SGOTM 12 - Team Zoe

[gmaharriet]

We already do have a barrack btw.

That's some very nice news.

Besides, I was looking for an excuse to say hi to all of you.

 

[zerksees]

Definitely rax after SoZ. Zerksees should probably play an 11 or 12 turn set, until we actually get writing, so we can see what else is out there, and work out what to get next.

Too late

2150 BC - pre-flight
We are the only ones building SoZ, or any wonder for that matter
The Arabs built the pyramids? Good luck with that.
Paris is already at size 12! They must really be stacked. I see no others that big atm
Notice the Ottomans only have 1 city. I wonder if they have a settler. If we need a city placed somewhere, all we'd need to do is clear the area and give them mapmaking and a map.

IBT
England warns - we apologize

2110 BC
SoZ in 7
Put new citizen on the lake to keep to 10 extra food
Meet the Celts. They have no gold and are down 5 visible techs
3 workers to the jungle

IBT
Celts warn

2070 BC
Inca now have mathematics. Time for some breath holding.
Sell HBR to Isabella for 24 gold

IBT
Mayans warn

2030 BC
SoZ still on schedule to finish in 5
Incense is now roaded

IBT
France building Great Lighthouse. Map making is out
Indians building Temple of Artemis

1990 BC
Build grapes colony
Found Germany, sell HBR for 12 gold

IBT
Germans warn

1950 BC
Slowly the others are acquiring mathematics. Egypt gained it this turn

IBT
nothing

1910 BC
Persia has writing. Still seems too expensive
Meet the Dutch and Babylon.

IBT
a couple trespass warnings

1870 BC
SoZ in 1, not much else. No one else is building it. Aztecs don't even have their ivory hooked up yet

IBT
Zoo: Statue of Zeus -> swordsman

1830 BC
India has polytheism, but will not trade for all our gold, gpt and mathematics
I have been looking at trades but nothing compelling.
Even writing would cost 275 gold and 2 gpt at this point.

IBT
First test: Rome demands 33 gold. Argh - I hate this. They have a dinky boat near our city. I am not afraid of a dinky boat, but it reminds me that I don't want to lose our dinky boats until we meet all the civs. So I reluctantly cave. If Rome has to go I request the right to crush them later in the game. War is better when it is on my own terms
Dutch are building Great Lightouse, French building MoM

1790 BC
Once we made size 11, we do not have enough food to keep up 10 fpt. Decide to mine a couple irrigated tiles to get spt up to 20. Also going to road our ivory forest tile. (Can't recall exactly which turn this happened, but we made it to size 11 with 10 extra fpt)

Met China dinky boat
Met Zulu. Sell them HBR for 32 gold
Sell math to Portugal for 41 gold - there are already a bunch with it so I am not too worried about dilution

IBT
Zoo: sword -> sword
France builds Great Lighthouse
Inca and Maya working on ToA

1750 BC
Cut lux to 20% due to border expansion
Writing is due in 1, so there will be a bunch of options. France has currency monopoly and polytheism is also low volume ownership. There are a lot of trading options, but I thought it smart to wait til writing is done so more trading opportunities would come up.

The save: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm12/Team_Zoe_SG012_BC1750_01.SAV

 

[zerksees]

A pic for lurkers:

 

[Whomp]

OK looking good Zerks. I'm really looking forward to using some AC's!!
I'm glad you caved. We don't want to derail our mission for something unexpected and you have dibs on Caesar.

It might be worthwhile for either Zerksees or Bucephalus to play a turn and see what our trading options are. It would be nice to find a 2, 3 or 4 fer opportunity here!

Roster:
Beorn --
ThERat--
Smart --
Zerksees--
Bucephalus --
Whomp--
Sanabas -- Boxed out in the garage

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

The pyramids of Mecca, the metropolis of Paris. These sure sound big.

War is better when it is on my own terms

Their land is close-by too. It would make for a nice winter palace - heh, we can always daydream that this is RaR. But I think the India-Portugal-Korea-more? mass is more promising for a forbidden palace, as it is bigger.

Side note: do we know wether japan has warrior code, horseback riding and iron working? It would be nice for them to have something to build that isn't warriors and can withstand aztec pressure.

 

[zerksees]

Japan has the same techs we do IIRC. We'll need them to fight each other just so we have some place to land!

I'll defer the next turn to Bucephalus unless he wants me to play one more.

How long til we are ready for this fight: 20 turns, 30? If we can get mapmaking maybe we get ROP with Japan so we don't have to shuffle all our units by boat in one turn.

 

[Bucephalus]

I'll defer the next turn to Bucephalus unless he wants me to play one more.

I think you are the better man for the job, if only because after ten turns you will have a 'feel' for the game, wheras I'd be coming in cold.

 

[Ansar]

lurker's comment: The Zoo officially has a statue!

Great job so far guys.

 

[gmaharriet]

lurker's comment: The Zoo officially has a statue!

Yes, and one which produces more animals for our zoo. It would have been a nice touch, though, if Zeus were sitting astride a horse.

 

[zerksees]

One more turn. No pressure.

IBT
finish writing and start mapmaking

1725 BC
We have 364 gold and 13 gpt

India, China, Inca and Maya have poly. We have no techs to sell.
Dutch have mapmaking, we have no techs for them either.
France has philo, mapmaking, currency, again we have no techs for her...yet

Build the kitty:
Sell writing to Egypt for 65 gold, to rome for 27 gold, to Germans for 21 gold, to Sumer for 20 gold

France will not sell us currency for 497 gold and 22 gpt - that would be all we have with 0% lux and 0% sci.

Decision time.

After a bunch of shopping around, I choose to buy philosophy to France paying 362 gold and 10 gpt.
Sell philosophy to India collecting polytheism and 7 gold. India likes us since no one else would take even trade, so we get 7 gold bonus. Maybe we should kill them last
Sell polytheism to dutch collecting map making and 3 gold.
France would not take a deal on polytheism for currency so I sell it to them for 281 gold.

So we net philosphy, polytheism and mapmaking at a cost of 10 gpt and 71 gold. Not too bad.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm12/Team_Zoe_SG012_BC1725_01.SAV

Changed the Zoo to build a harbor - to finish next turn. Once that is up we shall have some possible trades. Since the AI are so small the trades might not fetch much, but you never know.

BTW Joan has 15 wool luxuries to trade.

 

[ThERat]

good progress...now we can build our dromons and get after the first victim.

I guess we will research republic on min next. As for trades, we have to be very careful as wars might disrupt our trade routes and we do not want our rep flushed down the toilet due to such a broken route.

 

[zerksees]

We need code of laws before we can do republic, though I agree we should start min republic once we get code of laws.

Upon further analysis about your trading comments: Any trade is going to be precarious because our partner only has two cities, and could get wiped out before the trade deal is up - which will cause problems if there are goods in a per turn deal. So besides navigating the trade route concerns we have to watch out for this as well.

Bucephalus you are up. We need currency, construction, code of laws to get to next age. A per turn deal is ending soon so you will have some coin.

Building war units will be important but IMO but once we get currency we should put up a market quickly.

Hey team what are your thoughts on giving in to demands? I'm thinking giving up 30-50 gold is probably OK until we get to meet all. After that only give in to the AI with the money and techs.

Should we spend some gold on embassies - if so with whom?

Closing thought: We really need to get rid of Aztecs and Japan quickly so Ottomans will plant their last settler near us. There could be room NW of Japans capital for another city.

 

[sanabas]

Is there actually a disabled govt attached to Republic? Or have the govts been removed? If they've been removed, then there's no value at all in Republic. I'd rather go with a max run on construction, which hasn't appeared yet, correct? This is a fast tech game, and the opportunity to play middleman for trades is much better while AIs don't know each other. As soon as we get construction, whether at monopoly or as the price drops when isolated AIs research it, we should be able to trade for poly & currency without any problem, which should give us all 3 first tier techs in the MA. I don't think we'll be able to get a 4th, because I don't think we'll have the cash to buy one straight up, even if 4 or 5 of the scientific AIs pop the same one. But we should be able to trade our freebie for their freebies, and be 3 techs up on non-sci AIs, and then head towards Navigation, while trading for the bottom row + banking. I'm not a big fan of zero research at the best of times, and even less so in this game, for a couple of reasons. 1st, we will never have the opportunity to cash rush. So we'll just be stockpiling a lot of cash with limited use for us. 2nd, I think we're dramatically overestimating the AI research power. The AI's research bonus helps a lot, but more of their speed at Deity comes from their rapid expansion. They can't do rapid expansion in this game. It will take much longer for an AI to become extremely powerful, getting to 10 cities requires they conquer 4 opponents. Zero research feeds off one or two very strong, very quick AI, and we won't have that for quite a while. Look at hof/gotm games on sid or deity, when they are on archipelagos. Keeping ahead of a 6-8 city on those games isn't trivial, but it isn't especially tough either, especially for a scientific civ. I need to run away to work, more thoughts later.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

There is absolutely no govt attached, it's an empty tech like Atomic Theory. Sana's plan of maxing construction could work, but I doubt we'll be able to research anything on our own with 1 city against 2 deity bombs per AI.

Once we have the aztec island, the situation will change a lot, but not before we take the time to build up in all these new cities. By that time most AI's will bury themselves numb into unit costs and we'll have fair game on making libs/unis. This could take a little while though, and I think France can beat us to anything AA still. Good point of view though.

 

[sanabas]

I don't expect us to research construction first. I expect us to get it inside the top 10, and have ample trade value for it. I then expect us to do the same with theology & education. I agree our OCC can't outresearch AI 2CC. But the AI's research capacity is not going to increase at the same pace as tech costs, because they can't expand at normal deity speed. The AIs are not going to keep up the sort of research speed that makes no research attractive. They'll give us some techs, they'll help reduce our costs for some techs, but I expect that their research pace will drop as ours increases, to the point that they only give us replaceable parts & flight in the IA.

 

[zerksees]

I was brain dead last night regarding republic. We already went over that. I think you will find a max run will not move much above a min run, especially with no lib and no market. I could not even get writing to budge at max science. I might suggest min run on something until we get those buildings up. Even at min we should beat at least half of them to it.

I might suggest we go for literature.

 

[sanabas]

I was brain dead last night regarding republic. We already went over that. I think you will find a max run will not move much above a min run, especially with no lib and no market. I could not even get writing to budge at max science. I might suggest min run on something until we get those buildings up. Even at min we should beat at least half of them to it.

I might suggest we go for literature.

Writing wouldn't budge because we'd only researched ~40 beakers, and we would need to be able to research the rest in under 10 turns to have it drop at all. Check what the cost of construction is in CA2, see how long it would take at max. I expect it would be under 50, and it would come down further as a couple of others get it as well. Literature works for me as well, it should give us plenty of value, and if we're really lucky we'll be able to give it to a SCI AI who will be willing to pay monopoly rates to let us buy their MA freebie, and so have a shot at a 2nd tier freebie for us.

 

[ThERat]

Maybe someone could fire up the game as it stands now and check CA2 about the tech cost for construction as it is. I don't have CA2 installed, otherwise would have done that. If we can get construction in a reasonable time frame, I would favor that as well.

Else, a min run on literature sounds not a bad option given the AI usually neglecting that.

 

[Whomp]

I'm inclined to run hot on construction but as ThERat suggested checking CAII first makes sense.

Let's keep our eye out for the scientific slingshot. This could be a huge.

To pull this off you need a lot of gold in the bank, or optional techs from the previous age to barter with. Finish researching the last tech of the previous age, and a popup will appear congratulating you on entering the new era. Click "What's the big picture" and you will zoom to your research screen - without your free tech!

Hit F4 to tab to the foreign minister and buy the free techs from all your scientific rivals. You may need to gift them into the new age. Pay gold, gpt, anything to get those techs. Hit F1 adjust your gpt income. You will get it all back soon.

Now exit out of the foreign minister and continue your turn. When the build phase finishes check your research screen - you have a different free tech that none of the AIs have. If you got all the first-level techs already, it will be a second-level tech like Theology, Industrialization, or Space Flight! Sell it to your scientific rivals to get your money back.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I do think the odds are in favor of us getting all three techs if we manage to even get the first of them. Getting one might not be a piece of cake though. We'll need literature - and TGL not built.