SGOTM 12 - Spooks

[Andronicus]

We cannot be pilaging stuff at france without risking a GA i think.

Yea I didnt look carefully at that - a dromon cannot get in bombard and return to sea tile same turn.

 

[Abegweit]

I would be very surprised to see salt at Orleans. Two of the three unrevealed tiles are clearly plains. The third might be a hill, but I would bet on grass. In any case, it is currently undeveloped and would have to be hooked up.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Yep, we can be pretty sure it is gonna be on the hill near paris. That is why i was thinking if we should take Paris first for the gunpowder risk, or orleans first for the flip risk.

 

[Abegweit]

There are things we can do about a flip. There is nothing to be done if they get guns except to make a concubine out of the Egyptian instead of the Frenchie.

Twenty turns too late.

If we take Paris, the salt should be immediately pillaged, of course.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Indeed, that is right, the gunpowder risk is a much more dangerous thing, it can be more precisely calculated though, and that is what i am planning to do now. (expect it to take at least half an hour since i have more things on my head here atm)

 

[killercane]

I think I can mesh all excellent ideas by Andro and WOA into one, and I will start on the first five turns.

Backup troops will go past egypt, and we can see what the losses are @ Paris/Orleans and they can either go on to join the attack or pause and take it to Egypt with some more troops from home. This requires 2 more galleys.

I will also make peace with Rome if possible that it does not hurt our science from loss of war happies.

 

[killercane]

Preturn

Switch Libe to Longbow, will build another dromon in capital. Teoti->Dromon

We get 49 gold from India for 3 gpt. Sell England CoL for 25 gold. DOW Egypt and ally Persia for mono (they throw in 30 gold). Get Babylon in on the Egyptians for free.

Embassy with Vikings for 83 gold.

Turn 1

Const- Dromon-> Harbor
Engineering to Abe for 28 gold.
Was going to DOW France now that our curragh is out of their territory, but they are paying us 5 gpt. We dont get a rep hit for this do we? I will stop and let rep experts make me sure. Earlier it was said that we do not but just to make sure.

 

[Abegweit]

Was going to DOW France now that our curragh is out of their territory, but they are paying us 5 gpt. We dont get a rep hit for this do we? I will stop and let rep experts make me sure. Earlier it was said that we do not but just to make sure.

Why would we get a hit for letting them out of paying us money? Anyway, from Microbe's article:

First let's define "gpt deal". As far as trading reputation is concerned, "gpt deal" isn't an accurate name as you could risk trashing your reputation even if you are not paying gold-per-turn. A more accurate name is "rep-risky deal". A deal is rep-risky if any of the following is true:

* You pay per-turn (resources, gpt, RoP) goods for hard goods (techs or lump sum gold) from the AI.
* You export resources to the AI (even if the AI only pays per-turn goods)
* MA/MPP is involved.

None of this is true.

 

[Andronicus]

Looking into when will France research guns

There's no library yet. I checked. You see all the buildings they own. The rest of the stuff in the list is all wonders.

Looks like my estimate of their commerce was even low but that they are drowning in maintenance and unit costs. It will be a long long time before they get to guns.

Anyway. Calculations. Orleans should have the five wool we don't see and be making 5 * 3 + 7 * 1 + 5 *1 = 27 commerce * 40 % = 11. It probably has its lib by now. Thats 16. At best, Paris will get its lib five turns from now at which time its science will go up to 29 (28?).

(16 + 19) * 10 = 350. (1152 - 350) / (16 + 29) = 18.

So their best shot at guns at 28 turns of science, five of which they already have under their belt.

edit: miscalculation on Orleans. It could have as many as 7 wool and a silk.

7 * 3 + 1 * 4 + 2 * 1 + 5 * 1 = 32 or 19 bpt with a lib.

Plugging those numbers in gives 26 turns. Pretty close to your guess, Wacken

This was from turn 70 in 1250BC when Abegweit bought embassy with France
France started research on turn 65
I would question whether Orleans has a lib since it has been building Sun Tzu
If not then
Orleans working prob 11 tiles same as Paris
Base 3cpt (wool), 3 wool plains - 3*2=6 (9) 8 plains / grass tiles - 8*1=8 (17cpt total) * 40% -> 7bpt
Paris likely unchanged from embassy pic 19bpt until lib -> 28bpt
5 turns prior to 1250BC Paris 19bpt, Orleans 7bpt -> 130 beakers
5 turns till Paris built its lib (after GLib) ditto -> 130 beakers (260)
27 turns Paris 28bpt, Orleans 7bpt -> 925beakers (1185) -> reaches 1152 required for guns

This would be turn 102, 22 turns from current date

After Orleans completes its wonder (in 2-8 turns) it will likely build lib increasing research by 3bpt which should reduce ETA for guns by 2 tun to turn 100 give or take a turn

If Orleans built lib before starting Sun Tzu then need to factor extra 3bpt for all above to bring time to turn 99

 

[WackenOpenAir]

My expectation is that they have guns in 12 turns from now at best.

That is including a gradual increase from 40% to 80% science after they start fighting the vikings.

And the actual cost for them is 1152 beakers.

I calculated the worst case scenario. You calculated the best case scenario, so it'd be somewhere in between.

 

[killercane]

Alright I will DOW them then.

 

[killercane]

DOW France, ally Vikes for Engineering.

Interturn Orleans builds Sun Tzus.

Turn 2

Teno LB produced heads south-> Warrior
Moving troops.

Turn 3

Worker @ Kyoto goes to road ivory, troops load up @ Kyoto. Scientist is set there.
Const harbor->worker
Upgrade MDI @ Osaka.

Turn 4
On IT, French galley dies to Viking galley, then another Frenchie kills it.

Const worker-worker
Teno warrior-aqua
Teoti dromon-aqua

Upgrade the second MDI to go, this should have been done earlier by me. Delays loading the galley w/ both by a turn, but galley doesnt have full movement anyway.

France and Vikings are indeed on the same continent. Vikings have 12 units incl. 4 swords headed up there.

Persia has taken Memphis. Should we try to save Thebes and get gems or let Persia have it? We are strong vs. Egypt.

 

[Andronicus]

Persia has taken Memphis. Should we try to save Thebes and get gems or let Persia have it? We are strong vs. Egypt.

It may be opportune to land MDI and eSword there immed
Thebes is only size 6 and would have sent all its units to defend Memphis so reasonable chance only 2 defenders which would be spears

I would query the duct builds in Teno and Osaka
Osaka is shield poor and requres duct, lib and harbour. Lib allows use of hill once mined so lb first should allow all 3 to be completed soonest.
Similarly in Teno, we wont want a duct until can use all tiles, therefore lib first seems best to me
I assume you plan planting more forests for Teot after chopping snce again it is shield poor and growth wont be an issue when workers are added back after

 

[WackenOpenAir]

The micro management things are minor now. I discussed those with KC on msn, pretty much the same things andro just posted here.




Scandinavia seems to do a very good job against France. This may even result in us having to take Paris from Scandi instead of France. On the other hand though, it may mean the battlefield between them is gonna be close to Paris, causing them to have their forces very nearby.

I guess we will have to monitor that closely and see what it means for our plans. If scandi gets real close and they disc the hill, we surely should go for Orleans first.




Egypt may well be very lightly defended indeed. That is not completely sure though. If Persia kinda took Mephis in a supprise attack (maybe they had a stack just there after the last war) they may still have quite some units and the defensive ones may even be driven into the city. If we dont take it now, we may have to take it from Persia later. Persia might have guns by that time. So indeed, we do have good reason to take this city now. But it does increase the risk on our French mission. I dunno.

 

[Paul#42]

I guess we will have to monitor that closely and see what it means for our plans.

I can't tell right now where our curragh is but if we'd place it right in the harbor of Paris we would prevent any ships from leaving it and could watch those battles from the first row.

Egypt may well be very lightly defended indeed. That is not completely sure though. If Persia kinda took Mephis in a supprise attack (maybe they had a stack just there after the last war) they may still have quite some units and the defensive ones may even be driven into the city. If we dont take it now, we may have to take it from Persia later. Persia might have guns by that time. So indeed, we do have good reason to take this city now. But it does increase the risk on our French mission. I dunno.

If we fear Perisa could be too successfull, we might ally them on another opponent (Hittites, Mongols), to distract their forces...

Thebes fits our empire very well but wouldn't it be a constant element of uncertainty?
With a strong X-Man (what we want?), wouldn't Thebes always be tough to hold against military and culture?
Maybe we should rather concentrate on India and Maya territories?

Or do we want to keep X-Man weak as any AI won't help us at all?

I note that Spain and India have some gold.

 

[Andronicus]

Thebes fits our empire very well but wouldn't it be a constant element of uncertainty?
With a strong X-Man (what we want?), wouldn't Thebes always be tough to hold against military and culture?
Maybe we should rather concentrate on India and Maya territories?

Thebes is the best commerce generator available - with lib and uni its culture would hold its own - Memphis is far enough away and wont have culture from early BC years. I think we want it .. I'm sure we can hold it with appropriate diplomacy .. the question is can we take it and when?

 

[Paul#42]

Thebes is the best commerce generator available - with lib and uni its culture would hold its own - Memphis is far enough away and wont have culture from early BC years. I think we want it ..

You are certainly right. I did not have those gem mines in mind.

One general remark: I enjoy the discussion very much and regret that I'm not able to contribute much quality.
At home my family won't let me, so my attendance is 99% @work during weekdays while I have CA2 but no C3C available

Without C3C I don't even have the maps in CA2 as it uses the terrain pics.
I guess I'll have to install at least the graphic resources on my work station...

 

[markh]

For me it is a great "sit and learn lesson" I get here. I am following the discussions, so I am still around. I have the same problem as Paul. No civ during work, so it is difficult to take a more active part.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

If we want to take Thebes first
We load up another unit next turn (T5) and we sail to a sea corner near Thebes.
We drop 4 units on Thebes (T6) and sail back to the sea.
We sail home and pickup longbow and AC.(T7)
We pickup 2 survivors at Thebes.(T8)
4 units sail to France for a 9 turn trip (T17)

If we don't take Thebes
We sail the 4 units to France as planned next turn. We will have 2 units remaining at home, but no boat capacity to bring those to Paris.
We also have some vWarriors and i guess we are producing another one in Kyoto for a total of 4.
That makes 6 total units as soon as we have the gold for upgrading and the means to transport them.

We may be able to get at least 4 of them to sail sometime soon if we build 1 more dromon. We could build it from Kyoto slowly. From Teno/Teoti a little faster. Or if you are in a hurry, you could even build it from the capital.

If Persia takes Thebes, that ends our alliance deal and we will be out of deals with Persia 6 turns from now. They surely won't have Guns very soon, so that would leave us plenty time to take it from Persia.



9 turns after the first units is too late imo. I think we should not risk our French mission for Thebes now. I think we can take Thebes a little later.

PS: don't lose your jobs over civ guys

 

[Paul#42]

PS: don't lose your jobs over civ guys

I'd put it the other way around: Don't lose a civ game over my job
I'll be careful