SGOTM 9 - jeffelammar

[Jove]

Pre-flight- Everyone’s happy enough.
Trade Philosophy to Mongols for 146g. Could’ve got HBR, but let’s build a few cheap chariots first.
Move a citizen off the Lambs in channel city, give it to Oslo. CC still grows in 1... and so on.
Carthage is closer to that Ivory than I really realized…

Ibt- not much

Turn 0- warrior1 SW. Warrior 2 heading north to block the Ivory.
Curragh1 heading SE a little before suiciding,
Lux to 20%

Ibt- a barb galley moves in S. of Bergen.
My favorite production trick works- Move a citizen onto the plains tile that will be irrigated in 1. Screen says grow in 2, but we get the extra food when the tile is irrigated, grow, gain shields toward the Colossus.
Build 2 settlers, worker, barracks ->2 Settler, 2 warrior.

Turn 1- After much thought, send settlers to points A and C. Peel a worker off Trondheim to help Channel City. Continue to road north.
Launch Suicide Curragh! Due west…
Lux to 10%.

Ibt- Curragh1 survives. Due west… Discover land! Can see a blue border, but no contact.

Turn 2- For the sake of protecting settlers, send extra warrior N, lux to 20.

Ibt- Curragh1 Survives!

Turn 3- Galley lands in ‘safe’ waters. South of blue border, meet Spain. They have 1g, furs, HBR, lack Writing and Polytheism. They’re building the Oracle in their size 6 capitol.
Curragh2 peeking inland.

Ibt- Barb horse appears in the south, near Bergen.

Turn 4- Notice quite a few foreign warriors headed south past the chokepoints- 5 in all, out of 3 nations. Curious I think.
Look, all these guys can meet India. It’s extremely unlikely the knowledge will spread across the ocean before we take them out.
Curragh1 notices another border!

Ibt- Barb horse fortifies on S. Mountain. Mongol warriors move back North… not a warpath. Settler ->settler Truncheon (to E) . Warrior->archer Oslo.

Turn 5 (1100BC) Meet Celts. They have 311g, HBR, (4) wool, iron, horses. Lack Writing and Monarchy. Trade them Writing for 311g Still not taking HBR.

The gold is a little off, I forgot to trade to Mongols for a turn or 2.
It's really getting late... I'll finish this tomorrow. I'll check the thread before I do.

 

[Paul#42]

Wow! Great progress. This curragh1 really boosts us!
The money may help us to (short-)rush temple and library.

Should we give monarchy to those far away civs to speed up their research? It will take them some time to get republic (or monarchy) on their own. And I think it will take us quite a while (if ever) to start fighting them.

Now this is a kind of revolutionary thought because I tend to be too much afraid of not catching up with the AI in research (which hinders my Cotm games)...

 

[Jove]

The index of saves page isn't working for me to post a link to the save, or upload screenshots.

Ibt- Barb horse fortifies on S. Mountain. Mongol warriors move back North… not a warpath. Settler ->settler Truncheon (to E) . Warrior->archer Oslo.

Turn 5 (1100BC) Meet Celts. They have 311g, HBR, (4) wool, iron, horses. Lack Writing and Monarchy. Trade them Writing for 311g. Still not taking HBR.
India has Math.
Ibt- Mongols demand Monarchy… rrrr.. Tell them to buzz off. Mongols DoW!! Denyd was right about these guys…
Barb horse pillages the game of Bergen!

Turn 6- Embassy Carthage for 38g. (They have 2 numidians, 4spt, 105 turns from ToA)
Warrior kills barb horse ->vet.. Settler pair headed for C takes evasive action.
Oslo grows to 3, works iron mtn. for more shields for now.

Ibt- Our warrior, fortified in jungle across a river near B, gets killed by Mongol warrior.
Learn Mathematics. Trade it and philosophy to Carthage for alliance vs. Mongols.

Turn 7- Meet America. They have Horses, 50g. Behind in tech. Trade them Writing for 50g.
We’ve met everyone now.
Pricey, but buy 1 archer, 48g, to fight Mongols. We need to get MP’s out real quick, science is suffering.

Ibt- zzzz

Turn 8- Warrior heads into mountains in south to guard against more barb horses.
Evasive action w/settlers sucks. The Mongol warriors seem to have headed back North, moving in to settle C after all.
Found Birka at A. Claim Ivory. Looks about 50% corrupt. Starts Library pre-build.
As I don’t know for sure where the Mongols are, reluctantly settle Aarhus at E. It’s about 1/3 corrupt. Set for Library pre-build.
Warrior2 discovers barb camp N of. Birka.
Carthage has Map Making. Hmmm. Trade Monarchy for MM.
Trade Writing to Otto’s for 25g.
These AI are hopelessly behind in tech. They won’t be much help.

Ibt- Warrior2 killed by barb horse L
Celts complete the Oracle. Spanish switch to Colossus in Santiago!

Turn 9- Settler moves to C! Still no Mongols…
New settler heads toward E.
1000BC- 8 towns, 24 pop,. 2 settler, 8 worker, 5 warrior, 1 archer, 2 curragh. 447g @ -5gpt. Lit in 9, Colossus in 7.

Ibt-- AI fighting barbs around the world.

Turn 10- Did I get off in my turn count again? The list of saves in the maintenance thread shows everyone else submitting at 1000BC. I’ll stop here, at 975BC. The turn is still active, units haven't moved yet. Sheesh...


Notes: There’s a settler ready to go at C. There were Mongols in the area, I think we should settle.
We have a lot of gold. I was saving it for a temple/library in Channel City.
Oslo isn’t growing so it can build 2-turn warriors. We lost 2 warriors, and units got pulled away due to conflicts, leaving us short on MP’s and keeping lux around 20%. Sorry guys, science wasn’t the best this round.
-Carthage is our ally vs. Mongols. I recommend not hurting our rep this early in the game.
- The distant Granary builds are Library pre-builds.
- We need to watch the wonder cascade. I hope I didn’t blow it trading Monarchy to Celts. They’ll never get anywhere on ToA… We may want to keep literature under our hats for a little while.
-The Bergen settler factory is messed up due to barb pillaging.
- Never did join a worker to Channel City- lux was already at 20%. Maybe we can do that soon, we'll save, like, a turn or 2.

- I have the 1000BC save, I'm not sure what to do with it though...

 

[Jove]

Here's the situation at home in 975BC. Again, this turn is active, sorry See below for the save.

 

[pindicator]

Back a little early, so of course I'll jump back into Civ!

Nice turns, Jove, and great luck on that curragh! This will help us greatly, being able to contact all the AIs early on. We should be okay on Monarch skill even against the Mongols... but they gotta go. Hope we get the Colossus, too!

The more I see how far back India is, the more I realize how good of an idea that the Great Library strat is.

And be sure to submit the 1000BC save Jove, even if you submit the 975BC save immediately after. That way they can put us in the running for the QSC.

Do you think we are the only ones with Ivory? Is SoZ a good idea even if we are?

How quickly should we go for the iron island NE of us? If we do, do we plan on it being reasonably productive or should we cram the cities in for speicalist research? It looks like we can cram in 5 towns there if we so choose.

Oh, that's all I can think of...

 

[Jove]

I don't think we'd want the SoZ for it's own sake, once we get Berserks we'll be bad to the bone. The only use I can see for it is to trigger a GA earlier than Berserks, which will land us the GLb that much earlier. I dunno if it's worth it though. Now that we're at war for the duration of the treaty, we probably want the units right away.
Speaking of war, whoever is next, get a Great Leader, OK? The Forbidden Palace would come in handy.

 

[pindicator]

Speaking of war, whoever is next, get a Great Leader, OK? The Forbidden Palace would come in handy.

Jove <-- Just played
pindicator <-- Up!
TimBentley
Paul#42
CKS
denyd << Skipped for TG
jeffelammar

I guess that's me! But my GL luck is always sucky for some reason... Anyway, I will play tomorrow. Maybe late tonight.

 

[Paul#42]

With so many tiles to improve I would not join a worker in Channel City before we got at least one more tile for Trondheim (to give one BG to Channel City) and the plain to NE for Channel City improved. So we won't speed up Colossus anyway.

Maybe we should create some more embassies to control India's relations to other civs.

Why is the game near Bergen still not roaded? We had a worker there three turnsets ago? Did we have a barb encounter there?

How about spreading techs to the other continent? Any pros and cons?

 

[CKS]

Paul: The game was pillaged by a barb in Jove's turn 5.

Jove: Nice job with the curragh. It's good to know everyone.

I'm in favor of settling the island to the northeast as soon as it is convenient to do so. I think it'll be really corrupt, so it should be the island of specialists.

It was nice of the Mongols to encourage us to wipe them out. I always feel bad about declaring on a peaceful AI, but I don't have any qualms about wiping them out once they attack me.

I think we want to hurry the tech rate, so trading/giving techs to the AI not on our landmass sounds good to me. I feel confident that they will fall behind easily enough later on, so we might as well try and get some techs out of them now. We just need to make sure that they don't get literature until we are done with the great library. (As we get close to the modern age, we'll need to be careful - I think we should only give techs to a tiny civ to make the GL useful. I don't know whether we'll need to plan on invading the off-island civs or whether we can just leave them alone in our dust. I think we can wait and see what the situation is.)

 

[denyd]

Nice work Jove. Knowing where everyone is both geographically & research wise, sheds a little light on the future.

I'm thinking that what might work best is to encourage a single AI (Celts?) on the other island to dominate that landmass, while we take out the Mongols . I'm a little hesitant to remove the Ottoman as I like their era free tech and England/Carthage as Commercial AI tend to be tech financiers in the mid-game, though I think they might not be as valuable in this game. We might think about establishing a city on the iron island and giving it to the Ottoman's as a exile location before we move on them.

Building the SoZ as a GLib GA booster is an interesting idea. The more I thought about this (during a long SF to LA drive) the more I thought our biggest problem in this one is going to be getting Gandhi to actually build the spaceship. Claiming our landmass and the rest of the necessary lands should be pretty easy and increasing the tech pace can be done with lots of libraries/universities & markets/banks. We'll need to pull a couple of tricks off in the late IA to shave a few research turns off, but we are completely dependent on the prodding Gandhi into actually building a galley and landing a unit on our lands and then building the spaceship parts rather than a courthouse or granary. I'm thinking if we have all of our cities loaded with the all of the improvements, he might actually build an SS part.

[Way too much rambling in this post, that'll teach me to write this over a 2 hour period]

 

[Jove]

How about spreading techs to the other continent? Any pros and cons?

The pros are that of course they're more likely to learn a tech we don't already have, which is the only use we really have for the AI's this game.
The cons are giving techs away in such a way that we 'trap' ourselves in the AA. For instance, if they have construction, we have everything but, and we've already gifted them everything, we won't be able to trade. Just need to be careful is all.

Encouraging a dominant AI like the Celts to take over the other landmass is an interesting idea. These guys probably won't be much help with tech in the Middle and later ages. Maybe if one is super-sized though... I can picture allying with an AI, wiping out their enemies, allowing them to settle everything, and then sitting back while they crank up their research. Gifting gold/settlements is another nice thing to do. After we're at 4-turn research I think.

 

[TimBentley]

If we build the Great Library, not being able to trade techs for a tech shouldn't be a problem. It's possible we could get code of laws from Carthage or the Celts and construction (although we might start researching it before they finish) from someone else (researching currency ourselves).

Helping create a dominant AI on the other continent could be useful; they might help with replaceable parts and flight, for example.

 

[pindicator]

Yonder save file

Well, I have played too much Civ4 because I was rusty as all heck playing this. I have even forgotten to start a GLib... but we can use the temple in Channel City as a pre-build -- yet cancel the worker chop by Channel City if we do switch to this.

I just focused on expanding and keeping up with border guards and MPs for larger cities. I have a few galleys in production and we are quickly running out of new land to settle. There is the island to our NE, but only a few spots aside from there remain.

Here's the write-up:

Lots of unmoved units on the inherited turn. In fact, there's a settler ready to be settled, as the notes from last turnset said. So I settle Stavanger.

Rearrange MPs and turn off luxuries.

1) 950BC
Curragh survives two barb galleys and goes l33t on us.

2) 925BC
forgot to watch happiness and Trondheim riots.

3) 900BC
Settlers moving, galleys viewing, and not a Mongol in sight.

4) 875BC
Trondheim: Settler -> Settler
Reykjavik: Warrior -> Barracks
Oslo: Warrior -> Warrior (and i set it grow again)
Stockholm: Worker -> Worker

Science 80%
I think I've screwed up the settler growth in Bergen, but I can't find the post...

5) 850BC
Channel City: Colossus -> Temple (library prebuild possibly)

Science 70%
Settle Odense at letter D.

6) 825BC
Horses are hooked up.
Learn Literature. Currency is next.
Forbidden Palace message.
Bergen: Settler -> Settler

Hareid goes up at letter B.

7) 800BC
A lotta movement.
Science 90%; Lux 10%

8) 775BC
Trondheim: settler -> settler
Oslo: Warrior -> Archer
Channel City's borders expand

9) 750BC
One settler heads north, but I leave the other unmoved for the next player to decide.

The locations I have thought to settle for two of the three settlers I will mark on the map.
The blue settler could go one tile NW, but I have it there so we can pick up the game without needing a border expansion.
For the red settler, I am unsure where to put him. We can save him for a galley (under construction) or choose one of the three spots (or thereabouts) that I've put down.

Worker begins chop near Channel City, due in 4 turns. Would use it to hurry a library.

Ended with 9 turns to even our turns out again.

 

[TimBentley]

I think I've screwed up the settler growth in Bergen, but I can't find the post...

The only post like that I remember was for despotism.

Got it. I should play tomorrow.

 

[Paul#42]

I thought we had agreed to (part-) rush lib and temple in Channel City? It needs to work on the Big lib soon! I guesss CC should make 10spt which is great for short rushing. With the rest of our cash I'd like to have some embassies. ROPs could give us some good relations and maybe even small money every 20 turns. Agreed?

One galley should be enough, I even would delay that single one till we have no more land to settle on our home continent. Plus we could use some more workers for jungle and joining Channel City before we settle distant Islands. I'd rather build libs in our core. Also in Trondheim and Bergen, maybe part-rushed?

And no harbor in Hareid, rather warriors and workers.

Our Continent has a good shape for sharing it with India one day. We need Cities at the choke point(s if there is one on our way to carthage) in my opinion for that task.

I'm afraid the island to east is to small to be a useful exile for any but a scientific civ. Maybe the one to NE is better sized for that task.
I'd like us to shortrush the lib this turn and get the lumber for the temple (maybe another worker can speed this up?).

On India strategy: There might be a point where we could need some civ as a medium who could exactly give MM (and maybe a little more) to India once we want them to start moving. Maybe we can isolate one civ in time on a small island, gift them if necessary, give them contact to India (can we, without embassy? When? After PP?) and let these two trade before we wipe our medium out.
Or do you think, India will get MM on their own?

Should we up two or three warriors to do some leader fishing in the jungle? Or are there no Mongols visiting us at all?

We need to get the horses connected for more sophisticated MPs.

 

[Jove]

The Colossus! Fantastic!

-I agree- let's rush a library in CC with cash right away.
-We'll be able to trade contacts at Navigation. I think India will have a modest science rate as long as they're on that island with all those bonus tiles. They should get MM on their own eventually, but I'm not against using other techniques to get it to them. Not strictly necessary, IMHO.
- We need to decide where to put the Glb soon.
- That undefended settler next to Birka makes me nervous- I lost a unit to barbs up there. Are we sure there are no barbs up there now?
- Did the game by Bergen get irrigated?
- Let's switch those granary pre-builds over to Libraries.

Pindicator, did you ever see a Mongol during you're turns? If not, they must be in pretty bad shape!

 

[Paul#42]

short term:
I think there is no need to rush the whole library now, because we want the lumber + 10spt to complete the temple (60) in 4 turns, having shortrushed to 40 (harbor) the turn before. So we need the lib complete in 3 turns, so shortrushed to 60 in 1 turn. Preconsition of course that CC makes 10spt. Any calculation mistake so far?

EDIT: harbor costs 30 shields, so we have nothing to shortrush to 40. I guess we should build library (36 left) in 3 turns at 12spt, than get 10s from chopping and rush temple immediatly.

Having built lib and temp the decision where to build the Glib is easy in my opinion. It would take us too long to get another city similary productive.

Without looking at the save I feel we need more workers. Remember having a road to a site makes up for the delayed built settler in the long run.

long term strategy:
When India lands (defensive!) units in our land close to date X we should be able to isolate them with defenders, keep them alive and direct them to their target in time. Maybe we weaken them with some kind of catapult we could also need to scare away unwanted ships.

Research: In MA beeline to MT first or rather take the educational branch (Unis, Cope, Newton) for faster research first? I tend to the research branch, after researching and spreading Invention which gets us Berserks and GA which should be enough to kill or dispell our local rivals.

 

[pindicator]

- That undefended settler next to Birka makes me nervous- I lost a unit to barbs up there. Are we sure there are no barbs up there now?

Carthage warriors were heading from that direction through our lands to fight Mongolia. Not a barb was spotted in the northwest.

- Did the game by Bergen get irrigated?

Yes, for better or worse

Pindicator, did you ever see a Mongol during you're turns? If not, they must be in pretty bad shape!

Didn't see a single one!

 

[Paul#42]

Didn't see a single one!

That's not too good because we could use some straying mongol warriors for promotions and leader farming. Maybe we should send a small stack as soon as we can afford to lose some MPs? A leader for our FP would be appreciated...

 

[denyd]

First a little preamble to this post, most of the ideas on this post were conceived between the hours of 1am &#8211; 6am this morning as my cold medicine seemed to keep me awake instead of putting me to sleep. Such ideas typically fall into one of two categories, either of massive brilliance or of complete insanity. So here goes. This is all based on the single premise that our goal is to get India to space as quick as possible.

This is best case turn log from our future:

IBT &#8211; Discover Flight and enter the Modern Era research Computers set to 0% science.

Turn X &#8211; Trade missing required techs to Ottomans to get him to the Modern Age and he gets Computers. Switch research to Fission

IBT: Capital completes TOE netting Fission and Nuclear Power research Ecology at maximum due in 4

Turn X+1 &#8211; Trade Fission to Ottoman for Computers &#8211; Trade all techs need to Celts to allow him to reach Modern Era getting his treasury (no GPT). Use gold to hurry nuclear plants and research labs

Turn X+4 - By now Celts should have finished Amphibious Warfare, trade all first level MA techs to Celts (he should go for Rocketry)

IBT: Discover Ecology research Synthetic Fibers at maximum (5-6 turns)

Turn X+5 &#8211; Declare war on Carthage and take final city using Berserks to initiate Viking Golden Age &#8211; Research now due in 4

Turn X+8 &#8211; Move SOD of Tanks & Bombers to Celtic border

IBT: Discover Synthetic Fibers &#8211; Trade for Rocketry using Ecology & $$ - Research Space Flight at maximum due in 4

Turn X+9 &#8211; Upgrade all tanks to Modern Armor

Turn X+10 &#8211; Load up any stockpiled armies with Modern Armor &#8211; Declare war on Celts and using bombers, MA Armies & Modern Armor begin assimilating Celts lands being wary of domination limit.

Turn X+12 &#8211; Discover Space Flight research Satellites at maximum (should be 4 turns)

Turn X+16 &#8211; Discover Satellites research Superconductor at max (4 turns) &#8211; Somewhere in here Celts should be down to a single tundra city. Sign peace with Celts. Save an MGL to use later.

Turn X+20 &#8211; Discover Superconductor research The Laser (4 turns)

Turn X+24 &#8211; Discover The Laser research Robotics (Due in 4, but that will increase to 5 when Golden Age ends)

Turn X+25 &#8211; Hire lots of scientist to keep research to 4 turns

Turn X+28 &#8211; Discover Robotics research Miniaturization at 80% - Evacuate home island except for 2-3 Ancient Age units (Archers or Warriors) saved for this purpose move them to FP city for short term defense &#8211; Start Internet pre-build in FP city using Palace (which might be original Mongol Capital) &#8211; Use MGL to move palace to Entremont, where hopefully Smith’s Trading Post, JS Bach’s Cathedral & a couple of other wonders are. &#8211; Gift all MA techs to Ottomans &#8211; Introduce Ottomans & Celts to India

Turn X+30 &#8211; Hopefully India will land a couple of War Elephants

Turn X+30-50 &#8211; Sometime in here we will discover Miniaturization research Genetics at 10% - India captures undefended Viking cities including Great Library city and will now be in the MA &#8211; Time to eliminate the Ottomans - Start donating lumps of cash to Celts to allow tech purchases from India. Once FP city has completed Internet attack Indian WE (and hopefully lose) to kick off Indian GA. Try to be completing Nuclear Plants in the most productive cities before India gets there. Also retire all but a couple of barbarian hunter Modern Armors.

From here on out, it’s just give cash to Celts, hope they spend it on India techs and hope India starts building the SS with the cash. We might want to fill in the new continent to reduce the number of barbarians we have to deal with. If we end up with a monopoly on any needed resources (uranium or aluminum) we’ll need to gift a pair to the Celts.

This entire scenario is based on a couple of things.

1. Trying to schedule our GA at a time when it will impact our research most
2. Trying to reduce the number of things India can choose to build
3. Trying to control the Indian GA at a time when he’ll need to