SGOTM 23 - Unallocated

haphazard1 · Aug 18, 2016

A couple more turns played. Taking a while for each one with so much going on. Highlights:

- Made peace with Hatshepsut. We were in no position to push the war against her right now, anyway (there were only 2 units in all of Africa!), and her ships were blockading and starving some of our captured cities. So I normalized relations. We can come back later and finish her off.
- Alexander is dead. Athens came with the Oracle and 3 settled great prophets, quite a nice city.

With Greek culture removed, we should consider placing a city in northern Italy: copper, sheep, gems, 2 clams -- it would be a very strong site and would grow quickly. But is there enough time left for it to be profitable overall?
- Took Mehmed's last real city (he still has the size 1 junk city of Ankara, for a bit longer anyway :evil:

). He threw a stack at Istanbul that we barely fended off with losses (too many siege units to avoid getting hammered, sadly), and still has some horse archers that are being a pain. But he will not last much longer.
- Bombarding defenses in Russia, should start taking cities in a couple more turns.
- Finished Guilds, working on Banking (2 more turns at sustainable research rate).
- Joao built Notre Dame for our future use, very nice of him.

- Captured multiple workers from both Alex and Mehmed; we are accumulating quite a number of them.

They will certainly be useful later for building the railroad. For now they are mostly doing busy work, while trying to stay safe from raiding horse archers.
- Realized we do not have open borders with Churchill, so can not send ships with spies into his territory. Not sure what to do with our spies, any ideas?

Will play more turns a bit later, need a break for dinner.

haphazard1 · Aug 19, 2016

Another update:

- St. Petersberg is now proudly flying the flag of France.

No losses in taking it. :woohoo:

Size 14, with an academy

plus several other buildings intact. Very nice.

- Getting ready to finish off Mehmed, his stack threatening Istanbul has been destroyed. :hammer:

- We could trade Guilds for some techs, or we could still trade Printing Press. Guilds is known by Churchill so is not a monopoly; PP is a monopoly. Guilds allows knights, though, so not sure we should spread it around.

The save has been uploaded in case you want to examine the situation. Any advice is welcome. I will play more turns tomorrow; it is late and I am :sleep:

, not a good combination for detailed war turns.T

Upload log part 1:

Spoiler :

haphazard1 · Aug 19, 2016

Upload log part 2:

Spoiler :

ikotomi · Aug 19, 2016

Get civil service + gold from Gandhi if we haven't already. Trading printing press should be fine as it doesn't give AI a real advantage against us.

haphazard1 · Aug 19, 2016

Another couple turns played, another update.

- Mehmed has joined the ranks of ex-leaders of civilizations. :hammer:

He spawned a great general in his final city on the very last turn, just in time for Sargon to die. Too little too late, Mehmed. :lol:

- Banking completed, working on Replaceable Parts. Once that is finished, do we go directly to Steam Power or would it be worth grabbing Rifling? With how much warring we still have to do, the increased military power might be worth it. Thoughts?
- Moscow is being bombarded. Stalin keeps throwing units at us, but mostly he is just wasting units. If he wants to trade three or four units to pick off one random musketeer in the open, I can acept that. :lol:

- Used our speedy musketeers to steal three more Russian workers. When we are ready to build our railroad, we will have a sizable labor force -- almost none of it actually built by us.

- What to do with our two spies? Churchill no longer has any tech we don't know. Hatty, Stalin, and Gandhi are possible targets, although all the techs involved would be pretty quick to research anyway at this point. Or we could trade Printing Press and get most of what is available anyway.
- We generated a grreat engineer. What to do with him? There are not any really obvious wonders to rush, although he could build the Iron Works somewhere if we wanted it. Or we could use him for a golden age -- we do have the Mausoleum in Istanbul for the extra-long golden age. Or save him to rush Taj Mahal, maybe, for a golden age that way? (Assuming an AI does not beat us to the wonder.) Thoughts?

Should be able to play some more turns this evening after dinnner. I expect to take Moscow turn after next, then continue pushing into the Russian nortth; several more large cities there to claim. Turns are going slowly, but a lot has happened with all the fighting. I can keep playing, or if someone else wants the save just let me know.

Sun Tzu Wu · Aug 20, 2016

We can steal either Guilds (if we haven't researched it yet) and Banking from Churchill. We just need to allocate Espionage to Churchill and run 100% Espionage for a few turns. We also need an Islamic Missionary to spread Islam to London for the -40% espionage discount.

Oops, Banking already researched! I was hoping we would slowly research Printing Press at 00% and steal Guilds and Banking from Churchill. At least that was what the Spies were supposed to do in London.

We should declare War on Churchill as soon as possible to get overseas trade routes.

haphazard1 · Aug 20, 2016

Sun Tzu Wu, I ran into two issues with the spies for Churchill: first, we did not have open borders with him, so our galleys could not cross the channel to deliver the spies. And second, we are teching stuff like Banking in about 3 turns anyway (at break-even research, not even 100%), so diverting the slider to EP for several turns to fund a steal that might not work is not obviously a net positive move anyway.

We are currently pretty busy with Russia, but Churchill is definitely on the planned conquest list. :hammer:

He does have knights moving around, though, whicch is not a great matchup for our musketeers; we may want to wait and hit him with rifles. Either that or build some elephants to stomp his knights.

At our current tech pace plus Liberalism to grab Railroads, we should be ready to start building track in the not very distant future.

Actually achieving victory is going to take longer. Plus we need control over the entire path of the railroad. I think continuing to focus our military efforts on Asia and the future railroad path, with final clean up of Portugal, Egypt, and England by fresh forces from our core towards the end, may be simplest/fastest. But we shall see.

haphazard1 · Aug 20, 2016

A couple more turns played, another update.

- Moscow is now ours. :hammer:

Size 13, came with a settled great general and several buildings (granary, forge, market, and the like).
- Did some tech trading, using Guilds since it was not a monopoly. Also traded Banking, for similar reasons. Picked up Civil Service, Literature, Drama, Compass, Optics, and Music plus gold. Also sold Engineering to Churchill for all but 10 of his 300-some gold since he was 2 turns from finishing it anyway. The only AI techs we don't have now are Divine Right (no one willing to trade it yet) and Nationalism (known only by Mao, not willing to trade it). The era of getting tech from the AIs is pretty much over, I think. Maybe someone will come up with something if we are lucky, but they probably won't be willing to trade it anyway.
- Continuing to advance in Russia, Rostov is next on the target list. Lots of wounded units to heal, so it will be a couple turns to get everyone healthy and in position.

Turns take a while, with so much going on. Hard to believe I have only played 7 turns total. :crazyeye:

Will continue in a bit, have to run a couple errands first.

haphazard1 · Aug 20, 2016

Played 5 more turns. Update:

- Rostov has been taken. :hammer:

- I have organized our Task Force Russia troops into a northern force (going after Yakutsk and other northern cities) and an eastern force (going after Novogorod and other cities in that region). We have accumulated enough units for both forces to have enough cannon and musketeers to fight effectively, pretty much as quickly as they can move from city to city.

- I am also gathering a task force in Africa to finish off Hatshepsut, who is quite weak. We are pretty much ready to re-declare on her, if we want to do so. I have moved a spy in to her territory -- she does have Divine Right. But i do not think it is worth spending the slider on EP to steal that tech. Probably just go ahead and wipe her out. We can then repurpose Task Force Africa to eliminate Portugal, boating ir across to our side of the Med first.
- Still not sure what to do with the GE. :confused:

Maybe just go ahead and trigger a golden age? We could take a few turns to tech Nationalism and use him to rush the Taj, which would allow another 1 GP golden age later (we do have the Mausoleum to get longer golden ages).
- We are researching Steam Power, three more turns. Hopefully we have some coal somewhere. :please:

This brings me to 12 turns total, so I can hand over if someone else wants the save. Or I can keep playing if no one else is available. I don't want to hog the save. :lol:

But it would be nice to finish off Russia, maybe another 6 or 7 turns I think to finish that. Up to the team.

Save is uploaded for examination. Log part 1:

Spoiler :

haphazard1 · Aug 20, 2016

Log part 2:

Spoiler :

ikotomi · Aug 20, 2016

If we've eclipsed england in tech, let's move esp to Gandhi. We get a lot of passive ESP because of courthouses and science specialists now.

I would put GE in Berlin for Iron Works. Can we steal literature from Hatty? We can start building the HE somewhere as well.

haphazard1 · Aug 20, 2016

ikotomi, we have Literature. Putting the Heroic Epic somewhere would be good, I think it would pay off pretty fast since we have marble to speed it up. I need to check where our top hammer city is -- a couple of our Arabian conquests are actually very strong hammer cities and might make a good HE city.

Iron Works with the GE is also a possibility, with similar placement choices. Maybe even combine it with the HE

I have moved the EP to Mao a while back, as he is the only AI with anything interesting (meaning not Divine right) we do not already know. But our 40-50 EP per turn is not going to fund any tech steals; we would have to run the slider for several turns. And really, in those same turns we can just research anything that is available at this point. Unless we generate a great spy, I don't think we are going to do any tech stealing.

We should have Railroad and be laying track (assuming we have coal) in under 10 turns. So conquest is going to be the limiting factor, and control of the rail line within our culture. So all out military production is the way to go. I think teching Rifling once we have Railroad will be worth it, maybe after Nationalism. In fact, we should probably switch immediately to Nationalism, use the GE on Taj for an extended golden age with switch to Nationhood for drrafting, then finish Rifling (to draft stronger units), then Railroad. Mao has had Nationalism for a while so we might get beaten to the Taj, but probably we can get it; Nationalism would take us 3-4 turns to finish if we switch.

There is also Economics for the free great merchant, but we can safely pick that up a bit later as none of the AIs have Education yet.

From the maintenance thread, it looks like no extension. Should I play more turns, or does someone want to take over?

ikotomi · Aug 20, 2016

I wouldn't invest that heavily just for Taj. Golden Age doesn't help us that much once we get to Railroad because we don't need the commerce/great people as much anymore. It doesn't have particularly much synergy with building units because we're constantly whipping/drafting away our population. We should try for it when we get Nationalism and chop it out, but not sweat it to much if it turns to fail gold or we miss.

What's the bulb option for GE right now? Another option is to use it for steam power as long as we're not getting blocked by a higher priority tech, but our biggest concern at this point is building units to conquer, not research.

haphazard1 · Aug 20, 2016

Maybe using the GE for Iron Works might be best after all? Pick a very strong hammer city, put IW + HE there and crank out units.

We are close to having Railroad: finish Steam Power, then Liberalism -> Railroad. After that we only need research if we want drafting (Nationalism), or rifles. There isn't much else that is easily reachable that I can think of. Some of the AIs could research Astronomy for stronger ships; but the only naval transport we need is to England and that is one move and unload. So even worst case our troops can not be sunk in transport.

It really is pretty much just conquest, plus building the railroad. Our workers can start from Paris, head to Istanbul, then just keep pushing the tracks east. Freshly built troops can move down the growing rail line and keep conquering eastward. We have a couple galleys along the channel -- might need a couple more for transport to England. (We do have several in the Med, might be useful for bringing Task Force Africa north once Hatty is dead.) Portugal should not be a significant problem since fresh troops will be right on its border.

We have 11 days left, approximately. Who wants the save? Or should I play some more turns? I should have some time tomorrow, but if someone wants to take over just post.

ikotomi · Aug 20, 2016

IW in one city, and HE in another would give us two extremely strong production cities which will be better than super production city.

haphazard1 · Aug 21, 2016

You are probably correct. We are not producing tanks, after all.

marbe166 · Aug 21, 2016

I'll take over and continue to decimate Stalin. The EP points are still at Hatty, I'll move them to Mao. How about IW in Berlin and HE in Moscow?

marbe166 · Aug 21, 2016

Steam Power discovered, plenty of Coal available.

haphazard1 · Aug 21, 2016

marbe166 said:
Steam Power discovered, plenty of Coal available.

Excellent news!

That was one thing I was very worried about. Having to tech to get oil flowing would have been a significant setback.

For IW and HE, make sure to check some of the cities in north Africa and the former Arabia. There were some pretty good hammer cities, although food was an issue in a couple of them. Berlin and Moscow may be best, or they may not. I did not check with that in mind while I had the save.

Good luck smashing our remaining rivals! :hammer:

marbe166 · Aug 21, 2016

OK, another few turns played. Stalin is down to 3 cities. He is willing to capitulate and to trade Nationalism. I was thinking to take his capital and Nottingham and then make peace with him for Nationalism. We can finish him off later.

I have not done anything with the Great Engineer except moved him to Berlin. In addition, we have a Great General in Moscow (ready to be settled) as well as a Great Scientist in Copper City, with another one coming in a few turns, I guess using one of them for a Golden Age might be a good idea.

Save is uploaded. My notes:
T179: Positioning for attacks on Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Yakutsk. Bombardment of Yakutsk.
T180: Steam Power discovered. Lots of Coal available. Joao completes Angkor Wat. Yakutsk captured, 1 Cannon lost.
t181: Yaroslavl captured, no losses.
T182: Stalin retakes Yaroslavl! That mistake quickly rectified, one Catapult lost. Novgorod captured, no losses.
T183: A barb city has emerged in former Russian Territory south of Novgorod. It didn't last long.
T184: Water Supply in Paris poisoned!

Spoiler :

SGOTM 23 - Unallocated

Dancing Bear

Dancing Bear

Dancing Bear

Prince

Dancing Bear

Deity

Dancing Bear

Dancing Bear

Dancing Bear

Dancing Bear

Prince

Dancing Bear

Prince

Dancing Bear

Prince

Dancing Bear

Chieftain

Chieftain

Dancing Bear

Chieftain

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