SGOTM 13 - TNT thread

[2metraninja]

OK, I can take the game and play tonight or tomorrow.

 

[bjartur]

I'm busy over the weekend, but I should have time Monday and later.

If I had to guess, I would go with the decreasing counters during anarchy, but the gods of the game are sometimes inscrutable.

 

[fizbankovi]

im so nervous how we will finish compared to other teams. I think for a first run this was not a bad try...

some more planing of course would have been needed, but i think first you have to get the hang of it.

im going to totaly kill my system and install some new hardware+ new operating system. dont count on me for 3-4 days. (exept on the forums)

have fun guys! im proud!

 

[enKage]

I guess I'm next, but I will not be able to play for yet a couple of days. (Finished the grading, but more are coming, and I need to make a couple of exams too. Busy period.)

Anyway, I too believe to revolt counter will decrease during anarchy, hence switching civics sounds like the way to go. I havn't had a look at the save yet, but couldn't we calculate exactly how many tiles we need, and therefore plan our Domination win?

-jj-

The game is winable in 1-2 sets.
I suppose we need no more cities except settling 2 arctic islands (settler prepared or just building).

In case - we have huge army compared to Joao. Our army is near his cities - two of them are on "our" island, three are on the islnd near our navy stack full of muskeets (those cities are weakly protected).
Even if we start war with Joao, he doen,t have a posiibility to do bigger harm than pillaging fishingboats.

So two scenarios:

- revolt as quick as possible to castesystem and free speech and pump culture (and wealth and merchants in our inferior) until we achive enough land
- rush some ships of the line first (2-4 turns) and forbidden palace, transport army to Joaos islands and then revolt to castesystem/free spech, start war with joao just in case

Joao adopted merchantilism during my set, so we dont have any profits from him (except selling some techs). Doesn't matter if we keep peace with him...
As far as I remember Joao is a weak warmonger, when vassal states are on, he very often capitulates to me after losing 3-5 cities. Supposingly this game after losing some cities he would beg for peace

 

[Keath]

Nice going enKage!

@2metra - If you have the time for a set, take the save, post an 'I got it' and get us set up for our glorious victory!

@ jj - you are next after 2metra if you have the time.

@ bjartur - If jj doesn't have the time in a few days, you will be up.

*** Roster

2metraninja - (up)
justjohn - (on deck)
bjartur - (back in the game and alternate on deck)
..........
With just two sets left, that should probably see the end of the game. If not:
..........

will i have to play again? im plannig to reinstall my computer! so tell me ahead!

@fizbankovi - you would be next on the roster but I'm thinking you probably don't need to rush your computer rebuild.

 

[Keath]

I've had a closer look at the save and want to congratulate you, enKage, for doing such a great job of bringing the economy back from the brink and your war effort was excellent!

A few cities, including London, have unhappy citizens. Would it be a good idea to whip a happy building and get rid of the unhappy citizens?

@2metra - It looks like you could finish this off in one set, so don't hesitate to do so if you can. If you think it is two sets then we'll have either jj or bjartur ready to pick it up.

I think we're all getting keen to have a look at how the other teams did and analyze our game play. Maybe we could each critique some aspect of our game strategy from settler placement to war plans as dima suggested, during these last few days. I know we're all interested in how the Plastic Ducks came up with such an early win.

One thing I feel we might have done was to send out our workboats to explore early, then come back to settle. We may have come up with earlier wars when the AI had less cities. And we might have found the GLH and made it an early target.

And I wonder if our flying camera and defogging maps helped us to a better start or did this knowledge dampen our desire to explore, map and circumnavigate which would have been huge, I think. Think about the fact that southeast of our core cities is still in the fog!

So feel free to jump in with ideas for alternate play. Once the game is over, you can always play out some different scenarios for future reference.

I know that my last turnset was foreign territory for me. I've never drafted and never whipped with such fervor. Must remember to watch the economy next time.

 

[enKage]

I've had a closer look at the save and want to congratulate you, enKage, for doing such a great job of bringing the economy back from the brink and your war effort was excellent!

Just building some wealth, not a great job. Actually I am a little dissapointed as we should be at war with Joao at this stage as well

A few cities, including London, have unhappy citizens. Would it be a good idea to whip a happy building and get rid of the unhappy citizens?

Doesn't matter - we can whip frigate/SOTL. THEATRE and than if we switch to CS/FreeSpeech/X% culture whip unhappines will not be a problem

 

[2metraninja]

I'll play tonight.

Have just won a World war in this pitboss who was taking most of my Civ time lately

 

[fizbankovi]

good luck!!!!

keep us posted

 

[2metraninja]

Thanks. I'm playing.

 

[Keath]

Just to get a head start on critiquing our gameplay before we see what others have done, we might want to consider a few ideas. Once we've looked at the other teams threads, the cat will be out of the bag and we won't be able to analyze where we might have improved.

1. It's all about learning
So first, it's been a pleasure to play the game with you all. I've learned a lot and I would handle my last turnset quite differently if I were playing it again. The logistics of moving ships and troops requires some real grey matter exercise and when and where to whip and draft is something I could have spent more time figuring out. There's no sense whipping a unit that could have been done in three turns if it can't be transported in three turns.

2. Flying cameras
There was some disagreement about using the flying camera and hidden tile techniques and these have been criticized elsewhere on the forums. I think they are a double edged sword. First, it is a game design feature so cannot be considered an exploit. The upside is that you get an idea of the terrain before you have boats to actually map out the surroundings. On the downside, it meant actually sending out boats was redundant. I say this because we knew where to go and where our cities would best be placed, at least approximately.

3. Early exploration
I'm always for early exploration in my games and if I were playing this game alone I'd have sent out boats to explore and circumnavigate. Imagine if we'd have found Cathy and the GLH early. We might have sent off some archers/axemen to capture Moscow when it was small and Cathy had only a few cities. Same with the Vikings. By the time we invaded, he was fairly strong and had many cities.

4. Nice empire or all out war?
Instead of prioritizing building a core of cities with granaries and lighthouses we might have captured cities and spread our civilization out earlier only building our own cities in ideal locations. Did we need libraries? Maybe not. If we archer/axe rushed early we might have devoted all our resources to the war effort. If we needed techs, we might have made use of the pointy stick.

5. Stonehenge for culture
And what about Stonehenge? Would having a second city build it have helped our cause? For one thing, we would have had free monuments in every city therefore culture expansion would be in 15 turns, a big advantage. Or maybe not. Even at the end of the game, SH might still be giving us cultural expansion and therefore a quicker finish.

6. Key cities nearby
If we'd have put two cities on the main island and researched Fishing, Sailing, Mysticism, Masonry, Mining, BW, by the time we had Sailing and a galley we could have settled right on the stone. Would this have been superior? I don't know. We'd have to check it out. I feel that ultimate city location wasn't the most important criteria in this game.

7. Test games
We started out with the idea of building test saves for planning but soon gave up on the idea. I don't know if anyone kept up with this but I know I only used them for a short while. Perhaps we could have kept a test game or two going to try out alternatives.

8. Technology needs
What about our teching? Anyone suggest a better sequence?

Key techs:
Sailing for galleys and expansion.
BW for whipping and if our fourth city was on the copper, we'd have axemen.
Archery if we were doing early archer rush.
Writing for open borders?
Mysticism and Masonry for SH?

Would we need more techs to start (and finish) early war?

9. Original city placement
I'd like to try SIP, start early settler, switch to workboat once Fishing done, settle the SE hill. Get Sailing, Masonry, a galley and a settler and settle right on the stone. Build SH in the second city while building settlers, a worker and workboats to explore. With four extra food in the capital we might not have needed a worker first.

10. Early circumnavigation
Get archers and attack Nidaros early. Then find the GLH and send two or three galleys to capture it as a priority. Once we circumnavigate we get a 50% speed bonus. Sweet. By taking out these two cities we might be able to build less cities to start with and go for a total military effort, backfilling cities as we go.

11. Hind sight
Of course all this in hind sight makes it sound much more feasible (or likely not feasible, at all ). I know that we spent quite a bit of time debating our original city site but we might not have gone far enough with brainstorming how to get an early win. I think we built a nice empire but time was the key in this game. Would we even have needed a library?

Anyway, any other post mortem ideas before we finish and desire to read the other threads? It would be great to hear what everyone thinks. No criticism of our play intended, I just think it's all in the planning....

@ 2metra - Good luck and have fun. I don't think Joao is too tough so you might take some of his cities, too. Domination or total Conquest?

 

[dima42]

Thanks Keath,

Here's mine:
Thank you all for a wonderful game. I enjoyed it lots, and learned a ton. It's nice to spend more than a couple hours on a civ game; I usually don't get to do this for GOTM, etc. Hopefully this will motivate me to put in a thorough effort into some more civ games in the future .

1. opening: very good.
2. second city founding; maybe even better . thanks for not letting me get that tundra city
3. third city founding: good
4. orleans next to copper instead of on top of copper: i think this was the first big mistake. I think I would have done it too if I was playing then, because it is difficult to recognize this is a mistake. But I guess what I learned is that hammers are not very important in a game like this, and that the time we did not have copper hooked up cost us dearly.
5. alphabet early research: good
6. oracle -->metalcasting: good
7. colossus: I think this was wrong, but not sure. I think the correct thing to do here was to build barracks everywhere and start whipping axes into axes instead of axes into forges and colossuses
8. date of declaration on ragnar: 20 turns too late even considering our not settling on copper. I was a bit upset with this one; I felt we did too much peaceful building with things like libraries/markets in our new cities. granaries+lighthouses, I understand. most other early buildings were a waste though. we needed more military.
9. by the time we declared on Ragnar, there wasn't that much we could do. he had longbows, which may have been enough to just decide to not declare on him until catapults, but I think metra judged quite well when to pull out and it didn't cost us more than a few turns.
10. after this, our game was quite reasonable. I suspect we wasted less than 10 turns until the endgame.
11. in the endgame, the amount of population capturing we did was excessive; it is certainly more efficient to raze cities and replace with settlers

I suspect #4 cost us about 20 turns on the game, #8 cost us 40 additional turns on the game, lack of careful management cost us 20 turns on the game, and slightly unclean finish cost us about 10 turns.

That being said, I would like to really be clear that this is a fantastic result; we have played at least as well as an intermediate deity level player. Each and every one of us would have made more, and more important mistakes, if playing this game alone. I think we have proven that we are capable of quite strong play and I'm looking forward to perhaps playing more with y'all .

 

[Keath]

Thanks Keath,

Here's mine:
Thank you all for a wonderful game. I enjoyed it lots, and learned a ton. It's nice to spend more than a couple hours on a civ game; I usually don't get to do this for GOTM, etc. Hopefully this will motivate me to put in a thorough effort into some more civ games in the future .

1. opening: very good.
2. second city founding; maybe even better . thanks for not letting me get that tundra city
3. third city founding: good
4. orleans next to copper instead of on top of copper: i think this was the first big mistake. I think I would have done it too if I was playing then, because it is difficult to recognize this is a mistake. But I guess what I learned is that hammers are not very important in a game like this, and that the time we did not have copper hooked up cost us dearly.

Yep. I agree. Post 419 about the copper:

.....I might consider settling right on top of the copper, otherwise we'll need iron working just to clear the jungle and mine the copper.

I should have insisted, eh?

5. alphabet early research: good
6. oracle -->metalcasting: good
7. colossus: I think this was wrong, but not sure. I think the correct thing to do here was to build barracks everywhere and start whipping axes into axes instead of axes into forges and colossuses

Well, it sure seemed like a natural with this map but then again every diversion from conquest was a garden path, methinks.

8. date of declaration on ragnar: 20 turns too late even considering our not settling on copper. I was a bit upset with this one; I felt we did too much peaceful building with things like libraries/markets in our new cities. granaries+lighthouses, I understand. most other early buildings were a waste though. we needed more military.

Definitely. It is easy to fall into that warm fuzzy cloud that makes a man want to build a great city rather than getting to the nitty gritty of preparing for war, Spartan like, no luxuries.

9. by the time we declared on Ragnar, there wasn't that much we could do. he had longbows, which may have been enough to just decide to not declare on him until catapults, but I think metra judged quite well when to pull out and it didn't cost us more than a few turns.

Yes, this was a brilliant judgment on 2metra's part. I won't say how many times I've come up just a bit short and wasted units.

10. after this, our game was quite reasonable. I suspect we wasted less than 10 turns until the endgame.
11. in the endgame, the amount of population capturing we did was excessive; it is certainly more efficient to raze cities and replace with settlers

Good insight. I think we all knew this but alas, sometimes it slips by.....

I suspect #4 cost us about 20 turns on the game, #8 cost us 40 additional turns on the game, lack of careful management cost us 20 turns on the game, and slightly unclean finish cost us about 10 turns.

That being said, I would like to really be clear that this is a fantastic result; we have played at least as well as an intermediate deity level player. Each and every one of us would have made more, and more important mistakes, if playing this game alone. I think we have proven that we are capable of quite strong play and I'm looking forward to perhaps playing more with y'all .

Great stuff! I agree. For a first effort we have done well. Now if we can just avoid the wooden spoon.....

And I agree whole heartedly about another game. Whether I am the captain or not, I'd enjoy this very much. Like I say, it's all about learning and much of what we've learned is about forming a critical thinking team and making cooperative decisions. Well done, team!

So let's see how this all pans out.....

 

[fizbankovi]

You guys are were a great team. I would love to have another chance for this.

 

[Keath]

You guys are were a great team. I would love to have another chance for this.

Super!

 

[Keath]

How's it going, 2metra? Hope you're bringing the victory flag home for the glory of France.

 

[enKage]

i got my save with all troops well situated. I left mine with no to so good locations - at least to attack Joao - it'd take 2-3 turns to locate our troops around. as 2metra is warmonger, i hope he will do it anyway quite smoothly

 

[2metraninja]

I am playing, just took the last Russian city and yes, I am moving some armies in position to smash Joao.

Hope to serve you the victory on a silver plate in 1 or 2 days from now

 

[Keath]

Fantastic! We're all itchin' to see this happen!

 

[fizbankovi]

ok, i know i ahve said this before but man....

Spoiler :

bring home them heads on pointy stick!