SGOTM 16 - Fifth Element

[Folket]

A good post. Almost a full PPP. I'm busy today but I should be able to play my turns tomorrow afternoon.

I do not think we have agreed on the vassalization of Hammurabi yet.

Pi-Ramesses might have been a misstake but I'm not certain. It will help the city to grow to size 10 where I will whip the factory and thebes can survive without the 16 food for one turn. I will spread to Thebes now and build one executive there.

 

[Shaandore]

Can anyone verify this: if we take all the Babylonian cities, are we still below the Dom Limit? How many tiles? If results a safe number, we can then take the border Arab cities (keep or raze makes almost no difference) so the borders of our cities will expand over tiles where we already have some culture. Dom done.

We can customize the BUG advisors to have the exact number of tiles we own right after we hit enter. Just sum the present Babylonian ones.

The map has 1142 land tiles.

Domination limit is 731 (or 730 if it is rounded down...)

We have 566 land tiles now, and we can get 12 more on our landmass/on the islands if we don't settle more cities, and 9 more if we settle the red spots (not a good idea if we want to stay under 2/3 of world pop) and the Humbaba city. 3 of these tiles are currently Saladin's. So with red cities, max culture and Humbaba, that is 587 tiles.

Now I'll list the number of tiles that each player possess:
Hammurabi: 130
Qin: 183
Sitting Bull:109
Saladin: 134

There are 2 more ice tiles south of Babylonian lands near Shushan.
Sum is 1142

Conclusion: We can finish off Babylon if we want to. Or we can get two vassals if none of them is China. (We would have to gift some cities back though if we want two vassals).

 

[Shaandore]

A good post. Almost a full PPP. I'm busy today but I should be able to play my turns tomorrow afternoon.

I do not think we have agreed on the vassalization of Hammurabi yet.

Pi-Ramesses might have been a misstake but I'm not certain. It will help the city to grow to size 10 where I will whip the factory and thebes can survive without the 16 food for one turn. I will spread to Thebes now and build one executive there.

True. My main concern was Gergovia though, its culture is not even influential. At the current state it needs 49000 culture, most of which will need to come from artists. Generating 12 Great Artists is a bit too much to ask for. We also need one more GP for the third Corporation. And Orelans still has 125 turns left. Let's hope that those late wonders will help a bit. Running a gazillion artists after we switch to Caste will also be useful.

We don't have that many techs left (~70 turns with current beaker output at 100%. With the GA and overall economic growth that should be ~50 turns), so the bottleneck might be getting these two cities to legendary. Imagine 500 cpt in these cities, that would only get them 25000 culture during this time. (Orleans will have more soon, but Gergovia might have less...)

EDIT: It would be really useful to spread Buddhism and Christianity into these cities. Build the 6 temples and get the multiplier buildings in Gergovia and Orleans. This should be done now while we are in Org Rel. (There might be some fails when spreading)

Gergovia is the more important, we can get away with 3 temples. (Orleans has Hermitage)

 

[BLubmuz]

The map has 1142 land tiles.

Domination limit is 731 (or 730 if it is rounded down...)

We have 566 land tiles now, and we can get 12 more on our landmass/on the islands if we don't settle more cities, and 9 more if we settle the red spots (not a good idea if we want to stay under 2/3 of world pop) and the Humbaba city. 3 of these tiles are currently Saladin's. So with red cities, max culture and Humbaba, that is 587 tiles.

Now I'll list the number of tiles that each player possess:
Hammurabi: 130
Qin: 183
Sitting Bull:109
Saladin: 134

There are 2 more ice tiles south of Babylonian lands near Shushan.
Sum is 1142

Conclusion: We can finish off Babylon if we want to. Or we can get two vassals if none of them is China. (We would have to gift some cities back though if we want two vassals).

Good job on counting, right what we need.
Resuming: If we settle all we can, we arrive to 587 tiles, 581 without red cities (not noticed in the save). Assuming 130 from Hammu, but less because Chinese and Arab culture will gain tiles to them we arrive to 717 or 711, so safe because the borders are limited by foreign culture, so probably we'll be under 700.
The WW in Babylon can be obsolete, but the SoZ really strikes in a long war. But we won't fight a long war.

At this point the plan can be (let's keep aside for now vassals and diplo, we must discuss them further): wipe Babylon, then take the 2 Arab border cities and Mecca in the same turn, bomb a GA in Mecca, Domination done.

Now i see the red cities. IMO they are not worth the effort to build settlers and executives. Maybe one between Gergovia and Rheims in the riverside farmed tile.

Let's wait also ZPV on the VCs matter.

 

[Folket]

I'm certain the red cities will help. With just MI they pay for them self in a few turn. With Sushi they pay for themself in no time. But of course I will bend to the will of the team.

 

[Shaandore]

There is no team decision on red cities yet. All I'm saying that for UN we need to stay under 2/3 of world pop, and more cities might make this more difficult.

I was wondering if it is possible to request changing the deadline. The Maintenance thread says:

"Note, requests to extend any deadline must be filed in the maintenance thread no later than 1 week before the deadline. If such a motion is received and seconded, a non-public survey of team captains will be made, requiring a 2/3 majority to alter the deadline. Alteration of any deadline will automatically shift any subsequent deadlines by the same amount of time."

Since we are running out of time (~50 turns for 18 days) this might be a good idea. I think some other teams could use it too.

 

[ZPV]

Dom+UN makes sense.
It's very easy to time the UN, with a very little bit of planning.
We'll have such military superiority that we could arrange to raze most of china, and plant new cities, on the turn after diplo victory. That will work around any capitulation problems that might come up.

More important, IMO, is to set up our starvation megacities now. They will take time to grow, and we don't want to pollute their gene pools with priests and scientists.

 

[BLubmuz]

Dom+UN makes sense.
It's very easy to time the UN, with a very little bit of planning.

I'm not used to diplo victories, can you please give a draft plan?

About the deadline, i also think it's better request an extension. Off to PM Alan.

this is what i just sent him

Spoiler :

Hi Alan,
first off a good 2013.

Then, on topic: we (FE) are playing slowly due to RL problems of some member and to the need to well discuss any option. We can finish in time, but i think the quality of our game can be improved by a little extension. What about move it to the end of January?

I know the need to have a vote of all the teams. Do have i to ask in the maintenance thread or it's enough this?

Thanks for your patience and for your work.
ciao
Blub

 

[Folket]

Sounds like we have consensus on dom + UN.

I personally think we can manage to finish this in less then 50 turns and 18 days. I will play 8 turns tomorrow. Most of my PPP will be a copy of Shandoores post.

 

[Shaandore]

A key thing missing from my post (but part of ZPV's) is the planning of megacities. Just about anything with some green tiles can be good for this. We need to make sure to only run artists in these places. I think 10 cities should suffice. We already have Gergovia and Isca, we need some more. Eg. Uzbek could be good. This means that its farms will have to stay. There is a triple sushi city. It needs a fast lighthouse. After that no whips here!

I can't open the game now but try to find some more sites. Make sure to only run artists, or if we have no free specialist, run nothing, just click on max groth or maximize food manually. (If there is no artist slot, run "citizen specialist" as free specalist)

One more thing:
Don't forget the theaters for Globe!

 

[BLubmuz]

Sounds like we have consensus on dom + UN.

Not at all! I want to see a detailed (in terms of things to do, not micro) plan of the final phase of the game before to give an opinion. ATM i'm still on Culture+Dom or Space + Dom. Have i told you that i hate Diplo? In case, can be an AP victory an option? (i doubt).

 

[ZPV]

Here's a summary of the timings:

Turn   Event
X      UN Shows 1 turn left to complete; it goes down in the logs as built on this date.
X+1    We get the wonder movie, and election for the sec. gen.
X+2    The Sec. Gen. is announced.
X+3
X+4
X+5
X+6
X+7    The vote comes up.  We select Diplomatic victory.
X+8    The winner is announced, and we win the game.  (From here, we have one more turn

At the start of turns X+7 and X+8, we must have less than 62% of global population.
There must also be two other free AIs.
Us + our vassal should combine for more than 62% of the population though, so that we win the vote.
We can control this finely by whipping away excess population.

We can't use AP instead because we don't get to control when the election is so easily.

 

[Shaandore]

One more thing to the above: We might need to build UN earlier, and win only on 2nd or 3rd vote due to wonder race.

How many votes before new sec. general is elected? And how many turns pass between votes?

 

[Folket]

We do not want to build UN earlier. It would be harder to time votes.

 

[Folket]

Which turn was 225 AD?

Sorry for the wait. My brother was over and it took a lot of time. I have started to work on civ 4 now.

 

[Shaandore]

UN: we don't want the AIs to build it either. Saladin might get to it pretty soon, which screws the timing just as bad.

EDIT: t124 I think.

 

[Folket]

We could aim at AP victory in 41 turns? In 20-30 turns we can change our mind and get UN if 41 turns is to early or to late.

 

[Folket]

Artist farms
Giza
Gergovia
Bagacum
Uzbeck
Vienne
Rheims
Heliopolis?
Tolosa
Orleans?
Verlamion

 

[Shaandore]

I can't check the save now, but it looks good. Make sure that they get Sushi in this/next wave at latest, so they have time to grow.

 

[Folket]

The techs we need costs 155376 beakers.

To research in 41 turns our output need to increase with 4.5% from a 1500 this turn. Sounds really easy. While if we increase output with 7% we can have future tech in 31 turns.