SGOTM 10 - One Short Straw

[shyuhe]

We definitely stopped caring after we (I) lost Rostov At least I did...

We definitely could have warred much more efficiently, but after my barb fumble and the Gandhi dow, I don't think any of us thought we had a realistic shot at medaling. On the upside, I think we did a very good early game and midgame (until fumbling). So hopefully we can build on this!

In the future, we definitely need to scout more I think. We may have been able to avoid pacifism if we had settled Moscow in the original spot and built an early NE. In retrospect, we didn't need all the GP that we produced. Perhaps we need to do some spreadsheet math next time. Any volunteers?

Our late game warring definitely could have been sped up but I think we all had fun nuking the AI for retribution anyways

Soooo, now that we're on break for about a month (at least), do we want to play a casual SG in a search for new players? I'm thinking a quick speed conquest on immortal (or emperor).

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Soooo, now that we're on break for about a month (at least), do we want to play a casual SG in a search for new players? I'm thinking a quick speed conquest on immortal (or emperor).

So much for a break Well I am OK for a team training... thoughI am not sure to have internet connection near Christmas...

 

[babybluepants]

Soooo, now that we're on break for about a month (at least), do we want to play a casual SG in a search for new players? I'm thinking a quick speed conquest on immortal (or emperor).

When you mentioned a casual SG the other day, my first thought was quick-speed conquest on immortal would be fun...

Honestly, I think our biggest mistake was letting Gandhi develop. At the point of the initial worker steal, I was expecting to go for an aggressive choke, but it somehow just petered out. The task of building military units seemed daunting at the time, but in retrospect, it seems kinda laughable. Losing Rostov actually didn't slow us down as much as the Gandhi war, I feel.

 

[shyuhe]

^Probably right. We really should have just parked some LB next to Gandhi to discourage settlers from wandering out. Looking at the other games though, it looks like almost everyone got a Gandhi dow at some point. So I think we just needed to find a better way to fend against it.

I'll start up something in the regular SG forum.

 

[mdy]

I agree that our biggest mistake was not choking Gandhi effectively. If we had we would have had far fewer cities to take. Even with this failure we might have had a shot at the bronze if it wasn't for bad luck with the barbs and Gandhi's declaration of war.

 

[babybluepants]

Just for interest, LowtherCastle posted this in the Gypsy Kings thread:

klarius realized early on that the barbs would sent galleys full of attackers. We had a couple of eastern cities that were vulnerable to this. We spent a lot of posts resolving how to deal with this danger, because we wanted to avoid building land units if possible and klarius finally figured out we could block the barb galleys from even entering our waters like this:

Spoiler :

All we needed was two galleys/triremes/caravels. This also allowed us to freely develop our civ without worrying about stronger garrisons for these coastal cities.

 

[shyuhe]

Wow that's pretty ingenious.

 

[kcd_swede]

Wow that's pretty ingenious.

How does that work? In my own games, barbs generally decide to attack my galleys with theirs if they even see them. If I use a trireme the barbs send 2 galleys and attack it. Caravel might work, can't recall.

So what makes this work for them but not for me, generally speaking. Does the blocking have to be in neutral territory or something like that?

 

[bestsss]

^If the galleys are w/ AI_ATTACK_SEA they will attack, however since they are AI_ASSAULT_SEA (i.e transport).
The spawned barbs are not transport but produced ones are.

If they are in a city and loaded they will skip the turn, if the city is in danger (i.e. enemy units nearby). That results into unloading the troops.
Next time the troops are loaded again and the check about danger is performed and the same.

 

[kcd_swede]

^If the galleys are w/ AI_ATTACK_SEA they will attack, however since they are AI_ASSAULT_SEA (i.e transport).
The spawned barbs are not transport but produced ones are.

If they are in a city and loaded they will skip the turn, if the city is in danger (i.e. enemy units nearby). That results into unloading the troops.
Next time the troops are loaded again and the check about danger is performed and the same.

That makes sense. Its pretty amazing how there are advantages to be gained in even the smallest of details.

 

[Erkon]

^If the galleys are w/ AI_ATTACK_SEA they will attack, however since they are AI_ASSAULT_SEA (i.e transport).
The spawned barbs are not transport but produced ones are.

If they are in a city and loaded they will skip the turn, if the city is in danger (i.e. enemy units nearby). That results into unloading the troops.
Next time the troops are loaded again and the check about danger is performed and the same.

I think that in this case, the galleys were not in port, but en route to invade our island. But when we put a boat on that blocking tile, there was no longer any route so they boats returned. Then when we blocked the other tile, the boat came back. We had three barb galleys doing this thing every pair of turns. Lost at sea for 100 years Then we killed them with privateers to get XP

 

[bestsss]

Yes, transports dont attack, if you were very unlucky and spawned barb galley was nearby they could joined the group, though, and break through.. Need some unfogged coast tiles, though.

 

[Erkon]

Yes, transports dont attack, if you were very unlucky and spawned barb galley was nearby they could joined the group, though, and break through.. Need some unfogged coast tiles, though.

I think we came to the conclusion that it was not possible for barb galleys to spawn on the west coast of the barb continent. Don't remember the details though

 

[culdeus]

I think we came to the conclusion that it was not possible for barb galleys to spawn on the west coast of the barb continent. Don't remember the details though

Perhaps barb galleys won't spawn if there are barb cities near enough? Seems to be my experience.

 

[Yamps]

^2 tile fog-busting rule applies for barb units as well, so a galley indeed won't spawn near a barb city

 

[bestsss]

this is what i meant by: "Need some unfogged coast tiles", if barbs fogbust, nothing extra spawns.

 

[Soirana]

Congragulations on finish.

 

[classical_hero]

I agree that our biggest mistake was not choking Gandhi effectively. If we had we would have had far fewer cities to take. Even with this failure we might have had a shot at the bronze if it wasn't for bad luck with the barbs and Gandhi's declaration of war.

We had to conqueror something like 17 cities belonging to Gandhi, yet we managed to survive. I think it might have worked in our favour of having a larger Gandhi, since it meant that he would not declare war with us, thus we were safe against that threat. Realistically the only nation that was militarily a threat to us was China, but they did not even lean Astro so they were not a threat to us, but them and France did manage to make it some what easier for us, since we had one less civilisation to try and conqueror.

 

[babybluepants]

@Soirana, thx. We're starting a more relaxed game (quick-speed immortal conquest) in the regular SG forum, in case you change your mind about team play.

@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.

@Team, some thoughts on the game:
I compared openings with desert hill / in-place teams, and it looks like we expanded pretty well. Our first six cities are on roughly the same dates as XTeam (though we had already lost one of them ). It's impossible to compare with MW, since their game is just plain better all around, but I think our initial tactics and tech path were valid. In particular, I think our initial city locations were very sound. Despite not using slavery, we were behind only MW (by a lot), in terms of putting 5 cities down. This is because the desert hill capital didn't have the chopping power ours did, I think. Part of the reason our city locations didn't hold more of an edge, is that the north fish site ended up having 2 extra fish (which, tbh, could have been expected), which made it a great city despite overlap with in-place. IIRC, a major reason I liked our city locations initially was to have 3 good cities instead of 2. Letting Gandhi go was a big mistake, though. Seems other teams managed to claim the Vijayanagara spot and really squeeze him in. In retrospect, we may have also rushed to the Novgorod site too much, as we already gave up the Vija site, and knew Gandhi would settle there next. In fact in another game (US maybe?), he didn't even settle Novgorod after they took away Vija. Yaroslavl' first might have been better, to get a faster payoff on all the specialists.

Hard to compare past the loss of Rostov, since I figure we would have expanded onto islands starting with the Yekaterinburg settler and continued with further expansion, and would have been somewhat faster to Oxford and later techs as a consequence. I'm wondering if our tech path (Lib Const - rush Oxford - bulb to Comm) was any good. Communism is the real landfall, I feel - so rushing straight to it probably beats early Rep, as MW demonstrated (though Libbing it like they did is quite a stretch)? Seems some other Lib dates were slower, so a SM sling followed by Communism might work better? It's a bit bizarre that we made such a big deal of rushing to Constitution, and then whipped away all our specialists the moment we adopted Rep. Maybe there was no need for Rep until about 1700 AD, when we had our cities fully grown with infrastructure up.

We got to Rocketry ahead of both US and Smurkz, but later than WD and Misfits - go figure. There were some major (in)efficiencies in how different teams played the war phase. Honestly, we didn't have a plan for the war even as we were playing through it, let alone in advance of Rocketry.

I still think the obvious major mistake was not dealing with others: Gandhi, barbs and other AI's. We seemed to think that the initial slowdown of Gandhi was enough (maybe it would've been but for the loss of Rostov, as we might have subsequently beat him to the western islands), and we probably got too comfy re: barbs because of the landmass being so effectively spawnbusted by us and Gandhi. IIRC, prior to the galley that took Rostov, we only saw a couple of barb warriors and one axe - giving a false sense of security? Our original test map had a large isolated landmass, whereas the actual game had an easy to spawn-bust landmass + a developed barb continent, so very different feel.

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?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

@Soirana: tx...

Nice analysis BBP

It's a bit bizarre that we made such a big deal of rushing to Constitution, and then whipped away all our specialists the moment we adopted Rep. Maybe there was no need for Rep until about 1700 AD, when we had our cities fully grown with infrastructure up.

I agree about that, we screw early conception of the game. Most of it consisted in growing cities and rexing so beelining straight to communism was the good idea as u said.
Then we failed to see how whipping with Kremlin would be enough (no need for factories) to produce all we need. LowtherCastle made an excellent post about this in the results thread. (@ Shyuhe: I feel really guilty about this as we did two SGs to show the power of Kremlin assisted slavery )
Finally, I am still not convinced about the usefullness of our capital location compared to "in-place". As you said, rushing to Novgorod wasn't prolly the best idea better... oh well At least we had fun

edit: agree about the need of an official captain... I vote for either Shyuhe or mdy