SGOTM 10 - Xteam

[leif erikson]

The knight should be a certain winner. I'm thinking more about a possible counter attack after defeating the catapult, And about the time it will take before the knight is healed. But since he is faster than the WE he should have some healing time before the WE catches up. I guess it should be safe enough to attack the cat. Do we also risk our caravel at 16% chance of defeat?

Are you feeling lucky?

What is the downside to losing the Caravel? We have another in the area that can continue recon and watch for Barb Galleys? I'm inclined to attack to see if G will give up anything useful.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Yes, we could live with the loss I guess. On the other hand the potential gain may be small as well. Don't know what it takes to make the AI cough up a tech for peace but I suspect that since we haven't captured any cities the prospects are not too good. Either way would be OK with me. Let's see what CP prefers.

 

[Cactus Pete]

I'll have some time in about 5 hours.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Finally had time to look at save.

Think we can fairly safely attack the cat with the knight by subsequently moving both our WE and our explorer onto the ex-cat's tile.

Caravel is more problematic. Would opt to attack it and risk our own caravel only if we are also going to research Gunpowder to the bulbing point before we seek peace (which seems worthwhile to me).

Still like the idea of letting SP grow to 11 or 12 before whipping in order to keep 1 or 2 scientists running.

Note that we can put a settler and probably a worker in a galley and sail NW up the American coast and get to the western island chain. Not sure we want to settle so far from home (as I don't have a feel either for the maintenance cost involved [Could we create a colony and thereby save both maintenance and nuclear weapons' cost but gain resources?] or for the relative value of short-term maintenance expenses vs the long-term savings in weapons procurement), but should be discussed.

BTW, is there any effect on culture when you reduce a city's cultural defense by bombardment?

 

[leif erikson]

Caravel is more problematic. Would opt to attack it and risk our own caravel only if we are also going to research Gunpowder to the bulbing point before we seek peace (which seems worthwhile to me).

This is a good point I hadn't thought of. This reduces the value of Gunpowder and may make G more willing to give it for peace.

The downside is that it further delays our discovery of Printing Press and possible trade for Gunpowder.

Not convinced this is the way to go. We should be able to trade PP for GP as it is worth more beakers.

Note that we can put a settler and probably a worker in a galley and sail NW up the American coast and get to the western island chain. Not sure we want to settle so far from home (as I don't have a feel either for the maintenance cost involved [Could we create a colony and thereby save both maintenance and nuclear weapons' cost but gain resources?] or for the relative value of short-term maintenance expenses vs the long-term savings in weapons procurement), but should be discussed.

I don't think the colony will remain ours forever. It seems like we'll prolly have to take our own cities back with nukes later.

BTW, is there any effect on culture when you reduce a city's cultural defense by bombardment?

No, I don't think it reduces the cultural value within the city, nor of the surrounding tiles.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"It seems like we'll prolly have to take our own cities back with nukes later."

Please explain.

 

[leif erikson]

This game is being played with no Vassals and no Alliances. If we form a colony, will it not be independent? If so, then it is another leader that we will have to subdue for Conquest, and those cities we'll have to take the same way we take all the others,

 

[Cactus Pete]

Do we know that it will be independent?

 

[Frederiksberg]

Think we can fairly safely attack the cat with the knight by subsequently moving both our WE and our explorer onto the ex-cat's tile.

Let's do this.

Caravel is more problematic. Would opt to attack it and risk our own caravel only if we are also going to research Gunpowder to the bulbing point before we seek peace (which seems worthwhile to me).

After Gunpowder has come up for trade the plan has changed to trading for it using PP. And I guess it doesn't make sense to research Gunpowder to the bulbing point when we have no intention of bulbing anyway.

Still like the idea of letting SP grow to 11 or 12 before whipping in order to keep 1 or 2 scientists running.

St. Pete can grow even with 1-2 scientists hired. Remember that the last settler is planned in Fish City. This should allow St. Pete to grow a bit before we adopt Caste.

Note that we can put a settler and probably a worker in a galley and sail NW up the American coast and get to the western island chain. Not sure we want to settle so far from home (as I don't have a feel either for the maintenance cost involved [Could we create a colony and thereby save both maintenance and nuclear weapons' cost but gain resources?] or for the relative value of short-term maintenance expenses vs the long-term savings in weapons procurement), but should be discussed.

With vassals off colonies should be off as well since a colony is basically a vassal. Western (eastern?) islands are quite far away - particularly the spot with two fish and marble which is the only one that looks better than the places we are already considering.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Let's do this.

After Gunpowder has come up for trade the plan has changed to trading for it using PP. And I guess it doesn't make sense to research Gunpowder to the bulbing point when we have no intention of bulbing anyway. Guess not. Guess I haven't been keeping up.

St. Pete can grow even with 1-2 scientists hired. Remember that the last settler is planned in Fish City. This should allow St. Pete to grow a bit before we adopt Caste. Sounds good.

With vassals off colonies should be Do we know this? off as well since a colony is basically a vassal. Western (eastern?) islands are quite far away - particularly the spot with two fish and marble which is the only one that looks better than the places we are already considering.

Fine by me to continue playing.

 

[Mad Professor]

Catching up...

 

[Frederiksberg]

Fine by me to continue playing.

I will resume play tonight then and probably play until the next pair of settlers are done. This would allow us to revisit the discussion of where to settle the last two cities (I haven't ruled out the marble city yet though it may be too expensive).

If we can reach Communism fairly fast there may be several places that are still vacant for settling at the time when we can adopt State Property. If this situation presents itself we might consider switching back to slavery for a short while and whip out a bunch of settlers. We could also consider occupying the best spots with military units so that we can kill AI settlers - or perhaps rule the seas with Privateers trying to prevent the AI from settling any islands.

 

[Mad Professor]

or perhaps rule the seas with Privateers trying to prevent the AI from settling any islands.

As long as the settling parties are not accompanied by frigates They aren't usually though. The catch with Privateers is that we'll need our iron hooked up (and not given away), or copper connected, so no warrior MP's.

 

[leif erikson]

We gifted the Iron on turn 50. It is now turn 62, so we can cancel the deal whenever we feel the need.

If we settle on the Iron ice, we could gift that source away as well, if someone will take it, to build Warrior MP. Then we can cancel the deal with De Gaulle and have our Iron back when we need it.

EDIT - The road to Biology is also the road to Communism. Will need to trade for Liberalism to get there, if someone is kind enough to research it for us...

 

[Mad Professor]

This game is being played with no Vassals and no Alliances. If we form a colony, will it not be independent? If so, then it is another leader that we will have to subdue for Conquest, and those cities we'll have to take the same way we take all the others,

Can we even form a colony when there are no vassals allowed? There is certainly no problem with having overseas cities - it will be just like vanilla where there were no vassals either. It will just be that either we won't be able to liberate them to form a colony, or if we can ,then they will be independent straight away because they can't be our vassal. That would definitely be counter-productive!

 

[Mad Professor]

EDIT - The road to Biology is also the road to Communism. Will need to trade for Liberalism to get there, if someone is kind enough to research it for us...

I'm nervous about lengthening our road to fission. We should consider side steps from that beeline only if we see a way that it will shorten the war after fission more than it delays the arrival of fission. That includes considering the tech lead we have over the AI when reaching fission too. Nukes on our own territory will be more than just a little counter-productive, and so will be any AI building an SDI. I think the speed value of the conquest will be greatly enhanced by being the only nuclear power in the game. That means getting to fission a LONG time before the AI.

 

[leif erikson]

I'm having trouble seeing how Communism could be anything but a plus. With State Property, we eliminate distance maintenance, more gold for research. It provides plus 1 food for Workshops and Watermills, helping to increase our population so we can work more hammer sites, boosting gold production and research.

The question may be what it costs to get there. If the AI are slow to get Education and Liberalism, or refuse to trade them, then we will have a problem because we will go way off the beeline.

I think we should set the goal of getting to Communism quickly and play along and be flexible in how we find our way there.

 

[leif erikson]

sigh. Like an eternal optimist I downloaded BUG mod thinking I could just play that when I wasn't playing HoF.
I used the autoinstall option but now whenever I try and load up Buffy it loads BUG instead and say something like "BugCore - mod BUFFY not initialized, removing"
and there's no BUG mod in my Mods folder for me to delete and I there's no mod to "unload" before I try loading BUFFY.

I'm banging my head against the wall here.
I'd like to
a) just get rid of BUG completely again
or
b) be able to play with the BUG mod when I want and with the BUFFY mod when I want that.

Please help me, you're my only hope. and stuff.

PK,

I've been monitoring this on the HoF forum. How is your progress towards playing without crashes?

Hoping you can rejoin us soon.

 

[Frederiksberg]

I'm nervous about lengthening our road to fission. We should consider side steps from that beeline only if we see a way that it will shorten the war after fission more than it delays the arrival of fission.

I agree that we should carefully analyze the benefits of any tech outside the beeline (to nukes) before researching it. State Property is, however, huge and something we can hardly do without. No distance maintenance will provide lots of gold and the additional food for work shops and water mills will increase our hammer output significantly (and thus our ability to build wealth).

 

[Mad Professor]

I agree that we should carefully analyze the benefits of any tech outside the beeline (to nukes) before researching it. State Property is, however, huge and something we can hardly do without. No distance maintenance will provide lots of gold and the additional food for work shops and water mills will increase our hammer output significantly (and thus our ability to build wealth).

Point taken. Particularly that last bit in brackets. The 100% (plus modiefiers) that goes into this in BtS is something I'm still getting used to the power of.

Have we still got time to get Liberalism first? The thought of an expensive tech on our beeline free is tempting. The price of failing is more than just a little nuiscance though.

The question may be what it costs to get there. If the AI are slow to get Education and Liberalism, or refuse to trade them, then we will have a problem because we will go way off the beeline

Yes. The question exactly. The AI is usually slow to go for education, and not in a hurry to trade liberalism. That means if we want communism sooner rather than later, studying it ourselves becomes necessary, but that is way off the beeline... What to do?