SGOTM 14 - Unusual Suspects

I'm sorry, no time yesterday after all. Civ time ETA in 10h. :)
 
Really? Nobody but SH posts since yesterday? :rolleyes: I'm not really comfortable playing without more discussion but I think we have to keep moving. As they say, it's easier to get forgiveness than permission, so...
I read your post last night. Didn't have much to say, except noted we were going to lose a worker. Decided to wait for Yamps to post.
I think you should leave "I'm going to continue unless vetoed" messages up at least 24 hours before continuing.
Spoiler :
edit
depends on whether continuing from a pause or extending beyond planned point
in this case, it would have been good to get consensus as many decisions made: civics changes, peace, etc

I don't have any objections to what you did. Opening the save now.

Birka and Jelling populatiion will starve. They come out of revolt before we exit peace and before we capture more cities. They won't be able to work enough tiles. And we don't have slavery to convert the citizens to buildings.
We should have a plan for them (among everything else)


Now that we have Asoka's map, we see that he has 2 iron, 2 copper, and 1 horse. Rags has 2 copper and 1 horse.
Spoiler :
FTFY
Spoiler :
and an iron that may or may not be in his borders...
I'm sorry, no time yesterday after all. Civ time ETA in 10h. :)
Yamps is up. Go Yamps!
 
Yes, I know I pushed and maybe crossed the line there but I didn't know when or if anyone was going to comment. I did know that 21 days isn't a lot of time--hope Yamps doesn't have an aneurysm over what he finds. ;)

Where will we lose a worker? We're not at war with anybody. Yes, Birka and Jelling might starve a bit--mostly they're acting as stables for our horsies, which will soon be upgraded to cavs. About that: probably doesn't hurt to remind that XPs beyond 10 are lost so for some units you may want to wait until they hit the next level to upgrade. I'd also recommend going with Combat3 over Pinch for awhile longer--right now, Pinch will only benefit us when defending against gunpowder units, and they ain't got any. And muskets are no problem against cavs. Combat3 is good against everything, which we need because we're always put against the best defender when we attack, and we're overwhelmingly going to be on the attack. :)

Now that we have the Eastie map, see if we can sell it for some gold or embellish a trade for Optics--I assume they still have closed borders with everyone so there will be no trade benefit to the AI. And with DH's observation, there's no point in trying to pillage iron, or anything else. Maybe bring back the spy in case Asoka settles near the ivory again. Oooh, I never had units or time to pillage the ivory and road! Do that now!

You may take issue with me building forges in a couple places (NY and Chicago, maybe SF?)--it'll take awhile for payback but I thought it was worth it; they can also run engineers for more hammers. Likewise with West Point in Boston. Yeah, it's 8 fewer cuirs while we're waiting but the cavs will come out the door with 9 XPs good for 3 promos. Breathe deeply, Yamps, and forgive me if I have sinned. We should probably move a spy there to protect production.

Several cities have multiple items in their queues because I was holding back on cuirs or galleys, awaiting better units to finish. Boston still has a Chouse in its queue from when SH played. Philly still has Sistine--not sure whether to pad that or not. I have Wash building a bank because we're going to be running on the low-research side before long and a bank will bring in a lot of gold there.

Given what we see in St Louis there's now less urgency for a theatre and all those workers. Some should go to SF and build workshops--this will be a very nice production city--maybe build a forge if not already. In St Louis, maybe we don't need a theatre at all--would a library would be more useful long term? Or a granary? And we should switch that artist to work the iron to build culture--faster that way, although running the artist also gives us beakers--see what you think. I wanted to chop those forests next to that new city to the south before its borders pop and take away our forests.

Because of all the queue complications you should probably check every city every turn. I haven't done that this turn yet. If we drop Confusion then you might want to cancel those gifted resources to Monte. Not sure of the Theocracy vs Free Religion tradeoff but we don't want to stay in Pacifism beyond the GA.

Formal handoff to Yamps. Good luck!
 
I'm having 3rd thoughts about West Point, which we haven't quite started yet. In the time it would take we could build 3 cuirs and 4 cavs. Or maybe build some trebs until we get Rifling. These could be loaded on a couple galleys (or galleons) with a couple rifles, waiting offshore India for the peace to expire. Then they get dropped and advance inland (on defensive terrain) so they can bombard city defenses before the cavs arrive. Frigates can handle the coastal cities. Tech plan would be Rifling, Economics (put after Chem if we can still finish Econ before GA ends), Chem (to get extra hammer for workshops), Astro (after trading for Optics), SciMeth, Physics. We might be able to trade for Econ and possibly Astro in the not too distant future.

[Edit: Forgot another reason to wait on West Pt: we might pop a Great Eng from Boston in 20ish turns. Of course, we could also use him on Iron Works when/if we get Steel. BTW, when the Boston temple is finished we could run a priest there for another hammer and gold.]
 
Where will we lose a worker?
In the 1090 save, there is an Asoka archer by our furs. I didn't see any way to stop it from killing worker(s).
But in 1110 save, we have 20 workers, same as in 1090. So we survived somehow.

kcd, oops - I opened the 1090 save - thus loading a save from an earlier time. Something I never do in xOTMs. Is this something we should report?
 
I can't open the save now but I suspect that was a "good" Indian archer (wearing glasses), not a "bad" Indian (hippie hair). And opening old saves is fine as long as you don't make any irreversible changes.
 
got it. :coffee:

let's see what I've missed in the last few days...
 
In the 1090 save, there is an Asoka archer by our furs. I didn't see any way to stop it from killing worker(s).
But in 1110 save, we have 20 workers, same as in 1090. So we survived somehow.

kcd, oops - I opened the 1090 save - thus loading a save from an earlier time. Something I never do in xOTMs. Is this something we should report?

You can open earlier saves all you want as long as you don't do anything irreversible in them. Best not to, to avoid accidents.

I wouldn't build west point. I seldom do. Quantity of units beats quality every time. Quantity is quality. ;)

Looking good. Good job Xcal. :goodjob: ...but if you want to deviate from the plan to the extent of civic changes or city settling location not discussed or make civic changes or make big diplo decisions like war/peace... you really need to wait at least 24hrs for comments. 4 for 4 exceeds expectations. :lol: For the record, there's five of us checkng in fairly regularly, so you should have 3 (yourself included) be OK with such big changes before you execute. The deadline isn't enough excuse until its tomorrow... we might have thought of something that led to a faster endgame and end up saving time. (Note we almost made exception for people named Jovan, but voted that down :mischief:). OK, end of lecture. The only thing that I might have advised against is making peace, but I haven't looked at all the ramifications yet so I can still be persuaded it was the right choice. Just saying...

End of lecture. I do appreciate XCal's dedication and keeping up the pace. Sorry I was unavailable... I take responsibility for anything I didn't like. Anyhow, I thikn we're in pretty good shape with our efficient warring, and can't wait for those forced peace tuyrns to be over. :ar15:

Yamps is up!
(Who wants to be on-deck? Things here are still OFC.:crazyeye:)
 
Hmm, I can't open the last save (1110 AD), I'm getting some runtime error. The 1090 AD save however openes just fine. :confused: I've tried downloading the 1110 save again, but it didn't help. Anybody else having this problem?
 
I see that Deckhand loaded the save. Maybe there was some error in Alan's database later on. XCal, could you upload the save here in the thread to check it out?
 
Guilty on all counts--impatience is a weakness of mine. Hopefully I didn't do anything that wouldn't gain at least acquiesence.
Or maybe build some trebs until we get Rifling. These could be loaded on a couple galleys (or galleons) with a couple rifles, waiting offshore India for the peace to expire. Then they get dropped and advance inland (on defensive terrain) so they can bombard city defenses before the cavs arrive. Frigates can handle the coastal cities.
NW of Agra would be the spot if you try this. Two woody2 rifles and 2 trebs ought to do the trick, or even one of each.

Jelling and Birka will only lose 1 pop each to starvation when they come out of revolt--just run artists the first turn to get the border pop and then we have plenty of food.

The Confused missionary in Philly just arrived--use it to spread next turn to get the Pacifism GP bonus. Seattle will pop a Merchant in 6 turns, then Wash pops about 4 turns later. LA and Houston are set up for artists--if it turns out we don't need both for culture bombing then we can burn one (plus another GP) for a Golden Age. Nobamba will eventually pop its 60% border--when it does Shaka will be able to see inside his mountain ring--get that map! The other two mountain rings will require airships. The only other place that a barb could hide that I can see is Minoan, on Gandhi's spoke. (Of course, we're assuming that the Wiz is a barb--a safe assumption, I think, but should we consider sending out scouts to systematically search everywhere for an AI unit called "The Wizard of Oz"?)
 
(Of course, we're assuming that the Wiz is a barb--a safe assumption, I think, but should we consider sending out scouts to systematically search everywhere for an AI unit called "The Wizard of Oz"?)
:suicide::badcomp::pat: you blew my mind,
i don't think there is a smilee for that
That would be consistent with the game rules and scenario. Probably unlikely as it makes the game/victor much more random.
 
Hmm, I can't open the last save (1110 AD), I'm getting some runtime error. The 1090 AD save however openes just fine. :confused: I've tried downloading the 1110 save again, but it didn't help. Anybody else having this problem?
I just successfully downloaded and opened both the save from link in post 1060 and save from SGOTM status page.
I'm using Win7 64bit.
 
Sorry I missed your post, Yamps. I Xposted and then went to dinner. I downlaoded the save on our other computer (Mac running Windows XP SP3 via bootcamp) and didn't have a problem, but here it is as an attachment:
 

Attachments

Here's one more file to try. I started BTS, loaded my saved game, looked at the tech, diplo, etc. screens, and saved. It should be exactly the same file apart from creation date. FWIW, I'm running on Windows7.

By the way, if we want to run Theocracy we'll need Theology first.
 

Attachments

Alright, I can open both saves you uploaded. :goodjob: It's really odd, I can open everything except the 1110 AD one from the database. I'll notify AlanH.

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I'll take a more detailed look in the evening, ~9h from now. Most importantly, we need a plan to take out Oz. Do we have some culture bombing tests in the thread? I don't think it would work for those southern mountains near Shaka. This would mean nukes so we have to plan accordingly. First draft: mass whip cavs to take us close to the domination limit then tech to nukes to take out Oz and win.
 
Guilty on all counts--impatience is a weakness of mine. Hopefully I didn't do anything that wouldn't gain at least acquiesence.

NW of Agra would be the spot if you try this. Two woody2 rifles and 2 trebs ought to do the trick, or even one of each.

Jelling and Birka will only lose 1 pop each to starvation when they come out of revolt--just run artists the first turn to get the border pop and then we have plenty of food.

The Confused missionary in Philly just arrived--use it to spread next turn to get the Pacifism GP bonus. Seattle will pop a Merchant in 6 turns, then Wash pops about 4 turns later. LA and Houston are set up for artists--if it turns out we don't need both for culture bombing then we can burn one (plus another GP) for a Golden Age. Nobamba will eventually pop its 60% border--when it does Shaka will be able to see inside his mountain ring--get that map! The other two mountain rings will require airships. The only other place that a barb could hide that I can see is Minoan, on Gandhi's spoke. (Of course, we're assuming that the Wiz is a barb--a safe assumption, I think, but should we consider sending out scouts to systematically search everywhere for an AI unit called "The Wizard of Oz"?)

Personally I'm convinced. Astro needed, nothing else. I'm fog-gazing and concluding that in all likelihood, there is no flat land in any of the mountain ranges... these are a ruse. I'm also pretty certain that Minoan and Saxon are Oz-free zones, since an AI will take those cities eventually... too random.

Instead, look to the west of Malinese lands. The coast tiles in the ocean indicate a one-tile patch of land in the fog (6 west and 1 south of Teotihuacan). THAT's where we'll find the Wizard, I think! Its the farthest point possible frm our starting position, which makes a kind of logic from a map-builders perspective. Safe from AI until astro, and AI are safe from Oz. I'd expect it to be something tough like Mech Inf, so that AI are unlikely to attack it before Marines.

So my advice is don't gear up to make artists just yet. Wicked Witch of West moves up on target prio list? Note, a +1 visibility unit on a galley will not reveal that tile, nor will AI getting Optics, unless they also sail that way.

After rifling, go for optics/Astro. Upgrade the trireme acting as barb-stopper (note, that city won't last long against the English who have WE's) to a caravel to check. Buil a galleon at first opportunity and send him that way where we can preumably upload an assualt force once we know what we're up against. Question: can spies destroy improvements in neutral or barb territory? If there's a fort there, it would be nice to eliminate it first. Physics might be needed anyhow to soften it up a bit (20%)with airships. I doubt there's a city... black borders would give it away. Note, Oz might be a high strength unit, but he might have some flying monkeys (fighters) stationed there to prevent airship bombards anyhow. We'll see.

View attachment 307529
 
I notice that we can trade Liberalism and 55 gold for Optics + Econ. (Ghandi, Shaka, Mansa, Monte all same price). I say we should do it. Not sure who would be better to trade with, though.

About the AP voting: I see we now have enough votes to win the residency. However, there are 2 more vote cycles before that. At this point, if we vote no it would not pass. We should defy anyhow... just for safety. No unhappiness if resolution wouldn't have passed anyhow. I'm not sure if both on a team need the AP religion for the "Stop the war" resoultion to be active. But OTOH, we were warring with everyone's (except England's) worst enemy, so the resolution could have been active but the AI chose not to call it for a vote. :D I think we got some random luck, there. Anyhow, we'll find out once we become the AP resident (assuming the other side doesn't up their pop much). It would be useful to do a "declare war on heathens" resolution... that could get us enough +diplo we could win a Relig Vic (oh wait... better check the rules about that :blush: ).
 
Personally I'm convinced. Astro needed, nothing else. I'm fog-gazing and concluding that in all likelihood, there is no flat land in any of the mountain ranges... these are a ruse. I'm also pretty certain that Minoan and Saxon are Oz-free zones, since an AI will take those cities eventually... too random.
Well done. This makes a lot of sense. Agree on the approach of Astro after Rifles. How quickly can we get a Galleon with Cavs over there.
 
Nice sleuthing, kcd! I think it's very likely you're right. But can we keep running artists in one city (Houston or LA) just in case? The other can switch to merchants.

After Rifling and Astro I urge Chemistry for frigates--knocking down coastal city defenses will save countless horses' lives. ;)

Regarding AP votes, note that our voting weight is currently doubled because we're running Confusion and not Free Religion. If we go back to FR we can probably still stop resolutions but we'd need to spread the Word to more cities. Consider building a monastery in Boston or SF; the only other one we have is in Wash. Mona's will be going obsolete pretty soon--do we get to keep the 2-hammer bonus??

Give my vote little weight, but I guess we should do the Lib'ism trade ASAP. Note that Astro obsoletes monuments so we'll be losing 1 happiness in several cities. Wash will want an observatory.
 
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