SGOTM 12 - Xteam

[The-Hawk]

OK, I see this better now. Sorry about the confusion.

Yes, I think we are probably in need of a time out with Churchill. At this point, our economy is tanking. I think we are not going to be successful with a two-front war, we need to put all our energy on one AI at a time.

Once we finish Mao on the mainland, then we need to reassess Churchill (and Roosevelt). We may be close enough to the end that capturing more cities will not pay back. At that point, we should consider Fred's roving cleanup crew strategy.

I will stick with one comment from my earlier post. We messed up by not prioritizing a GE early in the game for mining. The impact would have been huge.

 

[zamint3]

We messed up by not prioritizing a GE early in the game for mining. The impact would have been huge.

Sorry I don't get this: "A Great Engineer (?) for mining"
Please explain!
Edit: leif's post below clarifies things for me, the key word being corporation! I have never build Mining Inc!

 

[leif erikson]

Once we finish Mao on the mainland, then we need to reassess Churchill (and Roosevelt). We may be close enough to the end that capturing more cities will not pay back. At that point, we should consider Fred's roving cleanup crew strategy.

Yes, but this does not help war weariness. We are in a difficult position in that changing civics to wage war will hurt tech rate yet trying to maintain tech rate may now cause scrubbing to be the bottleneck. This is further complicated in that we have enough WW built up with England that declaring to scrub will also hurt tech rate?

The issue is scrubbing and how we do that while maintaining tech rate?

I will stick with one comment from my earlier post. We messed up by not prioritizing a GE early in the game for mining. The impact would have been huge.

Problem is you cannot have corporations while in State Property.

btw - I think we have to take the city west of London before we take a cease fire or London will be mostly useless. We need hammers to convert to gold to keep tech rate up.

edit -

Sorry I don't get this: "A Great Engineer (?) for mining"
Please explain!

For Mining Inc. The corporation provides additional hammers depending upon what resources you have, so it means an appreciable number of hammers in cities with those resources. The Civlopedia explains it better than I can...

 

[Frederiksberg]

I took two more turns and tried to wrap up some of the loose ends. Captured 4 cities including Hastings leaving our English cities some more breathing space. I also made a cease fire with Churchill - we can break it again whenever we want.

T259 Move units around. Find a way to bring 3 tanks down to Hastings very fast.
T260 Capture Hastings, Reading (razed), Beijing og Xian. Cease fire with Churchill.

The SAVE

Culture slider is readjusted to 10% and we should take it down to zero when we make peace with Mao (and set science to 100%). Our GM has arrived in Delhi and he can do the trade mission next turn.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Agree with leif that it's not that simple to say if Corporations are stronger than SP.

 

[leif erikson]

Nice warmongering Fred, got a few new cities.

Now to consolidate, get tech moving and find a way to scrub what isn't ours.

Roster
Active:
Grifftavian - UP
Ronnie1 - On Deck
leif
zamint3
Mad Professor -
Cactus Pete - On hold until 6 January!

Lurker:
Frederiksberg
Conquistador63
da_Vinci
Rusten
The-Hawk


Off to look at the save.

 

[Grifftavian]

Excellent to Outstanding turn set, Fred!

Roster
Active:
Grifftavian - UP

I have downloaded the 1750 AD save from the P&R page, and opened it without problem. Will take an in depth look and begin to formulate a pre-play plan.

RE: War with China - looks like I should be able to take Guangzhou without too much trouble, leaving Mao 3 cities. The two down south could take a few turns to get troops there, and we would need to keep open borders with Roosevelt to get at them (unless we DOW on Roosevelt). That would leave Mao with Hangzhou as his Elba. Is that the plan for dealing with Mao?

Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[The-Hawk]

Very nice Fred! I am happy to see you were able to get Hastings before making peace with Churchill. This will make London a heck of a city. With all the food and wonders, we might have a nice GP factory here. Also, I see Churchill put some military instructors in there, might be a nice city to build tanks.

RE: War with China - looks like I should be able to take Guangzhou without too much trouble, leaving Mao 3 cities. The two down south could take a few turns to get troops there, and we would need to keep open borders with Roosevelt to get at them (unless we DOW on Roosevelt). That would leave Mao with Hangzhou as his Elba. Is that the plan for dealing with Mao?

I think we should take Guangzhou then make peace. I don't see much value in chasing after his southern island cities until later.

I notice Roosevelt has no oil. However, there are some dumpy islands he can settle to get it. He is tech'ing ahead of all the other AI's and is not all that far from tanks. I'm afraid cleaning his fallout via roving teams might be difficult if he gets tanks. Might force us to sidetrack to get MAs. I wonder if it is better to knock him down now?

Griff, maybe early on your turn you can run a unit around Roosevelt's cities and get an inventory of his units. It looks like he may be collecting them in New York. If so, maybe we can drop a SOD in via our navy and take the rifles out before he can upgrade them all.

I count almost 200 fallout tiles. We still have some work to do.

I notice some great generals are sitting around. Shouldn't we put them to work? Promote up some tanks?

 

[Frederiksberg]

I was very satisfied with the outcome of the Hastings battle. 10 Redcoats and a cannon were guarding the city and we managed to take it with the loss of only a single cannon. I started the attack with the two GG units because they had odds around 98%. Then odds dropped a bit so I decided to sacrifice a cannon following with 4 airstrikes from our airships. The cannon was now the only defender that wasn't damaged and odd exceeded 90% for our tanks with a single promotion. Then did a few tank attacks - two of them only resulted in minor damage to our units and using the 2nd promotion partially healed them preparing for the 2nd attack (tanks have blitz). Our 3 tanks thus killed 5 redcoats! The ordinary infantry units killed the remaining 3 redcoats and the cannon. No battle had odds lower than 80% or so. Blitz will, unfortunately, only give you a 2nd attack if the attacking unit is on a tile with no fallout. Learned this when attacking Beijing.

Agree with making peace with China when Guangzhou is captured. Hopefully we can get MilSci in return for peace. I kept the GG's on hold because I wanted to discuss if we want to use them for military academies and 50% unit production.

Another question is how to deploy our units when the China war is over. There are 3 potential targets: Gandhi, Roosevelt and Stalin. We can't afford to let our units stay idle. A war against Stalin would be easy in the sense that we just have 3 cities to attack and capture. If we attack Roosevelt or Gandhi we also have to decide if this is going to be a real war or just a "scrubbing" operation. A drawback of war with Roosevelt is the "Wheat Crisis" (reminds you of the Cold War). Americans have all the wheat so we loose 2 health when we attack. We could - of course go after a city that has wheat.

 

[Grifftavian]

I think we should take Guangzhou then make peace. I don't see much value in chasing after his southern island cities until later.

Agree with making peace with China when Guangzhou is captured. Hopefully we can get MilSci in return for peace. I kept the GG's on hold because I wanted to discuss if we want to use them for military academies and 50% unit production.

Two votes for taking Guangzhou and making Peace with Mao, which sounds like a good idea to me. Any objections? I will try and get Military Science with the Peace Treaty. If I do, what does everyone think of Fred's discussion point on using one or both of the GGenerals for Military Academies?

I notice Roosevelt has no oil. However, there are some dumpy islands he can settle to get it. He is tech'ing ahead of all the other AI's and is not all that far from tanks. I'm afraid cleaning his fallout via roving teams might be difficult if he gets tanks. Might force us to sidetrack to get MAs. I wonder if it is better to knock him down now?

Griff, maybe early on your turn you can run a unit around Roosevelt's cities and get an inventory of his units. It looks like he may be collecting them in New York. If so, maybe we can drop a SOD in via our navy and take the rifles out before he can upgrade them all.

Good idea, I will send a unit in on a walkabout to do some scouting, maybe have an Airship make some recon missions.

Another question is how to deploy our units when the China war is over. There are 3 potential targets: Gandhi, Roosevelt and Stalin. We can't afford to let our units stay idle. A war against Stalin would be easy in the sense that we just have 3 cities to attack and capture. If we attack Roosevelt or Gandhi we also have to decide if this is going to be a real war or just a "scrubbing" operation. A drawback of war with Roosevelt is the "Wheat Crisis" (reminds you of the Cold War). Americans have all the wheat so we loose 2 health when we attack. We could - of course go after a city that has wheat.

I will see about try to get some recon in on Stalin as well, we know we have to take him out.

RE: Research - IIRC we have one turn remaining on Plastics. Do we want to squeeze in Flight before continuing with Radio/Computers/Superconductors? Flight would let us build some Bombers, but it is not a tech we need for Space Ship components.

 

[Grifftavian]

Thanks to Fred's excellent work, we have nine newly captured cities in Anarchy for anywhere from 1 to 9 turns.

I would like to propose changing the builds in these cities to Culture. When the cities come out of Anarchy, their cultural borders will expand to the 9-tile square. If they are building Culture when they come out of Anarchy, their borders should pop out to the BFC quickly, usually 1 to 3 turns. As soon as the borders pop to the BFC, the game asks you for a new build in the city. What does everyone think of this?

 

[Mad Professor]

Excellent work Fred. We've missed your hand on the mouse! Getting Hastings was an excellent wrapup for the turnset too - it makes London much more powerful. Trying to take Hastings looked borderline to me, but you aced it! Well done.

Agree with making peace with China when Guangzhou is captured. Hopefully we can get MilSci in return for peace. I kept the GG's on hold because I wanted to discuss if we want to use them for military academies and 50% unit production.

Yes - take Guanzhou, then get peace with China. MilSci is an important consideration for the G.Gens because it opens up the possibility of military academies. Putting one where we have the Heroic Epic for example could be very useful indeed?

Another question is how to deploy our units when the China war is over. There are 3 potential targets: Gandhi, Roosevelt and Stalin. We can't afford to let our units stay idle. A war against Stalin would be easy in the sense that we just have 3 cities to attack and capture. If we attack Roosevelt or Gandhi we also have to decide if this is going to be a real war or just a "scrubbing" operation. A drawback of war with Roosevelt is the "Wheat Crisis" (reminds you of the Cold War). Americans have all the wheat so we loose 2 health when we attack. We could - of course go after a city that has wheat.

Right. We've build a big army and we can't afford to have it sitting around doing nothing. We need to start another war soon. We should leave England for a while because of the WW problem - not sure how quickly that is going to reduce...?

I think it boils down to Roosevelt or Stalin. We can bang Gandhi over the head any time and it won't be a long war because he's not very big. Stalin likewise actually. What are the pros and cons of doing Stalin before Roosevelt and visa versa? Remember we have to wipe Stalin out and ideally we want a lot of American territory in our control for easy scrubbing.

How long does it takes us to sail to Russia and back? Perhaps taking existing units to Russia while we build up a little more, then when they've killed Stalin and arrived back at America, they and the new builds can hit America? We have to make sure Roosevelt doesn't get oil - and he'll be looking for it too!!

It is very important that we prevent Roosevelt from hooking up oil or he will be a really big handful. In going for a space race we don't want any big military handfuls! Churchill was a good example of how that can hurt us.

Can we convince Roosevelt to attack Stalin? The important thing would be to ask if Roosevelt has units loaded into Galleons anywhere. If he does, then he'll set sail towards Stalin if we convince him to declare. If he does not, it could be a cold war which is a total waste as far as we're concerned. The advantage I'm thinking of is to get Stalin to use his nukes on Roosevelt!

 

[Mad Professor]

I would like to propose changing the builds in these cities to Culture. When the cities come out of Anarchy, their cultural borders will expand to the 9-tile square. If they are building Culture when they come out of Anarchy, their borders should pop out to the BFC quickly, usually 1 to 3 turns. As soon as the borders pop to the BFC, the game asks you for a new build in the city. What does everyone think of this?

We are in Caste system aren't we? Why not just put on some artists? The effect will be the same and you get a head start on another useful build. The artists would only be on for a turn or two, then you could work more tiles, or put on merchants or scientists.

 

[leif erikson]

The way I am looking at this is that we need to start getting hammers into Wealth or Beakers in order to catch up with research. Given that priority, I think we should consider getting our continent scrubbed by whatever means without building much more military.

That means Roosie next as we are on his doorstep? Our task is to eliminate Stalin, and he isn't going anywhere fast given the tech rate we've seen? When we hit Stalin, I think it needs to be coordinated and extremely fast to see if we can catch his nukes in his cities and eliminate them, right off the ships, so Marines and Artillery?

btw - excellent job Fred...

 

[Frederiksberg]

Right now we are running 10% culture and that alone or perhaps in conjunction with an artist should provide FC expansion in our cities. In other words, check if building culture is necessary before doing it.

We do have an economical crisis in the game because our next GM is 20 turns away and that means we must put a substantial number of cities on wealth. Yaroslavl should keep producing tanks, but perhaps this is the only place we build units for a while. A military academy there would be nice. When Plastic is researched I think we should build Hoover in Rostov. If we are to attack Roosevelt soon it would be nice to have health (Hoover) and happiness (Globe) closer to being improved. New York (Notre Dame) and the island city with wheat would be prime targets for a surprise attack and we need to prepare them well to avoid problems with mass upgrade of rifles to infantry and draft of infantry.

 

[zamint3]

Great job on Hastings there Fred
Trying to learn, I have a question or two:

I started the attack with the two GG units because they had odds around 98%. Good call! Then odds dropped a bit so I decided to sacrifice a cannon following with 4 airstrikes from our airships.

Why did you attack with the cannon first? I would have done it the other way around!

The cannon was now the only defender that wasn't damaged and odd exceeded 90% for our tanks with a single promotion. Then did a few tank attacks - two of them only resulted in minor damage to our units and using the 2nd promotion partially healed them preparing for the 2nd attack (tanks have blitz).

Did the tanks have both promotions available before attacking or did they gain the second promotion after the first attack?

 

[Frederiksberg]

I attacked with the cannon first because I don't know exactly how units are selected for collateral damage. I knew that air strikes always hit the top defender and the plan was to do some damage with air strikes to those units that were unaffected by collateral damage. It may have turned out the same way if you swapped the order but I wasn't sure. The tanks had 2 promotions available to begin with and I used one to improve battle odds keeping one in reserve because I wanted to do partial healing before a possible second attack.

 

[Grifftavian]

Pre-Play Plan – Version 2A

Research

Plastics (1T) => Radio => Computers => Superconductors (no change)
chg to 20% Culture/80% Science w/discovery of Plastics

War with China

Capture Guangzhou, then sign Peace Treaty, try and get Military Science and Mao in Caste System in the deal. Then begin scouting Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin in order to determine next target.
chg to 100% Science after peace with China

Next War Prep

Keep 2 Galleons near London/Nottingham & one Galleon near eastern islands. All other ship sail for Guangzhou. Start building Tank stacks in Nottingham, York & London/Hastings.

City Builds

change most Scientist specialists to Merchants!

Moscow: current build Research; -1 Food, build Public Transportation then back to Research? No Change
St. Pete: current build Tank (4T); -2 Food, next Infantry for Kransno & Khabar.
Novgorod: current build Research; change to Wealth
Rostov: current build Wealth; chg to Three Gorges Dam with Plastics!
Work Mine and run Engineer Specialist for Three Gorges build!
Yaro: current build Tank (1T); continue with Tanks or Marines.
Yekat: current build Globe Theater (13T); build Wealth or Taoist Missionaries** when GT completed?
Paris: current build Cannon (1T); next more Cannons
Orleans: current build Wealth; chg to Worker or two, then back to Wealth
Tours: current build Wealth; -1 Food, next Worker or two, then back to Wealth
Rheims: current build Wealth; chg to Battleship x2, then back to Wealth
Yakutsk: current build Research; stagnant growth, chg to Wealth
Vlad: current build Wealth; stagnant growth, No Change
Lyons: current build Wealth; No Change
Kransno: current build Wealth; No Change
Khabar: current build Forge (1T); next Wealth
Nottingham: current build Factory (8T); next Wealth
York: current build Lighthouse (8T); next Wealth
Dover: anarchy (2T) current build Forge (112T); next Work Boat
Chengdu: anarchy (3T) current build Theater (51T); chg to Library
London: anarchy (6T) current build Lighthouse (61T); chg to Forge
Shanghai: anarchy (1T) current build Library (91T); next Wealth
Nanjing: anarchy (4T) current build Library (91T); next Forge
Brighton: anarchy (4T) current build Forge (121T); next Library
Hastings: anarchy (5T) current build Theater (51T); chg to Library
Beijing: anarchy (9T) current build Factory (251T); next Wealth
Xian: anarchy (8T) current build Library (91T): next Wealth

**Yekat is only city with a Monastery (Taoist). Brighton has no religion at all, and eight cities could get another happy face (from free religion civic) by spreading Taoism to them.

Worker Actions

Three Workers from K-cities island back to mainland!
Scrub Fallout, then scrub Fallout, followed by scrub Fallout.

Civics – no change

Great People

GMerchant in Delhi completes Trade Mission next turn!
GScientist in Moscow can bulb part of Fission, which is prerequisite for Fusion and the Space Ship Engine. Save him for now!
We have three GGenerals, in Moscow, Yaro & Rheims. All will stand at ease until we can possibly get Military Science from Mao as part of peace Treaty.

I'll plan to play a few turns, until Guangzhou is captured and we make Peace with Mao, then post an interim save for further discussion.

Just noticed - Roosevelt has build a city on the Uranium Isalnd (see attached screen shot).

 

[zamint3]

I attacked with the cannon first because I don't know exactly how units are selected for collateral damage.

I'd like to know that too!

The tanks had 2 promotions available to begin with and I used one to improve battle odds keeping one in reserve because I wanted to do partial healing before a possible second attack.

So you take a (slightly) higher risk in the first attack in order to do the partial healing through the second promotion!
Wouldn't a CR2 promoted tank take less damage in the first attack, so that the outcome in the end would be (about) the same?

 

[leif erikson]

St. Pete had its water supply poisoned, so it will slowly recover over the next 6-turns.
Rostov has a Scientist hired. Please fire him to work the mine west of the city, takes 2-turns off the time to complete 3Gorges.
Orleans - I wonder if we should change some of these Scientists to Merchants, throughout the empire?
Rheims - think we should stop growth and use the citizen working the coast tile as an Engineer?

We have a lot of work to do in the new occupied zone. We need hammers: workshops, watermills and windmills.

The Great Merchant will yield 2500 Gold, giving us over 5,000 Gold in the treasury. That is enough for 20 turns at our current consumption. Perhaps we should set cities to wealth in order to stay in that range and the rest get set to science?

If we need culture, hire an Artist or two. I would try to keep the slider at 100% research as much as possible.

btw - Plastic Ducks must have finished as I saw Kossin posted in Fifth Element's thread. They are at the same date as us currently.