SGOTM 12 - Fifth Element

[BLubmuz]

Good plan.
I always promote any unit to CR if avaiable. The exceptions can be axes/maces for fight in the open or a suicide cat to do more collateral.

I'm afraid that without 2 moves units (but the medic which must be protected) blocking workers can be difficult. In any case, maybe splitting the attackers in 2 stacks can work.

What about build a couple HA?

You probably meant morale, not mobility, which comes after C3 or even C4, IIRC.

Graphs
we're well placed in any category, but power is impressive. We're also pretty advanced in terms of turns.

 

[Fluroscent]

Turnset plan

War
-Move units to herd the settler west or back. If we can get him to settle west, then we can capture his other four cities and leave him his new city.
If he wants to settle east, kill the settler. If he runs and hides in cities, treat it like another worker.

-If we cannot get him to settle a 5th city, then plan to leave him Lyons.

-Beeline Orleans still. The gem city is fallouted to hell, so we want to deny him iron first. The reinforcements can swing by and take the city if it has only 1-2 archers.

-Send a few of the advanced stack to check out his gem city garrison first though. If there is a dangerous stack there, kill it first.

-Keep one elephant back in case Churchill declares.

-Workers continue road towards Paris

Cities

Moscow: Elephant (3T) - Lighthouse (3T) - Worker (2T) - Worker (2T) - Taoist Monastary+Temple - Great Library
This should be roughly consistent with hooking marble. Avoid growth by switching out fish when needed. We need the workers, best to keep ahead of the curve with them.
Add more elephants if we suffer bad RNG in the war.

St Petersburg:
Catapult - Catapult - Worker - Library
Will allow us to grow to size 7, then stagnate a bit with a worker, then library to prepare Oxford.

CI:
Catapult - Lighthouse - Library - HEpic
One more quick cat for the war, then LH to grow. Library as a prereq for HEpic, then HEpic when available.
If not available in time -> build wealth until it is.

Novogrod:
Granary-Library
Work tiles as they are improved.

This gives us an offensive force of a total 8 phants, 11 cats, 3 axes and the medic. That seems reasonable to me. We can expect to lose roughly half the cats but not much more.

Captured cities:
Granary - Library in Orleans+Paris for universities
Granary - Courthouse otherwise

Workers

-Novogrod workers finish deer, then silver, then marble, then rice. Always send a worker to road ahead of time first.

-Moscow/StP gets the remaining needed improvements, that is cottages on the remaining grass tiles and the other plantation. Then the workers are sent north or south depending on need.

-Workers on the war road, work on connecting a path to all target cities first, then begin scrubbing important tiles (can be done before cities come out of revolt)

Scouting

-Send workboat to scout along south coast.

-Missionary to join the offensive force, and convert Paris when we capture it.

Diplo

-Sell Aesthetics to Roosevelt for 320
-Sell Meditation to Mao for 60 (should be small enough to pass with Gandhi)
-Sell Monotheism to Churchill for 40
-Trade Music to Gandhi in 1T for Monarchy+Archery+all his gold.

The reason for the last one is that I think we really want to have Monarchy for the golden age revolutions. Since Calendar won't cut it, we have to trade Music. Archery is also good to have actually, so we can build cheaper MPs. We also want to build the trade bonuses for diplo reasons, particularly Gandhi as we are going to have a different religion soon.

Tech

Finish Music -> Philosophy -> Paper.
I plan to pause the set at Philosophy so we can decide on whether or not to fire the golden age then or wait.

 

[Fluroscent]

I always promote any unit to CR if avaiable.

Axes can get this promo, but this would be a case where it is a bad idea, since the axes are there for stack defense, not to crack tough defenders.

I'm afraid that without 2 moves units (but the medic which must be protected) blocking workers can be difficult. In any case, maybe splitting the attackers in 2 stacks can work.

What about build a couple HA?

The AI likes to move workers/settlers out of threatened cities. If we advance on Lyons, but leave a road to Paris open, he should send the workers to Paris. Then we "surround" Lyons so they cant get back, and capture Paris along with the workers. I don't think HA will help, since they cannot hold a tile on their own (too vulnerable to spearmen), and the AI never lets workers be within strike distance unless cornered.

You probably meant morale, not mobility, which comes after C3 or even C4, IIRC.

Yeah, whatever the +1 movement one is called. Very handy on a GG medic.

Graphs
we're well placed in any category, but power is impressive. We're also pretty advanced in terms of turns.

Yes, it is good to see us not falling behind in score much even if we have invested heavily in military (presumably the other teams will have built more cities by now instead). Of course, we can expect to surge ahead once we capture the french cities

 

[BLubmuz]

Axes can get this promo, but this would be a case where it is a bad idea, since the axes are there for stack defense, not to crack tough defenders

That's what i meant.

Your PPP sounds good, but a mistake: barracks are needed for the HE. Library is needed for the NE (and GLib). And barracks are already in place. Maybe you want to hook marble before silver, to speed up the HE.

That French city near stone makes me wonder about Pyramids/Representation. Are they BIADL or still avaiable?

I'd also like to have Theo for the HS. No way to have it in trade, can we divert to it? It also speeds up Paper.

 

[Fluroscent]

Library is needed for the NE (and GLib). And barracks are already in place. Maybe you want to hook marble before silver, to speed up the HE.

You are right of course.
But I'd still prefer doing it this way, since I think we need to hook the silver more urgently to grow our cities. The library is needed for Oxford anyway, so we might as well build it before we finish HEpic.
I did consider going for marble sooner, but I thought it would fit better if we grew Moscow more so we have the possibility of running more specs during the golden age. I might be wrong though, and we could be better off going for quicker marble, start HE and GLib sooner, but sacrifice tech rate and growth a bit?

That French city near stone makes me wonder about Pyramids/Representation. Are they BIADL or still avaiable?

I'd also like to have Theo for the HS. No way to have it in trade, can we divert to it? It also speeds up Paper.

Is this not the part where we remember our first pages and the parts about not going wonder crazy?
Of course it is worth considering. But as for mids, by the time we can hook stone, we are busy building Oxford. Our plan was to not run too many specs prior to popping a GE, so representation would be limited in use, probably not even worth the revolution until we have constitution anyway.
It is also likely to be built at any time. Probably by Mao. Capturing it would be neat.
HS, is a good wonder, but Steam Power is on our priority path, so its timeframe is limited. We can probably get more net worker turns by just building more workers from some of those hammers instead. And we do not need another detour to Theology, the paper reduction is not enough. Oxford is too important to delay any further.

 

[beestar]

The War Doctrine sounds fine.

I'm a little worried about Gandhi being able to research Philo, and also being in a position to start GLib. I'd go for hooking up Marble and starting on GLib instead of the Taoist monastery/temple.

I agree that we don't need Hagia Sophia - I think we can save the big fallout clearing push for later on in the game, when our workers have fewer useful tile improvements to do. No to Pyramids as well, unless we have nothing else to build and we want failure gold (OR +25%, Stone bonus, Forges +25%?) - but we could also fail-build Parthenon for that.

Selling techs for gold is great.

Let's also try to get peace with Stalin as soon as we can trade him something bigger than Writing.

 

[BLubmuz]

I agree with your arguments.
Shiny bright things are what ruined some of the FE games. But we must be convinced or it does not work.

Let's go ahead, let's burn a candle on the RNG gods altar. Good fight and good luck!

 

[unclethrill]

Shiny bright things are what ruined some of the FE games. !

Here! Here! Lets not make those mistakes again!

 

[pnp_dredd]

I'm also concerned about starting GLib too late - It seems like something that Ghandi would prioritise. Now that we have our first attacking "wave", it may be better to build lighthouse-elephant-worker(s)-GLib in Moscow?

Also, I think that we should settle the potential GP farm sooner rather than later. That city also has potential as a worker/settler pump, so it's a valuable site. Also, with a decent population it can provide lots of useful "stuff" during a golden age, if it's had time to grow beforehand. Finally, this city gives bananas + sugar with 2 border pops.

CI or StP are the available cities which don't have super-urgent builds, and could slot in a settler (+workboat?) if there was nothing else urgent (particularly once they're growth-capped).

 

[beestar]

Comments on viewing the save

We have open resource trade paths with Churchill and Mao and Roosevelt. I would agree to a resource demand if they make one, for the enforced peace and diplo benefits.

Good to see Roosevelt is Jewish now, not Buddhist with Gandhi. Looking like we will prop Gandhi up as our BFF against a sea of enemies.

A few civs now have HBR. Since it's no longer monopoly it may now be safe to offer HBR to stalin (since he doesn't know anyone anyway, i.e. he has no one to trade it away to).

Make sure gems-stone city (Rheims) grows to pop 2 so we can capture it without razing. If we choke it (and CDG starts whipping defenders), we might auto-raze it.

If we built a chain of forts, our workboat could go explore the west!

GP Farm is a good city and it would be great to start its growth soon. We could build a settler, and as a backup option it could resettle the ruins of Rheims if we are forced to raze Rheims. It will slow down our social policies (er, maintenance), but as long as we have enough tech-sale gold and conquest gold to drive to Education, we can probably afford a bit of slowdown. It's a good city, but note that we won't actually be producing a lot of GPs out of it, at least not until we after get our GE. In the short term it's Moscow that will be pumping out the GPs, in the medium term it's the Ironworks engineer city.

By the way, I'm looking at the GPP bar and we're 60% GPro right now in Moscow. We seem to be willing to accept either one in favour of growing cottages. If we're really so indifferent, I think we should be deliberately aiming a GPro instead of a GS by running a priest specialist. We're heading toward Confucianism and accepting the diplo penalty, and the Shrine would save us hammers from missionaries and bring in some gold to help the slider. Would slow down bulbing Education, but I think the long term benefits of having St.Pete be a specialist gold city are better.

 

[Fluroscent]

Hey guys, nice comments.

I'm a little worried about Gandhi being able to research Philo, and also being in a position to start GLib. I'd go for hooking up Marble and starting on GLib instead of the Taoist monastery/temple

OK. I'll switch the order of silver/marble and get started on GLib sooner. Still want a phant and lighthouse first, and at least one worker. As for philo, we will get it as soon as possible. The trade gold will allow us to run 100% the whole way.

Also, I think that we should settle the potential GP farm sooner rather than later. That city also has potential as a worker/settler pump, so it's a valuable site. Also, with a decent population it can provide lots of useful "stuff" during a golden age, if it's had time to grow beforehand. Finally, this city gives bananas + sugar with 2 border pops.

I can build a settler in CI I guess (delay library and HEpic) and a workboat in StP. We need to scout the SE first though, so we don't block a seafood resource or something by settling there.

We have open resource trade paths with Churchill and Mao and Roosevelt. I would agree to a resource demand if they make one.

I will also agree to a cheap tech demand. But not to gold demands.

A few civs now have HBR. Since it's no longer monopoly it may now be safe to offer HBR to Stalin (since he doesn't know anyone anyway, i.e. he has no one to trade to).

Agreed, I'll do this.

Make sure gems-stone city (Rheims) grows to pop 2 so we can capture it without razing. If we choke it (and CDG starts whipping defenders), we might not be able to capture it.

True, I have considered this. We might need to camp around it so it can grow again before capturing it. I most certainly will not risk to raze it. It is so neatly placed

Going to play the first part later today. Need some GP calculations before firing up the golden age.

 

[Fluroscent]

It's not good news

Part turnset played. Nine turns.

Worst part first:
We captured Orleans. Predictably it had a large stack of archers/axes/swords/spears. Normally, I would have expected to lose about half the catapults, then just whittle down the defenders at great odds over a couple of rounds.
But then we got hit by the RNG..
We lost SEVEN catapults (three of them at 60%+ odds, NONE at <50% survived) and THREE elephants (at roughly 75%, 80% and 98%!!!) taking the city. AND, we will lose it back the next turn if we don't make peace...
We have a 0.6 hp axe there with no more units to move into the city, and an spear/sword pair ready to retake it...
Of course, we must now make peace for as cheap as possible (not a problem, he is still backwards, he will probably accept techs all the other AI have anyway), and then redeclare after ten turns (or more, depending...). So my part in the war is over for now. Hope you get better RNG luck than me blub..

Other notes:
-Peace made with Stalin for HBR. Sold him polytheism for 20 Why not?
-Settler went back and hid. It turns out De Gaulle is bordered to the west by at least Mao. I don't think he has room to expand that way.
-Rheims was size 1 when I checked. I tested in WB if a size 1 city with cultural expansion would autoraze.. It did, so no point hanging around there for now.
-No other metals spotted in France, so we should find the next part of the war much easier.
-Philo is in, and marble just hooked. We settle the GP farm site in two turns. We sort of have to make it a university city now, along with Orleans, since capturing Paris is delayed. After that, we might want to build a forge and NEpic to prepare a GE.
-Roosevelt has MC, so we can trade for it with Gandhi. It will cost CS.
-We have popped two generals. One is en route to the front to become a great medic. The other is just popped from Moscow. I assume we want to settle in CI so we can produce some 5XP cats.
-I am going to convert Orleans with the missionary since it will help the culture battle and production when we switch to OR, and Paris is less important if not a university city. Orleans, btw, is a great city with wet rice, gems(under fallout), banana and some nicely developed cottages already oh and a 3 hammer city tile.
-We only inherited a lighthouse, but no seafood so meh.
-Taoism was founded in Novogrod, which means it won't catch confu autospread. So we will need two missionaries to take advantage of OR properly. Tao missonary will be sent to Moscow to allow the temple/monastary.

I will pause here for discussion and try to work out how to best pop great people before continuing, since we might want to trigger the golden age now with the required civics ready, but maybe we should build GLib first? Do we want the MC trade now? I don't think we can afford to build forges yet. We probably need to build more units too. We must choose whether to build more everywhere, or build the HEpic (7 turn build) and let CI handle it. We really need only more catapults before redeclaring.

I attached some screenies. They show our remaining battered army at the front, but we do have two cats, two phants and an axe further back.

 

[BLubmuz]

I thought an experienced player like you knew this rule: never take a city with the last unit. Even if the chariot join it it has no hope with the spear.
No peace. 10 turns are too much. We'll lose the axe, no more. The stack have a medic in it and the French unit who will take back the city will be injured. The GG is on his way to make the super medic and more units are arriving.

No peace, more units, fight!!!

I'll take a look to the save shortly. You can play your 6 remaining turns if you got the mood.

 

[beestar]

Is it possible to sign a Cease Fire instead of a peace treaty? I don't know if this is better or worse. BLubmuz's argument for continuing fighting seems good, considering how large our stack is.

 

[Fluroscent]

I thought an experienced player like you knew this rule: never take a city with the last unit. Even if the chariot join it it has no hope with the spear.
No peace. 10 turns are too much. We'll lose the axe, no more. The stack have a medic in it and the French unit who will take back the city will be injured. The GG is on his way to make the super medic and more units are arriving.

No peace, more units, fight!!!

That's silly. Not taking the city: He reinforces it, and we have lost almost all our siege, so we probably lose a couple of more phants taking it at least four turns later, given we would need to move out of his culture, heal and return.
Seriously, What? We lose the city, and cannot take it back without suffering another couple of losses at BEST. 10 turns too much? It's not like we are in good shape to attack Paris within 10 turns anyway. Maybe we are good to start the attack, but finishing him off will be about the same with or without a 10 turn peace.
When we are ready to go again, he will most certainly have whipped one or two defenders. Plus he would probably build more metal units which he now can't.

OK, if the issue was just that we want to win the war the quickest, but that is not the case. The most critical issue is that we have the means to build Oxford. Orleans is a good city, but if we lose it and recapture it it will be size 1, and be in revolt for longer. All this adds up to slower university.
And if we don't take peace, we WILL lose more units, which means we need to delay key builds in our core cities to replace them.
Ten turns allows us to gather our army, heal up and bring in new siege, and allows us to not completely forget our economy.

Is it possible to sign a Cease Fire instead of a peace treaty? I don't know if this is better or worse. BLubmuz's argument for continuing fighting seems good, considering how large our stack is.

He won't take a cease fire, unfortunately.

 

[BLubmuz]

OK, i was under the shock of the bad news. 10 Turns are not much, we need at least 4 to heal even with the GG.
Negotiate peace, then i'll finish him (almost).

Please complete your TS. PPP for the remaining turns?

 

[Fluroscent]

OK, i was under the shock of the bad news. 10 Turns are not much, we need at least 4 to heal even with the GG.
Negotiate peace, then i'll finish him (almost).

No sweat, it was quite frustrating to experience.

Please complete your TS. PPP for the remaining turns?

Yeah, will do a new PPP, tomorrow. The most pressing issue is do we trigger the GA now or after finishing GLib?

Pros of triggering now:
-Can build the needed reinforcements for the war faster. As well as speeding up the whole bunch of builds we need in Moscow.
-Can switch civics right away, which will allow Moscow to grow immediately by getting happiness from religion and HR (currently held back by the happycap).
-Might allow faster education, if we would get it before the later GA finishes.
-Will get to Slavery/OR faster (at the end of the GA), which will help all our cities. This is the biggest issue as I see it, it will most certainly help us get Oxford sooner.

Pros of triggering after GLib:
-More GPP to be created during the GA. Might be possible double bulb education.
-Slightly more tiles will get the bonuses.

A large unknown is of course whether our next GP will be a GS or GPro. And the next GP created will be from the same contaminated pool, but at very low odds. The risk of getting two GProphets seems very low.

Deciding on this is critical when deciding lots of builds right now.

 

[beestar]

Couple of random questions, haven't looked at the save

- Are we planning on settling 'GP Farm' soon?
- How long will it take to rebuild the army?
- Can we still get units to Orleans after we declare peace, or will Rheims' culture cut off the path?

I haven't looked closely at the game - if we don't declare peace, then the spearman recaptures Orleans, then we need to attack it again with injured axes/elephants/catapults? Or is that French force bigger than just a spearman?

 

[pnp_dredd]

The most pressing issue is do we trigger the GA now or after finishing GLib?

I'm leaning towards triggering the GA sooner rather than later - we need production now. But also remember that one of the main reasons we teched music was to speed Education, so keep that in mind.

It's probably worth spending a few turns now to maximise the GA ouput as much as possible - spend a few turns spreading religion, upping population in cities which will lose their cap once we switch civics, filling food bars so we can run food deficits, waiting for Orleans to come out of anarchy, and trying to get the GP farm to size 2 with a cleared mine, and perhaps build HEpic?

I'm still not quite clear on how we are getting our GEng. It's dangerous to try for one in the HEpic city, using just a forge, due to Artist contamination. How long will it take to get this Geng in an ironworks city? Is it better to build a forge in a 0-GPP city now and run an Engy through to GAge, and just keep that up till we pop the GEng?

 

[Fluroscent]

- Are we planning on settling 'GP Farm' soon?

It will be settled two turns from now.

- How long will it take to rebuild the army?

Depends how big an army we want.

- Can we still get units to Orleans after we declare peace, or will Rheims' culture cut off the path?

The path is clear. Unless De Gaulle settles a city in the way.

I am thinking that when we redeclare, we go for Rheims first. This is so we have a chance to hook stone in time for Oxford. We have to leave a phant/axe pair in Orleans for defense. So our army should be considered with this in mind.

It's probably worth spending a few turns now to maximise the GA ouput as much as possible - spend a few turns spreading religion, upping population in cities which will lose their cap once we switch civics, filling food bars so we can run food deficits, waiting for Orleans to come out of anarchy, and trying to get the GP farm to size 2 with a cleared mine, and perhaps build HEpic?

I just did an estimate on StP. Since the first GP will come from Moscow, the next will cost 400GPP. Running four scientists for seven turns and three the next (maximum without starving) StP will generate 277GPP. So it looks like we will have to stick to Moscow to get an additional GP out of the golden age. It will be hard to do pre-GLIB it seems.
Moscow will have a 10GPP base with GLib. And up to six scientists can be employed for food deficit at size 10. It is a pity to not work golds in a golden age though.
An approximate base GPP rate of 28 multiplied by 200% from golden age+pacifism will yield 84GPP. About five turns to reach 400GPP.
I think we should probably wait for GLib, then trigger the golden age, squeeze out the scientist in Moscow as quickly as we can without losing pop, then immediately switch to slavery/OR.
So we will get either two scientists or 1 sci 1 pro, or, extremely unlikely, 2 pro.
Two scientists will mean we can double bulb education. One means we get there slower, but gain a shrine. Two prophets? then I will believe our save is cursed
Orleans coming out of revolt is also a good reason to wait on the GA. As well as founding the GP farm

Of course, regarding the GE, it will need 800GPP then. It is important that we do not pop more GP before that. We just need to get the forge running, then wait for Ironworks to push out the engineer. I think NEpic is worth the risk, but we don't have to decide yet.

I am going to formulate a plan now, with a delayed Golden age.