SGOTM 9 - jeffelammar

[Paul#42]

Another thing: Micro Management becoames quite exhausting and not less important these turns. I would suggest we shorten turnsets to five turns to keep players focused. How do you think?

 

[Jove]

The only downsides I see to gifting a city to India ASAP are:
-It'll be a distraction to manage, and screwupabble. Some planning and will ought to solve all that.
-Ghandi's science rate will increase. We're shot if he somehow manages to get Education at the wrong moment. We ought to ally Otto v Ghandi immediately just to eliminate the risk of any trades.
-Everyone disagrees about the details. Let's just keep hashing it out.
-It will cost significant military resources. We're pretty wimpy as it is.

In summary, 'it's annoying' is about the worst to say about this plan.

@Paul#42: By 'gift a horse', I meant gift Ghandi a city that has a horse resource. I'm in such a hurry this week that I'm not checking the files to know if its possible. If it is, Ghandi will be able to build horsemen. Hey, if there's no defenders in our lands, he won't even need war elephants.
And then, we claim Delhi as our own shelter of last resort. We can actually get an MA boost: Think of the number of bonus sea tiles we'll acquire! With some disbanding and rushing, Delhi could be a powerhouse in 4 turns. And we'll entirely eliminate Ghandi's existing military, in addition to ending corruption in his shiny brand-spanking-new capitol.

Edit: If we're serious about winning, the mming will only get worse. Is 5-turn turnsets within the rules?

 

[Paul#42]

The only downsides I see to gifting a city to India ASAP are:
-It'll be a distraction to manage, and screwupabble. Some planning and will ought to solve all that.
-Ghandi's science rate will increase. We're shot if he somehow manages to get Education at the wrong moment. We ought to ally Otto v Ghandi immediately just to eliminate the risk of any trades.
-Everyone disagrees about the details. Let's just keep hashing it out.
-It will cost significant military resources. We're pretty wimpy as it is.

I sensed some consense about details lately. It's just about the right turn to gift the city (and which one of course), isn't it? Or am I too far away from this discussion so I got a wrong impression?
I don't see mcuh of a distraction and if we plan as thoroughly as in the moment I don't think we will screw it up. We can lay it down to 10-12 rules that have to be obeyed for that era and I think it can be handled. I'll try to combine those rules so we can seperately discuss them.
I am convinced it is absolutely necessary to do it that way or we will spend lots of time waiting for Mr Gandhi to get out of the box!!

And regarding our wimpy military - for the first 20-30 turns after day X we will only need like those four canons we already have (upgraded to arties) and our warriors and archers to block a city every now and then. By then most of our core cities will have most buildings and there will be few to pump out mech Infs (if necessary by drafting). It will be absolutely no problem for us to keep Ancient-India in check.

In summary, 'it's annoying' is about the worst to say about this plan.

Can you explain that statement to a non-native reader? Does it mean you don't like it at all?

@Paul#42: By 'gift a horse', I meant gift Ghandi a city that has a horse resource. I'm in such a hurry this week that I'm not checking the files to know if its possible. If it is, Ghandi will be able to build horsemen. Hey, if there's no defenders in our lands, he won't even need war elephants.
And then, we claim Delhi as our own shelter of last resort. We can actually get an MA boost: Think of the number of bonus sea tiles we'll acquire! With some disbanding and rushing, Delhi could be a powerhouse in 4 turns. And we'll entirely eliminate Ghandi's existing military, in addition to ending corruption in his shiny brand-spanking-new capitol.

I do not think we have a horses resource that nearby. Furthermore I'm convinced that Gandhi loses all buildings in captured cities so we will keep him to one or two cities till he captures Channel City.

I would let him Delhi because he has double unit support, it's central enough for our plans and I see no value for us as our core will be in Spain. I'm not so excited about just having an OCC even with those nice sea tiles around...
Apart from that I don't fear Gandhi to get too far in research. With two cities and not even Map Making researched - how shall he manage to get Construction, Currency, all those AT-techs and then get to Education in 30-50 turns?!?

If we want to be really sure, we can sign an embargo with Ottomans and Gandhi on his own will get to Middle Ages NO WAY. I never signed an embargo (at least I can't remember), which tech is necessary for that? EDIT: Just saw that you suggest an Alliance - that would do the job much easier, of course

 

[Paul#42]

Edit: If we're serious about winning, the mming will only get worse. Is 5-turn turnsets within the rules?

I saw that in recent SGotms and I would not mind starting it in my turnset.
However I cannot find the rule right now, can anybody else?

 

[Paul#42]

Regarding razing Delhi or not I found a statement from Tim in the Maintenance Thread:

16 free units plus 4 per city.

So unit support is no reason to let Gandhi keep Delhi...
But still a reason to cut his units in Delhi to 1 if necessary
He might have like 16 units already there (with nothing left to build).

This reminds me of Gandhi's early curragh we destroyed in the first turnsets. I cannot believe this to remain the only trial to break out. Surprising as it was to see an AI use a curragh...

 

[AlanH]

I saw that in recent SGotms and I would not mind starting it in my turnset.
However I cannot find the rule right now, can anybody else?

lurker's comment: It's up to you to manage your team any way you see fit. Whatever keeps the game going best is fine with me, as long as the whole team is involved.

 

[TimBentley]

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...

He'll only choose espionage over steel, atomic theory (and some after those two), and ironclads. We'd be in the modern age before he researches espionage.

5-turn turnsets would be fine with me (haven't found time to get to turn 1 yet, I should finish today).

 

[Paul#42]

He'll only choose espionage over steel, atomic theory (and some after those two), and ironclads. We'd be in the modern age before he researches espionage.

So you mean: If we leave him without Steel by just selling him Refining he would still research Military Tradition, Democracy, Arts, Sanitation, Electricity and all that stuff first?
Now that is a major setback imo . Having no spies in India would mean a blind flight. We need to monitor them from the moment we gift the city.
If we are absolutely sure Brennus doesn't research it for us we should self-research it at least as first tech in Modern Times (or last tech before reaching MT). Are there any ideas how we could Brennus make research that one? Or don't you guys rate spying as high as I do (for the first time in my civ-career)?

 

[CKS]

I'm in favor of switching to 5 turn sets soon.

There is a nearby horse resource, one tile north of Aarhus (just north and west of Channel City). This might be a good city to gift, to give Ghandi some faster units. If we want to let him expand a bit before taking over Channel City, to get some luxuries, the Molde - Karasjok - Alesund path is still conveniently located. If not, Aarhus is right next to Channel City, so the Great Library is nice and close when the time comes.

I'm not in favor of taking Delhi. I think Ghandi needs as much help as he can get before we let him out. I did had a horrible thought about the gifted city flipping back to us, before I realized that we don't have to accept it if it happens.

@Paul#42: The "'it's annoying' is about the worst to say about this plan" statement means, "I don't see any major problems. There will be details to work out so that we don't mess it up, but we can handle them." The plan sounds pretty good.

 

[Paul#42]

There is a nearby horse resource, one tile north of Aarhus (just north and west of Channel City). This might be a good city to gift, to give Ghandi some faster units. If we want to let him expand a bit before taking over Channel City, to get some luxuries, the Molde - Karasjok - Alesund path is still conveniently located. If not, Aarhus is right next to Channel City, so the Great Library is nice and close when the time comes.

I remember I already favored Aarhus once (some 100 posts back), so this is fine with me (although I had chosen it as Gandhi's new capital). He should at least have the wheel by now or then, shouldn't he? Would be best if he would not have HBR by then to build lots of chariots.
But further cities we won't be giving to him because I don't think buildings stay alive. Or did anyone ever encounter a building in a captured city he didn't have the tech for (except wonders of course)?

I'm not in favor of taking Delhi. I think Ghandi needs as much help as he can get before we let him out. I did had a horrible thought about the gifted city flipping back to us, before I realized that we don't have to accept it if it happens.

I had similar horrible thoughts about Gandhi rejecting our gift (in German "gift" means poison )... But the test game showed even annoyed enemies don't reject gifts like that.

@Paul#42: The "'it's annoying' is about the worst to say about this plan" statement means, "I don't see any major problems. There will be details to work out so that we don't mess it up, but we can handle them." The plan sounds pretty good.

Thanks. This difficult sentence already caused me a headache...

 

[jeffelammar]

1. City to Gift: I thin Aarhus is a great choice. It's been my preference since mentioned ages back. (Plus it at exactly RCP7, so a legal choice)

2. When to Gift: I have no major objection to doing the gift at the beginning of modern. I just think we'll make better use of the city for reasearch than Ghandi will as a unit pump.

3. When I first started studying German, I messed up a test because Gift == poison.

4. As Alan said, 5 turn sets are perfectly acceptable. Sounds like we have a bunch of people for it, so let's say that the standard is 5 for now.

5. I don't think that there is much danger in increasing Ghandi's research rate. We can keep an eye on him and let him take Channel City if he learns Monotheism (Or we could even wait for Theology, but that's a little more risky)

 

[CKS]

in German "gift" means poison

Near my uncle's house in Minnesota there is a store that sells stuff imported from Germany. I've always found it amusing that its name is "The Gift Haus".

I'm sure that we would make better use of any city than Ghandi will, but we don't want to have to wait for dozens of turns for him to take some land. I think we need to encourage that as much as possible, and some horses may help. He won't be able to build them after he takes the Great Library (and war elephants are a lot more expensive), so giving him a little time to build horses before we let him attack us sounds good to me.

 

[Jove]

Yeah, 'annoying' = slightly unpleasant. I was thinking about how complicated this game is getting. Part of the fun of civ is that it's interesting to try to fit all this in your brain at one time when it gets like this. But too much detail can get, well, annoying. It shouldn't be an obstacle to us stalwart SGOTM warriors though.

 

[denyd]

To me the annoying part is the random nature of what Gandhi will do and when he'll do it. We good play this prefectly and Gandhi could decide it's too scary in space and never build the Apollo program and there's nothing we can do about it.

One thing I will tell you is if we get to 2045 AD and it's my turn and Gandhi hasn't built a space ship yet, I'm going to nuke his a$$ all the way to Alpha Centauri.

 

[TimBentley]

950(0): sell TM to America for WM, 2g
declare war on America
build embassy in Entremont for 68g (96spt!!)
sign MA against America for 4gpt, 15g
sell industrialization to Celts for 247gpt, 217g (we can buy wool later if needed)
found New Stockholm
science to 100%
do some MM, switch some builds, switch some scientists to civil engineers

IBT: Channel City factory->bank (thinking of Wall Street)

960(1): zzz (seems like the turn shouldn't have taken so long with that statement)

IBT: Celts stop buying spices from us

970(2): killed a musket in Madrid

IBT: Trondheim factory->bank

980(3): killed two more muskets

IBT: cancel lux deal with Celts, hire CE in Fauske
Stockholm settler->iron works

990(4): sell corporation to Celts for wool, wines, WM , 81gpt, 156g (about 400g underpriced)
capture Madrid

IBT: learn steel, start on refining

1000(5): Raze Spanish city I forgot the name of

Notes: We're currently about 60 beakers per turn short of getting refining in 5 turns. Firing some civil engineers (we have 9), rushing the university in Risor, and hiring scientists in Madrid should do it (may need a little less growth in favor of scientists in some areas)
It would be nice to get 5 stock exchanges for Wall Street (that's why Trondheim and Channel City are building banks)
Probably switching some worker builds to settlers would be advisable

Here is the save.

 

[Jove]

Dang, Spain is building muskets again. Did they re-hook the saltpeter or are they buying it?

 

[Paul#42]

got it. Will analyze later.

 

[Gyathaar]

One thing I will tell you is if we get to 2045 AD and it's my turn and Gandhi hasn't built a space ship yet, I'm going to nuke his a$$ all the way to Alpha Centauri.

That one made me laugh out loud

 

[jeffelammar]

One thing I will tell you is if we get to 2045 AD and it's my turn and Gandhi hasn't built a space ship yet, I'm going to nuke his a$$ all the way to Alpha Centauri.

Amen to that.

 

[TimBentley]

Dang, Spain is building muskets again. Did they re-hook the saltpeter or are they buying it?

They have an active trade with the Celts. Apparently they're buying horses and iron from them too.

I noticed that Madrid has a 1.5-3% flip chance, so the army is unsafe there.