SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

[RRRaskolnikov]

Another thing: We truly failed to consider privateers as a way to keep AIs down what were we thinking

 

[LowtherCastle]

@classical_hero
Gandhi had close to 20 cities in our game... How do you figure you were safe from having him large? I did see LC's comment in another thread, but I'd rather have a 4-city Gandhi declare on me, than a 20-city one.

I'd have to find klarius' explanation in our thread, but I don't think we're talking 20 cities, but rather a jump from something like 2 cities to 4 to drastically lower the likelihood of a DoW. But for us, the point was not how to avoid G's DoW on us, it was knowing that we wanted to beat him to it. If we DoW him, he'll consider peace in 6t or less (3t if you capture 6t/2UnitsWkrs; 2t if you capture 6t/3UnitsWkrs, etc.). If he DoWs us, it's 12t. We wanted to control our destiny.

It's impossible to compare with MW, since their game is just plain better all around

These kinds words forced me to look at your replay and some saves... . I'm not klarius and you haven't asked for my comments, but I'll share them anyway...

Settling
I like your choice of settling. Your capital location is probably the best long-term choice in the game (though, in retrospect, weaker than in-place simply because this game didn't need to go so long and the uberchops were decisive). This enabled you to settle the second-best location on the map, the 5-seafood GP farm, which we couldn't do. So in one sense you guys had the best set-up. Your ivory location also gave you a powerful counter to G's culture creep. An early theater here would have been another option for you. Settling Novgorod third is interesting. I think my teammates might question that. I kind of like it, because it's so powerful. I'm unsure about your choice of settling the horses to include the fish rather than where others did. You avoided G's culture, but gave yourself a weaker city, if you're interested in settling on the southern iron. The southern iron, imo, is far superior to Yekaterinburg, which is semi-useless once you have another source of iron. Grabbing G's Viagra iron would also be another high-value goal for you, obviously.

Some strategy details
This is in addition to comments you guys have made.
1) Exploration to meet AIs quickly is often critical. You should have gotten the explorer on the caravel immediately and met all those AIs. It appears you focused on circumnavigation, which is also important.
2) Following up on 1), think about fake wars early on. If you run the Replay Tool comparing MW and Xteam, pay attention to how Roosy and Mao start expanding on the Xteam map. We had them at war instead.
3) On stopping Gandhi from settling Viagra in your game. If you run the replay tool comparing you and Xteam, Gandhi doesn't even settle Viagra !?! Why not? Bad luck? I doubt it, but I'm guessing that Xteam kept Gandhi hung up with more warring. In any case, my suggestion is to do what we did: use the info you can get from the Espionage screen about what the AIs are building in their cities. In this game, settlers cost so much, it was easy to see when and where Gandhi was building a settler, and how close he was to completion. This helps you decide when to DoW him again, grab some more workers, and in your case, prevent G from settling Viagra.

Losing the horses was devastating and for any team that didn't realize that Gyathaar had planted that evil trap nearby, this was almost inevitable. That was a huge bummer and you guys played under a killer handicap. If you hadn't lost that city, I think you would have competed for top honors and it's unfortunate too, because I'm really curious if your tech strategy (same as CFR's) was better than ours.

 

[Erkon]

I think that three cities drastically reduced the chance for a DoW.

Also, I think that Gandhi was prepared to talk after one turn when I had killed his War Elephant, Great Artist and stolen a Free Worker

Anyway, us declaring on Gandhi was mandatory, since we didn't want a DoW when we started the GA, since we were afraid that he would send his caravel towards the fish at the north coast. I tried to argue with klarius that we should not declare, but he was absolutely convinced that we needed to declare very soon. I didn't push my opinion, as usual, which is a key reason why Team Murky Waters perform well

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Interesting precisions guys... tx!
I didn't know there are different "time to talk after a dow" weither you are the attacker or not...

 

[bestsss]

btw, caravels cant pillage (<bPillage>0</bPillage>). AI needs trireme for this. Non-barb galleys practically dont pillage either since they are w/ transports AI. (ASSAULT_SEA | SETTLER_SEA)

 

[babybluepants]

Another thing: We truly failed to consider privateers as a way to keep AIs down what were we thinking

Yeah, this was shocking to me when I looked at the MW and X threads. I can't believe we had such a blind spot in our game. Never even talked about restricting AI expansion.

@LC, Tx for the long reply.

The southern iron, imo, is far superior to Yekaterinburg, which is semi-useless once you have another source of iron. Grabbing G's Viagra iron would also be another high-value goal for you, obviously.

Yekaterinburg was meant to be infill much, much later. We settled it so we can rush Oxford immediately, after losing Rostov. Didn't feel confident settling southern iron until we can build up some more barb defence, and that would have delayed Oxford for quite some time. Again, this is where we could have used better knowledge of likely barb actions.

If you run the replay tool comparing you and Xteam, Gandhi doesn't even settle Viagra !?! Why not? Bad luck? I doubt it, but I'm guessing that Xteam kept Gandhi hung up with more warring.

Yes, that's what I meant - XTeam stayed at war in this phase. We knew that site was getting settled, but resigned ourselves to it initially. We really half-assed our strategy for dealing with Gandhi. I think RRRaskolnikov played a set, where he decided to settle Vija after all, but it was too late.

 

[shyuhe]

Thanks for the great analysis LC. I agree with most of your points.

As for our representation use - the problem was that we also got hit with Gandhi's dow a little after that and whipped away lots of potential rep scientists. I may try playing this game later on my own to see if I can do better using our settling pattern with more aggressive chopping (and better Gandhi management).

The privateer issue... well we just weren't open minded enough to realize it We did discuss trying to plant cities on the main continent to stop expansion but that discussion never really took off. I think we found ourselves hammer limited at that point.

We should have thought about fake wars to butter up AI but we never seriously considered getting any of the AI to friendly so it didn't occur to us That was probably a mistake since Roos is doable given the civics, as MW showed.

 

[shyuhe]

Re: team play - I think we need a merciless team captain. Someone needs to crack the whip and keep us to a reasonable schedule in the future. shyuhe?

@Soirana - thanks Your initial analysis and ideas were really helpful

 

[mdy]

I think a lot of our sloppy late game play (e.g. not thinking about privateers) can be put down to poor time management. We spent too long on the early turns so we had to rush through through the last few sets with minimal discussion.