SGOTM 12 - Spooks

[Paul#42]

Phantastic.

Can't wait to read the other threads...
I'm optimistic, now that team Regular finally caught our curve
Maybe we should submit the 1030-save - just to confuse?

And I will replay my first failed attempt on Paris

I think everything is written about our final turn, right?

Enjoy your final turn ever.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Playing right now.
Can't buy Fission, 950 gpt ain't enough.

Next turn i could swiched to seti, and traded our tech for Fission. Only 1 turn delay.

Now i make them all allied against Russia with MPP and ROP. Signing MPP's seem to get more expensive when you have more of them already. Paying all our gpt and gifting many into modern age, we do get MPP, ROP and alliance against Russia with all of them though.

Everyone except Babylon is Gracious with us.

We win the vote almost unanimous.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

26 turns on Klarius.
40 on Zoe.
With Physics at 420AD while we had it 190AD, team regular is also at a safe distance.

 

[Abegweit]

Excellent! It was a pleasure playing with you guys.

Off to read the threads...

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Ye, it was good
I'll try to spend my time a bit more productive now though

 

[Paul#42]

Excellent!

Can't buy Fission, 950 gpt ain't enough.

What did we, what did the others get?

Next turn i could swiched to seti, and traded our tech for Fission. Only 1 turn delay.

Why could you trade a turn later?

We win the vote almost unanimous.

Hey, I had expected a shot of the election board
You're finally getting tired, aren't you?
Could you place the final save here to have a look at?

Excellent! It was a pleasure playing with you guys.

I second that. Thanks to our new members Wacken and KC, you guys really had your impact (understatement of the year...)
And thanks to our official lurker, Andro. Had you known how much part you would take, you could also have played officially, right?

I learned a lot and enjoyed it although sometimes I felt small and like I was jeopardizing our chances a view to the quality of our team players. Not that our former teams did lack quality

Ye, it was good
I'll try to spend my time a bit more productive now though

You never know when the fever catches you again.
I dare to invite you for the next game once the pregame announcement is up.

edit: I wonder what it looks like if we visit two threads here, our own and another - would that hide that we are already reading foreign posts?
I for myself will try it that way, open our thread and then others simultanously.
Would make me feel better not to stress other teams...
I just had a look: When browsing two threads the profile shows the lowest common thread (Civ3 - Succession GOTM (SGOTM))

Anybody care to write a spoiler?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

What did we, what did the others get?
Why could you trade a turn later?

When i got to the big picture, i started gifting the scientifics. First on got Fussion. What a joy ! It wou'dn't sell it at all though even after changing all scientists to taxmen in the F1 screen.

So i gifted russia some cities, made war with them and allied that AI against them. I hoped that would increase the value of our gpt. If it did, it did not do enough though. I gifter more scientifics until another one got Fission. Still far away from a deal. I allied 2 more against Russia to buy another tech, but it just wouldn't work.

Since it was clearly not gonna be possible to buy a tech before getting our own free tech, i stopped gifting the scientifics and did not ally otheand went on to the next step.

We got Computers. Delhi finished it's explorer and i moved to Paris. There, i changed the build to Seti Programm and i turned the engineers into taxmen so that it would not finish immediately.

Next, i go back to the diplomacy, trade fission, gift pretty much everyone to the Modern age and ally/rop/mpp them all.

Press enter, watch the polution and starvation and win the game.

Hey, I had expected a shot of the election board
You're finally getting tired, aren't you?
Could you place the final save here to have a look at?

Sorry, i thought i had made this screenshot, but i clicked it away before pasting it and when i actually wanted to paste it, it wasn't on the clipboard
The save is added.

I learned a lot and enjoyed it although sometimes I felt small and like I was jeopardizing our chances a view to the quality of our team players. Not that our former teams did lack quality

We all did well, including you
And i guess we all have that fear of screwing up, at least i do.

You never know when the fever catches you again.
I dare to invite you for the next game once the pregame announcement is up.

Really, i won't

edit: I wonder what it looks like if we visit two threads here, our own and another - would that hide that we are already reading foreign posts?
I for myself will try it that way, open our thread and then others simultanously.
Would make me feel better not to stress other teams...
I just had a look: When browsing two threads the profile shows the lowest common thread (Civ3 - Succession GOTM (SGOTM))

I don't care about them knowing. They won't beat us anyway. If someone feels like it, you could write the first spoiler in that empty thread

 

[killercane]

And thanks to our official lurker, Andro. Had you known how much part you would take, you could also have played officially, right?

Thats an understatement. Though I wish Mark would have stayed on, you should have taken over for him Andro.

Congrats to everybody. Looking forward to reading some threads.

 

[Andronicus]

Well done - massive effort in micro management throughout the game.

Yea, I was wishing I was playing, but when this game started I was only halfway interested in civ3 and decidedly rusty.
I confess the bug has got me again . It was however a pleasure watching your efforts, thanks for allowing me to infest your thread, though you needed no help in keeping up the traditions of most posts .

 

[Paul#42]

And of course a special thanks to Gyathaar for providing an extremely challenging variant.

I really enjoy your ideas, even if they fail like in the Dumbo-to-space-paradoxon
This time however, it really worked out great.

Nice in-game challenge with Paris btw. Although we (I) failed on the first attempt (and provided some extra challenge by giving Invention to Joan ), I think we were the first to take it...

I'm really curious about the next SGotm and I will try even harder to get a team together than this time when I was close to joining the "evil empire"

Anyone out there who already knows he will be with me?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I really enjoy your ideas, even if they fail like in the Dumbo-to-space-paradoxon
This time however, it really worked out great.

I second that.

 

[Wotan]

Awesome game guys!
Really impressive, you managed to stay focussed on the MMing throughout the game in an almost superhuman way.
You outresearched all teams by a league (or two) I really must read up on your mid game where I guess you made sure you would stay on a tight research schedule. Hope RL soon allow me some time so I can study your saves in detail.

 

[killercane]

I think the growth method used at various times is what did the trick, along with making Paris as a priority. We did make a lot of mistakes though, probably this game could be won 15 turns sooner. The discussion was unbelievably good though, I think we discussed every tip, trick, exploit, and device in the game at some point or another.

MSCH posted about havnig a question in post #774. What was it?

 

[msch]

First of all Congratulations!!!
I liked the way your team played very much.
It was really a team work, and your team was not dominated by a leader like many others.

The questions. There are several I wondered about, don't remember exactly what this one was. I guess it was about why you rushed to get Paris, while having far from enough cities to build the FP.

Another one, later on was, about the GA timing. I had a feeling you plan it as if you need to play to the end of Modern Time. I.e. it looks like you tried to time it to get the maximum of power out of it, not to reduce the number of turns in Middle/Industrial age alone. Think about it. Was it possible to shave like 15 turns from the Middle age research by having GA early in it with 7-8 towns. You would not be able to use it later, but you could build Libs and Unis much faster, and probably faster capture Paris and some other cities.

Third question was why you decided to not use any defensive units while fighting for Paris. They could save a lot of losses there. Same about some artillery.

 

[Paul#42]

First of all Congratulations!!!
I liked the way your team played very much.
It was really a team work, and your team was not dominated by a leader like many others.

Thanks. It was real fun to work in this team.

The questions. There are several I wondered about, don't remember exactly what this one was. I guess it was about why you rushed to get Paris, while having far from enough cities to build the FP.

Part of it was our mistake to give Invention to Joan. It put us in a hurry because we knew it would be tough to get Paris once Joan got muskets.
We were incredibly lucky though that she was missing salt (only desgn mistake by Gyathaar? )

Another one, later on was, about the GA timing. I had a feeling you plan it as if you need to play to the end of Modern Time. I.e. it looks like you tried to time it to get the maximum of power out of it, not to reduce the number of turns in Middle/Industrial age alone. Think about it. Was it possible to shave like 15 turns from the Middle age research by having GA early in it with 7-8 towns. You would not be able to use it later, but you could build Libs and Unis much faster, and probably faster capture Paris and some other cities.

We decided to wait for Paris because it would have such a huge impact on our game and we wanted it to benefit from our GA. It might very well be better to havbe the GA earlier but it would only be Constantinople to benefit from GA big time (one-turn-MDI) - all other towns were too small IIRC.

Third question was why you decided to not use any defensive units while fighting for Paris. They could save a lot of losses there. Same about some artillery.

With the unit upkeep being such a factor, we could not waste any support on "auxilary forces". Catapult and trebs are extremely inefficient and pikes wont take a town for you. We did not plan to face counter attacks from more than one archer / LB and 2 defense (MDI) is not so much worse than 3 defense (Pike). MDI were excactly the arms we needed.

 

[markh]

Congrats, guys.

I am sorry, I could not take more part in this, but this was far over my head and I did not have the time to follow the discussion. However that much mm is too much for me and I am sure I would have made some mistakes due to non-concentrated playing.
Just on last weekend I managed to catch up on the posts. RL is keeping me quite busy. I managed to play the other two SGs I am in as there is not that much discussion, but as soon as they finish I will take a break or at least I will limit myself to one SG at a time.

 

[Paul#42]

I liked the way your team played very much.
It was really a team work, and your team was not dominated by a leader like many others.

Reading other teams' threads I see what you mean.
There were many decisions taken without consulting the others, especially in the first set. I'm glad we discussed that thoroughly, not only ensuring to draw the best decisions but also (even more important) to keep everyone (except for lost Mark ) focussed.

A real team effort, that is.

Funny thing is, we made lots of mistakes and finished way before the second. There was a lot of room for improvement.

We were quite lucky with GLH and SoZ - but the main points imo where:
1. worker-mania. The bold decision to leave the capital on worker duty through 2/3 of the game accepting incredible upkeep cost and running the game almost without treasury (how much money did Klarius have at times )
2. To go for Paris straight away (70 BC IIRC - Klarius 330 AD, our FP 50 BC - Klarius' FP 410 AD)
3. Science farms in corrupt but food rich areas.
4. research non-optional techs only (except sanitation)

 

[Abegweit]

We were quite lucky with GLH and SoZ

And the early MGL too? I don't think that we were lucky with this at all. The SoZ was of marginal utility. By the time it got into the game, we were already building MDIs. Besides we weren't the only team to capture it. It's almost half-expected that you will if you are careful.

As for the GLight, it certainly had its uses. However, there was a big downside too. Without it (and the early MGL), we would never have hatched our mad scheme to take out France before guns, when it turned out that we didn't even have to. Had it been necessary, it would have been a major coup. But it wasn't.

As it was, we lost time taking down nearer targets like Egypt and India. We also had the considerable cost of hanging on to a leader for (what?) forty turns.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

TGL could have been a huge luck if France had salpeter and TGL would have allowed us to capture Paris before they get their guns.
However, with them not having salpeter, it made us rush more than needed while we could take them any time we wanted.

Still, TGL certainly has been a good thing for us.

I didn't read the other threads all that well, but i assume most teams have had SOZ built by one of the neighbours? The ivory wasn't there for no reason i'd think....

 

[Abegweit]

I didn't read the other threads all that well, but i assume most teams have had SOZ built by one of the neighbours? The ivory wasn't there for no reason i'd think....

If they didn't rush to build it themselves, they captured it.