SGOTM 9 - jeffelammar

[Paul#42]

1. Kill off Spain ASAP (let's skip leader farming and get on to America)
2. Declare on America
3. Ally with Celts against America giving techs

Only if they have Nationalism - otherwise they would be a too easy victim for Brennus! He shall lose some units there, right?

4. Research ASAP Steel, Refining, Combustion, Sci Meth, Mass Prod, AT & Electronics, Motorized Transport (how's that order?)
5. Trade Celts techs for $$ to keep research at 100%
6. After combustion sell techs to Celts to encourage Flight research

no need to extremely hurry that - they will have more than 30 turns to research from the moment we researched combustion till we really need flight.

7. Complete railing & irrigation/mining of northern lands
8. Add aqueducts,harbors, libraries & markets to nothern lands
9. Settle, rail & irrigate/mine old Spain
10. Begin worker packing using only native workers in North & Spain

Why only native? I'd rather keep those slaves then. Losing most of our cities will impose us some unit support... At best we should use some slaves to join to our core cities as non-resistant and not-war-weary citizens for India

11. Setup city as Hoover pre-build
12. Setup city to time TOE pre-build for first turn of Modern Era
13. Gift Ottoman to Modern Era
14. Acquire Ottoman tech then kill him off
15. Complete TOE and select 2 Modern Techs (which 2?)

Did I miss anything?

Sounds good to me.

Edit: to Jove - Nice idea about gifting pre-final part

I like it, too. I'd give it even earlier to him to give him enough time to build like 6-10 units. 20-30 turns before would be appropriate imo. If a unit tries to attack before we want it we redline it with artillery and he will pull it back. Dependent on our research progress we could allow him to take some more minor cities to west so he can multiply his production. I think he will build many spears and archers first, that's the only drawback I see.
That would require some (~10) artilleries. How about that?

Then on day Y when we have completed space research we let him take Trondheim and Channel City. By then we shall have our units in our new capital.

Holy tish. It just crosses my mind: One thing I didn't test is whether he tends to sell things he cannot use... or if they are even destroyed automatically. My test won't give complete insight into that issue.
We should test that after gifting the first city (for that we can't change it anyway) by investigation and maybe direct him to Channel City first on day Y.
Does anyone reliably remember what in conquered cities happens to buildings which tech your civ does not know yet? Funny what basic rules you sometimes fail to know...

We will have to build SDI defenses in Spain. Anything else you need to stay untouchable in Modern Times?

 

[Jove]

Hmmmm, maybe we can gift India a lesser capitol and guide him to capture around the ring before total SS research. It looks like he won't run super-cities, no matter what we try.

Edit: The soonest we can gift a city to India is the first turn of the Modern Age. ~9 techs from now.

 

[Paul#42]

I finally finished the preturn, and here's a tentative dotmap I drew up for most of the Spanish island. It only requires 2 aqueducts (I think the aqueduct should go to the blue dot). The blue dots we already have, the large red dots (hopefully you can recognize the difference) are cities, the small red dots (give or take a couple) should be worked tiles.

A little crowded it seems to me. Imo we should first plan our new capital and lay out like in RCP4 (not strictly). Capital should be on the river quite centralized. As there are many BGs we maybe cannot avoid to settle on one of them... The tile west of the hill is most appealing to me on the first sight.

Some of your dots complicate to tell whether it's a BG... I'll have a closer look at home.

 

[TimBentley]

Yes the new Celtic gpt mention was after the trade. I hadn't been thinking about our palace move when I drew the dotmap, so it probably should be changed accordingly.

 

[Paul#42]

I hadn't been thinking about our palace move when I drew the dotmap, so it probably should be changed accordingly.

Our next 4-5 settlers will fill gaps on our continent anyway - no need to wait for our comments in your turnsets, right?

 

[CKS]

Good summary of our plans, denyd. We also need a prebuild for the Internet.

I think we need to get miniaturization from ToE, with a nicely timed prebuild for the Internet. If the Ottomans learn computers, then we take fission and miniaturization. If they learn fission, we take computers and miniaturization and we are happy. If they don't learn fission, we grumble. Having the research labs while we learn fission will be better than not having them while we learn miniaturization.

Since we don't know what will happen to improvements that Ghandi can't use when he takes a city, I'm leery of allowing him to take many before he gets the Great Library. If he loses all the factories, it'll be a lot harder to get the ship done. It sounds like happiness will be a problem for him; what can we do to make the Indians happy? If we give him Molde (by the incense) and lead him NW to the ivory for his first cities, will this let him keep his cities larger? If we make sure that the Celts don't have ivory and incense but do have other luxes for trade, this will let him trade for more happiness (as soon as he is able to trade with them). Hopefully Ghandi can get up to the ivory by the time we are ready to let him have the Great Library.

I think we should put the Internet in Channel City to go with the Great Library, and I think we should let Ghandi have Trondheim first, making sure that our palace jumps to Spain when that happens, to maximize the chances of Ghandi keeping our cities rather than razing them. Making sure the cities are smallish should also help, and Paul's idea about using merged slaves to give some happy and productive citizens to Ghandi sounds good, too. We can join our native workers to our towns now, and when we are ready to move, we can drop our core population and then add in some slaves to be his productive citizens.

 

[Paul#42]

Is everybody convenient with the idea to gift the one city immediately after reaching Modern Times to make sure he builds enough units? I think the artillery-project should work to keep him back without killing units, right? That one city would not cost us so much time as we would waste waiting for him to build some attack forces...

How we go on after the gifting I would like to depend on what happens to our gifted city. We look at it immediately (we should be able to spy by then) and have three options:

1. all buildings are gone ==> first city to be conquered is Channel City after we got the final space tech (only city in that turn)

2. buildings stay (and are not sold in the next interturn) ==>
a) we leave him with one city and decide in which order he may take the rest
b) we let him take some other cities to west (Ivory) but have to make sure he doesn't meet Celts or Otto to early (and Celts and Otto each other either).

I found a mistake in denyd's plan:
14. We need Ottomans after we got their free tech! They are part of the elevator, we want to keep Celts back to trade techs to. We need to keep Ottomans alive till Gandhi captures Channel City

So to conclude, here are the different roles and their lifespan in this plan:
Diplomacy
a) America: Can go asap.
b) Ottomans: must live till we get the last space tech + 1 turn, after India got Channel City and elevated to Modern Times on the interturn.
c) Celts: Live long and prosper (to trade money to Gandhi) maybe we should have a phony war with them to keep them from fighting Gandhi.
d) India: Get a gifted City after we reach Modern Times, capture Channel City on the turn we get final space tech, go to space.
e) Vikings: We stay alive and watch the party.

America shall never meet Ottomans or India. Celts meet India after Otto is gone and India elevated.

Research
ToE to get Miniaturization is fine, Spacelabs fast! We switch prebuild on the interturn via Big Picture!
We will need espionage to trace Gandhi's progress!

Any objections?

 

[CKS]

Sounds good to me.

 

[denyd]

The problem with keeping the Ottomans alive is word of our ROP rape will be spread. I'm not sure that this would be of major issue, but we need to consider it's impact.

With luck the Celts will pay the same GPT to the Indians for techs Gandhi got from the GL that he had been paying to us.

 

[jeffelammar]

Wow, you guys have been busy discussing...

Some points.
1. Getting Ghandi set up earlier, sounds like a really good idea. I don't think we need to do it as soon as we enter the Modern Ages, but definately do it after we have a couple modern techs.

2. I really like the idea of using a force of 10 artillery to pin Ghandi.

3. Worker Packing should be only native in North and Spain IMO. When we lose unit support, I'd rather have the free slaves out to do things like cleaning pollution.

4. Wow - Entremont is a monster. I noticed it's wealth of resources earlier, but that is just rediculous.

5. ROP - Have we ROP abused someone already? I thought we were saving it for the Celts at the End. At that point do we really care who knows?

 

[Gyathaar]

4. Wow - Entremont is a monster. I noticed it's wealth of resources earlier, but that is just rediculous.

Believe it or not.. the resources actually ended up that way there after I randomly placed them.. and I saw no reason to move them

 

[denyd]

I'm pretty sure we abused the Ottoman quite a while ago. We could always sign an ROP with the Celts just before we introduce them to the Ottomans, that would buy us 20 turns to pull the same trick on Brennus.

One more thing to consider, once Gandhi rides the elevator, the only units he'll be able to build will be War Elephants (70s) and TOW Infantry (120s).

BTW: What's the little symbol below the coal in the upper left hand corner stand for. That's one I haven't seen before.

 

[jeffelammar]

BTW: What's the little symbol below the coal in the upper left hand corner stand for. That's one I haven't seen before.

If you are talking about the square icon with the red and black, that is the icon for CivAssist-II.

It runs in the background, but you can bring it to the front any time by clicking the icon.

If that wasn't what you were asking about, then there is no icon.

 

[denyd]

That was it. I don't have/use Civ Assist II.

 

[CKS]

The problem with keeping the Ottomans alive is word of our ROP rape will be spread.

India knows the Ottomans, so word will spread anyway when they meet the Celts.

With regard to units, maybe we'll get lucky and Ghandi will have a nice supply of archers and spearmen stored up in Delhi, ready to invade our cities. Does the AI cheat with regard to knowing where our units are? If so, maybe we can convince Ghandi to attack sooner by putting our units where we can't attack him.

 

[denyd]

I was pretty sure that at last check India had yet to meet anyone but us. We should check via the diplomacy screen.

We could always investigate Delhi to see how many units are waiting there.

 

[CKS]

I don't think you can investigate a city of a civ you are at war with, and we don't have espionage yet.

I'm pretty sure that India met the Ottomans early on. I guess we'll have to check to be sure.

 

[denyd]

We could contact the Ottomans and see if they'd like to buy Indian contact.

I'm pretty sure you're right about investigating, but soon the Celts with have espionage and we'll be able to plant a spy in Delhi.

 

[Jove]

Otto and Ghandi have met, I'm pretty sure.
I doubt if Ghandi will ship any units from his home tile. The rules got modified because Ghandi became hydrophobic...

I like the idea of using Otto for the space elevator. Brennus is tough enough as it is, I'd hate to see him with Modern age units. Plus, if we need an extra 100 tiles, we have someone left to fight.

It's obvious, but Ghandi will only be building AA units until the elevator, spears and archers. Is it possible to gift a horse? Something to upgrade might help him... To keep him happy though, hmmm. Markets, gold for the lux slider, a gov't that uses MP's is about all I can think of.

I like the artillery cage idea too.

 

[Paul#42]

Otto and Ghandi have met, I'm pretty sure.
I doubt if Ghandi will ship any units from his home tile. The rules got modified because Ghandi became hydrophobic...

I second that. The only units we will "face" are the units he produces in the gifted city. Good news he can only produce TOW Inf and War Elephants (unless we settled on rubber or oil) . I hope he does not waste too much time on defense. So imo we cannont donate the city early enough! Let him build lots of cheap spears to upgrade to Mech Inf later - I really would gift him right after reaching Modern Times! He would not have to build much except for units.
Maybe we should make sure Brennus has two sources of rubber and oil for Gandhis Mech Infs!

Maybe we should even be killing all but one unit in Delhi (and block shields to hemm production) to free some unit support for the new land force. In despotism he would build at least 7 units in gifted city if he has only one to support in Delhi

Celts will only hear of our rop rape to Ottomans from India (Otto will never meet them) and by that time (or little later) we will be at war with Brennus to keep him from fighting weak but wealthy (and peaceful) Gandhi. So no need for rop anymore then.

I like the idea of using Otto for the space elevator. Brennus is tough enough as it is, I'd hate to see him with Modern age units. Plus, if we need an extra 100 tiles, we have someone left to fight.

We had that idea before. I thought it was necessary to bring it to minds again.

It's obvious, but Ghandi will only be building AA units until the elevator, spears and archers. Is it possible to gift a horse?

You cannot gift any units other than workers. He has to build it from the scratch.

And we cannot inspect Delhi without Espionage because we are not supposed to build an embassy with India IIRC. So our "what-will-the-AI-research-next-specialists should find out how long we should wait to give combustion to Brennus to make him research Espionage for us...