SGOTM 9 - Hagar

[markh]

Of course, but it would take some time to ship him over. Anyhow we have to see how our OS-campaign turns out in terms of leader generation.

 

[markh]

No sign of Abegweit ? Should we skip/swap him and go on ?

 

[Khan_Asparuh]

Andronicus PMed me, Abegweit requests a swap... I think that I'll be able to take it tonight or tomorrow night... So I got it.

 

[Abegweit]

My apologies for holding things up, guys. We are in the middle of a move and I was netless for a lot longer than I expected. I also had no idea that I was up. I'll review the thread and see how I went wrong in that department

Thanks for the swap, Khan. We're still setting things up but I'll be ready to play soon

 

[juballs2001]

looking forward to getting things rolling with this game again.

 

[Khan_Asparuh]

SGOTM9
(0) 450 AD
Situation check up. Looks nice. Disband 2 warriors and 2 archers. Order and hurry a few slaves in the captured cities.
(1) 460 AD
Use elite cavs to kill a few Mongols, not lucky. Kill a spear in Ulaanbaator, another one shows.
(2) 470 AD
Take Tabriz. Declare war on Osman. Cav army takes Iznik.
(IBT) Celts come asking for chemistry… Stick it, he goes away.
(3) 480 AD
Offensive on Edirne, two spears down one left. Amphibious assault on Bursa, lose elite Zerk but get a leader.
(4) 490 AD
Raze Edirne, size 12. Zerks capture Uskudar. Kill 2 defenders in Istanbul. Still unable to take Ulaanbaatar, too many spears. Will do next turn.
(5) 500 AD
Physics – Magnetism. Capture Istanbul, we control the GLighthouse. We have our private continent too. Finally get Ulaanbaatar and the Mongols are gone.

I’m sorry guys, I won’t be able to finish these turns. I’ll leave it here. The leader is in Bursa, he has movement left so you can use him.
Have fun.

 

[Andronicus]

Thanks for the swap, Khan. We're still setting things up but I'll be ready to play soon

Can I assume you're OK to play next?

Roster
Khan Asparuh - just played
Abegweit - up
IstariAsuka - waiting to hear when avail
Andronicus - on deck
juballs 2001
markh

 

[AlanH]

Please read an important addition to the rules HERE

 

[Abegweit]

Got it.

I'll play on Saturday. Comments welcome in the interim. What do we do with the leader?

 

[Andronicus]

Suggest you all look at the rule change - it has sig implications

If Gandhi cannot get out until modern age then

1) ? Keep Trondheim as capital until modern ages allowing us to maintain high science rate using our fully developed core - then move to Entremont at time of releasing Gandhi (having developed Celtic America by using civil engineers for producing libs / markets and factories)

2) The GLH is obviously the key to Gandhi getting all req techs - WV must be defended until all req techs have been researched, meanwhile encouraging Gandhi to take as much of starting continent as poss (by gifting to 3rd party as prev discussed)

3) In the race to be first team to complete our assignment the rate limitting factors appear to be
i) earliest poss date to modern ages = earliest release of Gandhi
ii) fastest research of all req MA techs = earliest give Gandhi GLib

4) alternative of trying to prune Gandhi's unit support costs should allow him to research MM earlier, but would he build a boat? - sounds like others have found he doesnt.

My thoughts

We need to continue to make science rate our number one goal - it must not take a back seat to world conquest - the conquest will inevitably come but each tech that takes one extra turn to research is one more turn until we can release Gandhi. Dont forget Otto's freebie techs (hope he doesnt get Nationalism)

I suggest we continue with plan to prune back Gandhi's numbers. I dont know if other teams have tried and failed at this - I assume they have - but I still feel its worth a go as if Gandhi can get off his island before we reach modern ages he can start getting control of island earlier.

 

[Andronicus]

Got it.

I'll play on Saturday. Comments welcome in the interim. What do we do with the leader?

I've just been thinking about this one - I think another cav army would be helpful for other continent, good chance of getting another during war over there to hold onto for rushing palace later

 

[juballs2001]

wow, that rule has really big implications on the game.

here is what i propose.

allow ghandi to take a city relatively close to our city with the GL.

then we unfortify that city, hope ghandi takes it and then we can allow him to slowly dismantle our capital.
when we are in the modern age, the other civs will still be industrious, so we only have to keep one other civ, i suggest spain up with us in techs.

that way when ghandi takes that city, he will learn up to the modern age, approx 5-10 techs in. and then he can dismantle the core and most of the continent and hopefully begin building the spaceship

 

[Abegweit]

Agreed on all points. We have more than enough military, except perhaps for a navy. It's time to fill in the gaps on our island. In the meantime, we can start in on Isabella using our current military.

Science should be set to Banking since we can easily achieve that in 4 turns. We can come back to Navigation later when we are bigger. Furthermore, we do not have enough workers and settlers even with the slaves. This is a priority.

The leader should become an army. I assume that he will be filled with cavalry but that can be decided once he gets to Celtia.

 

[Andronicus]

Agree we need more workers.
Have just sent santa a request for 20 more to help clear the jungle to get up our science farms and for RR which will come soon

Before committing to current plan - I have an alternative suggestion.

Celts will give 131gpt for chem, they are also researching quite quickly.
How about selling chem and hoping they research banking for us (edit - of course he may decide to research worthless Music or printing - at least the latter would allow us to ensure India has contacts with 3rd party to allow dow/gifting strat) whilst we research magnetism and ToG. Once we have Mag we can trade for further lux allowing 100% science supported by Celtic gpt payments.
We can then let Celts be for now - concentrate on taking out Spain and dev science infrastructure to attempt 4 turn research as much as poss with occ techs from Celts. Come flight and motorised transport, Celts can be taken out in only a few turns with tanks and bombers. Downside of this strat is Celtic lands would not be fully developed during modern ages, but we may find ourselves in modern ages sig sooner (and hence release Gandhi sooner).
Any comments?

 

[Abegweit]

I hadn't checked out the celtic gpt situation.

I agree totally with this plan.

 

[Andronicus]

wow, that rule has really big implications on the game.

here is what i propose.

allow ghandi to take a city relatively close to our city with the GL.

then we unfortify that city, hope ghandi takes it and then we can allow him to slowly dismantle our capital.
when we are in the modern age, the other civs will still be industrious, so we only have to keep one other civ, i suggest spain up with us in techs.

that way when ghandi takes that city, he will learn up to the modern age, approx 5-10 techs in. and then he can dismantle the core and most of the continent and hopefully begin building the spaceship

Suggest we let Gandhi escape as soon as poss so he starts to gain control of continent. Recommend delay allowing capture of WV until all techs req for space have been discovered as I would hate to have to rely on Gandhi self researching even 1 modern age tech. My experience in my trial game suggests he wont start building SS until he is not at war with anyone on the same continent. Thus once we give him WV with all the techs he requires, we want him to get the continent ASAP.

 

[Andronicus]

Noticed something odd in save - we have a settler of Otto nationality on ruins of Edirne - did we get this when city razed? (thought only get workers). Only way I know we could do this is to build a settler in city with Otto nationals - but we only recently dowed them.

 

[Abegweit]

My experience in my trial game suggests he wont start building SS until he is not at war with anyone on the same continent. Thus once we give him WV with all the techs he requires, we want him to get the continent ASAP.

Really? I had always thought that we would keep the top half of the continent as a science farm. OTOH, that was based on the theory that we would let him out in the middle IA. So strike both ideas... I'm beginning to think that we need to go back to our original idea of giving him a space elevator. If we do this, he also needs a decent core of low-culture cities as soon as we let him out.

I suggest the following: at some point (exact moment TBD but probably close to Space Flight), we abandon Trondheim and move the capital to Entremont. At the same time we abandon several other core cities and immediately build big cities on the ruins. These are gifted to somebody backwards (the Americans?) who are bribed into war with Gandhi. He should be able to walk over them and start his Quest for the Stars.

Edit: I should read more carefully. You already said that we should not depend on Gandhi researching anything. Agreed.

Edit2: If we are going to self-research all the way and only let Gandhi out when at the end, Communism is not wanted and the question of how to perform the palace jump issue is moot (answer: we jump when we have learnt everything). Similarly courthouses, banks and unis should be built in our core. I wish we had known this before our GA.

 

[Andronicus]

... we abandon several other core cities and immediately build big cities on the ruins.

Why?

If you are concerned that cities with too much culture will flip back to us then all we have to do is say no thanks when they flip.
I recommend when Gandhi has troops on the doorstep we sell all cultural improvements (as these are not transferable) and perhaps also expensive improvements like factory, and gift to backward 3rd party with 3rd party in alliance v India. Gandhi may raze some cities, is this less likely if city smaller? - if so we could starve it down for a few turns prior.

 

[Abegweit]

Why?

If you are concerned that cities with too much culture will flip back to us then all we have to do is say no thanks when they flip.
I recommend when Gandhi has troops on the doorstep we sell all cultural improvements (as these are not transferable) and perhaps also expensive improvements like factory, and gift to backward 3rd party with 3rd party in alliance v India. Gandhi may raze some cities, is this less likely if city smaller? - if so we could starve it down for a few turns prior.

In your test game, he razed city after city and starved down the few he wanted. My belief (I could be wrong) is that he did it because of flip danger. He has no idea that we would refuse it.