SGOTM 07 - Unusual Suspects

[Yamps]

First impressions:

Tech trades

Why are you feeding AI with techs? Liberalism monopoly just like that. You started selling Astronomy too while Gunpowder wasn't available yet. AI will sell Astronomy off and we will have to give sth else for Gunpowder. All we gained in power from trades is 8000 soldiers from Guilds. We have 124000 at the moment, those 8000 ain't that much. Also, Liz will convert to Free religion now, this should have been postponed as long as possible.

Cathy

Things are really bad, but that girl is crazy, she is willing to open borders. We should do that. We should also give her some techs to her ASAP. She could land troops in India, she is not that far.

Sal is a monster! 6 cities! Caravel should sail to Sal soon to see how many techs does he have, but after DP. He won't like us at all, that zealot. It is best that he doesn't know we exist at all as long as possible.

JC

We have +9, we need one more! Sadly, religion won't give that, we are at JC's +3 cap. Tech giving bonus is at +4 too, this is a cap too probably. I've been watching that, Paper giving didn't bring more bonuses with JC. Therfore we have to research Constitution before MT, this is a setback.


Resource trades
Sadly, no luck so far. But it doesn't hurt us much to try. Dye trade idea was wrong, no one will buy the Dye. Oh, well. We should just cancel the deal and sell the Crab to Cyrus for gold. We can try the trading scam with him, rich civs are best for sth like that.

Lot to evaluate, as usual. Taj Mahal has been built by Cyrus btw.

Melior Traiano, your move! What are you opinions, how do you evaluate our position?

 

[Melior Traiano]

I've checked the save. Preliminary evaluation:

1. Liberalism for Banking & 220g. I don't think it's an optimal trade because we're trading away a monopoly tech and getting back a tech that we don't even need yet. And it poisons our diplomacy with Cathy further.
   
2. Dye are useless to us. The deal with Cyrus will be renegotiated to pick up his GPT instead.
   
3. We're safe from attack by Alex because his borders are closed with Liz & George.
   
4. Our diplomacy with Cathy is totally trashed. She will be a potential threat for the remainder of this game.
   
5. George & Huayna are now in WFYABTA. We won't have any trade opportunities with the non-WFYABTA AI's until more discover Gunpowder & Printing Press. This is a regrettable situation because we need to trade Nationalism to Caesar at some point to get him to adopt Rep and because of WFYABTA, all we'll get from him is a tiny amount of gold.
   
6. There's an outside chance that we'll pick up another +1 from Caesar by the time we finish researching Constitution. If so, then we can trade techs with him again. If not, we will essentially be gifting both Nationalism & Constitution to Caesar so he can adopt Rep because we won't have another choice to start up the DP. Regardless, we'll want to get Caesar to adopt Rep so that by the time we research Military Tradition, Caesar will be Friendly.
   
7. After finishing Oxford, I think we should build the Observatory, followed by the Castle (this boosts power, right?).
   
8. I think we should farm over the forest south of the Marble. Go for max growth and hire two more scientists, while stagnating at 16 pop. We lose one , but there's no choice now because the Plains Forest north of the city was chopped and roaded. The alternative is to work the coast, which will give us a higher pop, but only 2 more GPP, instead of 4 & will take longer to get to that point because of less excess food along the way. Since we need as many super specialists as we can generate, I vote for the first option.
   
9. With the new map information, I think we should go for Domination. Taking over our continent & Saladin's mainland should put us over the top. We'll have to do the heavy lifting of killing off enemy units while Caesar waltzes in to actually capture each city, but once the war machine is unleashed, we should crush everything because the AI's are teching so slowly. Caesar might become braindead about sending troops overseas, though. But once he captures one of Saladin's cities, we should be able to gift him troops in that city so we can move his troops over there for him.

 

[kcd_swede]

First impressions:

Tech trades

Why are you feeding AI with techs? Liberalism monopoly just like that. You started selling Astronomy too while Gunpowder wasn't available yet. AI will sell Astronomy off and we will have to give sth else for Gunpowder. All we gained in power from trades is 8000 soldiers from Guilds. We have 124000 at the moment, those 8000 ain't that much. Also, Liz will convert to Free religion now, this should have been postponed as long as possible.

Cathy

Things are really bad, but that girl is crazy, she is willing to open borders. We should do that. We should also give her some techs to her ASAP. She could land troops in India, she is not that far.

Sal is a monster! 6 cities! Caravel should sail to Sal soon to see how many techs does he have, but after DP. He won't like us at all, that zealot. It is best that he doesn't know we exist at all as long as possible.

JC

We have +9, we need one more! Sadly, religion won't give that, we are at JC's +3 cap. Tech giving bonus is at +4 too, this is a cap too probably. I've been watching that, Paper giving didn't bring more bonuses with JC. Therfore we have to research Constitution before MT, this is a setback.


Resource trades
Sadly, no luck so far. But it doesn't hurt us much to try. Dye trade idea was wrong, no one will buy the Dye. Oh, well. We should just cancel the deal and sell the Crab to Cyrus for gold. We can try the trading scam with him, rich civs are best for sth like that.

Lot to evaluate, as usual. Taj Mahal has been built by Cyrus btw.

Melior Traiano, your move! What are you opinions, how do you evaluate our position?

Hi, about the Lib trade I figured out about 10 ways that was a really bad thing to do, no more than an hour after I did it. I've been trying to figure out why I did it, and the best I can come up with is "temporary insanity". At least I hope its temporary. I was thinking Lib was a pre-req to astro at the time, and maybe the distraction of my wife calling me to bed factors in too.

Doing that trade I broke my promise to myself and the team not to take undiscussed initiatives. I'm really at myself for that, and would think its totally appropriate if you want to skip over my turns next round or rounds.

Lets see... I gave up a monopoly tech, upset Cathy, sped up Liz growth, messed up chance to get more from Astro, increased WFYBTA for a tech we can't use for several turns yet anyhow. That about spell it out?

As for selling astronomy, I did not have instructions to wait specifically for gunpowder and as you maybe recall from my posts I was fixated on engr and guilds. I did watch AI trade values for astro as discussed. Initially, Liz offers Theo+Guild+240 and Wash offers Guild+Theo+WM. When I checked again on later turn, the offers dropped to Theo+Guild+100 and Guild+Theo. Perhaps that was affect of other things going on besides AI researching Astro, but since we didn't have monopoly on astro and I saw possible (likely or not I can't say) AI to AI trades leaving us out, I decided the time had come to make these trades. I never questioned myself whether these trades should be made, but did consider waiting longer. If I wait too long and lose chance to get both guilds + engr for astro I think we are worse than if I trade them a couple turns premature. Perhaps bad judgement. Perhaps just craven. Anyhow, I don't think these trades will hurt us so much.

Agree dyes are useless. I thought Cathy would want them. This was done before any tech trading, btw. There are a number of the resource trading that the next player should sort out and optimize.

Cathy: Yes, she is a danger. I think we will have fair warning, however, if she attacks. I agree we should give her sth. Yes, she will be a potential threat for the remainder of the game, but I don't know that we could ever feel safe with her.
Sal: Not sure I understand you... we should stay unknown to him but send our caravel there? Can't have it both ways. I lean towards getting contact with all the AI so that we can perhaps find someone else who is on Cathy's bad side and perhaps get her preoccupied...

JC: Yes, we will need to get him to Rep (if he is still the primary PA target). That means that Const before MT makes sense. If I understand it right, he can't go rep until 1 turn after we gift/trade const to him. Then he will maybe/probably require a bribe to enter DP. Consider cash? But tech gift if req'd.

Cyrus: built Taj... we never had a shot at it, glad we didn't put prio on it.


"Liberalism for Banking & 220g. I don't think it's an optimal trade"
That's a nice way to say it. Face it... it sucked bigtime. That crazy swede really screwed up that one.

Agree that dom seems the fastest. Question, can a PA team take vassals?

As for the write-up, the only comment I didn't include is that Liz says her bitter enemy is Alex and that we should stop trading with him. But we knew that, right? BTW: Why do they all think we are trading with Alex?

 

[kcd_swede]

WFYBTA limits:
Monte = 6
Saladin = 12

 

[Yamps]

Ok, brace yourself for more long posts by Yamps.

Mistakes and controversial decisions

• Liberalism
  
  From SGOTM05:
  
  

  Don’t play intoxicated (from alcohol, drugs or smoke). Don’t play when you are too tired. Or when you have your kids/wife screaming at you

  
  

  ...and maybe the distraction of my wife calling me to bed factors in too.

  
  Yeah, Erkon should update the guidance!
  
  Yes, Liberalism trade is a significant mistake, it has several consequences.
  
  

  Doing that trade I broke my promise to myself and the team not to take undiscussed initiatives. I'm really at myself for that, and would think its totally appropriate if you want to skip over my turns next round or rounds.

  
  Don't be too harsh on yourself. Just try to avoid impulsive game decisions in the future. I have faith in our team, we shall think of something. This reminds me on our first trade with worst enemies. We traded with Fred and JC started hating us, -4! We managed to use that mistake to our advantage, we bribed JC and got him to our side.
  
  
• Dye trade. I suggested that trade, my mistake. Cyrus didn't have the gold at the time and we didn't have Fish. The idea was to buy Dye and sell it to Cathy for Fish. However, this isn't possible.
  
  
• Selling Paper to Liz. Selling Paper we agreed on, it seemed as a good idea. This could have annoyed Cathy too, besides the Liberalism trade. However, I don't think that this was a mistake. Cathy was annoyed (-1) with Liz and annoyed with us (-4). It was hard to expect that Liz was Cathy's worst enemy. She was expected to have some enemies on the other continent, that's bad luck. On the other hand, the trades with Liz have brought us +9 with her. We are getting +3 from religion from her, +4 is her cap. We are gaining +1 per 10 turn, we could have reached friendly with her very soon. Maybe we would be able to sign a DP with her too. This isn't possible anymore, Free religion from Liberalism will stop it.
  
  
• Astronomy trades - not clear, I will explain what I mean.
  
  First, it should be clear that WFYBTA limit with almost everybody on our continent had already been reached. Capac and Washington were willing to trade with us because of low score. However, we have moved up in score and they won't trade now. This is most likely the right explanation. We can't tell for sure, we don't know all the scores, all civs are counted. There is the memory decay too, we can't tell perfectly how far are we from the limits. Liz should stop trading anytime now by my count, btw.
  
  

  As for selling astronomy, I did not have instructions to wait specifically for gunpowder and as you maybe recall from my posts I was fixated on engr and guilds. I did watch AI trade values for astro as discussed. Initially, Liz offers Theo+Guild+240 and Wash offers Guild+Theo+WM. When I checked again on later turn, the offers dropped to Theo+Guild+100 and Guild+Theo. Perhaps that was affect of other things going on besides AI researching Astro, but since we didn't have monopoly on astro and I saw possible (likely or not I can't say) AI to AI trades leaving us out, I decided the time had come to make these trades. I never questioned myself whether these trades should be made, but did consider waiting longer. If I wait too long and lose chance to get both guilds + engr for astro I think we are worse than if I trade them a couple turns premature. Perhaps bad judgement. Perhaps just craven. Anyhow, I don't think these trades will hurt us so much.

  
  I had suggested waiting for Gunpowder, but this is a reasonable argument. Besides, Washington and Liz were about to stop trading, it was logical to trade with them. It is difficult to say, those trades could be right after all.
  
  
• Forrest chopping
  
  

  ...but there's no choice now because the Plains Forest north of the city was chopped and roaded.

  
  Hey, things are not that bad! Only the mapmaker could have chopped that forest. We only added the farm and the road to the plains. Btw, what's the deal with those roads, you can pillage everything, but roads are forever!

Just some chit-chat

As for the write-up, the only comment I didn't include is that Liz says her bitter enemy is Alex and that we should stop trading with him. But we knew that, right? BTW: Why do they all think we are trading with Alex?

WFYBTA limits:
Monte = 6
Saladin = 12

Yeah, crazy AI! Alex won't even speak to us. Maybe Liz is actually thinking: "Don't you even think about trading with Alex ever again! ... You can go now."

Thanks for looking up the WFYBTA limits. I know where the file is of course, but there are so many things to look and check... We met Monty after the trades, right? That's 0/6 then.

 

[Yamps]

Game strategy

1) Diplomacy

Paper and religion are bringing us a lot: +9 with Fred, Wash, JC an Liz! +6 and rising with Asoka and HC! Sadly, Kublai had some civic demands, he is still Cautious at +3. If he gets to Pleased, we can convert him too. Religion will bring us more points, but not with JC. Current numbers are not exact, we should always remember that, hidden modifiers change things.

The point is that because of +1 per 10 turn for same religion I expect to see friendly status with some civs very soon! I suggest a change of tactics: MT first. We can have one PA, but many DP. Let's sign some protective pacts first, JC shouldn't mind a DP with his Jewish friends. It could be dangerous to wait for Constitution, JC is not the only one. We can still sign DP with him too a bit later.

Relations with Cathy are bad, but she seems like a reasonable girl. First, we shall open borders at -7, hilarious! Some techs will make her feel better too. Here is a crazy idea: we can send missionaries to her too! Maybe she won't convert to Judaism, but that could bring her to Free religion. Theoretically, JC could ask her to convert, she is pleased at him. Heck, we might make a friend out of her one day!


Izzy can reach us! This wasn't possible before, or I've simply missed it. She is weak, but we have to watch her. WHEOOHRN and unit movement too.

Saladin is dangerous, nothing good from him. I think that our caravel should move to the south, to meet the French and Mansa Musa. Sal will probably send his own caravels to our shores soon.

We should try to steer things up a bit after the DP. We don't want our rivals to sign DP and PA, we should push them to war. We don't want mutual war bonuses though, a lot of care is needed.

2) Domination

I don't think that this will be possible!

[*]With the new map information, I think we should go for Domination. Taking over our continent & Saladin's mainland should put us over the top. We'll have to do the heavy lifting of killing off enemy units while Caesar waltzes in to actually capture each city, but once the war machine is unleashed, we should crush everything because the AI's are teching so slowly. Caesar might become braindead about sending troops overseas, though. But once he captures one of Saladin's cities, we should be able to gift him troops in that city so we can move his troops over there for him.

Some civs are teching slowly, but some are fast and strong. Look at the garrisons, LB will become infantry. Also, while we are busy with war, Cyrus, Cathy and Sal could launch. Not to mention other teams. We should probably conquer Izzy, Toku and Alex, but only if this doesn't delay our Space victory. Hypothetically, why would you attack Sal? He is probably the strongest in the game, we should pick easier targets.

Agree that dom seems the fastest. Question, can a PA team take vassals?

Vassals?

3) Other considerations

I think we should farm over the forest south of the Marble. Go for max growth and hire two more scientists, while stagnating at 16 pop. We lose one , but there's no choice now because the Plains Forest north of the city was chopped and roaded. The alternative is to work the coast, which will give us a higher pop, but only 2 more GPP, instead of 4 & will take longer to get to that point because of less excess food along the way. Since we need as many super specialists as we can generate, I vote for the first option.

Well I agree. I suggested chopping that forest while we were building GT, we simply don't have enough food. There is the forge to build too, we will need it eventually. That would mean stagnant at 15, with 2 more scientists. If we don't build the forge, we can work the coast at 16. I think the forge is worth that much, especially when we MM and use stone.

After finishing Oxford, I think we should build the Observatory, followed by the Castle (this boosts power, right?).

Bah, only 2000 soldiers, go figure. Forge also gives 2000 soldiers btw. We shall soon get that iron, only at 50% for England, it should flip soon! Pikeman, Cho-Ko-Nu, Cats... We will get the cash from resources for more troops. I would build the forge before the Observatory to hurry things up.

Constructive criticism, ideas and opinions are as always greatly appreciated! Anyway, it's your move Melior Traiano. I'm interested to hear more assessments from you!

 

[kcd_swede]

As it turns out, my gaming computer suffered a fatal crash last night as my kids were playiny AOE2 online. Fatal as in dead. I don't know when I will be able to replace it. I'll let you know.

 

[Yamps]

roster reminder

1 - marconos
2 - classical_hero
3 - kcd_swede - Just played!
4 - Melior Traiano - UP!
5 - Morganknight - On Deck!
6 - shikhee
7 - Yamps

8 - Ankka (unofficially resigned)
9 - vra379971 (save opening problems)
kcd_swede - new comp needed...


Hope to hear final plans soon, Melior Traiano!
Morganknight, ready to play soon?
Kcd_swede, sorry to hear about hardware problems. Hope it isn't that serious.

Everybody else, hope to see more input! I know this game asks for a lot, hope you can find some time.

 

[Melior Traiano]

I really don't see any need to revise plans. Building a Forge will cause 1 at pop 16 and for what? Are we building an army yet? If not, then I think we should make do without the Forge and the extra .

The number 1 priority should be getting the PA with Caesar ASAP. The PA will open up a lot of options. DP with random Jewish civs, I just don't see the appeal nor the need ahead of getting Caesar to adopt Rep first. We can still DP with other civs after researching MT. Getting sidetracked by picking up random DP's first will only delay the achieving of an important goal for no reason that I find compelling.

The AI's really are teching very poorly this game. I'd be shocked if any manage to even get close to launching by the time we win. I think we should stomp as many AI's on our continent as Caesar can manage. The AI's on our continent are so small that as long as we have something resembling tech parity, we will own them. Chances are we will be fighting with a tech advantage. If Caesar goes braindead and doesn't produce enough troops to keep occupying enemy cities, then we might be forced to go for space. If he does keep up with the war machine, it'll be much quicker to go for domination. If need be, we can give units to Caesar, but he might refuse gifted units at some point. Regardless, we should take over as much land as possible because even if we're going for space, making it through the tech tree will take a long, long time unless we own a lot more land.

If we go for domination, the reasons for taking Saladin out are two-fold. He's Taoist, so I doubt that the big Hindu bloc will do anything to help him if we declare war. And because his cities are all on an island, cultural pressure from other civs is a non-factor. If we go after any of the cities on the other continent, we will need to fight at least two civs to own enough land to win. I also don't think he's that advanced. He's been isolated until Caravels and he's probably diplomatically isolated for 'heathen religion' penalties. And of his 6 cities, only Mecca & Medina are in good locations. He will totally get spanked if we go after him.

Cathy is one of the worst backstabbers, and will declare war even if Pleased. If it weren't for the fact that her land is pretty much useless without taking out Egypt & Mali as well, I'd say to go after her instead of Saladin.

I don't see any reason to bribe Kublai over to Judaism. His lands will become a new Roman province at some point anyway. Why feed him techs, then?

 

[marconos]

I like what Melior Traiano is saying and it goes with my feelings in this game. I just don't see how a domination win would actually take a huge amount of time. We are going to have to almost clear of our entire continent anyway.

Forge, skip it for now, not needed at this point IMO.

Get a DP with Ceasar ASAP and then get a PA with him. Once we have that we are set. We can then start killing off his neighbors and expanding his empire, thus increasing our own power.

As for conquering on the other continent. I'm still don't know how we are going to get Ceasar to get units over to the AI cities. Question though ... if he has issues getting units there could be conceivable go for a conquest victory quicker then domination? Just throwing that out there.

Anyway, looking forward to see the next set played out.

 

[Yamps]

I really don't see any need to revise plans. Building a Forge will cause 1 at pop 16 and for what? Are we building an army yet? If not, then I think we should make do without the Forge and the extra .

Forge vs one coast tile more, what is better? I would still go for the forge, but the difference isn't big. We are building a lot of things and the emphasis on production isn't great, forge could help.

The number 1 priority should be getting the PA with Caesar ASAP. The PA will open up a lot of options. DP with random Jewish civs, I just don't see the appeal nor the need ahead of getting Caesar to adopt Rep first. We can still DP with other civs after researching MT. Getting sidetracked by picking up random DP's first will only delay the achieving of an important goal for no reason that I find compelling.

What are we researching first? Does researching MT first and signing other pacts slow down DP with JC? JC won't get friendly so soon as other civs. Why shouldn't we sign the pact sooner? I don't see the delay with JC if we make pacts with his friends before we make it with him.

The AI's really are teching very poorly this game. I'd be shocked if any
manage to even get close to launching by the time we win.

AI also get PA. Some AI have tech parity with us at this time, war could slow us down.

I think we should stomp as many AI's on our continent as Caesar can manage. The AI's on our continent are so small that as long as we have something resembling tech parity, we will own them.

Caesar will be effective against weaker troops, but not so effective against even powered civs. AIs are small but have many soldiers. I don't think that domination is realistic, but we shall see. No test game has been won by domination, remember that.

If we go for domination, the reasons for taking Saladin out are two-fold. He's Taoist, so I doubt that the big Hindu bloc will do anything to help him if we declare war. And because his cities are all on an island, cultural pressure from other civs is a non-factor. If we go after any of the cities on the other continent, we will need to fight at least two civs to own enough land to win. I also don't think he's that advanced. He's been isolated until Caravels and he's probably diplomatically isolated for 'heathen religion' penalties. And of his 6 cities, only Mecca & Medina are in good locations. He will totally get spanked if we go after him.

Maybe Mansa Musa is Confucian. We shall see. Like I said, I don't see the domination happening.

Cathy is one of the worst backstabbers, and will declare war even if Pleased. If it weren't for the fact that her land is pretty much useless without taking out Egypt & Mali as well, I'd say to go after her instead of Saladin.

Liz and Asoka too are back-stabbers. Ok, but we have some options to get better relations, why not? We should reduce risks, IMO.

I don't see any reason to bribe Kublai over to Judaism. His lands will become a new Roman province at some point anyway. Why feed him techs, then?

Kublai could cause some problems, it doesn't cost us much to bribe him. It's better to back-stab him then vice-versa.


Well, we have some different opinions and views. There hasn't been much input from other players, we should move on. Use your best judgment, think things through. Play for ~10 turns and make a report. We shall see how much more after that. Vra was right, we have to play longer turnsets to finish things in time.

 

[marconos]

Working 1 more coast tile > forge at this time as the coast tile generates more commerce that generates more research and potentially allows us to generate another GP faster (could be wrong there didn't really run the numbers). If we are going space race at this point research is much more important then production.

We need to get the civ that Ceasar likes and switch to that as well, but with that said we should get to MT ask quickly as possible incase something happens to get us friendly with Ceasar quicker, stranger things have happened. This also gives us the option of getting a DP with someone else if we think we need it.

In any case, we need to make some moves and go on.. Where have all our team members gone?

 

[Melior Traiano]

Forge vs one coast tile more, what is better? I would still go for the forge, but the difference isn't big. We are building a lot of things and the emphasis on production isn't great, forge could help.

For me, the question here is when do we start building up an army? I don't think we should pay for a large standing army until it gets near time for PA with Caesar to kick in. In the meantime, I don't think getting the +25% is worth the extra . Without the Forge, city stagnates at 16, with 4 more GPP. With the Forge, pop will start decaying to 15, and then take a heck of a long time to build back up to 16. I think what we should do is build the Forge right before the military buildup, then take over Kublai's land. Kublai's Deer then cancels out the extra and hopefully, the city will never starve all the way down to 15.

What are we researching first? Does researching MT first and signing other pacts slow down DP with JC? JC won't get friendly so soon as other civs. Why shouldn't we sign the pact sooner? I don't see the delay with JC if we make pacts with his friends before we make it with him.

Well, I've thought about this some more and I agree it's better to research MT first. If Caesar gets to +10 without adopting Rep, we get the DP that much sooner. If he doesn't, he will immediately upon switching to Rep, so you're right that there's no downside to going MT first.

AI also get PA. Some AI have tech parity with us at this time, war could slow us down.

It's possible, but even if Cyrus & Cathy were to PA, I'm very doubtful that even their combined efforts would beat us to victory. Just look at their lands. The only choice piece of land they own is Persepolis. Even Moscow is only so-so, made even worse with the Malinese cultural pressure.

Caesar will be effective against weaker troops, but not so effective against even powered civs. AIs are small but have many soldiers. I don't think that domination is realistic, but we shall see. No test game has been won by domination, remember that.

We need to be very clear here about how Domination will be attempted: We have to bust the cities for Caesar and simply use his troops to occupy the captured cities. We are absolutely not relying on Caesar to capture any city by himself. All he will do is squander his troops if we let him try that. We have to build as big a city busting stack as we can and kill off as many city defenders as possible at each city while letting Caesar capture with his units. I really don't think it will be that difficult to conquer the home continent, but Caesar can be completely braindead about sending troops overseas to occupy a city and if so, we would have issues.

Maybe Mansa Musa is Confucian. We shall see. Like I said, I don't see the domination happening.

We don't have to commit to one victory condition yet. Space & Dom will run parallel courses for a while still. And as I've pointed out, even if we go for Space, we still want to take over as much land as Caesar can manage.

Liz and Asoka too are back-stabbers. Ok, but we have some options to get better relations, why not? We should reduce risks, IMO.

Notice I said Cathy is one of the worst backstabbers. She's a high maintenance AI who is easy to piss off because she asks for freebie techs more than anyone and gets a -2 each time you refuse. She can declare war at Pleased without even being bribed to do so, and I honestly can't remember any time when either Liz or Asoka did that.

Kublai could cause some problems, it doesn't cost us much to bribe him. It's better to back-stab him then vice-versa.

Kublai declaring war on us while Caesar is right next door with higher Power? I would be shocked if Kublai tried anything.

Well, we have some different opinions and views. There hasn't been much input from other players, we should move on. Use your best judgment, think things through. Play for ~10 turns and make a report. We shall see how much more after that. Vra was right, we have to play longer turnsets to finish things in time.

We do have some differences of opinion, but then again, I have been swayed to go MT first. I will report on Saturday morning U.S. Pacific time.

 

[kcd_swede]

Go for it Melior. Turn my goofs into gold please.
Stll no progress on my computer failure, but I access the forum from a different computer so you can gain stregnth from all my wisdom nonetheless. (That and 65 SEK will get you a meal at McDonalds).

Zlatan finally did his job... pleased to see that the Croats did theirs, too (All of Europe is happy about this except maybe parts of Germany) He he.

I know this is a busy time for many on our team, but I want to say special thank you to Yamps for holding it all together. More participation from rest of team would be very welcomed.
Melior, I also would put lower prio on forge. We need forge in time, but you have prio right imo. My advice: Watch out for the ladies, and not just the ones in the game.

 

[Yamps]

Zlatan finally did his job... pleased to see that the Croats did theirs, too (All of Europe is happy about this except maybe parts of Germany) He he.

He, he! Yes, let's keep it interesting. Deutschland auf Wiedersehen!

I know this is a busy time for many on our team, but I want to say special thank you to Yamps for holding it all together. More participation from rest of

Thanks! Yes, let's keep things together. We seem to lose players, I'm a bit worried.

Ok, Melior play till MT, post a report and some plans for the next ~10 turns. You will play them yourself, can you do that during the weekend? We have a schedule to keep up with.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Alright troops, I got sidetracked on Saturday & couldn't post, but here's the lowdown:

Turn 138: Move Scout toward Mongolia. Cancel Worker's road building orders.

Turn 139: Liz has learned Gunpowder. It's official, we are Cathy's worst enemy. We are also Izzy's worst enemy. Worker starts building Farm south of Marble.

Turn 140: City grows to size 14. Asoka adopts FR & drops to Cautious. Cancel the 1 GPT subsidies to Caesar & Huayna. Also cancel Crab to Cyrus for Dye. I decide to give him 1 GPT to see if I could inflate his available GPT. He had 5 GPT and as soon as I give him the 1 GPT, it drops to 0? Best I can figure is that the 1 extra GPT enabled him to bump research up a notch & still break even? Oh well, should have taken his 5 GPT and run.

Turn 141: Oxford completes, which immediately cuts MT research time to 4 turns. Start Observatory. A Great Artist is born. He joins our growing squad of super specialists. Meet this guy:

He is Monty's buddy. Also meet another guy, who is none too pleased:

It appears we are Saladin's worst enemy.

Turn 142: Cyrus has 5 GPT available again, so immediately jump on the opportunity to sell him Crab. He also knows Constitution, but has not adopted Rep & is unwilling to trade the tech.

Turn 143: Nothing of note happens. But I've been snooping around Caesar's neighbors' lands and they can be had with a Grenadier-Cannon army if we're diligent about it.

Turn 144: Liz has put Gunpowder & Economics on the trading block, but we have nothing to trade. Liz & Fred are now +10 & Friendly. Caesar is +10 too, but he's only still Pleased. Our culture has taken over the Iron again, but maybe not for long because Liz has popped another GA. Also, meet the victim of Louis's aggression:

Mansa has lost Kumbi Saleh to Louis & their war has just ended (there are still 10 turns on their peace treaty).

Turn 145: MT is done, start on Constitution. I decide to form a DP with Fred, as Caesar is only Cautious toward Liz & I don't want to risk antagonizing Caesar by agreeing to DP with someone he might consider a rival.

Turn 146: Toku demands we cancel trades with Liz, he takes a hike. Huayna asks for Nationalism as a freebie, not gonna happen. Cyrus adopts Rep & Free Market. Cathy converts to Confucianism. Caesar gets to Friendly (+11) and at long last:

Turn 147: Caesar wants Liberalism & 370g for Gunpowder. As adopting FR would drop him out of Friendly, I have to refuse. I try to trade him Nationalism instead, but he won't go for it without another tech thrown in, so he should get Nationalism by the time we're ready to trade him Constitution. Observatory complete, start Castle. Forest chop from the Farm completes Castle in 1 turn.

Turn 148: Castle complete, so ponder what to build next. Considered queuing some troops and leaving them incomplete, but decide against that because by the time they see action, we'll want them upgraded to Grens. Considered building the Forge, but I'm still not convinced that building infrastructure at 175% for each instead of 150% is worth the extra that will eventually drop our peak GPP by 6. Hermitage is not needed, as we're winning the culture war against both Liz & George. Considered a Temple for the option to hire a priest, but decide against it as we should not dilute the GS probability even further. So finally, I settled on building the Bank. It'll come in handy when we need to pay for an army later on.

Turn 149: Mansa wants to Open Borders. I refuse, to avoid pissing Louis off or possibly pissing Mansa off when Louis demands we cancel deals.

Turn 150: Constitution researched. Caesar is willing to make this deal:

Or this one:

Or this one:

Trading him Liberalism is a bit risky until the 'wise civic' bonus has had a chance to accumulate to put Caesar safely into Friendly. I'd just as well not trade for Theology, as Pacifism is giving us one-third of our GPP and it's such a cheap tech at this point anyway. You might be thinking WFYABTA doesn't matter so much anymore, but both Liz & Fred are barely Friendly and will probably drop back to Pleased if we start killing off their buddies, and be susceptible to WFYABTA again. Also, we should retain the option of trading with Cyrus, in case we need to down the road.

More pics:

Our fair city:

Power graph (Monty apparently started a war against Hatty around 200 BC):

Tech trade screen (notice how backward Izzy, Toku, Alex, & Kublai are):

I've been checking WHEOOHRN each turn & nobody is up to anything. I think we should pick up Gunpowder from Caesar and research Chemistry. After that, I think we'll have to go the Sci Meth > Communism path and start checking with Caesar each turn to see if PA is available. At this point, MT is a monopoly tech & we shouldn't trade it around until another civ can possibly do so too.

 

[Yamps]

All right, let's keep this thing moving. Let's try to avoid delays to actually finish the game! We are playing a good game, we have a fair chance for the award. But we must keep the good effort till the end!

Roster:

1 - marconos
2 - classical_hero
4 - Melior Traiano - Just played
5 - Morganknight - UP!
6 - shikhee - on deck!
7 - Yamps

8 - Ankka (unofficially resigned)
9 - vra379971 (save opening problems)
3 - kcd_swede - comp problems

Let's hurry up the player rotation to keep the interest.

• Morganknight, are you ready for play? You haven't posted for some time, but I see you are lurking. Last activity: Jun 13, 2008 09:53 PM
  
• Shikhee, last activity: Jun 05, 2008 03:22 PM

Yeah, I'm checking things.

Morganknight, Shikhee, you have 24h to report in and post a "got it". If you don't report we are moving down the roster. That would be me, but sadly I probably won't have time for play till Wednesday. Can somebody play sooner, Marconos, Classical, what's the situation?

Active player should study the current position and post playing suggestions. Checking in, discussions and play should all be finished in 72h. Yeah, this is not easy. Let's keep the effort, do you want to win or not?!

Sadly, I don't have the time right now to analyze the situation thoroughly, I'll probably do it tomorrow. Some initial observations:

• Exactly 40 turns after DP till PA, if we avoid war and stay in DP. The period will be prolonged if we get into war, even if the war is mutual with JC.
  
  
• WFYBTA limit account book has to be updated. We will have to trade till the end, IMO. Personality file should be consulted for the trade, some AI leaders sell techs off very fast , some leaders don't.
  
  
• We need a detailed Space vs Domination analysis.
  
  
• Tech path: maybe Fascism if we are going for Domination? However, I'm still thinking that Domination won't be possible. Communism path is better, that's my initial opinion. Going for Grenadiers before Communism? Why? Are we starting a war before we make a PA? That would be very risky.
  

All help is appreciated, let's keep the good team effort!


EDIT: additional ideas

We have to play aggressively, no guts, no glory! Right timing is everything. We should sign a PA after 40 turns and unleash the dogs of war immediately! Army of grens should be ready for havoc by that time, Pacifism dropped at some time, military civics adopted. I'm not looking at the save now, can we time communism/fascism and army build up to be ready in 40 turns at the same time? Weak civs must be crushed. (Yeah, a game of Civ is really bringing out the best in a man. ) We shall see then should we go for Space or Domination.

MT monopoly we have to keep for as long as possible of course. However, sooner or later, someone will research it. We have to check MT trading value regularly to see if the AI is researching it. We should push them to war if possible, to keep them out of DP for as long as possible.

Xteam have a disturbingly increasing power, btw. What are they up to? Murky Waters are increasing power too, but they have only played till 1 AD.

Interesting times are near, gentlemen!

 

[marconos]

I can look things over in detail tomorrow night and post my thoughts if no one else can. Would be able to play on Tuesday night with that.

Question: Why did we chop another forest? That costs us a healthy --- exactly the same amount as the forge would. So why did we chop it? Just want to hear the justification. Wasn't aware that we were going to do that.

Question: Have we thought about a conquest victory instead of just looking at domination? If the other continent isn't that large and we don't have to worry about occupying the enemy cities -- can we actually think about this as an option?

 

[Yamps]

I can look things over in detail tomorrow night and post my thoughts if no one else can. Would be able to play on Tuesday night with that.

All right! Of course, we are first going to wait for Morganknight and Shikhee to report in.

Question: Why did we chop another forest? That costs us a healthy --- exactly the same amount as the forge would. So why did we chop it? Just want to hear the justification. Wasn't aware that we were going to do that.

Melior said he was going to do that. We needed more food, we simply had too much health for our population.

Question: Have we thought about a conquest victory instead of just looking at domination? If the other continent isn't that large and we don't have to worry about occupying the enemy cities -- can we actually think about this as an option?

One continent (Saladin's) is small, the other one is rather big. I think that conquest is extremely unlikely. However, Shikhee mentioned ICBM usage in one of his test-games. Yeah, ICBM in OCC! If that isn't wild, I don't know what is. Let's make some conquering on our continent first, we'll be smarter then.

 

[kcd_swede]

Let's make some conquering on our continent first, we'll be smarter then.

Agreed... it will be good to see how eager to take cities JC really is. But for the next 40 turns we have to keep JC, and us out of war - which also means keeping Fred out of war. We also have to keep JC friendly. That is a priority. Another priority should be to look ahead at what military we want in 40 turns... building ahead is a very good idea and will also help keep us out of an unwanted war.

As for the build queue, if you pre-build something that upgrades to a Gren, then it automatically becomes a Gren in the queue when the tech is unlocked. We could start on some units pretty quick, then.

@Melior: