SGOTM 14 - One Short Straw

ToA is in Karakorum, Mongolia. I was thinking we would send either there or India. Not sure which is more profitable, but Mongolia is also quicker. I had no intention of setting up a caravel whip right away. I think we just deal with this if it happens in 4t. Scouting Asoka would be nice, but I'm ok going into the capital blind and it might just be better to get an extra unit instead.
 
I had no intention of setting up a caravel whip right away. I think we just deal with this if it happens in 4t. Scouting Asoka would be nice, but I'm ok going into the capital blind and it might just be better to get an extra unit instead.
Roger that.

You're still going to finish off the Explorer, though, right? As much as it sucks to spend another 20 Hammers or so, plus a possible +1 or 2 Gold per Turn in Supply Costs, I'd much rather invest that bit than have, say, Ivory City razed due to an unseen AI attack. BtS AIs are quite sneaky with their amphibious assaults on Cities, particularly when they have an Espionage advantage like they do here.



ToA is in Karakorum, Mongolia. I was thinking we would send either there or India. Not sure which is more profitable, but Mongolia is also quicker.
Mongolia = the western AI of the north
India = the northern AI of the west

Those AIs are definitely close, but the idea with sending a Caravel to the south was two-fold:
1. Exploring Asoka's capital just before war
AND
2. Exploring the rest of Asoka's coastline, the rest of Ragnar's coastline, and then exploring the south-east and south portions of the map for a possible Wizard.

We'll miss out on all of that if we send a Caravel to the west. It's not necessarily the biggest deal, as I personally think that we will be so busy with war that we will have plenty of time to find the Wizard, but I recall others on the team wanting to put a higher priority on locating the Wizard.


We might not get a Great Merchant so the issue might be moot. We could also just use up a Galleon to go exploring in the south. So, we do have lots of options available to us.

Since most AI Cities (all of them if the real game matches our test game) will be on the same continent as our City, the Temple of Artemis City is very likely going to be the most profitable City on the map, so I guess this factor trumps southern exploration, due to the fact that a later-built Galleon could always explore to the south, while we can only spend a Great Merchant once. So, yeah, if you can find the Temple of Artemis City AND if it is Coastal, I'd say that we "spend" our Great Merchant there. If the City is not coastal, then, with the AIs from the north plotting a war, it would really suck for them to declare on us after landing a Great Merchant that has to march inland, so if the Temple of Artemis City is inland, we might as well just press on to Gandhi then.


So, yeah, where you said that you want to send the Great Merchant sounds fine, as long as we remember to allocate a Galleon for southern exploration at some point down the road, mid-war.


Radio was for Guided Missiles, along with Rocketry, as our backup option to (potentially Amphibious) War Elephants:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10842595&postcount=844
 
PPP

Cities:
Spoiler :

Washington: keep building catapults

Ivory: keep building elephants

Pigs: whip explorer now - build elephant and regrow

Gems: finish WB (4t) - start galley (or possibly trireme, if GM pops)

Stone: whip elephant next turn - OF into catapult to finish - start new elephant/cat pair while regrowing 2 pop

Silver: whip elephant now - start catapult

Panama: whip elephant next turn - start galley

Bridge: switch to seafood next turn, continue granary

Marble: nothing for now, will whip galleon later


Worker priorities:
Connect the three Calendar :) resources asap. Road Silver and Stone. Also find a way to road Washington to Bridge directly. Maybe a few roads around Panama for easier barb handling later.

Research:
0% MC right now, 100% next turn.

Galley and explorer head to England. Drop off asap, so galley can return.

Eventually, I wanna invest some hammers in a ship in Pigs, so we have a quick whip available in case of an English sea-borne attack. I don't expect the attack for another 15t at least, so I'll get out a couple more units first.

Stopping point: 4t, when the next GP pops to reevaluate research.

Edit:
1 5xp WE heads to Panama. Axe and 1 warrior head back.
 
The PPP looks good! :) Here are some comments, but most of them won't really apply to this 4-turn turnset.


It literally hurts to see so many units being whipped without Police State enabled, particularly since whipping is when we come close to realising as much of the 25% Hammer bonus as possible (typically you might only expect to get 15% to 20% bonus Hammers when not whipping your Hammers, due to rounding at the City level for Hammers). Exactly how many Specialists do we have hired now (plus the 2 Scientists from The Great Library) and that won't be whipped away over the next 4 turns?

At 3.75 Flasks per Scientist (since we have a Library in every City that has a Scientist hired), I guess a significant portion of our Research is coming from the Scientists. I guess the counter-argument is that "it would hurt so much to see so many Scientists hired when we aren't running Representation." So, I guess I'll live without the Police State for now.


On that note... there was great talk about Lightbulbing our way up to Military Science. Personally, I'm under the impression that War Elephants and not Grenadiers will be the way to win vs both AIs and versus a Wizard that can be reached without needing Paratroopers/Guided Missiles/or other air-based units, since War Elephants can get the anti-Drill Flanking II promotion and Grenadiers can't. That said, is the expectation that we're supposed to be running some Scientists constantly?

My personal thinking is that I'd rather focus on getting out an army as soon as we switch out of Representation, so I'd be fine with firing Scientists (except for the ones in Washington until we get our next Great Scientist there) and growing our Cities. Growth = some post-Police-State whipping plus some future Specialist-hiring. I mean, it makes sense to grow our Cities closer to their Happiness/Healthiness limits instead of relatively stagnating with Specialists hired for a long time, right?

I'm asking though because I'm not sure if anyone objects and is expecting Scientists to remain hired... but if no one speaks up, then I say that we won't need to plan to keep many if any Scientist Specialists hired after the 4 turns and possibly none after the 8 turns and I figure that if anyone objects to that approach, they should speak up now so that we won't be relying on whipping away population points that someone else wants to keep around. In particular, if someone does want to keep Specialists around for a long time, then I'd be really pushing to switch into Police State immediately, to make up for the loss of future whipping potential, if you see where I'm going with this line of thinking.


Another possible Worker priority to add, although it won't matter until after the 4 turns:
- Farming around Washington IF we receive a Great Merchant, so as to increase our Trade Mission's Gold considerably. If we don't get a Great Merchant, we won't care.


The only potential concern that I see with the PPP itself is where you say that we're sending a War Elephant to Panama but are sending an Axeman back. Do we have multiple units to go after the Barbs?

I mean, now that we're waiting to attack Asoka until after getting Galleons, we definitely want an 8-Experience-Point unit from the Barbs, although we don't want to capture the Barbs' City (another reason not to capture the Barb City is that it'll likely have 0 infrastructure, in contrast to some of the AI Cities).

My thinking is just that when the Barb Axes (if any) come at us, we'll want more than 1 unit around, in case our attacker loses the battle. As long as we have or plan to have at least 2, preferably 3 War Elephants/Axemen when fighting the Barbs, then I don't really see a problem with what you've got planned.
 
None of our specialists are getting whipped away. That said, Stone should be running 2 Sci maybe, but we do need units right now. I'll have a look at what we'll need to do to get a GP from there. Forgot about that altogether.

I don't think we need to worry about research from now on. I wanna get Engineering as soon as possible. Stone has a lot of GE contribution already, so it should get a GP, as well as Washington. The other cities (Pigs, gems and Marble) could just fire of whip away their specs after Astro.
 
A shock elephant taking an axe on open terrain is so overwhelming, I'm almost ok with no backup. We'll have units moving south all along, so we could play it by ear a bit, but I'll look into this after the initial few turns.
 
Attacking the barb city just for 8xp is an option, I think. I could work that in, though it may delay our initial attack by a few turns.
 
In general, the PPP looks good.

I don't think we need to tech much farther than Astronomy/Engineering unless the Wizard is something crazy. With that said, I'm all for switching to Police State as soon as it makes sense with respect to Great People generation.

Have we built the canal at Panama yet? If not, how soon do we need it?

EDIT: X-Post with bbp's last three posts.
 
A shock elephant taking an axe on open terrain is so overwhelming, I'm almost ok with no backup. We'll have units moving south all along, so we could play it by ear a bit, but I'll look into this after the initial few turns.
I can't even begin to count the number of threads on this forum that deal with the "my 99+% odds unit died in battle!!!" concept. ;)


And yeah, Panama is a canal... until a successful War-Elephant-slaying Barb Axeman waltzes in and razes it. :mischief:


Honestly, I don't care TOO much about getting an early 8-Experience-Point unit and if we'd have to delay the war by a turn or more to get it, I'd rather not delay the war and just get our 8-Experience-Point unit from the war itself.

Getting the war started sooner is definitely worth the minor loss of Hammers from getting the Heroic Epic a few turns later.



As for the Great People, LC said that we'd basically need EDIT: 3 4 after Astronomy: 1 to launch a Golden Age and 3 generated from the Golden Age.
Okay, I checked out the bulbing crystal ball.

What I said before still holds.

As long as we've gotten the prereqs (Alpha + Calendar) in trade, we would get Astro ~T122. Then Stone would produce its GP around T140. With only an 8t golden age, no philo, no religion spread, Marble, then Washington, then Pigs all produce 100% GSes. The Pigs GS might come just after the GA, so we'd lose a turn revolting out of castes, if we wanted slavery back. So those three GSes would bulb all of MilSci and half of Chemistry, meaning between T122 and T150 we'd have to research GP and half of Chemistry, giving us grenadiers circa T150. Not bad for a day's work... :)

According to that plan, I suppose that we're slowly self-teching Engineering and trading for the other pre-requisites.

What I'm not sure is what the details are:
- Like, are we supposed to have 0 Specialists hired except for during that Golden Age period?
- Are we supposed to be growing Marble and Pigs Cities in the interim so that during a Golden Age they can each hire 5 or 6 or however many Scientists they can support hiring?
- If we are supposed to have Specialists hired outside of the Golden Age, for how long?

The answers won't really matter until after this current turnset, so I say just go ahead and play when you are ready.
 
Do we really need Chem and MSci? I'm not really sure why. My inclination is to go whip crazy and just grab as much land as possible, as fast as possible.

Stone can't whip, if we want a GP from there. T140 sounds right in that case, give or take 2t. Marble's really far from getting one. Not sure it's even possible, esp. as that city can't even grow right now. Gems should be more likely than Pigs, due to GLH points.
 
Aside from the Stone whip, nothing major happens in 4t. We could just hold off on that whip for the moment. I'd like to advance the game and see what happens with the Gems GP. We are seriously running out of time now.
 
Aside from the Stone whip, nothing major happens in 4t. We could just hold off on that whip for the moment. I'd like to advance the game and see what happens with the Gems GP. We are seriously running out of time now.
We might as well just hold off on that whip and play out the 4 turns.


I'm not convinced that we need Grenadiers, either. They were just a "well, they would be neat to get" kind of thing. We COULD use a Great Person for a later Golden Age... does that Great Person have to come from Stone City? Not necessarily. But let's decide after those 4 turns.
 
As I said, my desired priority is warring, so I'd be fine with whipping away our population points and razing an army.

After those 4 turns are up, team members will have a tiny bit of time to insist upon generating Great People, but as you say, the deadline is looming, so perfect play isn't an issue here.

As far as I am concerned, as soon as we have Astronomy in the bag, we want to switch into Police State and whip up a storm everywhere.

The only way that hordes of War Elephants won't take out a Wizard (remember we tested with every powerful unit in the game being the Wizard) is if we didn't understand things properly (and "The Wizard" is not a unit or a City OR if the location of the Wizard cannot be reached by land or Galleons.

In that case, we'll need techs like Radio + Rocketry or something else equivalent (Fascism and whatever other tech or techs enables Paratroopers), not really Military Science.

A later Golden Age could still be useful to switch into Representation + Caste System, running Specialists from the Cities that we have captured from 3+ AIs, and such an approach would probably be far more useful at getting us the techs that we'd need in order to reach an otherwise unreachable Wizard.


Barring such a possibility of an unreachable Wizard by land or sea, I'm in agreement that Astronomy is likely going to be "good enough" for us to win and Engineering is "icing on the cake that we can just slowly tech manually and get it when we get it." So, I wouldn't even be overly concerned about Stone City producing a Great Person anytime soon, but it shouldn't hurt for us to keep that possibility open for another 4 turns.
 
Ok, I rolled 1t. Have a question. Bridge popped its borders and revealed an Indian city north of the capital, with copper. If I move our galley to "Look from here?" in 2t, can I see the city's defences? I'm wondering if we could just take his copper city in a few turns, with minimal troops.
Spoiler :

Civ4ScreenShot0109.jpg



Edit: xpost with your post
 
Ummmm... you can see 2 squares across water, so yeah, we would be able to see the City with a Galley from the "Look from here?" position.

We could aim to attack if the defences are weak and then Pillage the Copper.

If I recall correctly, Asoka has 2 Copper and 1 is going to Ragnar, so if we pillage this one and he doesn't have Iron, then he could be out of metals... it's a big "if," but it's a possibility.

Would we hold the City or raze it? If we mostly have War Elephants and Cats, then we wouldn't get a defensive bonus for holding the City. While the Resources are OKAY, they aren't stellar: Plains Wheat + Magical Fish are good, but that's about it... the Copper is a Desert Copper so it's just a Plains Hills Mine... and we'd only get 1 Forest.

Unless the City was Size 8 or something ridiculously large, I'd be tempted to raze it.

The biggest point is... if we can attack before Longbowmen, then even a force of 6 units would do it. If we have to whip Stone now to make that happen (1 turn later than the PPP), we could do so, assuming that the defences are light enough.

Taking down even 1 City pre-Longbowmen would be nice, as long as we had enough units to weather the storm (6 units versus 2 defenders would be the absolute minimum number of units to send in... 3 or more defenders and we might as well just wait for Galleons anyway).
 
Note that Catapults cannot Amphibiously assault, so even with only 2 defenders, we might see 3+ defenders by the time that we could land our units.

While the idea of using Amphibious Elephants is a funny one, we don't have large enough forces to take such a risk.

Also, once we start the war, we can count on two AIs spamming units.

So, overall, I'd probably say "just stick to the plan of attacking after Astronomy" as being the likely best course of action. The only thing that might tempt me otherwise is if that City is large enough (like Size 8 or above) for us to be able to whip a couple of units out of it after capturing it (Size 7 by capturing, Size 6 by shrinking, then 2 to 3 whips... but likely it is Size 3 or smaller and thus not worth going to war over).
 
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