SGOTM 07 - Unusual Suspects

[Morganknight]

Our speed is fine. Only one other team has played faster than we have. There is nothing wrong with our leisurely pace. Up until recently, compared to other teams, I have been concerned we are moving too fast.

(Also, it seems an interesting team strategy would be to wait and see how other teams graphs progress before even starting, a sort of intelligence gathering mission. For instance, it is probably likely that most teams were going to build the Pyramids as we did. However, seeing our graph and knowing we were successful, takes a lot of the risk out of their decision. I could imagine waiting a month before even starting to see how others fare first - )

However, I agree that we have discussed this turn ad nauseum and should move forward.

----On another note, perhaps our religion is the right one...An excellent argument could be made for Asoka as our potential PA. He's making a good showing so far...----

 

[Yamps]

Toku we need to refuse anything he asks of us. Giving in to his demands can easily give us a -1 with our neighbors that we care about. If it gets us into a war we may be able to bribe one of our neighbors to kill him?

I don't believe we get penalties for paying tribute! Please somebody correct me if I'm wrong, this is important.

I _seriously_ think we should play faster. Balbes might be a really good player, but we need to make our own decisions. Mistakes often teach more than another player's good play.

We won't wait too long. Actually, we are waiting for Melior to get online, he is an active player.

I do feel like we are playing slow BUT, we are a new team and getting a feel for each other. The other thing I look at is only one other team has played as many turns as we have.

In any case ... who is up right now and what are they doing? From what I understood I was just swapping with the next person and they did the trades then back to me to do my 10 turns. Am I up now? From what I understand we have only done two turns.

You missed the roster reminder:

Reporting in as an acting captain.

Ok, first things first.

Roster reminder:

Melior Traiano
Morganknight
Shikhee

We have to add Ankka to the roster and we have skipped Marconos, but we can attend to that when Vra returns.

Melior has played a few turns and posted the save. Melior, you are still an active player. Please post your exact plan suggestion. I encourage all players to look at the save.

Our speed is fine. Only one other team has played faster than we have. There is nothing wrong with our leisurely pace. Up until recently, compared to other teams, I have been concerned we are moving too fast.

(Also, it seems an interesting team strategy would be to wait and see how other teams graphs progress before even starting, a sort of intelligence gathering mission. For instance, it is probably likely that most teams were going to build the Pyramids as we did. However, seeing our graph and knowing we were successful, takes a lot of the risk out of their decision. I could imagine waiting a month before even starting to see how others fare first - )

However, I agree that we have discussed this turn ad nauseum and should move forward.

----On another note, perhaps our religion is the right one...An excellent argument could be made for Asoka as our potential PA. He's making a good showing so far...----

Yes, they did see our culture graph go sky high. It would be wise to wait a bit. We can discuss later about the religion. But seriously, everybody is Buddhist out there. Will Asoka survive the game?

 

[Yamps]

Ok, Melior is up for play.

Everybody has had an opportunity to discuss things and we have agreed on most issues. There are some different opinions on certain details. Melior Traiano, please post shortly what you think about those differences. If we don't reach a consensus, use your best judgment.

Please wait as long as you can for the consensus and then play tonight.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Well, I'm not sure what I could be missing, but I'm gonna propose doing the following:

• trade for Poly + Sailing from Washington to pick up +diplomacy hit
• trade for Math from Asoka
• set research to Lit
• trade Math (+ Sailing, if necessary) for IW from Liz, but not if she already has Lit
• finish up Library ASAP, hire two scientists
• revolt to Rep + Slavery
• have Worker stay home & pre-chop forests for GL
• build some units for self-defense

OK, what'd I miss?

After thinking about this some more, I think I'd have the Worker build a Pasture for the Sheep before pre-chopping. I don't think we'd get that much more mileage from trading techs even if we find some new civ. Priesthood isn't worth trading for, it's too cheap a tech.

 

[Yamps]

After thinking about this some more, I think I'd have the Worker build a Pasture for the Sheep before pre-chopping. I don't think we'd get that much more mileage from trading techs even if we find some new civ. Priesthood isn't worth trading for, it's too cheap a tech.

Well, the basic question is what techs do we want.

We have traded for Mysticism, BW an AH so far.

My shopping list:

Math? Yes.
Poly? Yes
Sailing? I'm not sure abut that one. Note that Liz has Sailing. Why do we want it? Lighthouse for +2 food and popping tricks. We could use an aqueduct. Skiping this also is a strong option.
Meditation? Good for trading, but how many techs do we want to take?
Ironworking? Yes
Monarchy Yes Monarchy has the same prise as Alpha. We could get it for Alpha+sth or we could research it a bit and give only Alpha. We need Mono or Priesthood to open it up.
Mono Needed for Monarchy
Priesthood Needed for COL and Monarchy. Cheap, so no.

We will see on next turn what's on the table for the trade. (EDIT: post a screenshot please at this point.) It is more flexible to move the worker one more turn in the darkness.

Ok, a quick poll:
Do we move a worker back home right now, or do we explore for this turn?

P.S.

I expect some WFYBTA after 10 trades. This is a question of flexibility. Acid has traded for everything early on, but he didn't trade much later going for space. Are we going to tech fast for the space win, or are we going for domination?

Actually, we need to explore very fast not because of some immediate trades but to see how much land we have. If we are going for domination we have to be more careful with the number of trades.

 

[Morganknight]

Sailing also lets us build a small navy (i.e. one or two boats) for exploration...

Of course, we could also do this with a workboat...

 

[Melior Traiano]

OK, I had my techs crossed up. I kept thinking Liz didn't have Sailing for some reason. So, new plan, revisions in bold:

• trade for Poly + Med from Washington to pick up +diplomacy hit
• trade for Math from Asoka
• set research to Lit
• trade Math (+ Med, if necessary) for IW from Liz, but not if she already has Lit
• finish up Library ASAP, hire two scientists
• revolt to Rep + Slavery
• have Worker stay home, build a Sheep Pasture & pre-chop forests for GL
• build some units for self-defense

cap goes up by 2 with Rep, so I think we should have the Sheep Pasture built & worked ASAP. I think we also need to prechop as much as possible and throw the chops into the GL build when able. We might miss the extra forests for extra down the road, but we are for sure going to miss the GL if we lose the race by not chopping (enough).

 

[marconos]

I'm good with the plan.

 

[kcd_swede]

Good plan Melior.

 

[Ankka]

Yes, the plan is good. I especially agree on the civics.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Sorry team, my home internet access is down. I can post (late) tomorrow from work, but if you guys want to move this thing along & post tonight, someone else should be assigned to take over. I'm on US Pacific time.

 

[marconos]

late tomorrow is fine for me, it's not a major deal IMO.

 

[Morganknight]

I'll go ahead and start my turn then and play as we discussed.

 

[Yamps]

I'll go ahead and start my turn then and play as we discussed.

Let's get this show on the road!

 

[Morganknight]

Ok,

I traded Alphabet to Asoka for Mathematics as planned and Alphabet to Washington for Polytheism and Sailing. I also brought the worker back to start working the sheep.

As I was going from leader to leader to see what trades were available from each one, I accidentally accepted a trade from Isabella for Ironworking for our Mathematics. As it stands, she is the only one that would have traded it to us except Liz, who already has Literature and sure as hell was not going to get Mathematics from us anyway. Isabella would have also thrown in Archery as well, but fortunately I did not have it selected when I made my faux pas.

We did discover a source fo Iron within our cultural boundaries. However it is not within our fat cross. It looks like all that culture form the Pyramids is paying off...Our boundarys will expand again in at most 12 turns (An Academy could speed that up a little)...at which point Nottingham and New York will both be within our naturally occurring cultural borders. Is this a bad thing? Will we start seeing the diplomatics penalties for close borders with these two nations start going up?

Isabella is pleased with us after this trade and everyone else is cautious. Meditation, Priesthood and Monotheism were redded out for her in our trade options...I wonder why.

It would appear that Liz has already started the GL. If we are to finish it before her, it will take every trick in our stockpile, possibly including building Research instead of troops once the Library is finished, doing some whip overflow and chopping...

Library will be finished next turn and we will revolt to Representation and Slavery. I suggest starting an Axeman and put shields into it until it only needs one turn left to build and then switch to Research. Once Literature is researched, pop it back into the queue and whip it to finish getting the most shields out of it for the GL that we can.

Our worker will finish the Sheep pasture in 4 turns, after which we should prechop the irrigable forest near Beijing. It may be better to have it stop pasturing for now and go prechop immediately with our new timeframe...what do you guys think?

The other thing to remember is that we will be getting our first Great Person in 8 turns. It is very likely to be an Engineer which could solve all of our GL worries...in 7 if we don't revolt...

With a revolt, we will have Literature in 7 turns (not including building research)...It's close and I'm not 100% sure on the math, but it looks like spending a few turns building Research might actually shave an extra turn off of the research time.

Since we have Iron, building Cho-Ko-Nu is becoming more appealling. In a pipedream, I can see PAing with Isabella and conquering our little island together...

Oh, before I forget, I traded our Deer for Liz's Clams. I seem to recall Balbes saying something about not all health resources being equal. And he is of course correct. A Harbor comes much earlier than a Supermarket...and we start building good trade diplomacy with Liz. Our health stays the same. Its a win/win.

 

[shikhee]

Great Library
Will we benefit more than 1 turn by whipping 'X' to help build GL (+6 beakers from Rep) ? If not, and GL is a big race with Liz, then maybe we should wait that little bit longer before Revolting. The other important question, if Liz is going for GL, does she have Marble like we do to double production speed ? If not then we still have a very strong chance. If so should we stop wasting our time now ?

Forest chop
Also, from memory, we have 9 forests in our fat square - so chopping one for later Farm closest to the city for most hammers is prime, and if timed properly we will also have time to chop down a forest outside of our fat square. [edit] just realised there are 10 forest squares in our fatty, is it worth sacrificing a 2nd forest for more hammers now ?

PA
I just finished one of the test games (which did start diverting after the first 40-60 turns) but I managed to win Spacerace quite easily... bit longer than it should have been because I had trouble getting Cyrus to accept a PA (the defensive pact seemed to kick in and off at times, possibly I neglected something obvious!). Out of boredom I destroyed several late civs because I had best tech (and never needed more than 5-6 units and ICBMs to clean out cities). Anyway, it would have been strategically best if I had my PA on the other major continent, and a good friend on my continent - using my crack troops to clear the path to expansion for both... as it was I just destroyed whoever was annoying me and Victoria + Bismarck PA'ed and were strong that Cyrus + I. PA on another continent gives good retreat options and great mobility with airports and air units late game. It might be worth choosing a civ far away to push our religion onto in the dark-middle ages. At the end I also got my 100% healthy city up to 24 population (recycling centre of utmost importance there!), might have squeezed 1 or 2 more pop with more Farms but I deemed research more important (not sure if that is the right call or not).

 

[kcd_swede]

Good job. The clam trade sounds good.
How do we know Liz has started GL? Do we know when she started it?
I am wondering if a revolt is a good idea while we are in a wonder-race. We lose that turn, plus some production due to lower pop. We worked hard to get math + marble in order to max the choppping results, so lets not be shy about chopping now. Go for it chopping like very busy beavers.

Is anyone good at figures and interested figuring out how fast it will be possible to get GL with the different paths (revolt/pop overflow vs. no revolt chopfest)? A GE would be nice, but that's why you should bank on us getting a GS instead. If we win the GL race anyhow, a GS is better for us and all a GE does for us is ease our nerves (never worth the cost).

Chop chop! Build research to get to Lit asap. That's my recommendations.

 

[Yamps]

I think it is best not to put the save in between the official turn since it shows the other teams what we are doing. You can clearly see that we have been trading right after I had my turn. So that any saves that we are just discussing things for trade, you should just attach the save to your post in this thread, so it does not give away too much info about how we are playing. That is just a thought.

Morganknight, it is okay to post the save here on our team thread when we are not changing players.

Well, that Liz girl really is mean.
Things to consider:

1. What tiles do we chop?
2. What is our ETA for GL?
3. When do we expect Liz to finish it?

Let's make some calculations. We should consider sending a unit to scout England. Does Liz have marble? How many mines does she have?

Just had an idea: we should be able to conclude by looking at the resource screen if she has marble, right?

Btw, last plan Melior posted stated Poly+Meditation, not Sailing. Although Liz has discovered Meditation so Sailing actually looks better.

Well, time for more thinking.

 

[Morganknight]

OK, I have a whole well thought out post ready to submit and then lost it, so please bear with me. I hate it when this happens.

Liz does have Marble and is certainly building the GL.

If I am doing my math correctly, we can have the GL done in a minimum of 10 turns, assuming no great engineer and two chops. Will Liz beat us? I am guessing probably. The only thing in our favor is our industrious trait and our collective ingenuity. I am confident we have to try...

I propose the Green Forest as a preserve since we won't can't and/or won't want to irrigate those spaces any time in the near future. Red Forests are easilly irrigated grasslands.

Here is my proposed turn set:

0. This turn - we apply 25 research to Lit for a total of 54. Wake worker and send it along the yellow arrow to the first red circle. Start prechopping.

1. 54/100 GP. Next turn - Library is finished, switch production to an axeman, revolt to Representation and Slavery. 0 research. 0 production.

2. 54/100 GP. 33.75 research, 11 hammers (87.75/286 Literature)(11/35 Axeman)

3. 62/100 GP. 33.75 research, 11 hammers (121.50/286 Literature)(22/35 Axeman)

4. 70/100 GP. 33.75 research, 11 hammers (155.25/286 Literature)(33/35 Axeman)

5. 78/100 GP. Switch production to Research - 48.75 research (204/286 Literature)

6. 86/100 GP. 48.75 research (252.75/286 Literature)

7. 94/100 GP. Switch production to ?(*) - 33.75 research, 11 hammers (286.5/286 Literature)(11/? ?(*))

8. 102/100 GP. -We should get our first GP this turn, if it is an Engineer, we have to use him to pop the GL and the rest of this set is moot.- Literature researched, switch research to ?(**), queue up axeman and GL and whip, finish chop - 77 hammers (35/35 Axeman, 187.5/350 GL)

9. Move worker - 17 hammers (230/350 GL)

10. Finish chop, starve a little - 50 hammers (355/350 GL)

11. GL finished

I'm not sure how the game handles fractions, so this could be off a little...

*next research option is open. It seems like group consensus was Drama for the Globe and trading.

**next production is also open. lighthouse, aqueduct and or an exploratory workboat are all viable choices.

I plan on playing this out as proposed in 36 hours. That should be plenty of time for discussion. If, at that point, we haven't reached consensus, I will refrain.

 

[marconos]

That model looks fine for me. GL is going to be close if Liz is already doing it and your plan seems to give us our best shot at it.

Couple things I'm not sure on. How many hammers exactly is a whip of 1 person worth? What is the reason that you would make the 3 selected forests as forest preserves? Happiness isn't going to be an issue? Not sure what it gets us.