SGOTM 14 - Ivan

[Othniel]

I was hoping we'd have a bit more dialogue by now. We seem to be at a strategy crossroads and there have been some differing ideas thrown out, but little consensus.

We have a few variations of dotmaps. Which do we favor? I still like the ICS scheme, prehaps modified by dropping one of the dots, if we are not going to palace jump. But if we are planning a jump, we may want to totally rethink the dotmap.

When I was commenting yesterday, I hadn't had a chance to take a close look at the save. After doing that, I realized that we have exactly zero vet warriors to upgrade. We have a few regulars, but I think upgrading them would be a waste. So do we really want to hook the iron up now? I mean, we can hook the iron up in 5 turns from now, no problem, but we would have only maybe 3 vet warriors. Holding off on the iron hookup and do what ignas suggested of getting 10-12 warriors first, seems better to me now. That means we won't hook up iron until the next player's set, probably.

Anyhow, I had planned on playing tonight, but I'm not sure I should just yet. I'll check back here in a couple of hours and see if there's any activity before I decide.

 

[nerovats]

I'd postpone iron, until we have at least 6-8 vet warrior. That is 6-8 turns. I still think in manarchy it's easier to just get some extra cities to get unit support up. AI are small, should be easy to steal their extra cities. Will need some culture though to prevent flips. But can't afford that for now.

 

[ignas]

We have a few variations of dotmaps. Which do we favor? I still like the ICS

I also like it, we need more towns prefferably near fresh water!

Oporto and Guimaraes both can get 5spt so it's warrior a turn. Next turn we can send worker to road iron, then we will have iron in 7 (6 for roading, 1 turn for moving)turns, so it is 7 warrios->swords + 4 archers when iron is connected. Enough to handle successful war campaign.

Workers from granary towns, also from corrupted towns we will have in future. It will take very long time to grow towns to size 7, I think better to join workers.

 

[I. Larkin]

As you probably understand I am against ICS plan and will try to explain why. Our continent is small and even at Babylon distance corruption will be only 35% with Corthouse. Because of that Palace jump and FP location (if on our continent) does not make a big difference.
Our Nopt is 14, 19.25 with FP and 24.25 with FP and Corthouse. That mean (ruoghly) that we have to put at our land mass 25 Cities or so. Sure, we have to pick best place like Moscow, Babylon, Mekka and for non ICS they still will be productive.
ICS is good if we are "connerd" and have to pull out of desperate position. Since at this game we will need a lot of Settlers we can't afford to waste it to ICS.
I did some calculation of corruption for Cities and for Mekka if it will have rank 11 or 22, and you can see the difference. For FP I assumed that it is in Babylon, say.
We may settle 1 City at the land we have. Settelment on Iron (debated recently) looks too exposed.
I agree with GWetzel that we have to raze and replace Ottos area.

Wars: our war with Arabs were useless and I see no reason to continue it. As far as MA expierd we may make a peace and get what they have. even now they will not give us a City, unfortunately.
If we get DoW from Babylons we may get them in war vs Babs, but I am not sure, that it is a good idea.
As I wrote, we need war Russia vs Babylon. It will be Phoney war, but in future (after Ottos war) may be real.
War with Otto is real war, and we have to prepare well for that. I agree to delay it 8-9 turns, say when we will have veteran swords. But some reg swords also OK. Ottos have Iron, so we can't underestimate them. After Iron connected we may shortrush horses for support. Aim of the war just Iznik and City in fron of Opporto bette get as Peace deal their City near Arab's border. I hope it will be short war, so Ma with Arabs is not what we want.

 

[ignas]

Agree on wars with Ivan. Should we raze and replace or keep?Probably raze as their capuital Istanbul is close.

 

[ignas]

I don't understand why do you want to have Babylon or Mecca productive that badly. Will these towns have BIG boost to our income and production and we can't win fast without them? We can have tight low corrupted core of ~10-15 towns around Lisbon FAST(we have 2 4turn settler factories!), not 20-30 turns later when we capture Babylon + more turns to build courthouse or FP.

In my solo GOTM games core (usually pretty tight core) produce nothing but units, we go and conquer. Other corrupted towns outside core are used as specialist farms and build galleys, occassional settlers.

 

[nerovats]

First question is are we gona jump? I don't have a lot experience with it as it usually seems to take a lot of time to rebuild core.
I don't like ISC either. But dotmap depends on jump or not.
Arab war saved lot of gold.
Still don't like MA's as civs are small so wars will be short. I'd like to make after we took what we want. Downside is they could MA against us.

 

[DWetzel]

I don't hate the concept of ICSing, but I don't think it makes sense here.

It's great to put the towns on fresh water--but if we are using every available scrap of land struggling to get them to size 7 or 8, why bother? Take, for instance, the dot 2SE of Sagres on Othniel's map. It has zero bonus food tiles. If it worked EVERY available plains to it, there are eight 2-food tiles: seven plains and the lake. Which means it could in theory get to size 10. Which is great, except what does that leave for the OTHER red dot between Sagres and NC1? Basically nothing, so why have it?

I'd rather see us put towns where they can be productive at size 6 (working a couple of hills) than that configuration.

 

[I. Larkin]

1)First question is are we gona jump? I don't have a lot experience with it as it usually seems to take a lot of time to rebuild core.
2) I don't like ISC either. But dotmap depends on jump or not.
3) Arab war saved lot of gold.
4) Still don't like MA's as civs are small so wars will be short. I'd like to make after we took what we want. Downside is they could MA against us.

1) Most probaly not. At our continent Lisbon is the best spot and Jump will not help much. Only if Paris, say, has very good land around, like in SGTOM 12. To preserve Colosous from flip Palace may have sence there.
2) At this particular map (Deset and Tundra in ICS area) ICS has no sence. May be area down the river from Opporto is better. We may combine Combat Settlers with ICS.
3) yes, in this sense it is "good war", but after MA over that's it.
4) wars that generate WH may be long. MAs here are good. MA with Peace treaty renegotiation even better. But Otto's war better withou MA.

 

[I. Larkin]

1) I don't understand why do you want to have Babylon or Mecca productive that badly. Will these towns have BIG boost to our income and production and we can't win fast without them?
2) We can have tight low corrupted core of ~10-15 towns around Lisbon FAST(we have 2 4turn settler factories!), not 20-30 turns later when we capture Babylon + more turns to build courthouse or FP.

3)In my solo GOTM games core (usually pretty tight core) produce nothing but units, we go and conquer. Other corrupted towns outside core are used as specialist farms and build galleys, occassional settlers.

1)I put Babylon as examle, to simplify my calculations. But I may cosider FP in Moscow instead. The point is that Mekka is close and without ICS it is good City. If we manage to bring water here comerce from Ivory will be huge. I really like to capture it after Otto's war. It is just 2 horses turn along road to Mekka, if we build it...
2) I think we settle ring 1 and now debate area IBT ring 1 and 2. It is poor land, unfortunately. You see, Babylons for some reason ignore it. AIs know map better... But we still may settle near or on Iron hill (debated). Also 2E from Sagres. That's it. Let send settler togeter with Swords. Raze and replace.
3) May be you right here... But it is difficult now to change layout of Cities in general.
If you give me tabel of rank and distance of your new plan I may calculate corruption then.

 

[DWetzel]

FYI, looks like team klarius got a culture bump in their latest turnset consistent with a 4 cpt boost I think. Maybe they built SoZ?

 

[nerovats]

How can you tell that? Maybe they just settled in a way that grabed more land.

 

[I. Larkin]

FYI, looks like team klarius got a culture bump in their latest turnset consistent with a 4 cpt boost I think. Maybe they built SoZ?

I think it is Library, 3 cpt+ 2 cpt (Palace). They poprush before revolt and had 1 turn Anachy at last turnset. With the amount of Cities they have they could not produse SoZ. (as we are).

 

[DWetzel]

I think it is Library, 3 cpt+ 2 cpt (Palace). They poprush before revolt and had 1 turn Anachy at last turnset. With the amount of Cities they have they could not produse SoZ. (as we are).

Is it just me or does a library seem a strange choice this early?

 

[I. Larkin]

Don't know. Will see after they continue. How SoZ in culture?

 

[eldar]

SoZ is 4 culture per turn, 200 shields. Are we waiting for an AI to build it? Or if we conquer the AI on this continent before it's built, there's an even cheaper wonder for our GA after we capture the Colossus - assuming there is no Ivory elsewhere.

I tend to agree that I'd rather have more size-6 cities in our core working hills or mined plains and doing 5-10spt than a couple of size 8+ cities and a handful of smaller ones jammed in between doing nothing. We want, what, 8-10 productive cities pumping out units, with say 2 worker pumps (i.e. existing settler pumps) to help cities grow. We can do that in rings 1 & 2 without the need to ICS.

Better that we determine the best sites first, and get cities up to size 6 at those sites first. Then when there are gaps, fill them with ICS cities to get extra support and to build workers/settlers/boats.

 

[ignas]

We probably made a mistake not going for Republic slingshot and this will cost us.
Nevermind, so when we agree to hook up iron and go after Ottos's? If we raze AI towns few settlers should be in order.

 

[I. Larkin]

We may debate “general questions” later, but lets summarize what we agreed for next 10 turns.
1) City 2E from NC3 (2S from NC1).
2) After Settler: Curragh>Worker>Setler>?? From Lisbon., workers from Lagos.
3) The rest: barracks and warrior. After Iron connected (8 turns) Horses.
War:
1) Make Babylon Furious via demands and ask them DoW. (Next turn)
2) Bring Russia to MA vs babylon with peace renegotiation.
3) When Ottos MA expire make peace with Arabs. (Without MAs?)
4) Prepare to war vs Ottomans. Since we wait to Upgrade (rush Barracks in NC4) in 9 turn (too long I am afraid.) Strike Izmit and down the river from Opporto. Raze and replace . Settlers go with Swords.
Scouting:
1) Scout may try to see French through channel from Mekka area.
2) Curragh from Korea goes back NE black area
3) New Curragh from Lisbon goes around Celts Clockwise and try to go West.

Attached file copy for references.

 

[Lanzelot]

Ok, here is my 2 cents of wisdom...

1. Regarding the regular warriors: I'd keep them for MP duty now (so we can perhaps lower the lux slider to 0%). Later, once we have some extra cash, we can upgrade them anyway and then promote them to veteran. For example one can take out the barb camp (it will not be useful as a training camp anyway, because it's too close to our border, so no "uprising" at the end of the AA), another one can kill that Babylonian warrior, the others can join our main forces and will find occasional promotion opportunities when attacking warriors, archers or red-lined units.
2. I don't think, a palace jump would be useful in this game. It takes a lot of work to rebuild the new core, and for that the current game will hopefully be too short. In my opinion palace jumps are useful only if you have a lousy starting position (but Lisbon is actually one of the best locations on this continent!) or when you have a long game like spaceship or 100K.
3. I don't like the ICS plan, either. I think we should build 4 or 5 more cities (e.g like the ones on nerovats's dotmap -- the exact location can still be discussed, e.g the city between Emerita and Oporto may be better at the lake) and then concentrate on getting our core productive, like ignas said. For this I would produce lots of workers instead of settlers and use them for
   • improving our core tiles, of course... (mining some hills)
   • rushing the slowly-growing towns to size 7 or higher (this will also solve our unit-upkeep problem)
   • building roads towards our future war targets
   I think using workers to rush our core cities is superior to ICSing, because ICS will help only with the unit-upkeep. (The 1 spt and 1gpt from each town can be neglected.) But getting a full core of size-10 cities will help with the unit-upkeep and increase our production. I did not calculate it, but I think we can get 7 cities up to 10spt!
   Only build the occasional settler for raze&replace. This brings me to the next point:
4. Do we really need to raze&replace? From the F8 screen it looks like none of the AIs on our continent is culturally strong. I would take the risk and keep the towns (unless CivAssist shows a really high flip-risk). However, I would raze Iznik, because it interferes with our core. "Move" it 1NE.
5. How about the Forbidden Palace? My favorite location is Oporto or the next city east of Oporto. This would "extend" our core to the east (and it looks like there's very good land out there, lots of BGs and hills. We could already start a pre-build in Oporto, then we could have a very early FP and don't need to "waste" our first ML on the FP. (I want an early Knight Army in this game, because Armies will only be useful for conquering our home continent. We can't ship them overseas, and if we ship empty Armies and then "assemble" them on the target island, it will only help conquering 4 or 5 towns and will then be stuck on that small island forever...!)
6. Or should we continue research to Astronomy? It will disable the ToA, but that is not helpful on this archipelago map anyway, so that's no big deal. But it will make it much easier to get the GA, it will allow us to ship size-2 Armies, it will speed up our invasion forces and reduce the unit upkeep (need only 66% of the ships compared to galleys). The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Astronomy. We will be doing a lot of sea-traveling in this game! And loosing a galley full of Knights to a barb galley is really painful. This won't happen with a Carrack!

Ok, got to go to bed.
Lanzelot

 

[eldar]

Or should we continue research to Astronomy? I will disable the ToA, but that is not helpful on this archipelago map anyway, so that's no big deal. But it will make it much easier to get the GA, it will allow us to ship size-2 Armies, it will speed up our invasion forces and reduce the unit upkeep (need only 66% of the ships compared to galleys). The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of Astronomy. We will be doing a lot of sea-traveling in this game! And loosing a galley full of Knights to a barb galley is really painful. This won't happen with a Carrack!

There are many advantages to Carracks, and Astronomy in general, apart from starting our GA:
- Trade over sea tiles. We will probably need this and the LH may not be easy to get i.e. other side of the map.
- Carracks have the same capacity as Caravels, but have 2 attack so are far more useful against Galleys.
- Carracks have more range than Galleys.
- Carracks are safe on ocean tiles (minor but may be useful? just how "tweaked" is this map?)

So here's another vote for going to Astronomy.