SGOTM 12 - Team Zoe

[ThERat]

did you guys check the scoreboard recently? Seems that the Ivan's are trying to copy us...so similar in score and territory...it seems that klarius expands somewhat slower. spooks are also close...

however, it's all about tech pace and I think without many cities, beakers won't be very high. I think spooks would suffer a little not having the SoZ commerce in their capital...but if any of those teams are more lucky than us with AI research help, this might make the crucial difference.

 

[eldar]

lurker's comment: It's possible that the other teams are going for a smaller number of less corrupt worker-fed cities. 5 or 6 size 12s in the mid-MA are likely to be powerful researchers. Also, what are our current army costs?

 

[ThERat]

@eldar:

I think going for a small number of large cities is the wrong approach in this game. Feudalism has higher unit support for small cities. In fact, an empire with 5-10 big cities would implode under unit costs unless one were to not build any of them.

Our approach of gaining many cities (so far 21 IIRC) is the correct way IMHO. Since a long time, we have been under the unit support and should in fact try to stay below that so we can afford 100% research for the remainder of the game.

In fact, all AI's a totally bogged down by the unit support. Luckily, we got the AI's to fight each other and profited by gaining their gpt payments.

 

[zerksees]

I will be playing Civ tonight. Will it be this game?

ThERat - I have been watching the score. Too hard for me to tell by the charts all of what is going on. I came into this game with the thought of winning the UN vote - if we can actually win the whole thing that would be a bonus. I don't think our 'honorable play' rules (no ROP rape etc) are much of a factor in this game, so we have a chance. I am real curious what the other strategies are though.

 

[Whomp]

How's it coming along Smart?

I agree Zerksees. This game is quite a bit different than the last one with regards to maintaining a clean rep.

Just an fyi my cd drive blew out and I hope to have a new one by Tuesday.

 

[Smart]

I'm finishing my last turns and will post it soon, zerksees will be able to play tonight

 

[Smart]

Pre-turn: Sent army in galleon to Rome. Made some reinforcements for the next war. Gifted Fascism to civs who knows nationalism to let them research something more usefull. Gifted Medicine and Steam power to all scientific civs let them research Industrialization or Sanitation for us. Made around 10 gpt and some gold on those deals.
Building Heroic Epic in Kyoto.

Turn 3 - 680 AD: Built an embassy in Rome - there are only 3 legioners. Some fights with Zulu [2-1]
Transporting units, nothing much...

Turn 5 - 700 AD: Celts and france signed peace treaty.

Turn 6 - 710 AD: Declared war on Rome, landed knight army and some units near Rome. Allied Xerxes for gems and 24 gpt. Some fights [5-2].
Signed peace with Celts since France have done it too.

Turn 7 - 720 AD: Germany signed peace with Zulu, our deal with dyes is expired. France completed Magelans Voyage.

Turn 8 - 730 AD:
IBT: Persia asked for peace treaty, I had to accept because we have MA with them and aren't ready for big war - now we must wait 20 turns before we will be able to do something with Xerxes. Completed Iron Works and Electricity

Turn 9 - 740 AD:
Attacked Rome and captured it without any loses [10-2]
IBT: Lost 3 knights to legionarys around Rome [10-5]

Turn 10 - 750 AD: Transported Rifleman and some Knights to defend Rome. Army is redlined and will be healed on the next turn, then it may be transported by galleon directly to Veii or leaved here for defence. There are many knights and 3 cannons, so we will be able to survive for one turn until healing of all units will be completed.
Scientific method will be done in 7 turns, prebuild in 18, but it can be MMed after Dehli will complete rifleman for one more shield.

 

[ThERat]

had a look at the save, do not want to b too critical, but there are some observations I made, that don't make me too happy.

I thought we all agreed to take Seoul from Korea, the stack was in position just to wait for a few turns. Meanwhile, we could have declared on Rome without sending over units. It was clear to everyone that they would have huge stacks around (even if not in their capital). Persia would have nicely burned their units while we wait a while, we are in no hurry there, but can then land the army with cover and wait for the Roman units to go after Persia and then take their cities.

Instead, the whole stack was moved to Rome, Seoul is still Korean. There are even annoying Ottoman spears about to occupy the second choke, please move the MDI to cover that. Now we are sitting in a tight position in Rome and could lose all units there in the IT. All worst, even we survive, we might lose a lot of them and only the army would heal.
Why burn all our units like that?

As for techs, it looks as if sci methods now needs 8 turns, though I would still try and go for max commerce to try and drop a turn
Then, industrialization will take 9-10 turns. if we decide now to slow tech to coincide with the turn we finish industrialization, we should do that. Else, we need to slow the prebuild such, that it coincides with corporation. I guess we simply go for industrialization/ToE combo, should be possible to do


edit: I checked again, as th army has a yellow beaker it has moved partially and WON'T heal in the IT, how did you get to such a positive conclusion, smart? The whole operation endangers our stack there.
More careful play would be required if we want to have a shot at the victory

 

[zerksees]

The Romans are coming. On the first IBT there will be 4 vet med inf, 8 vet legionary and 1 vet horseman that can attack Rome. There are a few more damaged legionaries standing outside the door.
We have 1 vet rifle, 5 4/4 knight only one of which can fortify, 3 cannon, 1 1/4 knight and 2/13 army. Two galleons out of movement points nearby but one is full of units that can't unload.
Its hard to tell, but looking at the combat calculator and taking some guesses I put our chances of survival at 50/50.

In plain view are 13 more legionaries to hit the following turn and we have three units in a boat to reinforce. Our chaces of surviving them look bleak at best - maybe Persia will land somewhere and draw them off?

Since we can't gift cities with our units in them, we'll have to stick it out one turn. After that, barring a miracle, I'll load up what I can and the rest will have to be sacrificed. After that I propose gifting Rome to the Ottomans and retreating. Then I'll regroup and come back to finish the job. (I want to bait them away but i can't find a place out of range where a knight can run to.)

I'm not happy with the Ottoman spears on our Indian landmass anyway and once the Romans are dead we can take that city back. In the meantime I am going to starve Rome on the IBT and make beakers.

If ThERat is right and the army won't heal on this IBT I think I'll put it into a boat now so I don't risk it.

I also plan to:
- buy the worker from Babylon for printing press
- sell/gift nationalism, electronics and fascism to Arabs and Persia
- sell/gift electronics to France
- upgrade pike to rifle in Lion Trainer for 150 gold
- change thebes from courthouse to rifle
- move med inf near Seoul 1 east so the Ottomans can't seal the choke

There are more problems. We have two units on the Zulu landmass and no chance to take their cities. Germans made peace with them and their cities are size 2 and 1. Bismarck must have overused the whip so he will be of no help. I plan to make peace with the Zulu and pick up the units

I guess the primary focus will be to finish Rome, then clean up Ottoman spears and retake the city we gave them, then get the Korean capital. Don't know if I can do all that in 10.

On the tech front we have unis coming in 3, 4 and 7 turns. Sci method can be delivered in 7 atm. Maybe the unis will add enough beakers to shorten it one more. How many do we need atm?

I'll be playing 20 hours from now and so accepting input from my teammates (and lurkers of course) until then.

btw this is my offical "got it" - well within the 24 hour window.

 

[ThERat]

your plan sounds very good...

want to stress 2 points though:

- make sure you take out that army from Rome. We do not need a dead army...it's crucial for a retake of the Roman 'empire'
- I would not trade electricity right now. Why? If we are lucky and France/Arabia/Persia are currently working on industrialization, they don't need electricity. However, if they research industrialization while we go for sci methods, we have no more trade bait. We can't afford to trade away sci methods since France would then build ToE and maybe snatch it away from us.
Once we have industrialization, we can trade electricity as we want to set the AI to research Rep Parts.

Does that sounds logical?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I must say I agree with not touching Korea whatsoever.

A shame about Rome having all these reinforcements... too bad we didn't match them. More rifles should do the trick. Can we draft rifles in Rome? If we had a few rifles we might have a shot at living through this one. Otherwise it'll take a whole second wave.

 

[Smart]

I think I missed that idea about Korea
But aren't their cities useless? No luxes, far away from capital, almost all tundra tiles
I could let Rome to burn units for some time, but it would not be very fast - Persia had to transport units one by one, if they were on the same landmass - it would be easy... I investigated Rome and there were only 3 legionarys, so I hoped that they won't make for us much trouble... Other legions were coming from other city and partolling territory.
If we will leave army unfortified, it will have less defence then 4hp knight, and Romans probably won't attack it until the last unit. We can't draft units if town have population less then 7, but we will be able to bring and fortify one veteran rifle from boat.

 

[Whomp]

I'm for gifting Rome. Even with inferior units we're so outnumbered it's silly to keep. I wonder if we should consider giving it to Arabia or France to help their research speed. Rat's research plan makes sense and getting out of the Zulu war too.

Smart I think we were looking to take Korea because it's close to the FP and it would consolidate the continent.

 

[ThERat]

Rome will be a good city for us to keep later on. thus, i really like zerksees' idea to gift to Ottoman and later take back once we took out Romans. This way we can clear those annoying Ottoman spears.

@Smart, we had a lengthy discussion about # of cities we need to get a 1000shield palace build. Even if Seoul isn't that great, it's far better than no city. The sooner we take it out, the sooner we can consolidate on this part of the world...and concentrate on other's. It makes no sense at all to ship units around back and forth. Never mind though, it's too late already and we should follow th new plan to gift Rome and retake it later.

 

[zerksees]

- make sure you take out that army from Rome. We do not need a dead army...it's crucial for a retake of the Roman 'empire'
- I would not trade electricity right now. Why? If we are lucky and France/Arabia/Persia are currently working on industrialization, they don't need electricity. However, if they research industrialization while we go for sci methods, we have no more trade bait. We can't afford to trade away sci methods since France would then build ToE and maybe snatch it away from us.

These make sense and will be incorporated into the plan

Also I plan to consolidate the navy west of Roman territory. This way I can land some bait near Rome then land near Veii one or two turns later.

I must say I agree with not touching Korea whatsoever.

I don't understand this - what did I miss? First Rome, then Ottoman, then take Seoul (time permitting). Ottoman and Korea will be OCC (not dead) when done. Maybe some leader fishing too with Ottoman and Korea.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I think we are in good terms with the koreans and it would be nice for it to stay that way - we're trying to win diplomatically, yes?

 

[zerksees]

OK Beorn I understand where you are coming from. Anyone else have this concern about Korea?

I know we want to keep Korea around but I'm not too worried about their vote. I was thinking maybe we should gift them a faraway city (maybe Carthage old capital city?) before declaring, then take both of their native cities. This would reduce the flip risk as their capital would be far away.

Hopefully I can make the territory graph go up in these 10 but the pace might drop off here.

 

[ThERat]

gifting Korea one of the Carthage cities sounds good. Those 2 towns are a logistical nightmare anyway. if we have railed the whole Indian Island, we have no issue whatsoever to defend it, I really like that idea.

If we are worried about votes for the UN, we should make sure we know how to win it. Is a clean reputation + getting everyone to fight the opponent enough for that?

 

[zerksees]

Mid-turn brief

Our troops fought bravely but lost Rome on the first IBT
I was able to shave one turn off the research of scientific method
Romans paid in the end as they are now dead and we own both cities
It is 830 AD and industrialization is due in 7 and ToE due in 8

I uploaded the save for your viewing pleasure. It's late here - I’ll finish tomorrow night.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm12/Team_Zoe_SG012_AD0830_01.SAV

 

[ThERat]

we're now at 22 cities and the palace is still 600 shields, we still need another 10+ towns

I assume you will MM properly before hitting enter

Ok, since we need the next target too get more towns, I would favor Civs that don't like us anyway:

currently our relations are:

furious: Ottoman, France
annoyed: Persia, America, Babylon, England, Zulu
polite: Korea, Greece, Germany, Celts, Russia, Sumer, Arabia

We should go after one of the annoyed guys, since France (research something for us, please) and Ottoman are out
We still have a 13 turn deal with Persia, maybe we should go after England together with Sumer, after which we focus on Persia