SGOTM 9 - klarius

[ThERat]

i also think we should take Entremont as soon as possible. one thing I don't understand though (maybe I miessed that). Why did we switch off research? is that a temporary measure to cash rush improvements? Do we expect the Ai to research for us? Doubtful.

I also like the idea to take Delhi as soon as India lands on our continent and restrict them to one useless city.

 

[Ronald]

one thing I don't understand though (maybe I miessed that). Why did we switch off research? is that a temporary measure to cash rush improvements?

Yes, the ring cities need libraries to expand their borders to get real productive. As soon as we have them it's back to full speed research.

 

[Obormot]

pre-flight
- Changed some builds as it was discussed: libs in towns without fresh water switched to aqueducts, towns that were more then 50% corrupt switched to workers.
- Some MM, increase growth in several cities, hire several specialists in corrupt towns (usually in research games at this stage i like to have such towns grow fast and cash-rush workers with gold from AIs while researching at max, but this doesn't seem to work on monarch as the AI hardly have any gold)
- Gift all techs except Literature to the spanish.

330BC
- Kill the mongol warrior with our elite archer.

290BC
- Rush the last library, resume research. Engineering is due in 10 turns at 70% (-2 gpt). We have 8 gold in the treasury and the AI don't have any gold to help us too.
- 2 more mongol archers appear in the north.
- Celts build The Great Wall Well, most of their cities are bigger then 7 anyway.

270BC
- Kill both mongols. A mongol warrior is spotted, i cover our archer with a warrior.

IBT
- Mongol kills our warrior, but the elite archer is safe.

210BC
- TGL is built in Carthage.
- Start shifting our warriors to the core, we can keep 3 MPs per city in monarchy.

170BC
- Celts move a GS to Agedincum, and a horseman just outside its borders. It is obvious that they are about to declare, i'll let them attack to still get some war happiness. I also buy 10 gold (all they had) from them for 1 gpt.

150BC
- Oops, celts don't attack us. I completely forgot that they are at war with america and the path through Agedincum was the shortest for the celtic troops (the AI of course doesn't have much roads yet). But anyway those 10 gold allowed us to get Engineering 1 turn earlier
- Our galley makes a discovery that Spain is on a separate island.
- Engineering is due in 1 turn. Since it is last turn of research i put some of our scientists to work to store some food that can be converted to beakers later. Next turn we should hire several scientists agai. I think that since we cannot cash-rush workers we should keep corrupt towns at +2 fpt (average) and hire scientists to compensate food surplus. We have 17 workers now, but building more never hurts and we can do some worker joins later.

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm9/klarius_SG009_BC0150_01.SAV

 

[Northern Pike]

We've done a good job of accumulating galleys, and now we need the ground units they're going to carry. To begin with, we have to put Bergen and Trondheim onto brief pre-builds until we can change them to MDI next turn (after we've traded Engineering for Feudalism, simple enough I assume with the latter in general circulation), or we'll effectively sacrifice two MDI for galleys we don't need.

Then we should produce an MDI every four turns out of Trondheim, Bergen, and Reykjavik, and every five turns out of Oslo. The latter two towns will need MM to achieve this. This way, if I've calculated correctly, we'll produce our tenth MDI in 30 AD, and we'll be able to load them all onto galleys, along with two supporting units (perhaps our two archers), in 50 AD. We should then be able to land the expeditionary force on Entremont's wool hill in 170 AD, at worst; careful study might cut a turn off this route, which is irritatingly inefficient, although I don't think so.

We could also let the MDI production cycle run another three turns, and do the same thing that much later with three more MDI in our task force. I'd call ten MDI and two other units the prudent minimum, for a size-twelve target presumably held by veteran pikemen. We know the Celts have iron.

 

[klarius]

Well, I got it and had a brief look into the save.
My plans are similar to what NP wrote. Probably should add a pike or two. Entremont is linked to iron and may produce MDI, though most of these will go down to America (and I will keep this war cooking, if they should make peace).
I will also look, if I can get the production in our central cities further up. Should be possible to squeeze 3-turn MDI out of the capital. Now that we can replant forests I also intend to cut the grass forests near oslo. Could be another BG hidden there. Slight problem, as always, is having not enough workers, at least not where I will need them.
I think I will use Agedincum for the only thing I think it's worthwhile. That is have Celts declare on us for some war happiness (hopefully get the lux slider down to 0).
The flip risk is getting pretty high there and then we get nothing from this town at all. The celts are furious already and they sure think they are stronger than we are. They should declare when booted.
Our alliance against Mongols has expired. I think I make peace and get them back into business. Would be still nice if they send some more training material, but monarch AI are really not good at that.
I'm still not sure what to do with science. Most probably Celts are researching Mono already. They might get it even faster than we can research it. In that case full steam research would be a waste (we might end up putting monopoly beakers in it and overrun the research). On the other side they might have freaked out and set the research to engineering. I will look into it some more.

 

[Northern Pike]

Probably should add a pike or two.

Yes, that sounds wise. In a solo game I'd include a settler in the task force too, because an invading stack with a settler has so many more options.

 

[klarius]

The save

Well, pretty peaceful, diplomatic build up turns, though the war with Celts started right away.


Turn Log:

Preflight:
Go through our cities. Change a few builds. Aqueducts to complete when cities will not even have reached size 4-5 don't make much sense.
I also change the library in Odense to granary.
This has two reasons. First I think we can make a worker pump out of it.
Second I think leaving a culture hole might turn out beneficial later.
Maybe Gandhi will come with a settler pair to settle there later. He should know about the free space because his culture touched it earlier.
A settler pair should be quite nice to steer into a convenient location.
I don't want Stavanger to build a worker at this small size, change it to galley for now.

Ok, let's look into diplomacy:
I can get feudalism from Celts for literature and gpt. I'm pretty positive he will declare when booted, so I just do it.
That will save a bit headache with prebuilds.
I move the spear out, to not fall afoul the no teleportation rule, then I make him a little more furious by a few demands.
Boot order - he DoWs.
Fine 0% lux and every city ok.
Dial up Abe and gift him Agedincum. While I'm at it I take his 8g for map making and gift him currency.
I don't really think he will survive giving us money at some time, but anyway just for good practice (every civ gets currency).
Isa gets literature and feudalism. Idea here is that she will probably research mono. If celts should be quick to it, she may get the chance to buy it for us.
On our continent I will trade only with engineering, to set some civs up for invention.

So now look to produce some MDI.
A little bit more micromanagement and I can hit enter.

IBT:
Abe boots our troops out of Agedincum. Nice gets us further away from Celts.
Then Celts take Agedincum as was to be expected.
Engineering comes in. Peace with Mongols. Gift them construction and get republic for engineering. Then everybody on our island gets to tech parity, giving them engineering first.
That should put them all on invention.
Isa gets republic also, but not engineering currently. She may even cough up a few gold when in republic.

Turn 1 130BC:
Science to mono, but I leave it at 0% currently. We couldn't sustain 100% anyways and another library to come up. So just collect money first and do 100% later (maybe).
Disband one of our warriors in celt land. He couldn't escape a gallic. The other one captures a worker to annoy Brennus a little more. The spear tries an escape with maybe a little pillaging.
MM a little.

Turn 2 110BC:
I had our galleys out on Indian cove block now all whales for a turn. I think Gandhi will switch off these tiles and not back unless something changes in his population.
Not really important, just to do something with our galleys while waiting.
The second warrior in Celtia will also not make it - disband.
First two MDI. We need more . But I configure Trondheim first for a 2 turn pike.
Science 100% now - still not enough money to sustain, but maybe a few coins show up.

IBT: The spear also didn't make it. A gallic was faster. But I will be able to save the newly acquired slave.

Turn 3 90BC:
Slave embarks on galley. No use getting him home. But galley with slave will be available for some bikini babe duty.
Abe has a few coins. He gets RoP for it.
MM.

Turn 4 70BC:
Nothing to do short of worker jobs and MM.

Turn 5 50 BC:
The same

Turn 6 30BC:
We are out of money. Look around to get a loan. Get 50g old from Ottomans for 3 gpt. Also sell spain engineering for 12g. Abe gets CoL for 11g.
MM

Turn 7 10BC:
Not much

Turn 8 10AD:
Celts have mono which reduces our cost, so I get it in 1 turn at reduced science. But spanish couldn't afford it despite my best effort (cost would have further reduced).
I could get it for peace, but the war happiness is worth a lot currently. So no peace, though maybe peace and RoP is an option for the attack.
Ottomans have some gold. I rather take their cash by gpt, than having them waste it on unit upgrade or such nonsense. So another 51g - 3gpt deal. Carthage gets 1gpt for 18g.
India is in anarchy. They just researched monarchy. They still are missing writing, but you can expect their research to take off now. Maybe 20-30 turns till they have map making.
Just keep in mind.

IBT:
Mono comes in. Osman is the first to have some gpt available for a tech. Sell him mono for 26gpt + change (far below value but better than nothing).
No further trades worth while (and also no use to gift mono before invention is around).

Turn 9 30AD:
Forgot to sell mono to Carthage (GLib). That cost us all of his 6g available.
First galleys leave for Entremont.

Turn 10 50AD:
Business as usual. A little MM, a little galley moving. Land our slave in America.
Seeing that Abe has hooked iron (remarkable), I sell him feudalism for 12g. Maybe he manages to get a pike so that celts can nicely suicide.

A few notes:
I'm micromanaging every turn between the cities so the MM looks quite uneven. Nothing managed to numbers like 10sh.
You may want to change this for easier play, but 3 turn MDIs just don't fit well.
I replanted already some trees. You can use civassist2 to learn which forests wont give shields anymore.
We should have even more forests especially Oslo has much too much food and too few shields. Don't hesitate to plant on irrigated grass.
I think the units currently underway to Entremont could probably do. Entremont is building Sun Tsu currently and cannot build new units.
You may want to use Lapurdum as a first stage and maybe collect another galley load there.
But differential movement really delays movement if you stage on an island.
But we want Entremont soon so that we can get at least the border expansion by the ToA, before we learn education.
OTOH we don't want to delay education.
We will probably use up our war happiness points at Entremont, beware that most cities will then be on riot. Maybe even set 10% lux before the attack.
I just landed our celt slave in America. He may want to stay on that hill for another turn (don't move to flatland you may not see gallics coming).

 

[Northern Pike]

I think leaving a culture hole might turn out beneficial later.
Maybe Gandhi will come with a settler pair to settle there later. He should know about the free space because his culture touched it earlier.
A settler pair should be quite nice to steer into a convenient location.

Very cunning!

I think the units currently underway to Entremont could probably do.

I wouldn't take this risk. The units we have en route could fail at Entremont with just ordinary bad RNG, not flagrant misfortune. We should wait until we can attack Entremont with ten MDI.

If it turns out that we take Entremont with a redundantly large force, it'll be able to push on immediately, whereas a smaller stack would have to heal. So the loss of time would be mostly apparent, but the gain in safety would be real.

 

[klarius]

Well, looking on it by daylight, Northern Pike is right that the current troops are to few to be a sure win.
Because of that I would really recommend to stage on Lapurdum (take it with the first wave and heal).
Send the first wave galleys back to speed up the later reinforcements by chainining.
Not to establish a permanent ship chain, just to speed things up a bit. From Lapurdum the mountain near Entremont is one galley hop away so one ferry there should be enough, while the last reinforcements would go directly to the sheep mountain.
In all this don't forget that America has to stay at war with Celts if you don't want to see a lot reinforcements from other cities. So if they make peace, immediately ally them.
An alternative is to do the set up for Entremont with peace and RoP. Even in that case I would take Lapurdum first to collect the troops and make peace only when everything is collected there. We will lose our war happiness by peace, so it should come as late as possible.
With all the bugs in the WW-WH calculation, I'm not sure how much WH points we have to spend now. I should have spent something like 4 out of 30, 2 turns with units in Celtia and 1 unit lost, but I hope we could sustain WH through Lapurdum and even the Entremont fight, if the RNG isn't to bad. So I would prefer the no-peace route.

To look a bit more in the future, next step after Entremont should be Alesia (Great Wall). Probably we will have education then, so we cannot expand it's borders by the ToA anymore. You might want to either burn it, or have enough troops stationed outside that you are absolutely sure to be able to take it back in a flip. And there is also no need for fast further acquisitions after Alesia. Alesia alone will open up the space for 6 ICS towns I readily see on the map not counting what's hidden in the fog.
And that's my goal in Celtia - towns as fast as possible, not a lot of territory gain first. We aren't going for score.

BTW science:
We want to buy invention with theology (so no gifting or cheap selling before that). Our next research goal is education. We can slow down there a bit to take advantage of ToA (hopefully) and at the same time collect some money for rushes. But the latest time to acquire education is when gunpowder is around.
Don't go for chivalry, this will be researched sooner or later by one of the AIs. Our money is better invested in rushes to improve our empire than duplicate research.

 

[klarius]

A few more points on my take on the general long term strategy:

I don't want to take out or even severely hamper any AI before it had it's golden age.
So that means Celts are disposable now. Carthage very probable next (no hurry).
Depending on the availability of chivalry, we may get the Mongol golden age with them allied with us against Carthage (maybe 20 turns or even later from now).
It's still a long time to an Ottoman GA - there is no chance for them to trigger it by a wonder anytime soon.
I think to leave Spain unmolested for a long time (maybe all the way until we have to destroy their Apollo program ).
They should grow into our prime source of income. I even don't want to ally them against Celts, unless they buy a tech from them (which probably means Spain giving gpt). But then an alliance would be worth it to cut the trade and have us as their sole real trade partner for some time.
Spain has a chance for an golden age either by their UU (if there are still Celts around at that time), or by building Magellan's.

America seems useless (not very likely they get a GA ever), but with Gyathaar's mistake to put them in a locked war with India, they have a good use. We can just gift them cities when we are ready to hand over the land to India.
They will have much lower culture than we have at that time, which will reduce the resistance in the cities. Also the culture borders will collapse to let India approach faster.
And no chance for them bailing out by a sudden peace, which would be a risk with other civs used for that.
We just have to time it right so America can't build units first. And we also don't want America to progress too much in science. MA technologies are fine, but if we can help it no nationalism and communism.
So America to survive (as a small nation) is still a goal.
We cannot afford to help them directly (besides a bit bikini-babing with our slave), but the war at Entremont coupled with the inability of the AI to mount a good city siege should give them a good chance to hold out against Celts. Ideal would be, if Celts just manage to take Washington barely, for us to take later. But Brennus may even be to incompetent to do that (he for sure has the units/production to do it).

 

[Obormot]

That is a nice analysis of the situation. Just one question: where are we going to get the settlers for ICSing? I doubt that we'll get a leader so soon and won't be able to turn Entremont into a SF, so we'll have to cash-rush them or build them at home, which means slowing down science or turning one of our home cities into a settler pump. I prefer the latter and IIRC one of our cities was building a granary, so we may try to build settlers from there, but i don't remember how many shields it can produce.

Agree about taking Lapurdum first and bringing some more troops. I think using RoP abuse now is inefficent as most celtic troops are in America and we can also use the slave to bait them. I think we should save it for later when we have more troops and can attack several towns simultaneously.

 

[ThERat]

great analysis klarius!

I like that diea about using America for the Indian cause

 

[klarius]

That is a nice analysis of the situation. Just one question: where are we going to get the settlers for ICSing?

Well, there is always hope for a leader .
But anyways, we should get Entremont to 4-6 uncorrupted shields with a courthouse alone. We need the money for that, but it is a good investment, even if we get a leader later.
A bit of short-rushing then should get a good settler rate ( 4-turn settlers should be affordable). I hope for 5 sh at size 6 and being able to short-rush to 20sh before. Exact MM sequence and tile improvements TBD, when we have it.

Also I think we should invest the money to get Entremonts population down by 1-3 settlers rushed early. So there's the first 1-3 settlers (though workers first might be better).

Currently we are paying unit support cost (and our unit numbers should still increase for some time). So new villages are worth 3gpt even before specialists.
But I don't want to bleed off any inner core cities.

We still need a lot worker jobs done at home (the rim should get roads and also a few mines, jungle ), so spare population should still get workers there.
Odense (granary) has to few shields for a classical settler pump. So short rushing would be needed there too.
So a settler pump @home would mean Trondheim or Bergen. Not a good choice now they have the basic infra builds. That doesn't mean that there should be no settlers out of these towns (or also Oslo). The capital e.g. Is currently sporting a scientist, because it's the only city which would be unhappy. So a settler there at some time wouldn't be a bad thing. But currently we need military first.

BTW, after the current military build phase marketplaces in the big cities should come on the agenda at some time. But note we only have three luxes currently, one happy face is not worth the effort immediately.
We have to work on trade routes to our northern neighbors, there are 2 spare luxes to buy currently on our island.
Maybe a harbor on the inner sea will already do it (at least Carthage has a harbor there, but we don't know, if it's connected to their capital.

Well and somebody should also post this every now and then :

Our roster:

klarius just played
killercane up
ThERat on deck
Ronald
Northern Pike
Obormot

 

[Northern Pike]

That sounds like a sensible plan. I think I'd be more aggressive about crushing Carthage after the Celts than you seem inclined to be. Territory belonging neither to us nor to a civ from which we expect tech help is just a wasted opportunity.

Do we still intend to leave every defeated civ with one city, to reduce India's tech costs eventually? Your wording seems to imply you don't care about this.

It's quite a while since we've heard from Killer, and this isn't a good time for Americans to play. So I think we could probably swap him without further delay, and fit him back into the roster when the turkey coma wears off.

 

[klarius]

By going the way of keeping India behind we have already put our money on the Great Library.
It's available on our island, so now we should try to use it to bring India all the way to space. If we should fail this, a few percent faster research for India will not cut it. It's anyways doubtful that we can bring them to less than 50 turns research for modern age techs. We can give them well established cities and they will have lots of production. But libraries and universities vanish when cities change hands. And I doubt that Gandhi will build them with top priority.


Still no reason to get wild on the AI. We can keep them alive. Just the Celts I would like to eliminate. They currently have a lot culture due to ToA. Instead of worrying about flips for a long time, I would just go the easy way.

Edit, because I changed my mind:
Eliminate everyone besides Spain and backwards America.
And don't ever buy fascism. We don't want India to change to this garbage government. So they should never get it.

There's no need for us to really enforce the 24/72 rule, but ThERat if you want to take it that's also fine with me.

 

[Obormot]

Just leave at least one AI alive so that the GLib actually works

 

[Northern Pike]

If we should fail this, a few percent faster research for India will not cut it.

A lot of confusing things have been written about AI civs and the tech rate, so this is a real question, not a rhetorical one. Are you saying that the difference between India's being the last of eight civs to research a given Modern Age tech, and its being the last of four, would be insignificant?

 

[ThERat]

ok, will play my turns today.

By the way, do we really think we can get India all the way to SS with the Glibrary. That's a long way and I am not too sure how afr we would be with the tech tree by then. Of course, we try and cut out all those unnecessary techs, but still doubtful.

 

[Obormot]

Once they learn MapMaking and get a town on the main continent we may capture Delhi and culture-squeese them as much as we want (we can even leave them with just one tile). That would mean that it'll take 50 turns for them to research anything. That would give us enough time.

 

[ThERat]

I got a question before I continue to play. The great Lighthouse should give us unlimited movement across the sea, why is it that when I want to move the galleys, I cannot see the indication of distance? So, is there any restriction on movement here in SGOTM? Or can we move the galleys anywhere?