SGOTM 23 - Phoenix Rising

Great job Gumbolt! I think we can be very happy with our game. A lot could have been done differently for sure, but overall this went very well.

One of our biggest mistakes was probably underestimating our teching potential. I don't think anyone of us expected quite this pace. Should have focused more on conquest indeed. But railroad t131 and conquest 2 turns later is a very good result regardless. Well done all team!
 
I think we owe a big thanks to Elite too for his soldiering on the last 10-14 turns. Maybe not playing all but he was a big rock in terms of support. I would of never got through final 4-6 turns without him and Rusten too. Elite played many turns near end with very little support as most of the team were away.

SGOTM really put you through your paces. Especially near the end game with 50+ cities to manage. We pretty much had all but 1 tile of RR completed on T133. Even the best players can stumble under the pressure. *cough cough*

I think we had a solid core of 4 or so players here. Shame Yyeah never really joined. Maybe if we form again we can bribe Fippy to play. We didn't really do any late night sessions here. So it was a nice refreshing change from the usual PR all nighters.
 
We pretty much had all but 1 tile of RR completed on T133. Even the best players can stumble under the pressure. *cough cough*
So what was the final victory date? You did still kill last AI t133 and build last railroad after victory messages, right? Date of final save 475AD?

Edit: you mentioned it on last page. Then I don't see what the problem with one unrailroaded tile was. :)
 
So what was the final victory date? You did still kill last AI t133 and build last railroad after victory messages, right? Date of final save 475AD?

Yes I built final RR on T134. All Ai dead plus the 1 vassel on T133. So 475AD.

T80 screenshot from TA. At that point we look to be doing okay war wise. Not sure who was ahead.

Like a overall shot of our empire? Sure, hold on...

Spoiler :
 
Didn't expect you to finish so soon. :goodjob:
Reflections on our game to come later then. :)

Short point for now: Yes, I was fairly sure we were doing well in the 1000 BC - 700 BC range, but then we lost the plot a bit. It's natural really, we lost over half the team in the beginning of July. Personally I'm a little sad I couldn't be around more. I had 5 full weeks of travel. Not only are the weeks gone an issue but it's harder to pick up the game again afterwards. Overall I'm happy with our game though. Not vassaling Russia was going to be one of the mistakes to highlight, but this stems from completely underestimating our teching power and pace of the game.
 
What was our t80 situation? We had Thebes and Alexandria for sure, but was Alexander dead yet? What about Jerusalem?

T77-81 Elite P91. We set sail with our African Horsemen to Greece. Athens has 2 phalanx and a archer defending. Naturally after we steal his worker he builds another. We capture Athens losing 3HA.

Agreed Rusten. It was a fun game. Considering all things we did pretty well. Naturally we all wanted gold but to finish 8 turns behind TA is a big result. They have some of the best players on the forum and have been as a team for many SGOTM. Other teams have finished 50-100 turns behind them and this shows just how good we/they did. We played a strong game all things considered. 2000BPT around 300ad is crazy!!

Apart from me and Elite the bulk of this team was new. It takes a while to work out new teams. You and BIC were rocks very early on. It was unfortunate we lost so many players in July. Fact is we pulled through well. :goodjob:
 
Short point for now: Yes, I was fairly sure we were doing well in the 1000 BC - 700 BC range, but then we lost the plot a bit. It's natural really, we lost over half the team in the beginning of July. Personally I'm a little sad I couldn't be around more. I had 5 full weeks of travel. Not only are the weeks gone an issue but it's harder to pick up the game again afterwards. Overall I'm happy with our game though. Not vassaling Russia was going to be one of the mistakes to highlight, but this stems from completely underestimating our teching power and pace of the game.
Well played Rusten. As soon as I saw you join PR, I became concerned. ;)

I think the biggest challenge in SGs is maintaining the "plot."
 
Thanks, but the credit goes to the entire team. Elitetroops in particular has done a lot of the work in the later stages (July and onwards). Imagine being stuck with Gumbolt all by yourself for an entire month.... :scared: :shake:

Maybe we'll get you next time -- we've warmed up now! :)
It was my first real SGOTM experience so hopefully I picked up some things along the way for next time too. Looking forward to reading your thread.
 
Thanks, but the credit goes to the entire team. Elitetroops in particular has done a lot of the work in the later stages (July and onwards). Imagine being stuck with Gumbolt all by yourself for an entire month.... :scared: :shake:

Maybe we'll get you next time -- we've warmed up now! :)
It was my first real SGOTM experience so hopefully I picked up some things along the way for next time too. Looking forward to reading your thread.
Ofc, didn't mean to imply it was only you. I just remember some eternity ago there was a deity BOTM that only you won... ;)
 
And while the finish is still fresh I'll take the time to thank the team for 4 good months before I start picking the game apart. I really did enjoy the game even if it's a big shame I was gone for so much of it.

Thanks to Gumbolt for being a great captain and motivator. I think you have been the one constant throughout the entire game while others have come and gone a bit. We'd struggle to finish in time and keep the game going without you! :)

Thanks to BiC for being a great sparring partner in the early game when discussing various options. You kept me in check and enhanced my ideas. I think we worked very well together -- hopefully the feeling is mutual.

Thanks again to elitetroops for truly carrying this game in the later stages. Whatever analysis I did after returning from holiday in July was very shallow compared to previous. You did the nitty-gritty stuff and we wouldn't remain competitive without it. Examples would be in-depth army movement and GP timings.

Thanks to Megalurker and CC for early game ideas and discussion. Also thanks to shulec for popping in with comments every now and then.

It's a pity yyeah couldn't participate. I was actually looking forward to playing with him due to his enthusiasm for the game. In that sense he's much like you, Gumbolt. ;)

What is this? The Oscars? I'm going overboard. :hammer2:

:thanx:
 
And while the finish is still fresh I'll take the time to thank the team for 4 good months before I start picking the game apart.
A big thanks to you too Rusten! You and BiC did a massive job on early game micro!

I'm still waiting for you to pick the game apart. ;) I also want to have a look at some TA saved for comparison when I get back home tomorrow.

And spending a month with gumbolt really isn't that bad. As long as he doesn't put up signs. [emoji14]
 
Do we know when the game time runs out? I assumed midday UK time 01st September? Seems to me that Xteam are far from done here.
 
It's usually midnight in the last timezone, somewhere in the east pacific. At least in HoF gauntlets.
 
I've not yet compared saves with TA at various points. I think elitetroops wants to do it ;) :deal:

Things we could improve or did poorly (big picture):
It's not going to be a very long list as we played a pretty good game -- but there were still some problems.
I'm not going to mention the AD years, because we had already dug our grave then. These were the critical big picture mistakes as I see it:

  • Much too late first GA
I think even for a longer game we should've had our first GA sooner. I remember us thinking this during the game a while before we started our GA, but at that point it was almost too late. We should've had the first one without MoM. We finished teching even before our second golden age was finished I think (at least if we skipped things like MT) – :blush: embarassing and a huge waste of resources!!

In this particular game I think not getting an academy at all was better. It was not a big mistake in itself, but at least we should've found a way to generate our 2nd GS sooner (or use 2nd GS for academy instead of 1st). Reason being that the surrounding land was sooooo rich which resulted in the insane pace of the game. At ~800 BC we were in a position to realise this due to our scouting and capturing of the Pyramids+GL. We should've altered our plans. This goes into the next point →
  • GPP – too little too late
We talked about bulbing CS, guilds, banking, etc in the early stages, but little of this happened in the game. Bamboozled by the ridiculous speed of the game we were teching so fast that there was no time to aquire the GPs to bulb the techs with. If we had made other plans for Paris then this city could've helped produce many of the neccessary GM/GS instead of running cottages. If I were to play again I'd use Paris for GPP, and in that case the academy is poor.

  • Workers – too few too late
I remember noticing this clearly when I returned from Ukraine. We got our workers much too late this game. As a result it took way too long to get workshops planted everywhere and our forests were standing idle for centuries. This really halted our production. I think we should've added workers before we finished off Germany. Without workshops we couldn't keep up production while also getting GPP (and this game required both). Not having the required workers meant a need to remain in slavery, and this pushed back our GPP. Looking back on the game it's sickening how little we used specialists considering that we had representation all along.

So for next time I'd say we should aim to be even more flexible. Plans are fluid and can be tweaked. Reconsider plans whenever given valuable new information. Coming up with a long-term strategy is absolutely necessary, but we should still question it often. We did alter our plans at points this game too, for instance ignoring Portugal and striking Egypt first, but there's always room for improvement. Economically I don't think we changed much throughout the game.

I thought this post was going to be long, but looking at it now it still doesn't look half as long as XTeam's posts.
 
Oh, I didn't realize we can view saves of other teams already. :)

Totally agree on the Golden Ages. Should have done the 1 person GA as soon as we got first GS. We even did bureau/OR and religion switch outside of GA right before we got the GS. Could have waited a couple of turns with those. We did indeed finish teching during second golden age. By the time we realized this would happen, we were 1 turn from completing Taj Mahal. That was quite a waste of hammers...

Agree with Academy and GP comment as well. Should have skipped Academy completely. We should also have skipped a ton of other buildings.

I didn't yet do any in depth analysis of the TA game, but had a quick look at the latest save on the server:
Spoiler :
tLlxsLm.jpg

No forges, no courthouses, no monuments. Oh, and also note that only 2 workers built. I do not know if they set up some worker stealing factory somewhere, but they did capture 11 workers more than we did over the course of their short game.

Other thing to note there is that they produced 4 more great people than we did. We did consider the option to bulb Railroad, but quickly discarded the thought as GS bulbs are so much better. Only we didn't get much chance to do those GS bulbs. In the end, I think RR bulb wouldn't have been that strong though. They libbed SP and used 3 GMs to be able to 1 turn RR. We 1 turned Steam Power even without bulbs. And 1 turned Steel and Lib right after that so bulbs could not have made the finish any faster.
 
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