SGOTM 13 - tao

TheOverseer714 · Apr 27, 2008

The IBT issue seems to be affecting everyone to the point that half of our team is unable to even play with any quality. I have gotten bored during my IBT's to the point of doing other stuff while waiting, and my computer is a good one. It runs Oblivion with no frame rate issues, or any graphics problems. Not sure we're going to be able to finish this at this rate.

greatbeyond · May 3, 2008

Sorry for the delay, for anyone who is still checking... I had to move to my desktop to cut down on the IBT times. First I couldn't find my conquests disk, then when I did I had to get some scratches removed. After that the IBT was still about 8 to 10 minutes. Time to bring in the big gun and try it on my Quad Core (if this doesn't do it, nothing will). I should finish up on Sunday 05/04. Right now I have completed 5 turns and have gotten peace with 4 or 5 of those we were at war with. I only traded old Techs or small amounts of gold. Everyone else either wants a city or 35+G/T and all our cash. We are about 5 turns from Feudalism. Nobody wants to sell us anything, so I cranked up the research to 60%. I will have a full report probably on Monday.

Furiey · May 5, 2008

Sounds like I'm going to have problems even if I do get things going again, when I last played the IBT was 20 to 25 mins.

greatbeyond · May 8, 2008

We'll here it is. I went 15 turns so we are at 900AD.

After finally getting Conquests installed on my main computer, I had IBT times of 4 to 5 minutes.

We are at war with everyone but the Hittites (Gracious) the Mongols, and the Inca. Even though the Mongols have signed an Embargo against us. The Portuguese and Zulu have been eliminated.
No one would trade any techs when they weren't at war with us, so I turned up the research. We have Feudalism and are 8 turns from Theology. We have built some Libraries and Aquaducts. I would suggest keeping the emphasis on Libraries until each city has one, as completing just 1 Library bumped our research up 7 points according to CivAssist2.
Bombardment by the Russians is killing our Pop so we need to keep a Military Unit in our cities to absorb the bombardment. There is always the chance it will kill pop or destroy improvements but what can we do? Cats and Trebs do not apparently absorb damage from bombardment ( like workers).

I will try to post some other ideas later.

Here is the Save:

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm13/tao_SG013_AD0900_01.SAV

screenshot below

TheOverseer714
ThinkTank
denyd
Furiey
greatbeyond (just played)
ignas
tao

Iganas has indicated his PC will not run it, Furiey possibly too. It looks like denyd is probably up but I'm not sure. We should probably revise our play list to include only those who can actually play, though everyone should comment and contribute.

denyd · May 8, 2008

I was the first to realize my machine was overmatched for this one.

Anybody got access to a Cray??

BTW: Do we have any chance at all of getting to the Industrial Era before the Dutch launch?

greatbeyond · May 8, 2008

I don't think we can beat most of the AI teams, but IIRC the first Human team to launch wins. It may take us a while :lol:

tao · May 13, 2008

@TheOverseer714: Will you take it? We might continue even though team Klarius looks like the winner and all other teams are the loosers. :cry:

denyd · May 13, 2008

I would love to jump right in here and say all we have to do is A,B & C and then we'll win, but right about here is where I move on the next XOTM game. Normally there's a chance to catchup in the early IA when the AI goes up the Nationalism->Communism path but where we are now, they be building cruise missles by the time we get to Steam Power (only to discover we have no coal)

greatbeyond · May 13, 2008

The way I see it we are 2nd best to Team Klarius now. IF they have problems,

, we might still get the win. It will be a long hard road and will require lots of thought. I had considered giving an AI a city they want for Peace then taking it back and seeing if we can get a better peace settlement out of them. However from the looks of how far ahead of us they are, we will be attacking Riflemen with Longbows, so I discounted this. We still have hope for trades with some of the less advanced Civs. Amphibious denial is working very nicely.

As for the actual IBT time problem, it does not affect me that much, and I can play as much as needed. Either way I would like to see us move this game along so we can get to the next SGOTM.

TheOverseer714 · May 13, 2008

Actually we are third, it looks like team veteran is breaking away from us. I can start this soon, maybe Thursday night, so it's time for strategy and suggestions. If I can get rid of any civs at war with us, I will try. Things are looking pretty grim at the moment...

ThinkTank · May 14, 2008

As far as I can see, we are not going to win the competition nor the game. Given this, we might as well think about far more risky strategies than we have been doing until now. I mean, the risk of loosing more quickly is hardly a penalty in this case. So I would argue for a gift away cities - retake strategy, and after the retake demand techs and/or oversees territory.

greatbeyond · May 21, 2008

TheOverseer714, How did you make out? I feel your pain about there not being an obvious path to succeed. I still haven't given up hope. It looks like all the other teams except for Klarius are in the same boat. If some disaster strikes them we might have a chance. I 'm not sure about the city gifting, I guess it depends on what defensive units the Civ has. We would never be able to kill off a Rifleman with our current units. The other negative is that we lose any buildings we built when we gift it away. I think we should probably stay the course and concentrate on research and gold.

TheOverseer714 · May 21, 2008

Frankly, it's on hold right now. I did 3 turns with agonizingly long 20+ minute IBTs then about 3 units moved and start rebuilding things destroyed by the tons of enemy frigates and hit enter for another 20 minutes of murder. I gave up in disgust. Besides that, I have a decent computer, and this game is causing it problems. It is running 1 processor of a dual core at 80% for 20 minutes straight, which is causing some heating up and screenfreeze issues. I'll do some more after my current SG rounds are done, I have been up in most of them this week.

TheOverseer714 · May 23, 2008

I finally finished my turn-set, a spectacularly un fun set with very long IBT's punctuated by very short turns figuring out what was blasted away and to try to fix it. Survival at best. I'm ready for something good to happen, or at least different. Here is my turn-log:

Spoiler :

The save link:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm13/tao_SG013_AD1000_01.SAV

greatbeyond · May 24, 2008

I haven't given up hope yet, maybe the train coming through the tunnel will stop and pick us up instead of running us over. I still don't have any good strategy for dealing with the AI. I'm hoping they'll get tired of beating us up. As for the bombardment, we'll just have to keep units on the tiles/cities and hope they absorb all the punishment. It seems this has been the worst round for pop loss. Is there any comfort in thinking that all the other teams, except Klarius, are in the same boat?

greatbeyond · May 28, 2008

ThinkTank, are you able to take the save. I am getting more and more eager to get this over with so we can start a new SGOTM we might actually do well at.

ThinkTank · May 28, 2008

Got it. May take until Sunday until I can play. May take until 2028 until I want to play.

TheOverseer714 said:
I finally finished my turn-set, a spectacularly un fun set with very long IBT's punctuated by very short turns figuring out what was blasted away and to try to fix it. Survival at best. I'm ready for something good to happen, or at least different.

Couldn't agree more. I have a strong urge to throw the towel. There are no feasible strategy proposals I feel, and it is primarily a no-fun-long-waiting disaster, distracting from more interesting games. Even competitive games should have some element of fun I feel, and this one is way beyond that.

greatbeyond said:
I am getting more and more eager to get this over with so we can start a new SGOTM we might actually do well at.

I think we all are. In chess it is acceptable, and even good manner, to resign if your position is lost. Let's not waste anyone's time, including our own, and tip our king.

denyd · May 28, 2008

Is there any chance to sign peace with our current adversaries? If so, we could try for peace, sign an ROP with the holder of the Great Library, pile all of our troops into that city in hopes to hold it (gaining tech parity) then, trade those techs for alliances against the GL holder while trying to build up new military.

That's the only thing that I can think of at this time. If we can't get peace with all of the AI, then with them constantly signing new agreements against us, it's just a matter of time until the marines arrive and the only cavalry that could rescue us would be the 7th led by General George Armstrong Custer.

Furiey · May 28, 2008

Finally got my Civ 3 going again and can load the save OK providing I have nothing else running, so no CivAssist. I have also checked the IBT times using the 900AD save. They stand at nearly half an hour if I just press the button from that save, or 25 mins if I set all preferences so no IBT moves are shown. In the latter case I obviously won't see who's moving what and where or who is attacking us. I really don't see how I can successfully (or otherwise) play a set of turns.

There seem to be so many at war with us that without CivAssist I couldn't keep up. The Russians have the Great Library in Moscow, we're at war with them but don't know where they are yet. They want 58gpt and our gold for peace. I really don't know what to suggest, some troops in the cities may stop us losing building to bombardment, but from what I can see that is just postponing the inevitable.

greatbeyond · May 29, 2008

We had discussed using the city gifting trick to get peace, then declaring and recapturing right away. If we want to try this we should increase our military forces and do this only with a Civ we know doesn't have Riflemen. The right number of MI ( 2 or 3 with a neutral RNG ) can kill a Musketman but that number probably doubles or triples against a Rifleman. We could also consider this with a Civ that has less culture than us and hope that we get a culture flip right away. Remember that even though they ask for one city, they often may accept a different city. We could consider gifting away a city on our old homeland. I would suggest the one mid-island.

Finally, I don't want to be the only team to concede (pride goeth before a fall). Do we want to consider posting to the maintenance thread to see what the general consensus is?
It looks pretty clear that everyone else is having the same IBT time difficulties as us (a guess from the apparent pace of their efforts). Unless Team Klarius is willing to let slip that they are in trouble,

it appears they are the only ones to be even close to a Win against the AI. As I said before we may be able to launch a ship by 2050AD, but I am not all that certain about that. If no one makes it by the 2050AD deadline, do we keep playing? We could probably launch by 4000AD...

SGOTM 13 - tao

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