that's achieved, then conquer the rest of the continent as quickly as possible, using continued production to make good on whatever losses we take along the way. Once the infrastructure builds I outlined are done, it will all be military hardware for the rest of the game.

I'll wait for further comment before I play through to Industrialism.
 
@Melior: I think you can play through to Industrialism. Its not an aggressive strategy for winning SGOTM, but definitely the most certain strategy for winning the game itself.

I just have a few questions, but you don't need to answer before you play, just some time so I can learn.

How many turns to Ind? Will we be first to Ind? Do we have coal for all your plans or will you take JC´s? Look for possible trades for coal resource so both JC and us can have coal? Cathy is an opportunist, and can attack w/o WHEEOHRN... would JC survive?

@Marconos: to understand Asoka's war elephants, you must understand how the AI thinks. At one time, ware elephs were the best unit he could build, so he built them. War elep upgrade to Gunships (strange logic there... thinking of Disney's Dumbo film perhaps), and Asoka won't delete a unit (invested hammers) that could become useful later. Besdies... Deity AI are not constrained by unit maintanence costs like we are, I don't think. It costs him nothing to keep them. And btw, Asoka is definitely a "he", not a "she", despite the hair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_the_Great
 
Totally disagree on spending the next 25 turns without any military action. At the end of those 25 turns we will be in pretty much the same situation that we are in now.

Liz's Kyotos troops -- why are we so worried about this stack? She is going to leave 5 - 6 units behind in Kyoto dropping that force down quite a bit. If we hit her and take out her two major cities in the N she is no longer a problem. I have also seen the computer try to pull back their offense to "save" their core cities. In essence then end up running around not doing anything. You can always count on the computer doing something extremely stupid with their troops.

If we want to win anything we have to keep pushing. Stepping back and playing it safe may win this game but it won't win the SGOTM game which we are in a position to win ATM I believe.
 
Rocketry for gunships seems wiser.

That is not good move since they will be eaten alive by the SAM infs. Tanks will be our best bet for this game. Gunships will eventually be needed but not until our continents has tanks.
 
I'm back! :)

WinXp reinstalled!

I'll take a closer look soon. I see you are still discussing. Remember, we have deadlines you know. :) I'll look into the plans Marconos posted, but I'm still for waiting till Industrialism.
 
Here's what I think this boils down to:

If we declare war on Liz now, in 25 turns, we might knock her out. But during all that time, we & Caesar will sustain significant losses that have to made up for by replacement units. To rebuild enough of a strong army to then take on Asoka would require even more time.

On the other hand, if we build required infrastructure first, by the time Tanks become available, we can crank out a Tank each turn. In 25 turns from now, we will have a decisive edge in military capability over Liz or anyone else on the continent, for that matter. From there, we can steamroll through all our neighbors.

So what'll it be? 25 turns to win a hard-fought victory against Liz (neglecting necessary infrastructure along the way, and on top of that, making a post-war army rebuilding phase almost certainly necessary)? Or 25 turns to build up enough strength to kill anyone we want with ease (along with having the infrastructure in place to boost :hammers: by 150%)?

If choosing the first option will give us a quicker time to Domination, you're going to have to tell me how, because I don't see how it won't be slower than the second option.
 
Ok, I've examined things again.

@Marconos

We have to wait. Liz has too many soldiers in Kyoto and near Kyoto, don't forget the units in India. JC doesn't defend well, he has a tendency to leave cities virtually undefended. He left only 2 soldiers in Madrid during the war with Fred.

AI makes bad moves, but we shouldn't rely on that. JC could lose Madrid and Hamburg down there. We wouldn't be able to help him effectively, culture problems would cut us off.

I've examined Liz's character in more detail. It looks like she loves to dogpile on weak people, other than that she is not so willing to go to wars. However, she is Friendly at Asoka and Annoyed at our team. She is willing to go to wars when relations are like that. We can safely assume that Asoka would ask her to join him. Now, will she refuse because she thinks we are too strong? Are we willing to risk that? She could cause severe problems at this point.

What about Cathy? If Liz declares, maybe Cathy decides too. Nobody likes us, we have to be careful. We don't want to fight everybody at the same time.

Besides, the war with Asoka would be difficult. Our best tactic is to wait, but that would cause JC's stack in Washington to suicide. We don't want bloody casualties and prolonged war, we have to be swift and efficient.

Straightforward attacking isn't always the fastest strategy, we should build up here. Liz and Asoka won't get much stronger, we will.

@Melior

I agree that we should play till Industrialism and build some infrastructure. We can discuss other plans then. GA should gain some tiles to prevent culture damage to Washington. We also have to watch revolting chances, strong garrison could be necessary there.

Attacking Liz first after some build up is an interesting idea. The other idea would be to build some defensive forces to watch Kyoto for sneak attacks and attack Asoka with main forces. Btw, we do have 3 arties without promotions, those could be very useful for defense.

@Techs after Industrialism

Flight - I think that we should avoid that. We don't want JC to build bunch of planes and then suicide them on enemy SAMs. We also don't want him to bombard the tiles he would work himself very soon.

Rocketry - we'll build gunships if we have to take out tanks, again we don't want JC to lose those on SAMs.

Plastics - seems best to me, Caesar will lose power when we take the coal. He could use those power plants.

@Kcd_swede

Sal already has Industrialism, we are not first. We are going to need 10 turns for that. We can't get the Coal with trades, we need to take it from JC. That will take the bonuses from him.

Cathy is dangerous, but we and JC have high power. I don't expect her to attack just like that. We would have some time to send units to JC if she does try something, assuming we don't commit ourselves now to a difficult war.
 
Back
Top Bottom