SGOTM 07 - Unusual Suspects

[classical_hero]

How serious are we going to try for a cultural victory?

EDIT. I know that we have the to be careful of Cathy with her Space attempt, but do we have the means of trying for such an audacious attempt? This will mean that we go for trying to get Hollywood, Broadway, Rock and Roll and broadcast tower. All these provide a +50% bonus should be them all, but it is unlikely since we do not even have Electricity and thus we will lose Broadway.Considering our strong production powers right now we can get them quickly.. Another thing is that we can get + 100 culture if we revolt to Free Speech.. The main problem with that is that we lose the production and commerce bonus with Bureaucracy. If we do get everything then we can get a Cultural victory in under 50 turns, but the risk is very great. Also this is just me musing out loud to see a different possiblity for this game.

 

[Yamps]

@Classical_Hero

We need 3 cities for cultural victory. JC's cities would need legendary status too, that won't happen anytime soon.


Ok, I would like to hear detailed plans from you guys what to do next. The situation demands a lot of effort. Our roster also seems a bit unclear atm. Who do we have for play and active discussions? Another question, who has the time for play during the work days? That's the problem, everybody is busy then.

Here is the original list, but let's try to agree on a schedule that will work for us.

1 - marconos
2 - classical_hero
3 - kcd_swede - busy?
4 - Melior Traiano
7 - Yamps - just played!
9 - vra379971

5 - Morganknight - save opening problems
6 - shikhee - busy
8 - Ankka - unofficially resigned


Ok, Classical and Marconos reported in, who else is available and when?

 

[Melior Traiano]

Took a look at the game. Some thoughts:

Liz has Destroyers. How is that possible? Did someone trade her Oil? In any case, we need to keep close tabs on her WHEOOHRN status now, just in case. I don't think she'll turn on us, but best not to be caught surprised.

Kublai now also has a DP with Cathy. Which means we should find an easier mark than taking on the Kublai-Huayna-Cathy triple DP.

Which brings us to Asoka. He's got some choice land and doesn't have a DP with anyone. All those flood plains with towns, Gold mines, seafood, better to add those to the empire sooner than later. We should gear up to conquer his cities. And then after that, kill off Washington to eliminate his cultural interference. George has long outlived his usefulness anyway.

Techwise, I think the trades Yamps made were reasonable. Good trading opportunities are becoming rare, so it was good to make the most of it when they come up. For now, I think we should tech to Industrialism to reveal Aluminum & unlock Tanks. By that time, Asoka & George should be out of the picture & we can think about dealing with Liz.

I'm going to need to do a recount to make sure, but I'm wondering if we could win by Domination if we take over Cathy's lands? If Caesar can keep up, I think we'll win faster than a space race. But the question is whether Caesar can keep up. We could gift him units, but at some point, he might stop accepting them.

The next couple of rounds will give us a good idea as to how well Caesar can keep up with our conquests. It is still premature to commit to one victory condition to the exclusion of the other, I think. But the decision will have to be made by the time Industrialism is done.

Regarding the big dip in Power for Xteam, I wonder if maybe they've bulbed their way to Fission & unleashed a bunch of nukes to trash all the AI's lands? I can't imagine human players losing that many troops in a conventional war.

 

[marconos]

Wow, it's amazing how a little death and destruction can change the entire game outlook .

We have gone from a must move now position to one where we have a little (not much) more leeway.

I think we need to stick with our current plan of taking out Capac (kublai is secondary but we can declare peace with him after Capac is out. Here is why I am thinking that we still need to take those guys out.

1. Destroy their chance at a PA.
2. Add more cities to Ceasar making him very powerful in virtually every facet of the game.
3. Open up the cities that ceasar has and allow them to grow and utilize their full potential. Without killing Capac these cities will be too constrained.

Capc has 28 units showing
Kublai has 24 units showing

Here is my idea.

Take our Army N into Asoka's land. We hide our troops their from Capac's and Kub's views.
Send a group of 4 - 5 inf/artillary comb S as a moving defensive stack that will reinforce any Southern city of Ceasars that needs it from an attack from Kublai.

We declare war on Kublai. This brings Capac into the war but keeps Cathy out of it. Our Northern force that is in Asokas land move to Capac's N. city. I calculate we need around 15 - 20 units for this. The position for these troops in the forested hill just N of his city. We crush his city there and take it. If Ceasar isn't close enough to bring troops -- then we just raze it. It might make sense to do this anyway due to culture reasons and getting Ceasar too spread out. We then take our stack S and wipe out Capac. At this point we should have had one major battle with Kublai in the S. He will only have 1 stack. After killing that stack he won't have anything and his cities will fall easily.

Doing this will lock up the Southern portion of the continent for Ceasar and we can then set our sites on Asoka and connecting ceasar to our lands. Remember that when we take Asoka Washington has to go as well as killing Asoka will open up his lands.

Remember. The computer doesn't know how to wage war. Using backdoor troop movements we can wipe out their cities behind their stacks ... what fun

 

[Yamps]

@Melior

Liz has uranium, that's what's fueling the destroyers. She isn't getting oil from anybody, we can see her trades on the relations screen.

I missed the Cathy - Kublai DP, that's new!

Asoka - George in a quick attack, we agree on that.

Taking Cathy should be enough for domination, but I haven't counted the tiles. JC is number one in production btw, that's good for us. Why should we give him many units anyway? If we bust the city to one defender JC won't need too much to take it.

Regarding the Xteam, who knows what they are doing. Nuclear war in OCC? Sounds very risky to me. Let's just concentrate on our game and do our best.


@Marconos

Your plan is interesting but Kublai has a DP with Cathy now.

Attack would go like that, defensive stack on the Kublai-Caesar front and attack on Capac from the north. However, remember that JC is a computer AI too, he would lose troops on the Kublai front. You can ask him to attack Cuzco for example, but he would still most likely send forces on Mongolia too. The same thing happened against Fred, a lot of soldiers were moving around Hamburg. Exact tactics is also vital for success, such a war would be very dangerous. Remember, Fred send 6 soldiers on Antium and used his cannons for the attack too. If I had moved the stack out of the city, JC would have grave problems with only 2 infantry soldiers. The PA will kick in a few turns, I don't think we are ready for that war.

We have to fortify JC's cities with our own soldiers whatever we do and use preventive defensive stacks too. We can't afford to lose a city!

We need to consider another danger, diplomatic loss is a threat to us. If Cathy builds the UN, Kublai and Capac would surly vote for her. Probably Sal and some other civs too, I don't know the exact vote mechanics.

Capturing Bombay could bring back JC to Judaism, that's a holy city. We would also need to send missionaries to Cyrus and hopefully to Louis too to make Judaism dominant, Buddhism has more cities now! That would give more manipulation options.

Anyway, we should grow much stronger if we want to attack Kublai - Capac- Cathy.



Keep on the good work! We need team work for success.

Ok, Classical you are up, please post your ideas and plans ASAP. Weekend will be over very soon. The situation is difficult and pauses in play will be necessary, elaborate planing is needed here.

 

[marconos]

I missed that Kublai has a DP now with Capac and Cathy. I agree on the Asoka / Washington / Elizabeth path. Dang, can't believe I missed that.

 

[vra379971]

Assuming we can settle on a plan, I could play during the week.

 

[Yamps]

Assuming we can settle on a plan, I could play during the week.

Great!

Roster:

Yamps - just played!
classical_hero - UP!
Vra379971 - on deck!

Ok, the main idea is the Asoka-Washington attack, Liz after that. If somebody has a better plan, please say.

Classical, please hurry with the plans! We need a detailed plan for the war.

Other players are encouraged to make plans too, to speed things up.

 

[Yamps]

We should consider attacking Washington first. He doesn't have Assembly line yet, he is weak now. Of course, Asoka would crush the cities with culture, but we'll have some time while the cities are revolting! If we plan things properly, Asoka will fall very fast. It is vital to reach Asoka's cities before JC to bombard the defenses to 0% and attack with artillery.

We'll need destroyers later to defend our shores from Liz. Drydock is an unplanned building, but we are going to need that.

Hopefully we'll get Industrialism much quicker when Berlin and Hamburg kick in, we need those tanks asap for the attack on Liz.

Domination is quite possible, but we'll see what's best when we conquer Liz. Hypothetical plan: quick assault on Capac and Kublai, strong navy strike to sink reinforcements from Cathy and the final invasion to take her down.

 

[Melior Traiano]

Here's the recount for Domination:

Us: 34 land, 20 pop
Caesar: 63 land, 62 pop
Liz: 37 land, 51 pop
George: 8 land, 8 pop
Asoka: 59 land, 32 pop
Alex: 23 land, 28 pop
Huayna: 28 land, 23 pop
Kublai: 23 land, 24 pop
unclaimed (ATM): 18 land

totals: 293 land, 266 pop
required for Dom: 51% of 554 = 282.54 land, 39% of 476 = 185.64 pop

So upon recount, we actually do have enough land & pop to win by Domination if we take over the whole continent. I'm looking back at the count from a while back and I must have screwed that count up by not counting city & peak tiles. I double checked this time: Caesar + We have 97 land = 17.51% of 554, so the land component checks out. I can't figure out how the F8 screen computes 14.70% pop, though. We have a lot bigger cushion to make the pop limit, so I think we'll have no problem there. If we had to, we could farm over everything to swell pop count.

If someone could do an independent recount, that'd be great. But unless this recount is wrong, Domination is clearly the fastest way to victory. It looks like George's cities aren't required for our continental domination plans, so I think we should autoraze them ourselves. That way, we won't have to wait around for Caesar to show up & capture them. Let's kill George first; by the time Caesar shows up, George will be gone & Caesar will have troops in place to follow our invasion into India.

BTW, shouldn't our Worker near Berlin be farming over the immature cottage NE of the city before the forest?

 

[marconos]

If we can do a domination victory on just our continent IMO, we do it. We are in great shape to take out the continent. Killing off Washington ourselves is a good idea. Those rifleman would make great units to upgrade against .

I really don't like not having a shared border with Ceasar.

BTW: I can play during the week as well.

 

[Yamps]

@Melior

Our continent is big enough?! I'll do the recount ASAP! If that is the case, Domination here we come!

@Farming

Well, that's a hamlet actually but that will have to go too. That city doesn't have enough food, it will starve. Of course, we should look into it closely. I haven't made exact plans for that city, maybe we should keep it lower in size but with more production?

@George

I think we should take those cities. Those cities would prosper in our hands and bring money. It's good to bring JC's forces up, that won't be a delay. We'll need some time anyway to build enough units for Asoka. Of course, this is sth to discuss.

Btw, classical_hero still hasn't posted the plans, I'm a bit worried about that. Melior, you haven't played in a while, do you have the time for play?


If our continent is big enough, it is quite possible that Xteam used nuclear weapons. Bombs everywhere and quick troop movement!

 

[Yamps]

BTW: I can play during the week as well.

I'm counting on you.

Big question: should we use nuclear weapons? AIs have rocketry and Manhattan requires a lot of time and , they could get Fission by that time and nuke us as well. I would have to test nuke usage, I haven't used nukes in my games. Is that a bad thing?

 

[marconos]

Nukes are only to be used if we have the land but not the population. Otherwise they cause more problems then they solve IMO.

 

[Yamps]

Recount

Land numbers are correct!

However, total population number for our continent is wrong, we have 248 pop. Melior, you added the 18 unclaimed tiles to the population number.

There is another problem with the total population number! Mouse hovering says 476, but I made the population count manually:

Cathy: 67
Sal: 79
Monty: 50
Cyrus: 66
Lois: 48

248 from our continent + 310 from other continents summs to 558. This agrees with the number of total votes!

We have a problem, how is population counted for domination? Why the 476 number?

Population also matter, there will be some starvation in wars too. Farming will be problematic, JC will work against us! He will rebuild sth else if he feels like it.

Consequences:

Nuclear war is bad for population. Nukes kill people, you know. Land would be wasted, starvation would kill more people. Other continents would have to be nuked too to reduce total population. Total nuclear war! I'm not comfortable with that. Btw, ICBM cost 500 , that's a lot.

We'll need the population, we should keep George's cities. NY will grow back again. We also need big population to avoid the diplomatic loss.


Some other notes:

XTeam

I can't figure out what Xteam did. They increased power for 400 000 soldiers in 20 turns, from T160 to T180. 20 000 per turn! That's an artillery every turn or ICBM every 2 turns, ICBM is worth 40000 soldiers. Note the game period, that's very early for artillery, not to mention ICBM! Then they had a drop, 350 000 in 15 turns. 8 nukes or 16 arties? Ah, we'll see when the game ends.

UN

We don't have to built it to be eligible, we have the largest population. However, we won't get elected for the UN secretary. We could sabotage the UN production, we don't want it in the game. It is best to sabotage mines and other production tiles, spies are rarely detected doing that.

Hammer overflow

We won't get cash from excessive overflow yet, but more production multipliers would provide that. I calculated a bit, producing machine guns with Ironworks + coal would also provide . I should double check that and test it, of course. I did test such things for the GL, it is funny to see income after a build.

 

[classical_hero]

I am certainly liking the idea of destroying George since realistically he has nothing of value, except perhaps NY, so we can jsut continually bombard the city down to one defender until JC comes to take it, but Washington is useless since it has no growth potential.

I do have a question as to how you tell you PA partner to do and can someone point me to one of the PA articles so that I can read up about it.
I think that the first thing we should build is a drydocks so that we can start to build some destroyers. We can get workers once we destroy Washington. Once we have workers we can go and get the oil that is near by and start to destroy civs with Industrialisation. We need the drydock so that we can start to build Destroyers quicker and with more promotions. I will say that we will need about 3 or 4 Destroyers from the start we can go back to building some artillery. I think that is the plan for the first few turn then I wil get back to to once we have destroyed Washington.

 

[vra379971]

I do have a question as to how you tell you PA partner to do and can someone point me to one of the PA articles so that I can read up about it.

Nothing to do really...just go via diplomacy screen, say you want to talk about other matters, and there it all is.

 

[kcd_swede]

Wow, good work guys. Its amazing how fast the world is changing. I like Classical_Heros plan for Wash + destroyers. We don't have enough troops to take Asoka yet.

As for nukes, only if we need to reduce pop on other continent to win AND they cannot retaliate. Otherwise it makes life harder, not easier.

As for population counts, I believe that pop in revolt do not count towards the total until they come outof revolt. Not 100% sure on that, though.

I should have more time to think about strategy in the next few days. But for now, what I've seen sounds good.

 

[Yamps]

I am certainly liking the idea of destroying George since realistically he has nothing of value, except perhaps NY, so we can jsut continually bombard the city down to one defender until JC comes to take it, but Washington is useless since it has no growth potential.

I do have a question as to how you tell you PA partner to do and can someone point me to one of the PA articles so that I can read up about it.
I think that the first thing we should build is a drydocks so that we can start to build some destroyers. We can get workers once we destroy Washington. Once we have workers we can go and get the oil that is near by and start to destroy civs with Industrialisation. We need the drydock so that we can start to build Destroyers quicker and with more promotions. I will say that we will need about 3 or 4 Destroyers from the start we can go back to building some artillery. I think that is the plan for the first few turn then I wil get back to to once we have destroyed Washington.

No, this plan is not optimal!

We should take out Washington and Asoka too in a blitz attack! We don't need destroyers now at all. We should build artillery, infantry and machine guns. Washington has great growing potential, Asoka should fall soon after Washington! Before George's cities get out of revolt! Some forces have to defend JC's land, say machine gun and a infantry soldier per city, with some artillery standing by too.

Please try to re-evaluate the plan, waiting for Industrialism is too long!

 

[Yamps]

Plan proposal:

At the current rate we need 8 turns for Electricity and ~12 turns for Industrialism. We should take out Washington and Asoka before we discover Industrialism.

Our soldiers:

1 inf in Antium, 2 in Madrid, leave them there.
2 MG on a hill near Washington, 3 inf near Hamburg.
Main stack near Hamburg: 3 inf, 6art, 2can. Move the stack to Hamburg and upgrade the cannons.
Home : 5 inf, MG, 3 arties.

Asoka has around 10 soldiers per city and some artillery too. Here is the plan:

Use 2MG + 3 inf + main stack for the attack on the Washington city. Don't attack New York, take out Washington first. Make sure to tell JC immediately to attack Washington. When Washington falls, use the stack from Washington + reinforcements from Beijing to take the city.

We have 6 art + 2 canons + 3 art back home = 11 arties.
We'll need 9 more for Bombay, build arties only in Beijing. We'll have 5 turns of revolting turns in George's cities, we should build enough in time.

Watch the JC's GA, if JC culture bombs, gift him our GA too for the job!

Watch WHEOOHRN regularly, if somebody gets that we have to re-evaluate.

Please check this plan in detail, we have to be careful. WB testing is also recommended.

We should have low casualties against Washington, we have some heavily promoted artillery down there.

20 arties should be enough for the initial attack on Asoka, we'll build more to reinforce troops for Delhi. Delhi must fall fast after Bombay, 5 turns maximum to prevent culture damage.