SGOTM 11 - Who Dat?

beestar · Aug 1, 2010

Ah, must have missed it - sorry cas. I've updated the Google Docs with the correct number.

It's supposed to be (weakly) dependent on pop, but I couldn't see any difference between our two GSes.

Fluroscent · Aug 1, 2010

IIRC, GE hammers are not multiplied by OR bonus, but I could be wrong. Either way, OR would help greatly when chopping/whipping the last hammers.

And ignore my point about Parthenon, obviously :rolleyes:

. Still would think it is the most efficient war route though.

One small thing I learned in a recent WOTM - Gifting a city can instantly put a "-4 traded with worst enemies" modifier. Of course, this requires that someone has Mehmed as a worst enemy. Bribing someone into the war would likely make him just that.
A way around it should be to gift the city through a peace deal, but I don't know if it is practical being at war for so long..
Some of the hindus are probably friendly even with -4 too, but we need to keep this in mind.

And I'm for holding back on the 3rd GS unless someone starts making notable progress on education. A way to keep the beaker count down to avoid overbulbing could be to put a few more into liberalism instead (at 0% obviously, and with great care

).

pnp_dredd · Aug 1, 2010

Fluro, are you happy for me to play some more turns, till physics?

Tech:

The education-gazing is working well and I have more conifdence that we can get through Electricity. I'll bulb the two GSs into Physics now, and we can decide what to do with the next GS as required.

If we want to bulb through electricity, then we'll need another 2 GSs asap. We can greatly boost our GP-production rate through three strategies, all with some drawbacks:

1) Switch back to pacifism (+100% GPP but a diplo hit)
2) Run lotsa scientists in Delhi (Delhi will pop a GS but our beaker production will be slowed somewhat)
3) Perhaps burn our Great Prophet for a Golden Age? (+100% GPP and more beakers, but if we are going to bulb Electricity then we'll be pretty short on GPs for Eldine - we will have only 1 GG, and will need to generate 3 more GPs)

thoughts? If we are going for Electricity, we should switch up now. I think we should start making GS points in Delhi and switch to Pacifism.

Note that if we want to do this, it means that using slavery at any stage increases the risk of missing the Liberalism slingshot entirely.

War:

Fluroscent said:
-So my suggestion for an attack route: Capital(pink dot)->Erdine->Samsun. That should ensure all our goals are met. However, if he has a stack, we may want to fight it from Bursa first.

I'm not sure that the rewards outweigh the risks?

I just don't think we can take and hold that many cities. Mehmed has LBs and maces. We'll need to keep some sort of garrison in the cities that we capture, so our attack force will get smaller. I don't think it's worth building more military unless absolutely necessary. It's a long way to the front lines from our production cities.

It would be nice to take 3 more cities, but I thinks it's a risky move, given the military that we have available, and I don't think it's actually necessary.

The Silk should be safe - it's in the inner ring of Bursa, and we are able to run multiple Artist specialists. The yellow cross city will secure the Dyes.

We only need to take one more city - the city that will build the UN. I'm at work so I can't see what Samsun looks like.

I'm not convinced that there is much value in taking any other cities, and there is definately risk. But I'm open to be argued out of this position, if the majority feel otherwise.

other stuff:

Look through Beestar's "micro notes".
Priority to get a Hindu missionary to Fur Island. There is a galleon that we can use for this, but still need to produce the missionary.
Keep education-gazing

cas · Aug 1, 2010

How fast can Calcutta get a GS ? IIRC that city had lots of food and no production. Should be able to run just as many scientists as Dehli (or more) under caste, but then you could use Dehli to work cottages to increase our gpt/bpt.

There would be a chance of merchant contamination in the GP pool...but I still think it might be worth it.

cas

Fluroscent · Aug 2, 2010

Fluro, are you happy for me to play some more turns, till physics?

Yes, that was the idea.

I had thought of the option of burning the GPro, and I kind of like it. The GA could not come at a better time really, and as for GPs for eldine we have options, the easiest is to tech communism for the spy. We also have quite a few turns of GP production left after popping the last GS. From there, we need to finish lib, tech MM, build the UN, win the General Secretary vote and only then do we need our four GPs. A 2nd GG from an extended war is also feasible, but will require more troops probably.

I don't like running scientists in Delhi. It produces such a big part of our GNP through bureaucracy that it will hurt us to switch. And with a possible golden age, those cottages are even better.

GA+Pacifism should do it.

As for war. By all means take it slow, make sure we fight his stack on our terms. If we can obliterate his main force with few losses, then I don't see why we cannot take three cities. But if it does not look good, then by all means play it safe. Samsun is past the first line, so it is not an option to take alone. Istanbul is the city to go for, if at all possible. Remember to use the leftover maces from fur island to help asap. And to never move units about without both shock maces+phants in the stack. Maybe make some Xbow city defenders.

The Silk should be safe - it's in the inner ring of Bursa, and we are able to run multiple Artist specialists. The yellow cross city will secure the Dyes.

I don't agree here, we will suffer great cultural pressure in Bursa unless we take out Istanbul. We risk having revolts and possibly flipping, which would be horrible if it happened close to the election.

beestar · Aug 2, 2010

I hate to have such a big army and not use it

I think we do need to take Istanbul to relieve the cultural pressure from the north. If we smash Mehmed's stack, then we should be safe against counterattack. Might not be able to take too many more cities, but we can certainly hold them.

I think we're strong enough that we can extend the war almost indefinitely and reinforce slowly - I don't think Isabella is powerful enough to attack us, and if that happens, we can hunker down and play defense.

Can we bring the Spy back from Fur Island to monitor Mehmed's lands? An Airship or two would be nice too ...

GA and Pacifism sound OK to me. The first Golden Age is usually worth it, and we have a relatively large empire to make use of it. This is stating the obvious, but in a GA, hammers and commerce are multiplied while food is not, so in general we should lean toward working tiles rather than specialists. GP farm and (Calcutta?) excepted, of course.

beestar · Aug 2, 2010

P.S. Projected finish data is about T300 (1400AD), assuming 10 turns to build UN and 10 turns for first victory vote.

pnp_dredd · Aug 2, 2010

Played through to Physics.

Tech/GPP
Burnt 2 GSs
Switched to Pacifism
Delayed the Golden Age a little to get population growth in Delhi and Calcutta.
We've just popped a GS from Varanasi, and another from Physics in Delhi
Options for the next GP are: Varanasi, Calcutta and Patal. Patal is actually next to generate a GPerson, but I think this will change under a Golden Age.
It's probably time to burn the GPro for a GA now.

Trade
Finangled more gpt from Justinian and Saladin
Zara didn't wanna give 80 gold (990AD)

War/units
Moved settler, workers and some spare troops towards Bursa. Should move a couple of troops out of Bursa to protect the new city next to the Dyes.
Created a Hindu missionary: he's walking across our continent.
Created a settler: also walking across our continent

Vijay is the only city other than Delhi which has a Hindu Monastery, and should build some more missionaries once it finishes the Courthouse.

1010AD took Devil's Gate. At first, I was extremely lucky and didn't lose a unit during the initial attack (one mace was on 0.3 health!). Unfortunately, a Barb axeman attacked our maces outside Devils Gate between turns and took one out. Then the same uber-axeman attacked Devils Gate (on a hill) and took out a 7 hp maceman. We are now in danger of losing Devils Gate to this supreme axe, and should consider moving our Maceman out.

1020AD Mehmed's counterattack came. Screenie attached. One knight appeared in addition to what can be seen in the screenie. We lost one maceman in this counterattack, to a crossbow.

Bursa has been pacified, and is starving anyway, so I'm running an Artist. Interestingly, we found Uranium under Bursa!

Education-gazing
Zara has probably just started on Education. He used to take:
Education for Engineering, Feudalism (1638), Archery and WM
Now he wants:
Education for Engineering, Drama (702), Archery, WM, 40 gold (out of 40)
Could this change also be due to a switch from Friendly-Pleased? Anyway, keep an eye on it and see.

Justinian, I don't think so. But he now won't trade music, which is annoying. He "has his reasons".
He wants:
Education for Engineering, Feudalism, Archery, WM and 35 gold (out of 60)

Sally and Izzy can now tech Education as well

Sally is exactly the same as Justinian:
Education for Engineering, Feudalism, Archery, WM and 35 gold (out of 335)

Izzy: can't tell, because she wont trade anywhere near enough -many techs are "we don't want to start trading this away just yet".

Log (it's big):

Spoiler :

Fluroscent · Aug 2, 2010

Ok, before DL'ing.

-Ship some troops to take fur island, while remaining on the defensive in Bursa. Hope he suicides his stack. But don't do anything offensive yet.

-All focus on getting the radio sling done, in a golden age. The war progress is less critical. We should be good with no AI having any significant progress on education. I am not going to keep close tabs, since we are committed to radio sling now anyway.

-Once next GS is born and electriticy bulbed, switch back to theo+slavery and build more units to make war progress.

-When Liberalism is done, try to chain trade up to banking with education.

Will DL and update plan with more detail.

Fluroscent · Aug 2, 2010

Turnset plan

-Fire off GA to see how it affects GP times. Starve Pata+Calcutta as necessary to pop a GS asap. Both have contamination, so starve both in case the first fails.

-Time Electricity to preferably finish with 3rd bulb.

-Build HEpic in Bombay (8T - before GA), use to build more support troops.

-Ship both galleons with (settler)+missionary+maces+cats to DevilsGate. Use troops to pillage most cottages for gold after capturing the cities. Then ship back to Bursa.

-Defend new city with Phant+Mace.

-Grow cities that can. Build wealth for now in most cities.

Now, some options:

-Bribe Toku to war with Mehmed. Give astro and get feud+archery+150g too.
OR
-Bribe Toku to war with Isabella!, get feud+archery+150g, but cost astro+philo+paper.
OR
-Just trade for the techs+gold.

-Getting Toku into a war ensures he won't start a war on Justin again. The techs are all had by all the other hindus anyway.
-Getting him to war with Izzy should keep her off our back, but risk a war request. He only has +2 trade bonus now, and with mercantilism We should have enough bonuses available to cover it.
-War with Mehmed will get diplo points, but leave us likely DOW'ed by Izzy soon (1.1 power rating - not enough to discourage).
-Mehmed does not show any techs that he could use to bribe Izzy, but he may have guilds/banking.
Finally, Toku's gold is the only available in trade that won't help anyone research faster, we are definitely going for it.

Last Q: Where do we want the settler to go? FurIsland does not really make sense, as it will not accomplish anything there with nothing but a few flat grass tiles. We could just settle it on the backfill spot on our landmass, and grow it to boost pop.

beestar · Aug 2, 2010

Man, that barb axeman is a monster. It's tough to see a grown maceman have to run away and hide from an axeman

I noticed that Devil's Gate is not actually on a hill - too bad!

Sounds like Toku on Isabella is better. Can we afford wait until our beg-gold peace treaty with Isabella is about to expire? (The risk is that Toku may get Philo/Paper/Astro in the meantime ...) Mehmed definitely has Guilds and Feudalism since he's got a knight.

By the way, I checked the save and the trade screen, and Toku will actually offer to declare on both Isabella and Mehmed for Astro, Paper, and Philo. What a maniac. No Feudalism offered (though perhaps we could pick that up later when we start handing out Education)

Be very careful about the undefended settler & workers at the Spanish/Ottomon border - Mehmed can easily rampage some units through his open borders with isabella.

The settler could grow a farms/pig city on FurIsland (quicker to grow two small cities rather than one big city), but the maintenance might be quite high.

cas · Aug 2, 2010

Fluroscent said:
Turnset plan

-Mehmed does not show any techs that he could use to bribe Izzy, but he may have guilds/banking.

dredd stated that Meh had one knight in addition to what could be seen on the screenshot, so he has guilds.

Bad luck with Devil's gate. Should be ok...still have time to capture the necessary cities and a prolonged war may be in our interests anyway to generate a 2nd GG and get +diplo points with 1-2 Hindu bloc members.

I'm not concerned if I get another turnset at this point, so play until the game is at a good stopping point, Fluro. Pause for an update once in the middle somewhere. Then maybe Beestar can finish it out after your (longer) turnset.

cas

Fluroscent · Aug 2, 2010

By the way, I checked the save and the trade screen, and Toku will actually offer to declare on both Isabella and Mehmed for Astro, Paper, and Philo. What a maniac. No Feudalism offered (though perhaps we could pick that up later when we start handing out Education)

Nice catch! Do we want to do this? Feud is not very important right now anyway. Is there a good reason NOT to do this?

Be very careful about the undefended settler & workers at the Spanish/Ottomon border - Mehmed can easily rampage some units through his open borders with isabella.

I'll send the defending party to meet up with them asap.

cas said:
I'm not concerned if I get another turnset at this point, so play until the game is at a good stopping point, Fluro. Pause for an update once in the middle somewhere. Then maybe Beestar can finish it out after your (longer) turnset.

Probably going to stop at radio for a review. But that should be in less than 10 turns. If we want to move it along, I won't mind playing up to Mass Media

.

beestar said:
The settler could grow a farms/pig city on FurIsland (quicker to grow two small cities rather than one big city), but the maintenance might be quite high.

IIRC, three cities will incur colonial maintenance, which means it will be a cash drain. I'll just settle the filler city and farm it up.

Oh, and I almost forgot that we now can build airships. That changes things a bit, since we can build four and station them in bursa to make the war a lot smoother. They can also help defeat that insane axeman!
I think I'll build one in four different cities at once, and then see if we can begin our further attack sooner.

Aiming to play first part tomorrow.

beestar · Aug 2, 2010

Go for it.

Post an update so we can celebrate the successful liberalizing of Radio, but I personally don't mind if you keep playing to Mass Media.

Don't let Justinian steal DevilsGate from under our nose ...

pnp_dredd · Aug 2, 2010

Three quick points:

The settler was originally meant for Fur Island. The thinking is that someone (e.g. Justinian) can move a settler through our open borders and settle a city 1W of the Fur. We're then in a culture battle. I'm not sure how much of a risk this is. Perhaps we can settle that city after we complete MM? Otherwise just run Artists in the Barbarian cities to eat up the available land.

Delay settling the Dye city for as long as possible. The maintenance will hurt! However, one border pop from Izzy and we'll lose the site, so don't wait too long. Definately send some troops to protect the settler.

We need to build Hindu Missionaries. We'll have >7 cities that need Hinduism, and it's a long way to some cities from our two cities that can currently produce the required missionaries. ALso can ship warriors over once we have Fur Island secure.

The sugar island can build wealth if we need a little extra commerce.

Fluroscent · Aug 3, 2010

OK, much to report. Played to 1250AD and Mass Media.

Short version

The Good - Tech went smoothly, and so did the GP popping. We are close to having fulfilled most of the goals. Fur Island is ours with no additional losses.

The Bad - Toku forced us to close borders with Isabella. He would go back to pleased if I didn't, but now I wish I told him to stuff it. Because..

The Ugly - Having Mass Media without a place to build the UN sucks. I went for Erdine, since it seemed easier to capture and would have a shorter period of anger!!!. And then he suddenly had janissaries.

So we have MM, but even after killing a dozen defenders, we still haven't captured Erdine, and either way, further progress is quite difficult. Our troops are quite wounded, but can probably take and hold Erdine. But no chance of taking Istanbul without a lot of reinforcements.

Notes

-The barb axe became a maceman. But airships gave our CR mace 70% odds and he won. Zhou fell shortly after.

-Zara putting beakers into education was correct. He finished it the same turn we discovered liberalism.

-We have traded education and PP around and have banking+gunpowder. We switched to mercantilism to get the stubborn Toku friendly.

-We have three of the four needed GPs, so more than enough time to get the last one.

-Our mainland is all hindu now. Two missionaries are en route to Bursa, and one is being built for DevilsGate (Zhou got it already).

-We have six airships now, they help nicely in the war. But now we need to switch to full blown military in all mainland cities.

-I suggest upgrading two galleys that are at Bursa and creating a galleon chain around Izzys culture. We should have enough galleons to do that and have one free to ferry stuff to the furs.

-We can also slave units. Probably best to go with trebs(CR)+muskets+a few pikes exclusively, since we are up against Janissaries and knights mostly.

-We can tech communism to get the last GP, or we can wait for the next GG. I somehow think getting a GG will be easier. Then we can just kill research off for now.

So, we still have work to do :sad:

beestar · Aug 3, 2010

An eventful turnset! Great that we got to Liberalism and Radio all according to plan. So, remaining tasks are to find a UN city, finish the religion spread, and ensure we meet all the final conditions.

I assume the problem is that closed borders with Isabella makes it difficult to transport our units?

What do you think about drafting musketmen? Would cost us population, but maybe faster military buildup.

Are we #1 in pop?

If we found a new city in the right place, is there any benefit to gifting UN to Isabella rather than Mehmed?

--

I can have a look at the save tonight, post comments, and play soon after. Unless cas, do you want to play the next turnset? I think we still have some turns to go and there's probably room for two turnsets if you want it.

Fluroscent · Aug 3, 2010

Founding a city to build the UN may be better, depending on whether we can capture Erdine in the next few turns, and how long its "downtime" is. But I'd stick with Mehmed, as gifting a city to Isabella may cost us Toku's votes if he gets a -4 modifier. Take a look at the land between Bursa, Istanbul and Erdine and see if there is room to stick a city in somewhere. We also cannot talk to Isabella due to canceled trades.. (not sure for how long)

Drafting is actually a very good idea. We need to trade for nationalism, but that should be easy enough. Rep is not so important any longer, and unhappy faces don't matter too much. We can at least draft 1 musket/city and then switch back.
I didn't check pop, but I've been growing cities and replacing other improvements with farms. We should be able to afford a quick burst of drafting+whipping.

Also a reminder that the GPs+warriors need to be ON the fur tile on the turn of victory.

orb · Aug 3, 2010

Good luck for the final turnset Beestar. (Or Cas if you take another turn)

Just out of interest I've checked out the save dates of the competition from the downloads screen to kick off a bit of mindless speculation and analysis....

Results from SGOTM10.

Murky Waters 1st - Not playing this time
X team 2nd - Current save 2nd August-game date 1010AD, score 1852
Unusual Suspects 3rd - current save 27th July - game date 1010AD, score 1743
Smurkz - current save 26th July - game date 1030, score 1945.
Us. - current save 3rd Aug - game date 1250AD, our score at 1030 for comparison 1551.

So it looks like everyone who beat us last time (except MW) are still recently active in this game and has/had a higher score in this game at a similar time period to ourselves. - It will be fascinating to read the other team strategies after we submit to see how they achieved this.

3 teams have already played beyond our current game date.

Back to our game...How are the current diplo scores looking? - I'm assuming we will pick up the vote from the Hindu block (But having just lost my own diplo game last night when my so called "friends" didn't vote for me...Grrrr) I thought we should just check.

pnp_dredd · Aug 3, 2010

We're not #1 in pop: we have 10.8 mil to someone's 11.9 mil.

We're growing quickly though, while the AI will be pretty stagnant. If we're done teching then we can farm around Delhi, which will increase our population.

Throwing ideas around:

We can get a GArtist in around 20 turns, to push Bursa's culture, but there must be a faster way than that. There is one available city site 3E1N of Bursa, but it has no production capacity, still it might be the fastest way.

There's also the easter egg island. Whip a quick settler and couple of workers and there is a galley which we could upgrade near Calcutta. Would Mehmed accept such a city as a gift?

Or 3N1W of Devil's gate?

SGOTM 11 - Who Dat?

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