SGOTM 22 - Anti-TSR

[LowtherCastle]

Fantastic finish ZPV and Pollina!!!

Super glad you joined us, ZPV. Your added energy was much appreciated. Time to enjoy our victory and look around a bit.

 

[WastinTime]

Thanks gang! Another fun, friendly effort. So glad LC and Pollina had the dedication to keep me from hanging up this game mid-way thru. It delivered several challenges that I-- and the community--asked for. Namely, harder AI and espionage research--among others. We should be careful what we wish for! I particularly like how the somewhat challenging AI came as a surprise given this was only Monarch.
Adding ZPV definitely kept this from being too much of a slog for the usual 2-3 game finishers. It was nice to have 4+ players for a change.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I agree. This game turned out to be better than it seemed in the early going. In fact, it was clever of BSP to create a game in which we couldn't really dominate the AIs until close to the end. Every time we reached one peak, there was another ahead.

I think a large part of our frustration was losing 5 out of our first 7 spies (or whatever) at infinitesimal odds. But then we didn't lose another for an eon or two, so that made up for it.

It was also fun using espionage so that we could pretty much stay abreast of the AIs militarily even though we never quite caught up techwise.

Not sure why other VCs were shut off. Domination was impossible anyway, I suppose cultural might have been faster, especially espy cultural, religious is obvious. I guess BSP was hoping that space might be comparable to conquest, a hard nut to crack for a game designer.

I was also on the brink of quitting halfway through. It was Pollina's rock-solidness that kept me going.

 

[LowtherCastle]

ZPV, I wasn't sure if you pmed AlanH, so I just did.

 

[WastinTime]

Espionage research was fun. I never would have guessed I'd play a game where, IIRC, actual research was Alpha, Aes, Lit, Music... Steel.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Two teams already dead. RIP. Other two teams likely to win. Very difficult scenario unless you strategized correctly from the beginning, which we did. Not sure how much better we could have done. Any ideas on that?

 

[BSPollux]

Congrats on winning a game that was -accidentaly- very tough!

It seems that any game that's challenging for you guys is hardly possible for everyone else

 

[Pollina]

Great finish, ZPV! Thanks for joining us when we needed you the most!

Great work, team! SGOTMs are always great fun, but this one was special. Thanks for making it special! Now I have to find something better to do with my life.

I was also on the brink of quitting halfway through.

So was I, especially after the failed Mecca attack. I went to bed that night ready to quit. But when I checked the thread the next morning and saw you making plans to move forward, I was back on track immediately. It was WT’s micro turnset that convinced me that we’d win this game.

Espionage research was fun.

Yeah, that was definitely my favorite part of the game.

Congrats on winning a game that was -accidentaly- very tough!

Thanks for creating this scenario. There is only a very fine line between making a game too difficult or too easy, especially given how different the teams' expectations tend to be. It was a unique game with lots of interesting decisions, which made it fun for me.

What I liked most about it from a design perspective was the lack of real ocean tiles and all the strategical and tactical options that provided. Dropping off a SoD next to an AI’s core cities on DoW+0 is fun.

 

[Pollina]

Very difficult scenario unless you strategized correctly from the beginning, which we did. Not sure how much better we could have done. Any ideas on that?

Not sure either. I'm very happy with how we played this game. Is there anything we could have done to speed up our first war? Maybe stealing BW->IW after city#3 (before settling Bovino)? Or going for an early HA rush instead of waiting for praets? I don't know... Probably not.

Was targeting Mecca instead of Damascus a mistake? Or going for Sal instead of Hanni?

 

[ZPV]

Two teams already dead. RIP. Other two teams likely to win. Very difficult scenario unless you strategized correctly from the beginning, which we did. Not sure how much better we could have done. Any ideas on that?

Was there any scope to get an additional core city in the serviceable land around us (through aggression or otherwise)? Despite how good the AI super cities were for paying the bills and running golden ages, a lot of units came from the core, and an extra city would provide the bump to make everything else go faster. That's what I'd look to try and do differently.

The snowball potential of the game was massive.
If we'd been 4 turns faster, even as late as t190 when we were ready to attack Gil, we'd probably save 10+ turns on the end date, because we could kill his mainland off properly and get Brennus first time around (his goose was cooked by t209 if not for rifling).
If we'd been 4 turns later, we'd probably have another 10-15 turns to play, as we slog through both Brennus and Gil with rifles everywhere.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Pollina has conscientiously followed up on updating our summary posts, something that rarely is accomplished in full. Thanks, Pollina!!!

Turnset Summary

Other key posts

 

[LowtherCastle]

Having another production city nearby would clearly have increased our unit production by a significant percentage. It would have to have enough food, unlike HC, to get to pop10 or so.

Targeting the early wonders was clearly the right move and conflicted with earlier warring. Settling Bovino to get the ivory in the BFC would have saved some turns on Zeus and given us +1 happy without lessening the production capacity of Bovino, but at the expense of some coins.

Targeting a distant AI first, like Sal, is always dubious. We were trying to beat lbms, iirc, or slow his runaway train in any case. I think allowing only one AI to get Rifling was definitively a plus and even stone-aged Sal and some others weren't far off. I think that strategy was right. Perhaps ZPV's right that we just missed on Brennus and managed to undercut the rest just fine.

Another aspect of speeding up the game is that we were dependent to some degree on the AI tech rate. We didn't tech Cuirs, but they were essential to our conquest. So when we were able to steal Mil Trad was probably a limiting factor, perhaps the limiting factor. In fact, once we had a sense of where the game was going, the smartest way to strategize might have been to figure out how to get some AI to get Mil Trad soonest, if that was manipulatable at all.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Was targeting Mecca instead of Damascus a mistake? Or going for Sal instead of Hanni?

Yes, I think that became apparent. Obviously our failed attempt on Mecca cost us turns. That whole phase was tricky because we wanted MoM, marble, iron, and all that stuff.

Going for Carthage at the earliest possible time might have been a good idea. It was distant from other Hanni culture and had wheat and all three commerce metals. I not convinced we could have done that and stopped the runaway Sal train though.

I'm thinking our AI target path was the safest route, in terms of controlling the overall game.

 

[WastinTime]

What I liked most about it from a design perspective was the lack of real ocean tiles and all the strategical and tactical options that provided.

Plot twist opportunity missed?:
When LC discovered one of Gilga's islands (Shuruppak) was strangely missing from trade routes, I thought for sure BSP put a ring of ocean tiles around it after he had lulled us into thinking the entire map was coast. (I wasn't able to open the save to check right away.) That would have meant Astronomy or a culture bridge. Gilga would have been able to settle it using his culture bridge. Fortunately (would have been luckily) for us, we kept Nibru, which would have given us that bridge too. I made sure to check before we raze or gave away Nibru.

 

[Pollina]

Would we have settled the wheat/silver spot in our east if we had discovered it earlier? Would it have been worth it to delay the Sal war for it? That's the only spot near our core empire I see that could have been useful in the long term.

 

[Mitchum]

First, whoever played that first 12 turns really set us up for success. Thank you so much to whomever that was!!!

Second, I think losing so many early spies hurt us quite a bit. If we had just average success/odds early on, we could have likely caught all AI pre-Rifles. Sure, we made up for it mid game by having several successful spy missions but those early failures when 40H represented a large part of our empire's output slowed us down quite a bit.

I'm having strong pangs of ambivalence. I can't wait to finish the game but I don't want our collaboration and virtual companionship to end...

This was really the only reason I played lurked followed this thread. I knew before the game started that I wouldn't be able to devote much time to this game but I didn't want to miss it either.

I've been playing a game on my phone called Clash of Clans. I like it because you can play in 5-minute increments when you're otherwise doing nothing. It also has a social aspect which makes it fun in the same way SGOTMs are. It's amazingly deep for a mobile app and well worth the download. If any of you are interested, you should join our war clan.

 

[LowtherCastle]

First, whoever played that first 12 turns really set us up for success. Thank you so much to whomever that was!!!

Yeah, that was Da_Vinci and to think he was acting like we were 5 levels beyond him.

Another factor in our decision to attack Sal then Zara was the wonders we got--and prevented from getting built. MoM and the Pyramids in particular. We made massive use of both, especially the Pyramids.

In hindsight, we did a whole lot of stuff right.

 

[LowtherCastle]

What I liked most about it from a design perspective was the lack of real ocean tiles and all the strategical and tactical options that provided. Dropping off a SoD next to an AI’s core cities on DoW+0 is fun.

Yes, the coastal connection from Zara to Gil was critical to allowing us to stone-age Gil's runaway train. It also allowed our Sal+Zara cities to be useful right to the end of the game because they could supply units in both directions.

 

[Pollina]

Yes, the coastal connection from Zara to Gil was critical to allowing us to stone-age Gil's runaway train. It also allowed our Sal+Zara cities to be useful right to the end of the game because they could supply units in both directions.

I wonder if our game would have been winnable with normal oceans. Probably, but our endgame would have been an even bigger slog, similar to what TTfkapr is facing now. Possibly even worse. Getting a 7th WW would have been very awkward. Maintaining a trade connection to all our cities would have been a challenge. I somehow doubt we would have finished a game like that.

 

[WastinTime]

We would not have attacked Sal first if there was ocean.
And not just because we lose the ability to attack Brennus/Gilga from there.
We also would not have gotten circumnavigation bonus.
It would have been Hannibal first an he would not have had longbows like Sal did.
We would have built a lot less galleys. It could have been the faster route, but I'm not 2nd guessing our plan. It worked out well.