SGOTM 12 - One Short Straw

[Mitchum]

Obviously we want to do the Blue Line because the Black Line invites an attack from CHurchill's SoD if he DOW's us.

The two forts must be done on T+3 to allow landing units at York on T+8. Doable. Barely...

OK, this is doable. I assume that the Indian Ocean canal is no longer a priority then and our galleys will slip through the Marseilles canal, right? This also means that the worker steal option is off...

We can finish the Indian Ocean canal later if/when it becomes necessary.

 

[Mitchum]

Blue line: 24 wkr-turns (2 wkrs scrub road-less tile on T+2 and T+3)

Hmmm... If we declare on T+2, don't you think Churchill is likely to move his SOD toward our workers? Luckily, they can only move 1 tile/turn in our culture and we can run away, but this will throw off our timing.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Nope. There goes our cheap MP build!

I don't think we need to overboard on MP builds. Only for cities that need them to get through the warring. After that our warring units can do that rather than disbanding them.

Regarding a spy in each of Vlad and Troy, I can do it, but it will tie up two galleys. Let's see how the Marseilles canal plan works out. If I have a spare galley, I'll do it.

Or build another galley, in Orleans or somewhere.

Sure, we have a few spies around that can be used, plus the successful ones that get teleported back to Moscow. I hope our war with Churchill is close to being done in ~9 turns. If not, we could always CF for the steal.

Will we have 800-1000EPs on CHurchill in 9t?

BTW, I thought a spy was more likely to get caught the more units there are in the city. So we should think about taking Marseilles in the next 10 turns and then gifting it back to him unitless...

Number of units has no bearing on how likely he is to get caught. If CHruchill has a spy there, that has a bearing.

OK. So we have one settler in Orleans for Hammer City. I'll try to fit in two more for Bcool's private island. Plus there is an island at least two tiles wide (at its northern tip) south of Rhiems that may be interesting to settle...

There may be a better spot on the island that uses that fish. We can get there by settling the copper city first and waiting for a culture expansion or wait until Astronomy.

What we see are ocean tiles. That means the land tiles are 2S into the fog and the fish cannot be in the FC of the city. It also means we can never reach it from COpper CIty via our culture pre-Astro. But you could send a unit down from Rheims to the SE corner. If he defogs a 1f3g ocean tile, then a city there will give us access at 100.

 

[LowtherCastle]

OK, this is doable. I assume that the Indian Ocean canal is no longer a priority then and our galleys will slip through the Marseilles canal, right? This also means that the worker steal option is off...

We can finish the Indian Ocean canal later if/when it becomes necessary.

If you can spare the galley, then I would definitely build the Indian Ocean Canal as planned and steal the workers. We still need as many as we can get. Furthermore, if you happen to spy into Oxford, we might want to shuffle our stacks a bit and capture it sooner. It's a very nice city. I was even toying with that idea already this morning...

Hmmm... If we declare on T+2, don't you think Churchill is likely to move his SOD toward our workers? Luckily, they can only move 1 tile/turn in our culture and we can run away, but this will throw off our timing.

Yes, alas, this is a random factor out of our control (other than to put a stack of defenders on the workers. Definitely put at least one musket with the workers he can see to make them less attractive, maybe 2 or 3. And road that tile on T+4 for the sake of flexibility.

I don't think it's going to be a problem.

 

[LowtherCastle]

On the Indian Ocean Canal. Plus, we'll want the Hastings NW Canal ass soon as we're done with London to bring our units over, in all likelihood.

 

[Mitchum]

I'd go ahead and make your Paper for gold trade. T+1 or T+2 hopefully we'll be able to also trade him maps for close to 105g, before the DoW.

Check.

Our galleys in the Indian Ocean should probably try to stay more than two tiles from Oxford city center, just in case. We'll have a 1-mvmt advantage.

If we don't build the Indian Ocean canal, this may not be an issue, but it leaves our coast unprotected by naval units... Maybe we should slow build this canal (i.e. with only 3 or 4 workers instead of 8) and finish it on T+3 so that we can have a galley or two over here...

So on T+1 you might want to move a couple more muskets from Marseilles-2W to 3W. (They are still able to protect Orleans and Rheims from 3W, they just don't threaten Marseilles.)

OK. I assume these two or three muskets are not for our Churchill SOD but to relieve the pressure on Marseille to slow down the flow of troops there.

I was thinking this galley would pick up muskets drafted in GP Farm on T+1 and T+2. The one drafted T0 has already moved and can get to the battle zone on foot.

Thats better. It gets an extra musket into the action that much sooner.

I haven't done any actual workout on the idea of getting the 7 workers to build the Hastings-NW fort, btw. But I realized that with a musket escort, they don't have to wait till the turn we capture Hastings to move there. They can arrive a turn earlier.

If the galley is idle, good to take advantage of that. Eventually we might regret not having scrubbed that island earlier.

Will scrub island north of Bermuda if/when possible.

I would minimze drafting outside of GP Farm, but do it in an emergency, by all means. In general, unhappiness could start working against us after Sushi.

OK.

Contrary to my normal preference, I'd actually build a theatre before the forge, because asap we'd like to expand this culture to subsume the iron tile for Mining Inc. The worker on the iron should definitely road and could also build a fort, although the fort is porbably a waste of time, because we'll surely have workers available to mine this later on.

Check.

Do we want to farm or workshop the river tiles?

I was thinking 1 farm in Hammer City to start just to get it growing and the rest would be workshops. Then, once we get Sushi here, we can workshop over that farm.

Optimal MM between Shanghai and Beijing is tricky because of some valuable shared tiles. maybe play around with it a bit.

Thanks for the reminder.

Good question. We haven't really discussed settling a bunch of seafood cities for Sushi, but they will work much better if they already have granary+lh or at least enough population to poprush them during that phase. Your turnset will be complete if you can figure this out too.

I'll try to build 2 more settlers (in addition to the one in Orleans) during my turnset.

That was my first thought too, but I'm not used to thinking with Sushi. Now I'm wondering if production now, growth later is the right mix. Of course, there's also the question, how soon will we spread Sushi to distant cities like this? If we could irrigate those farms, it'd be different.

Guangzhou will be a very nice production city with Sushi. I agree that we'll leave the workshop (thought it had fresh water with what looked like a river but is actually just Roosy's blue border, BTW ). We should send a Sushi exec here as one of the first 5 to 8, I think. Then it can help to spread Sid's/Mining Inc in the area.

Mitchum, if Roosy has enough cash, you might want to go ahead and do this next turn. I've noticed AIs often MM their cities for max commerce to finish a (2t)-tech in (1t).

OK. I'll look to see how much cash Roosy has next turn and sell him PP if it makes sense.

Also, we want to trade maps to Gandhi and Roosy asap, for around 60g, I think it is. BOth should happen on the same turn so they don't share with each other. Btw, we want to trade Churchill maps before or at the same time as Roosy, so Churchill doesn't get our maps from Roosy for free. CHurchill trades them at Pleased, Roosy at Cautious.

OK.

Looking great, Mitchum! When are you planning to play?

I'll try to play tonight if we're all in agreement by then. Of course, it also depends on the kiddos and the spousal unit.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Mitchum, this is going to be an awesome turnset. Stuff will happen, of course, but we will be rewarded for all the planning you're putting into it...

 

[bcool]

I will put OF into the Kremlin somewhere on every turn and plan on finishing it on the final turn of the GA so that we get the fail on the turn after the GA (at least from the cities below Bermuda on the F1 list).

Might want to finish it 2 turns before the end of GA if you want to whip anything the turn you switch to slavery (the last turn of the GA).

Re: confu missionary for Marseilles & stealing steam power

True. I'll try to work this into the plan. I don't think we'll be taking Marseilles any time soon, so it may not be in the next 3 turns...

Ideally we spread confu here soon after we capture it for more culture.
The spy needs to be in place 5 turns before we steal steam power (so the 9 turns was just a random guess, you probably have more time to get a spy here)
You will give him back Marseilles before the steal (and from what I've learned from LC, he will take it regardless of his situation since he owned it before)

 

[LowtherCastle]

OK. I assume these two or three muskets are not for our Churchill SOD but to relieve the pressure on Marseille to slow down the flow of troops there.

I was thinking 1 farm in Hammer City to start just to get it growing and the rest would be workshops. Then, once we get Sushi here, we can workshop over that farm.

Actually, I meant the extra Muskets for busting through at Tours-N, if necessary, after which they could return to the Orleans/Rheims area.

I'm all for one or more farms at Hammer City. Somehow I mixed that up with Bcool Island. Sry.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Btw, guys, my EP estimates for Marseilles had to be wrong, because I forgot to lower the cultural discount.

We could do Marseilles-Copper CIty instead...

 

[Mitchum]

Mitchum, this is going to be an awesome turnset. Stuff will happen, of course, but we will be rewarded for all the planning you're putting into it...

Thanks. I'm looking forward to playing it!

Here's my gameplan based on how much time I'm going to have today (in fact, the girls are hovering around me as I type this): You guys chat among yourselves and I'll chime in when I have a spare moment. I'll re-work my galley and worker MM for the Marseilles Canal and update my PPP tonight for final comments. I'll try to play on Sunday, but I don't want to have to rush...

 

[bcool]

Re: espionage issues

Since Rosey is running mercantilism, when we gift him the cities he will get a free specialist which I fear will be an artist. So our cultural bonus will rapidly drop to ~0%.

So maybe next turn gift him only Vlad, steal Guilds
Then build up espionage and perhaps spies until we can steal the rest from Troy on one turn.
nevermind he is in slavery not caste system and he doesn't have the sistine chapel.

Mitchum I really appreciate the time you put into planning and responding to our ideas.

 

[babybluepants]

Holy crap! No comment... I barely managed to read through everything. Milk Kremlin for all it's worth in Siberia and Bahamas...

@Mitchum,

I would PM Alan about the crashing. I also crashed during my TS by excessive alt-tabbing. We should maybe try to limit that somehow. I know there's a lot of consulting to do with the PPP and report-writing...

Not sure how the mod works exactly, but I think those would raise a flag.

 

[babybluepants]

@InitialPPP-Cities

Moscow, Fish, Pigs, Rheims, Orleans, Chengdu, Bcool, Shanghai, Crabbes, Guang: ok

Siberia: maybe look for another turn of Kremlin

GP Farm: how about a quick barracks build after all? We might wanna whip some maces when we get a chance.

Cuba: I guess we can't build chariots anymore...

Bahamas: Kremlin!

Bermuda: skip Kremlin for now. Intelligence Agency here? For spy farming later?

Bananas: not sure about Uni. Maybe even settler? For the islands...

Paris: ok, I kept delaying the galley too much.

Kamchatka: worker was meant to prepare the iron for later (at least road) - not necessary, I guess.

Orleans: we don't get cash for pillaging our own cottages - just worker over it.

Beijing: the settler was meant for Hangz-2W. I think we should complete. I probably shouldn't have sent the other settler towards hammer city, and used this one instead? Two-seafood cities could be settled soon... Copper city might need to be?

Edit:
Churchill appears to have run a GM mission, and then used the money for upgrades. He didn't have any cash available for trade until this turn, when he showed up with 8gpt + 140g. I'd take all that money now - don't wait 'till next turn. Not sure what he's up to.
Maybe I missed it, but are we selling maps on T+1 if cash available?

 

[LowtherCastle]

The game crashing when you go in and out of it several times is a known problem. I just leave the game and load it up again every 4th or 5th time. It's a pain, but if you're doing other things at the same time, it's no biggie.

 

[bcool]

Handy to have a laptop to check the very active message board and a desktop to play the game too

 

[babybluepants]

I like the aggressive move towards Tours. Is 4 muskets really enough? He could end up with random units in the city pre-strike, or have a couple of maces + some trailing and counter.

Edit:
@Mitchum,
Didn't respond yesterday: I think I saw 1-2 galleys on Churchill's east coast.

 

[Mitchum]

Also, we want to trade maps to Gandhi and Roosy asap, for around 60g, I think it is. BOth should happen on the same turn so they don't share with each other. Btw, we want to trade Churchill maps before or at the same time as Roosy, so Churchill doesn't get our maps from Roosy for free. CHurchill trades them at Pleased, Roosy at Cautious.

FYI, Churchill is annoyed and won't trades maps with us. Are you saying that we should sell our map to him?

 

[Mitchum]

Fish:
Builds: wealth (1 turn) -> grocer -> market -> bank

I wanted to ask you about this. Are you planning to complete each of these builds or pre-build them, etc.?

Well, that depends on whether we're planning to run Slavery at the end of this GA or not... To be save, I was planning to build the grocer to as close to 149 hammers as possible. That should leave our options open.

 

[Mitchum]

Might want to finish it 2 turns before the end of GA if you want to whip anything the turn you switch to slavery (the last turn of the GA).

We don't have to decide this right now, but we still get the GA boni (100% gpp, tile bonus, etc.) on the last turn of the GA, so my preference is to not whip too much on that turn (i.e. keep the peeps working those GA-enhanced tiles). Plus, more fail gold would be a good thing, yes?