SGOTM 12 - Xteam

[leif erikson]

Nice work on the recon!

Looks like we have some room to expand.

Roster:
Active:
zamint3 - UP
Conquistador63 - On Deck
Cactus Pete
Ronnie1
leif
Mad Professor
Grifftavian Nice work.

Lurker:
da_Vinci
Frederiksberg
Rusten
The-Hawk

Off to have a closer look at the save...

 

[Cactus Pete]

Probably need to settle SE of the start and build workers there.

Can we get rid of the dot map on the official save?

What does the +12 next to Roosevelt and the -11 next Catherine indicate?

Why do we have no war weariness affecting happiness in the capital, but other civs seem to all have 3?

 

[leif erikson]

Probably need to settle SE of the start and build workers there.

I wonder if we share our continent with De Gaulle? Cannot see west and south enough to know for sure. If we do, perhaps we should build a blocking city near the Pigs? Not sure the city site SW of the Ivory is all that great, perhaps south of cow and NE of Ivory?

Can we get rid of the dot map on the official save?

Yes, this would be nice. Please let us know how you do it so we can all make the change if we wish. Z3 can do it to the official save before he plays, if he wishes?

What does the +12 next to Roosevelt and the -11 next Catherine indicate?

I believe it is the number of points of score gained or lost during the latest turn. We lost 11 because we whipped away pop for the settler.

Why do we have no war weariness affecting happiness in the capital, but other civs seem to all have 3?

I do not think 3 creates WW in a city, it is more, no?

 

[Conquistador 63]

Dotmap: ctrl-X hides dotmaps. Alt-X creates a BFC for you to put anywhere on the map - or if clicking on an existing dotmap, it will erase it.

 

[Mad Professor]

Good going Griff.

However, the Warrior found lots of interesting stuff out to the west, including the French Cultural Borders, but it appears they may be on an adjacent island.

It could well be we are alone on the land mass we occupy? Or at least anyone else is a long way away to the north, or something.

He spotted one French Worker, and I've marked the spot on the map where the Warrior saw him. The Warrior has also found three City Ruins and many more resources. There is an additional Ivory 1NW of the one MP discovered earlier. I've put some Green dot-maps down where the City Ruins are located. Looks as though they might make good city sites, what does everyone think?

And Mao has already founded a 2nd city.

The Chinese city is pretty normal - we've been slow producing our settler because we did two workers first. Now we need to spam settlers fast for a while I think. Several quickly by the looks. Let's turn all that Moscow food into settlers ASAP. I hope the next player has his whip ready?

They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so attached are several thousand words worth of screen shots from the final turn of my turn set. Turn set stopped on turn 52/1920 BC. Turn set has been uploaded.

That was several thousand words. Thanks. Hopefully I'll get a chance to have a look at the save this evening.

 

[leif erikson]

It could well be we are alone on the land mass we occupy? Or at least anyone else is a long way away to the north, or something.

Don't think we are alone.

Starting Conditions
Almost all of earth is covered by fallout. You are in contact with all opponents, you are at war with them, and they are upset that you have nuked them. The map is not the same as in SGOTM10. You are land connected to at least one of the AIs. The AI capitals are pre-settled. All biological units have died from exposure to radiation, except your settler. The fallout will not disappear by itself, and it is not possible to settle on fallout (due to a modified BUFFY)

Now we need to spam settlers fast for a while I think. Several quickly by the looks. Let's turn all that Moscow food into settlers ASAP. I hope the next player has his whip ready?

Yes, I think our next discussion needs to be about city sites and order of settling. We will need to dispatch Workers to clean our city sites.

Would be nice to know if we are connected to France or not? If not, I suspect the Old Russian empire to the north? Perhaps we need an exploring Work Boat?

edit - C63.

 

[Conquistador 63]

Interesting to note who met who from the autolog attitude changes...I made an attempt to guess their relative position, and tried to translate it to a text-based "map", not sure how the copy/paste will work in this post, let's see:

CHU
[
ROO --- DeG -----Cath
[...... / ... [
[.... / ..... [
STA----MAO ................. Gandhi?

 

[zamint3]

Wauv that's a lot more fallout than I expected.... - I hope we have enough rubber gloves for our poor workers.

Nice job Griff

Probably need to settle SE of the start and build workers there.

I think you're right, SE is a nice spot , we need a lot of workers fast!

Next city site should be NW of the cow, where the warrior is atm. The two peaks don't seem to be covered in fallout and when the borders pop it should be connected to Moscow and health problems will be under control.

Other city sites needs heavy scrubbing before health gets tolerable.

Interesting to note who met who from the autolog attitude changes...I made an attempt to guess their relative position, and tried to translate it to a text-based "map", not sure how the copy/paste will work in this post, let's see:

CHU
[
ROO --- DeG -----Cath
[...... / ... [
[.... / ..... [
STA----MAO ................. Gandhi?

You just might be right!?
Why does the foreign advisor screen not show any AI contact?

There's tundra up north so maybe scouting should be directed W-SW towards France.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Not so sure we should try to block the French at this point. We're a long time from having a road there, and we are at war with them and would have to put hammers into units rather than into settlers, workers, boats, infrastructure, etc. Also, wouldn't want to commit to thwarting the French until we find out how real and present a threat Stalin is. Might work out to steal a worker and/or to attack France first, ideally after we have Alpha and can extort tech.

Thinking site to SE would allow us to work one of the gold hills until we can scrub some fallout and grow the city.

We need to prioritize worker actions carefully. There is more that needs to be done than we have workers to do it - roads and chopping, in addition to scrubbing and improving.

 

[leif erikson]

Not so sure we should try to block the French at this point. We're a long time from having a road there, and we are at war with them and would have to put hammers into units rather than into settlers, workers, boats, infrastructure, etc. Also, wouldn't want to commit to thwarting the French until we find out how real and present a threat Stalin is. Might work out to steal a worker and/or to attack France first, ideally after we have Alpha and can extort tech.

Yes, I think you may be right. Getting into a shooting war now would be a problem for expansion. Would be nice to see if we have a connection with De Gaulle so he doesn't sneak up on us with a stack when we are unprepared?
Perhaps a Chariot when we have time to produce one?

Thinking site to SE would allow us to work one of the gold hills until we can scrub some fallout and grow the city.

We need to prioritize worker actions carefully. There is more that needs to be done than we have workers to do it - roads and chopping, in addition to scrubbing and improving.

Speaks to the need for more Workers. Also, city site prioritization. We will need to be pretty organized this game because building a Settler without a clean place to found a city is wasteful.

We should agree on a dot map of the next two to three cities before we start the next turn set?

As some of you know, I have yet to get Civ5 to work on my gaming system. Just got a copy of Win7 and am reloading my system starting after this post is complete. I'll get back as soon as I can. Hope this works.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Good luck, leif. I too will be absent (for about 40 hours) while traveling.

 

[Rusten]

How much has been tested in terms of the AI opposition? Just want to make sure we don't overproduce units and stifle our expansion. I don't know how many of you have played AW games (should play out similar), but despite being at war it will take the AI a long time to actually send units to hurt you, and they will normally be stray units, not stacks.

Agree with Fred that CS (with Oracle) would be great if possible.

 

[The-Hawk]

Nice progress!

Only problem I see is we should have prepared a site for the settler. We have four sites that do not have fallout (marked on the attached screenshot). All four have a forest, if we want to settle there, we should have chopped the forest first.



So, I think we need to decide:

1) Settle one of these four sites, or scrub a 5th.
2) If one of these 4 sites, settle without chop or hold the settler a couple of turns while we chop.
3) Which site?

CP likes site 1 because it can work one of Moscow's gold tiles (and the cows). I think site 2 has merit because it gets the extra hammer from plains hill. Site 4 is not a bad one, might be good in the future when we have calendar. I can't imagine settling site 3.

In my opinion, question 3 really boils down to site 1 or site 2. Site 1 has early advantage from working Moscow tiles during whip recovery. Site 2 is slightly better in the long run. I assume the capital will be working the gold and cows. Site 2 will not have enough food to work the copper and all 3 hills, so might as well settle on the plains hill for the hammer. Site 2 does block a couple of future sites (e.g. site 4) but they can be moved further west.

Bottom line for me, I think site 1 is best and we should chop before we settle.

 

[The-Hawk]

Agree with Fred that CS (with Oracle) would be great if possible.

This will be an interesting decision for the team. I agree early CS is very powerful given our decision to settler NNE. The big question is how fast the AI's are teching/expanding compared to us. Said another way, we are crawling compared to a normal game, are the AI's crawling too?

IMHO, the potential reward is big enough to take the risk. Hopefully if the AI's are not as stunted by fallout, they will build Oracle quickly and put us out of our misery.

 

[leif erikson]

Agree with selection of Site 1.

The problem with the Oracle decision is that, according to the post in the maintenance thread, the AI are not playing as we are since they cheat on fallout cleanup. If we get another city up and running that can take off some of the burden of rushing settlers and workers, then we could stabilize the capital a bit to optimize research and build Oracle. Without specializing the capital, not sure e can make the sling?

To do this, I think we would need to have both the Rice and Cow available to site 1 and prioritize that worker effort. I guess what I am asking is whether the sling is powerful enough to offset the trade-offs needed to try to pull it off; and what are the consequences of failure?

edit - finally have Civ5 up and running and will load civ4 tomorrow, most likely, so I can get back into the swing of things.

 

[Rusten]

The AI's may not play as we are, but we're not playing usual here either. We have 2 gold which makes a CS sling that much easier as we'll pick up the required techs quickly. As to whether it's powerful here; you bet!

Our capital does not shine for bureaucracy per se, as there are too many average tiles (read: no mass cottages), but it will have a much greater effect early on than usual due to the few extremely good ones.

I'd recommend the colossus as well. It's pretty easy to get, especially if you claim the Oracle yourself to make sure there's no MC sling from the AI.

A quick look at the options shows aggressive AI being on -- this should decrease likelyhood of early Oracle. There's also the fact that they're at war with us, which should lower the wonder probability.

I see the Oracle-> CS as the best plan here.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Do any of the AIs have multiplier for wonder production?

 

[Grifftavian]

Do any of the AIs have multiplier for wonder production?

De Gaulle, Roosevelt and Stalin all have the Industrious Trait.

 

[Rusten]

There are some IND AIs, but only Stalin has decent value for wonder construction.

The non-IND AIs all have a below average value as well. Would need to double-check to be sure, but IIRC Stalin is the only AI in the 30 club -- the others are all 20 or lower. For comparison there are plenty of leaders with 40 in the game (and Louis at 50).

 

[Cactus Pete]

Doesn't the fact that there are 3 industious AIs in the game -- even assuming only a 20% inclination on the part of each -- make the odds that none of the three construct a given wonder be .8 X .8 X.8 or 51.2%? So 48.8% of the time one of them would.