SGOTM 14 - One Short Straw

[Dhoomstriker]

I was thinking we go into total war mode and probably run PS after Astro. What are the libraries and Rep for?

Well, this line of thinking (Police State and unit-pumping, with the occasional Barracks or Lighthouse thrown in later) works fine for me but you had to come to that realisation on your own in order to be convined.

We might still eventually build additional Libraries later for border pops or something.

It is arguable that we could switch to Police State even sooner, but I don't think that doing so will help us nearly as much as Representation will help us in the short run. It's only when we've fired many of the Scientist specialists, grown and improved some of our Cities, and actually start working several Mines that Police State will matter a lot anyway. If you only make 2 or 3 Hammers per turn, Police State only helps on whipping actions, meaning that it would provide less than a 25% boost. In practice, it never really achieves a full 25% boost, but you can get a lot closer to the full 25% when more of your Cities are large enough to work a couple of Mines each.

There will be a Happiness hit when we switch out of Representation but I suppose that the theory is that we'll have sufficient Calendar Resources connected by then, plus possibly a new Happiness Resource stolen from the AIs from the east to make up for it.


Your numbers for building an army sound good. As you say, figuring out the logistics will be the most challenging part and it is arguable that maybe we should be having some of our Workers focusing on Roads.

I do think that we want to aim to attack with 4 fully-loaded Galleys, though--if we have to wait a couple of turns for our other units to "catch up" before attacking, we could face a huge stack of defenders. Waiting for the others to catch up and only THEN attacking, while it seems like it will take longer, will actually take less time to capture the City overall.

So, don't worry if you can't get all of the units to the front lines right away. It may even turn out that due to the speed of our research and the slow pace of our units marching, we could find ourselves upgrading Galleys around the time that we're launching our first attack.

Of course, as you say, if we don't get Metal Casting in trade, the balance will shift more toward us being ready to attack before Astronomy is in our hands.


Once we get going, i.e. a couple of turnsets after yours, we'll have a Galleon chain and Engineering, so the logistical nightmare will hopefully not be as bad, but here it can be about balance... getting an extra promo on a unit if it means that the unit will arrive too late might not be worth the delay... hence we may need to more aggressively whip, or even skip a Barracks in Washington, or go with more Axes than War Elephants, or else just plan to attack a little bit later and be happy with attacking later but with a sufficiently-sized force to do the job correctly in the first attack wave.

 

[babybluepants]

Well, this line of thinking (Police State and unit-pumping, with the occasional Barracks or Lighthouse thrown in later) works fine for me but you had to come to that realisation on your own in order to be convined.

Not really. I always thought so. I've only been arguing that there's not much point building galleys, if we can get Astro by the time we wanna attack anyway. Our cash flow will be quite poor after all this, and I think it's far simpler to set up a bunch of PS-powered Galleon whips for the turn after Astro, than it is to upgrade half a dozen galleys later. I still think this argument could hold. That's why I've been asking you guys to give me an exact date and unit count for the "quick first strike" approach.

With MC self-research and/or GM from Gems, our Astro date drops to 150 AD most likely, by which point we can just about capture an Indian city, it seems. Hence, I'm now agreeing to build galleys as of my latest testing.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

That's why I've been asking you guys to give me an exact date and unit count for the "quick first strike" approach.

4 Galleys, 8 land units, of which 2 are Cats, at least 1 of the remainder are Axes and the rest are War Elephants or Axes, with the emphasis on War Elephants unless by getting an Axe or two more we can attack a turn faster.

As for the date, I am clueless, other than assuming that we can get Calendar in trade but not Metal Casting and then roughly using what the test game says. We can't COUNT on getting Metal Casting in trade, as nice as it would be to get.


Gold for upgrading Galleys can potentially come from capturing an AI City, which pays for itself in terms of the upgrades allowing us to capture more Cities quicker.

For at least a little while, until we get a big enough army and some momentum going, Hammers will still be hard to come by, thus I'm cool with building Galleys and upgrading them later, as doing so saves us Hammers.

Yes, there is the argument that switching into Police State and THEN whipping Galleons can be a good thing to do, but by then we'll almost certainly be facing Fortified Longbowmen.


It's not an easy call to make as we'll be playing the odds either way, but it's easier to just pump out some units and be prepared to attack when we can drop off 8 units than any other possibility... i.e. only aim to build 4 Galleys and see if doing so can get you another key land unit or two to the front lines a bit faster than building 6 Galleys.


There's still the uncertainty about what the Barb units will do, so if you (or any other volunteer???) can do some testing just to see if the Barb Galley will continue to follow the AI Work Boat, we'll have a better idea which Work-Boat-luring strategy to utilise.

 

[babybluepants]

Haven't had a chance to test for the barb galley yet.

Suggested builds to about 1 AD:

Washington: barracks - axe - cat - cat - cat / GS due 150 AD
Gems: WB (Bridge) - WB (Bridge) / GS or GM due 50 AD (runs 2 Sci through Astro)
Pigs: Worker (part) - WB (part) - Worker (2pop) - WB - cat - WE / GS due 125 BC (runs 2 Sci through Astro)
Stone: Library (2pop) - galley - galley (grow to 7 and hire 2 Sci)
Ivory: stable - WE - WE - WE
Marble: galley - start galley slowly, while running 2 Sci at pop 4
Silver: granary (2pop) - WE - galley
Panama: granary (2pop) - WE - galley
Bridge: monument (chop) - granary

 

[Dhoomstriker]

In theory, the builds sound good... I really can't say whether or not the logistics will work out favourably, particularly for the arrival of the further-away-built Galleys or land units. That said, if you play it through in the test game, you should have a decent idea of which units you might need to whip in order to get them arriving at our gathering point (which I assume is near Bridge City or Marble City).

 

[babybluepants]

Dhoom,
Are you gonna have access to Civ anytime soon? I forget what your situation is.

One problem with the builds is that I can't quite get good numbers for an early attack on the barb city. I'll see if I can switch out and early galley.

One other problem is that I don't have roads from Silver and Stone for a while, so I'll have to look at fixing that, too. Those cities are far for both galley and troop movement.

I'll just play around today and tmr. This is a tricky TS.

I would still like to at least try it my way (only build land troops and just set up some Galleon whips for Astro date). I'll need to better approximate our research speed, though.

 

[babybluepants]

Man, matching TR income with the real game is a pain...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Dhoom,
Are you gonna have access to Civ anytime soon? I forget what your situation is.

My Magic Eight Ball says: the chance is unlikely

I'll just play around today and tmr. This is a tricky TS.

I agree. Thanks for handling it. Worst case, you get frustrated/have had enough with trying to optimise troop distribution and just go with whatever you have.

I would still like to at least try it my way (only build land troops and just set up some Galleon whips for Astro date). I'll need to better approximate our research speed, though.

And that idea could work out well, too.

The biggest key is my mind is to land with a sufficiently large force on the first turn of war. If we're doing it a bit later, that means landing an even larger force with more Catapults in the mix, since we'll almost certainly be facing fully-fortified Longbowmen and will probably want 5+ Catapults to Bombard for a turn or two and then all suicide attack, hopefully with, say, 1 of the Cat surviving.


The idea with the earlier attack is to hopefully strike at a time before the AIs are really ready for us... it's still a gamble and depending upon what we see we might call off said attack until we get more forces prepared anyway. There's a smaller chance of us having to delay the attack if we can get the attack underway within a reasonable amount of time, but the chance is still there.

It is also arguable that waiting until we switch into Police State to do most of our whipping of units would be beneficial, but I still am leaning toward pushing for that early attack just to give us the momentum. If we are lucky enough to strike at and take down an AI capital before they research Feudalism, we could potentially delay their learning of said tech for a few extra crucial turns, giving us a very large upper-hand. It's a "big if," but one worth trying for if we think that we can make it work.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Man, matching TR income with the real game is a pain...

Make it easy on yourself:
- In the test game, Close Borders with all AI Teams but 1 team.
- Then, count how many Foreign Trade Routes we have in the real game
- Next, for the AI Team in the test game with whom we have Open Borders, create a bunch of Size 1 Cities using the World Builder. The Cities can just be in Coastal areas that are revealed to us--they can even be adjacent and break the "no City within 2 squares of each other rule," since that rule only applies to non-World-Built Cities.

We might end up with LESS Commerce from Foreign Trade Routes in the test game but this way, we shouldn't end up with MORE Commerce from Foreign Trade Routes. If we end up with more in the real game, good for us, but we won't worry about it too much.


You could also have a two-part plan that goes up until the point where we need to decide if we're going to self-tech Metal Casting or not. If, in the real game, it turns out that we'll be able to trade for it, you could potentially switch gears toward whipping more of our units post-Police-State, with some of them being Galleons. You could at least stop play at that point and we could get a better handle of whether or not it will be worth it to wait for Galleons. Otherwise, if we're forced to self-tech Metal Casting, then we should almost certainly continue with the Galley-based attack, right?

 

[babybluepants]

Sorry, Dhoom. It's been really hectic IRL. I doubt I can test play this properly 'till next week.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Meh, no worries.

An alternative is just to play forward--you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do. You can just use "an AI will trade us Metal Casting" as a potential stopping point, in which case we may reconsider the timing of the initial rush to include whipped Galleons (with us building more land units in place of Galleys in the meantime).

We can probably just hide our Work Boat and watch the Barb Galley sail past as it chases the AI Work Boat. At worst, we'll lose a netted Fish at Ivory City and a netted Fish at Silver City, but we quite possibly won't lose either, as the Barb Galley should hopefully just continue to follow the AI's Work Boat around forever.

 

[Mitchum]

Hi guys. I've been extremely busy lately with work, traveling, sick wife and kids and out-of-town guests. Things won’t slow down for me for another two weeks or so. I should be able to start commenting, but I won’t be able to play a turnset for a while. Sorry.

Regarding the current SOD build-up plan, I’m fine with bbp playing it out as he proposed in post 1744.

As Dhoom said, we should have enough gold from capturing cities to upgrade a few galleys to galleons, so maybe the galleys that have the furthest to travel should be completed and upgraded when we have the cash and the others can be started as galleys but whipped as galleons once we learn Astronomy.

@bbp, do you still have time to play? It seems that it’s only you for now with Dhoom and I commenting. Where is everyone else?

 

[babybluepants]

Sorry, guys. I've been crazy busy lately. I'm working 12 hr days, including weekends. If you want me to continue play with a slightly less involved PPP process, I could do so this week. The next 20t are reasonably straightforward, aside from trade stuff.

We will need a whole lot more participation, if we wanna play out this game to our standard level. And, we're now running out of time anyway. I don't really understand what happened. We had 5-6 players highly active for two months, and then suddenly everyone completely disappeared.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

If you want me to continue play with a slightly less involved PPP process, I could do so this week.

Fine by me. You have a good handle on how things will go and what to build where. We can probably just hide our Work Boat and wait for the AI Work Boat + Barb Galley combo to sail on by... and just aim to ignore them completely.

Worst case, we lose a couple of netted seafood, but realistically the Barb Galley will just ignore our seafood nets and will keep on sailing. It's a risk but it's one worth taking just so that we can get the game moving again.

So, I'm fine with you just playing ahead roughly according to the plan that you have already laid out. I'd rather see you bring us to a decision point (such as "do we make this trade?") where we can elicit more active participation than spend any longer on planning this next bit.


I am not at home and have not been for several weeks, thus I have no Civ 4 access. Maybe if you bring the game forward, we'll get more people coming out of the woodwork.

 

[babybluepants]

Ok, I decided to play on.

T103 300 BC
Monte wants HBR for Monarchy. Denied.
Barb galley is 3W+1N from Pigs. I think it may have killed that WB. English WB is moving south, as well.
Scout spotted Monte's borders in the hub...

T105 250 BC
Genghis demands Aesthetics - denied.
Barb galley seems to be chasing our WB north now. Fingers crossed.
Scout has seen two Monte cities and a settler in the hub.
Construction due in 1t, no trade available.

T106 225 BC
Construction done.
Barb galley is now on Pigs' clam, with our WB 2N+1NW. We'll see next turn.
Calendar is available in trade from Monte/Gandhi and Mansa/Shaka.

I'm gonna stop for the moment, to think about the Calendar possibility and what to build in Panama. I'll post some screenshots for you in a bit.

Here is your Session Turn Log from 325 BC to 225 BC:

Spoiler :

Turn 104, 275 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Pigs City!
Turn 104, 275 BC: Gems City has grown to size 5.
Turn 104, 275 BC: Stone City has grown to size 6.
Turn 104, 275 BC: Good Witch of the South will trade Meditation
Turn 104, 275 BC: Wicked Witch of the South will trade Meditation
Turn 104, 275 BC: The Temple of Artemis has been built in a far away land!

Turn 105, 250 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Pigs City!
Turn 105, 250 BC: Good Witch of the South/Wicked Witch of the South has no worst enemy.
Turn 105, 250 BC: Washington will grow to size 8 on the next turn.
Turn 105, 250 BC: Pigs City will grow to size 7 on the next turn.
Turn 105, 250 BC: Ivory City will grow to size 8 on the next turn.
Turn 105, 250 BC: Silver City will grow to size 4 on the next turn.
Turn 105, 250 BC: You have discovered Construction!
Turn 105, 250 BC: You have trained a Worker in Pigs City. Work has now begun on a Work Boat.
Turn 105, 250 BC: Wicked Witch of the West adopts Hereditary Rule!
Turn 105, 250 BC: Good Witch of the West adopts Hereditary Rule!

Turn 106, 225 BC: The enemy has been spotted near Pigs City!
Turn 106, 225 BC: Washington has grown to size 8.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Washington can hurry Axeman for 1⇴ with 30ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 10 turns.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Pigs City can hurry Work Boat for 1⇴ with 15ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 19 turns.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Stone City can hurry Galley for 1⇴ with 16ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 18 turns.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Ivory City has grown to size 8.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Silver City has grown to size 4.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Silver City can hurry Granary for 2⇴ with 30ℤ overflow and +1⇤ for 12 turns.
Turn 106, 225 BC: The borders of Marble City are about to expand.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Good Witch of the South will trade Calendar
Turn 106, 225 BC: Wicked Witch of the South will trade Calendar
Turn 106, 225 BC: Wicked Witch of the West will trade Calendar
Turn 106, 225 BC: Good Witch of the West will trade Calendar
Turn 106, 225 BC: Stone City will grow to size 5 on the next turn.
Turn 106, 225 BC: Panama City will grow to size 3 on the next turn.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

EDIT: Lol, good timing... I just cross-posted with bbp playing.

Okay, so we are less than a month away from the game's end (Dec 10th). It is unlikely that I will have Civ 4 access before that time.

That said, it's still plenty of time to complete a game (think how XOTM games are, by definition, and with some exceptions, completed within a month's time).

babybluepants has put together a PPP that's pretty good and either he or someone else could play it forward. The biggest uncertainties are what techs we'll get in trade, but whatever we get likely won't change the strategy, and what to do about the Barb Galley and it seems like, without any dissenting opinions, we'll just hide our Clam Work Boat back in our City for a few turns until the Barb Galley has sailed past and will just deal with the potential of losing some fishing nets. Worst case, we lose some nets and we'll eventually get a Galleon to end the threat... not the end of the world.

After that, it'll be about pushing the war on the AIs of the east (located to our south), then continuing to pour enough Hammers into units for that front until we have sufficiently overwhelming odds to be able to maintain that front, before opening up a second front on the AIs from the north (to our west).

With the expectation that we can probably take down 5 to 6 AIs and reach Domination, we'll probably reinforce our southern army and push it on toward the AIs from the south.

The AIs from the west will likely not get attacked.

Sometime before then, one of the AIs is bound to get the Paper tech and we can probably extort an AI team's World Map in exchange for a 10 turn Peace agreement, a few turns after they have learned Paper, to have given them sufficient time to have traded around World Maps with other AI teams. Armed with this info, we'll either have the Wizard revealed or else will see a conspicuous part of the map that is not revealed. We have already discussed several worst-case scenarios for what the Wizard Challenge could be like, so let's not dwell too much on that discussion any more right now and just worry about it once we figure out what we're up against.


What I forget is when we're making the switch into Police State relative to generating the Great People to Lightbulb our way up through Military Science, but that decision won't come in the upcoming turnset, so we'll know as we get closer to that time. It'll likely be an Anarchy-based switch, though, since I don't recall us using up a Great Person on a Golden Age in terms of our Great-Person-management plan.


It's still going to be a fun challenge because we don't really know what is in store in terms of the Wizard and how he may cause us to divert/rethink our plans. It's also not too much of a mystery as to what we need to do, so we also shouldn't feel that we're stuck in terms of moving forward.

Really, we just need someone to spend some time PLAYING A GAME and HAVING SOME FUN. A Gold Medal without the fun is meaningless to me, so I'd much rather see players enjoying their turnsets than setting any other sort of lofty goal as our "be all, end all" target.

We have a strong group of players, we know what we have to do, now we just need to make some time in our real lives to go out and do it!

 

[babybluepants]

Screenshots...

Spoiler :

Tech:

South:

North:

Monte:

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Monte wants HBR for Monarchy. Denied.

Good call. Taking Monarchy can only hurt us at this point and HBR could easily mean earlier War Elephants for an AI, given how this map type seems to have multiple Ivory sources.

Barb galley is 3W+1N from Pigs. I think it may have killed that WB...
Barb galley seems to be chasing our WB north now. Fingers crossed.

That approach works even better than hiding! Now you have your own little weapon of mass destruction. Remember that if you go near an AI's City that has seafood and said AI's City is coastal, you can hide the Work Boat inside of the AI's City and have fun watching the Barb Galley pillage the seafood.

Of course, we may or may not want to do so on the closest AI City, as if we do so too close to our own area, the Barb Galley may just decide to wander back towards our area... but it's something to keep in mind if the chasing is successful.

Calendar is available in trade from Monte/Gandhi and Mansa/Shaka.

I guess the factors involved are:
a) If we don't get Calendar in trade now, we'll need it in a few turns anyway, so we're going to have to take that tech in trade at some point
b) The longer that we wait, the more chance that the price will be marginally cheaper due to the third team learning the tech
c) The longer that we wait, the greater the chance that one AI on a team will start to build MoM, at which point the tech will come off of the table
d) As time goes on, AI teams will partially research, fully research, or receive in trade one or more of the techs that we wanted to trade to them, meaning that we'll have to give them different techs than what we have on the table now

Point b) isn't strong enough of a point to delay the trade UNLESS the idea is to trade a tech that we are soon going to learn in the future, such as Compass.

So, unless there's a strong desire to trade away a tech that we have yet to learn, I think that the trade should happen now, particularly due to the risk of point c) causing us complications by delaying the trading.

Reminder: do not take Meditation in trade.

Scout spotted Monte's borders in the hub...

Well, I think that we said that we would be exploring the lands belonging western and/or southern AIs, so if he's one of them, then go ahead and start such exploration.

I think that the primary goal is still going to be to find the Wizard, so when mapping out an AI's lands, we'll care more about fully exploring the coastline than anything else, since it makes no sense for the Wizard to be placed inside of an AI's borders (where a Barb City could be Culture-flipped and thus easily killing the Wizard without needing to engage it in battle).

Pre-Optics, a Scout exploring the Coast does as good of a job as a Work Boat exploring the coast. So, we can also consider trying to reveal a coastal path that connects with our Work Boat's exploration, in order to open up more Foreign Trade Routes as fast as possible.

Once we get Optics, our Work Boat explorer will become even more valuable due to its extended exploration radius.

Turn 104, 275 BC: The Temple of Artemis has been built in a far away land!

Well, it is a good thing that we aren't chasing after a ton of Wonders... although this date is relatively late for that Wonder, it's still a nice feeling not to feel like we got beaten to a Wonder that we wanted to build.

 

[babybluepants]

The one thing I wanted to consider is whether we gain anything with Calendar now, vs after Compass. Our workers are pretty occupied atm, and I haven't actually thought of plantations this early.

Good point about MoM, though. Maybe we should just take it now for that reason...

I just checked and we can get it for Aest from MM. Monte wants both Lit and HBR. Aest is obviously a good deal. Edit: I think we should just take that. Should've just checked before. It's the best deal we'll get.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Based on your screenshots:
I guess explore Monte's area with the Scout with the emphasis of revealing his coastline to the north of your Scout and then further into his empire, so that when our Work Boat meets up with the explored area, we should get a ton of Foreign Trade Routes at that time. It seems that Monte is one of the western AIs (due to his name), so I am guessing that he is the southernmost of the two western AIs based on his position on the minimap.

It is interesting that the AIs of the north are planning a war... do we have any "refused a Demand" penalties with either of these AIs? If yes, then we're likely their war target.


As for techs:
a) We cannot take Meditation
b) We have no use for Organized Religion... I'm not sure that it would HURT to take it (other than We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced penalties potentially ruining a later Gunpowder trade), but I see no reason to take it in trade now, either
c) Monarchy we want to continue to avoid
d) Calendar we probably want to get now before an AI team or two starts to build MoM

So, it comes down to what we can trade away in order to get Calendar...

My guess is that Code of Laws to Shaka + Mansa won't be sufficient.

Thus, we'll probably either need to divert some research into Calendar for a turn at a 0% Science Rate and hope that the AIs don't start to build MoM during the intervening turn or else we'll likely have to give away a second tech.

Seeing as how Monte + Asoka appear to be the tech leaders, we'd be forced to give them one of our military techs... which is probably not a good idea since they are probably the peacenicks and might not get those techs themselves except through trade...

Thus, my vote would likely be to trade:
Code of Laws + Aesthetics to Mansa + Shaka <-> Calendar from Mansa + Shaka

Obviously, if they'll take only Code of Laws or Aesthetics, we won't give them both, but I suspect that we'll have to give them both... which is fine...

Let the AIs race after Philosophy. Let the AIs race after building the Aesthetics World Wonders instead of building units. Those things can only help us.


As for our main empire, things look like they are on track. I don't have much to say there other than you've got a good plan in place, the Maginot line seems to be doing the trick of keeping the Barbs away, and we'll just keep building up our army regardless of whether or not the AIs of the east get Feudalism.

Worst case, next turn or so you see a message about one of the AIs of the east switching into Vassalage or Serfdom and we can consider attacking the AIs from the north (who don't even have Monarchy yet) as our first attack target... otherwise, we should probably still stick with attacking the AIs from the east, with the hope that they won't have mobilized huge Longbowmen forces by the time that we arrive on their shores.


As for the Barb Galley, it does look like you're in a good position to lure it. At this point you'll just need to decide if you want to lure into around the north of the island to the west of our mainland or down the southern coast to the south-west.

My vote would be to lure it around to the north, getting the Barb Galley deeper into AI territory, where we won't have to worry about it coming after our seafood Resources.

Recall that you can be either 3 or 4 squares ahead of the Barb Galley and still successfully lure it... it will only potentially get distracted by a netted seafood Resource if the Barb Galley ends its turn 1 move away from or on top of the seafood Resource, so our Ivory Magical Fish looks to be safe.

The only real trick is to watch that you actually cut corners with the Work Boat, taking the most efficient route available to you, as the Barb Galley will definitely take the most efficient route to you, and the only way to die is if you take more moves to get to the same square than the Barb Galley takes.