SGOTM 23 - Turbo Ants

[LowtherCastle]

Africa is death.

 

[ZPV]

Well done so far, Pollina!

I wonder if we should be prepared to let Hatty hold CEB or Fur City for a few turns, so that we can sneak-attack Thebes when it has only 1 defender because the settler-stack just left.

 

[WastinTime]

Bummer. What a huge setback. We are out one more horse archer than expected along with the Granary and lighthouse. Those buildings are going to take a long time to rebuild

 

[Pollina]

I wonder if we should be prepared to let Hatty hold CEB or Fur City for a few turns, so that we can sneak-attack Thebes when it has only 1 defender because the settler-stack just left.

We could do that. But then we'd need to build the monument in CEB if we don't want to lose 1pop and the granary.

 

[ZPV]

We could do that. But then we'd need to build the monument in CEB if we don't want to lose 1pop and the granary.

Hatty would certainly out-culture us in the city, even with a monument. It would have to be a case of whipping it down to size 1, and hope for the best with the granary.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Hatty would certainly out-culture us in the city, even with a monument. It would have to be a case of whipping it down to size 1, and hope for the best with the granary.

She never owns it for 1t. That's the problem with tech stealing from a creative civ. That's why it's good to have two tech-steal cities. Those two cities just alternate between growing a bit, maybe whipping (haven't done any calcs on that) and the gift-steal-re-capture.

In a fastest finish game, the question is, how soon do we want to steal teh techs?

 

[Pollina]

ZPV's idea was to give CEB (or FC) to Hatty immediately after the settler+escort leaves, so that we can DoW and take Thebes while it is lightly defended. She would have to keep CEB for more than 1t, until she settles her new city.

 

[LowtherCastle]

ZPV's idea was to give CEB (or FC) to Hatty immediately after the settler+escort leaves, so that we can DoW and take Thebes while it is lightly defended. She would have to keep CEB for more than 1t, until she settles her new city.

If she's still in Castes (1 city), Thebes'll be lightly defended for a few turns, right?

 

[WastinTime]

That's an interesting situation. Where would Hatty settle if her only city is her capital which is CEB?
Would she try to march the settler back to her new home? or just settle where she was planning to.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Probably the most valuable of all the SG lessons I learned from klarius was to start afresh with each new turn. We've just lost two attackers. That throws all my MM off. We're down to two production cities, with Stone coming on line soon. Sounds to me like research just took second seat to production, but I'm not really sure. We need to re-calibrate everything. Which city to capture next? How to handle the tech stealing? Do we want to capture Thebes before Hatty finishes Calendar? And so on.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Hatty's culture in CEB would create Motherland unhappiness too, right? Seems like a major nerfjob.

 

[Mitchum]

Nice work, Pollina. We may have had bad luck in taking Alexa but a) we ctually got the city and b) we actually had a successful spy mission when it really mattered.

It seems easier just to CF and rinse/repeat with FC but maybe I don't understand what we're trying to accomplish with CEB... I'd be fine if we waited to take Thebes until Hatty settles her next city but is the thinking that it will take her too long?

Are we going to wait until she researches calendar (9 turns) as LC said? That would give us time to focus elsewhere if we want.

I just looked at the save and I have a few MM questions:

When can we quarry our stone in Stone Quarry?

What is our worker over by Munich doing?

We lost eyes on Hatty's build in Thebes. She was building a settler, right?

Keep an eye on Hatty's workers. It would be nice to pick them up.

Alexa is a sweet city with the GLib and 2 super scientists. That will be helpful.

 

[ZPV]

Yep, no need for CEB shenanigans. I'm happy to wait for Hatty to settle a city before re-DoWing. I don't think an amphibious attack will be worth it though.

Since we kept her out of slavery, I do think 4 HAs will be enough.

I don't think we have quite enough production to attack Fred at the same time, but maybe Alex.

I wouldn't bother waiting for Calendar. It's too far down the timeline for me.

I would like us to give Maths to almost everyone. We'll hopefully get Calendar free that way.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Pollina]

LC, do you have Athens' sabotage production values for t68 and t69?

 

[Pollina]

Hatty has Construction. That means both her workers should be able to move to Thebes-2W1S or Thebes 2W2S where they are safe from our HAs. Her 3rd worker could be mining and roading one of the PHills east of Thebes. We might be able to capture a worker amphibiously with some luck.

Thebes settler finishes t74.

That barb archer near the gold could capture Alexa on t75 if we are not careful.

Alexa can only grow at 1fpt until its borders expand (t85) or until we capture Thebes. Delaying a Thebes attack wastes 18 bpt in Alexa alone (Rep beakers).

Athens has 18h into a build it just started. Maybe Alex has finally decided that playing OCC is dumb when there are such nice spots to settle in his north. Do we want him to settle a 2nd city? Possible other builds are workboats, units, lighthouse.

Alex will switch into Caste if we give him CoL, as long as he has less than 3 cities. Same with Joao. Could that be a reason to steal CoL before Construction? Or for trying to steal both on t79 or so.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I'll be awol for some number of days. Carry on without me! Good luck.

 

[LowtherCastle]

LC, do you have Athens' sabotage production values for t68 and t69?

sorry, no. I'm away from my computer for probably 7 days or more.

 

[ZPV]

Hatty has Construction. That means both her workers should be able to move to Thebes-2W1S or Thebes 2W2S where they are safe from our HAs. Her 3rd worker could be mining and roading one of the PHills east of Thebes. We might be able to capture a worker amphibiously with some luck.

Thebes settler finishes t74.

That barb archer near the gold could capture Alexa on t75 if we are not careful.

Alexa can only grow at 1fpt until its borders expand (t85) or until we capture Thebes. Delaying a Thebes attack wastes 18 bpt in Alexa alone (Rep beakers).

Hmm, yeah, delaying Thebes really hurts.
By my calculation, we could potentially land 3.5 HAs outside Thebes on t74. That's too early, because the settler stack won't have left yet.

We could also land 3.5 HAs outside Athens on t73, and wait for the next HA pair to arrive to take Thebes - delaying it a couple turns, but enough for the settler to leave.
That's really only 3 HAs though - I'd expect the wounded one to scout Athens to make sure it's still lightly defended, and then teleport out.

Not sure what to do about the barbarian archer. We're still below 3 cities per player (37 for 13 players by my count), so the archer won't take the long range city attack mission, so I think we could probably ignore it. We can whip a defender after t75 if needed.

Athens has 18h into a build it just started. Maybe Alex has finally decided that playing OCC is dumb when there are such nice spots to settle in his north. Do we want him to settle a 2nd city? Possible other builds are workboats, units, lighthouse.

Alex will switch into Caste if we give him CoL, as long as he has less than 3 cities. Same with Joao. Could that be a reason to steal CoL before Construction? Or for trying to steal both on t79 or so.

I'm struggling to let Alex settle a new city for us.
As for CoL before Construction? Yes! Istanbul is the only city we'd realistically be able to drop a Construction-unit at, and we'll have time to steal it either way.

Double steal? Not sure. Doesn't that increase the risk of failure? I don't remember the spy mechanic for gift cities exactly.

 

[WastinTime]

I think getting them into caste is genius. With all the capitals at 60% and usually on a hill, we save a lot of units. It's so cool you figured out they'll switch voluntarily. I've never been a big fan of the elepult anyway, so CoL sounds good.

Stealing both is fine too. You mean 2 spies in the same city, right? The slightly lower odds for stacked spies are acceptable risk to me.

 

[Pollina]

Besides the much higher failure chance (>30%), another problem with a double steal is that we would have to tech PH (for CoL) and run the EP slider some more before we can tech Currency. Stealing only CoL on t78 should work out much better. We would finish Currency just in time for the CoL steal.

We could have 4.5 HAs and 1 axe or chariot landing near Thebes on t75. That's probably still too early. There is no guarantee that the settler will leave the city immediately and not wait until Thebes finishes another defender, is there? Are we willing to delay the Fredburg attack for earlier Thebes and Athens?