SGOTM 07 - Xteam

[Cactus Pete]

If we're sure there are enough tiles on our continent for Domination, then that certainly looks like the quickest sure path to victory, and I would agree with SCT that we should not wait too long before "cracking some heads."

At some future point, would we faciltate matters by gifting a settler(s) to Asoka?

 

[rrau]

Settlers aren't a build option when playing OCC

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Some thoughts below on the different victory conditions, hopefully to help us focus on which ones we want to consider and which ones we throw out.

Single diplo
I agree that if we go for diplo on our own it will require a lot of luck to pull it off. We need to have the ideal opponent and need to be able to secure the votes of around 12/18 civs. I'm sure it is possible, but it does require us putting all our eggs in one basket. It is probably the fastest theoretical victory path from our current position. It will be easier to win over civs to vote for us if we are on our own compared to if we are in a PA. I'd say the risk in this option is very high, but it's the fastest. Guess 1300-1400AD?

PA Domination
Here we simply need to kill every civ on our continent, make sure Asoka's culture grabs every tile and we grow enough to get the above the population threshold (WE NEED TO TEST THIS - my guess is it will be around 50%). We devote all beakers to military techs, and all hammers to military units. I'd say the risk is moderate, but it is not that fast. Guess 1600-1700AD? (I did get domination around 1810AD in one of the test games).

PA diplo
Here we need to split research between military techs and also getting to Mass Media (were most beakers along the way don't give any military advantage). We only need to conquer the unfriendly civs on our home continent and try to get Asoka to befriend one or two foreign civs. It's not clear at this stage whether we will be able to secure the 62% threshold, since there is so much land per civ on the foreign continent. I'd say the risk is high, and it is about the same speed as going for domination. Guess 1600-1700AD?

The risk mentioned above is my gauge of the likelihood of things not going according to the plan and the victory date starting to slip back or victory not possible.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I have played 9 more uneventful turns (which is good).

Pre-turn: Open borders with Cyrus, Hatshepsut and Louis.

T118: Discover Liberalism -> Astronomy -> Printing Press. Trade routes jump in value from 5-5-4-4 to 7-7-6-6. Our new trade routes are intercontinental. Bulb part of PP. Trade stone for silk and 2 gpt with Louis.

T119: Work boat -> archer. Meet Cathy and trade Education for Engineering and 10 gold to get her pleased. Also open borders. Fred makes peace with HC. Trade whale for dye with Cyrus.

T120: Cathy asks for Astronomy. I refuse. Maybe a mistake? Printing Press -> Scientific Method.

T121:

T122: Monty demands our map and gets it. Sell map to most of our friends.

T123: Start bombarding Madrid.

T124: Gift missionary to Saladin.

T125:

T126: Scientific Method -> Communism

We are 8 turns from discovering Communism (T134). A missionary is on his way to Paris and will say hello to Mansa on his way. A small stack composed of xbow, mace and cat is on a hill outside Madrid hoping for a chance to earn a promotion or two. Our two workers are posted in Washington and Bombay to give early warning if the enemy should advance. Saladin has for some reason not used the missionary.

I'm tempted to play the remaining 8 turns until PA before handing over. What does the team say? It depends among other things on whether we want to go for a solo diplomatic victory.

Status on shared war turns:

JC: 40!
Asoka: 38
Toku: 29
Fred: 40!
Washington: 19

The save

Pic:

Spoiler :

 

[leif erikson]

Nice work Fred!!

Please hold on continuing. I would like the team to explore a bit more the strategy of going it alone to diplo.

Thanks to JT for his evaluation of the options. Is there general agreement on his evaluation?

My own view, in reading this info, is that if we wish to be competitive we need to consider what is the fastest strategy to get us to a successful finish and then whether we think we can achieve this? I would rather lose trying to achieve the best date possible.

I think we have played this quite well thus far because we had tested this out and had a good plan which we have executed well, and had a bit of luck in no early declarations and the way that the religions aligned.

Can we develop as good a plan, execute it as well and have a bit of luck in the way the diplo situation aligns in the second half of this game? Or will we be throwing away what we have done so well by trying to go it alone? In other words, is solo diplo a fool's errand?

What can we do to figure this all out or is there so much luck involved that it is not worth considering?

 

[Frederiksberg]

Beelining for Mass Media takes around 60 turns, probably a little less and then we need around 17 turns to build the UN so the earliest possible victory date for a solo diplomatic game seems to be 80 turns from now. I don't know how that compares to JT's estimated dates.

To achieve domination in 70 turns after PA sounds challenging. Asoka would need to capture 16 cities during these 70 turns - that's 1 city every 4 turns.

More important is, that we would right now only get the votes of 4-5 civs and we need at least 10. If the shared religion and shared wars disappear it looks even worse.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Good work Fred!

As we pause, we also need to work out a plan for handling the other continent - so that we have a clear agreed direction.

Having open borders for trade routes is a no brainer.

How freely do we want to trade techs?
Which civs shall we not trade with? (we don't want to start getting penalties for trading with worst enemies).
Do we instigate any wars?

 

[Mad Professor]

Nice going Fred.

Saladin has possibly not used the missionary because technically his "state religion" is "no religion" and theocracy prevents any missionaries not of "no religion" from doing anything. A belated thought it would have been nice to have before we decided to do this, but one that occurred to me while trying to explain Saladin's lack of use of the missionary.

Thanks to JT for his evaluation of the options. Is there general agreement on his evaluation?

I think JT sums it up fairly well.

My own view, in reading this info, is that if we wish to be competitive we need to consider what is the fastest strategy to get us to a successful finish and then whether we think we can achieve this? I would rather lose trying to achieve the best date possible.

I think we have played this quite well thus far because we had tested this out and had a good plan which we have executed well, and had a bit of luck in no early declarations and the way that the religions aligned.

Part of our good planning to this point has been lots of good testing. Perhaps we should do some more...? I might even have some time over the next week to do some of it! [I'm just no good at constructing test games - I know because I've tried!] We shouldn't change now from good planning and good testing to "this is probably how it will go" - not if we really want to do our best to finish as fast as possible.

Can we develop as good a plan, execute it as well and have a bit of luck in the way the diplo situation aligns in the second half of this game? Or will we be throwing away what we have done so well by trying to go it alone? In other words, is solo diplo a fool's errand?

What can we do to figure this all out or is there so much luck involved that it is not worth considering?

I think testing will help. Obviously we won't be able to construct test games with an identical diplomatic situation, so that's where testing the diplo victory is rather fuzzy. However we could construct one with a similar situation and play it a few times trying different methods of victory to get some idea of what our chances are - we're not going to be in a worse situation for trying that, and I think most likely we'll have a better idea. I'll certainly volunteer to do some of the testing which will be good for me since my turnset is coming up soon. I just beg of fthe task of creating the test game! We're not in a screaming hurry to finish the game as far as I know, so let's have a good look at things!

 

[Mad Professor]

More important is, that we would right now only get the votes of 4-5 civs and we need at least 10. If the shared religion and shared wars disappear it looks even worse.

This is a really important consideration. I'd be willing to bet that there will be a lot more free religion around in 70 turns time! Diplo looks hard for this very reason, unless it's simply a back door diplo, which means we've got to act a bit like domination in any case. The problem with back door diplo in this game is that we need more population for that than domination and we have enough land on our own continent for domination. Back door diplos come in handy when you have plenty of population already but are short of handy land area. I don't think that is the case in this game.

How freely do we want to trade techs?
Which civs shall we not trade with? (we don't want to start getting penalties for trading with worst enemies).
Do we instigate any wars?

These are diplo related questions. If we want to keep open the diplo option (and it would be foolish to throw it away when we don't have to even if we decide domination is best) we need to consider these seriously. The question then becomes though (if we choose domination) when will pandering to the diplo option start getting in the way of domination? We don't want any AI's forming PA's anywhere, and we don't want an AI to become big and powerful enough for the diety bonuses to let them get away from us and our PA partner. I believe there is potential for these problems to occur on the other continent. Cyrus or Saladin could really romp away if they had a successful war and captured a few cities thereby significantly increasing GDP etc through empire size. And God forbid they form a PA with anyone...

So the objective of instigating wars (particularly on the other continent) has to include "control" of an AI's progress and diplomatic relations with others, not just our own relations with them for maintaining the possibility of a diplo victory.

 

[Jimmy Thunder]

Beelining for Mass Media takes around 60 turns, probably a little less and then we need around 17 turns to build the UN so the earliest possible victory date for a solo diplomatic game seems to be 80 turns from now. I don't know how that compares to JT's estimated dates.

To achieve domination in 70 turns after PA sounds challenging. Asoka would need to capture 16 cities during these 70 turns - that's 1 city every 4 turns.

Just checked my guess dates with the actual turn numbers and they are pretty close:

1400AD is turn 200, 74 turns from now - this seems a realistic time for fastest diplo

1600AD is turn 230, 104 turns from now - this seems realistic for fastest domination

 

[rrau]

One thing to consider.........after all those wars, the pop in the cities may be small. I lost a test game to a spaceship while waiting for my PA parter to grow pop.

 

[Mad Professor]

There are quite a bunch of flat topped power graphs on the progress page. War? A couple of teams have had extended periods like that. What else could it be other than war? Total stalling of science...? Why?

 

[Frederiksberg]

This is a really important consideration. I'd be willing to bet that there will be a lot more free religion around in 70 turns time! Diplo looks hard for this very reason, unless it's simply a back door diplo, which means we've got to act a bit like domination in any case. The problem with back door diplo in this game is that we need more population for that than domination and we have enough land on our own continent for domination. Back door diplos come in handy when you have plenty of population already but are short of handy land area. I don't think that is the case in this game.

Actually my comment was referring to a Diplo Victory without PA in which case there is no backdoor victory since this is OCC.

I think testing will help. Obviously we won't be able to construct test games with an identical diplomatic situation, so that's where testing the diplo victory is rather fuzzy. However we could construct one with a similar situation and play it a few times trying different methods of victory to get some idea of what our chances are - we're not going to be in a worse situation for trying that, and I think most likely we'll have a better idea. I'll certainly volunteer to do some of the testing which will be good for me since my turnset is coming up soon. I just beg of fthe task of creating the test game! We're not in a screaming hurry to finish the game as far as I know, so let's have a good look at things!

Testing is probably required to do well in the next phase and choose the best solutions. Maybe I should upload the save now and we can start testing? Or do we want the last 8 turns so that we can see the situation after the PA is (hopefully) formed. A few things could still go wrong with the PA. Asoka could make peace within the next two turns or he could discover Liberalism and adopt Free Religion in which case he may not be Friendly anymore.

One thing to consider.........after all those wars, the pop in the cities may be small. I lost a test game to a spaceship while waiting for my PA parter to grow pop.

You can work your PA partners land so farming+Biology is a possibility. But the pop limit is a concern and a reason to start wars on the other continent.

There are quite a bunch of flat topped power graphs on the progress page. War? A couple of teams have had extended periods like that. What else could it be other than war? Total stalling of science...? Why?

My theory is that they have been attacked and had their land pillaged. A couple of players have resigned and that indicates to me that their teams (CRC and Gypsy Kings) may be facing an early attack as well. We should be happy for our good luck in this respect so far.

 

[leif erikson]

Testing is probably required to do well in the next phase and choose the best solutions. Maybe I should upload the save now and we can start testing? Or do we want the last 8 turns so that we can see the situation after the PA is (hopefully) formed. A few things could still go wrong with the PA. Asoka could make peace within the next two turns or he could discover Liberalism and adopt Free Religion in which case he may not be Friendly anymore.

I think we should stop here for the moment unless other team members would like to go through to Communism. The reason we may want to go to Communism is to gauge our potential for PA partners before we make the decision on strategic direction. The down side is that we go 8 more turns into the game.

Seems to me that we are down to two options; solo diplo or PA domination?

What is the best way to create test games? Can we recreate our current situation in World Builder? I will try to get a map made if that will help. I'm loading CIV onto another system so I can run them together in order to have the map on one and World Builder on the other. Not sure how to recreate the diplo situation?

My theory is that they have been attacked and had their land pillaged. A couple of players have resigned and that indicates to me that their teams (CRC and Gypsy Kings) may be facing an early attack as well. We should be happy for our good luck in this respect so far.

It will be interesting to read the threads and see what is going on? I suspect that your right about the wars. And we have been fortunate thus far. Looks like those sacrifices to the RNG have been worth it. Got to keep up with those Haka's.

The real question is how lucky do we feel as we look ahead?
Reminds me of Dirty Harry's line...

 

[ShannonCT]

Testing is probably required to do well in the next phase and choose the best solutions. Maybe I should upload the save now and we can start testing? Or do we want the last 8 turns so that we can see the situation after the PA is (hopefully) formed. A few things could still go wrong with the PA. Asoka could make peace within the next two turns or he could discover Liberalism and adopt Free Religion in which case he may not be Friendly anymore.

Definitely think we should stop here and test. Communism is a waste if we're going for solo diplo.

And I'd be very surprised if we can't find a way to get a PA with Asoka. If he does quit the war in the next turn, we still have three techs to bribe him back into war with Kublai. And even if he adopted Free Religion, we'd be at +9, with the option to get to +11 by gifting techs.

I'll try to create some test games today. But I'm not going to run them all the way through to SciMeth. If I run them that far, most of the future AI behavior will already be predetermined. (And it's too hard to recreate our current position anyway.) What we want to know is the range and probabilities of possible AI behavior. What I will try to build into the tests is Asoka founding Hinduism on our continent and another AI founding Buddhism on our continent.

 

[Frederiksberg]

What I would like to test is primarily the speed of conquest in a PA and what means you have at directing the PA partners attacks. The trade-off between building our own army and gifting cheap units to the partner is also interesting to evaluate. And how much of a tech lead do you need?

 

[Frederiksberg]

If we're sure there are enough tiles on our continent for Domination, then that certainly looks like the quickest sure path to victory, and I would agree with SCT that we should not wait too long before "cracking some heads."

According to leif's and my count there are 10 more tiles than we need on our own continent. And we could probably capture a city on the 12 tile island as well.

 

[ShannonCT]

What I would like to test is primarily the speed of conquest in a PA and what means you have at directing the PA partners attacks. The trade-off between building our own army and gifting cheap units to the partner is also interesting to evaluate. And how much of a tech lead do you need?

There is the option to request your ally to attack a particular city. I had varying success with getting this to work. Declaring on an AI and gifting units near the battlefront seems to work well in getting the AI to attack where you want it to.

Keep in mind that the AI gets a 95% discount in upgrading units on Deity. So it doesn't make much sense for us to upgrade our own units unless we think we can do a job much better than the AI can. I think maybe the best use of our own units is pre-bombarding cities that Asoka will soon be ready to take. The AI seems really stupid about leaving its seige weapons unguarded and this can really slow down their progress.

How much tech lead do we need? No tech lead is too big. I think for domination, we go for Gunpowder-Chemistry-Steel first, then Replaceable Parts-Rifling, then toward Assembly Line, and finally Combustion-Industrialism, if necessary. That tech path should keep us at least 1 level above the AI in military tech for the rest of the game. There are no horse on our continent, so we can forget about Military Tradition.

According to leif's and my count there are 10 more tiles than we need on our own continent. And we could probably capture a city on the 12 tile island as well.

That should be enough land to get domination without overseas conquest. Even if Asoka razes a city, he, or another AI, will rebuild nearby and eventually take over the empty territory.

And as far as population required for domination, I'm finding that the requirement goes up by about 1% per AI eliminated. Right now, it's at 35%. So if we eliminate every AI on our continent, we'd need about 44% of the population. Seems pretty doable.

 

[ShannonCT]

Here are a couple games people might want to play around with:

The first game is in the early stages, after researching Fishing and BW. Asoka has founded Hinduism on our continent and someone else has founded Buddhism on our continent.

The second game starts after having just signed a PA with Capac, the tech leader. I've just gifted him a dozen units that he upgraded to grens/rifles.

 

[ShannonCT]

Do we instigate any wars?

If we are going for domination, I'd suggest we get Louis to declare on Cyrus for Engineering and Astro. Get Catherine to declare on Hatty. And if we gift Lizzy some techs and get to Friendly status, she should be willing to declare on Alex. On our own continent, I think the goal should be to keep eveyone at war with someone else so they wear each other down and get overwhelmed by our superior units when we declare. On the other continent, we should try to pit evenly matched AI against each other so that they pillage each other's resources but fail to take any cities, reducing the total population of the other continent.