SGOTM 10 - Xteam

[Cactus Pete]

Looked at save and liked what I saw.

Do you have any concerns about what might be in the fog around York? There is a wounded frigate available to give a bit of protection to our galleon in that area.

Looks like you are counting on three-move cossacks to sack Bombay. Are you sure that foreign culture doesn't make a fallout tile cost three turns? Would it do that for a forest?

 

[leif erikson]

Looked at save and liked what I saw.

I like it as well.

I can see why we will have to double-nuke the Indian cities, not many units about.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Mad Professor]

Came home a bit later than anticipated so only two turns are done. Everything according to plan (9 cities captured).

Oh yeah. Kick butt, Fred.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Do you have any concerns about what might be in the fog around York? There is a wounded frigate available to give a bit of protection to our galleon in that area.

Perhaps I can take a look with an air ship. Wasn't any ships there 2 turns ago.

Looks like you are counting on three-move cossacks to sack Bombay. Are you sure that foreign culture doesn't make a fallout tile cost three turns? Would it do that for a forest?

Yes, the GG will mobility promote the Cossacks waiting south of St. Pete. I tested that this gives them the ability to pass the fall out. If only we thought of this earlier... Hastings is still a bottleneck and if the two access tiles are blocked by fall out it's likely to take 3 turns to finish the game as opposed to 2 turns if everything goes well. There is also some chance of counter attacks on our Cossack stack advancing on Hastings and wandering units that escape our nuke blasts could also cause delay if they manage to help defend Hastings.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Like your odds for success.

Good luck.

 

[leif erikson]

Happy Hunting Fred, and Good Luck!

 

[Frederiksberg]

The deed is done .

Everything went according to plan and the last 7 cities fell in two turns.

Here is the save:

Conquest Victory for Stalin

Highlights:

T192 Nuke and capture Orleans, Marseilles, Canterbury (ICBM). Nuke Nottingham (ICBM) and it turns out that access to the city is blocked by fall out so have to advance Cossacks in two turns.
T193 Nuke and capture Lyons, Newcastle, Warwick. Double nuke and capture Coventry (D), Rheims (D). Capture Nottingham. The Chinese are gone. No losses and no counter attacks so far.
T194 Nuke and capture Chartres. The French are gone. Double nuke and capture York(D), London(D). It turns out that we can advance Cossacks not only from Nottingham but also from London so that they are in striking range of Hastings. This gives us 3 tiles for attacking.
T195 Double nuke and capture Delhi(D), Bombay(D), Vijayanagara(D). Nuke Hastings once. We are lucky that one tile is unaffected by fall out. I use the 2nd nuke on a tile adjacent to the city such that the fall out free tile is protected from fall out from 2nd nuke while still retaining the deadly effect on the city defenders. Hastings is captured and the game is over

The Indians and English were eliminated last turn. Thats a one civ per turn rate of elimination

 

[leif erikson]

The deed is done .

Everything went according to plan and the last 7 cities fell in two turns.

The Indians and English were eliminated last turn. Thats a one civ per turn rate of elimination

Excellent work Fred!!


Great game XTeam!!

Alan posted that he would not be posting congratulatory messages in threads because so many people look for them to know when a team has finished.

We can now go and view other team threads. Please do not post in those threads until the team has completed their game. Also, posting will show others that we have finished, so perhaps we should hold back for a few more days?

 

[Cactus Pete]

Spectacular finish, Fred.

Please explain how this cleverness works: "I use the 2nd nuke on a tile adjacent to the city such that the fall out free tile is protected from fall out from 2nd nuke while still retaining the deadly effect on the city defenders."

Well done, X-team. Looking forward to learning what the other teams did but will refrain as per leif's warning.

 

[DJMGator13]

Well done everyone.

 

[leif erikson]

Please explain how this cleverness works: "I use the 2nd nuke on a tile adjacent to the city such that the fall out free tile is protected from fall out from 2nd nuke while still retaining the deadly effect on the city defenders."

When a nuke lands, it affects 9-tiles; the tile it lands in and the eight which surround it. Once Fred hit the city with the nuke, he was free to land the second one wherever he wished. Let's say the tile free of fallout is east of the city. If he lands the nuke 1-tile west of the city, its blast effects the city's defenders but the eastern tile, next to the city, is unaffected.

I'm not sure what the fallout rules are, but if fallout can only occur in the 9-tiles affected by the blast, then the tile located east of the city should remain free of fallout.

Hope that is clearer than mud?

 

[Cactus Pete]

So a nuke has the same effect whether it lands in the city or next to it, or is this only true after an initial nuke has hit the city?

 

[leif erikson]

It has, essentially, the same effect. As I understand it, the requirement for hitting the city comes from the need for the event to be logged, and that only happens if the nuke lands on the city tile, for verification by the Staff that we nuked the city before we took it. Once we hit it (and it was logged), it doesn't matter where the second nuke landed.

 

[Mad Professor]

Well done Fred.

It has, essentially, the same effect. As I understand it, the requirement for hitting the city comes from the need for the event to be logged, and that only happens if the nuke lands on the city tile, for verification by the Staff that we nuked the city before we took it. Once we hit it (and it was logged), it doesn't matter where the second nuke landed.

This is exactly it. Landing next the city has exactly the dame effect for damage on units. It's just the logging of the strike on the city.

 

[Mad Professor]

Just had a quick look at some saves. Apart from the Russians who don't seem to have any hope of finishing in time, only OSS and MW have not already past our finish date. OSS have not started war and have let the AI's settle 54 cities (obviously they didn't concentrate on reducing AI settling like we did)

MW have quite a bit of play left to do (they have not started war yet either, indeed they are still 6 turns from Rocketry) but if they finish in time they will certainly finish at an earlier date than us. They seem to have done even better than us on restricting AI settling, and their tech rate has been very impressive. If they conduct war anywhere near as well as us, they will finish at an earlier date fairly comfortably. The only question that remains is whether they will get the game done in time before the deadline.

Looks like the silver is ours, and if MW don't finish before the dealine we might even get gold. That is of course, unless the Russians have been playing but not posting saves at the progress site?

Edit: From the way Chokonuts were going I thought they weren't going to make it, but it looks like they will win, and get it in before the deadline. They'll have a 21st century finish though...

Hmm - Trash Team couldn't win even if there was no deadline. They're in trouble. Interestingly, I'm seeing in a couple of games that the French attacked and captured the barbarian continent. That makes the road to conquest longer of course.

 

[Mad Professor]

OSS have now started war but are in trouble. We did it way, way better. Let me just pat the chief planners and war players on the back for a fantastic effort in that area! Oh - and OSS have passed our finish date now. Only MW and the Russians have not.

 

[Yamps]

Congrats on a great game!

MW settled their second city where most teams had Bombay and blocked a lot of land. I'm half through their saves, it's early REX with crippling Gandhi that pulled them ahead. Looking forward to your saves as well!

Now off to see what OSS and Smurkz are doing...

 

[Mad Professor]

Congrats on a great game!

MW settled their second city where most teams had Bombay and blocked a lot of land. I'm half through their saves, it's early REX with crippling Gandhi that pulled them ahead. Looking forward to your saves as well!

Now off to see what OSS and Smurkz are doing...

We also put effort into crippling Gandhi - and were largely successful - he never got more than three cities And our early REX was also good. I haven't looked closely at MW's yet, but a quick glance seems to indicate that they did that better than we did.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Thanks!

I suspected that MW had managed to settle in the "Bombay" spot because it was the only explanation for their early score lead. This is of course game breaking not only because this spot is great compared to the other available city sites but also because it blocks off Indian culture and opens up more land for other cities east and south of "Bombay". So basically we were out of the competition for gold after 4 turns or so .

We did make other mistakes likes loosing a city to a barb attack, and maybe more important failing to start building the Manhattan Project soon enough. This meant that research was going faster than we needed. In retrospect it also unclear if we really needed Fascism - perhaps the turns spent researching Assembly Line + Fascism couldn't be fully recovered by having less WW problems and increased unit production. Still, our lack of coordinating Manhattan means that adding this extra research meant nothing in the game but it could have done with better planning of Manhattan.

I hope you win the Bronze Both OSS and Smurkz have won laurels before so it would be nice to see a new team getting the glory

 

[Yamps]

Thanks for good wishes!

We settled our first 2 cities like you did iirc from your save, I had a look a couple of days ago. (Moscow 1S from gold and St Pete on spot) In hindsight, the settler that went for gold should have made a twist towards Gandhi. Also, we chose Serfdom and our REX wasn't that good...What did pull us ahead compared to many teams was the Kremlin whip, everything was farmed in the end and nukes whipped practically instantly from our 12 cities scattered around the map. (Biology grassland farm was like a 2 food 4 hammer tile or higher even in large cities, better than a 2 food 3 hammer workshop. We were doing 4 pop nuke whips, unhappiness wasn't really a problem.) Then we did the same to Gandhi's 18 (! ) cities and everything went down quickly enough. You can find my summary here and some additional comments a few posts after that: Unusual Suspects summary

We didn't use Assembly line and Military Science, although we did use Radio and Ecology. What were you doing, using ICBMs and then tactical nukes from different directions? In our game Gandhi settled most islands with galleys and then some later on with Galleons, I'm guessing your islands were pretty much clear from AI.