SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Mitchum]

Just a question, do both Isabella and Zara have enough diplo points to vote for us for a diplo victory? Did we finish up managing to convert Izzy to Buddhism? They might prefer us to Toku, but the cutoff for voting is higher for the diplo victory and we don't want them to abstain.

It sounds like Justinian's vote is safe enough, Toku as second in population is under control, and the game conditions seem to be under control too, so these two seem to me like the biggest variables left. Although maybe they're under control too.

Everyone is friendly with us but Mehmed, so I believe that we are beyond the threshold at which point an AI will vote for us.

 

[Irgy]

Ok, that's good then, we just need to keep an eye on whether they drop out of Friendly. I assume Zara hasn't maxed out the different-religion dislike yet for instance, or we might have to refuse a demand from him to switch religions.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I assume Zara hasn't maxed out the different-religion dislike yet

Without looking at the game, I can confirm that Zara long ago maxed out his dislike for us for running a different State Religion.

we might have to refuse a demand from him to switch religions.

That situation would be a possibility. We'll just have to hope that his tendency to almost constantly Demand techs will outweigh any negative modifier for us refusing to switch to his Religion.

 

[Mitchum]

Game Over!!

Everything went according to plan. The last three great people landed on the Fur with one turn to spare. I captured Konya and decided to keep it for the extra pops. It already had Buddhism, so there was no risk there. I did NOT settle Whales. I was about to just before the vote, but luckily I realized that I didn't have a Buddhist missionary prepared, so I left the settler sitting on our intended city location.

A few quick screen shots. The first one shows Tokugawa finally getting into the action, 2 turns before the end of the game...

Spoiler :

This one shows the final voting results. As expected, everyone voted for us but Tokugawa and Mehmed.

Spoiler :

Congratuations to us all! We did it! Now to see if we got 7th or 8th place...

I sent a PM to AlanH in BLubmuz' absence. As far as I know, we are NOT ALLOWED to read other team's threads until he has posted that it is okay for us to do so in this thread.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I did NOT settle Whales. I was about to just before the vote, but luckily I realized that I didn't have a Buddhist missionary prepared, so I left the settler sitting on our intended city location.

Nice on-the-fly thinking on that issue! You saved us from a potentially ignoble defeat!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The first one shows Tokugawa finally getting into the action, 2 turns before the end of the game...

That's one sick looking stack! He even has a City Raider II Grenadier! Man, this guy plays after my own heart!

I'm glad that it didn't land next to one of our poorly-defended Cities.

There's something to be said for a strong diplomatic policy to stave off the AIs' attacks!

Now, where was Toku earlier on in the game, when his stacks could have actually made a difference against our enemies?

 

[Irgy]

\o/

Great work Mitchum!

Great work everyone!

T287 seems like a good date to me. Everything went very smoothly in the end, other than my major screw-up in the first turnset there were no real mishaps, and our overall strategy worked a charm I think.

We've beaten at least 5 teams, based on the dates of the saves (is that why you're saying 7th or 8th Mitchum?). Including quite obviously both the culture pursuing teams, so it looks like diplo was the right choice there by quite a margin.

Surely some of those other saves aren't going to be victories which are also satisfying all of the conditions. 820AD and 940AD seem particularly suspicious, the 820AD looks almost like an accidental domination win, surely they don't have all that conquest and an 820AD Mass Media as well? The 940AD has a sudden dip in power at the end, surely a sign of giving up after an unwanted DOW.

I notice it says our latest save is 1315AD, but the screenshot says 1335AD. Is the victory save not listed, or have you just not uploaded it yet? If it's the former then some of the close dates (particularly the 1300) might have finishing dates after ours as well. They might have turn sets left to play as well, although it is getting pretty close to the deadline.

 

[Mitchum]

Surely some of those other saves aren't going to be victories which are also satisfying all of the conditions. 820AD and 940AD seem particularly suspicious, the 820AD looks almost like an accidental domination win, surely they don't have all that conquest and an 820AD Mass Media as well? The 940AD has a sudden dip in power at the end, surely a sign of giving up after an unwanted DOW.

I'm surprised about the quick dates too, but knowing the level of some of the players on those two teams, I'm pretty confident that they were able to pull out wins.

I notice it says our latest save is 1315AD, but the screenshot says 1335AD. Is the victory save not listed, or have you just not uploaded it yet? If it's the former then some of the close dates (particularly the 1300) might have finishing dates after ours as well. They might have turn sets left to play as well, although it is getting pretty close to the deadline.

The results page only shows the last save uploaded prior to the final save. So, it is possible that a team played a very long final turnset, making the date showing on this results page hard to correlate to the actual finish date.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

The 940AD has a sudden dip in power at the end, surely a sign of giving up after an unwanted DOW.

That situation could be caused by many things, such as winning some Cities in a war but losing units, or perhaps a team messing with your head by intentionally deleting their units after declaring peace, just to make it LOOK like their Power dropped unexpectedly, when in fact they decided that they no longer needed military units to win.

 

[unclethrill]

Congrats All!!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Activating the four symbols with our Four Great People

Spoiler :

The Fifth Element Goddess Arrives

Spoiler :

 

[AlanH]

Well done, Fifth Element.

You can go and visit the other teams now. Don't post if they haven't finished.

 

[culdeus]

I've been loosely following along. Good job guys.

I'm now retired from Civ4 and waiting for 5. Hopefully see you guys on the other side someday.

 

[babybluepants]

Congrats on the victory, Fifth Element! Settling on the PH was a huge advantage, IMHO. You guys did well considering.

That situation could be caused by many things, such as winning some Cities in a war but losing units, or perhaps a team messing with your head by intentionally deleting their units after declaring peace, just to make it LOOK like their Power dropped unexpectedly, when in fact they decided that they no longer needed military units to win.

It's nothing. The score dip was starving cities down to accumulate UN rush-buy cash. Power drop: Toku was the UN opponent, Justinian was in WHEOOHRN, with Toku as the most likely target. We had some spare maces, and gifted them to Toku near the border, just in case.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Let me add to the congratulations Fifth Element. Obviously I wasn't following you, but a 1335AD win is good (even if we beat you in real time).
I'll be very interested in reading the summary of the win, 143 pages being too much to read on a nasty head cold.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Let me add to the congratulations Fifth Element. Obviously I wasn't following you, but a 1335AD win is good (even if we beat you in real time).

Thanks! We have a lot of reading to do to get "caught up" in terms of where the other teams placed.

I'm still not even sure which teams have finished and which haven't.

I'll be very interested in reading the summary of the win, 143 pages being too much to read on a nasty head cold.

BLubmuz asked AlanH to open up a spoiler thread at the end of the game, to which AlanH agreed. So, I believe that it is BLubmuz' intention to summarize our game.

I, personally, would love to see every team participate with such a spoiler, even if it's just a link to a message in their own thread, as well as to include a screenshot of some of their early settling locations.

 

[Brian Shanahan]

Thanks! We have a lot of reading to do to get "caught up" in terms of where the other teams placed.

I'm still not even sure which teams have finished and which haven't.

Us, Phoenix Rising (Gumbolt congratulated us), and Plastic Ducks with an early diplo that I heard of.
P.S. we went culture, didn't even consider diplo much.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Congrats on the victory, Fifth Element!

Thank you!

Settling on the PH was a huge advantage, IMHO. You guys did well considering.

Indeed.

However, consider the following:
At Size 3, by settling in place, one could work:
Corn + Corn + GCopper Mine

At Size 3, by moving to the PHRiv, one could work:
Corn + Corn + GHRiv Mine

The difference being just the Copper vs a GHRiv Mine, so you have:
In place = 2 Food + 4 Hammers
PH = 1 Food + 3 Hammers + 1 Commerce + 1 Hammer from settling on a 2H-square

So, it's 2 Food + 4 Hammers vs 1 Food + 4 Hammers + 1 Commerce

It's all pretty comparable.

However, throw in the PHRiv Silver Resource for the PHRiv settling location and our in-place settling location can't even compete.

Even by grabbing the PHRiv Silver with a second City, we had to stagnate that City just to keep working the Silver, while other teams could settle in the same place but grow this second City on occasion while having Delhi work the Silver. Further, once Bureaucracy is in, a team working the Silver in the capitol again blows us away.

So, without the PHRiv Silver being where it was, in-place wasn't actually all that different from settling on the PHRiv. With the PHRiv Silver going in other teams' capitols, our games were lightyears apart.


There were, of course, many other factors that distinguished the games, which are controlled by the individual teams' decisions and actions, but this element of the game (picking up a PHRiv Silver by moving to a spot that a Warrior could not feasibly find it on Turn 0) was too luck-based for my tastes.

Still, we enjoyed the game, learned a lot, taught each other a lot, and placed well ahead of our targeted date, so those are the things that really matter, making the game a major success in my eyes!

It's nothing. The score dip was starving cities down to accumulate UN rush-buy cash. Power drop: Toku was the UN opponent, Justinian was in WHEOOHRN, with Toku as the most likely target. We had some spare maces, and gifted them to Toku near the border, just in case.

Okay, thanks for clarifying. Indeed, sometimes the graphs can be very telling, while other times they just leave you scratching your head in wonder.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

P.S. we went culture, didn't even consider diplo much.

I really wanted to play a Cultural game. It didn't seem like it would place ahead of a Diplo game, which is why we ultimately chose to go for a Diplo game, but I think that we would have really ENJOYED playing a Cultural game.

I'll have to check out your thread as to how you executed things, but it would have been neat to have taken our game (with 6 Religions available to us) and have played it out for a Cultural win, just to see how our initial setup would have compared to yours.

 

[kcd_swede]

Congrats 5th Element!

I thought you guys were going to take 6th place from US (Unusual Suspects), and think you could have if not for some bad luck slowing you down near the end. Glad you didn't, though, because I chose to delay our victory by 5 turns to get +diplo with Saldin in the SG vote (and he ended up not voting for us, but we won it anyhow). We had the last GP on the fur two turns before victory, and that would have otherwise been our bottleneck too. So had you beaten us by 1 turn I would be in the doghouse now. As it stands, my 5 turn delay didn't cost us any placing in the finishings.

I agree with Dhoomstriker that without the silver, the decision to settle on the PH is not obvious. We decided the extra hammer for earlier worker would easily pay for itself, though. That we got silver makes our choice of settling the PH a very lucrative one, and that is more than enough bonus to explain why we finished ahead of you guys.

Looking at the Gold game (Plastic Ducks), we were too careful about not declaring war until we know where the resources are. By the time we knew, it would have required slowing down our tech pace too much. Early on, we joked about taking Zara's GLH capitol, but didn't have the guts to actually do it. And we didn't really figure out that getting enough diplo for Friendly status would be too slow without the common war bonus... I guess none of US have been able to build the UN so quickly that it mattered before. We played the game with no war at all.

I think you guys play with really great teamwork, so much so that we have tried to emulate your methods as much as we can. Hope you all had as much fun with this as I did, and we'll meet again in SGOTM12, I hope.