SGOTM 07 - Xteam

Mad Professor · May 25, 2008

DJMGator13 said:
The "softening up" of opponents I'm talking about is to bring in other AI's as allys or keeping AI-on-AI action going so that their number of units stay down. Do it thru diplo actions not necessarily direct combat by the human player part.

OK. I misunderstood what you were talking about there. Getting future targets involved in war before we get to them is probably a good idea - the only thing we'd need to watch there is giving too many or a really important tech away to someone to get the war started. We don't want to bring rifles and grens to a civ that has only lbows ten turns before we plan to attack them! But I guess that's obvious!

ShannonCT · May 25, 2008

DJMGator13 said:
Asoka's city raze probability is at 0%.

Wow. So Asoka will keep every city he takes? That should save us some turns. I just hope we can start him off with some cities that will speed up his economy and not slow it down.

leif erikson · May 25, 2008

ShannonCT said:
Wow. So Asoka will keep every city he takes? That should save us some turns. I just hope we can start him off with some cities that will speed up his economy and not slow it down.

Perhaps we should start with Washington then. :hammer:

If we can raze New York and help Asoka take Washington, that would be a good start. That will require Cats and Maces, preferably CR2. That means Theocracy. How soon should we try and start?

What diplo problems might that cause, if any?

@Fred - If you haven't started yet, would it be a good idea to do a local recon of the cities of Elizabeth during your 8 turns of getting us to Communism?

ShannonCT · May 25, 2008

leif erikson said:
Perhaps we should start with Washington then.

If we can raze New York and help Asoka take Washington, that would be a good start. That will require Cats and Maces, preferably CR2. That means Theocracy. How soon should we try and start?

What diplo problems might that cause, if any?

@Fred - If you haven't started yet, would it be a good idea to do a local recon of the cities of Elizabeth during your 8 turns of getting us to Communism?

What should we do about Asoka's attack on Cuzco? Should we gift him the archers after the PA is signed in the hopes that he will take Cuzco with them or should we try to get him to use crossbows or grenadiers against Washington first? How strong is Cuzco likely to be? At least we can ask Washington to attack Cuzco.

I suggest that we start wars between Lizzy and Alex, Louis and Cyrus, Hatty and Cathy now.

Frederiksberg · May 25, 2008

I have played. Everything went well except that the game crashed my computer one turn before Communism :mad:

. Replaying the turn from the auto save was easy, but my turn log notes all disappeared including my notes on number and type of units in almost all cities :mad:

. So you will have to do with the highlights and the auto generated log:

Highlights of turn 126-134:

We have discovered Communism and have the pleasant choice of making a PA with Asoka, Fred or Julius. A GS has been born in Beijing and he can either bulb part of Physics or build an Academy in one of Asokas cities.

Cathy has been bribed to attack Hatty and Louis has been converted to Hinduism and bribed to war with Cyrus. I gifted Drama and Paper to Lizzy but she did not get to Friendly until turn 134 so she could not be bribed to war before now (think we got an extra + for shared religion).

Asoka has made peace with Capac and Fred has captured Madrid and destroyed the Spanish. Our mace won a couple of battles and has 9/10 XP.

It's very obvious that the civs that have not been to war has considerably more units so bribing Lizzy into war should probably be done first thing in the next turn set.

The save

Auto log:

Spoiler :

Frederiksberg · May 25, 2008

A few more things. We can trade for Gunpowder with Washington and research Chemistry in 5-6 turns and after that we should be ready for an attack - maybe on Washington? Elisabeth can be bribed to attack Alex - they both have big stacks that we would want to decimate. We should probably also bribe Fred into war again - maybe with Kublai this time to keep him occupied down south?

DJMGator13 · May 25, 2008

TEST GAME RESULTS - not real game, thought I'd add that since Fred has posted the Real Game Save

Finished my test game run through and here are a couple things I saw. I went Artillery in front of Assembly Line and surprisingly Capac built (or upgraded) a good number of artillery units on his own. We may want to prioritize Biology and Medicine early in our tech line up so that we can offset the +6 unhealthy that will come from power and buildings (+2 power, +1 forge, +1 factory and possibly +2 Ironworks). We may not need the IW if we can keep the huge unit tech lead.

I was a little slower than leifs 65 turns for capturing all the cities on the landmass, but I built the IW and changed civics 2x. On the plus side, by using the 2nd GS to make an Academy in one of Capacs cities I was able to research all the way to Tanks in the same 65 turns. The 1st GS a later used as a specialist in Capacs capital.

Research dates
Artillery T179 187
Assb Line T188 198
Electricity start T199 (qued w/Indust no finish date in log)
Industrialism finished T218
Railroad T219 227
Combustion T228 234
Biology T235 240
Democracy T241 244
Medicine T245 - 254

War
Eliminated France T188
Eliminated Russia T199
Captured all mainland cities from Washington by T216
Eliminated Germany T225
Eliminated Khan T236
Eliminated Elizabeth T245 (she had a SAM infantry)

Because of the unhealthy issue I switched back to slavery and poprushed Globe for 4 pop. When IW completed I started starving again, I farmed over 2 cottages. Eventually Beijing got down to size 10 before I got into Environmentalism for +6 health. So this wasnt my best effort. BTW, Im still waiting for Capac to launch a naval assault so I can win by domination. Ive gifted him transports and almost every military unit I own. Im less than 30 tiles short. Hes bombarding but not transporting troops.

Mad Professor · May 25, 2008

DJMGator13 said:
TEST GAME RESULTS -

...

BTW, Im still waiting for Capac to launch a naval assault so I can win by domination. Ive gifted him transports and almost every military unit I own. Im less than 30 tiles short. Hes bombarding but not transporting troops.

Fortunately not a problem we'll have in the real game because there is enough tiles for domination on our own continent! This is a wonderful bonus, because getting a PA partner to join you in war over the ocean is a real drag!

Frederiksberg said:
We have discovered Communism and have the pleasant choice of making a PA with Asoka, Fred or Julius. A GS has been born in Beijing and he can either bulb part of Physics or build an Academy in one of Asokas cities

Looks like we're just about ready to launch into the doomsday war. Let's get our plans ironed out carefully first now!

leif erikson · May 25, 2008

DJMGator13 said:
We may want to prioritize Biology and Medicine early in our tech line up so that we can offset the +6 unhealthy that will come from power and buildings (+2 power, +1 forge, +1 factory and possibly +2 Ironworks). We may not need the IW if we can keep the huge “unit tech” lead.

A Factory, Coal Plant and the Iron Works totals some 1100 Hammers. That is the equivalent of 11 Cannon or 8 Artillery units. In addition is the research time to get to Environmentalism to cover the "cost" of building all that stuff.

Built Cannons for upgrade, using HC's Gold, to Artillery. I should probably try playing building all this infrastructure, but it would seem like a significant diversion from getting these units produced and in the field for conquest towards domination? Funny that I seem to want to leave my builder instincts behind...
:rolleyes:

DJMGator13 · May 25, 2008

Mad Professor said:
Fortunately not a problem we'll have in the real game because there is enough tiles for domination on our own continent! This is a wonderful bonus, because getting a PA partner to join you in war over the ocean is a real drag!

Looks like we're just about ready to launch into the doomsday war. Let's get our plans ironed out carefully first now!

I just did a tile recount, you know how us Florida people love our recounts. (Little presidential election humor for our international friends.) I've always skipped both inland lakes and mountains when doing tile counts. I can't remember where I heard about not counting mountains but it has always given me pretty acurate counts when I've played domination games.

I come up with 281 on our continent, then a 12 tile isand and a 48 tile island plus 200 tiles on the other continent. That gives us 281 tiles out of 541 or 51.94% with every tile on our continent.

Other issues to consider. If we can get Environmentalism we can get Beijing to size 20, by picking up the 4 food currently be lost to unhealthiness. These 3 tiles are all big hammer producing tiles and will take us from 26 hpt to 49 hpt without a factory. With a factory we can get 63 hpt. Will need to see what the coal and war situation is to decide if factory and IW is even a consideration.

Those same 3 tiles will add no more commerce, so we need to get the observatory squeezed in the que. This should take the bpt from 462 to 500 bpt. We also need to get the theater built so that we're ready for Globe and the war weariness.

PA partner should probably be Asoka since he is the most advanced technology wise. He has all the techs currently known by others and unknown by us. This should help further the tech-gap between us and the other AI's.

leif erikson · May 25, 2008

Fred, nice work. :hatsoff:

A little war on the other continent and Isabela removed from history! :goodjob:

Roster:
Gator - UP
Mad Professor - On Deck
rrau
leif
ShannonCT
Jimmy Thunder
Cactus Pete
Frederiksberg - Just Played!!

Mistfit - :beer:

Frederiksberg said:
A few more things. We can trade for Gunpowder with Washington and research Chemistry in 5-6 turns and after that we should be ready for an attack - maybe on Washington? Elisabeth can be bribed to attack Alex - they both have big stacks that we would want to decimate. We should probably also bribe Fred into war again - maybe with Kublai this time to keep him occupied down south?

I like this idea. :goodjob:

For Education, we can get Gunpowder plus 30 Gold.

And, maybe, Washington will start building Universities just when we are ready to go after him... :hammer:

EDIT - Mountain tiles do not count towards domination?

Jimmy Thunder · May 25, 2008

leif erikson said:
EDIT - Mountain tiles do not count towards domination?

I've been sure that mountains DO count. The tiles that don't count are coast and ocean (naturally) as well as iceberg tiles and inland seas/freshwater lakes.

rrau · May 25, 2008

For some reason, I didn't think mountain tiles counted, either. Unless you're milking a game, it's best not to count them to be on the safe side, is my feeling

Jimmy Thunder · May 25, 2008

An interesting quirk:

I just remembered something about signing a PA. For some reason, on the turn that you sign a PA your AI partner has a MASSIVE number of beakers available for research for that turn only. I wonder if it is because you can redirect all of the beakers they have stored up towards their current research goal.

The result of this is that we should be able to research our first tech very quickly after signing a PA (I think there's often been enough beakers from the AI partner to research an expensive tech in 1 turn!). A possible gambit for this would be to direct this massive amount of beaker to research Physics quickly (as well as using our current GS if needed) and then use the GS from Physics to bulb toward Chemistry. This allows us to use 2 GS's on our Artillery beeline path.

If we put off going for Physics for a while, the GS from it will only be useful for Biology or Electricity.

It would be good if someone can confirm this quirk from any current testing that people are doing.

DJMGator13 · May 25, 2008

Jimmy Thunder said:
I've been sure that mountains DO count. The tiles that don't count are coast and ocean (naturally) as well as iceberg tiles and inland seas/freshwater lakes.

I went back and looked at the HOF Major 17 game, the Ice Age domination one, and when they talked about counting tiles they only mentioned the inland lakes. (But the other water ones apply also.)

Mountains are "impassable" tiles same as those "impassable" iceberg tiles and maybe that is why I've always skipped them in my counts. It is something I heard back when Civ IV first came out.

Cactus Pete · May 26, 2008

Jimmy Thunder said:
An interesting quirk:

I just remembered something about signing a PA. For some reason, on the turn that you sign a PA your AI partner has a MASSIVE number of beakers available for research for that turn only. I wonder if it is because you can redirect all of the beakers they have stored up towards their current research goal.

The result of this is that we should be able to research our first tech very quickly after signing a PA (I think there's often been enough beakers from the AI partner to research an expensive tech in 1 turn!). A possible gambit for this would be to direct this massive amount of beaker to research Physics quickly (as well as using our current GS if needed) and then use the GS from Physics to bulb toward Chemistry. This allows us to use 2 GS's on our Artillery beeline path.

If we put off going for Physics for a while, the GS from it will only be useful for Biology or Electricity.

It would be good if someone can confirm this quirk from any current testing that people are doing.

Interesting, JT. Hope that we can confirm (or demonstrate it untrue).

I've finally managed to play a little of SCT's test. PA's are powerful (never used one before). Domination is certainly our best strategy, unless Asoka behaves very differently from HC, who has done almost exactly as I'd have him. Gifted no units. (Be interested to know if SCT did a lot of that earlier or if HC just engaged in his own military build up.) HC captures cities as soon as I weaken them. The agressiveness of the AI in Diety works against them, when you have such military superiority. They attack superior units so you don't have to fight many units within the cities. Suspect that too large a stack would inhibit that desirable agressiveness.

I'm on turn 202 and have already eliminated three civs, leaving just three on our continent. See no need to build factories, etc. Did create an academy (in Cusco I think). Have built Globe, completed just before Infantry became available and upgraded MP's. Went directly to Artillery and then Steam and Assembly Line. Doubt I'll need any other military techs, but am on the path to tanks. Using galleons to move units quickly and frigates (fast and quick to build -- via upgraded caravels -- compared to artillery, though have built and put several of those to good use, especially inland) to help reduce culture.

Wars between civs on our continent do indeed weaken them and get their units out in the open, and we definitely need to consider how best to get last cities taken to expand.

Frederiksberg · May 26, 2008

Jimmy Thunder said:
I've been sure that mountains DO count. The tiles that don't count are coast and ocean (naturally) as well as iceberg tiles and inland seas/freshwater lakes.

I believe this is correct.

Jimmy Thunder said:
I just remembered something about signing a PA. For some reason, on the turn that you sign a PA your AI partner has a MASSIVE number of beakers available for research for that turn only. I wonder if it is because you can redirect all of the beakers they have stored up towards their current research goal.

The result of this is that we should be able to research our first tech very quickly after signing a PA (I think there's often been enough beakers from the AI partner to research an expensive tech in 1 turn!). A possible gambit for this would be to direct this massive amount of beaker to research Physics quickly (as well as using our current GS if needed) and then use the GS from Physics to bulb toward Chemistry. This allows us to use 2 GS's on our Artillery beeline path.

If we put off going for Physics for a while, the GS from it will only be useful for Biology or Electricity.

This is very interesting. GS bulbing is not extremely important any more since the beakers from bulbing will be less than 2 turns of research when we get our PA. I would rather get Chemistry ASAP because this means that our attack can start rolling and we can gift our archers to Asoka for upgrade to Grenadiers. We can also upgrade our mace, xbow and axes if we have the cash (maybe we need to keep a few archers as MP's.

Cactus Pete said:
Wars between civs on our continent do indeed weaken them and get their units out in the open, and we definitely need to consider how best to get last cities taken to expand.

I think we need a plan for the expansion of the last captured cities. A GA could be useful but the probability that we get one in time is not high. Do we have other means of influencing the culture in those cities. I have previuosly suggested that we adopt Free Religion and ask Asoka to do the same. That would mean that every religion in a city contributes 1 cpt. If last city is Budhist we can use a Hindu missionary to get 2cpt in that city. Drawback is the anarchy involved in switching to Free Religion because we want to switch again to Theocracy later. Another idea is to plan in such a way that the city captured last have some culture producing buildings that will survive the capture.

leif erikson said:
A Factory, Coal Plant and the Iron Works totals some 1100 Hammers. That is the equivalent of 11 Cannon or 8 Artillery units. In addition is the research time to get to Environmentalism to cover the "cost" of building all that stuff.

I think leif is right. We can't use that many hammers to improve production so we should find other ways. One thing we can do is to use the whip and get below the health threshold (Note, that when NY is captured or razed we have the cows). This would allow us to work more hammer tiles. When we decide to shut down research we can convert all grassland tiles to work shops and adopt State Property. When DO we shut down research? When we have Artillery? When we have infantry?

Frederiksberg · May 26, 2008

A few more thoughts for discussion:

Are we going to build any more infrastructure? The Heroic Epic seems like a no brainer and the Globe may also be worth building to remove WW and liberate units from MP duty. Anything else?

We should probably analyze the map to see if some cities will require 2 border expansions in order to cover the desired number of tiles. If this is indeed the case they should be captured earlier so that there is more time for culture to develop. Remember that we need to cover all tiles except 10 on our own continent to achieve domination.

Cactus Pete · May 26, 2008

Frederiksberg said:
This is very interesting. GS bulbing is not extremely important any more since the beakers from bulbing will be less than 2 turns of research when we get our PA. I would rather get Chemistry ASAP because this means that our attack can start rolling and we can gift our archers to Asoka for upgrade to Grenadiers. In SCT's test game, there was plenty of gold available to upgrade units ourselves, and that would be preferable if such riches are available in the SGOTM. Along this line, how much concern, if any, should we have about trading techs to off-continent AI's for gold?We can also upgrade our mace, xbow and axes if we have the cash (maybe we need to keep a few archers as MP's.

I think we need a plan for the expansion of the last captured cities. I have previuosly suggested that we adopt Free Religion and ask Asoka to do the same. Drawback is the anarchy involved in switching to Free Religion because we want to switch again to Theocracy later. Why is there a hurry in switching to Free Relgion? Another idea is to plan in such a way that the city captured last have some culture producing buildings that will survive the capture.

I think leif is right. We can't use that many hammers to improve production so we should find other ways. Concur.One thing we can do is to use the whip and get below the health threshold (Note, that when NY is captured or razed we have the cows). This would allow us to work more hammer tiles. When we decide to shut down research we can convert all grassland tiles to work shops and adopt State Property. When DO we shut down research? When we have Artillery? When we have infantry? I think we're going to want Infantry.

Have we decided whether we want to build more archers before getting a PA?

Frederiksberg · May 26, 2008

Cactus Pete said:
Why is there a hurry in switching to Free Relgion?

As I understand it we can't ask Asoka to change civics after the PA has been formed thus it must be done before. And you can only ask him to switch to a civic you are using yourself.

Cactus Pete said:
I think we're going to want Infantry.

Infantry only or infantry + Artillery?

SGOTM 07 - Xteam

Deity

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Still breathing

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King

Emperor

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