SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

babybluepants · Nov 17, 2009

^ We'll be put out of our misery one way or the other in just a few short weeks.

mdy said:
We might just be able to salvage this situation but we will need to revolt to slavery immediatly and start mass whipping units in all our northern cities. A castle/temple are useless too us at this point. Muskets in St Pete/Moscow and elephants elsewhere. We might try sacrificing a fee workers to draw some of his forces away and buy a little time. I think we should also revolt to theocracy, this will all hurt our economy but the extra XP could be crucial.

You really think we can hold St. Pete? We'd need Gandhi to do something really stupid, like not use his trebs at all. 1-2 suicide attacks and our defenders are done... I'm wondering if we should just drop back to Moscow with everything we have right now. It obviously sucks to lose another city given the variant... There's also nothing left to settle, save for the silver. AI tech pace is pretty atrocious, so we might just be able to plug along with 5-6 cities.

We actually have Nat monopoly... I guess Taj is still available after all. :lol:

We could build it just for kicks...

RRRaskolnikov · Nov 17, 2009

I would not give up on St Pet! As mdy says I would go in slavery /theo (one turn of anarchy) and whip a few more troops. LBs are more efficient than muskets I think... one more phant would be usefull too.
Moscow can hire some scientists (best than engeener and foodless workshops with Oxford). Yaro should keep at least two scientists once we revolt, but I don't think merchants are good (unless we plan on another GA or a trade mission?). We can revolt back in caste/state property once we have communism. The galley near Novgorod is done I believe

(indian caravel can reach it ibt).

I would still switch now on scientific method (buulbing PP). We can trade the rest of astro later, but we have no use for it I believe (there is no way we can settle a city in the near future, even if sugar - sugar/fish- dye - crab/silver sites are still open).

I think we are still OK (sort of) if we can hold St pet...

edit: Moscow LB can reinforce St Pet in two turns moving on the hill...

babybluepants · Nov 18, 2009

Tech

I'd finish Astro. Roos would give us Econ+230g for Nat right now, but I hate giving it to only one AI. I suspect we won't have any trade partners other than him and Gandhi, though. Ideally, we buy peace for Nat and get a good trade with Roos... PP would be good to get though. I'd keep an eye out for anyone getting Nat or PP. Right now we should just keep the slider @ 0 for a bit anyway.

Gandhi

We have a couple of 7xp units in St. Pete now. I wonder if I should pull one out this turn, so it doesn't get killed next turn. It would be nice to at least get a HE unit this war. I might switch it out with the longbow from Moscow, which is CG and full-health, but it seems to have already moved once this turn and can't make it over 'till next unfortunately.

We have 6 units in St. Pete atm, all injured. He has 4 attack units, also hurt, but stronger, as well as 2 healthy Trebs. The Moscow LB can get there after another round of attacks, but we could be down to 2 defenders by then. With a turn of anarchy, we have to hold off 2 IBT's without new production. Gandhi's units should be injured, but he could have reinforcements. I'm mainly wondering if I should hold of on anarchy in order to get the new Musket out of Moscow, as the next couple of turns in St. Pete will be a close call... Anyway, I'm for an immediate switch, but I'm not sure how it's gonna play out.

Gandhi has 2 knights down by Rostov. I'm worried they'll head towards Moscow (3t).

mdy · Nov 18, 2009

I would be inclined to bulb printing press ans start scientific method straight away as well. If we revolt to theocracy as well as slavery we will need 2 turns of anarchy to switch to free market which we can't at the moment. Without free market astronomy is useless and a prnting press trade does not look very likely.

I think we need to revolt immediatly we are guaranteed to be able to hold St Pete for at least 2 turns but we need a lot of units ASAP if we are to hold it after that. One of our 7XP units is at 1.5 strength so that should survive next turn, I think we should keep it to preserve the defensive bonus and to heal.

We have 7 units in St Pete including the explorer. At T+1 this will probably be reduced to 3 units, if we move the longbow form Moscow and whip a musket immediatly in St Pete we should have 5 units. A second whipped musket in St Pete, the Musket from Moscow and another from Yektarinburg should arrive the next turn. This is the 1 point where we are in danger of losing the city as we will have up to 4 units and we will only have 3 so we will lose the city if we don't win at least 1 battle. The next turn we should get 4 units with whipping in all cities so we should be safe at this point. If we can get good odds on an attack at some point I would take it as our odds of winning that 1 battle than we would on the defence.

The 2 knights S of Lodon are damaged so hopefully they will retreat to heal before coming after us.

shyuhe · Nov 18, 2009

I'll be out of town for the next week and half so it'll be up to you guys in the meantime

I'll post but I can't see saves.

RRRaskolnikov · Nov 18, 2009

shyuhe said:
I'll be out of town for the next week and half so it'll be up to you guys in the meantime I'll post but I can't see saves.

Either the barbs will get ride of us, either we'll have to play two turnsets a day in the last week :lol:

We will try to hold waiting for your return! :salute:

babybluepants · Nov 18, 2009

mdy said:
I would be inclined to bulb printing press ans start scientific method straight away as well. If we revolt to theocracy as well as slavery we will need 2 turns of anarchy to switch to free market which we can't at the moment. Without free market astronomy is useless and a prnting press trade does not look very likely.

Well, I'll go with team consensus, but I don't see the big rush to use a GS. Even if it's true that we can't get it in a trade later, it's not like we can tech to Comm just yet. If it's a matter of putting our spare beakers at 0% into something, I'm cool with doing PP to within a bulb for now.

mdy said:
I think we need to revolt immediatly we are guaranteed to be able to hold St Pete for at least 2 turns but we need a lot of units ASAP if we are to hold it after that. One of our 7XP units is at 1.5 strength so that should survive next turn, I think we should keep it to preserve the defensive bonus and to heal.

That sounds ok except that, for all I know, a treb suicide or two could put that 1.5 LB ahead of the 2.7's this IBT. Whichever of our LB's gets hit here is dead, so it might as well be the lower promo, I'm thinking.

mdy said:
The 2 knights S of Lodon are damaged so hopefully they will retreat to heal before coming after us..

Totally missed the injury. That's fine.

We get through this war, should we rush a settler to silver immediately? Moscow won't have anything too pressing to build then. We're left with very little land. Gandhi already got sugar, and I think we can just forget about western islands, even if there's anything left there atm.

RRRas, chime in if you have anything, and I could play tonight.

mdy · Nov 18, 2009

I'm cool with doing PP to within a bulb for now.

I think we can bulb all of printing press now.

RRRaskolnikov · Nov 18, 2009

@BBP: Gandhi hasn't sugar at all for now... he will prolly have it when we have a settler ready, but you shouldn't consider a resource that u can settle in the frist ring as "lost".

Anyway, I think you should play till the end of the war, we'll have to adjust builds and civics by then and might need a bit of discussion...

Communism: no point in delaying that. I would still bulb PP now (as mdy says, we can bulb the whole of it immediately) and start on SM. Once the war is over, we should keep on grabbin the land which is left, it's likely we won't have hammers to build observatories anyway (observatories which are only efficient in our specialists cities - Yaro and Moscow). After Communism, I would rush toward either AL (factories - will double science when ubilding it in shops cities), or biology.

good luck for your turns

maybe the RNG will be with us for once)

babybluepants · Nov 18, 2009

I don't like AL - it's not essential with the variant, and the upper half of the tree is much easier to acquire by trade later. Bio and then the Fission line is what I would do. I would think getting to nukes faster (and Gandhi's cities) beats early factories. We can discuss this later, though...

I wasn't saying I wanna delay Comm, just that we need some cash first, and I prefer holding GS's to see what the AI's end up with while saving up at 0% slider... Since you guys are both for an immediate bulb - I'll do that.

End of war it is............

shyuhe · Nov 18, 2009

Early nukes is better than AL. We can whip nukes and charge in with cavalry. I don't think we can bulb PP in its entirety, but can definitely put 0% slider into it. I don't think there's much commerce going around right now though. We will probably need to hire some merchants soon instead of scientists.

babybluepants · Nov 18, 2009

^ We are very low on gpt. Going out of Pac should reduce the unit maintenance a bit... We won't be able to run merchants once in slavery. We can review after this turnset.

babybluepants · Nov 19, 2009

Bloody hell! That was stressful. I needed a BIG glass of scotch and a pile of cigarettes while playing.

We're still at war, but I think I played 2-3t too many. We were down to just explorer at 2t, and one elephant at strength 0.4 after 3t. Lost every bloody battle, as he brought in 4 more siege units the second turn. There was another barb galley, and I took it out at 70% odds - I had to, as Moscow was undefended and the 2 southern knights started moving, too. Got a GG and joined it in Moscow.

I bulbed PP immediately, switched to to slavery/theocracy and whipped like mad everywhere. Stacked a lot of unhappiness now. Bulbed SM immediately, too. One GS remaining.

The save's uploaded. It's 1754 AD now (I played 9 turns), we're 2t from SM @ 30% slider. Mao's got Astro and Churchill has GP now. Roosevelt still has 270g and still offers that + Econ for Nat.

Gandhi's finally willing to talk now, but wants St. Pete for peace. He has no more units at St. Pete. One elephant retreated, the two units are just hanging out by Novgorod and not moving. The two knights are just hanging around Rostov. Another barb galley just showed up, but our trireme is 1t from full health and has combat now. BTW, why the **** are they not attacking Rostov now?! Coming straight for Moscow.

I decided to stop here for more discussion. I'm building harbors and courthouses everywhere, and settler in Moscow (it was about to start hammer decay). My micro was bloody awful, so have at it.

We're ok for defenders now. I think we should consider switching civics back now. Gandhi isn't threatening us anymore, and our cities are in shambles. The only reason Roosevelt likes us is Mercantilism, so I would consider taking some trades with him, while we still can.

Log:

Spoiler :

Screenshots to follow...

I could play another mini-set or hand off to mdy. Won't be able to play the next couple of nights, though. If you're taking over, beware, 'cause it's a mess now.

RRRaskolnikov · Nov 19, 2009

Looks good... You did a nice job holding!

I have a question about rules: only way to see if Gandhi will make peace for gold is to test it... Can we do that without it being considering as cheating? I would like to see if he buys peace for 70 gold or even less... maybe it's wiser to PM AlanH?

mdy · Nov 19, 2009

Good job on holding St Pete.

offering Gandhi gold for peace would be an irreversible change if he accepted so we would have to go through with it. I would prefer we used the gold for deficit research and traded him a useless tech like liberalism.

I agree with revolting back to caste system/pacifism.

I also think we should go for nukes before AL to give us the possibility of taking cities.

Given our trade route situation I doubt harbors will give us any extra gold. Markets/Grocers/Banks/Courthouses would be more useful.

babybluepants · Nov 19, 2009

This is the second turn he's wanted to talk. First turn I offered him Nat, and he rejected. This turn, he was willing to take St. Pete. We don't exactly have gold to offer, and we need it bad. I would think it's irreversible if we try offering something, RRRas.

RRRaskolnikov · Nov 19, 2009

@BBP: yeah, that's why I asked if this was allowed, but that was prolly a dumb question... it is not I bet

I will have another look at the save after work, but I like mdy idea of gifting a crap tech. We need peace for now.

OT: There are 90% chances I won't have web access from friday to monday included. I will keep you posted before leaving

babybluepants · Nov 19, 2009

Harbors might have been a bad choice. I usually build them asap in coastal cities. They are cheap to build and we can use health in some cities and routes will open up eventually - with comm + astro. Pacifism will cost us some in unit maintenance, but should be almost evened out by less civic maintenance. We're really strapped for cash now. I would like to take Roosevelt's cash, and start building wealth where possible to get us to comm.

As for Gandhi, I would try offering him tech(s) next turn.

I think we should complete the settler now. We have some defenders, so settling silver is quite doable.

I just remembered that Gandhi had LB + 2 knights in Rostov and I had nothing in Moscow when the first barb galley showed up. Now he has 2 units and I have some, so maybe barb incursions will skip us from here on. Here's hoping...

mdy, do you wanna play now, or should I continue?

BTW, what did the fans do? Or, are you talking about the handball? That was pretty ridiculous. Not that I care, since my team (Serbia) is already qualified - at French expense, no less.

RRRaskolnikov · Nov 19, 2009

Warning... OT

babybluepants said:
BTW, what did the fans do? Or, are you talking about the handball? That was pretty ridiculous. Not that I care, since my team (Serbia) is already qualified - at French expense, no less.

French soccer national team qualified to the world cup against Ireland cheating (assist from Henry with the help of... his hand)... that's a complete shame. Like irish people, I wish the match could be played again for fair-play spirit. Due to economical/political considerations, I am afraid that won't happen :rolleyes:

Most french people loving soccer/sport are ashamed today...

Will comment on the rest later, I don't have time to look at it properly now

babybluepants · Nov 19, 2009

OT: When I was growing up, our universal football motto was: if you can get away with it, DO IT. Granted, that was in dirty southeastern Europe.

Still, I can't believe the referee missed Henry's handball - it was so blatant.

On topic now: I just realized we only have 2 1/2 weeks left... I think we should try and get through comm this weekend.

SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

Deity

Goldfish

Deity

Emperor

Deity

Goldfish

Deity

Emperor

Goldfish

Deity

Deity

Deity

Deity

Goldfish

Emperor

Deity

Goldfish

Deity

Goldfish

Deity

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