SGOTM 08 - Smurkz

[r_rolo1]

Yup, our spear medic already had speeded the ofensive in atleast 1 turn, otherwise we would had needed atleast one more turn of healing after nobamba taking.... so I think that it was worth it. And most likely the medic axe ( the only other contender ATM ) would had been call far more often to defend than the spear ( given that we only have 1 C2 axe )

About queues in this turn IMHO:
Yo : colloseum
Hari: some kind of military ( catapults? ) unless we want to finish the war afer Ulundi
Pura: tricky.... I had queued a phant IIRC, but I have no idea of what to do next in here
kwa: it finished the granary this turn. IMHO a lighthouse or a library in here would be good. We should not whip the city below 2 pop, given that it has 2 good tiles to work ( seafood and grassland iron )

IMHO we should whip the uM library as soon as we can ( probably this turn? ). This city will never be a good prod center and has 2 food resources...... what to do with her?

 

[Xcalibrator]

Maybe we should have uM keep her pop and build a worker--we certainly have lots of stuff he could work on: cottages, irrigation, chopping jungle...

What about starting on an ikhanda in Kwa but leaving some hammers to finish and then switching to a lighthouse? In 10 turns we whip the rest of the ikhanda and give the big overflow to the lighthouse. There's some semi-decent hammer potential in Kwa with the forest(s) and iron; it's going to be awhile before we can build cottages to make a library useful and in the meantime we could turn out a couple military units. Or... maybe another galley would be useful to defend our seafood, such as by Nobamba?

Once we get Paper we can trade maps with Joao. After that, shall we continue with Education so we can build universities? The drawbacks are that it'll take awhile (1800 standardized beakers) and then we have to build the uni's to get any advantage. That timing would work well if we manage to beat down Shaka by the time we get Ed, but I have my doubts.

Just for discussion, should we instead go for Metal Casting (450 beakers) and then Machinery (700)? We could then build maces and crossbows. A trireme might be useful, too, and then during peacetime we could build forges to help speed up production of universities once we get Education.

And again, I think we should send our Rockport galley west to see what's going on south of the Nongoma isthmus.

 

[r_rolo1]

I agree with checking what's up south of nongoma with the rockport galley.....

MC +machinery is indeed a good option. Should we? I don't think we're in danger of losing lib anyway.....

And I don't think we can do ikhandas

P.S How about doing sankore in yo?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Heh. Morale will be nice, but how are we going to get the extra +1 xp?

 

[unkle]

finishing defenders post cats ?

 

[Xcalibrator]

And I don't think we can do ikhandas

Er, uh, I've been playing a game as Shaka and am just about to declare on Suryavaraman--guess I'm a little confused.

Yeah, no problem getting that extra XP. If we're careful with that spear, we may have him up to Woodsman III (with extra 15% healing) by the end of the game!

 

[r_rolo1]

I've been talking with Niklas and renata in IM and Niklas is strongly against not teching Edu ASAP, since we have a good chance of getting a GS in 5 turns in yo.

 

[Niklas]

With the end of the war coming up, I'd like to take a moment to look at the bigger picture again.

We are looking at a fast-paced research game here. What matters is how fast we can tech to those last wonders, everything else is secondary. We will wipe the others pretty fast towards the end using Infantry, and we'll have the production capacity to pump them out pretty fast too.

So in my mind, we should at this stage in the game do everything we can to speed research up. That could of course be military activities - but right now, the ultimate prize must be considered Education. Even if all we did was build a Uni in Yo, that's still worth a lot. But I would hope that we do a lot more than that.

We will have Paper in 2 turns, and a GS in 5 (90% chance). Bulbing him will give 1650 beakers, +-30 or so, leaving 1041 beakers for manual research on Edu. If we go to 100% research after Paper, it should take us 5turns to generate those, so we could have Edu on turn 146.

Education gives Universities and Oxford. That Yo will build both is not in question. The problem is that Oxford requires 5 Unis to be built. Where else would we build them? Pura, being a commerce center, seems obvious. Hari might build one pretty fast so could possibly be one of the five. Ulundi would probably also be a good researcher and will warrant a Uni, only question is how fast. uMgung could use one, as could Kwa and Rockport... hmm, ok, so we might discount Nobamba at least.

I've done some counting, and talking with rolo and Renata, and I suggest the following plan for Yo:

T139: Switch in Axe, already 33/35 hammers.
T140: 22 base overflow hammers. Queue up Monastery.
T141: 57 hammers into Monastery, whip 1 pop.
T142: 44 base overflow hammers. Queue up Sankore, putting 150 hammers into it.
T143: Switch build to Colosseum.
T144: 40 hammers into Colosseum.
T145: Complete Colosseum with 0 overflow. Queue up Sankore again.
T146: 190 hammers into Sankore. We get Education, switch build to Uni.
T147: 24 hammers into Uni.
T148: 48 hammers into Uni.
T149: 72 hammers into Uni.
T150: 96 hammers into Uni.
T151: 120 hammers into Uni. Whip-complete for 2 pop.
T152: 22 base hammers overflow. Queue up Sankore again.
...
T160: Complete Sankore, switch to Oxford.

So that gives us up to turn 160 to build 4 more Unis somewhere. Doable?

 

[r_rolo1]

If we get a GS in turn 144 .....

 

[Niklas]

If we don't, we can simply keep building Sankore until we've teched Education manually. It will be a while, but nothing much we could about it do in that case. And we would also know not to switch any other towns to Unis, since there would be no Unis to switch them too.

 

[r_rolo1]

Now that's better

Other thing we need to discuss is short and long term plans for our cities. In IM between me and Renata ( Niklas was putting the 33 axe hammers in another building for the second time this week ) we have discussed a little about what to do with our cities....

So my proposal would be:
-Hari would be a provisional unit pump.
-Pura is a clear sci city
-kwa could make a lighthouse and pump some workers
-uM is a good candidate for Moai, given his 9 coastal tiles ans 1 ocean and the 2 food resources would assure a fast enough growth to have all of them worker soon enough.
-Nobamba... well, nobamba is the the classic generic city that the AI loves to do. Good enough for both sci and hammer spending, but not outstanding.
-Ulundi ( yeah, i know this one is not ours yet ): This one could be easily an wonder pump or a HE city ( or both ). not sure of which one is better for our game

 

[Xcalibrator]

I really like the idea of uM with the Moai; good place to put it while we can whip.

As for Niklas's university plan, I'm sold that going for Education to build a uni in Yo is worth it since we'll be so close after bulbing, but I'm more skeptical about putting another 890 hammers toward 4 other unis (and 1 library) ASAP; 890 hammers is the equivalent of nearly 15 cats, or 15 phants, or 25 axes. Keep in mind that we're going to need at least one warm body in every newly conquered city, plus losses along the way. And I doubt we'll be able to build uni#5 (which will have to be in one of Shaka's ex-cities) before around turn 167.

I vote that Rolo play another 2 turns until we get Paper and then trade maps with Joao to see if he's found anybody else. Does anyone know for sure if a map will establish tech-trading contact for us? What about trade routes? If we can trade a couple of our techs for a fistful of others (such as Metal Casting and Machinery) and establish some nice trade routes, then I'd be more enthusiastic about giving up catapults for professors.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Maps will not cause us to be able to contact anyone, other than knowing where the other civ is to send a unit to them to make contact. With that being said, I'm fairly certain one cannot trade with another civ if contact has not been made.

Niklas has outlined a military plan that involves us using infantry to wipe out whomever we see fit. With that being said and the relative consensus is to keep Shaka around after taking his capital, that mass amount of military units won't be needed. I personally think we should wipe him out entirely, but with him still having 7 + cities the feasibility of that is rather slim.

 

[unkle]

Several items...

First I need a swap since I'll have a working trip i nParis next week Had hopes to be able to cancel it, but no, so unless we want to wait Friday, I think we need to get Chris up to speed...

Second I think we need the HE in Hari. We can build it, and it is a 5-6 turns thing to do. Hari should be almost building units all the time any way so....

Third Joao trade maps only stricly above Pleased. Doubtful we can get him to Friendly in 2 turns, but... Better to hope for getting something out a CF from Shaka (is that doable ?)

Fourth, well there is no fourth for now, but I'll get one

 

[Xcalibrator]

I seem to be missing some of the discussion--on IM, I assume. So we're going to stop the war immediately after taking Ulundi and Nongoma? OK. From Rolo's check on what Shaka would offer for peace, we should get a nice deal (and let's remember to ask for his map).

I'm OK with the all-out-for-Oxford plan, but think we need to keep building units for awhile outside Yo. Figure out which city will be the slowest to finish its university and have the others build units (or other useful stuff) until they need to start. Yo should of course build its uni ASAP, but the others can wait since they provide such a small fraction of our total beakers.

I'm also with those who support HE in Hari. We'll get it a lot sooner there than in Ulundi, which should become a mongo wonder-building production center (eventually) with its abundant food, hammers, and river (for health and levee).

What's the research plan after Education? We can go for Liberalism, but I'd rather wait on that a bit so we can choose a more valuable tech as our reward. Going for Engineering via MC and Machinery has its attractions.

 

[r_rolo1]

Xc, it was already slightly discussed here about the feasibility of continuing a war vs shaka and what would we like to have before a permanent peace. It was proposed that we should atleast take Nongoma to have acess to trade routes with João, and that has been my working hipothesis ( peace or ceasefire after this 2 cities in our hands ). This is still not decided OFC ( given our lack of knowledge of what Zululand really looks like, how could we make that decision? ), but I do think that we need to make a pause after that, even to give our empire a break to rebuild the ex-zulu cities and to cut WW growth ( remember that we enter in a new era with Edu and that the WW rises with that )

P.S I would really like to take Steel out of lib

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Moai in uM seems like a good idea to me. HE in Hari as well, along with a big push for Oxford in Yo.

How many turns has rolo played? Perhaps he should play 5 turns so we can see if we have a GS before we make the next big plan?

 

[Niklas]

rolo has played 10 turns, 129-139, so it's time for someone else to take the wheel. Chris, have you got it?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Got it.

Can you post a version of the spreadsheet with 'paste values'?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Joao has a city just west of Ulundi. We won't need Nongoma to enable trade with Joao. Do we really need to capture Nongoma, or will Ulundi be sufficient?