[BTS] SGOTM 26 - Home Slices

[lymond]

I wonder if they wasted early boat and unit turns exploring the worthless north island. That hurt us and delayed our other exploration.

Which worthless Northern island? Metal island or Elephant island. The former we basically bypassed with the primary focus of pushing the wb West to meet AIs. It was clear anyway moving along the southern coast of that island that it was crap and clearly we were near the top of the map. Elephant island we pretty much ignored entirely. I think we peeked up just on the SE edge with a galley before sending E around SB land. We did build a Scout as well with goal of meeting up with galley and finding more AIs. Early scouting around Stone/Marble island informed us that there was land to the SE of it in the fog, so we were hoping to meet someone below SB are find some sort of bridge to more AIs.

Honestly, early on, like yall, we were a little hopeful on finding some greener pastures, but soon realized that was not likely. I think overall our scouting was very focused and thorough, and finding Pete early was a nice payoff (and enabling early overseas trade routes) Scouting in the SE did not amount to much but needed to be done and certainly eliminated the idea of finding a super spot.

 

[Kaitzilla]

The only thing I noticed is that they used a great artist to bulb massmedia and whipped speaker tower 1 turn before victory. Their AP victory coexists with the Great Lighthouse

This was a masterstroke for their team actually.

Mass media is required to build Broadcast Tower.
Broadcast Tower is required because Great Lighthouse means no Eiffel Tower.

Whomever built the AP and then gets Mass Media obsoletes the AP (no more votes come up), so no way to win a religious victory.


How does one both build a broadcast tower and win an AP victory if the AP obsoletes?

Wait for the turn of the vote, vote for AP religious win, then BULB Mass Media complete and whip Broadcast Tower.
Next turn win.

 

[lymond]

Well, technically we whipped GT the turn before that and bought the BT the turn before victory.

Hey Kait, some of your pics did not work for me in the post above

Yep, My figured that out in her testing, which was brilliant. We basically needed to confirm that idea very early before proceeding toward an AP victory.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Hey Kait, some of your pics did not work for me in the post above

My photo site is having technical issues tonight. (rare)
https://status.smugmug.com/

Grr

I'll try to add more to the postgame stuff again tomorrow when the pictures start working again.
Only 160 more turns to go through!

 

[Mitchum]

I thought even with the lack of food the two scarce happy resources (one of which could have been used for military purposes) would make this island interesting enough to have been worth scouting, which you could do with a workboat, but clearly teams did not feel it was worth it. Probably my biggest regret about this map

If there were either more food up there (fish please or something like gold, we would have settled it for sure.

The map was fine and the scenario was VERY well planned. No complaints at all!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

If there were either more food up there (fish please :yum or something like gold, we would have settled it for sure.

There was Gold lol! There was no fish or pig anywhere on the map.

EDIT: Oh and thank you for the kind words

 

[Fippy]

Kai once again shows he's the best summary writer, honestly you are the one person where i read each and every word on Fanatics

Broadcast vs AP idea, i came up with testing it after remembering & comparing sgotm rules: we can change Civics, Religion etc after winning but buildings and cities must be sorted one turn before. Next thought..i have seen how AP & UN co-exist in games, we have to obsolete AP thou but what if it was still around for 1 vote?
I worldbuildered Mass Media in on a test game right after voting on something, and noticed that vote still shows a result next turn.
Now i thought about Iso games and Astro bulbs, where i often put enuf beakers into Astro to instantly finish it once my second GS gets born (and get routes + trades one turn sooner).
An idea was born..

Double clams city: i first had the idea when i noticed how all other possible spots were almost exclusively tundra.
Plains are shivered on in regular games, but here they allow rare workshops (on tundra only with rivers).
I thought this means respectable 15 tiles with State Property, and we can very much use a high city with our Cap & cows city already taken by other wonders.
+ i wasn't interested in tiles like silver which are easily beaten by Rep scientists, so double clams had everything but a 3rd resi.
To compensate for that it can improve one seafood within 8t thou, so i thought okay in regular games we learned how important early progress can be. Let's stick with that.

for a very competition (nothing beats sgotm in Civ in that regard for me), your thread is once again full of interesting and extremely well written posts.

 

[Fippy]

I thought even with the lack of food the two scarce happy resources (one of which could have been used for military purposes) would make this island interesting enough to have been worth scouting, which you could do with a workboat, but clearly teams did not feel it was worth it. Probably my biggest regret about this map

CHA + Rep from Pyras + Furs, Silver & Wine made our happy situation too good already.
Without green tiles cities also consume their food fast.

 

[Fippy]

No way that could be just academies or a Sushi mistake.
I need to take advantage of their uploading every turn to investigate...

Only one (pretty late) Academy in Bibs for us.
With less weird GP born at ~15% chances we might have built another one in quad or cow/glh city, but iirc more academies were never really discussed.

Imo we surged ahead early with GLH and Caste, then lost some ground late to no National Park and slowed down AI partners in Merc.
I'd estimate that a perfectly played 2nd half would have set our fastest possible date at around turn 204 (3-4 turns each for NP and Steel).
But no way to tell if other things would have timed out under much more "pressure".

 

[Gumbolt]

Congrats on a great game.

T13 comparison is interesting.
The delay on HS 3rd city to 3480BC vs PR 3rd city at 3800bc double clam is a free workboat. That is 30H you had to make up here come T13. Certainly at size 2 we were getting 2c commerce from the clams too. That kind of mini snowball early on could of been the difference of you finding Peter earlier.

Not sure how much of advantage this gave PR. Not much when playing against HS.

You did beat us to some of the other cities.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Kudos on the ingenious AP gambit, Fippy.

This games harkens back to Civ 3 and REXing to the domination limit asap except here it was growing 7 cities to their pop limit asap.

GLH enabled PR to REX with less financial troubles. IIRC, we spent at least 10 turns with more or less no research. That alone creates the difference.

In fact it seems you could have REXed even harder.

How many techs did you get from AIs?

 

[Fippy]

Merci LTC, big techs we got: MT, Consti, Corp, Guilds
Others: Banking, Feuda, Mona, Construction, IW, Aest, Literature

Banking prolly hurt us thou, didn't fit with golden age timing and a switch into Free Market.

 

[WastinTime]

Yep, My figured that out in her testing, which was brilliant. We basically needed to confirm that idea very early before proceeding toward an AP victory.

That's amazing. Your path to victory would have qualified as 'impossible' before you proved it do-able. I love impossible wins! But I never would figured that out.
GLH should have meant your only reasonable early victory option was conquest. Both diplo wins shoulda been off the table.
I think you broke the scenario. That's usually our job!
NZ, did you know GreatLighthouse could be built and still win with AP?

 

[MirrorGuard]

We got astronomy, rep-parts, communism, Feudalism, engineering, philosophy, IW, calendar, alphabet, monarchy, what else? optics?

 

[Fippy]

I think you broke the scenario. That's usually our job!
NZ, did you know GreatLighthouse could be built and still win with AP?

My thoughts exactly after figuring it out, i even asked NZ in our thread if it's allowed

 

[Mitchum]

All very clever, PR. Well played!! SGOTMs are often the place where new ideas are discovered due to the amount of time we have to test, tinker, think and dream about the game.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

NZ, did you know GreatLighthouse could be built and still win with AP?

Hell no, I thought I was setting up some really difficult choices with the rules of the game!

SGOTMs are often the place where new ideas are discovered due to the amount of time we have to test, tinker, think and dream about the game.

Absolutely I love seeing what people can come up with especially new ways to have your cake and eat it!

 

[Gumbolt]

The only other way was to convince an Ai to tech mass media for you.Then trade it on the turn of the vote and whip broadcast tower. Then win AP. If we could of captured cities you could of tried to get Ai to build Eiffel Tower but obviously not possible this way. Would they trade it at friendly if building the wonder?

Of course Mylene's gambit worked a treat here. Well done Mylene. Team Phoenix would be lost without you.

 

[WastinTime]

Then trade it on the turn of the vote

I would have assumed that trading for it canceled the vote results just as much as bulbing MM (should have). Still shocked that it didn't cus I know I've seen the vote come up and then result is canceled for other reasons. Like a city is lost.

 

[Fippy]

I tested that trading for MM also works for keeping the vote alive.
But significant danger there, if they start one of the wonders they would refuse to trade.