SGOTM 23 - Turbo Ants

[Mitchum]

No worries LC. No one in the thread had been talking about that for a long time. I would not have thought of it either. A settled scientist will be useful to us the rest of the game.

Nice turnset. That was a long and complicated one for sure. You set is up nicely!

Did you move our scout and meet the Mongols?

 

[Pollina]

Yeah, no worries LC. You can always blame WT for vetoing the earlier Alpha gift.

Fanatastic job planning out this crazy turnset!

Hatty building a settler. Will she send him out, along with the warrior? Or will she keep him in Thebes and build another defender or two first?

 

[ZPV]

Well played, LC!
Missing out on the Alpha gift? It might be for the best. The extra scientist is worth +16 final bpt on its own. We don't need that many turns of that to make up for not stealing Philo. EDIT: Plus, that means we get to lightbulb an extra GS rather than GM on our tech path.

 

[ZPV]

Roster:

Pollina -- Up next
Mitchum -- Not sure if he's up to two turnsets in as many months.
ZPV
WastinTime
LowtherCastle -- Just played

 

[WastinTime]

Good, hard work on that turnset. LC. I can't lie: No Philo is a huge setback, but we can recover. Hatty would trade us Mono T68 and T69. Odd that we didn't immediately go for the alpha<->mono trade.

 

[WastinTime]

EDIT: Plus, that means we get to lightbulb an extra GS rather than GM on our tech path.

a settled GS does not add GPP. But we do get 1 hammer if that matters

 

[ZPV]

a settled GS does not add GPP. But we do get 1 hammer if that matters

What I mean is, there aren't all that many GS bulbs for us, so we have to plan on a whole bunch of GM lightbulbs at the end. Now we have the opportunity for one more useful GS lightbulb (Philo), letting us run scientists instead of merchants in a city down the line.

 

[WastinTime]

Gandhi didn't start with a wonder, right? Couldn't he build a library and get a GS for Philo?

Getting way ahead, but since there is no other discussion rt now...

GP Thoughts

GS's: Edu?, Ppress, Chem
GM's: Econ, RepParts(1-2), railroad(4)

Must avoid : Nationalism, maybe Meditation

If no Coal (annoying)
GS: Sci Meth,
2-3 GE: Combustion
(ignoring Plastics/Offshore oil...that's just rude, BSP)

Seems like we could use 6-7 GMs and 3-4 GS
Unlikely we bother with the GEs

I find that realistically 12 GPs are the max we can get in this game's timeframe.
We'll need religion in ~7 GP cities. Pacifism(philo or Paya). Merc(banking) is ideal but not required. Parthenon. 2 golden ages with MoM=24 turns

What often works for me:
Two of those cities are monsters (one with Nat Epic, One with Great Library) producing GP's #2-#5, #11 and #12.
Five of those cities are simple and only produce one GM each (#6 - #10)

Notes:
- We probably want the Music GArt, but not necessary
- Most painful part of the ~24 turns is no slavery. Plan ahead to have units/buildings and $$$ beforehand.
- Start the GAs at 1AD, T115. Get RR on T140. Win the game T141. (maybe add 10 turns to all those for BSP's monkey business)

Another idea that I had pre-game was to possibly avoid Philo completely (using Paya). Note above I said avoid Nationalism and maybe Meditation.
That's because Medi forces us to bulb Philo.

I would need to double check the GS tech preferences, but the challenge is to bulb Chemistry. That means we need to temporarily avoid Paper (Edu).

So we reasearch Engineering, Guilds (knights!), Gunpowder, bulb Chem. I was hopeing to rush to Knights and go Banking for Merc anyway.

Then we can get (bulb?) Paper

We never have to research Medi, Philo, Edu, Liberalism. I didn't want to build Unis and Oxford anyway. Of course, we lose the ability to Lib->SteamPower, but it's less beakers avoiding all that stuff.

I feel like I'm missing some requirement or forgetting something. My original plan has us bulbing Econ with a GM. What do we need Econ for? Hopefully I was just thinking we needed Corps which we don't. If we do need Econ, then we need Education. In that case, we'd want to get Philo, Lib for a free tech.

Edit: bad news is we can't bulb PPress without having Edu

 

[Pollina]

We need Meditation for Paya.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Thanks for the consolation, gang. I slept horribly last night. I never used to make mistakes like that. Something's out in my RL. Need to work on that.

Good, hard work on that turnset. LC. I can't lie: No Philo is a huge setback, but we can recover. Hatty would trade us Mono T68 and T69. Odd that we didn't immediately go for the alpha<->mono trade.

I actually thought about the trade before hitting <enter>, but decided to put it off because "we were waiting till the DoW." Brain fart. I knew "we were waiting till she popped the GS" but it slipped my mind.

Gandhi didn't start with a wonder, right? Couldn't he build a library and get a GS for Philo?

Yes, one thought I had was that Philo is still monopoly so still open to AI bulbing. Mehmed has already popped one GS, being born with a library. We could figure out when his next one is likely to come and get someone who's not braindead to gift him the necessary techs.

 

[WastinTime]

We need Meditation for Paya.

I never realized that. Well, we don't have gold either, so I didn't like Paya anyway.

 

[Pollina]

"Got it."

What's the plan for Munich/Fredburg?

We're going to use galley3 and warrior3 to re-take FurCity next turn?

Anything else I need to know about before planning out my moves until Alexa capture?

 

[WastinTime]

crap, we really do want Philo then, and we need it early-ish. We need it when we start our double golden age around T110-115.

So Alexa gives us a GS around T85 (could be used for Philo). Then, if we run +2 sci, we could get another around T100. But we're not going to want to stunt Alexa's growth like that. It wants to be size 11 by T110 (for the golden ages).
So not running any extra Sci means we get a 2nd GS (for Golden Age) about T110. (25 turns at 8 GPP). That worked out pretty nice

 

[Pollina]

Depending on when when Thebes comes out of resistance, we could whip a library there and build a mixed odds GP for our GA.

 

[Pollina]

PPP t70-71

t70
- Meet the Mongols. Open borders (if possible)?
- follow LC's post #1038 micro (1-whip SQ granary and CEB HA)
- axe moves towards CEB?
- move galleys with HAs to rally point.
- trade HBR for Mono. Or Alpha?

t71
- Gift FurCity to Hatty, steal Math, (gift Worker?)
- DoW, Re-capture FurCity
- Amphibious attack on Alexa (What's the best attack order? 0XP-C2-C2?)

 

[LowtherCastle]

What's the plan for Munich/Fredburg?

My most recent MM has as CRI axe from Paris and 2 axes from CEB. Unfortunately, Fred's CI axe, spear, and archer are all 25% fortifying and now a warrior got added. More will be needed unless WT or someone has a genius idea on how to empty it. I also had two more HAs going out for Thebes. One could hold back to help with Munich, if that will be enough.

We're going to use galley3 and warrior3 to re-take FurCity next turn?

Yes.

Anything else I need to know about before planning out my moves until Alexa capture?

Notthat I can think of but I'm not thinking too well yet.

Note: There is a gold tile SW of Alexa.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Also, the spy in CEB was born this turn. My MM had CEB building a disposable monument to put 1c in before T75 for a T75 steal. That spy could also move to FC for a T77 steal et cetera.

 

[ZPV]

I kind of think we should attack Munich for keeps, and just let Hatty settle a 3rd city (EDLT: although it might help to give it to Hatty very temporarily to give her time to settle it). IIRC it's hard for her to switch away from the settler because it'll have 3 turns left next turn. We'll be able to attack it amphibiously once the settler-stack leaves.

I don't think the spearman will leave at peacetime. Dangle a chariot outside the city while we're at war but not threatening it, and it's another story. I'd prefer to do that rather than build too many axes. HAs are better units, and the 1-mover of choice will be war elephants soon.

We can even sneak-attack Athens while we wait for Hatty to settle her city. So there's no rush to capture it.

Attack order for Alexa: Yeah, 0XP-C2-5XP sounds good to me. Maybe unpromoted 5XP will get us an extra XP on the yellowlined War Chariot.
Don't give Hatty a worker. We'll get extra war success at Alexa. The worker gift is just for entirely phoney wars to recapture a gift city.

 

[WastinTime]

I know you were joking, but for the record, I did not veto Alpha gift. I was considering vetoing flipping her into slavery.

Anyway, like ZPV implied, this could be a blessing in disguise since she settled the GS and didn't do something bad like a 2nd Academy or a golden age. Or, worst possible: bulb Alpha! That woulda been a slap in the face.

Not only do we get the settled GS benefits, but we might still find a way to get Philo free...really free instead of stealing it for EPs. Let's be sure and keep an eye out for any AI getting a GS. They all have a lot of food, so they just need a library (or caste)

 

[LowtherCastle]

@ZPV: I agree that Hatty settling her Dummy City now a no-brainer, since we see her production. Keep Fredburg. That might affect the CEB MM or just postpone capturing Fredburg till we have the horsepower.