SGOTM 11 - Wotan

[schmiddi]

my first thoughts:

about army: we'll get knights (more or less) soon, do you like that better?
I saw an idle worker. I would try to connect umtata asap. any objections?
I'm a little itchy about angry japanese passing by SpiceGirls. I guess I'm overanxious?
from your comments GrLib seems to be almost out of reach and I honestly have no idea about how to proceed techwise.

 

[dmanakho]

I left one worker unmoved for the next player to decide.

We need to come to the consensus before Schmiddi starts his turns.
1. Where do we go tech. wise given GrLib is too far away and can actually hurt us by killing ToA effect. My opinion -proceed to MT
2. Where new core will be located? - I have no strong opinion, but Wotan and Kulko disagree there
3. Decide what to do if we get a leader -> I agree, building FP in new land could be the best idea right now.
4. Proceed with Arabs as next target or keep crushing egypt. I suggest former since it make sense both strategically and tactically.

@Schmiddi, left over horse in the northern desert should be re-routed and sent to the battle. Should barbs appear there they will be busy with new german town.

 

[Wotan]

Checked in and noticed you have started the discussion. No notification tonight so I thought the level of activity was low. Will check the save tomorrow and post thoughts.

 

[Wotan]

First a few notes on the current situation and management of cities and workers.

The Worker NW of Z should mine that tile not irrigate it. When mined it will allow Z to run a 4 turn settler factory with 6-8-7-9 spt. As previously suggested. Until the tile is mined use the mined tile now used by HorseTown when at size 5. So at size 4 use Cow, mined BG, mined G and irrigated G. At size 5 add another mined G. That would give full access of the goats to Umtata.

Horsetown: Change to Settler, put the sixth citizen on a coastal tile when Z is using the mined G since 6 spt is enough, no reason to waste a shield when we can add another beaker. That would suggest working the mined G 2 turns and the coastal tile 3 turns. Added together the Settler will finish at the same time the food box is filled.

Bapedi: Settler next

Intombe: Settler, arrange tile useage to fill the food and shields when the Settler is built.

Warfare: Turn on Arabs next to eliminate them while still putting pressure on teh Egyptians. Find a way of getting us into a GA using the Impis. Maybe build a couple more?

Iron: Connect/Disconnect? With only mountains for Iron it will be expensive in workers to run a disconnect service (9 Worker actions) Maybe we should connect now and build Knights while in GA? And plan for the use of this trick for a later stage of the game.

New Palace: I am still in favour of Damascus over Thebes. Even if it requires a lot of Worker actions. Most workers in our heartland are about to finish their chores there so should soon be available for new tasks. But the area around Damascus is more productive and with better presence of fresh water than Memphis. Lots of Grassland and hills. As opposed to FPs, Deserts and Plains. I am however considering Thebes as a location for the FP.

Warning about the non-movement of the Barbs? Kulko asked why I did not warn about this but I do not understand this question. The Barbs appeared after my turns (MA seeding occured on the first turn Tim played) so how was I involved in this?

New towns: New locations should prioritize fresh water in former Arab lands, so much available so we should make sure we use it.

With Germans on the continent we need to place a sentry in each border town to dissuade the Germans from attacking empty towns and start a war.

Tech: Stop after Chivalry. We take techs from peace offerings if possible, or potential trade situations. Then we go after the ToA, conquer our continent and focus on getting the GLib to boost us tech wise after having used the ToA to expand Culture on our starting continent. Simple plan, right?

Leader: Depending on situation but if it is avaliable before we have control of our FP location choice we should convert it to an Army but keep it empty until able to fill it with Knights.

 

[Kulko]

Core
I do not at all see the better longterm development you see.
There are no BG (ok some might come below the Jungle), no Bonus ressources
no lux in this area. When we have put all the work in we get a lot of grasslands on a river.
On the other hand West of Thebes there are definetly Hills and normal terrain visible, so this looks like a much better location to me.
Other posibility would be choosing the town on the border of jungle and floodplain.


Barb
Ok, you are right, forgot who has the turnset before me. Anyway such a thing would be nice to know from teh turnset before.

 

[schmiddi]

I'll set the workers near Z to mining and set the idle worker to connect the iron to be prepared for knights to become available.

I'll let the cities build units a suggested.

@Kulko: Do you mean El-Amarna for Palace? And where are the dotmaps?

I'll continue against Arabia as suggested. I guess we completely raze them if possible?
In these locked aliances, does making peace with one mean making peace automaticly with all?

I'll stop research after chiv and try to collect some cash.

Should I found a city on the landbridge between Bapedi and LandBridge immideately or should I send that settler to arabia?

I guess starting a GA disrupts our 4-turn-settler-factory?


I hope I didn't miss anything important.

 

[Wotan]

Workers set to mine? There is one worker on that tile now, irrigating, just change that to mining. 6 turns is OK since we can use the mined G from Horsetown for the next few turns, HT will only require 2 turns use of that tile and turns of coastal tile use to build a Settler and finish it at the same time it fills the food box. No need to move additional workers there or stop their current activities to do so.

Still see the egyptian area as less valueable for the palace.

Razing Arabian towns we capture? Why on earth would we want that at this stage of the game? No amjor difference in culture so risks for flips are minimal besides Arabia and the rest of the AIs are so small we can finish a campaign against them in just a blitzkrieg attack. So please do not raze any town we can capture. I guess that was also why Dman suggested shifting focus from Egypt since the next few Egyptian towns are size 1 and without culture and thus would autoraze. We want to capture Damascus, Mecca and as many of the arabian towns as possible. Please tell me I misunderstood you comment on razing.

I would send Settlers to settle new territories before settling landbridge, we have several settlers finishing the production line in a few turns time. Take a couple of them to "close" the landbridge.

GA will change the buildpattern for Z, yes. But that is a welcome change where we probably get as many settlers but have a HM in between. Should be possible to run it at 15spt.

Good luck!

EDIT: No idea about the locked alliance impact on wars. Would guess we need to sue for peace with each AI else they will redeclare at the first opportunity?

 

[schmiddi]

I did not mean to raze the cities but to completely conquer all arabian cities. Me and my english.

about Mining near Z: I misremembered the number of workers irrigating there.

 

[Wotan]

Phew, you had me worried there for a moment. But better safe than sorry so I posted a question about razing. Even though I was pretty sure it was a misunderstanding...

The same goes for the worker actions.

With Killer out of the picture I play after you! Ask Dman what that can feel like...

 

[schmiddi]

I played my set and it turned out terrible. Seems like Murphy's law struck me.
The offensive did not work out as planned and there where other things going wrong.

Just as a minor consolidations, we now have a great leader as well as a golden Age started.

Details later.

 

[Wotan]

GA and a Leader! Does not seem to be a total failure? You have to tell us what went wrong, suspense is killing me. Production was easy to deal with so must be the RNG gods being angry with us? Did you move on Damascus piecemeal or something to that effect, slowly grinding our armies into the dust? Tech was just a few turns from completion and halting it should not affect your game either so what happened?

EDIT: I just had to open the save. This is utter chaos. How could you possibly make such a mess of the game in just 10 turns? How can Z. be at size 3 about to grow to size 4 with citizens working tiles for 11 spt with 1 food left to produce? Where is the 5 fpt plan we should follow. Food is the most important factor in Civ, yet you totally ignore this simple fact and run it at 3 fpt??? Was that so difficult to follow? Being in GA disrupts the settler factory, that I know but it should absolutely not affect the food production so that part is totally your doing. It has 25 shields produced with 5 left on the Settler. You have managed to totally disrupt the Settler factory and my enthusiasm for this game. It is a team game, if you can't play the game to the ability required don't join a SGOTM, please! You managed to disrupt a simple plan last turnset too costing us a warrior to save the situation, this time it is absolutely amazing how you have managed to mismanage the builds. I thought it was impossible to not understand how to run the production, but I underestimated you, you have the capacity to destroy a perfectly good game.

The land bridge: We talked about securing the landbridge with a couple of settlers from the "second wave" of settlers after sending the first to arabian lands. Two Settlers from the second wave are in Spicetown so you ignored the idea of using them to secure the land bridge. And settling former arabian lands was also something you thought was a bad idea since you planted a town near china instead. And you are mining a tile next to this town, with absolute corruption you believe mining to be smart? And a japanese town on the landbridge so now we need to go to war with Japan too.

Damascus razed, I guess you captured it and then lost it again and the AI retaking it destroyed it, or? And Alexandria!!!! How on earth do you go about making such a mess of things?

We were in agreement to stop research, yet you chose to start it on a new tech, even if it is just a lonely scientist. Not much of a team player are you? And of the two choices available, why not engineering? What help do we have of Theology if we should have chosen to continue research? The alternative to stop research we discussed was to go full speed to MT. Yet of the two choices you pick the one not leading to MT. Amazing!

I need to take a really good paus and think about whether to invest more time into this game. With the lack of will shown by you to try playing a team game I see no reason to keep focus on this game. Right now I am pretty sure I should go on autoskip for the duration but I will go to bed now and sleep on it.

And by the way, from what I can see Murphy had little to do with the chaos you managed to create. Don't try blaming it on the innocent...

 

[dmanakho]

OH my.... i hope you weren't sending one horse a turn against arabian spears...
tell us... tell us...

 

[Wotan]

OH my.... i hope you weren't sending one horse a turn against arabian spears...
tell us... tell us...

It is worse than that. It is up there with the performance of a player briefly on the team last SGOTM. One that apparently has not really grasped Civ or the fact that a SGOTM is a game where a whole team devotes several weeks of time to a game. And shows little respect for the time everyone invest in the game. Right now I feel I have better things to do with my time so if I am to play I will not do so within the next few days. But as I stated in my previous post I will sleep on it first.

 

[dmanakho]

It's a mess alright...
All our Laurel hopes were just cancelled
Can we have a detailed log published to figure out what and where it went wrong.

 

[Kulko]

Time to cite a petunia pot: "Oh no, not again!"

Looked at the save and it really pains.

One of these things might be a nuisance, but 3 or four of them together are a real fun killer.

I think we can still win the objectiv, but beating Shaka or klarius to fastest victory seems illusionary.

Well lets all settle down a bit, and then decide how to go on.

 

[Wotan]

Have had builders in the house this morning so I thought I would replay the turn set. Immediately in the first AI turn sequence something happened that needed some attention. Having the Great Wall in Mecca change a lot so to avoid attacking walled towns Mecca should fall first. I played through the turn set just to check if it was an extraordinary situation that could be attributed to Murphy but found nothing to that effect. I have uploaded a save from 150BC just for comparison and cannot find anything that difficult to deal with during the 10 turns. Major impact was of course from the Great Wall and the change of target that results in. The AI’s are at peace on our continent as of the last AI turn sequence but are willing to renew the wars for a price. We could have gained engineering for Chiv and war from Korea if we wanted to else a simple trade for Mono with China would have rekindled the fighting. A couple of Settlers in position to start new towns and a HM "guarding" a location next to an iron mountain waithing for a Settler to arrive. GA is in effect but no leader.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/28942/Shaka_of_the_Zulu_150_BC.SAV]

 

[TimBentley]

I'm not sure where the money has gone since we've been at 0% science for 6 turns and there haven't been upgrades it looks like. Being at war with the whole landmass will be annoying.

We could use the alliances to get free stuff by trading for a tech with gpt or getting a city(s) in peace, then attacking their ally. This would be my suggestion of how to get engineering, invention, and gunpowder.

Rushing a barracks for upgrades somewhere near the front would be good.

 

[Kulko]

@ Wotan, yes I think that makes clear what happened during the turnset, as the mismanagement of Z is just a complete ignorance of the homefront in the heat of the battle, Which meant, that Z stuck to the forest after the last growth cycle.

Nevertheless, I do not like you replaying the turnset, even under this situation. I would still like to learn more about playing middle to deep game of Civ, so would continue playing on. And therefore I might as well play on in the official tournament, even when the chance of the laurel is gone. But now we have given Alan a good reason to disqualify us again. And gained nothing which we wouldn't have know today in the evening or tomorrow.

 

[Kulko]

Well given the situation on the arabian front, my suggestion would be to switch sides as soon as posible and attack Japan and China, with trying to establish a new capital in the area north of Shanghai. But still that costs us 10 turns to wheel our Armies around.

I assume the Japanese AI is under no circumstances interested in a switch of cities?

 

[schmiddi]

turnlog:

350 (0)
sent the idle worker to the iron mountains
changed the irrigating worker to mining
arranged the city build queues as suggested

IBT
germans found the city on spot
tsingtao finishes worker, starts baracks
wonder cascading
trondheim finishes pyramids
memphis lighthouse
mecca great wall
bejing mausoleum

330 (1)
mooved troops

IBT
egypt lands settler N of Z
accompanying spearman get promoted to elite by barbs
Hlob HM -> HM
Mponde HM -> warrior
Tugela warrior -> Impi
Umtata worker -> barracks

310 (2)
mooved troops
sold Mono to US for 37g + 2gpt

IBT
Z settler -> settler

290 (3)
mooved troops

IBT
china makes peace

270 (4)
got china into the war again
atack damascus
elite HM vs. reg. spear win GL down to 1HP
elite HM vs. reg. spear win down to 3HP
reg. HM vs. reg. spear
damascus got autorazed, seems they had built settlers (just as mecca does)

IBT
Ulundi HM -> HM
Bap settler -> HM
HT Settler -> settler
egyp archers are going for alex.

250 (5)
mooved troops

IBT
egypt takes alex.

230 (6)
attack mecca
elite HM vs. reg. spear win down to 2HP
vet. HM vs. reg. spear loss spear down to 1HP
vet. HM vs. reg. spear loss spear down to 1HP
vet. HM vs. reg. spear loss with no scratch to spear
vet. HM vs. reg. spear win down to 1HP
and they still have fresh spears
retake alex, it gets autorazed


IBT
arabian archer kills retreating HM
Z settler -> settler
Intombe settler -> knights
spicegirls worker -> barracks

210 (7)
HM kills an arabian Settler/HM, get 2 slaves

IBT
changed intombe to galley
Hlobane and Mpondo start knights

190 (8)
founded Isandhlwana

IBT
GoldenHill worker -> barracks
Ibabango as well

170 (9)
had to found zunguin on spot, or else german settler would have blocked the place

IBT
Umfolozi barracks -> MedInf (that was before the GA and I thought a knight would take too long, but could be changed now)
Impi near Giza gets attacked by pikeman and wins -> GA

150 (10) just saved

I know that I made some terrible mistakes, especially not concentrating on mecca after the great wall and not closing the gap on the bridge. I'm really sorry.

one city is building an impi right now. I guess we don't need that one, as we have our GA