SGOTM 9 - jeffelammar

[denyd]

So the Celts are history, now what???

I suppose we should gift the Ottoman a city off shore (heck give him the whole island), declare war a and capture his local city while wiping out his troops then sign peace giving all the SS techs to Osman. That will isolate the two remaining AI on small islands. Then begin improving the Celtic island, while relocating our troops to the once-Celtic home. If we have a MGL, should we move our capital now (and to where)? Once we lose our FP, where do we want to re-build it? We might want a city that can build a nuclear plant. Maybe Richardborough for the Capital and Entremont for the FP.

 

[CKS]

Nice job on the Celts! Maybe Ghandi will feel able to take us on during the rest of your turns.

I did have one random thought. Would Ghandi be more likely to attack if we weren't so ridiculously strong against him? Once the Celts are completely demolished (I'm assuming they still have some island holdings right now), we could disband our military if this would encourage Ghandi to start expanding. Once he took some cities we could rebuild faster than he could. I've never been in a situation where the AI wouldn't attack, nor where I've been so strong against an AI that I wasn't wiping out.

 

[Paul#42]

I had a tough evening because Hamburg won in Munich in soccer which is like Boston sweeping the Yankees in the bronx...
Sorry for another delay...

So here is the short version (the official turnlog will be attached as txt):

Pre flight check

War against Celts shall start in turn 0 because rop is running out.

Take off

1525 (0)
Inspect the major Celtic cities. Entremont has 13 Infs, Atlanta 10. Alesia 5, New York 6.
Most others have 3 defenders.
Capture most cities with a record of 76-12.
Most losses happened when injured units attacked New York before I found a healthy MA
I razed Philadelphia (1), Verulamium (11), Eboracum (9), Lugdunum (6) to stay under domination limit...
rushed Palace in Entremont to prevent flips

IBT Counterattack: slow units kill ~5 MA, ~3 tanks, 3 knights. New Caristad recaptured.
Celts take all our arties but use only one, move all others
Entremont builds Palace.
Stavanger MA -> MA.
14 tiles under Domination limit.
Osman sends 5 units on our territory.
Gandhi doesn't move.

1530 (1)
Stockholm is down to 38 spt after corruption
That's it from Celtic continent. Four towns left. 5 exposed slow units on mountains left. Record now (130-17).
Osman is annoying me. I'll boot him. He draws back. For now.
17 tiles over domination limit. I raze Gergovia (12 tiles), Salamanca (6) and New Karasjok (10) in Spain.
All celtic towns have many improvements.

IBT Some celtic Bombers strike. No losses. Some workers and canons captured.
Celtic MI lands on our island to east. Only one reg warrior there
New Caristad builds Intelligence Agency.

1535 (2)
on eastern island:
desperated reg warrior loses to MI (3/4)...
27 tiles over domination limit.
I raze five towns in Spain and Celtic Burgdigala. 4 tiles under domination limit.
improve w/l-record to (162-22)

IBT Celts MI takes Vadso on eastern Island.
Osman and Gandhi sign Alliance.
Osman enters our territorry again. We boot him again. Ain't I peaceful?
Gandhi's not moving
Try to plant a spy (63g) but he is discovered.

1540 (3)
Next turn, 24 cities are expanding due to Internet culture...
Inspect Osman's exile. culture 550. 5 spears, 2 reg rifles. University but no library.
preparing some seaborn invasions.

IBT cultural expansion takes us 23 turns under domination limit - sea tiles don't count.

1545 (4)
try to plant spy in India - failed again.
boot Osman again. He leaves.
two vet rifles landed in spain (on mountain). Nearly overlooked that. Three knights take care of those.

IBT nothing special...
Celts land reg Inf next to Istanbul.
India doesn't move...

1550 (5)
MA kills vet Inf near Istanbul (final record: 179-24)
try to plant spy in India - failed again. (0-3)

By mistake I sold the harbor in Zaragoza.

After flight check

Celts are down to their last city. We are finally facing 3 OCC. Gandhi doesn't move, Osman is quite annoying. Next player may shave him a bit if he likes.
Celtic land is quite a mess, sorry for that. There's resistence in two cities I wanted to end when Celts are history.
I did not manage to plant a spy in India. IIRC only one try per turn makes sense.
There is an empty army in Celts land - I would suggest to rush a building with it.
There is a MGL on a ship in the south - our berserks are real leader farmers

Next player feel free to rejump capital to Trondheim (or around). But I think we don't need the production there anymore.

Here is the save

 

[Paul#42]

Here's a screeny of our new home - looks a little uncomfortable now

 

[CKS]

I've got the save. I should be able to play my turns by tomorrow evening.

Nice job on the Celts. Are we still planning to leave them around for a while, as potential trading partners for Ghandi?

I'll work on planting a spy with India. I'll also look for relocation possibilities to set up either the Ottomans or the Celts to trade with India in case we can't get India to build a boat and invade old Spain.

 

[jeffelammar]

Nice job on the Celts. Are we still planning to leave them around for a while, as potential trading partners for Ghandi?

Yes. Because they are technologically behind Ghandi, they are a good candidate to keep around.

 

[jeffelammar]

Three more thoughts.

1. We should give some slaves to Ghandi.
I'm hoping that he would add one or two to his city, increasing his production.
Because he already has happiness issues, I'd give him slaves rather than our real workers.
If we do this, we should do it by moving them to the desert 1 east of Aarhus. In hopes of drawing him to take them there. The ones we have by Channel City are good bait, but I'm hoping that he would be more agressive on ones in his territory.
On that note, we might be able to breadcrumb him straight to channel city with a string of workers.

2. We are still building modern armors. Given the world status, I see no reason to continue. I'd build some settlers so we can repopulate Keltoi.

3. Noticed one other thing. There is a Celtic GS near madrid. We need to take it out.

 

[Paul#42]

Yes. Because they are technologically behind Ghandi, they are a good candidate to keep around.

Oops! I nearly forgot that

Maybe we should move them to our 4-town-island or - even better - to Delhi. That would further decrease flip risks in Keltoi.

Good idea about the slaves! Sorry I did not get it myself. Whatever he does with them - he could use them!

Is there anything we can do to give Gandhi some war happiness?

 

[Jove]

I second that. I did try to breadcrumb Ghandi during my turns, to no effect, but I did not use units in his territory. Maybe some workers inside his borders would convince him that we really are pals.

 

[Paul#42]

plus reducing our military to a task force might also make him more selfconscious...

How about Celts to Delhi? Maybe they become hydrophobic, too? We might reduce our forces to a couple of MA-armies on our home continent.

 

[denyd]

Before we start retiring our military, let's research recycling so we can get both shields and gold from the disbanding.

BTW: for the great job on the Celts

I like the worker bread crumb idea, but Gandhi seems a bit to paranoid at this time to do anything, but we might as well try anything that might work.

Does anyone know if any team has gotten Gandhi to launch?

 

[jeffelammar]

I like the idea of putting the Celts in Delhi. Kinda poetic that.

I wouldn't retire too much of our military. It isn't really costing us anything to keep it around. At this point, there are no "critical" builds, so I'd rather keep the units around in case we need to do something drastic. At the moment, all Ghandi is going to build is military anyway, so keep our troops around till he takes more cities. Once he has a signifcant portion of our homeland, we can disband some troops to make us look weaker.

I had two more thoughts on how to encourage Ghandi to Launch. I don't know if it makes a difference, but the AI might be more inclined to build spaceship parts if they are in a race, thus I suggest that once we have the Celtic core up, we start building a space ship ourselves.


If it gets to 2030 and Ghandi doesn't look to be getting ready to launch in the next 20 turns, I say we kill him dead and then launch our own ship! We'll paint an Elephant on itl.

 

[Jove]

Yessss!
But I disagree about keeping the military. If the others are right (and I'm not sure they are...), getting weaker will encourage Ghandi to start taking our empty towns right away. And the sooner the better, right? We could disband them for marketplaces and banks, for example.
But, how far away is Recycling?

 

[Paul#42]

And how about evacuating Osman to another small island, too? As everyone seems to be hydrophobic this game we might only need to keep one army per continent by then.

Osman really annoyed me with his five units stepping into our territory every single turn. Such a behaviour should not be tolerated

 

[CKS]

Here is the save.
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm9/Jeffelammar_SG009_AD1575_01.SAV

Turn 0: Vet knight kills GS by Madrid. Boot Ottomans. Move Celtic worker into Indian territory. Make peace with Celts, give them Delhi.

IBT: Celts ask us to leave, Ottomans advance, India sits tight. Start some harbors in our new lands.

Turn 1: Switch builds in the old country to banks, factories, offshore platforms, stock exchanges for Ghandi. Book Ottomans again, prepare to attack Lugdunum.

IBT: Celts demand we leave, I declare, they bomb us but do no damage. Ottomans advance, India sits tight. Learn Genetics, start Smart Weapons. I think about recycling first, but recycling doesn't give us gold when we disband units, it gives us shields when we sell buildings. I don't see the necessity right now, not that I'm worried about Ghandi bombing us either.

Turn 2: Bomb Lugdunum, losing 2 bombers to SAMs. MA army kills 3 inf and 1 rifle, taking the city. If I'd have known there were so few defenders, I probably wouldn't have bombed it. I bomb some destroyers, boot the ottomans again, and clear some pollution. Switch builds to cure for cancer (Stavanger) and longevity (Stockholm).

IBT: Rifle, knight, longbow land by Madrid. Ottomans advance, India does nothing. Start some offshore platforms and harbors.

Turn 3: Disband some northern tundra cities as we will get a cultural expansion this turn. Kill the invading Celts, losing a guerrila in the process. Get called away and IT decides to do some updates while I'm gone, rebooting my computer. Reload and do it again. Rebase bombers to Steel Harbor to kill the boats. Abandon cities on small island to east, leaving Vadso in case we want to isolate someone there later. Build Aarhus in new lands. We need to build up by our new palace.

IBT: Otto comes out again, Madrid starts a settler.

Turn 4: Sink 3 Celtic ships. Leader has made it to Celtic lands, fortify him to save for new FP or whatever. Move settler, boot Ottomans, Clean pollution, road Celtic lands.

IBT: Same.

Turn 5: Abandon Zaragosa, bomb ships, boot Ottomans.


If we boot the Ottomans to the small eastern island, we could disband all our military on the home continent. Maybe this would encourage Ghandi to come out. We need to do something, or I think he'll just sit there forever.

I tried planting a spy a couple of times, with no luck. We should keep trying, though there seems to be no hurry.

 

[jeffelammar]

Nice turns CKS, too bad that rat Ghandi won't cooperate. We probably should never have killed any of his archers
Then again hindsight is 20/20.

Plant Spy
Regular spy 50%
Veteran spy 60%
If a spy plant fails you will get a flag saying so. You cant plant a spy when flagged. There is a chance of 1/3 for the flag to disappear each turn. Failing other spy mission, does not trigger the flag. You can plant a spy the same turn your spy has been exposed by a failed mission.

Looks like it is random on each turn whether the failed plant expires, so if you plant

Frequency        chance flag gone    chance of success (50% of the chance 
                                                        the flag is gone)
Every turn:        33%                      16%
Every Other        55%                      27.5%
Every 3            70%                      35%
Every 4            80%                      40%
Every 5            87%                      43%

I'm not an expert, but I think the numbers make sense. To me this seems like every 3 or 4 turns is the optimal number of frequency to try.

If we are disbanding troops, I'd rather transport them to the Celtic Island and disband them for shields over there.

 

[jeffelammar]

More Brainstorming.
1. We should research Sanitation next. It would allow us to grow the cities in our old core and thus improve the value Ghandi gets when he finally gets off his butt.

2. After that we should bee line to Free Artistry. Building Shakespeare in Stavenger would be a great help to Ghandi too.

 

[denyd]

I like the idea of Sanitation though I think Gandhi will just pop-rush away the extra citizens, at least he might use them for units to capture extra cities.

Shakespeare does worry me a bit. How are we doing on 100K?

 

[Paul#42]

I like the idea of Sanitation though I think Gandhi will just pop-rush away the extra citizens, at least he might use them for units to capture extra cities.

Shakespeare does worry me a bit. How are we doing on 100K?

Culture graph tells we are just approaching 40k. It should take us ~150 turns to come close to 100k.

Should we also send a warrior in Gandhi's territory to encourage an archer to strike? I still think our best bet would be to abandon most of our military. Lets get Osman out and leave the (finally) sinking ship...
But take care of Brennus' fleet.

This brings me to a trailblazing insight:
Best exile ever would be on a 3x3-tile island a town placed in the middle

 

[Jove]

I don't know, if Ghandi attacked our warrior, he'd probably lose.
I like the idea of Shake's. Maybe it can be done in CC?