SGOTM 26 - Lurkers Thread

[Fine_Distinction]

NZ always stated he wanted this to be about competition between teams. Not on silly random or luck events where one team might accidentally find a site with 3-4 fish because they sent a workboat east instead of west.

There was never likely to be a far off site that would be game changing.

Looks like HS have decided to rush through final turns. 3 big techs left and UN 5-6 turns off.

Yeah, I do not think that a hidden paradise somewhere would reward scouting - it will be rather a game breaking random event ...

 

[Fine_Distinction]

Partly, we were surely hoping for a great 6-7th city spot.
I guess the main difference was that we rated 2x clams higher than other possible cities (like 3x seafood), so any found paradise would replace some other spot but not this one.
Personally i also had no illusions that said paradise might be above what HS called Canal

Like HS we were not exactly happy with what we found via scouting, but i think we did well with getting that info early and decided Optics should be our main focus.

Yeah, you right, Mitchum got me confused with his summary. Waiting was not the only problem, their 3rd city was simply worse than your - and costed more.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

This all sounds very negative so I just want to be clear - both PR and HS played absolutely amazing games, this is a very high standard of play we are watching!

Indecisive and US are playing at a high level as well but suffering a bit from a shortage of active players, more eyes means more ideas, more discussion, plans get refined etc.

 

[Fippy]

This all sounds very negative

Hmm not sure..they are unhappy with their game and peoples jump on that train. But imo not for negativity, so far everyone has been very interested in comparing & understanding what happened.

 

[Gumbolt]

I apologise if any of my posts were overly negative. I should of included other teams in my comparisons. I have not really had much time to sit down and do that.

I am proud to still play in these games 15-16 games on. I fully appreciate the time and efforts it takes to run these games. It's also a great chance to bond and learn from fellow team players.

In terms of HS we have to remember to bulb med they needed to avoid compass. This was part of their master plan. Hence why they met so few ai early on.

Sometimes you have a plan in a game. That plan will evolve as a game goes on. Once you are all in sometimes that sets your game and you follow through. It will be great to see 3-4 very different games here.

I will try and look at other teams in more details. I would love be to see how conquest works here. Also how the other team do with AP.

 

[Fippy]

Indecisive have an interestingly developed empire.
Sadly they are holding themselves back by not switching into Rep for 9t now, when looking at cities like this one

Spoiler :

all we wanted here is Rep, Caste & Paci with 4 scientists (and some starving in golden age).
We did accept some Anarchy turns cos it's painful how many potential beakers and gpp are lost across cities in despotism.

They did some really good things (which their score graph also reflects).

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I apologise if any of my posts were overly negative.

It was nothing specific I just felt out of context it could seem that way but the context is we are analysing to death very very high level play.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

This all sounds very negative so I just want to be clear - both PR and HS played absolutely amazing games, this is a very high standard of play we are watching!

Indecisive and US are playing at a high level as well but suffering a bit from a shortage of active players, more eyes means more ideas, more discussion, plans get refined etc.

I did not mean to sound condescending, sorry if that came that way. I agree that generally HS played extremely well - and that is exactly why this settling of the 3rd city really stands out as a bad decision. And @Fippy and LC seem to agree it was probably game-costing. The same way that in some BOTMs all people with medals moved settler 1E etc. Which really sucks if you make such mistake early on and later meticulous play cannot fix it. But this is famous civ snownball.

Moderator Action: Removed link to active user - please be more careful in future --NZ

 

[Pangaea]

Don't think you should mention people like that who are still actively playing. They get notifications, and there is a chance they click on it and go into this thread.

It will be interesting to see what HS has to say about the game once they see comparisons with PR and what were done differently. Probably not all that much between the teams. At this level we're talking about margins, even if it looks a little different now with probably about 10 turns difference. That AP move probably saved a fair few turns too.

 

[Fippy]

PR game summary start..settling:

Spoiler :

There wasn't much doubt about settling Bibs and V(ienne) on turn 0.
T(olosa) or double clams we already discussed here as 3

4 or G(ergovia) was an outstanding site with 4 food resis, a workboat was supplied from V.
We agreed this would be great as Artist city with NE. For most of the game we used food + scientists only.

At 5 (NW) we discussed getting whales or forests + ph furs. We picked the forests (1 in first ring) cos this city was difficult to set up, and also expensive early.
But very good later with decent production from horsies + furs mine. So we gave it one of the really big tasks, Spy city with Kremlin + West point (both 400h with stone).

6 or Keystone (KS) was settled asap for stone (Pyras). We figured that marble will not be important early, and actually only used it for NE.
Difficult one to develop, we had lots and lots of tests on how we can get important buildings (granary + LH) inside while or before switching into Caste.
Moai + AP was between here and city 7, but we thought 7 was settled too late and is better suited for clean GS pools.
Was a long process But we had some time on AP.

7 or Trips, here we got lucky.
SB planted his city 3 tiles away which was surprising, we were monitoring the situation with one settler but iirc he could have locked us out.
We were wary of him plotting war if we settle too eary, and the city was also rather expensive.
Tests showed that no border tension happens on coast tiles, and we were happy to settle there when our economy allowed (7th city always increases costs globally).
With no production but very good food for scientists we gave Trips no big building tasks, Heroic Epic and Drydocks were whipped / rushbuyed with only 1h invested.

Early game plans

Spoiler :

Tech order: AH - Myst - Sailing - Mining - BW - Masonry - Writing.
Myst as first pick (after AH for food) wasn't avoidable for monuments, and also gave Bibs SH to build for failgold (Running gag later, completed by AIs in 725BC after Oracle ).
We hoped for gold sooner, but got a nice and bigger amount later.
Sailing vs. BW, our 2 workers were still busy and Sailing very good for traderoutes. Also important for resource gifts to SB, building some diplo early.
Masonry for stone + GLH (and some TGW failgold in Bibs after SH hammers were done).
Writing for open borders and Library in Bibs, seemed much more important than wheel (not needed for traderoutes) and pottery (no cottage plans).

GLH
V was rather obvious for it, good hammers and forests.
After developing our AP plan with bulbing MM on the voting turn for Broadcast Tower, we were sure on getting it as one of 2 economy key wonders.
Great haste was made here with 2 workers chopping, completed in 1800BC.
GM points were extremely helpful and got us 2 Great Merchants later.
Not obsoleted until very late (Corporation trade with Peter).

Pyras
Similar we did set them up as fast as we could.
T (double clams) worked on whipping overflow (Library ~29h for 3 pop + workboat) until Keystone got stone connected.
We also had maths now for better chops (wheel - pottery - maths after writing).
All out chopping & whipping at this point, completed 950BC.

Our economy can easily be summed up as Rep + traderoutes, no cottage.

Later settled city development, overall we absorbed gpt costs fast in favor of getting them running sooner.
3800BC (T), 2640BC (G), 2040BC (NW), 1880 BC (KS), 1720BC (Trips, shortly after GLH).
KS was net positive immediately, giving all other cities a 2 island route.

Log pic

Spoiler :

Making friends Gandhi style

Spoiler :

What was next after Pyras and one turn of Anarchy for Rep, after maths (very important for them) we decided on Alpha.
2 AIs with no better land than we had (actually Bully's looked terrible) left us with little hope for a trade instead. After discovering it we immediately picked up Meditation & Priesthood, keeping in mind that friendly removes wfyabta restrictions anyways.

Shortly after the Oracle was completed as 2nd wonder for AIs (after TGW and before SH), and we were happy with deciding against trying it (also we needed AP anyways).

Our next tech was CoL.
Caste and Paci seemed like an optimal combo for peaceful play, and we hired 2 scientists in our Cap longer ago to bulb Philo.
First GS was born on the CoL discovering turn (800BC), and suddenly we had 2 Relis on our hands

Next turn we revolted into said Caste & Paci, lots of city testing was done on test with "last minute whips" and how we can get crucial buildings before losing Slavery.
A small waiting period for Reli spreads also begun, we hoped to get some help with deciding between Tao and Confu.
Tao was founded in G (Artist city, most food so good Paci city) and Confu in Trips (near SB).
Trips becoming a holy city was very helpful for claiming our 3rd seafood here, which was also contested by SB.

About 4 turns later Confu did spread into one of Bully's cities, with no other spreads happening and Trips benefiting from 5 culture/turn we picked Confu as our main Reli.
Peter did not get an auto-spread yet.
Our free mish infected Bibs, which started working on a Monastery so we can build more for other cities. Good city with no other urgent tasks.
In 625BC (~7t after founding the Relis) we revolted into Confu, already our 3rd Anarchy turn after Rep and Caste + Paci.

Techwise we picked currency next, an obvious choice (discounted by knowing both maths & Alpha, extracting gold from SB and Peter, more traderoutes).
There was also an interesting race going on between a Peter workboat and SB scouts, will they meet and unlock trading by not being isolated anymore?
They did and we picked up IW in a trade, yay now we can free 2 gems from jungle

Next was the decision pro Optics (and Astro bulbs).
We had all economy techs now and everything basic like Currency, CoL, IW etc.
We favored meeting more AIs over stuff like CS for Bur, what we mostly needed was gold and resources. 4 more AIs out there for trades was too tempting.
So Compass (600BC), MC (550BC) and Machinery (450BC) were all self-teched.
Meanwhile we also picked up Monarchy in trade (very nice for wine).
Optics was reached in 375BC, showing that we already had a strong economy going.
2 Caravels were prepared with chops (i think) and overflow, ready to move out asap.

Oh and one of the most important events, 1t before Optics Peter got a Confu spread and he even liked SB from now on

Log pic for this part

Spoiler :

New faces & the AP

Spoiler :

Our Caras found the 4 remaining AIs quickly, we had a good pointer already with seeing white culture south of Peter. Even had a scout workboat positioned here, which would later connect whales for trade
So 2 zealots (Charlie & Sal) and 2 IND AIs (Biz & Louie). Surprising that SH went so late with those around.
At start we traded with all of them, and maybe most important wheat for 2 more with Charlie (we usually called him Chucky in our thread).
Silk, gold and later even Iron from Louie was also available over time.

Our cities were mostly on scientists, we were not bothered yet with for buildings.
An exception was KS (AP city) for a forge, Moai tiles are nice but no forests so we needed prod here.
Wanted to keep science & gpp production high for now cos we had big bulbing plans.
There was a big event with Leo di Caprio (oops i mean da Vinci..) born in Pyras city.
This was huge for Artist city and Taj Mahal! (already written down by Tonny in his GP list).
G had little production, marble was delayed in favor of stone and we were just super happy with an Engi.

We balanced teching between Theo (for AP), some beakers into Astro and i think CS at this point. Theo and CS were not possible to complete before bulbing Astro cos they unlock Paper (which comes before Astro on the GS bulbing path).
Calendar was picked up via trade, i think. But possible that we teched it as Astro approached.
Some smaller techs like Mono were also traded for, still following our "we dun care about wfyabta" approach.
In 200BC the big moment arrived and Astro was double bulbed, with Theo also completing on this turn.

During this time we also had more nice trades like Aest and Literature (hugging with AIs paying off already), and grabbed the music free Artist in 50BC.
Seeing Peters teching this was never in danger.
Our main focus was on Paper + Edu now (1 bulb) for Ox in Bibs.
Wonder wise we decided on UoS (stone, not obsoleting) over Glib,
and on Taj (GE rush) for a very handy and easily timed golden age.

Other big news include Biz declaring on Charlie, with other AIs disliking Burger King as well,
and getting Feuda for free from Peter.
Tension was on KS and AP progress, which was so crucial for our big Reli Victory plan.
We always kept an eye out if other AIs reach Theo, and Leo the Engineer was even sitting in KS for emergencies.

More logs

Spoiler :

Golden Times

Spoiler :

The first golden age (with music Artist) was triggered in 175AD, and we had big plans for this one.
Moai tiles doubled in production for AP.
Bur was (finally) adopted, we were not giving it much priority before unlike in many other games. Free diplo with Peter too.
And 1t before the golden age ends we had plans in place for a ~5t Slavery phase, whipping buildings like harbors and missing libraries in very low cities like Trips.
More and faster GPP gathering was also very important for future plans.

We also got a GM from GLH city.
At first we were unsure, but soon realized gold will be very helpful (trade mission in Mecca).
An Academy was built in Bibs with one GS. Very delayed you could say, but we had so many important bulbs before. Now it's shining with gems & Bur.

Teching went towards Nationalism, basically only for Taj.
We wanted to chain 2 golden ages for 2 main reasons:
a) we can switch into Christianity temporally for an AP reli that nobody follows, which would hurt if done via Anarchy cos we want Paci and Confu back asap
b) we can also get out of Slavery again, with our techrate relying on Rep scientists

Peter started teching Guilds and then Banking, which created an interesting dilemma.
At first we wanted Economics and Free Market included in golden age switches.
But now we waited for trades on both techs, and did not get them in time.
This would create problems later with AIs switching into Mercantalism, and us having no way to remove that cos we had no Economy Civic.

But anyways, AP was completed succesful and locked into X(tian).
2nd golden age was started 5t later (when we were able to switch Civics and Confu again) by rushing Taj with our Engi.
Things were looking bright, next big goal Biology which will be for the next chapter.

Even more logs

Spoiler :

Bio products & Fake Wars

Spoiler :

Research plans now reached a new height with additional 20% discounts on Gunpowder & SM possible, via Guilds and Chemistry.
Printing Press was an easy choice (could be bulbed, but so can many expensive techs like Ele and Physics later), then we ran out of time and needed techs while Peter was a bit slow on Guilds. So we had to do Engineering ourselves, turns out Biz started it but would have been too slow. After trading for Guilds and unlocking Chemistry we were fine again (but lost out on those ~1.5k Engi trade beakers).

After Chemistry we researched SM (now with 40% discounts), never pretty with the loss of Monasteries.
But Bio was next, not bulbable with Physics blocking (6t selfteching was okay thou).
I highlight this so much cos it's an interesting area, without Astro Bio could be bulbed by avoiding Physics. But early Astro was worth more to use than farms, we had so many bizarre low chance GP born (who were not scientists but still useful, Merchants and Artists) that ultimately we made a good choice here.

So anyways, our plan to make Bibs strong was farming river tiles.
Cottages would be negative food, and we were looking at State Property Watermills instead later. Meanwhile good food would allow more Rep scientists.
V and T also benefited a lot from 3 farms.
Sadly we had to wait for Lib (Superconductors) so no quick Communism and SP.

Meanwhile Peter and Biz (our main trading partners for techs) went into lala land, both researched MT first (useful so no complains yet).
Then both picked Divine Right which was super annoying.
Around this time we remembered Privateers and made the questionable choice of holding back Astro & Chemistry (instead of securing with an additional Frigate or 2, was mentioned in several other posts too).
As result Peter stayed in Mercantalism and the struggle for traderoutes began, while also slowing his teching down significantly.
We started to worry about important future trades like Consti and Corp.

As distraction we built 3 Muskies in Bibs and declared war on Charlie in 860AD.
Main goal was getting 30 GG points for a warlord (Super-Frigate from an upgraded Cara for us), very nice side effects were diplo with Sal, Biz and Louie who all hated Charlie for different religions and for declaring on Biz. And Plunder gold.

About half of those 30 points came from attacking outdated ships with Galleons and Caras, Ais love building them in coastal cities
Our Muskies were also succesful and picked off units like Swords, Spears and Cats.
Charlie sent some stacks towards Biz and we often waited around german cities.
Overall this part was easy, and Charlie very backwards.

Diplo was firmly set at this point, everybody against Burger King (funny enuf they barely captured any of his cities, even with advanced units like Cuirs from all the techs we gave away). We started working on xtian spreads into isolated island cities, Charlie also had one infected before we declared.

Core cities were now growing much faster with Bio farms (reached in 800AD), and teching went towards our big Lib goal of Superconds via Physics, Ele and Refrigeration.
All available GS were used on 4x Ele bulb.
Not much discussion was going on here now, and punching Charlie was indeed very welcome to keep things interesting.

Logs

Spoiler :

Late game fine tuning

Spoiler :

Lib was reached in 1080AD, and Bibs enjoyed it's new 25% science Lab build.
3t later we reached Commies and accepted 1t of Anarchy into SP.
We talked a bit about using our last golden age now (had 2 great peoples with the Commies Gspy), but keeping that for the final turns and important Civic switches seemed more important.
SP greatly reduced our costs (i think we now payed only around 70gpt), and while some cities started working on big builds like West Point our main focus was still building research.

Many calculations started on how many average beakers we need for a turn X finish date.
Will Peter or Biz give us Consti & Corp via trade. Maybe even Steel?
When will the last xtian spread happen.
We still had Economics (nice for our last GM gold boost), Rep Parts and Steam Power to selftech (all very nice for Levees, extra for Watermills).
RP was delayed a bit in anticipation of Peter or Biz possibly going there, but they did not and we cursed our luck at this point cos they picked stuff like Military Science instead.

We were relieved when Peter started Consti shortly before we ran out of techs that are not AL (blocked) or Steel (still hoping for trade)
Afterwards he went for Corp (AIs love that tech), and our main trade hopes were achieved.
Biz remained useless from now on, going Rifling after MS.

With everything being back in our hands now, we figured the most likely AP vote turn will be 210.
Average beakers/turn added up, still not 100% sure but we became more and more certain.
Hopes were mainly on the last golden age covering for lower beakers output before.

Steel trade was still ??? and here AP testing came into play (cheers Tonny).
For a 210 vote we have lots of time (last spread can be anywhere between 199 and 209).
Not so long for 207 (in case we can get Steel for free and skip around 3 turns of teching).
But let's just say this never happened and Peter started Democracy after Corps while Biz was still on Rifling.
AIs were done at this point and only used for small gold trades.
Mishes were sorted out and no pressure there, so overall the game became obvious and relaxed.

I should prolly mention that we planned to whip all big required builds (Ironworks, Wall Street etc) shortly before winning, to allow research building in cities.
So we put just enuf into those builds until they are prepared for whipping, yay Kremlin.
And that AP votes are not happening until every AI gets the AP Reli, but not going into detail here for now.

Winning

Spoiler :

1410AD we started our 3rd golden age with Gspy + last GP from G (scienstist at 2000gpp).
2 Artists were also ready for founding Jewelers Inc. in Trips, and bulbing MM to make Broadcast Tower available.
Timing was off by 1t here, golden age should have been 1420AD instead but oh well i think we were a bit tired.

AIs were given more and more techs for diplo, which overall looked very good (+17 Biz, +14 SB and +20 Peter).
Biz was the last AI infected with AP Reli on turn 199, locking us into a victory vote happening on 210. Extra mishes (spread worked well in germany) went to Peter as safest voter.

We switched into Slavery, US and FM on turn 208.
Teching was finished on t209 (~4700 of 5500 MM beakers) and our Artist bulbed the last part on 210 while G rushbuyed Broadcast Tower for 525g.
Big builds were whipped on 209 (our big drop on the graphs), smaller builds on 210 with many rushbuyed cos we had so much gold left.

What much can i say, AP vote was kept alive as planned by the MM bulb and all AIs cept poor Charlie voted for us

Best & worst PR moves

Spoiler :

I consider settling double clams as 3rd city, getting GLH & Pyras early, Optics beeline and advancing AIs very much + getting many nice trades as our best moves.

Ofc the MM bulb and keeping AP alive was brilliant in retro, but i can honestly say this was a lucky find. Testing can pay off thou.

Worst move was no NP in our Cap (discussed in another post).

Very dubious: gifting x mish to Biz early and hoping that Peter will get no auto-spread.
Could have put AP timing out of our hands.
But we got lucky and Biz spread failed (mish disappeared), was i ever so happy about something failing?

Questionable at best was avoiding Privateers by not giving Astro away (and slowing trade partners down), over the better solution of protecting ourselves with more Frigates.
Also questionable: giving away Gunpowder and then Chemistry early, unlocking MS for AIs in hopes for Steel while putting Consti & Corp trades at danger.

Pics of our top cities at their peak

Spoiler :

 

[Tonny]

I'd like to add that settling T this early didn't affect researching AH in such a way that we had idle worker turns.
Our first worker at Bibs arrived at Sheep with 0 mps 1 turn before AH was actually researched. (actually 1 turn farm on its way)
V delayed the worker by working coast for more commerce and no idle turns for that worker as well.

 

[Fine_Distinction]

I did not mean to sound condescending, sorry if that came that way. I agree that generally HS played extremely well - and that is exactly why this settling of the 3rd city really stands out as a bad decision. And @Fippy and LC seem to agree it was probably game-costing. The same way that in some BOTMs all people with medals moved settler 1E etc. Which really sucks if you make such mistake early on and later meticulous play cannot fix it. But this is famous civ snownball.

Moderator Action: Removed link to active user - please be more careful in future --NZ

sorry i was careful not to cite their posts but you are right that citing their forum names is prolly as dangerous as it also creates alerts

 

[Pangaea]

We 4xbulbed Electricty and grabbed Superconductor with Lib.

 

[lymond]

It should be noted that with Tonny's mathematical prowess the 4Xbulb of Electricity was to the exact beaker.

If you had told me we were going to Lib Superconductors at the beginning of this game, I'd have called you muy loco.

Indecisive have an interestingly developed empire.
Sadly they are holding themselves back by not switching into Rep for 9t now, when looking at ....

Building that Market is quite concerning as well

 

[Gumbolt]

1ad is absolutely a fascinating game point. I have taken a few pictures of HS and PR saves. I am mainly interested as there is a score difference of 348 at this point. For a game like this that seems huge. I want to work out where that comes from. Albeit that score is mostly clawed back by 250ad.The big difference is pop/technology.
HS 379 pop PR 591. Pop 43 vs 67 pop total.
239 vs 383 on tech.
The other interesting thing is use of universities. I suspect HS whipped unis in most cities. The difference in science looks purely due to be the spamming of scientists with 6 base science each. That and GLH trade routes. Looks to me extra infrastructure this game from whipping really does not pay off. We did not have edu at this point. By 1000ad PR had 2 unis. PR needed one for OU. Even with Oxford uni there is 100 or so difference in science here. HS were not running a single scientist at 1ad. All our trade routes were earning 3c. Our capital had 52.65 science a turn.

Appears I can't upload all images to 1 thread. Will create a 2nd post with HS on it I don't have a file storage site so apologies for no links.

 

[Gumbolt]

HS images for 1ad. If these images are not interesting I can remove. Please let me know.

Tech wise PR have 10 early techs that HS are missing all the way up to music and Astronomy.

PR were likely a short bulb from edu.

Capitals
Bibs 10 pop 56BPT vs science 7 pop 119 BPT. HS capital is way ahead of ours in terms of science. Uni/OU/temple and dun. They had recently whipped this. OU is a big upgrade on pr'S.

KS 9 pop 29BPT vs Profit 3.pop 12bpt. Moai Stat vs Oracle.MS hammers are really nice here. This is such a great city site. Profit has 2-3 more buildings. PR's city is 3 x bigger as PR need hammers for AP.

NW 9 pop 51.25BPT Whale 6 pop 17.6BPT Whale has CH and Conf monst. Difference in trade routes is 8c a turn. NW 2 turns off a forge.

G 12 pop. 73BPT vs Silver 5 pop 20.8BPT. This was our best science city for 1ad. Looks like HS had whipped 3 builds here. hs are playing the long game here as when sushi hits this city will be amazing for science. There is however a cost to whipping cities for Sushi which is interesting. PR's city was ahead by 7 pop and running 6 scientists?

V 9 pop 51.25 BPT vs Cows 8 pop 22.95 BPT. PR went GLH vs mids. Main difference is beakers from 4 scientists and 6C from trade routes. PR built forge. If HS had settled double clams sooner pretty sure mids would of gone there.

T 8 pop 51bpt vs Clams 4 pop 16bpt. City double the size and science over 3 times that of Clams. Helped by 6c trade routes too. Main build difference conf mish/dun vs mids. HS city has 25 whip anger so heavily whipped. PR's had none and was at it's happiness cap.

Trips 10 pop 37bpt vs Canal 10pop 36 bpt. Pretty similar. PR were only running 1 scientist at this point. Con mish and library makes difference for HS here.

The difference here is strategy. HS are preparing for sushi and a speciailist economy that will abuse uni conf monst and bring them in huge amounts of science at the end of the game.

PR took the short term view to push rep/scientists/ caste to max early science and push for bulbing with GS. Mixed with a trade route strategy.

The other big difference is meeting of all ai. Also fact Russia and SB were friendly in PR's game compared to pleased. Once HS get Peter to friendly they can trade for philosophy and another tech. They had planned to try and get an Ai to bulb it for them as it was not part of their sushi plan.

At this stage the difference in science is purely down to population/GLH trade routes. Compared to HS who have planned and whipped quite a few builds in slavery to help their end game science. The big difference in early game techs really does help. E.g free artist. Early world maps with paper and optics.

HS would of known these pops would quickly regrow in 9-10 turns.

Anyway I just thought it would be interesting to see why there was this huge score difference.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Loving the analysis and sure the lurkers appreciate the pictures.

 

[Gumbolt]

There is no save for the other 2 teams at 1ad. I could do screen shots for the 1-2 turns before. I don't want to do too many comparisons here as I am sure teams can browse the saves. I can see one team is going AP. I wonder if they have worked out the AP riddle with Massmedia?

 

[Tonny]

Adding some others numbers here. All our gps and their usages.

100 -> scientist (Bib) on turn 84 with 100% chance. Bulbed Philosophy on turn 84.
200 -> engineer (T) on turn 98 with only 17% chance! There was a 83% chance that we could have a scientist. This delayed our Astro bulb a little bit, but it was a huge win for building Taj Mahal for a GA. Taj was built on turn 134 for our 2nd GA.
300 -> scientist on turn 104 (G) with 100% chance. Bulbed Astro on turn 107.
400 -> scientist on turn 107 (Trips) with 100% chance. Bulbed Astro on turn 107. Our already built GLH will shine now. Shortly after Astro we found all other AI and their juicy traderoutes. (edit: we already met some of the other AI after researching Optics, but now the traderoutes started to shine. Only Louis wasn't found yet)
500 -> scientist on turn 117 (NW) with 100% chance. Partially bulbed Education on t117.
600 -> merchant on turn 123 (V) with 31% chance. Not ideal, because we wanted to bulb our way towards Physics/Bio/Electricity. Luckily Saladin had a nice city with ToA. Mission it is!
700 -> scientist on turn 126 (T) with 84% chance. This one went to Bib to build an Academy on turn 127.
800 -> scientist on turn 128 (G) with 100% chance. Eventually used for our 4x bulb of Electricity on turn 160.
900 -> merchant on turn 144 (V) with 13% chance. Another bummer for our bulb strategy. Mission it is!
1000 -> artist on turn 148 (G) with 11% chance. Can you see our luck? Oh well, let's save this one for building the HQ then (turn 210).
1200 -> scientist on turn 154 (NW) with 100% chance. Eventually used for our 4x bulb of Electricity on turn 160.
1400 -> scientist on turn 158 (Trips) with 100% chance. Eventually used for our 4x bulb of Electricity on turn 160.
1600 -> artist on turn 171 (G) with 13% chance. We were hoping for a scientist to settle in Bib. This little setback had its bright side. We could still use scientist specialists in G to fund our research, although it wouldn't be as effective. Would we have gotten the scientist, we would assign all the specialists to be artists in G. We saved the artist to bulb Mass Media on turn 210.
1800 -> scientist on turn 184 (T) with 84% chance. This one settled in Bib on turn 185. Our original plan was to use the ge/gs from this city to start the 3rd GA.
2000 -> scientist on turn 201 (G) with 86% chance. It didn't matter which gp we got here. Originally we planned a 100% artist here to bulb MM and use the 1800 gp for a GA. Now this one starts our 3rd and last GA on turn 201. We did a little miscalc in our enthousiasm. The last GA should have started on turn 202.

We got some more gps. These are the ones from techs.

Artist (Music) on turn 114. Our first GA started on turn 122 with this one.
Scientist (Physics) on turn 160. And there's our 4th scientist to bulb Electricity instantly on turn 160 on our way to Lib Superconductors.
Spy (Communism) on turn 172. Communism was a big tech for us for State Property enhanced workshops. The spy was used to start our last (3rd) GA.
Merchant (Economics) on turn 175. This one went on a mission.

We needed to have a level 6 unit to build West Point. Our general arrived on turn 171 by harassing Charlemagne.

 

[Fippy]

Added 3 chapters in my game summary, soon you might feel like reading a PR book ~~
SGOTM 26 - Lurkers Thread